Sometimes, We Don't Need Jesus
There was a good crowd that day. The young clarinetist, wisp of a girl not yet in her teens, rose at the appointed point in the prayer service and left her father and strode to the front of the Fillmore chapel. In this historic, pillar-punctuated sanctuary, where Charles and Myrtle had preached and taught an earlier generation of heroes who launched the Unity movement, this little hero summoned the courage to raise her black wind instrument and blow the soothing, familiar first notes of "Amazing Grace..." With the warm sun slanting in from the fountained courtyard, I slouched in the seat and closed my eyes. Soon I was drifting, carried away by the lilting melody.
.
Then the music stopped sharply. I opened my eyes and saw the girl trembling. She had stumbled in the music--missed a note, or lost her place. I never noticed during the serenade. But she did, and it was too much to bear. She flew to her father's arms. I could hear soft sobbing above the murmuring tones of an approving, patient parent.
.
And then it happened. The congregation spontaneously took up the melody, a cappella.
.
"Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a soul like me..."
.
All of us began almost at the same instant. It was as though God, or Myrtle Fillmore, had raised a baton and said, "All right now, together..."
.
The song ended amid smiles and not a few tears all around. Soon the program would continue. She never got up and finished her solo. No one expected her to do that. But after the prayer service, people came up to her and said kind words. Yet, no gesture could have been as simple and as powerful as that moment of spontaneous "grace consciousness" when a room full of strangers became the patient, loving family of a girl who will remember their embracing song for the rest of her life.
.
Sometimes, we don't need Jesus. We just need to act like him.
There was a good crowd that day. The young clarinetist, wisp of a girl not yet in her teens, rose at the appointed point in the prayer service and left her father and strode to the front of the Fillmore chapel. In this historic, pillar-punctuated sanctuary, where Charles and Myrtle had preached and taught an earlier generation of heroes who launched the Unity movement, this little hero summoned the courage to raise her black wind instrument and blow the soothing, familiar first notes of "Amazing Grace..." With the warm sun slanting in from the fountained courtyard, I slouched in the seat and closed my eyes. Soon I was drifting, carried away by the lilting melody.
.
Then the music stopped sharply. I opened my eyes and saw the girl trembling. She had stumbled in the music--missed a note, or lost her place. I never noticed during the serenade. But she did, and it was too much to bear. She flew to her father's arms. I could hear soft sobbing above the murmuring tones of an approving, patient parent.
.
And then it happened. The congregation spontaneously took up the melody, a cappella.
.
"Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a soul like me..."
.
All of us began almost at the same instant. It was as though God, or Myrtle Fillmore, had raised a baton and said, "All right now, together..."
.
The song ended amid smiles and not a few tears all around. Soon the program would continue. She never got up and finished her solo. No one expected her to do that. But after the prayer service, people came up to her and said kind words. Yet, no gesture could have been as simple and as powerful as that moment of spontaneous "grace consciousness" when a room full of strangers became the patient, loving family of a girl who will remember their embracing song for the rest of her life.
.
Sometimes, we don't need Jesus. We just need to act like him.
