If You’re Good, and You’re Doing What You’re Doing For Somebody Else, You Won’t Fail
Review of and insights from Hold On The Light Will Come (And Other Lessons My Songs Have Taught Me) by Michael McLean
Intro
This book is an intimate description of how Michael McLean came to write many of his songs. They are lessons that he learned for himself while writing or after writing them.
My favorite part of this book is how Michael seems to have personal conversations, whether imagined or not, with the Lord.
So many times I got excited, overjoyed, or emotional from the messages from one of the chapters. The book isn’t long but each chapter is a lesson he learned and is generally a story of the lesson and the song related to that lesson.
Ratings
- Likelihood of recommending a friend to read? 📚📚📚📚📚
- Likelihood of recommending a friend to purchase? 💰💰💰💰
- Positive Influence: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
- Time to read (more stars is more time): 🕒🕒
Two or Three Favorite Things
I think one of my favorite stories in the book was one Michael told about seeing a musical put together by some friends.
He really wanted it to be good.
He saw people liked and were inspired by it, but he didn’t like it. He didn’t think it was very good.
He thought at first that he didn’t like it because no one had invited him to help write it, but that wasn’t it.
He just plain didn’t like it.
It bothered him that so many people loved it and that it was very successful and he disliked it so much. He said:
I started wondering what to think. What was wrong with me? Had I become so critical and weird that it had robbed me of the joy these other people were feeling? I started to question whether it was a good idea for me to continue in the field I was in if I couldn’t even understand why people were so moved by something that left me so cold.
This affected me so deeply that I said a little prayer in my heart on the way home from the theater. The prayer went something like this: ‘Dear Heavenly Father, do you love this? Is this your kind of show? Am I completely out to lunch? Have you been trying to get me to appreciate this kind of work for years and I’ve been too stubborn or too proud to get it? If I have been wrong, let me know, and I’ll change, but I’ve got to know: Do you love this?
There was a real urgency to my prayer. Maybe that’s why I got an answer so soon.
“I love them.”
I was confused. This wasn’t an answer to the question I had asked, so I asked again. The answer was the same: “I love them.”
To me, there is a profound message here.
We love him, because he first loved us. (1 John 4:19)
God loves us, and he will use the weak, not-so-good things we do or create to accomplish good.
I view it as an additional way we enjoy of his grace, mercy and goodness both as givers and receivers.
We should always strive to make high quality and pleasing things, but the wonder in the grace of God is that it can somehow make our imperfect, mediocre efforts have more significant impact.
His grace fills the gap. That’s the power of his Atonement and its application to everyday life.
The big takeaway here though is that God loves us. Despite or because of our efforts.
I was confused. This wasn’t an answer to the question I had asked, so I asked again. The answer was the same: ‘I love them.’
Why wasn’t I getting the answer I wanted to hear: that the Creator of heaven and earth sees things the way I do; feels about things the way I feel; likes the same things I like. But He didn’t go there. The answer was simply: ‘I love them.’
Michael figured he was asking the wrong question, but he wasn’t sure what the better question was; he thinks he’d never have been able to formulate it without having read an excerpt from The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis.
(paraphrasing) — The book talks about a bus ride from hell to heaven. A famous artist on the bus wants to stop the bus so he can paint a landscape in heaven. The Spirit tells the artist he doesn’t need to stop and paint (p. 136):
When you painted on earth — at least in your earlier days — it was because you caught glimpses of Heaven in the earthly landscape. The success of your painting was that it enabled others to the glimpses too. But here you are having the thing itself. It is from here that the messages came. There is no good telling us about this country, for we see it already…If you are interested in the country only for the sake of painting it, you’ll never learn to see the country.”
[The artist protested,] “But that’s just how a real artist is interested in the country.”
“No, You’re forgetting,” said the Spirit. “That was not how you began. Light itself was your first love. You loved paint only as a means of telling about light.”
“Oh, that’s ages ago,” said the [artist.] “One grows out of that. Of course, you haven’t seen my later works. One becomes more and more interested in paint for its own sake.”
