"You Gotta Have Art," the song says--doesn't it?

I bought a piano last weekend!

We sold mine last time we moved, and I almost went into withdrawal!

So, last weekend, I went shopping and played a digital piano--as a rich concert grand, as a bright modern piano, as an organ, my little repertoire of favorites on that new keyboard. As I realized this had to be my piano, this would be my piano, I had to stop and wipe away the tears.

The salesman's eyes turned red around the rims, too. He's his church pianist, and he said, "Sometimes, the right chord--" Yes, and something about music touches the right chord within the heart.

I also tried out a Celtic harp at an Irish festival recently. I seriously considered renting one and taking lessons. Even my inexperienced strumming of those strings produced beauty that brought tears to my eyes.

But I already know how to play my favorites on the piano.

Ballet, with its music creates soaring beauty, literature has great and moving scenes that motivate us. And of course, the Bible with its awesome eternal truths has great power to move us to tears, to joy, to action, to our destiny with God. Standing in the incomparable Louvre put tears in my eyes, too.

But not colors and images--not creating them when I was an art major--nothing moves me like a string of notes on piano keys.

My hero plays the piano one morning before arguing with the heroine about her own desire to take her art students on tours of European art capitals. He doesn't want her so far away without him. But he knew that was her dream when he married her. She's angry, he's angry, he leaves the beach house for his workday flying with the Navy.

A little while later, she sees him die.

The usually happy-go-lucky Maggie is devastated and wracked with guilt. This is the second person she knew who died after she said something she regretted. And this is her precious husband. He will never come home again.

Why has God allowed this? She now believes God is her enemy.

Only after seeking truth and power down many blind and dangerous alleys and dating a murderer without knowing it--and experiencing laughter along with her tears--does she find peace with God again. And love with another man.

My late parents both encouraged my writing. And they both flew, (and played the piano, painted, made pottery) a long time ago. (See the photo of the type of planes they flew, below.) My scene of the young pilot's funeral made my dad weep. It's nice to know my art could create tears in someone else. And he assured me it wasn't because of bad writing, LOL!

It had touched a universal chord within him.

Three years ago this week, he went to be with the Lord--and with Mama. I'll forever treasure that memory of him wiping his eyes as he read my work.

Yes, I know: The show, "Damn Yankees," about baseball, is the source of the song, "You Gotta Have Heart."

But I submit you also gotta have art! Miles and miles and miles of art!

Often, they're one and the same.