Lesson Eleven: Except Ye Become As Little Children

(https://youtu.be/S1-LCnGojnw  In case this video is taken down, it is a gorgeous little blond girl, 6 or 7 or 8 years of age, playing a full size harp, unable to reach all the strings.)

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The little darl'n can only reach three quarters of the instrument, yet she has command of that three-fourths. If I could design my heaven, I would have one of these installed in every room.

It reminds me of an experience in the 1970s. I was tuning at the University of Georgia, in the basement band room, an old nine-foot Mason & Hamlin Concert Grand (that was a bear to tune). And in walks this little girl with a tiny violin. She walked up to the piano like we were old friends, she smiled at me and then started to make screeching sounds, as she tuned the tiny instrument and walked around me from side to side. She was tiny, 4 years old, oriental and small for her age. That one-quarter violin was perfectly proportioned to her size. She looked at me with a wink (honest like a tiny elf who knew a joke) and started playing this beautiful music on that tiny violin that would rip your heart out. It was passionate and sweet and had that “something” which is impossible to define that makes music real, a song of the soul and not the brain making the body saw notes.  That capacity is so real that I can tell in the first five notes played by anyone, if they are about to play music or just notes in order.

It was very much like the Twilight Zone for me. I had never heard of the Suzuki Program, nor knew of the existence of a one-quarter violin - and I thought I knew most every musical instrument that existed. That was pure hubris, because I have discovered new instruments again and again across the years - the last being the Chapman Stick - a few years ago.  Anyway, adding insult to injury, other children arrived and began to play harmonies and counter melodies on various instruments. Before long there were over one hundred kids in the room and they were not making noise.

The teacher walked in and apologized for interrupting my tuning and asked how much time I needed to finish. I said 5 to 8 minutes. She instructed the crew to remain silent. And if you can imagine the discipline of 100 plus children in a room, each with noise making devices in their hands, remaining quite? They did; it was absolute silence. I could not even hear them breathing, and I had (emphasis on the past tense) unusually keen hearing. When I finished I checked the piano tuning by playing a series of cords and intervals that would immediate tell me if I was successful in tuning the piano or if I had failed (really I only played them to hear them and enjoy the effects of the tuning.) The teacher asked, "Are you finished?" I nodded in the affirmative. She thanked the children for being silent so I could finish and I thanked them, too. Then she did the most extraordinary thing, she asked them if they could play the series of cords I had played while I was checking the tuning. And trust me, the series was complex. I had created it, to check for classical intervals in all twelve keys and jazz intervals in broken cords and flated 5th. She counted 7 counts, because my check was in 7/4 time (one two, one two, one two three,) And the approximation was unbelievable, not perfect, but OH MY GOD! - one hundred minds, ages four to thirteen. (BTW the Materialists are FOOLS - the human spirit is not firing of electrons in the brain.) The fact that they had that "playing by ear" skill, that musical acuity BLEW ME AWAY - and broke a prejudice I had held that classical musicians played always mechanically, many of them do, the best ones do not.

A decade later, I was privileged to become a "musical confidant" of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra's new “top violinist, who took the job of Concert MASTER - at the age of nineteen. His mother was a Suzuki teacher. While Concert Master under Musical Director Robert Shaw, "we" won 13 Grammy Awards for best classical presentations and recordings.

The back-story is that the Suzuki group was comprised of musical prodigies, brought from all over, to be raised on the University of Georgia campus. And only the ones that were older were being taught how to read music. They were taught to listen and repeat and play by rote and play creatively, from their heart, from their soul, from their spirit, years before they were exposed to the artificial dots on a page, a mere schematic of music, not the music itself.

