Music and Me...

I was the bass guitar player in a country band called "Last Minute Thang." And no, this is not a joke.

It was high school and I was a band student. Make that, a band nerd. I wanted to be in band since I was a young child at football games, back when the old rock gymnasium was still standing at the visitors end of the football field. I didn't understand how music worked when I was a kid, but I would go home and on a sheet of paper try to recreate what I heard. I drew lines. Small lines for low notes, longer ones for high notes. The next day I would try to recreate the song in my head by looking at the paper. I was obsessed.

Then the glorious year came-- Sixth Grade. About the only thing I can remember good about sixth grade was beginning band. I was a trumpet player, and I was good. Well, good for a sixth grader. By tenth grade my teeth needed braces, which made it painful to continue playing the trumpet, so I switched to Tuba.

Yes, I was a Tuba player. Two years All-State.

Like I said, band nerd.

Sometime in high school a jazz band formed and I learned how to play the bass guitar. I actually learned on an old upright bass. I was not naturally talented at anything, I just practiced hard. Because of this lack of natural talent, I didn't play any instruments, including the bass guitar, by ear. I simply knew how to read music and recreate it on the instrument.

The upright bass became an electric bass. Then, as the Brad Paisley song says, I grabbed a few good buddies, and we started a band.

We played at a few country churches and at the Chandler Cherokee Pow Wow. We played covers of popular country songs. Garth Brooks, Clint Black, and Garth Brooks. (We listened to a lot of Garth Brooks.) At the churches we played old gospel favorites. Beulah Land, Amazing Grace, Beulah Land. (Beulah Land was popular among the little old ladies.)

And then our Footloose moment came. We were about to play at the Winona Shindig, a place that helped a lot of small regional acts get their start. We were shut down when the father of our drummer and lead singer, a fundamentalist Baptist pastor, found out that there would be dancing and alcohol at the Shindig.

Country Music glory was derailed forever.

I continued to play the bass for a bit longer. Early college in the early 90's was the "Praise and Worship Revolution," so I tinkered with the bass guitar. I was actually the bass guitar player for a Christian group Point of Grace. For two songs anyway, but that is another story altogether.

Whenever I run into an old friend from home one of the first things I get asked is if I still play the Tuba or the Bass Guitar. The Cross Canadian Ragweed song rings true-- You're always 17 in your home town. But the truth is that I haven't touched a musical instrument in years. I'm not sure I'd know what to do. But that is ok with me. That was a whole other life, a whole other person. I've got other things to work on now...

Ash Wednesday...

Have mercy Father/ On me your son/ Just a damned old sinner/ and ashamed of things I've done/ I beg forgiveness/ For the prayers I've said/ And the lies that burn like coals upon my head.-- From Fathers and Sons by Brian Douglas Phillips

Today is Ash Wednesday, one of those days on the church calendar where I try to pretend that I am an old-pro at all this stuff that I was in the dark about for the better part of my life. But that is, of course, a complete lie. I am to the point where I can think about sin and death and ashes and moving into a season of death and resurrection, but I am still thinking about that smudge on my forehead. I used to joke about how unfortunate it was that UBC's Ash Wednesday services were at night, so we can't go a whole day without people seeing the ashes on our heads. You know, because that is what Ash Wednesday is about... letting people know about my piety and attentiveness to grace.

But I am no pious one, and have awful trouble being attentive to grace. I am frail, prone to long extended bouts of narcissistic obsession. I am slothful in my speech and with my time. I have done, and I have left undone. Nothing more than ashes, and to ashes I will return. But out of the ashes...

An Open Letter to Chris Seay and the Twenty or So People Who Clicked "Like" on his "Open Letter to the Regents of Baylor University"...

I get it. I reacted the same way as you. When I heard the news, my Facebook status read...

The "Baylor Family" has complained that its past leadership has been too divisive. Now it appears that Ken Starr, one of the most divisive characters in recent U.S. history, will be named Baylor's next president. Wow.

Like most of us who posted yesterday morning via blogs, notes, or status updates on Facebook, I wanted to be on top of the news. Like a cable news network full of ideologues, I wanted it known that I understood the greater implications of what this all meant before the next guy did. I understood the history of Ken Starr,of the Baylor controversies, and of what it takes to be a leader that unifies a divided constituency. I understood Ken Starr was not this guy.

Then the support from Mark Osler began making its way through the blogosphere. And then from Nadine Strossen, the long time president of the ACLU. Then President Bush, the one that all the progressives are now calling "the good one." Later I read that he endorsed President Obama's first choice for the U.S. Supreme Court, Sonya Sotomayor.

The tidbits kept trickling in and I realized that I may have been one of the only of my Facebook friends who had read the Starr Report, but beyond that, I didn't know a damn thing about the guy. What revealed itself throughout the day was the fact that Kenneth Starr is a polarizing and divisive for two reasons. a.) In a handful of high profile cases, he has been on the unpopular side of history. b.) People like you and me say he is.

