Music is a Light in the Darkness

Music has been a vehicle for me to see the most amazing places and meet the most wonderful people. Life is indeed a Field Trip, and I'm like a wide-eyed school boy with his face pressed to the bus window, taking it all in. But sometimes what we see along the way is dark and troubling.

My good friend Edgar Cruz is not only a great guitar player, but a great soul as well. I'm thankful to be counted among his friends. As I'm heading back to his home town of Oklahoma City this weekend for another round of shows with him and his friends (and putting together another tour with Edgar in California in February), I couldn't help but think back on a concert we did last year in Knoxville at a Unitarian church.

A few weeks before our arrival, a man had walked in and opened fire on the congregation, killing two people and wounding several more on a Sunday morning. It was horrible. The gunman had political and personal reasons for the attack. Unitarians are liberal as a rule and open to alternative lifestyles, to which he reportedly objected.

Our concert was booked through an outside promoter, a member of the local guitar association, and had been scheduled for months. When we got there, the mood was tense, and the usually open, gregarious members were on their guard, a few of them even mentioning to me how they hated the change in atmosphere brought on by the recent tragedy.

Later that evening as Edgar and I played, we could feel the mood change in the room. We could sense a relaxation, a letting down of the guard that protected them from a cold hard outside world.

It was a little thing, really. Just a 90 minute concert, two guys with guitars and some stories to tell. And I don't know if anyone remembers it so keenly as me, but that was a night I'll never forget.

As I played, I looked out over the faces in the crowd. I rewound the events of the day to the moment I first came into the Church, carrying my guitar case and gig bag, stepping around a small youth group who were making chalk drawings on the sidewalk outside.

One young man had drawn a large rainbow, with the words "God Loves Everyone." And I couldn't help but wonder who he was thinking about when he wrote those words. No doubt he was thinking of the victims, people he had known, with whom he had worshiped -- but he may very well have been thinking of the shooter as well, struggling with the notion of forgiveness he had been taught within those very walls.

My heart broke as I approached the door to find it locked tight on a sunny Saturday afternoon. A member of the church whose turn it was for security detail stepped up to unlock the door and let me in. He asked for my name, and he checked with another inside who knew we were coming. The man seemed particularly concerned about my guitar. (I later learned the killer had concealed his gun in a guitar case.)

Yeah, this is dark stuff. Man's inhumanity to man. It's horrible. It can cause one to lose hope in mankind althogether.

Until you're there.

Until you're sitting among them weeks later, seeing for yourself the smiling, healing faces lit warmly by the tender light of each other's support. In a small way I felt connected to that rainbow of humanity. As members of a family, we feel each others' pain, we share in each others' successes.

To me that's what makes these places -- sanctuaries, we call them -- holy.

And I'm thankful that music has taken me to places of light. When the world can seem covered at times in darkness, we need all the light we can get.

Today my thoughts are with anyone in pain. Let your mind find a favorite song, and put the needle down on the vinyl and let it play. Okay, for those who found that analogy too antiquated, find your brain's favorite iTunes playlist and put it on shuffle. ;-)

Have a good day, and take care of each other.