Can I Play the Piano in Heaven?

May 18, 2025September 21, 2025 / Apple Hill Cottage / 4 Comments

…and the jokey answer to that is Good, because I can’t play the piano now.

I love music. But I can’t play an instrument, can’t sing, can’t even really remember words to songs very well. I can be listening to someone play music and strain to remember the words, even if I know the song. The only time I sing is if I’m in the car by myself. Or in the house alone.




Yet even so, music can transport me to a glorious place:
a place where I can sing;
a place where kindness and mercy are attending;
a place where the wind sings alto;
a place where the rain and the sun
fall together;
a place both near and far
where the world has turned on its axis 
and is the world we long for,
not the world we live in.
Yes, heaven.

Where is heaven?
It is the step through the air,
there but here,
the hand on the mirror but 
through the looking glass.
Where the world is the same but better.
More glisten.
More light.
More calm.
More mercy.
The dimension beyond
where sometimes we can catch
a glimpse,
a shadow.

I was there this morning when the pianist played a piece so intricate, so graceful, that spontaneous applause burst out (in church!) when he was finished.

I was there the other evening when I put in my earbuds and listened to an updated video of the Beatles singing Let It Be.

And that same evening I rediscovered Joan Baez’s 75th Birthday Celebration when she and EmmyLou and Jackson Browne sang The Plane Wreck at Los Gatos (Deportee). And if you don’t know the words, listen and weep.

I was there driving down the road earlier this week when the deep rhythmic bass of Celtic Worship’s bagpipes announced my favorite hymn, Jesus Paid It All. And yes, I sang along.

Musicians, artists, writers, storytellers — they remind us of the good; that we can be the force for good; that we are the force for good. Against ugliness, against unkindness, against authoritarian regimes who try to get us to believe untruths. They speak, sing, paint, write what is Real.

And here is Springsteen — showing and singing the crowd his version of heaven. I call it his This Is Happening Now speech. Watch him remind us that We the People are the force for good.

And after you watch that, watch this video of Bruce singing This Land Is Your Land.

Lake Erie
California Redwoods
North Carolina mountains
Kentucky waterfall
Pacific Ocean
Pennsylvania back road
Carmel California
Laurel Mountains Pennsylvania
Murrells Inlet South Carolina
Wisconsin prairie
Kennesaw Mountain, Georgia
Atlantic Ocean

We the people are a force for Good. For Democracy. Against authoritarianism. Against military parades that cost 45 million dollars when the government is ostensibly firing federal workers and agency budgets to cut waste. If you want to protest on June 14, the day of the parade, check out this Indivisible page. It will show you where protests are happening around the country. Coming to a place near where you live. Start making your music (and your signs) now. Whether you can sing or not.

Stand in the Breach…

October 1, 2020March 6, 2023 / Apple Hill Cottage / 18 Comments

…So I have just spent the last thirty days writing political posts on a blog that was never supposed to be political.

But these last three years have left me with something that needs to be more than a month-long rant. What unsettles me the most are the reasoned, thoughtful, pieces that discuss the loss of democracy through authoritarianism. Do you know how it happens? Good people like you and me simply tune out what is happening because: A) We can’t believe it has come to this; B) We simply zone out because of A; C) We don’t know what we can possibly do against something so BIG; or D) We don’t talk about it because our friends voted for the other party, and we know what discussing politics ~~has done~~ does to friends and families.

But this is important, friends: It is no longer Politics As Usual. We bury our heads in the sand at our country’s peril. (And believe me, I am a long-time ostrich…) And so I pulled my head out of the sand, blinked in the sunlight, and wrote some things here that might offend, but I have tried to write them in the most reasoned way I could. We do not need to add another screaming voice to this already polarized country.

I was reading my morning scriptures today — I’m in Ezekiel (!) — and I was struggling hard to understand what Chapter 22 was telling me, when I came to verse 30: “And I sought for a man among them who should build up the wall and stand in the breach before me for the land, that I should not destroy it, but I found none.”

No, it isn’t about building a wall. (Please read this post, if you need to hear my views on walls….) It is about being righteous, standing up for righteousness, for justice, for mercy, for love. Righteousness must be tempered by love, or else we have someone who is a sounding gong or a clanging cymbal; love must be tempered by righteousness or we have wantonness. Justice without mercy is cruelty; mercy on its own without justice makes us doormats. Love & Righteousness, Justice & Mercy–they belong on opposite sides of the same coin; one without the other is an imbalance, a lack of harmony, a breach…

These days the country is certainly imbalanced, harmony is hard to find, and perhaps the breach is miles wide, but what is democracy worth? For my entire lifetime, democracy has not needed to be fought for, and perhaps we have grown soft and complacent, thinking the United States of America was the founding of democracy, and we needn’t worry about it.

