The Singer Trilogy E-Book

Calvin Miller

• Herausgeber: IVP
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2010

Seitenzahl: 232

Beschreibung

Hundreds of thousands have already thrilled to this extraordinary retelling of a life unmatched in human history. Through the story of the Singer, his Song and his battles with the World Hater, Calvin Miller has created a work full of life. Now you can find the complete, powerful tale of incarnation and redemption in one volume, with all three of Calvin Miller's books together: The Singer, The Song and The Finale.The Singer quickly became a favorite of evangelists, pastors, artists, students, teachers and readers of all sorts when it was originally published in 1975. Recounting the story of Christ through an allegorical and poetic narrative of a Singer whose Song could not be silenced, Miller's work reinvigorated Christian literature and offers believers and seekers everywhere a deeply personal encounter with the gospel.This magnificent reimagining of the story of Christ and his church gives young and old alike the opportunitiy to be immersed in the good news.

Leseprobe

THE SINGER TRILOGY

The Mythic Retelling of the Story of the New Testament

Calvin Miller

THE SINGER, THE SONG, THE FINALEIN ONE VOLUME

Cover and interior illustrationsby Joe DeVelasco

www.IVPress.com/books

Contents

THE SINGER

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

XII

XIII

XXIV

XV

XVI

XVII

XVIII

XIX

XX

XXI

XXII

XXIII

XXIV

THE SONG

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

XII

XIII

XIV

XV

XVI

XVII

XVIII

XIX

XX

XXI

XXII

XXIII

XXIV

THE FINALE

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

XII

XIII

XIV

XV

XVI

XVII

XVIII

XIX

XX

XXI

XXII

XXIII

XXIV

About the Author

About the Singer Trilogy

More Titles from InterVarsity Press

Copyright

THE SINGER

I

For most who live, hell is never knowing who they are.

The Singer knew and knowing was his torment.

When he awoke, the song was there.

Its melody beckoned and begged him to sing it.

It hung upon the wind and settled in the meadows where he walked.

He knew its lovely words and could have sung it all, but feared to sing a song whose harmony was far too perfect for human ear to understand.

And still at midnight it stirred him to awareness, and with its haunting melody it drew him with a curious mystery to stand before an open window.

In rhapsody it played among the stars.

It rippled through Andromeda and deepened Vega’s hues.

It swirled in heavy strains from galaxy to galaxy and gave him back his very fingerprint.

“Sing the Song!” the heavens seemed to cry. “We never could have been without the melody that you alone can sing.”

But he drew back, sighing that the song they so desired was higher than the earth.

And always in his agony of longing and reluctance, the atmosphere around him argued back.

“You, too, are higher than the earth! You sang the higher music once, before the oceans ever crashed their craggy coasts.”

He braced himself upon a precipice above the canyon floor, and with the wind full on his face, he cried into the sky:

“Earthmaker, tell me if I have the right to sing …”

But then his final word trailed off into gales.

The gull screamed.

“No,” he thought, “only Earthmaker is everlasting. His alone must be the theme from which sprung the world I stand upon.”

And so he only loved but never sang the song.

Full well he knew that few would ever see him as a singer of so grand a piece.

He knew that they would say to him:

“You are no singer! And even if you are you should sing the songs we know.”

And well he knew the penalty of law. A dreamer could be ostracized in hate for singing songs the world had never heard.

Such songs had sent a thousand singers to their death already.

And the song which dogged his aching steps and begged him pleadingly to sing it was completely unfamiliar.

Only the stars and mountains knew it. But they were old. And man was new, and chained to simple, useless rhymes; thus he could not understand the majesty that settled down upon him.

But daily now it played upon his heart and swept his soul, until the joy exploded his awareness—crying near the edge of sanity, “Sing … sing … S I N G!”

II

It is strange how oftentimes the air speaks.

We are sane as long as we hear voices when there are none.

We are insane when we hear nothing and worse we are deaf.

He worked the wood and drove the pegs methodically.

The shavings from the adze piled high upon the floor.

“Earthmaker, full of mercy,” he said, when evening had come, “I am a tradesman!”

“No,” said the silent air, not a tradesman—a troubadour instead!”

“A tradesman!” he said firmly as he smashed his mallet on the vise.

“A troubadour!” the silence thundered back.

III

Two artists met one time within a little wood. Each brought his finest painting stroked by his complete uniqueness. When each revealed his canvas to the other—they were identical.

So once in every solar system there are two fingerprints alike.

But only once.

His seeming madness made the music play a hundred times more loudly than before.

It lured him from his highland home.

He left the mallet broken on the vise and walked away.

