The Bad Guitarist

Once upon a time, the casserole dishes were covered in foil, the 8 X 10 tables were stacked, and the remains of a fellowship dinner were cleared away.  Guys were arranging folding chairs in a semi-circle in the multipurpose room. Kids were playing chase in the Sunday School wing and friends and family were passing babies around from lap to lap.  It was a Sunday night and our annual all-church talent show was about to begin. Any plans for a serious program were abandoned as we all pitched in to create our highly disorganized show.  Anyone could participate, the only rule: Keep it family friendly.  That night’s program included an assortment of solos and ensembles, a kid’s puppet show, and a poetry reading. A group of women even performed a choreographed dance to a dusty classic, I Heard it Through the Grapevine. It was all in fun.  After a break for home-made ice cream and cookies, a long-time church member began setting up an assortment of sound equipment- speakers, amplifiers, and a microphone.  He had never played for us before, having taken up the guitar after an early retirement. He seemed eager to share his budding interest in country and western music. Once he unpacked and plugged in his big black guitar, we all settled in for a treat. He tapped the microphone, adjusted the volume, and began to sing.

It was awful.

The sour, off-key pitch of his voice was accompanied by an uneven guitar tempo.  Think Phoebe from Friends singing Smelly Cat and you get the idea.  We squirmed in our chairs and couldn’t quite meet each other’s eyes. The performance drew to a close and polite applause followed.  The bad guitarist’s debut was over and the result was less than stellar. 

I have no idea whether this man continued to sing and play his guitar for friends and family.  I do know that at the time I felt embarrassment mixed with compassion for his public display of poor singing, of which he was blissfully unaware.  Now, years later, the embarrassment is all mine, as I think of my silly and grace-less reaction.   My perspective has changed.  What I once saw as an exercise in humiliation, I now see as a model of courage. What I once saw as a nightmare, I now realize was actually about a dream. The bad guitarist’s performance had little to do with talent. It was about listening to your dream and giving yourself to it with all your heart.

Once upon a time, I dreamed of writing historical fiction.  I took a six week class from a successful writer.  I joined a writing group.  I wrote an outline and travelled to a little North Texas town to do research for my setting. I gave my future book a title. I spent every spare minute on this dream.  Somehow during the years of wage-earning and child-rearing, multiple relocations and family challenges, that dream had faded.  A couple of months ago while clearing out an old file cabinet, I ran across a folder with the title Amethyst Remembrance.  Inside was an outline, a few carefully typed chapters, those research notes, and my main character’s thumbnail sketch.  I sat down on the closet floor and eagerly started to read.

It was awful. 

There was a time when, even alone in that closet, my cheeks would have flamed red in embarrassment at the amateurish and trite words I once so earnestly penned.  Instead, I smiled as I remembered the woman I was. Then, I was convinced that one day I would be a best-selling author.  I thought about that old dream that never materialized and now, never would. I thought about how a dream might not be written in stone, but instead just be in need of a little “editing.” For here I am all those years later, writing away on stories and essays that express much more heart and soul than that novel ever could have contained. The calling to be a writer took the long way ‘round, an unexpected turn, and my dream did too.  Things haven’t turned out perfectly, and last time I checked, my name was not on any best seller’s list. Still, I write, and when ideas bubble and words flow, they can sparkle like a precious jewel… an amethyst, perhaps.  Sure, there are plenty of times I read my own work and know that I’ve hit some sour notes and the pace of my story sputters.  When that happens, I think of the bad guitarist.  I can still picture his foot tapping in an off-beat rhythm and hear the squeaky timbre of his voice. Instead of wondering, What was he thinking?  I whisper a prayer of thanks for a man who had a dream and the courage to pursue it.  He may have been a bad guitarist, but he was a very, very good dreamer. If I could hear him now, I would give him a standing ovation and a hearty Bravo!

Esau McCaulley recently described how his early dream to become a pastor never came to pass. Instead he enjoyed a different but intensely satisfying career and a vibrant family life. Few of us become everything that we dreamed.¹, McCaulley writes. He’s right you know.  I have no regrets about that unfinished novel, for it was just an unfinished dream, the end of which is still being written. It’s not always about attaining a dream, but allowing that dream to grow and change, until one day, we find that what we have is what we dreamed about after all.

We all have dreams. Surely they must be one way that God reveals God’s hopes for us in pictures that we cannot put into words. When we dream, we come a little closer to something that only we can be, something that only we can do. When a dream fails to turn out the way we thought it would, we can see it as a pile of old papers in a forgotten file, a useless Amethyst Remembrance. It we look again, we may see the beginnings of another dream.  We honor the dream that once was by dreaming still.

Today’s tile is made from watercolor, glittery paint and collage material.  A likeness of a tiny dream catcher, an important protective symbol from the Ojibwe people, flows off the edges of the tile.  The rest of the tile is a swirling, shiny mass that represents a dream that could be forming, transforming, fading, or gaining energy. 

If a little dreaming is dangerous

The cure for it is not to dream less,

But to dream more,

To dream all the time

— Marcel Proust

Oh God.  Even though we may not be all who we once dreamed we were, we give our hopes and dreams into your care.  Make our dreams Your dreams, and Your hopes, our hopes. Amen.

¹Marriage Changed my Dreams by E. McCaulley, New York Times, 2022.