Everything I have said in this lesson so far is a direct analogy to the reality of the Ancient Christian Life, The Way. It did not come off a page, it was learned by example, called Tradition, and the Apostles and their Successors were Tradition’s directors; it created a language of spiritual understanding and communication, a GROWTH that was unconscious, inside strict rule of discipline. It required individual “tuning” the personal spiritual work of repentance and purification, by fasting, prayer and meditation, a solitary place called the prayer closet, where one could make the screeching sounds necessary to prepare the instrument to SING.  But it found its driving motivation and the witness of its spiritual reality SINGING, in communal performance called worship; the Divine Liturgy being the most important "performance." Like the children in that Suzuki Orchestra had to have the discipline to have their instrument prepared, to be “in tune,” for performance, they had to be in tune and sensitive to the others, in degrees of subtlety that boggles the mind. So the Ancient Christians worshiped followed the liturgical forms, while remaining open and sensitive to the nuanced and subtle sounds produced by the hearts, souls and spirits of others. In so doing, they created a common voice powered by the Holy Spirit, that joined the voices of angels, where heaven opened and the worship became, thy will be done on earth as in heaven, the visible joining of the Church Militant with the Church Triumphant, comprised of the saints of all ages, together with heavenly host singing ‘Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Sabaoth, heaven and earth are filled with your glory. Hosanna, Hosanna, Hosanna in the Highest, Blessed is He who comes in the Name of the Lord, Hosanna in the Highest.  Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal, Have mercy on us. Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal, Have mercy on us. Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal, Have mercy on us. And if you have ears to hear and eye to see, I have just explained the context of all of Saint John’s Apocalypse to you. The Book of Revelations is all about what this worship is, what its meaning is, what its goal is, how it is done, where it is done, (around the throne of God) who is in attendance, what their rolls are, and in very graphic terms it describes everything that competes to despoil it, everything in rebellion that seeks to ape it, parrot it, rape it, and destroy it, and the very real fact that what is being destroyed is the death and the work of every evil force of all time, by the triumph of the Blood of the perfect and unspotted Lamb, who taketh away the sins of the world, have mercy on us. Lamb of God, who taketh away the sins of the world, have mercy on us. Lamb of God who taketh away the sins of the world, grant us your peace.



Except ye become as a little child, ye cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. “Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones; for I say unto you, That in heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven.”

Unknown and powerful saints.

In the middle 70s, I tuned in a Church my great, great Grand father founded, before the Civil War, on Georgia Highway 166, near the Douglas/Carroll county line. I had extra time, so after I tuned I started playing. Before long what I was playing was simple, sincere, without pretense and I knew to be a prayer. The spirit in that chapel became so sweet and warm I was dreading having to stand and leave.  A young woman, early twenties, had arrived silently carrying a harp, and set it down and listened to me playing. She never opened her mouth, just sat for a few minutes listening to me play.  We nodded to each other and smiled, simply acknowledging the presence of the other. I stopped playing and started packing my tools, assuming she wanted to rehearse. She walked toward me and I noticed that her footsteps did not make any noise.  She motioned for me to give her the piano, and the sound of the wooden bench scraping the floor as I literally scrambled to my feet getting out of her way was somehow shocking to me, I felt like a clumsy ox and worried that I had scratched the plank floor. My heavy foot falls sounded like thunder, on that old wooden floor, and creaked and popped under my enormous weight. She realized that fear had risen in me, and it wasn’t just fear, it was filthy fear, the sure knowledge of my sinfulness, because I was suddenly aware as she walked toward me that I was in the presence of pure sanctity, and that this young woman was a saint or an angel; I did not know which. She looked at me with pity, and motioned with her hands lifted at the elbow, towards me. I felt the fear drain from my heart, and all I felt then was the warm sweetness of the room, and the dread in my heart that this moment would end, grief at the idea of having to leave this place, and this person. She sat down at the piano and started to play, and it was so different, so haunting it almost took my breath away.

I watched over her shoulder, trying to catch the movements and patterns of her fingers on the keyboard, to see if what she was playing matched the keys she was depressing.  I realized she really was playing the instrument, not “manipulating it” for want of a better term.  She then motioned for me to sit at the piano, and she played harp for me for probably 30 minutes or more, playing on the Harp what she had previously played on the piano.  I played along with her sounds and patterns, using only my right hand, the patterns were new to me, but somehow, fit my hand like a familiar glove. I recorded in my mind and upon my fingers, not what she was playing but the style of it. Then quicker than she had arrived, she disappeared with her harp and the room that was warm was suddenly cold. Poof, gone! And were it not for the fact that suddenly I could play the piano like a HARP, I would have thought the episode an illusion, an hallucination.