Never had he been the way he walked, and yet his feet knew every step. He could not cease to marvel how they moved his body forward through the mist of circumstances which he vaguely knew by name.

His naked feet intrigued him, for they moved with purpose which his mind had not yet measured. Besides they each one wore a curious scar of some wound as yet unopened; yet they had been there long before his birth. What twist of meaning had Earthmaker given him, to scar his feet before he ever walked?

From the hills, he walked ever downward to the valley miles below.

Down, down, down—until the vegetation thickened into shrubs, and the desert gave way to river jungles.

And there where water lapped at his fatigue, he heard a singer, singing his compelling carols to the empty air.

The tradesman knew that it was an earth song, for it was different from the Star-Song which begged him be its singer—yet somehow like it.

The River Singer finished and they walked into the trees.

“Are you the Troubadour, who knows the Ancient Star-Song?” the tradesman softly asked.

“No, you are the Great Troubadour for whom the songless world, so long has waited,” the River Singer said. “Sing, for many years now, I have hungered to hear the Ancient Star-Song …”

“I am a tradesman only …”

Then the River Singer waded out into the water and beckoned with his hand. Slowly the tradesman followed.

They stopped waist-deep in water. Their eyes swam and they waited for the music to begin.

It did.

The tradesman knew the River Singer heard it too.

The water swirled around them and the music surged.

Every chord seemed to fuse the world in oneness.

They stood until the surging current buried them in song. It then receded and the music died away.

And the river was once more a simple river.

Then over that thin silver stream the thunder pealed, and a voice called from the sky above …

“Tradesman! You are the Troubadour! Go now and sing!”

IV

I knew a blind man whom a surgeon helped to see. The doctor never had a lover such as he. It is in such a way that singers love composers.

From the river, he moved on and on in quietness alone.

He still talked to Earthmaker as he always had but now he called him “Father-Spirit.” He loved the newer name.

The Star-Song came upon him with a manly joy.

At last he sang!

He threw the song against the basalt canyon walls.

It ricocheted in splendor, and he remembered far before that he had sung those very canyons into being.

“Father-Spirit!” he shouted at the desert sky, “I love you. Ask of me anything you will and I will do it all.”

The universe gathered up the echoes of his joy and answered back, “I love you, too, my Singer. One thing alone I ask of you:

“Sing my Ancient Star-Song to the world.”

“Father-Spirit, I will sing it, in every country will I sing it, till all the world you love can sing it.”

In joy he sang and sang until he fell asleep upon the desert floor.

V

Hate sometimes stands quite close to love.

God too stands often near to evil—like silent chessmen—side by side.

Only the color of the squares is different.

He was not alone when he awoke.

The ancient World Hater had come upon his resting place and not by chance.

The Hater leered at him with one defiant, impish grin.

“Hello, Singer!”

“Hello, World Hater,” the Troubadour responded.

“You know my name, old friend of man?”

“As you know mine, old enemy of God.”

“What brings you to the desert?”

“The Giver of the Song!”

“And does he let you sing it only in these isolated spots?”

“I only practice here to sing it in the crowded ways!”

It was hard to sing before the World Hater, for he ground each joyous stanza underneath his heel.

The music only seemed to make the venom in his hate more bitter than before.

The Hater drew a silver flute from underneath his studded belt. He placed it to his leathered lips drawn tight to play a melody.

The song surprisingly was sweet. It filled the canyon with an airy-tune and hung its lingering reverberations mysteriously in every cleft. It rippled on the very ground around their feet.

A strange compulsion came upon the Singer. Furiously he wanted so to sing the Hater’s tune.

He barely staunched the eager urge to sing.

The morning sun glinted fire upon the silver flute. The music and the dazzling light appeared to mesmerize the Singer.

“You must not sing the Hater’s song,” the Father-Spirit cried, “Be very careful, for I love you, Troubadour.”

“Now,” cried the World Hater, “Let’s do this tune at once. I’ll pipe, you sing. Think of the thousand kingdoms that will dance about our feet.”

“No, Hater, I’ll not sing your melodies,” the Troubadour replied.

“What then Singer will you sing?”

“The Ancient Star-Song of the Father-Spirit.”

“Alone, without accompaniment?”

“Yes, Hater, all alone if need be.”

“You need my pipe, man.”

“You need my song instead.”

“The music of your song is far beyond my tiny pipe.”

“Then, go! For I shall never sing a lesser piece.”

Then all at once the Troubadour began again. The mountains amplified his song. It swirled as sunlit symphony, until the Hater put his pipe beneath his belt and fled before the song of love.

