tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-84653687688097414892024-03-09T20:45:48.347-06:00Postcards From MercylandWritings by Phil Madeira, author of "God On The Rocks: Distilling Religion, Savoring Faith" and producer of the CD "Mercyland: Hymns For The Rest Of Us"Phil Madeirahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09541966641322415672noreply@blogger.comBlogger52125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8465368768809741489.post-69514653071020755992014-05-18T22:18:00.000-05:002014-05-18T22:19:42.599-05:00The Calling<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6-pcg2e2qRR2Z_6lUKNteCTc7pHtANUehauVFDb5gekA3E-_UaGfW-4Y7Z5RQ82Vmh02ReWSsz_lVmQklGveyhaYa1szoKO3qzDbQudp0orXBBDnGx3DJqFz9OMpvwPe-imyWwOSJo-c/s1600/66590_2398054688106_218876408_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6-pcg2e2qRR2Z_6lUKNteCTc7pHtANUehauVFDb5gekA3E-_UaGfW-4Y7Z5RQ82Vmh02ReWSsz_lVmQklGveyhaYa1szoKO3qzDbQudp0orXBBDnGx3DJqFz9OMpvwPe-imyWwOSJo-c/s1600/66590_2398054688106_218876408_n.jpg" height="265" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="text-align: left;">A bit of unabashed promotion for my newest project. If you are familiar with my <b>Mercyland: Hymns For The Rest Of Us</b> CD, you will be pleased to know that I am starting a sequel to it. The photo gives a hint as to what to expect from both CDs.</span><br />
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I have a strange calling of sorts. When I was involved in the Christian Music scene, I never really fit. I even had a record company guy tell me, "Bro, you really don't belong here. You belong in the real world", but I wasn't about to leave a party I wasn't wanted at. </div>
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If you read the blog preceding this one, you know that I was smiled upon and brought into the Americana fold, before it really had that name, by Buddy and Julie Miller. Buddy actually appears on the first Mercyland project. </div>
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But as far as I wanted to get away from religious music, I couldn't shake the idea of that old children's song "Jesus Loves Me", and that remains at the core of what I believe. That's the idea behind Mercyland: Hymns For The Rest Of Us. This is my calling. If that appeals to you in the least, I unabashedly confess that I need your help in making this record happen. Your support on Kickstarter will make this happen.</div>
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Thanks for reading, and thanks for going to this link: <a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1553710051/mercyland-hymns-for-the-rest-of-us-chapter-two" target="_blank">Mercyland: Chapter Two</a></div>
<br />Phil Madeirahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09541966641322415672noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8465368768809741489.post-21540841992569847362014-04-08T01:11:00.000-05:002014-04-08T01:11:30.264-05:00MILLER TIME<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXziQ7oIcq4yqEpXdktFjiIS2NPvJyqJX0vgxZ2R4BqqoFD92bXwaTgq3MgUbLR78Q_bhu88LSXqOpYSRiM6SWLj-YiNZ5mhZRomIA5xvK5_pclXabUryEmFRFc0C7eatv852EeaiXrXE/s1600/0217301413b10c963078a0638a0a48e8.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXziQ7oIcq4yqEpXdktFjiIS2NPvJyqJX0vgxZ2R4BqqoFD92bXwaTgq3MgUbLR78Q_bhu88LSXqOpYSRiM6SWLj-YiNZ5mhZRomIA5xvK5_pclXabUryEmFRFc0C7eatv852EeaiXrXE/s1600/0217301413b10c963078a0638a0a48e8.JPG" height="320" width="240" /></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When Mark Heard passed away, it wasn’t really a surprise; it was just a bummer. He had been recovering from a heart attack, and as I’ve heard it said, someone told him a joke so funny that he laughed himself out of this world and into the next. Laughing your way out of this world full of tears doesn’t seem to be a bad way to go.</span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-2e1db8b4-3ffb-8c5a-11bc-46c5800b4734" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Mark was a great songwriter and artist who had recorded quite a few records during the 70s and 80s. Toward the end of his career, he released two records which were artistic apexes. He was only getting better. He left this world before achieving any household word name status, but among songwriters and musicians, he remains greatly admired.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The week of Mark’s passing, I was playing a gig in LA and managed to get to his memorial service. Most of the folks in attendance were fellow musicians, and quite a few of them performed. Some of these folks eventually would migrate to Nashville. Two of those would-be emigrants were Buddy and Julie Miller. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The next day, the Millers were performing at the same venue that I was playing at, and we ended up in the green room together. I was knocked out by their music, by Julie’s heart on her sleeve lyrics, and by both of their world weary vocals. Julie was one of very few Christian artists whose music fully engaged me. I was drawn to the wounded, broken lyrics and the sparse instrumentation. Little did I how this initial meeting would alter and enrich the course of my life.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When the Millers moved to Nashville, we struck up a friendship and a work relationship. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Meanwhile, Emmylou Harris recorded, “All My Tears”, written by Julie in the wake of Mark’s passing, and years later, when I was in her band, we occasionally performed it. It was also a staple of Buddy’s setlist, performed nearly every time I played in his band, a none-too-fond farewell to a world that wounds its inhabitants.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For many years, whether it was a Julie record or a Buddy record, or someone else Buddy was working with, I would be called into Buddy’s studio to play accordion, Hammond organ, and occasionally other instruments like lap steel or pump organ. This was a joyous season in a career which has given me much joy. Julie has no rivals when it comes to writing lyrics which lay the heart bare, expose the brokenness which is common to all of us, and perhaps turn the listener’s heart into a fertile ground for redemption.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Eventually, the many recording sessions turned into concert opportunities with Buddy, and I traveled the world as a member of his band, perhaps the greatest live music experience of my life. A reviewer once said that Buddy’s voice sounded like the ghosts of Howlin’ Wolf and Hank Williams were battling for control of it. I can’t even begin to draw comparisons to Buddy’s guitar work, so distinct it is. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Every time Buddy invited me to play on a record or perform somewhere, my resume would gather a few more great names. I would find myself on stages with the likes of Elvis Costello, Emmylou Harris, Patty Griffin, Allen Toussaint, Judy Collins, and many others. These were golden days, heady and mind-blowing, days which I recall with a smile, and with gratitude. If I had to single out one person who has blessed me in the music business (and there have been many), it would be Buddy Miller. Buddy gave me opportunity after opportunity in the Americana Music scene. It was because of those years of being a journeyman musician in his band and on his recordings that I became a member of Emmylou Harris’ band, which of course brought many opportunities as well.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">While Buddy’s right up there with John Scofield and Clarence White in my Pantheon of guitar gods, it was his character and kindness which most impressed me. Gracious to nearly everyone, from his audience to the waitress serving us breakfast in a New Jersey diner, Buddy was a polite and decent guy to be around, never thinking his talent should set him apart from anyone else.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Yet, he was set apart. Beautiful opportunities to play and produce music came Buddy’s way, thus my way and anyone else who was in his band at the time. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My most memorable of these many events was when Buddy assembled a rhythm section to back the legendary Al Green for a live network television event with the Nashville Symphony. The assistant conductor had the task of bringing our little rock’n’soul combo together with the symphony. Being primarily self-trained, the idea of being in a setting with legitimate symphonic masters was intimidating to me, but I was up for the challenge, and excited to play “Take Me To The River” and “Love And Happiness” with Al Green.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We were in the center of the crescent shaped assembly of musicians, and I was literally eye to eye with the young conductor, a Korean man whose English wasn’t very good. (Although it was much better than my Korean.)</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A few minutes into “Take Me To The River”, Al took a left turn and omitted the second bridge. Having played in clubs for years, the rhythm section followed him without issue. The symphony players, being in Nashville and perhaps used to pop music, seemed to roll with the punches as well. But the conductor was confused; he was the only one left on the page.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I was standing closer to him than anyone else on the bandstand. I realized he was hollering at me, but the music was so loud I couldn’t understand him. “What?”, I yelled back. Finally, I realised he was panicking, yelling “Where AH we?!”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If the chasm between myself and proper musicians was ever evident, it was in this moment. It didn’t occur to me that I was addressing The Maestro. I hollered, “Sixteen bars, man!” as if he were a fellow bluesman. My message was merely to state, “Play for sixteen more bars, and end it”, but the conductor thought I was saying that we were on Bar Sixteen of the musical score, which would be near the top of the song.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“What?!”, he cried, incredulously.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Sixteen bars, man!”, thinking, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">come on, dude, surely you know how to do this</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Again, the terror stricken man yelled, “What?!”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">At this point, eight bars must have surely past, and I yelled, “Just end it, man!” which the conductor indeed understood, his train not wrecking, but coming into the station unscathed.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That night, I got home and watched the tape of our performance on A&E network, and found that the performance actually sounded fine. I could even see the conductor and I communicating, but the panic that we felt in that moment didn’t show. We looked like we were having a calm conversation while performing before millions. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“How’s the family?”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Let’s get a drink when we’re done here.”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The moment of panic looked nothing like it felt.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">From that day forward on the road with Buddy, whenever there was a question about what direction our vehicle was heading in, someone would inevitably cry out, “Where AH we?”, knowing full well we’d get to wherever it was were going. Laughter doesn’t hurt when you feel lost.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Sometimes all a moment gives us is a question, “Where am I?”, signaling distress and disorientation. We know where we are going, but there doesn’t seem to be a way from Point A to Point B. Sometimes, all one can do is say “yes” to the faint image of a beckoning hand in the shadows. It has almost been a way of life for me, traveling down a bending road, with just enough information to get me to Point B, and then wait. Life is full of so many transitions that recalibrations are necessary.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It isn’t lost on me that the song we nearly wrecked was “Take Me To The River”, which contains a beautifully disoriented lyric, vacillating between pleading to a lost lover, and praying to God for wholeness and spiritual baptism. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Maybe Reverend Al was singing about everyone’s journey, bearing loss and losing bearings along the way, longing for the waters of redemption in a world that mars and breaks us. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If we’re lucky, like Mark Heard, we get to laugh on our way out. </span></div>