“One does, indeed. I also have had to recover from that. It was all a snare. Ink and catgut and paint were necessary down there, but they are also dangerous stimulants, every poet and musician and artist, but for Grace, is drawn away from love of the thing he tells, to love of the telling till, down in Deep Hell, they cannot be interested in God at all but only in what they say about Him. For it doesn’t stop at being interested in paint, you know. They sink lower — become interested in their own personalities and then in nothing but their own reputations.”
The artist then asks about meeting the “really distinguished people.” Michael said the Spirit’s response “jumped off the page and grabbed [his] full attention.”
“But they aren’t distinguished — no more than anyone else. Don’t you understand? The Glory flows into everyone, and back from everyone: like light and mirrors. But the light’s the thing.”
“Do you mean there are no famous men?”
“They are all famous. They are all known, remembered, recognized by the only Mind that can give perfect judgment.” (C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, 83–86 first emphasis added by Michael McLean, latter emphasis added by me.)]
If the point of the story isn’t clear, it’s this — Michael’s question on whether the Lord liked the quality of the music and show wasn’t the most important question.
The real question is whether or not and how well the work of art is telling about the light.
Is it communicating something that is hard to show or tell? Is it helping others to understand the truth of how things really are?
It definitely doesn’t require you to be associated with any particular religion or philosophy to communicate a truth. Anyone, anywhere can do that. But the Judge of Heaven and Earth will value our contributions on how well it helped others to see and understand and know Him.
Are you reflecting the light, or do you care so much about the mirror and it’s construction that you forget to care about how well it is reflecting the light?
One of my favorite things about the book is how Michael allows us to get to know him and his thoughts and his weaknesses. He shows his insecurities, his pride, his thoughtlessness, as well as the times of humility and joy. He actually has a chapter entitled “Something’s Broken in My Brain” that’s about the medication he has to take for his depression and it’s a song he’s never published but is just for himself:
Something’s broken in my brain
And only pills can fix it.
I fought this thing for years in vain,
Believing I could lick it.
I tried and failed and felt so weak;
It made me quite the cynic.
And then I heard the heavens speak:
“Mike, get thee to a clinic.”
I thought that meant the clinic
For my own immortal soul,
So I trudged down to a church to wait
For God to make me whole.
Then something happened then and there
That came as quite a shocker:
I heard the voice of God say, “Mike,
I meant get thee to a doctor.”
“But you’re the God of heaven and earth,
My King, my Lord, my Master.
Why not just heal me here and now?
It’s cheaper and it’s faster.”
He paused so long I thought He’d gone,
And then, in all His glory,
He shared an insight that will be
The moral of my story.
He said, “I whispered to some scientists who couldn’t see
The one who guided their research was none other than me.
You see, I know you wonder
If I hear prayers when you say them.
Well, I’ve heard all your cries for help
Long before you pray them.”
Michael says he appreciates his pill for what it does — balance out the highs and lows allowing him to feel “normal”. I think this is a chapter that those who have to deal with mental struggles or illness can relate to. I haven’t been in that position but I can semi-imagine the difficulties of having things out of balance. I know I definitely have my moments and mental weaknesses and many people struggle with much, much worse.
Either way, sometimes the answers to our problems are simpler than we hope them to be. Sometimes the pill may just be the “Wash 7 times in the River Jordan” from the story of Elisha — not as grand a show of faith as we’d like it to be, but solves our problem nonetheless.
Personal Impact
Michael’s songs have had a big impact on my life. But this section is about the book’s impact, not the music’s impact. Not sure which is greater, but the book’s impact has been significant.
What I love most about the book is his willingness to share some less-than-positive stuff about himself so that we can understand that most of the songs have a story behind them and often lessons for him to learn.
He likes to say that God talks to us in the way we can hear, and that to him, the songwriter, God communicates with Michael through songs. Each lesson is either a personal revelation, an answer to a prayer , or an increased understanding of life, love and people.
To me, it contains many beautiful messages of truth that, more than anything else, can increase our faith that God lives and loves each of us individually. It’s a common theme in his music as well. A real testimony of personal revelation and its power.