“Reality” hit me like a jolt of adrenaline and I thought, surely I’m already late to my next tuning appointment.  But when I looked at my watch, only twenty-two minutes had elapsed, it seemed like it had been much, much longer. I still had more time than that to kill, but I could no longer stand the emptiness of that room. I packed up and walked out into the warm sunshine, and the surrounding scenery was very breath taking, it held almost the “glory” the warm sweetness I had just experienced. I remembered that I had not noticed that beauty on my way over, or as I arrived. I had instead been living in my head, not in the world of experience, attending the world by rote, going through the motions, not honoring the moment. Motions were just means to an end. I realized that it was not just my music that was forever changed, but that it was me; I was seeing differently.

I want to point out that the beauty I was experiencing contained no “theory” even though the music had clear structure, and the sudden realization of the beauty in nature was “eyes open” seeing it in a new way. Standing in front of that Church enjoying the sunshine and the shade, the symphonic movement of the air, the wonder of existence, ultimately lead me to oil painting in the out of doors. In years to come the oil painting was just an excuse to touch “that world.” Now, I want to caution against accusing me of necromancy, that is “communication with the dead.”  Firstly there was nothing dead about the young woman I met, and no she was not a deceiving angel of light, in fact she was pretty in a way, not beautiful, and very humble and unpretentious in her demeanor. And what she engendered was reverent fear and the witness of sanctity.

The caretaker arrived in his pick-up truck, and quickly approached me.  Against all better judgment I decided to tell what had just happened. I started and ended by saying, “I know you will think I’m crazy but . . . “ He said, “No, Butch, I believe you. Believe me, I of all people know you are telling the truth. I was cutting the grass in the cemetery a few years back and hit something I think was an iron stake, and the blade broke and half of it hit me so hard it partly lodge in this leg” He pulled up his pants and showed me “and I was bleeding so badly, I was immediately in shock, next thing I knew someone was picking me up, and it was a young woman, who probably weighed half what I weigh. (He was a small man.) She carried me and laid me down next to the road, just as a car stopped seeing me in trouble, bleeding and unable to stand. I turned to thank her and there was no one there.  (remember this was pre-cell phone days and he was in a life and death situation, unable to walk, bleeding profusely and isolated on an old country road, half a mile from the closest neighbor). I had to have three pints of blood for they got me sowed up, and later they had to put a pin in this shank, cause I kept re-breaking it.”
“Did you speak with her?”
“No, but I think from the first second I knew who she was.  You know, you can’t get any of the ladies of the church to come here alone. They all have seen Sarah or are frightened to. My wife seen her, too. More than thirty years ago, during the war, things was scarce, she was pregnant, and in danger of loosing our second son. She was kneeling at the altar begging God to help her and a young woman started praying next to her, they were about the same age. She laid her hands on my wife’s stomach and said, “not to worry, sister,” smiled and disappeared. My wife was so frightened she got up and ran out of the church and ran all the way to the house, which you know is almost half a mile, she came screaming to me in the field that she had seen an angel.”

“You said, ‘second son’ so he was born?”
“Yeah, he played UGA football and is a lawyer, thinking about getting into politics.”  He motioned for me to follow him. We walked deep into the old part of the cemetery and he pointed at a headstone that looked too new to match the rest of the family. He said, “Look at the dates.” They were all in the 1880s, mother, father, two sons, a young friend, and the daughter Sarah. They all died within two months of one another. Sarah was the last to die and had buried the others, or at least watched them buried. He said, “It was some hellish influenza, some of the really old folk said years back.  Look around, it wiped out about two thirds of the congregation. I’ve looked at all the stones, the ones you can still read, this was the last family that lost anyone, and near as I can figure, Sarah was the last to die. I’m thinking that hell produced a saint.” 

To this day I know it and all these forty plus years later, I cannot invoke her memory without touching the deepest part of my heart. Her “music lesson” changed me. I have never played a sound, "as a prayer" since, that was not locked in HER style. One day, after the doctor gives me a terminal diagnosis, I will tell all of the story, because Sarah is a Warrior. Listen to this music - five lessons when I was five, and six lessons when I was twenty-two . . .those lessons do not explain this.

( https://soundcloud.com/piano-butch-robinson/classical-romance-by-piano-butch-robinson )

“For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven. But as touching the resurrection of the dead, have ye not read that which was spoken unto you by God, saying, ‘I AM the God of Abraham, and the God of Issac, and the God of Jacob?’ God is not the God of the dead, but the living.” And remember Jesus did not say, I will be the Resurrection and the Life; he said, I AM the resurrection and the life.

