Emmaus Road Worshipers

My father, Dr. Simon Anderson, shown here with my mother, Nancy, was a professor of music for over 40 years at the University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music, one of the best music schools in the country.  Though he started out instructing future band leaders, he soon found music appreciation to be his true passion.  In the early 80’s, I sat at our dining room table stuffing copies of his first book, The Musical Imperative (which he published with his own company, Clifton Hills Press, Inc.), into mailers addressed to music teachers all around the United States.  At its peak of popularity, the text was being used in some 50 high schools, colleges, and universities across the country.

The Musical Imperative (now in its 4th edition) was a distillation of Dad’s philosophy of music, which can be summed up in a phrase I heard countless times in my youth: “There’s good classical music and bad classical music, good bluegrass and bad bluegrass.”  While this might not seem revolutionary now, in the late 60’s and early 70’s such a statement–along with corollary pronouncements about the worth of all music to be discussed, analyzed, and dissected in the academy–was tantamount to heresy, and Dad was routinely dismissed by colleagues and administrators who couldn’t bear the thought that the three B’s might just as easily be Basie, Brubeck, and “Bird” as Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms.

Yet Dad persevered, taking his egalitarian message to the PBS airwaves in Cincinnati with two TV shows, Man and His Music and Pop Music, U.S.A., both of them simply his classroom lectures brought to a broader audience.  (Many of those viewers for their efforts earned college credit via so-called “correspondence courses” decades before the idea of online education.)  If Dad was compelling in front of hundreds in his classroom, he was scintillating in front of thousands on the small screen, one-upping himself (one example out of many) by not only donning a wig and strumming a guitar, which he did in class, but also saddling up and riding a horse for the TV audience in order to illustrate Willie Nelson’s populist appeal, rooted in such staples of Americana as the Hollywood western.  At every turn, but especially when I sat in his classes when I was a student at UC before I transferred to Judson (now) University, I couldn’t have been prouder to be his son: “That’s my dad!”

That man is gone.  Dad’s dementia, gradually more and more pronounced (in hindsight) over a five-year period, took a serious nose dive when he got pneumonia a few years ago.  The Ph.D who used to hold college students–including several future NFL and NBA players–in the palm of his hand, regaling them with stories from his vast experiences and convincing them to give classical music a try, even as he made sure to give occasional props to their particular preferred genre of music, now can’t string a sentence together.  He is a 37 on a scale of 1-40, where 40 is dead.  Now and again, his eyes appear to light up when a family member is present, but–who’s to say?–that could be gas, the same kind of smiles we get from a flatulating baby.  My father-in-law is fond of the expression “Once a man, twice a boy.”  That’s my dad.

Paul tells us to live is Christ and to die is gain.  I believe that wholeheartedly, and, hence, I really wonder why the Lord doesn’t call Dad home, swinging low the chariot for him, helping him cross to the other side of Jordan, granting him passage on the old ship of Zion as it sails into heaven’s port.  Et cetera.  Dad has lived a good, long, and productive life.  He served the Church Universal faithfully, his initial nominal Christianity taking root into a more-vibrant faith along the way.  His family is ready to release him to his heavenly reward.  I see no earthly reason for him to remain with us.

And yet . . . maybe there’s a heavenly reason that I don’t grasp, limited to seeing through a glass darkly as I am.  Right before Christmas, my wife Lea and I wheeled Dad into the large day room where the residents of the nursing home gather, and I played a few Christmas carols on the piano for him.  I got the usual blank response for the most part–another discouraging visit, my efforts seemingly in vain.

After we wheeled him back to his regular perch in the hallway and walked away to leave, a couple who appeared to be about our age stepped out from a room where someone was very evidently being ushered into eternity.  The husband asked, “Was that you playing?”  When I responded in the affirmative, he thanked me, saying, “We’re losing Mom tonight.  Your music really comforted us.  Thanks.”

And I was reminded once again that we never know when our seemingly random and inconsequential gestures in this life might be used in very purposeful and important ways by our omniscient God, who asks us not to grow weary and to trust Him when we don’t understand.  I hope Dad has met his Maker by this time next year, but, if he hasn’t, I will try to trust the Lord more and complain less.  I don’t do New Year’s resolutions, but, if I wanted to, those two wouldn’t be bad places to start.