After all, don’t we have the Constitution?
Don’t we have three branches of government that balance each other?
Aren’t we all certain of our freedom and our voting rights?
Dictators and tyrants and authoritarian rulers are not our allies, are they?

If the events of the last few months have you wondering or worrying about these questions, I suggest that we remember that it wasn’t so long ago, we needed to fight for democracy. The odd thing about now is that it seems our democracy is deteriorating from within. And we can’t agree about who is doing the crumbling as the walls fall to pieces with people on either side shouting and throwing rocks.

What we need is courageous people to stand in the breach. Courageous people to say “Stop shouting.” “Stop Tweeting.” Put down the ugly sign in your hand, turn to the person next to you, and offer it to them.

I’ve been reading The Case for the Psalms by N.T. Wright and there is this beautiful quote toward the end. He writes about “…a people of praise who, out of their celebration of God’s goodness in creation and out of their eager anticipation of his coming in judgment at last, speak his word and his truth to those in power, reminding them that they are answerable to the God who will one day hold them accountable.”

Can we speak truth to those in power? Will we stand in the breach, or have we gone too soft after years of easy living? Will we offer our hands to those who are different from us? Are we willing to do the hard work of reconciliation or is it just easier to keep shouting and interrupting? Jesus stands in the gap for us, and calls us to do the same. How will you stand?

thirty biblical reasons to vote democratic in 2020: #10 Oppression of the poor

September 10, 2020September 20, 2020 / Apple Hill Cottage

…Do not oppress the widow, the fatherless, the foreigner, or the poor. Do not plot evil against each other.” –Zechariah 7:10 (NIV)

This is a two part verse, so let’s look at oppression first. Zechariah speaks of four specific members of the population who are weak, and should be treated tenderly: widows, orphans, immigrants, and the poor.

Widows were particularly vulnerable in ancient mideastern society, and throughout the Bible there is concern for caring for them. Widows in modern America are not universally poor, but many are. So let’s look at the president’s payroll tax cut which was an Executive Order in August. He calls it an aid to those who are struggling during the pandemic, but really it only applies to those who are working. And the bottom line is that the payroll tax funds Social Security and Medicare, which almost every widow I know depends on. In 2016, he ran on the promise that he would not change Social Security. Yet just a few days ago, he said that if he wins in November, he will make that payroll tax go away. It’s a complicated issue; if you want to read more try this article from Forbes.

During the current president’s administration, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Food Stamps) and Medicaid will be cut 1.2 trillion dollars over the next ten years, and the eligibility rules were rewritten to lower the number of people who qualify. One in five children in the U.S. live in poverty (about 15 million or 21% of all kids), Put another way, the U.S. has the 11th highest child poverty rate of 42 industrialized countries. You can find a wealth of statistics on child poverty in this article in The Nation or the website National Center for Children in Poverty.

And the Wall? To keep immigrants out? This wall to keep immigrants out is estimated to cost 21 to 70 billion dollars. Our country was built on immigrants. Unless you are descended from a Native American, you are descended from an immigrant. Do our immigration laws need to be updated and modernized? Absolutely. Do we build a wall to keep immigrants out? Never. Do we separate children of immigrants from their parents? Never. Do we keep immigrants in holding cells until they can be sent back? Never. Do we send back those who have lived here for years and are valuable to our society? Never. It pains me to even think that I have to write these things…

The second part of this verse — Do not plot evil against each other — seems like a fundamental precept of civilization, doesn’t it?

In simple terms it means don’t stir up trouble. Don’t be an instigator. Don’t foment division. Don’t encourage chaos. Don’t sow hatred.

As I’m writing this on August 31, this week there have been protests in Boston and Washington D.C. There have been riots in Portland and Kenosha. Americans are fighting each other in the streets; rarely has there been this level of political, racial, and economic animosity toward each other. The president has been asked not to travel to Kenosha, but he’s going anyway. Just to stir up trouble. To keep our eyes on the violence, rather than try to heal it.

He has pitted Americans against one another in such an incendiary fashion as to make it almost impossible for us to talk to each other civilly.

Just one more example–he implies that the Democrats will ruin the suburbs by building more low income housing there. Is he talking about housing for the poor? Housing for immigrants? Housing for the fatherless? For widows? Or is this more incendiary talk to plot evil against each other?

We are all God’s children.