A Song In The Night

I predict that in about 11 seconds, you are going to say, "wow, Chris, that's heavy."

Have you ever had a night where a heaviness is so near and the phantoms of fear come up so close that the darkness is almost tangible? You toss and turn. A panic comes on. You get up and pace and try to shake it off, but you're just plain afraid.

I would guess that everyone has had a night panic at least once.

There seems to be something extra scary about being afraid in the middle of the night. Maybe it's because lacking a visual connection to the stuff around us, we have a frightful capacity to fill in the blackness with all kinds of phantasms conjured by our fearful brains.

There is a powerful weapon against the terrors of the night. Janie used to wield this weapon a lot. She utilized it to get settled when fears seeped in from behind the window shades and from under the dresser. Her fears about cancer. Her fears about the welfare of the kids and me when she would eventually die.

And the weapon's name?

What Did Jesus Christ Look Like?

What did Jesus Christ look like?

Well, first of all, he was white, or black, had blue eyes, was skinny and had good hair. He walked around in a white bathrobe with a blue prom sash over his shoulder and wore epic screen-printed tee-shirts and Birkenstock sandals and, evidently, glowed. He carried a lamb around and placed his hand on the tops of little children's heads. I understand He also played baseball and football in the backyard with some of the kids in the 'hood.

If I spend too much time thinking about