As I was listening I thought about being in conversation with God, and I was struck by how much Bach's Fugue in G-Minor mirrors my relationship with God. When I first began conversing with God, it was very simple. In reply, God did not repeat my melody but responded in a harmonic way, just as Bach has his instruments do. Over time, our conversation -- the Divine and mine -- has built in richness, complexity, depth and beauty, like the fugue builds. Ebb and flow occur in the dynamics of both music and my communication with God, but my soul is constantly stirred by the heartbreaking beauty of what I hear and what I know.
Wouldn't you know it? Last autumn I became a seed and fell into the ground again. That is why I haven't written for a while. How could it always is in the soil. And dark. You can't imagine! But it doesn't matter whether there is light or not because you have no eyes. You feel all alone, and you don't know there are other seeds around you who are also trying to see. Then a little shoot begins to grow out of the top of your head and it starts to feel its way upward through what seems like all the dirt in the world. The ascent is long and hard; you believe it will never end. Then one day in May you break out and into the sun and air. Your eyes are restored, and, when you look around, there are poppies everywhere, all celebrating their own resurrection. What a feeling! I was just beginning to enjoy my own red blossom when a cold September wind stole into the valley and I returned to the ground. Now spring seems an impossible flower. I would surely lose heart if Jesus hadn't told us we are all seeds and that someday we will rise permanently and fall will be no more.