Honor Thy Father

"SACRILEGE...i.e., reading the bible in bed (the sack)." -Jerry E. Giger Sr.

My father was a choral conductor—an old-fashioned minister of music in so many churches of my youth. He was also a professor at universities, where the robes also hung heavy, and reverence had a rhythm all its own.

He taught me two great Sunday lessons, not from the pulpit or classroom, but from the marrow.

The first came in goosebumps. I was maybe eleven.

At a service he wasn’t leading, we sat side by side in the pew. The special music had just ended, and he noticed the hairs rise on my arms. Leaning in with a sideways grin, he whispered, “I call that an eargasm.”

I laughed silently, pretending to understand. I did, and I didn’t. Not fully. But I knew something sacred had passed between us. And now, years later, I understand fully—he saw the musician in me. The sensitive thread stretched between skin and sound. And he named it.

The second came when I asked a question that maybe only a child would ask: “Why don’t we clap our hands in church after the music?”

He didn’t scoff. He didn’t scold. He just looked at me and said, “Because we are all listening for God’s applause.”

And that was enough. That one sentence carved itself into my bones. That one sentence has never stopped echoing.

At the time, I didn’t know that he was teaching me about sacred imagination. He didn’t use the words. He didn’t diagram the theology. He didn’t even always live it—but it showed, in the way he revered silence, in the way he believed beauty belonged to something higher, in the way he trusted that not all applause was audible.

He is the author of a dream I chased for three decades on nylon strings, practicing till “perfect,” and performing with fear, hoping that if I was good enough, he might turn toward me with eyes full of pride.

It has taken me a lifetime to see that he already had. And it began years before.

He didn’t always know how to say it. He didn’t always know how to stay with it. But he had that imagination—even if it wore a suit and tie, showed up early to warm up the choir, and came home late from rehearsing the choral.

I mistook his expectations for absence. I confused his silence for disapproval. But underneath it all, he was a man of wonder—a man who could see holiness in the swell of a chord across voices, a boy’s goosebumps, and the hush that follows a prayerfully offered song.

Maybe he didn’t teach me with words. Maybe he taught me with glances and pauses, with reverence and wit. Maybe sacred imagination isn’t always poetic. Sometimes it shows up in the back of the sanctuary, arms crossed, eyes closed, waiting for God to clap.

And so I say: Thank you, Daddy. You planted more than you knew. Even in the places you fumbled, you passed on the flame. And I carry it now—not just as your son, but as an artist who still listens for the applause that only heaven can give.

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