The Lord be with you!

My family rang in the new year a little differently this year.  Our noisemakers and strobe lights came courtesy of an EMT ambulance, whose sirens and blue-and-red flashers helped clear a path to the emergency room for my mother-in-law, who was resting uncomfortably inside following her cardiac arrest several minutes prior.

A few days later I reflected back on those whirlwind 10 minutes or so that saw my mother-in-law brought back from death’s door.  Late in the afternoon, my wife Lea and I pulled into my in-laws’ driveway, having done some last-minute errand-running before all the stores closed down for New Year’s Eve.  Fortuitously, Lea went on ahead of me while I gathered the bags.  When I walked in a minute later, I heard a commotion in the family room and quickly hurried to the back of the house.  There I found a scene out of a fast-paced TV drama.

I’ve read accounts of emergency situations like this, many of them mentioning tunnel vision and the sense of time standing still or, at least, moving in ultra-slow motion.  I’m not sure exactly what I experienced during those frenetic moments, but I do have a handful of images seared into my brain, images that, in hindsight, point to Emmanuel, the God-with-Us whose coming into this troubled world as a helpless infant we had celebrated just the week before.

The primary picture is of my normally soft-spoken wife, typically a picture of decorum, shouting at the limp, lifeless body of her mother–“Stay with us, Mom!  Come back!  We love you!”–manhandling her petite frame as a child would a rag doll as she first performed the Heimlich Maneuver and then switched to CPR when it became clear that was warranted.  Lea was operating on God-given adrenaline, and it was an intense, frightening scene, one which was, depending on whether you were the recipient or the observer of those rescue efforts, either desperately for or definitely not for the faint of heart.

Other visual memories include one sister-in-law, an occupational therapist, rubbing my mother-in-law’s feet using a technique called reflexology, an exercise sometimes found to be helpful during physical crises like heart attacks and strokes.  Another recollection finds another sister-in-law calmly relaying information from the 911 dispatcher, her voice no more agitated than if she had been discussing the weather in the Florida Keys.

And then in my mind’s eye I see my father-in-law and me, both prone to Alpha-male behavior, both of us rendered nigh on useless on the periphery of the proceedings . . . useless unless you count our prayers, in which case we contributed much to the goings-on.  My mother-in-law has had a good and long life, but it hasn’t often been an easy one, so my prayer was simply, “Lord, don’t take her like this!”  If it’s never a good time to die, it’s particularly bad timing to go while your daughter is trying with all her might to resuscitate you.

In reference to my wife and my two sisters-in-law on a recent Facebook post, my father-in-law eloquently wrote, “Had those three angels not been present, Nancy would have remained with her Lord, but He sent her back to continue her ‘work’ in His Kingdom.  What He really expects from her now will be revealed to us at some future date and time.”

Indeed, I don’t pretend to know the mind of God here.  I don’t know why Lea’s CPR “worked,” causing enough blood to course through her mother’s veins for enough time to allow the EMT’s, with their more-sophisticated equipment, to finish the life-saving endeavor–or why one of Lea’s brothers has performed CPR twice, on younger people in ostensibly better physical condition, to no avail.  The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.  Blessed be the name of the Lord.

For now, on this 12th day of Christmas, I will simply reflect for a little longer on the Word who became flesh and dwelt among us 2,000 years ago.  He was there, Emmanuel, in our midst that late afternoon and gave the supernatural strength to perform the tasks that were needed, and we are grateful.  And I’ll think on my Bible Gateway verse of the day for January 2, Psalm 90:12: “Teach us to realize the brevity of life, so that we may grow in wisdom” (NLT).  I think all the members of my family are a little wiser these days.

The Lord be with you!

My mother-in-law, Nancy Bahnfleth, was released from ICU yesterday, and, although she has a long road ahead of her, we are optimistic for her recovery.  If the Lord brings her to your mind, we would covet prayers on her behalf.