A year after publishing Singing from Silence, I have added two new questions to the FAQ page:

Q:  Where can I find all the rumours that have been repeated about Rich Mullins?

A:  Not here.  I knew Rich Mullins as a friend and a songwriter, an artist whose working materials consisted of his own life experiences and the love of God.  The tools of his trade were honesty, brokenness, beauty, light and dark.      
    
Like all performers and through no fault of his own, Richard had a public side and a private side.  I understand that human nature makes the rest of us curious about the quirks and flaws  of our celebrities and heroes, but I do not intend seek the lowest common denominator by filling pages with questionable content.  Richard is the one who taught me about sharing the truth of our lives through art.  In gratitude for our friendship, Singing from Silence is in no part based on careless speculation or third-hand intrusions on the life stories of others.

The content of Singing from Silence is pared down to my own memories: the only ones I'm capable of writing with truth.  It tells the story of two human beings striving to show one another the love of God in a fallen world.  Forgiveness and grace are repeatedly required and repeatedly given.

Q:  Does the book do justice to Rich Mullins' memory?

A:  That question is very subjective.  If you want a book which stresses his successful musical career and his large base of fans, you might prefer to read An Arrow Pointing to Heaven by James Bryan Smith or perhaps the novel The Wind in the Wheat by Reed Arvin, which is said to be based in part on Richard's life.  

From my point of view, the whole idea of Singing from Silence is to be fair to Richard's memory.  Like many creative geniuises, Richard admitted to a dual nature.  To my way of thinking, when we overlook his life in favor of his art, his sorrow in favor of his laughter, his introspection in favor of his prophetic stance, we have lost half of what made him a human being.  My best memories are of Richard as a man who struggled as we all do to allow himself to be transformed in the hands of the Great Artist. 

I believe Richard wanted to be remembered as someone we can all relate to, because  his art touches us the most when we remember him that way.  This was my intention in publishing Singing from Silence. 

Q: Why is the book called Singing from Silence?
A: I can think of two--more, maybe five reasons I chose that title. . . (more)

This may be one of those  puzzles I can't solve and can't shake:  or maybe it's four hundred and ninety  puzzles waiting to be unpacked.  Forgiveness.  Hard as it is to ask for, it's  harder to give.  

Ever try to unpeel the  center of a golf ball?    My brother and I were not so good at sports, but what  we lacked in coordination we made up for in geekiness, so this is one sports-oriented occupation that kept us busy for hours--when we weren't watching  The Three Stooges for tips on useful sibling interactions.  As a resourceful child who got a golf ball  with a good chip in it, you could usually find some way to tear off the outer  shell.  When you reached the inner ball, you'd find it was compacted of a long wrapped strand of stretched rubber band stuff.  Under what looked like hundreds of feet of wrapping was a core--my brother assured me it was filled with poisonous gas.  I figured he was just trying to scare me.   All you had to do was touch the surface of the rubber band ball and it would turn brittle and shred into bits, spinning and pinging and snapping the whole time as though it was alive with the tension that was packed into the golf ball when it was first  formed.  

The golf ball reminds  me of a lifetime of small, repeated unhealed traumas.  Each little event winds  the rubber-band strand just a little tighter, makes the dimensions of the  center just a little greater, adds just a little more weight to the entire  center.  Over and over, during a lifetime of repeated trauma, the tension  builds.  Stress affects our emotional lives, our ability to think clearly, our  health and our ability to cope with  physical pain. As the center grows through  repeated events, our lives become ever more stressed as our attention is distanced from the  inner core--the heart, where healing can take place.

One day some assault  or trauma parts the outer shell from the ball and exposes the inner layer.  Some  events just remind us of others from long ago, making healing more complicated.   The original wound that began all of our trauma is still there under all the  spinning and pinging and snapping, but to get close enough to the core to do the  healing, we have a lot of unwinding to work through.   

Forgiveness is easier  when we can empathize with our offender, but sometimes we can make no rhyme or  reason of the actions of others.  These offenses are the most difficult to  forgive, and because we carry them longer, probably the most important. 

If we're traumatized  early enough and often enough, by the time we are adults, forgiving one single  event may depend on years of work on forgiving hundreds of past events.  To the  man who asked, "Should I forgive my brother seven times?"  Jesus answered, "Not  seven, but seventy times seven."  Maybe that's what Jesus was talking about.

Some things we forgive because we can.  Those are easy.  There are some things we forgive for our own personal growth.  I'm much more selfish than I like to admit.  In my life, there are some things I've forgiven just so my offender wouldn't have the privelege of keeping me out of the kingdom.  
 
No matter why we forgive, it's good to let go of our past grievances: just to let go of the stress so we can break through to a deeper healing.   We all want to believe God will forgive us; sometimes it's harder to believe God is willing to forgive our offender, too.  God forgives exponentially.

Note to self: 
Next  time I am tempted to offend, try to remember that I may be asking someone to  forgive me exponentially for something that seems to me like just one incident.

Disclaimer:   They don't always use the same methods for making golf balls as they used to, so no matter how resourceful you are,  I can't guarantee you'll have the same experience my brother and I had if you  try to unpeel one.

I gratefully acknowledge the conversations with Rodney A. Ellis, Ph.D., whose understanding of the process of healing traumatic memories led in turn to this series of PTSD awareness posts. 

Lost: Fear of what tomorrow may hold.
Found:  Joy in being given a new opportunity to give.

Many thanks for the prayers of many friends,
Pam Richards

More soon, thank God!