She preached out of II Kings 6 - the story of Elisha making an iron axe head float. The story goes that a young man was chopping wood and the head of the axe, which he had borrowed, flew into the water. The young man pointed out to Elisha, the prophet, where the axe head went into the water. Then the prophet chopped off a stick from the tree, put it in the water and the axe head floated. He told the young man to pick it up.
Even as allegory goes, that's a lot to take in. But as preached, it was, as we say, convicting. Madame Pastor preached that we sometimes have borrowed gifts that we lose along the way. Most frequently, she says, we know full well where we "lost" them. Even if someone can bring it back to the surface and make it easy for us to take up again, it's still incumbent on us to do the taking-up. I nodded that way we do when we feel "like somebody's been reading my mail", as they say down home. I thought about how long it had been since I'd played the piano or sang in church - aside from bellowing along with the congregation. But I caught myself when I remembered that the experience doesn't come cheap. And it's soooo not free. There is a price to pay for taking up that borrowed axe head again.
It's the price of disclosure. When you get up on the podium and do your schtick and it becomes obvious that you've probably done this before - a lot - and that you have at least a knack, if not a talent, for it...you get questions. They want to know you. It's instant celebrity in a very small and insignificant fishbowl. Some of the curiosity is genuine and awe-inspired. But a little bit of it is born of jealousy and that perverse desire some have to lay low anything that gets raised up.
I got quizzed on the way out of church Sunday morning as to what I planned to sing Sunday night and I laughed - politely. I didn't say no, exactly. But I was hearing Pappy in the back of my head, "Know those who labour among you," he'd quote. And it made me think less of the ones who were asking. Because they don't know me. But if they knew me - really knew me - they wouldn't ask. Then I couldn't do it. And I wanted to do it. So I laughed. But I didn't say no. I just went home. And played. And played. And found a song I would sing if I was going to sing, but I wasn't going to sing. And they wouldn't ask anyway. That's just my ego talking.
The song I found was written about a step and a half higher than I would prefer - if I was going to sing it, which I wasn't. But I sat at the piano and transcribed it in about 15 minutes into a lower key and played it through several times just to make sure the highest notes were in my "hollerin' range" as the ladies used to call it back in the day. I laid the music book down on the copy machine and ran a copy - because walking into church with a fat music book would look like I had plans, which I didn't. And it would only encourage them, which I didn't want to do. But I darkened some of the transcription on the page after it printed and placed it in the back of my Bible such that it wouldn't bend the wrong way and refuse to stand up on the piano later - if necessary. But it wouldn't be necessary. This was just crazy. I'd bought my own publicity. Nice thought, though.
I got to church Sunday night and every single person I met asked me what I was singing. I laughed. I joked about having missed the conspiracy meeting. I joked about knowing not what you ask for. I laughed. I laughed right up until the end of the Song Service when that Lady Pastor looked down from the pulpit (Pool Pit, as we say) and asked, "Are you gonna sing?"
"Really?" I squeaked.
"Yes, " she said. "Really."
I pulled the paper out of my Bible as the pianist slipped off the bench. I motioned for the other musicians to stay put, in case they wanted to play along. I apologized in advance for whatever sound might emit from my years-dormant voice and my trembling hands. I asked them, half-jokingly, to give me a moment to introduce myself to that piano.
"Hi, my name is Jonah. It's good to be in Nineveh," I riffed. Everybody in the house got the joke - and that it wasn't such a big joke. But none of them knew the whole story. I thanked the lady pastor who sat across the podium from me and appeared to gulp when I thanked her for showing me where I'd lost my axe head. And then I played and sang this little song...
It was about 10 years after the last time I'd sung in public. I remember the last time like it was yesterday. It was my cousin Jim's wedding. I thought I had laryngitis. I downed a bottle of Real Lemon during the wedding to trick my vocal chords into the right degree of tension to get me through. It was right before I went to the doctor and got The Diagnosis. Not Laryngitis. That was the last time I'd sung in public. Ten years and twice that much history washed over me as I sang...
"When we have exhausted our store of endurance,
When our strength has failed ere the day is half done,
When we've reached the end of our hoarded resources,
Our Father's full giving has only begun."
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