<br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span>Phil Madeirahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09541966641322415672noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8465368768809741489.post-75988893290159470022014-03-28T17:46:00.000-05:002014-04-07T18:19:04.678-05:00Methuselah Goes To The Movies<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0b53lYFanDbUXaiOlFt_WYkrqAunI3t_U2KIAOaC1v2T21BtFzeVSdauZyo7j_vjH9UcnoecoNefmfsQobovhn4_vfVqYei3MDAgbXDFIW9kMObpkB8jGvVVA2ZRes4YZ4ujMj1-GPOE/s1600/methuselah.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0b53lYFanDbUXaiOlFt_WYkrqAunI3t_U2KIAOaC1v2T21BtFzeVSdauZyo7j_vjH9UcnoecoNefmfsQobovhn4_vfVqYei3MDAgbXDFIW9kMObpkB8jGvVVA2ZRes4YZ4ujMj1-GPOE/s1600/methuselah.jpg" height="108" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In one week, I received two invitations to attend screenings of new movies, both with biblical themes. I had to miss the first of the films, but was available on the evening of the second film’s screening.</span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-c1643ae6-0acb-a43b-b4dd-a5c82c661d49" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My Southern Born Woman agreed to go with me to watch a film called “Noah”, figuring it would be fun, knowing the theater served beer, and with the knowledge that if film were really bad, at least we’d be in cahoots in our criticism of it. Sometimes it’s fun to be quietly catty with the one you love.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The cast of “Noah” was somewhat promising, if not odd: Russell Crowe as Noah, Jennifer Connelly as Mrs Noah, and Anthony Hopkins as Methuselah. Given how old Noah is said to have been, I think Anthony Hopkins might have been better cast in the title role, although ever since he played Hannibal Lechter, it’s hard for me to see him without wondering who he’ll take a bite out of.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The lights came down, and the theater hushed. I’ve never seen Hollywood move so quickly to make a story “Hollywood”. Within 5 minutes of the movie’s start, they had angels turning into odd, animated stone creatures with low voices; creatures who would eventually help Noah wage war against his foes, apparently the descendants of Cain. We knew right away that someone with a fantastic imagination had gotten a hold of the story. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The acting, to be fair, was great; all top-notch players, not a bad apple in the bunch. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Russell Crowe’s Noah had a very hip wardrobe, starting with skinny jeans and a parka type coat that I’d like to see Columbia Sportswear issue someday: The Noah Parka, waterproof and stylish- I can see it now.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He also goes through three very distinct haircuts, starting with an unkempt hippy, longhair theme, moving to a buzz cut, and finally to what looks like a razor cut / nee shag. I’ll have to ask my barber friend / guitarist Steve Mason for the details, but leave it to Hollywood to give us several versions of Noah to get into- Noah Mach I, Noah Mach 2, and Noah Mach 3, at your Christian hairdresser now.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My very biblically minded mother might have enjoyed one element of the adaptation. Being of Swedish descent, I think she would have found some pride in seeing what appeared to be Vikings in all the battle scenes, although she would have been disappointed that they were on the wrong side of right, and destined for drowning. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What I truly enjoyed was how all the animals were called by Creation to fill up the ark. Each grouping of life forms finds themselves wildly yet methodically called to fill the ark. I used to think that Noah spent about 100 years gathering them, but the film’s version felt like something C.S. Lewis would have come up with, and thus probably acceptable by Christians everywhere. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In this narrative, Jennifer Connelly burns a combination of herbs to put all the creatures to sleep. I've always thought of the ark as noisy and chaotic, but the sleeping herb notion gave weight to the idea of Mrs Noah being in touch with creation. In fact, a viable theme of the film is that what sets Noah apart from the sinful world that drowns away is an aversion to violence against creation, something we could use a dose of all these years after the Deluge.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The family conflict runs deep, and every story needs dysfunction. We've got high drama between Noah and his son Ham. No surprise there. Knowing how certain theologies have used the Ham narrative, I was thankful that Ham was played by an average looking white kid from suburbia. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Noah winds up as a lunatic, trying to kill his grandchildren, and generally upsetting everyone on the ark and in the theater. To be sure, I can see a little cabin fever wafting about the ark, but I need to remind the screenwriters that it was Abraham who tried to kill his progeny, not Noah.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The special effects are dazzling, of course, and I suppose a theological explanation of the fantastic abilities of the effects team is that before the flood, everything was better. People lived longer, and the movies were much longer. Or so this one seemed. All ends well, and the last Viking is vanquished, as the boat lands in what seems to be Ireland, verdant and as Celtic in appearance as most of the actors in the film.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s always kind of funny to me when a simple narrative gets turned on its head to make it more interesting or controversial. I call that kind of writing “fiction”, and have found that most fiction is a true story bent into a more interesting form.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When screenwriters get into the Bible it never ceases to amaze me how they’ll interfere with the narrative. Reflecting on all the biblical epics Hollywood has churned out, it gets a little predictable, doesn’t it? </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Some version of Charlton Heston will always show up playing the hero, as if he’d just come from the set of a Western, and between soundstage walls, got rid of the gun, the hat, the spurs, pants, vest, etc, and grabbed a bathrobe for his biblical scene. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I have to admit liking Ben Hur, but I never read the book. Ben Hur was one of the first movies I ever saw. My parents were godly people who weren’t sure how they felt about going to see movies. Like every other evangelically raised person my age, Ben Hur was my gateway drug of movies. From “Ben Hur”, I went to “Old Yeller”, and from “Old Yeller”, I went to “Mary Poppins”, and eventually wound up in a theater watching “Silence Of The Lambs” with Methuselah / Anthony Hopkins starring as a cannibal.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Don’t even get me started on “Christian” movies, because I have too many friends involved in making them, just like “Christian” music, and I don’t know anyone in either of those worlds that is trying to produce crap. It’s just that there’s a certain audience that needs to be pampered and pandered to, hence feeding them vanilla ice cream and wonder bread.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Speaking of white, Jesus is always an unbelievably handsome Aryan guy, with the most piercing blue eyes anyone’s ever fallen for. He’s also usually quite sedated, even when he’s calmly beating the tar out of the moneychangers in the temple. He calmly gets the nails pounded into his hands and feet, groaning ever so slightly. I will interject here that Mel Gibson tried to get it right with the torture of Christ, and then took it overboard. But his Jesus was still a stud, what can you say? You can’t have Danny DeVito playing our Lord and Savior.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">All this just goes to show you that when you open up the Bible, you’ll read it a bit differently than your neighbor. I know no other book which has so much valuable information for the redemption of humanity, and yet that information can be twisted into the basis for many people’s abhorrent behavior. Imagination must be balanced with reverence when it comes to reading or even re-writing our holy texts.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My Southern Born Woman’s take on the Old Testament, as Christians call it, is intriguing and creative, and worth consideration. It’s called <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Jezebels-Blues-Other-Works-Imagination/dp/0615653502/ref=sr_1_fkmr2_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1396044995&sr=8-1-fkmr2&keywords=Jezebel%27s+got+the+blues" target="_blank">“Jezebel’s Got The Blues and Other Works of Imagination”</a>. Her version of Noah is succinct and funny, narrated by a rat, perhaps the lowest mammal form on the ark. I don’t mind selling that book here, because it’s a lot closer to the mark than Hollywood. It’s got more in common with Broadway; no special effects, and no beautiful stars, but funny as Hell.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What to do with these holy stories? Scripture gives us glimpses of human beings who connect with God in unlikely ways. I suppose just connecting with God is unlikely, when you think about it, but the models in scripture give me hope that God is trying to connect with us, whether we are screenwriters, boatbuilders, authors, warriors, midwives or even precocious children, God is always whispering to us, calling us to Mercyland.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span>Phil Madeirahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09541966641322415672noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8465368768809741489.post-40483800993050713542014-03-27T01:19:00.001-05:002014-03-29T12:02:32.916-05:00Redemption<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEid1AcwkikIrLOCoVa88GX2cza5naBZekHKYRGRWXV8Ooxqrdf40HUZFWvX1hw-hYpZZk5rR5R606Nzeb-HVI4gPfC4Cc5rjEghC8I7STGyDE44uvqbDuVcUWToDFzXIFg14NsOVxesHeA/s1600/fred-phelps.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEid1AcwkikIrLOCoVa88GX2cza5naBZekHKYRGRWXV8Ooxqrdf40HUZFWvX1hw-hYpZZk5rR5R606Nzeb-HVI4gPfC4Cc5rjEghC8I7STGyDE44uvqbDuVcUWToDFzXIFg14NsOVxesHeA/s1600/fred-phelps.jpg" height="180" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When the infamous, sinister minister Fred Phelps of Westboro, Kansas died, I can’t say I mourned his passing any more than I celebrated his existence. The abusive Bible thumper was of the ilk that used obscure scriptures to preach a message of pure hate; hate for gays in particular, but hate for anyone who was one degree out of line with his preaching.</span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-7381de39-021f-95bd-aaa5-39b7c6514a1b" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">His followers were mostly family members, and if the sins of the father were ever visited upon the children, the Phelps family lived out that prophesy in spades. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A few years ago, my Southern Born Woman got a message from Christ Church Cathedral that Fred’s people would be picketing our church, which, like most Episcopal churches, is gay friendly. We don’t attend very often but we took the message to heart, and thought we’d stand in solidarity with our gay brethren that Sunday. The message from the Dean of the Cathedral reminded us to avoid engaging in any hostile debate, rather to invite the Westboro folks to attend our service.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We headed downtown to the cathedral, keeping our eyes open for some sign of the usual “God hates fags” and “God hates you” signs that the Phelps group is famous for, but Broadway seemed just as quiet as it always is on Sunday mornings. The group was nowhere to be seen. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Later on, we heard that the group had mistakenly gone to another church in Nashville that goes by the name “Christ Church”, a Pentecostal church which, to my knowledge, isn’t LGBT affirming. I’m sure the folks at Christ Church felt like they must be doing something right with all that protestation. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’ve never been able to wrap my mind around hate mongers, no matter what the stripe, but when hatred is done in the name of Jesus, I take it personally. There are many people who like to use the Bible as their ultimate argument for any number of things, some of them being worthy ideals; pacifism, charity, and personal sacrifice are just a few ideals that are easily backed up by the Bible. An illogical read of Scripture can be the basis for many crimes of hate, but I fervently believe that a person like Fred Phelps would have to talk himself into the crazy rational that connects hatred and Jesus. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It just doesn’t add up. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">On the other hand, the story of Redemption is in the air, singing through the trees, whispering through nature, and daring us to believe that we are loved. Why redemption’s song, that perfect love song, wasn’t on Fred Phelps’ lips is a sad question, but probably answerable in the pathology of his history, found on the fingerprints of whatever insane person raised or abused him. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But I owe Fred one, I must admit. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When I decided to make a record called <a href="http://philmadeira.net/shop/mercyland-hymns-for-the-rest-of-us-cd" target="_blank">“Mercyland: Hymns For The Rest Of Us”</a>, it was Phelps and his Westboro army that influenced me more than anything, in that "Mercyland" was a reaction to the Haters, and I don't know anyone who hates as much as Fred and Co, whose idea seems to be "God is hate", which I still can't find in my Bible.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When I invited the artists who wound up on Mercyland, I merely said that I wanted to do a record based on the idea “What if God is love?”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Emmylou Harris said “yes” before anyone else did, and once she was “in”, just about everyone I asked agreed to be on the project. I wasn’t looking for artists who identified with the Christian faith, and didn’t think of the project as a “Christian record”, but I did want to gather artists and songs to identify with the idea that humanity might have hope in Something greater than ourselves.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 17px; white-space: pre-wrap;">The idea resonated with the great artists who partook, and continues to resonate when the songs from Mercyland are performed. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 17px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 17px; white-space: pre-wrap;">I wish Fred Phelps could have heard the message of the music he unwittingly inspired, but perhaps he's listening now.</span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">While Mercyland wasn’t a gigantic seller, it did move people, and continues to do so. In 40 years of being a music maker, I identify Mercyland as being my most important work. In juxtaposition to the Westboro crowd, I like holding up my sign that says, “God loves you!”. It’s something I truly believe, no matter who a person is, and no matter what they’ve done.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Everyone’s mother has reminded them, “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything”, and I’ll take it a step further. The only word worth saying or hearing is “Redemption”.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I like to think that Fred knows that to be true now. May the Westboro army and the rest of us find it to be so.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span>Phil Madeirahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09541966641322415672noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8465368768809741489.post-16602242363532154042014-03-19T00:21:00.004-05:002014-03-19T00:21:26.334-05:00Lenten Verses<br />
