My first whistle was an $8 Feadóg and since then, my music “career” has been varied. I have played in rock bands, jazz bands, Celtic bands, Bluegrass, worship groups, solo... Not always with the whistle (I play other instruments, too), and there was a time the whistles lay forgotten on my shelf. But in spring of 2017, that ‘still, small voice’ told me to begin playing again. “Breath is Life, and I am Life,” it said, and I Felt as if I was being nudged into closer intimacy with God through that humble little flute. I recorded a short EP of traditional tunes in March 2018 as an excuse to get my chops back after an extended abscence from playing, and then I chickened out. My ego got the better of me and I felt ridiculous. ‘The mandolin is so much cooler. You can’t lead a worship team with a tinwhistle!’ kept reverberating in my head.
And so I did something really stupid. I listened.
I put down the whistles and focused on other things, and prayed, “Lord, pick the instrument you want me to focus on, please.” Less than a week later, I injured my left hand thumb and fretting a stringed instrument became painful, and over the course of the next eight weeks, gradually became impossible. When I played the whistles, my hand felt fine. If I tried to persist with the guitar or mandolin or ukulele, it got worse. If I so much as thought about playing other instruments, it was like cosmic forces saw fit to conspire for random things to happen to it (bumps, bruises, a kid grabbing my thumb and wrenching it) and make it hurt more. I saw a massage therapist in my stubbornness, and she put me on six weeks of total rest, during which time I reflected on the journey thus far. And it was obvious, (Painfully so.) So I picked up the whistles again seriously in December.
And my hand has improved immeasurably.
And I discovered how to lead worship while playing a primitive flute.
And Lo — others began commenting on the effect that tinwhistle had on them, spiritually and emotionally. As I played, I began to have visions of the work Jesus was doing. It was like the more I played, the more I sought Him, the more He made Himself known.
On January 24th 2019, I was driving home from a supply trip for our small farm. The kids were asleep in the back seat, and I was praying and talking to God. I asked, “What am I supposed to be doing with this? How does my music fit in with Your agenda for healing and deliverance and everything?” And I was dropped into this vision of a dark, tangled forest. At one end, I see a light, far off through the trees, and as I look at it, I hear MY tinwhistle music floating and diving around the tree trunks. As I turn the other way, I see people, all manner of people, picking their way through the brush to make it to the sound (and the Light, which I understood to be God’s presence). Before I could ask who these people were, I heard God explain to me those were His people: Christians both active and lapsed, new believers, old believers, people who weren’t believers yet but would become ones soon, all wounded, tired, beseiged... and He told me my job was to “call them Home” where He could minister to them, strengthen them, heal and prepare them for the days ahead.
So here I am. As a pastor said of Mary and Joseph — two unwed teenagers about to birth the Messiah nobody believed in yet — God is in the business of making the insignificant to society, Significant. I’ll lift up my humble little flute, an instrument often relegated to the realm of a child’s playthings, and I’ll sing you Home.
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