“Beloved Singer, beware the World Hater,” the Father-Spirit said.

Then upward there the Singer stretched his arms and said again, “I love you, Father-Spirit.”

He waited there a moment while the sky embraced him and then he walked away. Ahead he saw the cities rise, and people thronged the crowded ways.

VI

If she has loved him, a man will carry anything for his mother—a waterpot or a world.

“Where first to sing?” he thought.

He turned back to the highlands where he had left the broken tool so useless on the vise.

For days he walked. The dust flew up around his feet as he walked home.

At length, he passed the village signpost and there by odd coincidence, his mother at that very time stood by the well.

They met.

He reached to carry her stone jar.

“It’s not traditional,” she said.

He took it anyway.

Her cares had made her fifty years seem even more.

“You broke your hammer on the vise,” she said. “I had it mended for you.”

“I’m through with hammers, anyway,” he said. “I’ve just come home to board the shop.”

“And then you’ll leave?”

“I will,” he said.

“Where will you go?” She studied paving stones as on they walked. He moved the heavy jar to ride upon his other shoulder.

“Wherever there are crowds of many people.”

“The Great Walled City of the Ancient King?”

“Yes, I suppose.”

He feared to talk to her. Yet he must tell her of the River Singer and all about the Star-Song, he had so lately sung. He seemed afraid that she would think him mad. He could not bear to hurt her. For besides the Father-Spirit, he loved her most of all. At length he knew he must lay bare his heart.

“You seem so troubled, son,” she said.

“Not for myself,” he said. Then with the hand that was not needed in balancing the jar, he took her hand and smiled.

“I hate for you to board the shop and leave …”

“Am I the tradesman that my father was, while still he was alive?” he asked.

“You both were good, but somehow wood is never kind to your great hands. Your father’s hands never paid the pain it cost you, just to love his trade.”

She looked down at the gentle, suffering hand that held her own. Somewhere in her swimming recollection, she remembered the same hand with infant fingers that had clutched the ringlets of her hair and reached to feel the leathered face of Eastern Kings. But he could not remember that.

They walked still further without speaking.

“MOTHER, I AM THE SINGER!” He blurted out at once.

“I know,” she said.

“I love the Father-Spirit more than life. He has sent me to the crowded ways to sing the Ancient Star-Song.”

“I know,” she said again. “I heard the Ancient Star-Song only once. It was the very night that you were born. And all these years, my son, I’ve known that you would come to board the shop someday. Can you sing the Star-Song yet?”

“I can,” he answered back.

They neared a house and entered. They shared a simple meal and sat in silence. And the song, which they alone of all the world did know, was lingering all around them in the air.

She had not heard its strains for thirty years but hungered for its music.

He had not sung it for an afternoon but longed to have its fluid meaning coursing through his soul.

Of course the song began.

VII

Before the song all music came like muted, empty octaves begging a composer’s pen. The notes cried silently for paper staves and kept their sound in theory only.

In the beginning was the song of love.

Alone in empty nothingness and space

It sang itself through vaulted halls above

Reached gently out to touch the Father’s face.

And all the tracklessness where worlds would be

Cried “Father” through the aching void. Sound tore

The distant chasm, and eternity

Called back—“I love you Son—sing Troubadour.”

His melody fell upward into joy

And climbed its way in spangled rhapsody.

Earthmaker’s infant stars adored his boy,

And blazed his name through every galaxy.

“Love,” sang the Spirit Son and mountains came.

More melody, and life began to grow.

He sang of light, and darkness fled in shame

Before a universe in embryo.

Then on the naked ground the Troubadour

Knelt down and firmly sang a stronger chord.

He scooped the earth dust in his hand

And worked the clay till he had molded man.

They laid him down beneath primeval trees

And waited there. They loved him while he slept

And both rejoiced as he began to breathe

A triumph etched in brutal nakedness.

“I am a Man!” the sun-crowned being sang.

He stood and brushed away the clinging sand.

He knew from where his very being sprang.

Wet clay still dripped from off the Singer’s hands.

Earthmaker viewed the sculptured dignity

Of man, God-like and strident, President

Of everything that was, content to be

God’s intimate and only earthen friend.

The three embraced in that primeval glen.

And then God walked away, his Singer too.

Hate came—discord—they never met again.

The new man aged and died and dying grew

A race of doubtful, death-owned sickly men.

And every child received the planet’s scar

And wept for love to come and reign. And then

To heal hate-sickened life both wide and far.

“We’re naked!” cried the new men in their shame, (they really were)

A race of piteous things who had no name.

They died absurdly whimpering for life.