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My Southern Born Woman has been distilling her Lenten meditations into a few simple sentences every day, and I have followed her lead on this. For more information about how she inspires writers (including me), visit <a href="http://www.writingcircle.org/">www.writingcircle.org</a>.<br />
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In the midst of 40 days without half and half in my coffee and no Havarti on my burger, I can't exactly say I'm suffering. Nonetheless, here is the fruit of the first few weeks of Lent 2014.<br />
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Lenten
sacrifice… trivial gesture, a spoonful of cream, voluntarily offered<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">How
little can I give thee, Lord Jesus?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Spirit,
enlarge my heart.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt;">Under
the ocean</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Waiting
the resurrection<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">A
pearl in a shell<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Pulling
the oars<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">My
back to my destination<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Waiting
for the skid of arrival<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">As
a swan glides overhead<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1e2326; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Helvetica Neue";"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1e2326; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Helvetica Neue";">The body is its own distraction. When the body is in pain, it's
trying to call us away from mindfulness and compassion.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #1e2326; font-size: 14pt;">The knot in a twisted back finally rubbed out, and Lo how
blessed a body is to be able to stand, sit, walk, run, turn, bend.</span><span style="color: #1e2326; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></div>
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<span style="color: #1e2326; font-size: 14pt;">Bless the unseen blessings.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #1e2326; font-size: 14pt;">There is only one word worth saying or hearing: Redemption.</span></div>
Phil Madeirahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09541966641322415672noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8465368768809741489.post-11642989257967475552014-03-03T17:47:00.000-06:002014-03-03T17:47:01.728-06:00Brain's PlaygroundNote to readers- This is a chapter from my upcoming book. I ended up reading it at Brian Harrison's memorial service a few weeks ago. Brian AKA "Brain" was somewhat of a Nashville legend in the studio, having worked with many of us here, as well as Shelby Lynne and others.<br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Brain's Playground</span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-1b837e73-8a50-bb92-d9b8-cae137afe661" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I was sitting in my living room when I got a message from my friend Jim. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Are you around?”, he asked.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Yeah, are you okay?”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Well, my friend Rick told me his friend Brian had passed away today, and I thought it might be your friend with the same name.”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Lemme get back to you”, I said, dialing Bryan Owings, my friend of many years and miles.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The relief of hearing Bryan’s voice was dampened with news that we’d lost a good friend, another Brian. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So as not to confuse Bryan Owings and Brian Harrison, friends shuffled a few letters in Mr Harrison’s name and dubbed him “Brain”. The nickname stuck.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Brain was beloved in the music scene in Nashville, being a stellar bassist and guitarist, and a great recording engineer and producer. Brain’s entire house was a recording studio, complete with a 24 track tape machine in his bedroom, guitar amps in his kitchen, a recording console in his living room, keyboards in his dining room, and drums in his garage. A wry Mississippian with a dark sense of humor, he named his studio “The Rendering Plant”. I had recorded there quite a bit and loved working in what felt like Brain’s playground, surrounded by paintings of Muddy Waters and Son House, guitars, and vintage microphones.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Brain was likeable, irreverent, and witty; he possessed a slashing sense of humor and a most gracious gift of hospitality. He had a particular lack of affection for former Vice President Dick Cheney, whom he believed (with many others) to be a war criminal. It was as if every reason for despair was embodied in the person of Dick Cheney.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“On the day Dick Cheney dies, don’t call me, just show up. I’ll be throwing the greatest bash Nashville’s ever seen.” </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Now Brain was gone.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Bryan told me that Brain’s computer had been open to a Google search for the phrase “tingling arms”. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I could hear the aching in his trembling voice. He choked up. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Philly, will you say a prayer?”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Right now?”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Yeah, right now.”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In my short prayer, I said that I was sure Brain was in Heaven at that moment complaining that Dick Cheney had outlasted him. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A discussion ensued about Brain, the nicest guy you’d ever want to meet, unless you were Dick Cheney. Brain’s great capacity for congeniality and generosity offset his often caustic sense of humor. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I listened as Bryan talked about what a great person Brain was, and how he just wanted to know that Brain was alright in death. Those of us who believe in Jesus and an afterlife probably understand this uncertainty when someone who doesn’t care about God passes on. After all, Brain had little use for religion, while he was respectful of his friends who were trying to connect with God.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I believe faith matters in this life. I am glad I believe in Jesus, glad to have a sense of the Spirit’s presence in my life. Of course, that Presence often makes Itself known via good people that cross my path, Bryan Owings, for one. Brain, for another. It would be ironic that an Atheist can exhibit behavior that reminds me of God’s goodness, except I believe the Creator’s DNA is running through the heart and soul of every creature.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Story of Redemption is strong medicine. Jesus died for all sinners, we’re told. We are also told that God is Love. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Some of us believe in an afterlife, while others are content that this is all you get.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Most of us probably don’t probably put much thought into these ideas. except when someone we love dies.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Some believe that the behavior of a saint lands you in Heaven, while anything less keeps you out. I don’t believe that.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I cling to the idea that God is just like any good mother or father calling to beloved children “Come home”. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My faith causes me to believe that Brain is in God’s presence because God is good. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I cling to this kind of mercy, the all-loving kind- the kind I need to display more of, and the kind I see repeated in the Story of Redemption. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The mercy I cling to does not co-exist with judgment; it is illogical, and possibly maddeningly unfair. To wit, I believe this: I believe the day is going to come when all of Brain’s friends are going to show up at his old house and party in style, meaning a certain former Vice President will have passed away. By the time that day comes, Brain will have been so steeped in the love and mercy of Jesus that he’ll probably be the first to welcome an undeserving Dick Cheney through Heaven’s Pearly Gates.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I can use that kind of news.</span></div>
<br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Phil Madeira</span></div>
Phil Madeirahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09541966641322415672noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8465368768809741489.post-49366849203731112192013-10-16T12:31:00.000-05:002013-11-12T16:28:30.167-06:00The Runt<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"><b>Hey, friends. I'm trying something a little different here... short stories. I'd love reader feedback (as always!), but specifically-</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"><b><br /></b></span>
<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"><b>1- What emotions did the story make you feel?</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"><b><br /></b></span>
<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"><b>2- Shall I keep going? Of course, I'm continuing to write spiritual memoirs, but something about "true fiction" gives me the freedom to delve into emotional territory that memoir writing must sometimes skirt.</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"><b><br /></b></span>
<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"><b>3- Thanks always for reading! pax, pm</b></span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjh3b4eVmqU62aLBWUrlVIK5JWn7CbRtxnQzwScBfsoPQK3KuQlmap1Ajm3osgKMQFNNaMTeBWNXaOpt_rgS81o_S3TiTtKPewRqKfLICSEDevNFk0ZNIGuB7Jnsa1JlqyQnZZzhR9j3-I/s1600/photo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjh3b4eVmqU62aLBWUrlVIK5JWn7CbRtxnQzwScBfsoPQK3KuQlmap1Ajm3osgKMQFNNaMTeBWNXaOpt_rgS81o_S3TiTtKPewRqKfLICSEDevNFk0ZNIGuB7Jnsa1JlqyQnZZzhR9j3-I/s320/photo.jpg" width="236" /></a><br />
When it’s said of anyone, “they’re closer than brothers”, I
tune out. For one thing, I don’t
know too many brothers that are all that close, and for another, I don’t
approve of brotherly love.</div>
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When Gideon toppled out of my womb, it was with little
effort on my part.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The way had
been made three years earlier by his older brother Amos, who time would prove
to be bigger, stronger, and smarter.</div>
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The pattern of Amos making the way clear for Gideon was one that
my sons never grew out of.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When
the runt needed the elder’s muscle in the playground, all he needed to do was
whistle.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Gideon took great joy in
prodding older or bigger boys into fights, and then ducking out as Amos dove in
head first, fists flailing and curses spewing from his mouth.</div>
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The burden of being responsible for someone of no social
intelligence is hard to shoulder, especially when the bond is blood.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Somehow, that responsibility left my
hands and fell to Amos’ on the day that Gideon came complaining headfirst into
the world.</div>
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Amos could sing beautifully from the time he started
walking.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He paraded around the
house, strumming my father’s old Gibson mandolin until the day that he hit on
something like a chord.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>From that
day forward, Amos knew what he was supposed to do with his life.</div>
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Tiny Gideon, that simple boy, wasn’t cut out of the same
cloth as Amos.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If Amos sounded
like the child of Hank Williams, and I’ll take the credit on that, Gideon
sounded like the love child of Phyllis Diller and Buddy Hackett- there was
nothing glimmering in his voice, and nothing dirty or rusty.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His vocal chords held nothing of the
poetry of music, only the notes.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Finding that his brother could squawk out a note, Amos
taught him to play guitar, and taught him the harmonies that would befit his
hollow sound.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Amos shouldered the
burden of having an ordinary brother by helping him to appear talented.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As it happened, it only made Amos shine
brighter.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Blessed be the ties
that bind</i>, says an old hymn.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But I say it’s a curse to be related to an idiot.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Don’t chide me for my lack of maternal
niceties; I am too old to be less than honest.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Death is coming for me like a wise old hound dog, and I’ll
be damned if I’m going to walk through the Pearly Gates with a lie tucked
behind my lip like some old chaw.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I’m done saying that my boys were good.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They were both no good, and I may have delivered them into
this world, but they delivered each other into the evil that has made them
bright stars.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some people make a
deal with the Devil, but my sons, and I can hardly bear to call them mine, had
each other to make a bargain with.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Amos I have loved, and Gideon I have hated, but Amos made it
easier by being the nice son, the diplomat, and the hand shaker.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Gideon was fly in the ointment, a
trouble maker, ne’er do well, kicking at the hornet’s nest until it would
nearly explode, leaving Amos to pick it up and hurl it into oblivion before
