[musictlk] Blind Labyrinth

[Ken The PionEar]

My name is Ken Downey, and my friend, doctor Robert Gross and I, have formed 
a band called Blind Labyrinth. (A blind labyrinth would be a maze with no 
way out, thus the No Escape audio logo.) We have a CD album coming out soon 
called, "The Inner Ear." The centerpiece of the album is about Menniere's 
disease, but it also has other unrelated electroacoustic pieces. Our second 
album, "Y," will come out later--if we make enough money from the first one. 
You don't have to wait for the albums to be released though. You can hear 
every one of our pieces here: www.thepionear.net/BlindLabyrinth.html
for free. There are also m3u playlist files of my two solo albums, "My Photo 
Album," and, "Worshipful Massage," which I play for clients while they're on 
the table.
Doctor Gross and I have also recently started BASS: the Believer and Skeptic 
Show, where we talk about both our differences and similarities as believer 
and atheist. Here is the link for that. There are two versions, and the old 
version only has three shows, so if you get that link please let me know. 
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/believer-skeptic-show!/id687002587
We are up to our fifth podcast and are about to air our sixth.
I hope you all enjoy our work.
Here is my testimony.
/I was born blind. My optic nerves did not form right, so all I had was 
light perception, left eye. Of course, that didn't bother me until I was 
six, and people started telling me I was different.

I went to a Church of Christ since I was three, but began attending a 
penticostal church at the age of nine. I used to get on the bus and preach, 
just like my childhood heroes Jimmy Swaggard and Jim Baker did. I preached 
the Gospel, and sometimes the presence of God would come upon me so strongly 
that I god scared. (They don't tell you about the anointing on Gospel Bill 
you know.)

One by one, the few friends I had began to turn their backs, and I had the 
honor of suffering for the faith. How I miss those days! Anyway, something 
in the midst of that stopped me cold--for years, and it wasn't my formar 
best friend beating me up on the playground. That, as I said, was an honor. 
It was the two churches playing tug-of-war with my soul. "Speaking in 
tongues is wrong," said the church of Christ, totally skipping over 1 Cor. 
14-39.

"They didn't baptize you right," said the UPC church, "so you have to do it 
all over again."

I know, I thought, I'll attend a whole new church... It was poison, so I 
quit going altogether--for years.

I won't say too much about all the teasing, taunting, and worse I endured. 
Many of you lived the story, and therefore know it. I'll give two examples.

"How do you know I'm the one that spit on you?" asked one kid after doing 
just that, "can you analyze the spit?"

The other was another kid stealing my cane and throwing it in the trash can.

Even worse was losing so many friends. When I was eight, my three best 
friends died in a house fire. I lost more as quickly as I made them because 
they all moved away--one after another, and every time a friend moved away I 
was losing my three best friends all over again. The worst part was that I 
didn't even know that those three kids ever existed. I repressed my 
knowledge of them completely for years and then couldn't figure out why I 
was bawling my eyes out just because a kid I knew for less than a month was 
moving.

Hurting, hopeless and helpless, I turned to drugs when I was seventeen. 
First, there was the high itself, which, at the time, seemed to heal all the 
wounds I'd taken. Second, there was the fact that I finally felt I found a 
place where I belonged. I never got teased by my fellow druggies--never. Oh, 
they threatened to put LSD in my milk more than once, but instead of acting 
scared I dared them to do it even though God had already told me that if I 
ever touched acid I would die. "Go ahead," I said, "I really wanna know what 
a blind person sees on acid."

My father, who is an alcoholic, often lectured our family on the despicable 
practice our government does--welfare. "Those people," he would say, "should 
just get off their lazy butts and get jobs!" Then he would tell me that I 
aught to learn to work the government system as best as I could, knowing i'd 
never get a job.