They probed their sin for rationality.

Self murdered self in endless hopeless strife

And holiness slept with indecency.

All birth was but the prelude unto death

And every cradle swung above a grave.

The sun made weary trips from east to west,

Time found no shore, and culture screamed and raved.

The world, in peaceless orbits, sped along

And waited for the Singer and his song.

VIII

It is always much more difficult to sing when the audience has turned its back.

The Singer ceased.

The Ancient Star-Song slept.

“You know the final verse?” his mother asked.

“I know it all,” he answered back. “But I’ll not sing it here. I’ll wait till I am on the wall. Then alone the melody will fall upon thick ears.”

“They will not like the final verse,” she said.

“They will not like it, for its music is beyond their empty days and makes them trade their littleness for life.”

“The self of every singer of the song must die to know its music?”

“They all must die, and ever does the self die hard. It screams and begs in pity not to go. Nor can it bear to let the Father-Spirit own the soul.”

He turned the thoughts methodically within his mind then spoke again, “Mother, I shall sing the song while I move out to seek more singers who like me are quite content to sing, then die.”

She knew that he was right, but found it hard to talk of joyous life and painful death at the same time. How odd the song born on Earthmaker’s breath should lead his only Troubadour to death.

“I cannot bear to see you die. Let all

The world go by. Don’t sing upon the wall.

At least don’t sing the hell-bound ancient curse.

If you must sing of life leave off the final verse.”

“I go,” he said. “God give me strength to sing upon the wall—the Great Walled City of the Ancient King.”

He turned.

She cried.

“Leave off the final verse and not upon the wall.”

He kissed her.

“I can’t ignore the Father-Spirit’s call

So I will sing it there, and I will sing it all.”

IX

A healthy child is somehow very much like God. A hurting child, his son.

The sunlight lured him from the shaded, village streets and drew him into day. And everywhere he went, the World Hater had already been. The sick men lay among the roadside thorns. The old ones groaned from habit. The young ones whimpered out of hopelessness.

The Singer stopped. Beside the road he saw a brown-eyed child. Her mouth was drawn in hard, firm lines that could not bend to either smile or frown. Her sickness ate her spirit, devouring all the sparkle in her eyes.

Her legs misshapen as they were, lay useless underneath the coarsest sort of cloth. The Singer knelt beside her in the dust and touched her limpid hand and cried. He drew the cloth away that hid her legs. He reached his calloused hand and touched the small, misshapen foot.

“I too was born with scarred feet. See mine!” he said, drawing back the hem of his own robe.

She seemed about to speak, when the music of a silver pipe broke in the air around them. He had heard the pipe before.

Above them towered the World Hater.

“I knew you’d come,” he said. “You will, of course, make straight her twisted limbs?”

“I will, World Hater … but can you have no mercy? She’s but a child. Can her wholeness menace you in any way? Would it so embarrass you to see her skipping in the sun? Why hate such little, suffering life?”

“Why chide me, Singer? She’s Earthmaker’s awful error. Tell your Father-Spirit he should take more time when he creates.”

“No, it is love which brings a thousand children into life in health. It is hate that cripples each exception to eternal joy. But why must you forever toy with nature to make yourself such ugly pastimes of delight?”

“I hate all the Father-Spirit loves. If he would only hate the world with me, I’d find no joy in it again. You sing. The only music that I know is the cacophony of agony that grows from roadside wretches such as these.”

The child between them lay bewildered by their conversation. The Singer spoke again:

“I’ll bring my song against your hate

Against the bonds of human sins.

And human tears will all subside

When the Ancient Star-Song wins.”

The Hater raged and screamed above his crippled joy:

“Sing health! If you must.

Sing everybody’s but your own. I soon will have your song, likewise your life.

Your great Star-Song is doomed to fall.

You’ll groan my kind of music

when I meet you at the wall.”

The Singer scooped the frightened child into his arms. He sang and set her in the sunny fields and thrilled to watch her run. The world was hers in a way she’d never known. The butterfly-filled meadows danced her eyes alive and drew her scurrying away.

And others came!

Untouchables with bandages heard the healing song and came to health:

The crippled and the blind.

Sick of soul

Sick of heart

Sick of hate

Sick of mind.

Everywhere the music went, full health came.

And all the way, men everywhere were whispering that the long-awaited Troubadour had come.

“It is he,” they said, “at last he’s come. Praise the Father-Spirit, he has come.”

X

The word crying does not appear in the lexicon of heaven. It is the only word listed in the lexicon of hell.

The Singer woke at midnight. In the stupor of half-consciousness—neither quite aware nor yet asleep—he was alone.

