Sheltered by the Beautiful
Sheltered by the Beautiful
Henry Lewis
On a Life in Criminal Forensics and Classical Music
“And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” Mark 12:30, Deuteronomy 6:5–6, Luke 10:28, Matthew 22:37
Alan is a very private person, and a mostly solitary one. In his professional life as a forensic psychologist he has had to work with some of man’s darkest moments. I admire him greatly for this, but more importantly, I believe God has given him a special grace to work in these hard, forbidding places. He has confided in me countless stories of individuals, some of whom were truly depraved and others, victims of their own angry outrage of the moment. He works hard to understand and how to weigh the distinction between the two. For him it is a delicate balance between a vast knowledge of the man’s human nature and capacity, and a caring heart sensitive to another person’s authentic pleas for help. It has always been a difficult challenge. In our home, we wonder how a person like my brother can deal, day in and day out, with such dark and broken situations. How could one enter the deep and depraved mind of others every day just long enough to know the extent of the evil? How can one glance even briefly into the wicked throat of that dark abyss to fairly weigh the heart of another? How could one remain untouched by the fires of hell itself? Was it a regrettable lost moment, or was this someone wholly given over to the powers of darkness?
*
After he returns from the office, his day-to-day meanderings through untold darkness, Alan plays his violin.
“Live life with innocence and singleness of heart,” he says. When Alan plays his violin, it is an expression of this innocence, this singularity of purpose. It is not only a healing balm to his own spirit, it is a lovely song of praise to God.
Finding sacred solace in the lovely and wonderful is not new. In the first century, Paul the Apostle wrote to the Philippians, “… whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” He knew there was something restorative and truly uplifting, something most holy, when we set our thoughts to these nobler things. Yes, others have found needed shelter in the beautiful. Blaise Pascal, the brilliant French mathematician and Catholic theologian once said, “In difficult times carry something beautiful in your heart.” For all of the brilliance of his mind, he knew he must get back to loveliness, the root of beauty. He wrote in Pensées, “Wisdom is a return to childhood.” In these moments of returning there seems to be a rekindling of a purity and a clarity of being. There is a coming back to childhood. It often seems as though the darkness itself gives us the window through which we perceive a greater, more gentle light, and we see with purer eyes. Thomas Merton wrote in The Silent Life, “The deepest need of our darkness is to comprehend the light which shines in the midst of it.” Merton found in the midst of darkness an ache and a longing to see the purity of light, to see more clearly. The darkness gives place for the light of heaven to etch its brilliance into our lives. The dark of night gives place for the stars to shine with more radiance. Martin Luther King, Jr., pastor and civil rights leader, once observed, “Only in the darkness you can see the stars.” And he was not alone in this. Many others have stood beneath a vast night sky, beneath the overwhelming reality of something or someone greater than themselves. And it was the stars that showed their brilliance and whispered of things eternal. In Crime and Punishment, one of Dostoevsky’s characters wisely observes, “The darker the night, the brighter the stars, the deeper the grief, the closer is God!” Well, this is it then. We are pressed from darkness into light. There is an eternal dawn if only we will have it. The darkness only sharpens our focus.
*
But what of Alan’s violins?
Alan likes older violins, preferring the gut strings they used a long time ago. These provide a warmer sound with an almost throaty familiarity that he treasures. As he takes the violin’s neck in hand, it is as the caress of a friend. And he lightly fingers the strings just to savor the friendship and familiarity of the moment. He considers the beautiful grain of the woods and places it under his chin. Then he draws the bow across the strings and a song begins as the praise rises effortless and free. His most prized violins all have a story behind them. He knows the maker’s history and, in some cases, those that have handled the instrument through the years. For him it is all about the relationships, for these are not simply pieces of wood with four strings attached. They are telling a story, singing if you will, and they each have their own unique voice. He says that you must know each violin and its relationships in order to play it well. And the same is true with the people he works with. You must know them to understand them. And he’s willing to make the sacrifice. It is in the knowing that we love.
*
Over the years, my brother has bought and sold numerous stringed instruments, looking for what he called the voice, looking for that perfect something in an instrument. These days he would describe himself as an adult student of the violin. He once told me that serious violin players will tell you, “You must have a teacher to learn to play violin.” He loves to ask them in response, “Who gave the first violin lesson?” It is a good question.
He would give me the critique of different violins, what was lovely and what was not. Sometimes the sound of a note—on a single string, in a certain place, held by the finger just so—was not true to Alan’s ear. These days he has only three or four violins that he plays regularly. But he loves his George Barton violin. He wrote to me recently,
I played George Barton's violin this morning. After years and playing literally hundreds of them, I play it mostly. It has a sound like no other to me. It does not have that modern, easy touch, clear tone. Rather, it is a challenge to get adequate tone and it has a very raspy voice. Strange, I like it. I really don't much play any others now. So, I think about the passage of sound from the fingers pressing against gut strings, like the paintbrush to canvas.
It is here in these earthly spaces of our perceptions where shades of darkness prevail. We fight in such spaces. We fight against principalities and powers. In him is light and no darkness. In his precepts, we hold a singleness of mind and heart and deed. In him we find a continuity in things here and now.
I play the violin out of an internal need for a singleness of mind, heart, and deed; and a need for his continuity. What my ears hear is not perfect and my arm grows sore. These assail me. Yet, I play.
As Alan enters his musical world each day, he plays for hours and hours, finding through the weave of timbre and melody, a personal restoration. But more than that. He worships the Lord there. Every time he plays, with every stroke of the bow, every press of the fingers along the board, every ache of the soul, he is worshiping the Lord of heaven and earth. His heart, his hands, and often his voice are singing to the Lord. So, who gave the first violin lesson? Alan will tell you that it was God. He would also tell you that God is still taking students. Alan is one of them.
Henry Lewis
Writer & Poet
Henry is a dawn-watcher, poet, writer and trailrunner. He is a dreamer and a night-skygazer, and a sojourner in a strange land. Henry lives in the Minneapolis area with his lovely wife where he writes and paints and dreams of trails, gazing wonderstruck at the wink of a rising sun and the dancing northern lights across the night sky.
Photography by Josh Hild