Two years after graduation saw me, jobless as my father predicted, sitting 
in my room smoking a bowl and watching Christian TV. I still loved God, but 
I couldn't stand anything to do with church. It was just too hurtful. So 
there I was, getting high, when Breakthrough Ministries came on, and Rod 
Parsley began talking about his Bible school.

"I want you to go to that school," the Lord said to me.

"Lord," I said, "I love your word." In that statement was the teenager's 
thought that I knew everything about it already, since I've studied it since 
I was nine.

"I love your word God, but I want to learn more about music."

"We also have a music program, for those who are interested," Parsley 
continued, and I knew--I had actually heard the voice of God.

A partially sighted friend and I boarded a bus and went to Columbus Ohio to 
go to the camp meeting. He would be coming back, I would be staying. I can't 
describe the intensity and the wondefulness of the feeling of the glory of 
God then. If you haven't felt his presence, like the best high ever, then I 
can't describe it, nor compare it with even the best of all drugs, because 
they fall short.

I had a wicked idea when I got to Columbus. What if I mix this feeling with 
weed? Well, you can't. I went to a bar and smoked up, and the feeling of 
God's presence lifted. Why He didn't just strike me down then I'll never 
get, except of course that He loves me--loves us all--so much. Even more 
mysterious, I felt His presence again the next morning, as if nothing had 
happened!

That lasted three days. On that Wednesday the feeling disappeared. It was a 
shattering experience. Yet I knew that I had to go on, so I did. I got one 
more glimpse of that loviness that is feeling God. About six months later, I 
felt His presence again--so strong, so wonderful--and then He made me feel 
like I was high on pot. The comparison was completely ridiculous--yet I must 
confess that since that sweet feeling lifted I often struggled with 
addiction to that drug. When you're thirsty, you see, you'll drink 
anything--even if you know better.

In the meantime though, I began to cry out to God. "Oh God, don't let me 
look to the left or the right. All I want is to glorify You. I want to walk 
with you like Enoch and Elijah, like Moses and John." That prayer is still 
my heartbeat today, and what can I do? God put that there, and I couldn't 
remove it even if I wanted to.

There was much corruption in the church, a lot of greed. It was things like 
that that made me want to leave Bible school. I couldn't see just how 
miraculous my time there was. God used me to heal a totally deaf man and 
another partially deaf one. Yet the corruption I "saw," was all I could 
"see," and so I left. The reason I left was because of what one of our 
teachers said. "Keep one eye on the anointing, and the other on a pretty 
lady," he had said. Well, I didn't even recognize the anointing. I think we 
get used to it after a while. The pretty lady was the woman I mom hooked me 
up with at the start of my second year. It was a blind date--literally! 
Maybe I would have stayed on in Bible school, despite wanting to be with her 
so much, but the fact was that I saw little but that corruption, and it 
seemed to be getting worse by the day. One of the things I used to pray as a 
teenager was, "God, let people feel they could open up to me." That was a 
selfish prayer prayed in the hope that a pretty woman would open up to me, 
and I'd find myself with a girlfriend. Anyway, the Lord answered it, but 
since I didn't have a girlfriend I couldn't see it--and so people told me 
everything about school--all the bad things that were happening. The dorms 
were a mess, the whole student body was a mess, immorality abounded. One day 
I was in the prayer room and I heard people planning a party, and who was 
going to be bringing the bag of weed to the party...

Meanwhile, two teachers said that if I stayed on and graduated, not giving 
up, I would get my sight. That had me so wound up I couldn't sit still for 
days. In less than nine months, I was going to be healed!

But I left. I left for that beautiful woman, and eventually got married. We 
have been through more than most would believe. Our firstborn son died as I 
pulled him out of the womb. After that came trial after trial, and they 
never let up. I think now that they were just preparation for the really big 
trials.

In the meantime, I began to design games. I wrote one called "World of 
Darkness," named after a song I wrote. Both the game and the song were about 
blindness and the attempt to express and describe what it is like.