I told this story to a dear friend, a fellow musician, who happens to be Jewish, and played him this piece (the link above) and he said, “Nice...enchanting, ethereal qualities...would be amazing with a harp!”  I could not help but needle him a little, so I answered,

“<smile> I love you, man, and love your music, but you just obfuscated the point. But I love you enough to let you off the hook. BTW the MAGIC word, "ethereal" is used by naturalists, who do not have a CLUE of the spiritual reality to which they have been exposed.”

He answered, “The inspiration? It's obviously there, and is why the two would compliment each other...as a tribute...I used "ethereal" in the sense of heavenly... Maybe I'm just tired...just a few minutes ago finished installing one set of drawers in our new cabinets...new butcher-block counter, new window, New backsplash onyx tiles getting grouted tomorrow...late, long hours!” 

S.E. thought I was fussing at him. He sent me a picture of the woodwork, and it was gorgeous, he is a master at woodworking. I duly and rightly extended my appreciation of his creative talents and then shamelessly needled again him saying,

“<smile> BTW the Magic word ‘Heaven and Heavenly’ is used by naturalists, who have been influence by Plato, but who still do not have a CLUE of the spiritual reality to which they have been exposed.”

S.E. ended the conversation saying, “That's as close as my language capabilities can get to describing the indescribable...how do you put into words the inspiration, the creative process, the manifestation of that on an instrument, the translation/transmission of all that to another's senses...? One of the grandest of human endeavors, while being the most mysterious...”

I waited till the next day to respond, to press the impression of sanctity deeper, “Yes, the ancients were smarter than the modern materialists are, locked as they are in a closed circle of reality devoid of a creator and beneficent God. I am not talking about you, of course, but the general impoverishment of the cultural language created by ‘naturalism.’ The ancients knew that Truth, Beauty, Goodness, and Liberty could not be separated, and that such communication of a spiritual language that out paces the mortal and common reasoning abilities, today we call the function of the brain, were of a higher intelligence, contact with something more than the mortal soul, or "sarx" (the flesh we hold in common with the beasts). Even most of the Greek Pagan Philosophers understood this.

“The Greeks who were the progenitors of Western Civilization had a word for it, NOUS, sometimes translated heart and sometimes mind, and some moderns translate it heart/mind - but I don't like that because it is not of the lesser "emotions" but rather spiritual intelligence, the capacity of the human to communicate spiritually, in non-verbal reality, that functions on a higher intelligence. ‘The Noetic Capacity’ (Noetic – of the NOUS) is spiritual; it is spiritual capacity, different than psychic capacity (of the soul), which can be used for good or ill. 

“The Noetic Capacity is there though dampened and dying and dead in too many humans. So they prefer music that is primarily based on the common sexual urge, as the infamous Simon Cowell has repeatedly said, “rock n roll and pop music is all about sex,” though that is a lie, some of it is just fun and about novelty and humor, and some of it about anger, greed, pride, jealousy etc. There is a whole genre of it that is about gnawing common grief, that longing that haunts the hearts, the constantly longing human psyche of man. Some of it is purely demonic and destructive to the human person, an invitation to sorcery and necromancy. Most can't imagine anything higher; they never connect with anything higher. It is life on a feed lot.” +++

“And of the angels he saith, Who maketh his angels spirits, and his ministers a flame of fire.”

“Let brotherly love continue.  Be not forgetful to entertain strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.”

Some have also entertained sanctified persons, i.e., saints, both aware, and unaware, just as humans have experienced angels both aware, and unaware.

In the synergistic working of Christ’s Holy Spirit, acting on knowledge above our reasoning, sometimes we are even allowed to be mistaken as angels. <smile> I was an angel once, and snapped a priest/monk out of years of depression following a mission to Africa that turned terribly wrong.  The priests were ordered by the dictator to watch the torture and execution of the “enemies of the state.” He had returned a shadow of the man I had known not well, but beyond a two dimensional relationship. It fact he was instrumental in helping me lead a dear friend to Christ, and break him out of his rebellion to God, which really was not a rebellion against Jesus Christ, but against the ignorance and harshness of his fundamentalist and silly birth religion. I saw my friend’s heart, I had watched him twice place himself in mortal danger to save others from injury or death; the second incident was from certain death and he had saved us all – a story for another time. So I knew Father Anthony more than casually. Prior to his mission to Africa, when I would arrive at the monastery he would smile and greet me by name. But after Africa, there arrived a hollow-eyed man, who even when I prompted him as to who I was, had no memory of me. I could tell that he didn’t like me, and I could not judge him for that, after all, what’s to like?  But then I thought that my calling on his memory was an aggravation to him, maybe even painful.  So for several years on my visits to the monastery, I would avoid him. I always enjoyed seeing him at a distance and wondered if the old friend would ever walk up to me and say “Butch.”