The problem with prematurely labeling someone as divisive is that it infects the conversation. It demands people take sides before there are even any sides to be taken. On top of that, the supposed "divisive" person is faced with an added burden of proving they are not so on top of the already arduous task of the job set before them. It is unfair, and unChristian. You are a pastor and a public figure. I am a student studying to be the same. Regardless of whether we like it or not, we are always teaching. In this case we have taught that it is ok to cast judgement on someone we do not know, provided we inoculate ourselves from criticism by offering a tepid support for the decision to elevate that person to a position of leadership.For this I believe we all owe Judge Starr an apology and the benefit of the doubt.

I am a Lost fan as are you. But when it comes to the conversations about the show I am, well, lost. All the twists and intricate nuances do not interest me. Destiny or Choice? Boring. Plot doesn't fascinate me in Lost because there is always going to be something new around the corner. A hatch, a smoke monster, a wheel that throws you to last week. For me, these serve one purpose-- To reveal a character. Both what is deep within a character, and what is between characters. I am enthralled by the looks people give, by why they are angry or why they are scared, why they react one way in one situation and another way in another. In Lost, the past is essential, but there is always a new present to reveal that there is no such thing as a one-dimensional character. Most people contain multitudes, and all of them deserve the opportunity to make the most of a new reality.

Let's all give Judge Starr that opportunity.

Rugged Belief...

Your heart's on the loose
You rolled them seven's with nothing to lose
And this aint no place for the weary kind
-- Ryan Bingham's The Weary Kind (From the Movie Crazy Heart.)

As children they taught us to pray, "God is great,God is good, let us thank him for our food, Amen." This worked its way deep down in us and taught us an important lesson: God is, in fact, good. And it was easy to believe, especially where I grew up. The pine trees reached the sky and the sky seemed to go on forever. Crime was low, friendships plentiful, and the preacher always had a half-stick of gum ready for the children at the end of the church service. How could God not be good?

And then it all got complicated. Acne and weird body hair, girls that wouldn't pay attention and guys who wanted to fight you. Car payments and collection agencies. And eventually, words like Cancer, AIDS, and death got attached to the names of people we knew. We still kept saying "God is good," but slowly the question began to work its way out of us, "Really? Is God good?" The puzzle pieces just didn't seem to fit.

A few of us rejected the God piece altogether. The realities on the ground seemed to be proof that either God was a fairy tale or that Bette Midler was right, God really was just watching us from a distance.

Some of us tried to force the pieces together. We developed a language that polished off the harsh realities of life. We smiled our best Joel Osteen smile and said everything was ok. Difficult times were just illusions. Devastating life circumstances were no longer cause for lament, but "opportunities to rejoice." Funerals became "celebrations of life," and the answer to "How are you doing" was always "blessed," no matter how much shit we were covered in. (It's a wonder we marveled when others accused people of faith as having their heads in the sand.)

Others of us turned God into a puppet master, calling the shots and micromanaging the universe. The universe was created in six days, God has one perfect plan for your life, and don't whine because "He is in control." This was perhaps the easiest to embrace because it took all responsibility for our lives away from us and allowed us to dictate the people God looked down upon.

Through it all, the two-pronged mystery of a good God coupled with a harsh world got lost in the garage sale. But some of us are looking for it again.

Recently I was a participant in a time of prayer. We made a few confessions of faith, each repeated by verbalizing the words "God, you are good." We were then encouraged to say prayers for our selves, our community, and our world. Each prayer was followed by a collective "God, you are good." The Haitian earthquake... God, you are good. Death of a loved one... God, you are good. Estrangement and disownment... God, you are good.

It was painful.

How can we be honest about all that we see in the world and still believe in a good God? I don' know, but we do. I suppose it may be because one does not negate the other. King David knew this, and gave us the Psalms as a guidebook for embracing tragedy and God at the same time. The pain and the hope mixed together. Both were acknowledged, neither ignored.

Today after church there were quite a number of us at Mi Tequila, one of my favorite places in Waco. A few of us have become regulars, and many more joined us today. I looked around and thought about how much I loved all these people, the ones who have shared life with me, the ones who are relatively new, and the ones I have just met. We were all there, together. There was something normal, boring, and extremely holy about those moments. But then a tinge of sadness overtook me as I recalled what a good friend of mine said to me shortly after the death of my friend Kyle... What is so horrible about this is that it is just going to keep on happening. We are all just going to keep on dying. All of us are going to have to keep burying each other until there is no one left to bury.

None of this negates hope. We still embrace the ultimate reality that everything will be made right at an appropriate time. But we shouldn't allow that fact to sweep us away too soon. The gospel is bad news before it is good news.