I found my blindness to be quite an obstacle in every church I attended. I 
was usually relegated to the roll of pew-sitter, and the people were 
generally happy to leave me to it. I, of course, was not. I am tired of 
being put into boxes. I have a lot to offer the body of Christ. In fact, I 
feel like a leech who's been sucking and sucking and sucking until it's so 
full it's about to burst. Even writing all this testimony down doesn't 
relieve even a hundredth of that feeling, and it just gets stronger and 
stronger every day, like fire shut up in the bones.

I left my home in California in 1999 to come back to Ohio, to lead worship 
services for a pastor I knew. In fact, the man was my mentor and spiritual 
father... I guess he still is. Then, some guests came in from South Africa 
and led for a while, then the pastor put in a guitarist who hadn't even been 
saved for half a year. I had moved my family all the way across the country 
to lead worship, and I was replaced with no explanation or apology. 
Bitterness became both my arch enemy and my daily dinner. One day I 
confronted the pastor about it. I hadn't known what he was going to say 
until I confronted him, but as soon as I said my peace and asked why, I 
heard his words even before he said them. I think God was preparing me so I 
wouldn't lose it completely and bite his head off. His response: "It just... 
happened."

In 2006 my hearing started to go. Also, I had huge attacks of vertigo that 
left me nauseated and vomiting. The doctors diagnosed it as Menniere's 
disease. Most people who contract it end up with only one ear affected, but 
even before my right ear began to be affected the doctors said that a test 
showed that it would be.

"Isn't there anything I can do about this?" I asked.

"It's just life, Mr. Downey," one doctor said, "you're just going to have to 
learn to deal with it."
As you know, we depend heavily on our ears for everything, especially 
mobility. This meant that i couldn't go around by myself anymore. One day, 
the traffic would sound right, but the next day everything would be off, 
because the hearing fluctuates. Fortunately for me, I have my wife and kids 
to lead me, so I can get around some--but I can't travel like I used to. I 
was never big on walking, so this didn't hit too hard--it was just a big 
annoyance that's all.

What did, and still does, hit hard are the pitch distortions. I am a 
musician. I play keyboard, recorder, some guitar, and just about anything 
else I pcik up. But there are days when I can't hear pitch at all, days when 
the best choral performances seem like second grade choir rehearsals. "Why 
God!" I asked one day.

"Music is one of your idols," He said, "and you have to let it go."

Ouch!

Three years ago, some people were praying for me, that God heal my eyes and 
ears. Yes, they pray for me all the time too. Anyway, God did heal my ears. 
My pitch was spot on. There was absolutely no tinitis--where your ears ring. 
I was finally healed.

"Will you go through this a while longer?" the Lord asked.

Oh come on God, really?" I whined.

"It will be beneficial for you," He said.

I asked if it was His perfect will--but I already knew the answer...

The next morning found me, with tinitis and a touch of vertigo, complaining 
to God again, just as though i had never given my consent. Here is the 
Lord's response verbatim.

"On Earth," He said, "parents give their children assignments to prepare 
them for that next big test. But in my Kingdom, I give my children tests to 
prepare them for the next big assignment."

I was shocked. i thought about all the trials I'd ever gone through--the 
teasing, the bullying, my son dying, and I smiled--or tried to anyway.

At this time, I read John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. I felt such an 
offinity both for him and the work that I wrote a sequel called, "The 
Pilgrim's Promise." There are whole sections of that book I barely remember 
writing.

It was about this time that my wife decided to go into neuroscience. Later 
she would confide to me that it was partially because of the Menniere's 
disease that she did this and, having studied for a year, she saw the early 
signs of the seizures our son was having. Nobody else would have seen it. So 
she took him to the doctor, knowing something was wrong, the doc diagnosed 
his condition, and gave him medicine that has almost completely stopped 
them. Score another one for God, who used my condition to help prod my wife 
into the line of work he wanted her in, so that she could prevent our son 
from getting a large amount of brain damage due to seizure activity. Yes, 
score one for science too.

