FM Radio, Prayer and Listening for the Universe
Growing up in 1970’s Iowa City, I spent a lot of evenings in my room reading and listening to the radio: KRNA, KQCR and Q103 in the Quad Cities. They were scattered between 94.7 and 103.1 and I would spin the dial on my clock radio up and down, listening to a song on one station and then spinning again to check out what was playing on the other stations. It drove my brother crazy, “Can’t we listen to one station?” I was older and it was my clock radio, so the scrolling between stations continued unabated. At some point, and this is cloaked in a bit of mystery, I came to believe that the universe might be trying to communicate with me through songs. Writing that, frankly, makes me feel a little insane, but it is what I believed. I kind of still believe it today.
As a kid, I didn’t understand the point of prayer. I grew up in a very religious family. We were Lutherans and attended the 8am service every Sunday (I mean “every Sunday,” and if you’d like a cupful of disdain, mention going to the 10:30 service to my mom). I was regularly involved in “prayer.” I just didn’t see the point: (a) God was omniscient. Hence God already knows what’s going on with me and I’m not interested in wasting God’s time or my own; (b) it seemed insane that you could pray for “things” and get them. That can’t possibly be the way things worked, this fourteen-year-old thought.
At the same time, I did believe in God. I knew there was a force beyond me out there and there were times I felt really strongly connected. A lot of those times came when I was in church. Sometimes those moments came during the organ preludes in the quiet minutes before the service started or when the congregation was reciting together one of Pastor Trost’s elegantly written prayers or one of the beautiful Psalms. There was a deep sense of calm and well-being, a feeling of peace and connection. I knew that was the feeling of being connected to God. I’d listen to what was being read and had immediate reactions when things resonated with me. Those same things, those passages from the Bible, bits of music, things our Pastor said, those things still resonate with me today—when I let them. I knew, way back then, it was God, the Universe, whatever that force is, trying to get something across to me. I remember being struck in my 8th grade catechism class at the beautiful words of Matthew 11:28. I had no idea how deeply that message would be interwoven through my life or how it helped me find my way out (another trippy story, another time).
Believing that God or the Universe might also choose to communicate with me via FM radio, therefore, did not seem completely outlandish. My nighttime radio scanning now had a purpose: There were lucky songs and when those songs were played, particularly if they were played in a certain order, there was a message from the Universe coming through. The first official lucky song, so designated for the 1977-78 school year, was Steely Dan’s “Peg.” I didn’t then and still don’t really have any idea what the song is about (another reason I love Steely Dan), but every time I heard it, I kind of knew things were going to be ok, that things were on the right track, that I was on the right track. I still have that reaction when I hear it—even if its on hold or at the grocery store.
The problem with this philosophy, frankly, was interpreting the message. When I heard Pastor Trost’s warm baritone voice intone, “Come unto me, all ye who suffer or are heavy laden, and I will refresh thee,” I knew what that message was. I was less certain about how to decode the message being transmitted by hearing “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart,” “Strange Magic,” and “Save it For a Rainy Day,” in that order. Most of the time I was trying to answer questions like, “Should I ask Patty A to the dance?” or “does Julie B like me?” My system produced murky results at best.
I spent a lot of years drinking my life away, piece by piece, drink by drink. It took me ten years of rehabs and IOPs and meetings and just about everything I could think of to finally get a year of sobriety. Out of all of that, the thing that saved me was finding my sense of willingness again. I had lost the willingness to believe that there was a way out. I had lost the willingness to believe that I still lived under God’s care and protection. I had lost the willingness to believe that I could ever stop drinking. I had lost the willingness to believe. What I did believe was that the combination of hubris and arrogance and selfishness that had been my life had finally caught up with me and it was now just a matter of waiting for the wheel to turn and for all of my horrible mistakes to finally consume me.
When I look back and see 14 year-old me listening for lucky songs all those nights, I see willingness. I see someone who was pretty unsure about where all of this was going, someone who didn’t have a ton of confidence. But I see someone who was always willing to believe that there was a message about to come through and patiently waiting, spinning the dial on the clock radio, until it did. When I heard “Peg” in the car on the way home from basketball practice, I knew things were unfolding the way they should and that I just needed to be patient and have a little faith. It’s hard, sometimes, to think about what had to happen to get me back to that place. It came at a pretty high cost and not just for me.
I see prayer differently now, too. My prayers usually take the form of a running conversation and commentary with God. I find myself saying “OK, OK, I get it,” a lot. I realize now that prayer is the ultimate act of willingness and humility. The act of prayer necessarily acknowledges the existence of a higher power and a belief that the Higher Power can somehow make life better. You can’t really pray unless you are willing to believe. Bill W’s salvation began when he realized:
It was only a matter of being willing to believe in a power greater than myself. Nothing more was required of me to make my beginning. I saw that growth could begin at that point. Upon a foundation of complete willingness…”
Big Book, p. 12
I still love hearing “Peg” and it’s on a lot of my playlists. I still don’t know what it means (“Drawn up in blueprint blue, it sure looks good on you?”). I’ve realized I don’t know too much about what anything means, but that’s not really the point. I think the point is to go through life being willing to believe that there’s a message always about to come through and that the things that are supposed to happen, generally do happen. That an open, willing heart is better, that there is beauty and love all around us and that the Universe is always happy to drop a few breadcrumbs when I’m feeling particularly lost.
Thanks for Letting Me Share