For a few days during my recent sabbatical, I stayed with friends in their home in Crystal Lake, Illinois, about 45 miles northwest of Chicago. I had my guitar with me and didn’t want to disturb anyone, so I crept down to the basement to strum and sing. I rehearsed a couple of hymns—“Blessed Assurance” and “How Great Thou Art”—and then I looked over my shoulder to find an onlooker. Sam, the 10-year-old in the house, was sitting on the stairs listening and watching.
Wanting to do right by this unexpected fan, I acknowledged Sam’s Pink Floyd t-shirt, closed my eyes, and tried to remember one of their songs. Then it came to me: “Wish You Were Here.” I played the iconic riff (not perfectly) and the words came to me, too: “So…so you think you can tell heaven from hell? Blue skies from pain? Can you tell a green field from a cold steel rail? A smile from a veil? Do you think you can tell?”
Then Sam asked if I knew “Hey You,” another Pink Floyd song. I’d never learned to play it, but I knew the tune. Once I found the right key to sing it in, again, it came to me. Just like that, I was playing “Hey You.”
We were on a roll! Sam and I went upstairs, sat in the living room, and invited his parents to listen in. But did I have any other Pink Floyd songs in me?
“Oh! I’ve got it!” I remembered one of the first bass lines I ever learned was “Comfortably Numb,” another Pink Floyd tune. I formed a semblance of the guitar part around my memory of the bass line, started singing it, and Sam smiled with approval.
Hitting the last chord, I paused for a minute. Sam sat still on the couch across from me in silence. He didn’t make any requests. I felt no pressure to perform another Pink Floyd song to win his approval. There was no anxiousness in the space we shared. Time fell away. And then, from the recesses of my bass-playing memory, I summoned one last Pink Floyd tune: “Money.” Sam lit up. It was perfect.
Looking back on that brief moment, I see Sam as a reflection of the Divine. Him sitting with me—listening, nodding along, asking for nothing and relishing in everything—was empowering. His supportive presence nurtured a comfort and confidence that sprout from one’s relationship with God, where we are given permission to bring the simple gifts we’ve tucked away, intentionally or not, back out to put them on display for no other reason than to share joy. I doubt I would’ve been able to draw those Pink Floyd songs from within myself without Sam sitting with me and inviting them to come out. It was a rebirth of sorts.
In The Creative Encounter, Howard Thurman writes, “There need not be only one single rebirth, but again and again a man may be reborn until at last there is nothing that remains between him and God.” Who knew that simply playing a few Pink Floyd songs would be another rebirth for me, with each song played bringing me closer and closer to the God who delights in the simple gifts I have—the different simple gifts that all of us have—that I’d almost forgotten; some of them that I didn’t know were there in the first place. Thanks, Sam. Wish you were here.
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