anyone else got hurt.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When they visited me in this lime lit room, I couldn’t wait
for them to leave.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Neither of them
meant anything nice, it occurs to me, but Amos would offer a few polite
remarks, counter to Gideon’s badgering.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Gideon would repeat my every word in a mocking fashion, dumbly finding
great humor in the remarks I made.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I talked of my pain, and it would bring Gideon great reason to laugh.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Before leaving, they would go to the waiting room and sing
to enthused old timers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I don’t care if I hear a lick again.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
You ask where their father is, and I’ll tell you he’s dead,
too, but not before filling their heads with dreams of floodlights and adoring
fans.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Fans that old rascal
couldn’t begin to count.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Fans he
couldn’t even dream about.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His
card tricks and hatful of rabbits intrigued them when they were little, and the
sexy tramp getting sawn asunder widened their eyes when they were coming of
age, but an old magician with stale jokes and writing tear stained postcards
from BFE couldn’t hold a candle to boys who could really sing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One August night, he made the mistake of unleashing them at ages
9 and 12 on an audience in Bartlesville, and those 13 people wouldn’t let the
boys off stage.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Worse, the lit up
Okies wouldn’t let <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">him</i> back on.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No trick in the book could undo the
thing that he set into motion, and no soothing spirit could lead him to forgive
himself for the pride that cometh before a fall.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The boys were hooked on performing from that moment on.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
No longer did they fight me when I dragged them to the
Pentecostal Church on Sundays.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
holy rollers thought it was the Spirit that prodded my boys to spontaneously
start singing in the middle of the service, but I knew what was going on; I
knew they had to be seen and heard, just like an addict needs to stick a needle
in her vein.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The boys would start singing, and the congregation would
urge them on into glory.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Yes,
Lord”, women swooned.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Hal Lay Lou
Ya!” men shouted, and I’ll admit I basked in the glow of my stars.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“They’re touched from above,
anointed!”, cried Brother Clay, tears in his eyes, pride shining from his
face.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>God was going to send my
boys out into the world from Brother Clay’s tiny mason block tabernacle to be
warriors for Christianity.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Marching as to war, they went. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When they were old enough to drive, they quit school, and
took my Buick 6 on the road, playing in every Pentecostal Church in
Missouri.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They would play for a
“Love Offering”, at which time they would announce, “The Lord just told me someone
is going to give us one hundred dollars tonight, Praise God!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now, who is feeling that call this
evening?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Who has had it laid on
his or her heart?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Glory to
God!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Let’s give a hand to this
sweet sister over here!”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Down the highways and up the byways they traveled, sometimes
singing their songs in joyous appreciation of each other, and sometimes beating
the living shit out of each other.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Despite all that made up harmonizing, those two hated each
other like any right minded Siamese Twin hates the other, one being the host,
the other being the parasite.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Yet, when push came to shove, loyalty sprang up like a weed
and those two stuck together like glue.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>They were closer to each other than they were to the women they
married.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They were a team, albeit
ill-fated, and they stuck together like glue. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One would never hear of any criticism of the other, no
matter how constructive or innocent or even wise.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There was no talking to them.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I must have been alone in knowing that they hated each
other.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I saw it from the time Gideon
was crawling.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I saw it as he
dutifully obeyed his brother, and screeched out the broken notes that would
eventually be taken as charming and folksy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I used to beg Amos to let Gideon to find something to do
that was of his own invention, but Gideon was so pitifully stupid that I
finally accepted that the Good Lord had blessed him with a watchdog and
shepherd all in the person of his older brother.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
After 13 years of being Gospel stars in tents all over the
South, Amos pulled their station wagon to the side of the road one night, got
out, said “Try life without me” to Gideon, and stepped into the path of an
oncoming Greyhound.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
With Amos gone, Gideon needed to find a new place for his
shadow.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He moved into my house,
lived on my social security, and expected me to pick up where I’d left off all
those years ago.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Nobody wants to hear a broken harmony part without the
melody shoring it up, but sing to me he does every afternoon, if you can call
it singing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“I come to the garden
alone” he pipes away, and that’s where I want to be- in a garden alone.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
As he leaves, a nurse smiles and tells me what a wonderful
boy I raised.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“He’s very
talented”, I say with a smile.</div>
Phil Madeirahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09541966641322415672noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8465368768809741489.post-75706912071264151722013-05-22T12:13:00.002-05:002013-05-24T18:30:11.209-05:00GYPSY PRAYERS<style>
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<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmufa9tMLxThEazc78pzbKYVYz_OREcEN48N2E89zm5t6Z0sSlKD6XiSvO9Tkm8WzKN4vKLrwqYvf5DphuWZFcyq5pLt1_pisBpiyGF8yalrnZAIMe6ruJOBuLVZqaQLWoV1DNlZA5iJ8/s1600/IMG_0234.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="211" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmufa9tMLxThEazc78pzbKYVYz_OREcEN48N2E89zm5t6Z0sSlKD6XiSvO9Tkm8WzKN4vKLrwqYvf5DphuWZFcyq5pLt1_pisBpiyGF8yalrnZAIMe6ruJOBuLVZqaQLWoV1DNlZA5iJ8/s320/IMG_0234.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">From about the time she turned 40, my
mother has been scouring the obituaries. It used to amuse me; her first
glimpse of the day's news being the Bad News. She breathes in as she
announces the name of the departed. She breathes out a heavy sigh. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">The subtle wind she stirs is, in my mind,
a prayer.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Now that I'm older than she was then, I
get it, which is not to say that I scour the obits, but just to say that as
time goes on, the likelihood of recognizing someone in the column increases.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Death can hit us in many ways, but
nothing is so shattering as witnessing someone who has lost their child.
It seems so unfair when young life is cut short, and parents left
grieving.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">One week in Nashville, good friends lost
their son Chris to cancer. He was 40- the same age as my mother when she
started paying attention to the obituaries. Two weeks before they lost
Chris, they lost their one remaining mother. It was a plumb hard season
for these two friends.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Up North, my friend John was asking friends to send their energy, prayers, and hopes out to his
twenty-something son who was struggling with cancer. John, a fellow
musician, texted me "Your prayers are helping!", which of course I
hoped was true. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">I prayed earnestly that
their son would be healed. If nothing else, I hoped John and his loved ones would
find mercy and peace in this worst of scenarios. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">At the same time, my buddy Dave, who had
been in remission from cancer for a few years, had given me notice that
"it" was back. He was in the inferno again, dreading the
treatment, wary of the difficult journey that lay before him. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">He spoke with a tone that was blunt and weary, and it made
me sad to think of my good pal suffering as he was. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">We finally managed to get some face time
together at Fido’s a local coffee joint in Nashville. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">As is our way, we got down to it pretty
quickly. I asked him about the process, and he detailed the next few
months of the ordeal he was about to enter. Tubes and stem cells and
ports, constant sterilization of this, that, and the other are evocative of a
world we can't control. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">He said that it would be several months
at best since we’d get the chance to visit; he was facing quarantine, and
surgery, and chemo. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">I wasn’t sure I could go through with all the
messing with my body, I told him, but who’s to say that a year of misery won’t
beget another quarter century of good living? Whatever one does in this situation requires extraordinary bravery.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">I recall my friend Tom, whose spirit suddenly left
his body in the snow on a hiking trail on a few years ago. A few weeks
before his departure, he had told someone he was ready to go, and I remember
thinking, “Who thinks this way at 60 years old?” I was 57, I think.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Well, now I’m 61. And I don’t look
forward to going forward into the Great Beyond any time soon, but neither do I want to live as long my mother has-
still ticking away at 92. Her one good eye is starting to fail and she’s
slowing down, but she talks about having another decade in her. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Dad was 84 when he checked out of this
world, but I think he was 70 when his mind checked out of his healthy body, and
I’d be a big, fat liar if I said that I don’t wonder about getting Alzheimer’s
like he did.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">I feel just fine, and if something is
really wrong with me, I don’t want to know just yet. And yes, if some
almighty boot descends from on high and snuffs my light out, I’m ready, I
guess, to reignite elsewhere, hopefully in the presence of Almighty Love.
I enjoy life as I know it, with all its difficulties and blessings. Perhaps the next life will be even more exciting, but it's hard to imagine Paradise being interesting when all the drama will be back here on Planet Earth.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">All of the fighters I’ve mentioned above
have taken drastic steps to keep their feet planted on this earth, and I can’t
blame them. There are babies to behold, songs to unfold, hands to hold,
and anniversaries to go gold. I didn’t mean to rhyme, by the way, but
there you go. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Once, I was producing a rock’n’roller
named James Clay. He was an amazing singer, and probably still is,
although I’ve completely lost track of him. He came, as many great
singers do, from a Pentecostal background. He knew how to hoop and holler
and tongue-talk, and he could sing like Mahalia Jackson and Bono all wrapped up
into one longhaired, redneck package. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">I liked James a lot, and we had a great
time working together, mining for the right stones on which to build his
musical house.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">One day I was looking at his lyrics and
there was a line that said if he didn’t audibly speak his prayers, God was
incapable of hearing them. I took issue with the idea, but he was
stalwart in his faith that that was how it was. With so many voiceless
people on our planet, I argued, that idea is plumb cruel... religious. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">I think we are built to pray, and that we
are created to commune with God to the point that our very breathing is
accomplishing good things beyond what we’re conscious of. We breathe in
God by taking in the oxygen God created.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">I go so far as to assume that our
humming, our smiling, our tears, and everything that</span> <span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">emanates from our
emotive beings is a prayer, even when we might be expressing an</span> <span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">excruciatingly
painful denial of God’s existence. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">We pray with our ears. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Every time I listen to my friend John’s
music, I remember to pray for his son, and for all those who love him.