My wife is not a Christian. In the beginning, she told me she was--and, I am 
convinced, really believed it. Nowadays she's a total atheist who always 
complains that the universe is out to get us. In August, last year, our car 
broke down. We paid $1800 to get it fixed, it got us back to Ohio from 
Michigan where the problem occured, then broke down again--it was time for a 
new car. We got the car, and my wife blew out her ACL joint while cleaning 
her mom's bedroom. My wife is stubborn though, and didn't let a little thing 
like that slow her down. She kept going to and from school every day, even 
through two surgeries. I married Wonder Woman--and I can't wait to see what 
she'll be like when she finds Christ!

I began to have terrible regrets about leaving Bible school at this time. I 
remember laying in bed one night, praying to God. "Why did I do it God?" I 
asked over and over, "why did I leave--and how wonderfully would I be 
serving you had I stayed?"

I heard the phone ringing. It wasn't my phone, it was the old Bible school 
dormatory phone. This was something between a daydream and a vision. I 
answered it, and my mom was on the other end of the line, telling me that my 
girlfriend was killed by her last boyfriend. "See?" God seemed to say, 
"wasn't it worth it--giving up your sight to save her?"

Of course it was! I told God, with tears streaming down my cheeks, of course 
it was! Score another for the Master! He used my disquiet and inability to 
see His working for His glory.

I still believe that God is going to completely heal both my eyes and ears, 
by the way. In the beginning, I prayed, "God, please open my eyes that I may 
see." Now I pray, "Oh God, I beseech you, open my eyes that the unconverted 
may see!"

Nobody in my family is a Christian except, I think, my eight-year-old son. 
My sister says she's a Christian, but goes around drinking, drugging, having 
sex and generally living like the world. Of course, I'm even worse in a way, 
because I still fall to the temptation of getting high whenever it's around, 
though I know better, and that knowledge keeps me from telling her what I 
know, even though God continually tells me that He can even use our faults, 
our sins, our weaknesses, and that their is now no condemnation for those 
that believe in Christ Jesus.

Anyway, at the time my wife blew out her ACL, I got a call from a friend of 
mine, a professor of music theory. He hadn't been keeping in contact with me 
because he knew how hard music was for me, how I hated hearing it in my 
condition.

"Why don't you record a piece about it?" he asked.

"I did, but nobody's going to want to hear it," I told him. He said he 
would, so I added some sound effects and sent it to him. He added other 
music to it, did a reading about Menniere's disease, and we had a 22-minute 
piece called, "Dyschord: Hell on Earth."

My wife, who is very good at research--naturally, researched musicians with 
Menniere's disease and gave me some names. I wrote to them all, explaining 
what the piece was about, and only got one reply--but what a reply. It was 
from a lady who, for a short time, lived in the same small town I did. The 
thing I remembered most about her was her big puppet, and I won her heart 
when I asked if she had been the girl with the puppet. So God used the 
Menniere's to connect me with a long-lost childhood friend.

"And that's what I'm doing," God said. "All those friends who moved away, 
they are like coals spread across the nation. When I do things in your life, 
they will know and will tell everyone they know, so I will indeed be 
magnified."

And that, of course, is what nobody understands except others who share my 
heart. We don't talk of these things to evoke pity from those around us, nor 
do we wish to have others say, "He's blind, and he's done all that--what's 
your excuse," a thing I hear often after giving my testimony. No, no no! My 
objective, my only objective, like the very beat of my heart, is: Glorify 
Him! Magnify Him! Reflect His glory into the Earth! That's it. There is 
nothing else I want--really want--but that. Oh, I get distracted, and 
sometimes go chasing after some stupid thing or another, but like a homing 
beacon He has placed this desire in me, and I cannot now or ever avoid it 
for long.

Ken Downey
president of www.ThePionEar.net
PionEaring audio games since 2005