And Grace Flooded in
You are in a room occupied by innumerable wheels, levers, switches, knobs, and pedals. The lowly conductor, you press and spin, twiddle and turn, wipe the sweat from your brow, damn the luck, and press some more. Press for years, trying to find a lever that does something, a button that brings the light. But there is no such button and, defeated, you sprawl in the middle of the floor, amongst the shafts and gears, bereft of any desire to keep operating. Sure that hope is just the cackling, sinister whisper that pervades the air in something less than words.
In the broken, messy machine, something speaks in the language of hints, it speaks of learning and letting go of the task.
And the machine runs. A single, simple, unobtrusive switch flips. In the rumble to life of the mechanisms, a light comes and you call it your own. It kindles and burns and the whole thing rolls forward, you somewhere near the helm, watching its workings, yet not at it. You set to work fiddling with your levers and pushing your pedals, throttling onward. The light dims, but you don’t notice. You only notice when the light is gone. You only notice when the light has been gone for some time. The machine frightens you. The wisdom of the switches dims with the fading light. The sweat on your brow is a sure indication that you are running it wrong.
You know in that moment that the light was not your own, and your possession of it, like a simple spoiled child’s, was a greedy thing. You collapse, face down in the chaos of levers. It is all going down; the whole blasted contraption is sinking at an unearthly rate. You are frantic to find the single unobtrusive switch that made everything bright.
On your face in the terrible dark, you wail for the brokenness of your machine, wail for the brokenness you do not want to be your own, sob to be let out of penetrating nothing, and into something. And something comes. A switch flips, a few discreet wheels turn, and light tickles your closed eyes. It is splendid movement, come again. And what began once can continue for all time; this is the promise that speaks like sure music.