And frankly, that is quite often, because I do love John’s music. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">We pray with our sorrows. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">I think often of Chris’ parents, and the
gaping hole in their hearts, and yet a hole so large means someone wonderful
occupied their lives, and there’s something indeed profound about that.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">We pray with our joys. My meeting
with Dave was littered with laughter, along with a tear or two, as we recalled
how the road of our music making has bonded us.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">We pray in our solitude. </span> </div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">I don't pray with the idea God will do
exactly as I've asked, but I do pray with the belief that God is capable of
intervening in this weathered old world of ours. I believe God Almighty
is more involved than empirical evidence suggests, but it doesn't make me feel
better when tragedy happens.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">So, I sing out a gypsy prayer. It
changes shape, traveling along the highway of God’s veins, wandering in hopes
of finding a good place to land. It might be literal babble from an
uninformed tongue, letting go and letting God. Or it might be a
succession of notes spit off my old Gibson guitar. Often my prayer is
silent but thoughtful; I’m thinking the words, but not saying them
audibly. Sometimes they are spoken as curtly and black and white as a
grocery list in hopes that God is my personal delivery man.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Today, my prayer is a litany of first
names, breathed in and breathed out. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Kyrie Eleison.</span></div>
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</span>Phil Madeirahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09541966641322415672noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8465368768809741489.post-5231601546825564502013-05-19T23:19:00.001-05:002013-05-24T13:42:54.524-05:00BRAND NEW<style>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdPmq9X3VWM4cXVIJKTsY7Hyhm_SpmWgkBlThQzcZhGFcMudqNEDbHqSdha6QNYfN5vtwL68R4KR7fLeZ_sln_mXR1ueA7vTrEYM6DOOKlVOMOcPtxQgKLYNEVhnMYG2mXwiMVNlqhSu0/s1600/photo-11.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdPmq9X3VWM4cXVIJKTsY7Hyhm_SpmWgkBlThQzcZhGFcMudqNEDbHqSdha6QNYfN5vtwL68R4KR7fLeZ_sln_mXR1ueA7vTrEYM6DOOKlVOMOcPtxQgKLYNEVhnMYG2mXwiMVNlqhSu0/s320/photo-11.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This weekend found me digging holes in my Southern Born
Woman’s backyard.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
She likes to garden, and has kept up with a small patch of
wonderland for quite some time now.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For
a while, she employed an Irishman with a green thumb (what else?) who would get down
and dirty, weeding and turning the ground over so that she could plant to her
heart’s content.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But Sean, as he was called, disappeared one season, never to
be heard from again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So, naturally, I volunteered.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All I asked for in exchange for my shovel
skills was a tomato pie.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She makes a
damn fine pie.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We got to our task in the late morning, dodging a few
threats of rain until our determination won out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Our break came in the form of a trip to the
Nashville Farmers Market where she picked out a few roses and some leafy things
the names of which I can’t remember.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>What I do know is whatever we planted was perennial.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If everything goes well, our work might pay
off for years, and make her backyard world more beautiful as time passes.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Back to her garden we went, digging holes and mixing plant
food until a late lunch gave us another break.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>We had made plans with our friends Don and Leslie and their brand new baby, who
(like the leafy things) has a name that’s momentarily lost on me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If I were a more careful self editor, I’d
come back later and deal with this bit of old agedness, alas, that’s not me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But that little boy has the most lovely
disposition, I must say.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And the bluest
eyes.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
New life is everywhere.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Today, our GPS barked out directions as we headed to another
couple’s home on the other side of Nashville.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Eddie and Corinna are expecting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Actually, their C-section is this Wednesday,
so the word “expecting” is slightly understated.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In what might be their last opportunity to entertain for the
next 13 years or so, Eddie and Corinna prepared a beautiful brunch for a few
friends.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I had never met any of the
other folks, but we all united under the same umbrella, waiting for a rain of
blessings into their home and life.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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Our visit culminated in the nursery, all pink and cheery,
with friendly owls on the walls and a mobile of butterflies hanging from the
ceiling.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In that small space we were
asked to speak or pray a blessing into their life in these short moments before
their new daughter is born.</div>
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<br /></div>
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The expectant mother said, “I hope this world is becoming a
better place; it is, isn’t it?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If
nothing else, I hope that Millie arrives and makes it better”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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Lovely.</div>
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<br /></div>
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New life is everywhere, even in a mother’s hope that our
crazy, insane world is improving.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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As she said, all this world really has is the hope of a new
life, a baby, for example.</div>
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<br /></div>
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No wonder there are those who speak of being “born
again”!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>New life, new chances, new
reasons to hope; this is the bounty a newborn often brings with it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We got back to my Southern Born Woman’s garden, and sipped
ice tea, surveying the handiwork of color splashing red, pink, orange in an
otherwise verdant jungle.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She pulled a
few springs of mint from a potted plant and put them in our tea.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I've been a parent for over two decades, but I still remember the days of expectancy, and the first seasons of a new baby. One can't forget their wide eyes, their innocent coos, their sheer optimism, and their belief that you, the dad or the mom, are going to give them the most beautiful life.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Well, children, we try. And we hope. And then we pass the torch to you. And the process repeats.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
New life is everywhere.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I sipped my tea. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I thought about the little blue eyed charmer we had
picnicked with yesterday, and the long expected child due this Wednesday, and
at this moment they’ve fulfilled Corinna’s wish~ they’ve already made the world a
better place.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
New life is everywhere. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Phil Madeirahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09541966641322415672noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8465368768809741489.post-82298681989450124142013-05-17T12:15:00.003-05:002013-05-17T12:15:23.971-05:00FLEXIBLE FLYER<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi52PKioYGcgeLLbzBmFDIxiW_uCSXynC4Bs36pq55PMoGFofh7Rs4zFRqemeJA82NzCDQYjbMvCtloz8LCNuGYxOjWuAPd_4kSRl6ue2yc1mzhDlwoUW4wDeXYb5b945SpztioECIVIBU/s1600/2013_ford_flex_wagon_limited_fq_oem_1_500.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi52PKioYGcgeLLbzBmFDIxiW_uCSXynC4Bs36pq55PMoGFofh7Rs4zFRqemeJA82NzCDQYjbMvCtloz8LCNuGYxOjWuAPd_4kSRl6ue2yc1mzhDlwoUW4wDeXYb5b945SpztioECIVIBU/s320/2013_ford_flex_wagon_limited_fq_oem_1_500.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
I have been sitting for the last 8 hours. I wish I could say that my posterior has been in a first class seat on its way to London. Or that it's been on the back of some sturdy palomino taking me on a leisurely ride in, I don't know, Zion National Park. Or that it's been seated altruistically across from people who could benefit from a visit from me- my mother, a stranger, a friend.<br />
<br />
But no, my bee hind has been planted in a hard chair in my home as I've stared at a screen (the one I'm staring at right now), Tweeting, Googling, and Facebooking. These terms are quite new, but frequently employed in this screen oriented age we live in.<br />
<br />
I forgot to mention "blogging", and that's obviously what I'm doing in this moment. I'm also watching the clock because I've got an appointment in 40 minutes. <br />
<br />
I've got a book coming out on June 11 called <u>God On The Rocks; Distilling Religion, Savoring Faith </u>from Jericho books, and a CD called "pm" coming out around the same time. And the only way you can market anything these days is to blog, tweet, and FB about it. <br />
<br />
But I've got something else up my sleeve. <br />
<br />
I want to get away from the screen, and connect with human beings in non-virtual places.<br />
<br />
I need a road trip.<br />
<br />
If I'm going to be seated, I'm thinking it needs to be in a car. If you've been reading my blog, you know I love old Fords, particularly Falcons, particularly Falcon station wagons, and even more particularly, Falcon Country Squire wagons- you know the car- it's got fake wood sides. <br />
<br />
I just gave my old Infiniti SUV to one of my daughters. And I'm driving a 2001 Lexus sedan. It's got a lot of pep, and I've even road tripped a bit with it. But the romance isn't there. The only Japanese car that contains any road romance to it is perhaps a Toyota FJ60, the cool mid '80s SUV. With lousy seats.<br />
<br />
And we can't have that, because I think this blog is about sitting.<br />
<br />
I'm not all that patriotic, but nothing really compares to American cars, at least if you're writing a story.<br />
<br />
So, this summer, after I get back from Norway (I know, I know... what a life), I want to hit every bookstore and listening room from Savannah to Boston, and I want to drive. I've got books and CDs to hawk, and I've also got to start another book. <br />
<br />
Why not write my next one on the road? Now that <u>God On The Rocks</u> is about to be in print, I need to follow it up with more stories about real life, and where better to find those stories than on the highways and byways. <br />
<br />
Are you with me? Anyone want a lift?<br />
<br />
I'm thinking of seeing the East Coast through the windshield of a Ford Flex. Seems like the closest thing I'm going to find to an old Falcon wagon, where all my early road trips started. Boxy and nostalgic looking without being really stupid looking like a PT Cruiser. Sounds good to me. As long as it's black.<br />
<br />
www.philmadeira.net<br />
<br />Phil Madeirahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09541966641322415672noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8465368768809741489.post-29032891599850298422013-01-03T15:29:00.001-06:002013-01-03T15:29:35.278-06:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJy8b5LuaiHO8k_KZKyBU-lxW6_8q_kYoRoFJfiGtjsOgbgaSvf1IfH81-wf8N_cuhVSe5xnVgeBWpMN6hQ82Bj0V-jBh1Zjb8Dbp1awjUv97gkm5jWIoOUWhJ4HOAs-Ga5M_AUFhyphenhyphenXVg/s1600/PM_Madeira_KS.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJy8b5LuaiHO8k_KZKyBU-lxW6_8q_kYoRoFJfiGtjsOgbgaSvf1IfH81-wf8N_cuhVSe5xnVgeBWpMN6hQ82Bj0V-jBh1Zjb8Dbp1awjUv97gkm5jWIoOUWhJ4HOAs-Ga5M_AUFhyphenhyphenXVg/s320/PM_Madeira_KS.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
Hey Folks!<br />
<br />
Happy New Year!<br />
<br />
I'm happy to tell you that I'm in full swing with my forthcoming book "God On The Rocks: Distilling Religion, Savoring Faith" and continuing to perform songs from Mercyland: Hymns For The Rest Of Us. Upcoming Nashville dates include February 6 and 7. More on that later. You can follow me at <a href="http://www.twitter.com/philmadeira" target="_blank">Twitter</a> and on <a href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/Phil-Madeira-Music-and-Writing/120285547987036" target="_blank">Facebook</a>.<br />
<br />
Big news- I am also working on a solo CD and I know many of you will want to be a part of the process. As always, thanks for your support!<br />
<br />
Please visit my <a href="http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1553710051/new-music-from-phil-madeira" target="_blank">Kickstarter</a> page and find out how you can be involved with my music.<br />
<br />
Thanks, and have a great year! <br />
<br />
Blog forthcoming! I promise.<br />
<br />
pmPhil Madeirahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09541966641322415672noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8465368768809741489.post-18934214380692722022012-10-10T00:47:00.001-05:002012-10-10T00:47:33.551-05:00Stitch in Time<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpEkarIKeDZkbocSIPbNHqloGYTV88K_946tJqvtDcIVtWEM7-t_oeQJsgJDsX-AsegoAqaGDK5qeXlgNHht-FuBbp0cpXS1aQAt_x1xbs7P6UkUMbIDKeL1pZMAzHpIHBlGDl6GGtC5U/s1600/photo-2.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="264" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpEkarIKeDZkbocSIPbNHqloGYTV88K_946tJqvtDcIVtWEM7-t_oeQJsgJDsX-AsegoAqaGDK5qeXlgNHht-FuBbp0cpXS1aQAt_x1xbs7P6UkUMbIDKeL1pZMAzHpIHBlGDl6GGtC5U/s320/photo-2.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">There was a man in my father's parish who owned a cabin cruiser. It was a
nice boat made by a company called Egg Harbor. Every so often, the man
would invite my father and his boys to spend a day on Narragansett Bay, the
body of water that divides the state of Rhode Island into two unequal pieces.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I have a faint recollection of the actual vessel, but I can picture the man,
whose name was George. I remember the choppy waves from one particular
day on the bay, and remember that George nearly had a seizure because I was
whistling. The high-pitched sound caused George to believe that something
was wrong with engine, and he gave me a good talking to, which did my feelings
no damage. I came to understand that there were rules on a boat that didn't
apply elsewhere.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">George often brought his camera with him, documenting our outings with slides
so they could be seen on a big screen.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Which brings me to my favorite memory of those days- my father's hat.