This is hard and requires rugged belief. Annie Dillard said that if we really believed the words we said in our worship, instead of coming to church in our Sunday best, we would put on pads and crash helmets. Life is hard, God is good, takes what some would call guts, others would call something else.

This ain't no place for the weary kind.

Ramblings...

The sun came out today just in time to see itself set. As I was driving over the 17th street bridge I could see a faint glimmer bouncing off the downtown buildings to my right. It disappeared over the horizon as quick as it came out from behind the clouds.

I thought about this city. There are pockets of life-giving activity all around, yet it is possible blend in and fade away. Untold numbers of people likely do just that. Some do it by choice, while others agonize at their loneliness. Caught in the crossfires between Baylor social status, class, and the ubiquitous religious conversations, this can be a lonely place.

I am often alone, yet rarely lonely. I am a skillful traveler of the road that journeys from introvert to extrovert. I function well in crowds, can charm he socks off of old ladies, and have become somewhat adept at the well timed witty remark among a table of friends. But I also love my alone time. I need it. I need to be able to look at the just arrived yet soon to vanish sun and to sit with the image for hours and try to figure out what it means.

I suppose it means this-- It reflects off of what it will. It gives us all the opportunity, if only for a brief moment, to see the angles, to imagine what it means for light to break through the darkness, to illuminate the faces of those who would be close to us. It also shows us the way home.

Birds and Rocks...

I logged many hours as a child at Lamplighter, the preschool that nurtured within me a love of people and an independent spirit. My parents both worked, so me and my sister were there from a very young age. I had the rare experience (these days, anyway) of being with friends from the time we were toddlers until the present. I suppose you could judge families for not having a parent stay home with the children, but as for me, I wouldn't have had it any other way.

I remember many things about Lamplighter. The tire fort, the old boat, and the sandbox. At an early age I remember helping the teachers paint ceramic zoo animals, that stayed on the front porch of that old building until just a few years ago. And then there were the field trips. The school owned a white van that it used to transport us to various places. The seats in the van folded down into a flat surface so more kids could fit in, without seat belts, of course. Like many things from my childhood, this would make adults recoil in horror today.

One place that old white van often took us was to the swimming pool at Sportsman's Paradise, a neighborhood on Lake Palestine whose name greatly exaggerates the reality on the ground. On one such trip to this pool, I had an experience that would shape how I viewed God for years to come. I was around four or five.

A friend of mine told everyone that he saw someone give someone else the finger. The children in the van, apparently experts at this type of behavior, responded "NO WAY!" I, on the other hand, had no clue what this meant. So I asked him what "giving someone the finger" meant, and he told me. It is where you point up with your middle finger while all your other fingers stay down in a fist. "Oh, yeah, I knew that."

But I didn't. And I was curious. So I did it. Silently, to myself, I held my hand close to my chest and "shot the bird." I thought I was being inconspicuous until I heard the girl sitting next to me gasp in terror. "Ahhhhmmmm, that's bad!!!" I told her it wasn't bad, it was just holding up a finger. At that moment a small rock flew into the open window and struck me just below my eye. As I grabbed my face in pain the girl leaned in and whispered in my ear, "I guess that is God punishing you."

And that is how I came to live much of my life in fear of a vengeful God waiting around the corner for me to do something bad.

But the same preschool where this happened was the same place that drug us to all those Vacation Bible Schools throughout the summers. It was here that we learned to value Scripture. This made it possible that I would someday read the words from 1 John... "There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear."

I suppose as a minister, this is my job, to help people find this perfect love that drives out fear. If you get to know me, maybe you will see it. As your friend, I've also been known to raise a finger or two...

Musings on My Kind of Music...

In his 1998 autobiography simply titled Cash, The Man in Black makes a keen observation about the history of country music that is as true now as it was then. Unfortuanately, it will likely be true from here on out. He noted that there was a certain way of life that produced Country Music. Now, it is Country Music that produces a certain way of life.

The southern farmer, after hot days of back breaking work, would craft songs describing and lamenting experiences in the fields. The melodies, instrumentation, and tone were initially inherited from their Scotch-Irish forbears, but later mingled with the mournful sounds from black slaves (and later on urban blacks), and occasionally the dusty desperado music of the American west, to create a quintessential American art form.

Now there are hardly any southern famers, save those who work on large corporate farms. We listen to this music and try desperately to recreate the hardscrabble life from generations ago. When Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard sing the Townes Van Zandt classic Pancho and Lefty we no longer feel the immediacy and raw instinct that comes out of the line "He wore his gun outside his pants/ For all the honest world to feel." Instead we create a cult-like following around firearms and make up imaginary enemies out of people who supposedly want to take them away from us.

I think the reason many of us continue to listen to country music is because it provides us a window into when times were harder. It is escape music of a different kind. This says a lot about the value of all the things that make our lives easier, that we would want a form of music that harkens us back to a time when there would be much more dirt under our fingernails and a real reason to wear cowboy boots.