One day, tired from driving, returning from a long trip, I stopped by this time driven just to greet him. I just had the urge to say, “Hello” and say something encouraging. While there I would visit an ancient medieval altar, used for centuries, a huge timber as the top, with worn smooth depressions where the candles, chalice and paten had been placed and removed thousands and thousand of times. The thought of the living Christ’s present on that altar, always struck a cord deeply in my heart, and I found myself laying my hands on that ancient wood, and praying in silence, a physical contact with all those priests and deacons, and faithful across time. All whom I pictured in vision struggling so seriously and lovingly in their own era. So this day Father Anthony was working in the Guest House office. I think I will let him tell it in his own words.

Excerpt from “Praying in the Cellar: A Guide To Facing Your Fears and Finding God” by Anthony Delisi, O.C.S.O.  “The Book of Acts (chapter 12) reveals the power of angels.  Where are these angels of light today? Why was Peter freed, while on the other hand James was beheaded? Is the intervention of angels so rare that when it does happen it is written in the Scriptures?  Or, is the opposite nearer the truth?

“Perhaps we are being reminded of the nearness of angels and of their reality?  I have never seen an angel. Or, have I?  Some years back, a bearded stranger walked into our guesthouse and spoke to me while I was working in the office. He said, “The Father is pleased with this place.” I answered that the Father is pleased with many places, but he insisted that the Father was please with this place.  I then asked, “Where are you from?”  He answered, “I am from near and I am from afar.” Then, he repeated those words once more.  I asked him if he wanted to stay for supper, but as I looked up I noticed that he had already left. I was not sure if he heard me, so I got up from behind the desk and went to the door, but no one was there.  Was he an angel?

“Perhaps I have not recognized angels in human disguise.  The early church thought Peter was an angel. We live in a world of mysteries. We see so much when we stand in Your light. But, what is it that we do not yet see?” + + +

In this case Father Anthony’s angel was, yours truly. But what wonder it is still since every time I have seen him since, the light had returned to his eyes and he has become a prolific writer. You see I had the impression, rightly or wrongly that after the horrors of Africa that changed him, that the patient endurance of dullness had grown irksome to him. I drove miles out of the way on my trip, with a burning desire to say to his face, not just that God was pleased with the work of the Guest House, which he most assuredly is, but that God loved and was pleased with Father Anthony.  It was odd that he did not ask me my name, the usual first step in an introduction, “Hello, I’m Father Anthony” begging the question “and what’s your name.”  No he went straight for “where are you from.”  I did not want to engender the pain of him trying to remember me, as I had once, after he returned from Africa. I did not want to say, “I know you don’t remember me but I’m Butch Robinson, raised on the campus of Beulah Heights Bible College, Timothy Stayton introduced us years ago, when we were teens, and you helped catechize my friend Doug R., you know who was beheaded with a chainsaw?”  No, I did not want to watch him strain to remember so I said without thinking, but having the double meaning in my mind, that I was from near (since I loved the dear father, and remember all our encounters) and from afar (since whatever happened in Africa wiped away his memory of me.)

How did I manage to disappear?  I took Father Anthony’s rebuff, “The Father is please with a lot of places” as a rejection of what I said and I was reminding him that his work was sacred, of love, a power for the good, beautiful, a real comfort and solace in this world for thousands, etc., etc. So, when the phone rang, the part he may or may not remember, I hesitated, and turned and walked down the hall to the conference room where that lovely old altar is kept in “retirement.” (Someone told me recently that it was not an altar, just a very old table. Frankly I don't know.)  The room was dark, but I did not need any light, because that altar literally glows in my eyes. I walked to it, placed my hands on it, as I had several times in my life and prayed, this time especially for Father Anthony. I heard commotion outside, in the hallway, and heard the door open and saw Fr Anthony peer into the dark, turn and literally trot down the hallway. Little did I know he was chasing an angel.  When the coast was clear, I slipped out of the building and continued my journey.