Hidden somewhere in the bottom of a box of unorganized photographs is a
favorite picture of my father wearing a beat up grey fedora, standing in
George's cabin cruiser.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The brim bent low in the front, its silk hem worn and frayed, grey as the late
afternoon sky in October. Its surface was pock-marked, having been gnawed
on by a moth or two, and the black band around the crown was stained by the
salty sweat of a hard working man.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">My father was a frugal sort of man when it came to his possessions, yet
generous when it came to what he could lavish upon others, usually in the form
of love and kindness. A pair of new dress shoes would serve him
professionally, and when finally unpolishable, would become his casual shoes
when he mowed the grass, worked around the house, or went to bat on the church
softball field.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Dad was no Imelda Marcos.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I'm sure he bought the hat new before I was born. Like me, Dad was bald,
and a hat would have been a necessity more than a fashion statement. With
Dad, there was never a fashion statement other than 'let modesty prevail'.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I am thinking of these things because this morning I got out my sewing kit and
mended a favorite shirt.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It's a denim cowboy shirt I bought in England in 1996. I was there with
my friend John Hartley, playing music as always. Somewhere near Nottingham,
I happened to walk into a shop where I found a classic western shirt by
Wrangler, slightly different than what was available in the States. <span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> I liked
the oyster colored snaps, milk white circles disturbed by India ink.
Indigo is a color I find hard to resist, and cotton is pretty much all I wear,
and unlike my father, I guess I might have a fashion statement to make,
low-brow as it might be.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">So I bought it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">One morning, 16 years after buying the western shirt, I looked at the holes in
the elbows and decided it needed another patch job. I've taken a needle
and thread to it before, and it was time for another repair. The iron-on
patches I bought at Walgreen's were applied from the inside of each sleeve,
covering the holes my elbows had created. The ironing was the easy part.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The sewing was the enjoyable part.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Call me a seamster.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">My mother taught me to sew so long ago that I can't remember when it was, just
that she sat patiently with me and explained how to thread a needle and how to
stitch a nice, neat seam. She also taught me to iron, rightfully thinking
that every young man ought to be able to take care of his own laundry.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I had patched up the pockets and flaps on this favorite of shirts once before,
and the time had come for reinforcement. I threaded the needle, knotted
it as Mom had shown me so long ago, and repaired the damage that my enjoyment
of the shirt had caused.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">About 10 minutes later, I put the shirt on and went out for coffee.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">This shirt has been all around the world with me. I guess I can say the
same thing about a few other shirts, and even my socks and boxers, but there is
something about this shirt that makes it worth fixing, and worth writing about.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I like fixing things.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">My maternal grandfather Beckman was a clever working-class Swede who was
constantly inventing, repairing, and tinkering. I think some of his
handiness was passed down to me, as my father's people, while industrious, were
not notedly handy.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Morfar, which means "mother's father" in Swedish, was brilliant when
it came to putting things together. While I never met the man, whenever I
swing a hammer, sew up a hole on a screen door, or fix an old piece of
furniture for my Southern Born Woman, I am reflecting his image. I like
employing my imagination until it yields a plan of repair, invention, or
discovery. I guess it's not much different than writing a song.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I don't know when Dad parted with his old chapeau; I know my mother wasn't
overly fond of the hat as it gave him the appearance of "a bum", so
perhaps she sweetly convinced him to let it go. These days, a hat like
his would wind up in a vintage clothing shop, but I'm sure it was relegated to
the waste can that was submerged on the far side of the garage.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Whatever he felt about that hat, perhaps I feel about this shirt, and I'll wear
it as long as I can repair it.
When it’s beyond repair, my daughter Kate will no doubt find it useful
as a canvas to embroider on.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I wonder about the word "disposable". How old is the word?
It seems like a modern concept, thus a new word.
"Disposable" can apply from razor blades to relationships.
We are a society that doesn't have time to make do with what we have, or
to repair things that are retrievable.
That sad fact makes me appreciate Peabody’s Shoe Repair on 21<sup>st</sup>
Avenue in Nashville, where I’ve brought my old Dingo suede cowboy boots for new
soles at least 4 times in the last 25 years. They are shot to hell, but I can’t give up on them.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Or the shirt.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And I'm even less willing to give up
on my relationships~ my woman, my children, and good friends.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And myself.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In deference to those most essential relationships, the sewing kit needs to be
within reach most of the time.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I'm full of holes that need to be acknowledged and measured, closed up and
stitched shut. And then there are the holes behind my back and under the
collar that I don't know about unless someone tells me. Hopefully,
someone loves me enough to let me know.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Thread bare and worn down, I'm still here, and hopefully useful.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Redemption is just a stitch away.</span></div>
<!--EndFragment-->Phil Madeirahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09541966641322415672noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8465368768809741489.post-21222353021375361962012-09-26T01:03:00.001-05:002012-09-26T13:01:41.196-05:00GOOD NEWS HURTS<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMrKCXgDrAIKEp74MnxldgwUnIvtQSki_6GT_rYFDBqng63nFBtnDuLcnsk1zDljM46fYBhgUTFLKaooNZ4ZU8cfKneD0LOf9D8p5K4HJmyRDtZ4t9lSmQFbah3apVXtLTrir5QNc1dQ0/s1600/photo-1.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMrKCXgDrAIKEp74MnxldgwUnIvtQSki_6GT_rYFDBqng63nFBtnDuLcnsk1zDljM46fYBhgUTFLKaooNZ4ZU8cfKneD0LOf9D8p5K4HJmyRDtZ4t9lSmQFbah3apVXtLTrir5QNc1dQ0/s320/photo-1.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Good News Hurts</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It was an odd thing, hearing from someone I had worked with
many years ago. I wondered if some
old mutual friend had passed away, or if I’d been seen flipping off the wife of
the assistant minister at a nearby church when she nearly plowed into my
stopped car. Busted? Seven on the
Enneagram; I tend to think the worst at times. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It turned out that Jeff was calling to invite me to play
songs from <i>Mercyland: Hymns For The Rest
Of Us</i> at a benefit for an amazing charity called <a href="http://www.ijm.org/" target="_blank">International JusticeMission</a>. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I had only to check out their website to know that their
mission was unique and courageous, trying to set captives free from the world
of human trafficking. I knew that
I needed to be at the benefit, not just to play my music, but to become more aware of a
world that none of us wants to imagine.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I called Cindy Morgan and Amy Stroup to see if they would
want to make cameo appearances and chime in on the songs they’d contributed to <i>Mercyland</i>. They didn’t hesitate.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The day approached and I packed up my Blueridge guitar and
headed over to the Renaissance Hotel for the big fete. I was still basking in the glow of the
concert of Mercyland songs we had performed the week before during the
Americana Music Association’s convention.
Emmylou, Buddy, Shawn Mullins, The North Mississippi Allstars, sweet
Matraca Berg, Kasey Chambers and a few other pals had sung their hearts out in
this sold out concert. People saw
that as my night, my triumph, whatever, but I knew that it was an evening
revolving around doing good in God’s name.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A week later, this evening wasn’t my evening; it wasn’t
about my music, or even about my friends. It was about doing
something good in the name of God.
</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And that made me happy, because there is so much more bad done in God's name than good.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My Southern Born Woman and I sat with Amy on our left and Cindy on our right. Several
Tennessee Titans sat at the table next to ours, basking in the glow of finally
winning one by the skin of their teeth; first win of the season. Wine and conversation flowed freely. Jena Nardella, the young woman who gave a stirring benediction at this year's Democratic Convention was in attendance. <i>Forget the Titans, I've got to meet that woman</i>, I thought.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Once the meal was over, Cindy and I ascended the stairs and
took our microphones, and sang “Leaning On You”, our hillbilly hymn of
brokenness- “I keep meanin’ to be leanin’ on You”. Lord A-mighty, isn’t that how it is?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Then Amy got on mic and sang “Fell Like A Feather”- “Somebody make it stop, can’t
look at the face of God”. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Our third and final number, Mercyland, the title track was
tailor made for the evening, Merrill Farnsworth’s lyric articulating God’s best
dream, “Ain’t no borders, ain’t no jails, ain’t no souls put up for sale”.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We used up our 15 minutes in 12, and that was that. A speech about IJM’s work followed our
music, and then the appeal for funds.
When you watch a film about an 11 year old girl sold into the sex trade,
and see an interview with a slave owner, gleeful about his 25 years of success,
the light of truth is alarming. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Like my boss Emmy has sung on occasion, “Love hurts”. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I found the evening gratifying and beautiful, as people of
means wrote checks to a good cause.
It was good seeing old friends and associates from a world I don’t venture into much at all anymore. A few old acquaintances shook my hand and hugged my neck. I thanked Jeff for inviting me to be a part of the night; I would be leaving with a heart fuller than when I'd arrived.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And then everyone left.
