again

I have been blessed to enjoy Florida Christmas vacations with my wife’s family for almost 40 years.

For a Wisconsin native, these sunny weeks have been surreal. When the girls were young, I joked that even sharing half of the child-care load during the vacation week made me feel like I needed a subsequent real vacation.

Since the girls grew up, I often use the peaceful vacation time to plan logistics for the major arts series concert events I produce at our church, or to write creatively.

That was the case at Christmas of 2014. I began to envision a dramatic musical project about heaven.

It seems that everyone thinks about heaven, but few people talk about heaven. We all instinctively long for heaven, but we don’t know much about it. For Christians, we look to the Bible for guidance on how to know God and how to be rescued and how to become part of what Jesus called “the kingdom of heaven,” but we still find heaven to be a mystery. We are taught that every one of us needs to be forgiven when confronted by a perfect deity, and we learn that we can never earn this forgiveness. We learn that God offers forgiveness as a free gift – his rescue comes through his own goodness and sacrifice, not ours.

But what is heaven really about?

How will heaven address the great griefs of this life? Why do we long for a redemption and restoration that will undo the pain we now know only too well?

What about a child lost in an accident?

What about an innocent animal that enriches a life and teaches about death too soon?

What about the parent whose loss leaves a young woman empty before she has grown up?

I thought about the people in my life that have raised these pressing questions, and I thought about three stories I have written to honor them. If Christianity is true, if the rescue offered by Jesus’ death on the cross and his resurrection from the dead are real, if God will one day redeem and restore all of creation in this little particle of his universe, shouldn’t I address this unspoken longing?

Longing for heaven.

I guess I needed to be in my fifties before I could collect three of my stories about longing for heaven.

So I gathered them. Three stories about grief and longing for heaven. They all speak about the longing to experience the loved one again. Someday. Somehow. By God’s grace.

Again is a universal longing, so I named the collection Again.

One of the great joys in my life is being surrounded by creative friends who are willing to share my dreams and introduce me to more creative friends.

Four of those friends, Jeffry Swertfeger, Brian Dunbar, Tommy Rinkoski, and Evan Bonde, joined me for this creative project.

I envisioned a collection of original dramatic readings, music, and songs. These friends helped realize it. Jeffry wrote original songs for my friends to sing. Brian wrote and performed original musical scores to enhance the readings and he recorded the audio performances. Tommy edited my stories and created screenplays, and then recruited some of Rochester Minnesota’s finest actors. Evan patiently captured everything on camera.

We created a video of Again, saved for now as a template that could someday form the basis for a live performance. Live events carry amazing power, but they are so transient. So few people can attend. Since we are not certain of the prospects for the logistics needed for live performances of Again, I have chosen to preserve a simple video version here for now.

Besides the team that created these elements, superbly talented old and new friends read and sang their way through all of this original material for the recording.  Their creativity honors me beyond words. I am so thankful to Mollie Baker, Bria Carr, Jerry Casper, Tanner Fiek, Mariya Maragos, Nick Mezzacapa, Mick Nichols, Audrey Rinkoski, Cory Wentland, and Sue Zehasky for sharing their gifts for this project.

Who knows whether this work will ever be realized as a live performance? If you have 38 minutes and are curious, watch it here, and wonder with me why we each are wired to long for our own personal Again.

4.12.18