The air was full of moans. With groans of grief and pity, the night was crying. He had never heard the darkness cry before.

“Where are you, World Hater?” he shouted.

“Standing in the doorway of the worlds—reveling in my melodies of ugliness and death.”

The Singer listened. The morbid air depressed him and he could not help but weep himself. He ached from the despair. “How long have they cried beyond the doorway of the worlds?” he asked.

The World Hater seemed to summon up the volume of their moaning and then he shouted, “They’ve moaned a million years—It never stops. They hurt with pain that burns and eats the conscience—illuminating every failure. They never can be free. Crying is the only thing they know.”

“Poor souls! Have they nothing to look back upon with joy?” the Singer asked.

“No. Nor anything to look forward to with hope.”

“Could they never give up suffering for one small moment, every thousand years or so?”

“No. Never. They ache in simply knowing they will never cease to ache.”

“I’m coming to the Canyon of the Damned you know.”

“You dare not think that you could sing above their anguished dying that never will be dead.”

“You’ll see, World Hater. I will come.”

“It’s my domain!” the Hater protested.

“You have no domain. How dare you think that you can hold some corner of Earthmaker’s universe and make it your own private horror chamber!”

“It is forever, Singer!”

“Yes, but not off-limits to the song. I’ll smash the gates that hold the damned and every chain will fall away.

“I’ll sing to every suffering cell of hate, the love song of my soul.

“I’ll stand upon the torment of the Canyon of the Damned.”

The troubled air grew still. The World Hater stepped outside the universe—pulled shut the doorway of the worlds.

And Crying softly slept with Joy.

XI

Oftentimes Love is so poorly packaged that when we have sold everything to buy it, we cry in finding all our substance gone and nothing in the tinsel and the ribbon.

Hate dresses well to please a buyer.

He met a woman in the street. She leaned against an open door and sang through her half-parted lips a song that he could barely hear. He knew her friendship was for hire. She was without a doubt a study in desire. Her hair fell free around her shoulders. And intrigue played upon her lips.

“Are you betrothed?” she asked.

“No, only loved,” he answered.

“And do you pay for love?”

“No, but I owe it everything.”

“You are alone. Could I sell you but an hour of friendship?”

Deaf to her surface proposition, he said, “Tell me of the song that you were singing as I came upon you. Where did you learn it?”

His question troubled her. At length she said, “The first night that I ever sold myself, I learned it from a tall impressive man.”

“And did he play a silver pipe?” the Singer asked.

She seemed surprised. “Do you know the man who bought me first?”

“Yes. Not long ago, in fact, he did his best to teach that song to me.”

“I cannot understand. I sell friendship and you your melody. Why would he teach us both the self-same song?”

The Singer pitied her. He knew the World Hater had a way of making every victim feel as though he were the only person who could sing his song.

“He only has one song; he therefore teaches it to everyone. It is a song of hate.”

“No, it is a love song. The first night that he held me close, he sang it tenderly and so in every way he owned me while he sang to me of love.”

“And have you seen him since?”

“No, not him, but a never ending queue of men with his desires.”

“So it was no song of love. Tell me, did he also say that someday in the merchandising of your soul, you would find someone who would not simply leave his fee upon the stand but rather take you home to care for you and cherish you?”

Again she seemed surprised, “Those were indeed his very words—how can you know them?”

“And have you found the one that he has promised?”

“Not yet.”

“And how long have you peddled friendship?”

“Some twenty years are gone since first I learned the song that you inquired about.”

The Singer felt a burst of pity. “We sometimes give ourselves to hate in masquerade and only think it love. And all our lives we sing the song we thought was right. The Canyon of the Damned is filled with singers who thought they knew a love song … Listen while I sing for you a song of love.”

He began the melody so vital to the dying men around him. “In the beginning was the song of love …”

She listened and knew for the first time she was hearing all of love there was. Her eyes swam when he was finished. She sobbed and sobbed in shame. “Forgive me, Father-Spirit, for I am sinful and undone … for singing weary years of all the wrong words …”

The Singer touched her shoulder and told her of the joy that lay ahead if she could learn the music he had sung.

He left her in the street and walked away, and as he left he heard her singing his new song. And when he turned to wave the final time he saw her shaking her head to a friendship buyer. She would not take his money.

And from his little distance, the Singer heard her use his very words.

“Are you betrothed?” the buyer asked her.

“No, only loved,” she answered.

“And do you pay for love?”

“No, but I owe it everything.”

XII

In hell there is no music—an agonizing night that never ends as songless as a shattered violin.

“Sing the Hillside Song!” they cried.