We went home to our McMansions (or something with a roof at least), our
computers, our comforts, our companions, our places of forgetting.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And now I’m trying to remember the face of a freed slave,
his ragged teeth gleaming, his lips curved into a rapturous smile, his eyes
reflecting light…</div>
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<br /></div>
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“Can’t look at the face of God, gonna give it all I’ve got,
but the light stings as it tears through unbelief”.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Kyrie Eleison, Y'all.</div>
<!--EndFragment-->Phil Madeirahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09541966641322415672noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8465368768809741489.post-17077090360955709132012-09-05T15:40:00.001-05:002012-09-05T15:40:50.965-05:00Big News- Bottoms Up!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiejBAlrNrgyM0WW-cW_qXO2SYYShq2AogxqdDTLNbxx9Yh9vtSaK4M_wqeNrFDYd177vjZib4KUKN0NulZ0Q-HW-hq5ur4Kx-spDABdP72Kd7FFRp120j8YKfm9w1vdO__7-DGbX8Fuxg/s1600/IMG-20120904-00480.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiejBAlrNrgyM0WW-cW_qXO2SYYShq2AogxqdDTLNbxx9Yh9vtSaK4M_wqeNrFDYd177vjZib4KUKN0NulZ0Q-HW-hq5ur4Kx-spDABdP72Kd7FFRp120j8YKfm9w1vdO__7-DGbX8Fuxg/s320/IMG-20120904-00480.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
Hold on to your hats, y'all, it's the resurrection mornin'! It must be! I haven't blogged in pretty long spell.<br />
<br />
Good news abounds. For one thing, Mercyland: Hymns For The Rest Of Us continues to slowly roll uphill- oh yes, it's uphill nowadays in the music biz. But interest in the project is growing, and I'm at once humbled, proud, and penniless.<br />
<br />
Thursday September 13, 2012, at 6pm, a few of my illustrious compadres and I will attempt to perform "Mercyland" at the Downtown Presbyterian Church in Nashville. You know the place- a conventional looking shell, housing what seems to be the entire set of Cleopatra's palace from back when Liz Taylor was riding high. Anyway, the Wood Brothers, Kacey Chambers and Shane Nicholson, the McCrary Sisters, and one or two more (if I play my cards right) will all be joining the original Mercyland cast- Emmylou Harris, Buddy Miller, Shawn Mullins, The North Mississippi Allstars, Amy Stroup, and me and whoever else surfaces in the next 8 days, for an early evening show. I'm excited, y'all!<br />
<br />
More news...<br />
<br />
I'm about to launch a new Kickstarter campaign for a 2012 solo PM record, which is a little scary. I don't anticipate anything major to come from the effort, but it's just time, like it was time to do a painting a few weeks ago, and it was time to load the dishwasher this evening. Some things just have to get done. The songs have been written with Merrill Farnsworth, Cindy Morgan, Gordon Kennedy, and perhaps one I co-wrote with the wonderful Amy Grant. You just never know. But it's rootsy and positive and confessional, all at once.<br />
<br />
Still with me? Well, if you are, chances are you've been with me on this blog journey for the last few years. I've gone from frequent blogger to infrequent... Something happened that I didn't feel like sharing in this forum, but I will now.<br />
<br />
My friend Ian Cron and I were having coffee one day. I was going about my usual business inspiring him, knowing he'd completely misquote me but enjoying him just the same, when he offered me the phone number of a literary agent. I found some excuse to get going, and left my Venti Iced Coffee No Sweetner No Room sitting there at the Five Points Starby's, such was my excitement. (And by the way, I am NOT the former Christian musician songwriter he keeps talking about- I think he's referring to Stephen Colbert).<br />
<br />
Anyway, I got to my car, and dialed the number. A voice answered, "This is Kathy". Now was my chance. I went for it:<br />
<br />
"Hey Kathy, this is Phil Madeira. Ian Cron gave me your number, thinking you might want to read my writings."<br />
<br />
Pause.<br />
<br />
Kathy answered tentatively, "Well, I'm not looking for new clients. In fact, I'm thinning out my client list at the moment and am too busy to take on anyone new".<br />
<br />
I knew this tone. I knew this voice. Hell, I'd been on the other end of the call I was making, usually with someone wanting to pitch me a song her mother had written. I knew the sound of someone wishing they hadn't picked up the phone.<br />
<br />
Kathy went on. "I'm not interested in picking up any new clients".<br />
<br />
"Yes", I said smiling, "I can hear that in your tone".<br />
<br />
She sighed.<br />
<br />
"Ok. What's your book about?"<br />
<br />
Well, now I knew she was just being nice. I could hear the resignation in her voice. <i>Why waste each other's time?</i> I thought. I defaulted to my WTF tone and said, "Well, Kathy, it's about trying to hang onto Jesus while simultaneously losing all the shit of religion".<br />
<br />
There, I'd let her off the hook.<br />
<br />
"I'd really like to read that", she replied.<br />
<br />
A year later, I'm on the verge of signing a book deal. I can't believe it, and for the moment, this is all I'm going to say about it. But you, dear readers, have been encouragers along the way of me discovering that I can do this. I'll probably pull down most of these blog entries at some point; I've edited them a bit, and hopefully made them equally raw and redemptive. I swear there's no altar call in the book, and my new publisher assures me that my discretionary use of 4 letter words will stay in tact. <br />
<br />
So, kudos and heaps of gratitude to Ian Cron for inspiring something of grand or possibly grandiose proportions. Drinks are on me, Ian. (Wait, how much is a grande latte?)<br />
<br />
I'll spring the title on you in a few days, and then I suppose this blog will turn into less of an experiment and into more of a forum about what I'm doing in the arts and where the book is taking me.<br />
<br />
I'm overwhelmed, y'all. Thanks.<br />
<br />
All good things...<br />
pkmPhil Madeirahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09541966641322415672noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8465368768809741489.post-24588323495713330352012-03-11T19:46:00.000-05:002012-03-11T19:46:09.210-05:00Hey Friends, please check out this kickstarter campaign!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcUdO3GhGDXsDmUjcEuOkc_sAyVcXrGQjk4qGPZsBsYJiyYGFeykjlzfkRK-w8ZIFkeO1f5doWsZSrrukqCZwn8wxlQzzvj6Fx9ReHkiWhRkHNM5CiSasndv04n09oT3ZRQB05NdSrZk0/s1600/Mercyland+Cover-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="280" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcUdO3GhGDXsDmUjcEuOkc_sAyVcXrGQjk4qGPZsBsYJiyYGFeykjlzfkRK-w8ZIFkeO1f5doWsZSrrukqCZwn8wxlQzzvj6Fx9ReHkiWhRkHNM5CiSasndv04n09oT3ZRQB05NdSrZk0/s320/Mercyland+Cover-2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>Friends, when I started blogging here, I wrote often of my project of Spiritual songs, which finally was completed after two years, and will release on April 24th of this year (2012). Kickstarter provides a way for people to support the arts, and (in this case) receive the music before it's released. I hope you'll pass along the following info to all your friends and hope that you will support <a href="http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1553710051/mercyland-hymns-for-the-rest-of-us" target="_blank">Mercyland: Hymns For The Rest Of Us</a>.<br />
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Please "Like" the project on facebook, as well: <a href="http://www.mercylandmusic.com/" target="_blank">Mercyland: Hymns For The Rest Of Us</a>Phil Madeirahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09541966641322415672noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8465368768809741489.post-48933378282454847902011-10-17T10:55:00.001-05:002011-10-17T11:07:59.099-05:00Falcon Quest<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMf3FbsPk4yDiwlWOyFY8WVWtMIAGg7N8BD0UeIgDUplpnOHL5IK-NsT2x9CkBfZNjUysyE38tQA_L4F504HHnMkN9-DwFXR7YrPkxDy00aniLOS7yBUAcVUJsOUEg7uhS7axQWCLCgvw/s1600/1961_ford_falcon_tudor_011.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="161" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMf3FbsPk4yDiwlWOyFY8WVWtMIAGg7N8BD0UeIgDUplpnOHL5IK-NsT2x9CkBfZNjUysyE38tQA_L4F504HHnMkN9-DwFXR7YrPkxDy00aniLOS7yBUAcVUJsOUEg7uhS7axQWCLCgvw/s320/1961_ford_falcon_tudor_011.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 13pt;">Seatbelts, bike helmets, knee pads, safety vests... There were no such things when I was a boy.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 13pt;">I remember standing on the bench seat next to my father as he drove his two tone turquoise and white 1955 Ford Fairlane. My arm was slung around his neck, and I hung on as he turned into the S curves of the Wampanoag Trail, a serpentine stretch of road on the outskirts of Barrington, the Rhode Island town I once called home.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 13pt;">My brother Dave and I felt the torque of that old V8 as dad put the pedal to the metal and grinned. Our backs pressed against the tweed seats as we rolled left and right with the curves, cheering him on.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 13pt;">Mom didn’t drive because she was blind in one eye, and her lack of peripheral vision made her nervous. In the eyes of my brother and me, until our sister Annie got her permit, driving was a male endeavor.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 13pt;">I keep inventory of boyhood events by the particular cars that carried me:<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 13pt;">Dad driving Dave and me to see the Yankees at Fenway Park- baby blue 1959 Ford Galaxie wagon.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 13pt;">The family trip across the country to California- a brand new metallic blue ‘64 Chevy Bel Air wagon.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 13pt;">Learning to drive a stick in a turquoise 1963 Ford Falcon, a gift to Dad from the widow of an old friend.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 13pt;">Mom and Dad taking me out to Indiana for my freshman year of college- a gold 1970 Ford Galaxie sedan<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 13pt;">It would bring my father a great deal of joy to know that his namesake, my brother Dave, grew up and became CEO of the largest Automobile museum in North America. Besides the New York Yankees, our love of the automobile bonded us. We anticipated autumn with enthusiasm because it promised the debut of all the new car models from Detroit with monikers like Mustang, Thunderbird, Grand Prix, Continental, Corvette, and Bronco, names to be lived up to.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 13pt;">We Madeira men had a romance with cars.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 13pt;">Dave and I shared the ’63 Falcon in high school, which he eventually took to college in the late ‘60s. It was a “three-on-the-tree”, meaning it had a standard transmission whose gearshift was on the steering column.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 13pt;">Ford introduced their compact line, Falcon, in 1960. The humble car was named for the bird of kings, the king of birds. In folklore, the falcon often represents the warrior, passion, intellect, keenness, and vision.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 13pt;">My Falcon came to me from my mother, a generous gift and an expression of belief that I was becoming a man.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 13pt;">In 1973, Mom took the pocket change she had made playing piano at church, and bought me a 1964 Falcon station wagon for $150. I parked it at parents’ house and patched the holes in the floor and the fenders with sheet metal and Bondo, and then sprayed it with metallic blue paint, and I thought it looked pretty glorious.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 13pt;">In truth, it wasn’t much to look at, but it was mine. And it got me down the road, and back without much trouble for about 4 years. Not bad for $150. I named it Felix.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 13pt;">On my first trek West in the summer of ’73, I was about 45 miles from my destination when the clutch failed. I found a mechanic and it was fixed within hours. It lasted for as long as I kept Felix.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 13pt;">Every 18 months, the battery would die, and I would go to a junkyard, fork over five bucks, and walk out with a used generator, which I would install within minutes. Maintenance was up to me; I couldn’t afford to pay for repairs that were within the scope of my technical abilities, so I learned to figure it out.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 13pt;">Felix was my Kon-Tiki, my whale, my Santa Maria, my literal vehicle into manhood. Through blinding blizzards and zero temperatures, that old car faithfully delivered me to university and back home at least twice a year. I remember leaving Barrington in the dead of night, knowing I would avoid the congestion of New York City and all roads leading there if I chose to drive in darkness.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 13pt;">I would drive Felix 900 miles from Rhode Island to Indiana, with an AM radio keeping me company until the signal faded somewhere on Interstate 80, leaving nothing but a black sky, the Pennsylvania hills, and the wind whistling through the cracks in the floor.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 13pt;">Under an ink black canopy, I watched stars fall. On winter treks, snow flakes replaced stars, and sometimes the roads were barely traversable, but Felix and I would proceed cautiously, or so we thought.