Father Anthony asked, “We see so much when we stand in Your light. But, what is it that we do not yet see?” I answer, in this culture everyone is blind, and spiritually blind to the point of insanity, where they think a man can be a wife and mother and a woman can be a husband and father. Even Christians, who are not that blind, are still to a great extent non-spiritual, thinking that being spiritual is being a spiritualist, and looking for wonders, and God to over power them by force, or having reduced God to silly sentimentality etc., even in the Apostolic Catholic Churches so many have accepted a “schematic” and not the LIFE. There is a reason for it, we have forgotten in the sea of Luciferian Propaganda, the reason that Jesus said, “those who have purified their hearts, see me” he actually said “Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God” same meaning; He was not talking about some far off date in the afterlife, some reward in eternity, but here now, God’s presence and actions in EVERYTHING.

This entire lesson was to give example to the “take away” from the last lesson, “St Symeon speaks of even the highest expression of Orthodox 'mystical experience, seeing the Divine Light' as second to the living presence of the Holy Spirit, in the Liturgy of Living. (The Synergistic Experience of the Life of God in Christ by the Holy Spirit as our everyday state.) He said, 'If you have seen Christ but He has not yet granted you to drink of this beverage, fall down before Him and lament . . . and since you see Christ, lift up your eyes to Him unceasingly and always keep Him as the one spectator of your dejection and affliction.' The beverage is the 'life of the Holy Spirit itself' dwelling in us and with us, and as he describes above, to produce faith with works. The fulfillment of his promise, “and I will dwell in them and they in me.”

As shocking to those whose religion is theoretical and maybe even a perfect schematic and road map of the way, my friend in Christ, Saint Sarah is still working and producing faith with works, and why not, because God the Father is still working! And her faith gained in a horrible influenza plague, in the 1880’s where her entire world was taken away in a matter of two months, is still producing faith with works. Sarah had managed to create in Christ the part she got to keep, which was her whole real self. Now she is standing ready, guarding a community, I assume even now these 40 plus years later, to come to the aid of those in need, and to do so upon an instant.

What was I praying when Saint Sarah walked into the chapel carrying a harp? I was pouring out my grief and anger upon the keyboard, a young man in the throes of bitterness, just like someone does in a prayer closet when their faith and spiritual vision has grown so shallow and dim, all they can manage is “Why God? Why.” That grief and anger which no one on the outside was allowed to see, she saw it, and gave me the tools to wash it out of myself, to eventually purge it from my life. 

Whatever it was zapping the light from Father Anthony’s eyes, the event’s too gruesome to speak, even the sinner Butch, in obedience to make that visit and say that thing, that seemed so obvious and unneeded to say, was able create something NEW by saying it. 

I could name hundreds of like events, hundreds, some that are personal experience and some to which I am personal witness. Like the angels singing harmony with my sister Linda, as my sister Charlotte slept and her husband was gasping his last hours, his soul struggling to be set at liberty. She sat quietly singing, not wanting to awaken Charlotte, but I was focused on Don in prayer, and thought other people had arrived in the room. The music was so poignantly sweet; I didn’t want to spoil the sound with faces. They came an went, and I smiled at Linda afterward and said basically what only a brother could say, and not be hated for it, “Sis, I’m amazed how beautiful your voice is at your age. It was as beautiful as the others.” I did not realize what I had affirmed. I did not realize those beautiful voices were not people in the room; they came and left so naturally, as I prayed with my eyes half closed looking at the floor. I did not realize until later two years later, when my sister said, “Well, you heard the angels singing that last night with Don.” I said, “What?” She said, “I know you heard them, Butch, because you remarked to me how beautiful it was.” Indeed it had been beautiful, and indeed I had remarked, but at the time I was wrapped enough in my own struggle watching my friend and brother struggle in death throes, I had paid no attention to the singing except to rest in it, as I silently prayed.

Jesus said, “My father worketh hitherto, and I work.” And those in his Body work also, both the living and the more alive.  Saint Sarah, pray for me. Father Anthony, your prayers, please, and forgive me for not being an angel, but be amazed that Christ Jesus in his condescension uses even terrible sinners, like me, even sometimes to comfort his saints.