One of the messages I most enjoyed dealt with one of McLean’s songs that I love most entitled The One and Only You.
In the chapter Michael talks about how he thought that by thirty-five years old he’d start speaking and acting like the grown-ups he had always respected in his life:
I’d been in several meetings with mature people, and I noticed the way they interacted with other community leaders; the way they commented on matters of business, politics, and church; the way they carried themselves in general. Not one, not even one (as far as I could see) ever jumped out of his chair in the midst of a discussion and yelled, “Are you kidding me? This is nuts! What planet are you guys living on?” And I never saw any of them get so emotional or passionate in a presentation that tears came to their eyes…These were mature people, and I admired them because the world was stable and safe in their hands.
When he realized he still didn’t feel mature upon hitting 35 years old nor was there evidence that he ever would (besides a mortgage, wife and kids), he decided he was going to change. He said he started wearing suits, ties, and Sunday shoes instead of sweaters, jeans and Reeboks. He said this new level of maturity lasted about five weeks.
I was driving to work….On the way, I decided it was time to change the preset buttons on the radio to include more “appropriate” stations. In the process, I pushed the button of a previously beloved rock station just as the Boss was singing “Darlington Country” from the Born in the U.S.A. album. At that moment, alone in the car, it seemed almost sacrilegious for me, having graduated from high school in New Jersey, not to crank it up and sing along with Bruce Springsteen, the coolest rockin’ daddy in the U.S.A….
When a traffic light forced me to stop…I took advantage of this opportunity to use the steering wheel as a drum set and I pounded away. Out of the corner of my eye I could see, sitting in a Lexus right next to me, a true grown-up. The look was unmistakable. He observed me, over the top of his grown-up guy glasses, with a mixture of condescending amusement and disdain that crushed my mood like a power outage at a battle of the bands. I’d been found out. I was embarrassed and immediately turned the radio down and sat up straight and regained a mature, upright position…
For the next few blocks I beat myself up for being such an idiot. It wasn’t because the guy in the fancy car disapproved; I didn’t even know who he was. It was because I wasn’t making the transition into the grow-up world very well…I was disappointed that my makeover on the outside hadn’t affected the real me inside.
And then I felt as if something were sweetly wrapping itself around my soul. That’s the only way I can describe it. It was warm and tender and felt like liquid understanding flowing from my head to my heart. And I wondered why I had turned the radio down. For the next few moments, deep in thought, I imagined a conversation with the most mature Being in all the universe sitting next to me in that car.
“I like Bruce too.”
Wow.
I mean, I don’t even know how to respond to a message that is so personal, so tender, yet exactly what Michael needed in that moment.
He needed to know that he didn’t need to change who he was.
“There is a place here that only you can fill.
And this empty space awaits the magic you instill.
For your warm embrace does what nothing else can do.
You’re second to none because you’re the one and only you.”
That stanza comes from one of Michael’s songs, one of my favorites from his Distant Serenade album. My mom gifted it to me for my birthday once as a teen, and I really like the book, songs and message. I know I’ve had my share of times I’ve been frustrated with myself and felt I should be different than I am. Michael shared this story and song online here (it includes the ending of the story I just shared as well):
Check it out if you’d like to hear the song and see all the lines to the song. Please do, listen to the song at least once. The message is beautiful.
Final Thoughts
My final thoughts are that YOU NEED TO READ THIS BOOK. Or listen to his songs. You may find them cheesy or simple, but they are simple, heartfelt, personal messages that as Michael says in the title of his books, lessons that he himself learned, sometimes before, sometimes after writing the song, but most of the time, they were messages that he himself needed to hear.
“…all this inner dialogue seemed to be summed up in these words: IF YOU’RE GOOD, AND YOU’RE DOING WHAT YOU’RE DOING FOR SOMEBODY ELSE, YOU WON’T FAIL.”
Michael McLean is a pretty-well known LDS songwriter & playwright. His works include The Forgotten Carols, The Garden, The Ark, Mr. Kruger’s Christmas as well as various albums and commercials.