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 13pt;">I'd crack the little triangular vent window so commonplace on yesterday's cars, and try to cool off as the defroster kept the windshield hot, and once in a while my headlights would be so encrusted with ice that I'd have to pull over and chip away at them with a screwdriver.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 13pt;">Meanwhile, I'd find some groovy late night DJ playing blues or jazz, and somehow Felix seemed to pick up on the energy of the music, and we'd find ourselves cruising at 80 miles per hour. Occasionally, a tobacco soaked voice would announce whose music was moving us, and I'd make a mental note of who it was. Taj Mahal, Dave Brubeck, Sonny Rollins, Miles, or Muddy. Sooner or later, the bend in the road would take us behind a high, lonesome hill, and the signal would distort and then disappear into the blackness.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 13pt;">Just as I'd lost one signal, another might appear, maybe some black preacher, hollering salvation at fever pitch, or possibly making a sales pitch. It was hard to tell the difference between the prophets and the profiteers, but the cadence of their voices carried us down the road.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 13pt;">One night, the radio picked up a soulful voice from Atlanta which promised, "I'm goin' to getchoo outta th' ghet-to' an' into th' get-mo'!"<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 13pt;">For all the gospel shouting, my soul didn't feel any closer to God Almighty, but the road seemed a little staighter and the hills seemed a little shallower. We might've been running on fumes, but when the radio was working, Felix ran like a top.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 13pt;">The radio also connected me to Nashville, a place I had no romance about, nor the slightest inkling that it would one day become my habitat. In the wee hours, old school country and western tunes would bleed through the little mono speaker hidden beneath a grille in the center of the metal dashboard. Someone from WSM was keeping the truckers awake with twangy etudes from Buck Owens and Dave Dudley.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 13pt;">Those were beautiful times.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 13pt;">The fondness I have for that old Ford Falcon is greater than all the combined affection I’ve given to many cars I’ve owned, matched only by a Mercedes Wagon that is long gone.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 13pt;">I’m sentimental that way.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 13pt;">I like the new cars just fine, but they don’t make ‘em like they used to. Hell, they don’t even name them like they used to! What does Prius mean, anyway?<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 13pt;">I would trade my Infiniti for a good running Falcon if given the chance.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 13pt;">The tribes of the past sent adolescent males on lone journeys, during which they would transition from boyhood to manhood. Communing with nature, hearing the voice of an owl or a wolf, and perhaps starving just enough to be in a state of altered and open consciousness, the boy/man would return to the tribe with a word, a prize, or perhaps a vision that could be celebrated by the entire community.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 13pt;">Western society has substituted television and cyber-worlds for real living, and the vision quest has faded from view. Yet, something in a boy’s heart knows he must seek beyond the borders of comfort. Something tells him that he will find fulfillment and knowledge, excitement, and adventure if he cuts the apron strings and ventures into the unknown.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 13pt;">When I graduated from college, I had bachelor’s degree in Art, something I have never formally used. Nonetheless, I returned to my parents’ home having fulfilled the task they had sent me away to accomplish. Moreover, I returned with friendship bonds that have lasted for nearly 4 decades, stories that have served to remind me about the breath God Almighty continues to fill my lungs with, and lessons learned on the ribbon of road with that beautiful old Falcon.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 13pt;">A college friend hounded me to let go of Felix when I relocated to Upstate New York in 1976, and I reluctantly did so, but the lessons linger. Maybe brother Falcon had more magic under its hood than one would expect from an oil guzzling straight-six engine. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 13pt;">Maybe it gave me wings.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div>Phil Madeirahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09541966641322415672noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8465368768809741489.post-10880636629117513302011-10-11T21:35:00.000-05:002011-10-11T21:35:55.334-05:00Beat Generation<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:DocumentProperties> <o:Template>Normal.dotm</o:Template> <o:Revision>0</o:Revision> <o:TotalTime>0</o:TotalTime> <o:Pages>1</o:Pages> <o:Words>1268</o:Words> <o:Characters>7230</o:Characters> <o:Company>1234phil</o:Company> <o:Lines>60</o:Lines> <o:Paragraphs>14</o:Paragraphs> <o:CharactersWithSpaces>8878</o:CharactersWithSpaces> <o:Version>12.0</o:Version> </o:DocumentProperties> <o:OfficeDocumentSettings> <o:AllowPNG/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves>false</w:TrackMoves> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing> <w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing> <w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery>0</w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery> <w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery>0</w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:DontAutofitConstrainedTables/> <w:DontVertAlignInTxbx/> </w:Compatibility> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" LatentStyleCount="276"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--> <!--[if gte mso 10]> <style>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNOKxN_EaUDRGgr03hFf7EgR3fDXTUxpPVvwZ0Q6cItTkAjAKDA6O-PmOH6EAz-WaG6ahF7B8doAidlOwbGiE7OwxYa-IO9-URxzW_M8tXCe45GtjvdqpM8IG6ZtQ1lZ_eNjVJLIKysqI/s1600/LudwigWWIRopeDrum-r7729-764071.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="243" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNOKxN_EaUDRGgr03hFf7EgR3fDXTUxpPVvwZ0Q6cItTkAjAKDA6O-PmOH6EAz-WaG6ahF7B8doAidlOwbGiE7OwxYa-IO9-URxzW_M8tXCe45GtjvdqpM8IG6ZtQ1lZ_eNjVJLIKysqI/s320/LudwigWWIRopeDrum-r7729-764071.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal">I am the baby who tumbled from the womb drumming.<span> </span>I am the boy whose fingers tapped out a tattoo on a maple-topped desk in elementary school.<span> </span>I am the teenager who split the calfskin head of an old Ludwig drum as my blue and gold clad fellows marched ahead, laden down with cumbersome brass tubas and silver cornets.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Be it a Sunday school class or a marching band, a book group or an English Lit class, I’ve never been swept along with the herd.<span> </span>I might be singing along to whatever melody is being raised by the chorus, but the tempo in my head is always fighting with the cadence of the footfalls of the communal parade.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The rhythm in my head is upbeat and funky.<span> </span>The snare drum barks with brassy insistence and the bass drum holds it all together, landing solidly on the beat, while a maraca trips erratically overhead, riding on the wind.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">And the beat goes on.<span> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Those who love me have sometimes felt the need to explain or excuse me.<span> </span>My childhood shenanigans would often elicit an exclamation of “Where did you come from?” from my bemused father.<span> </span>Exasperated, my mother would plead with me to get in line with dress codes, mores, or whatever <span> </span>parental vision I was supposed to be fulfilling.<span> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">It’s no wonder that I’m marching to my own beat.<span> </span>My parents set me up.<span> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">While I was incubating in my mother’s tummy, she was playing Mahalia Jackson records, feeding my soul the music of a world that was vastly different to white bread New England.<span> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">When she preached on Mother’s Day, it was to a congregation who wasn’t sure what to do with the idea of a woman having that kind of authority.<span> </span>She was more progressive than she knew.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">My father, a man’s man if I ever knew one, was somewhat of a pacifist, bringing yet another strange facet into an otherwise dog-eat-dog world.<span> </span>He presided over the Rhode Island chapter of Habitat For Humanity, and he created a relief society to benefit destitute people in Haiti.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Dad was a minister in a Baptist Church, known more for what they don’t do than for what they get done.<span> </span>Yet, unlike many Baptists, he preached less about Hell than of the Church’s responsibility to the poor.<span> </span>He ruffled the feathers of his flock when he preached against the War in Viet Nam, and when he championed men like Martin Luther King, Jr.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Their literal interpretation of the words of Christ made them who they were.<span> </span>They took faith seriously, and as such, set themselves apart from the self-centered suburbia they lived in.<span> </span>They were truly “in the world, but not of the world”.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">My parents were proudly Evangelical, and felt united with conscientious believers like Billy Graham and John Perkins, espousing an evangelism both theologically spoken and practiced.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">There were many churches in Barrington, the upper class town we lived in.<span> </span>Although Rhode Island was founded by the first Baptist, Roger Williams, being Baptist carried with it a hillbilly stigma among the bluebloods of New England.<span> </span>The social climbers attended St John’s Episcopal or The White Church, an aptly named Congregational group on the banks of the Barrington River.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">There were two Catholic churches, one Methodist, another less well-heeled Episcopal parish, and a synagogue just to round things out.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">My parents would answer my questions about what the other churches believed with phrases that caused me to think that we at Barrington Baptist had quite a bit more truth than the rest of the town’s Christians.<span> </span>“Well, they don’t really know the Lord the way we do” was the gist of it.<span> </span>It was always something of a surprise for me to find out that an Episcopalian or a Congregationalist could be a “real Christian”.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">My life was designed by my parents to revolve around church events several days a week.<span> </span>Sunday was filled with Sunday school class, morning worship, afternoon youth group, and evening worship.<span> </span>There was also Wednesday evening prayer meeting, which we thankfully were not required to attend, and Friday night youth activities in the church gymnasium.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">By the time I was 18 years old, I had done enough church-going to fill the average lifetime.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">When I left the warmth of my parents’ home for my freshman year of college, I sought out other Christians like them, but there were none that I could find.<span> </span>At Taylor University, I recognized the religious jargon, and found some comfort in being with “real Christians”, but there was something missing.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I attended chapel services and occasionally went to one church or another on Sunday, but sleeping in seemed a more constructive option.<span> </span>I let myself off the hook based on my behavior and “time served”.<span> </span>I still do.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Over the years, the search for God’s presence led me in and out of a variety of traditions, from incense burners to barn burners, liturgists to improvisers.<span> </span>In contrast to conventional church wisdom, the more active I became in one group or another, the less connected to Christ I felt.<span> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">What my parents loved to experience with many, I cherish with one or two people, and more so under the low lighting of a bar than the brightly lit chandeliers of a church sanctuary.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Trying to remain a good parent to the end, my nonagenarian mother still sends me books by prominent Evangelical authors.<span> </span>I’m in good company, mind you; she sends devotional books to the President of the United States! <span> </span>Once, after reading something Barack Obama had said about his spiritual life, Mom told me that she was quite sure he had read the book she’d sent him.<span> </span>If that’s the case, he’s one up on me.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Unfortunately, what was once meaningful jargon now falls flat when it hits my ears.<span> </span>I can’t read these books.<span> </span>It’s hard enough for me to read the Bible, so familiar is it to me.<span> </span>But the language of Evangelicalism seems like a pair of loaded dice; I know exactly where the roll will take me.<span> </span>I need something fresh.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Surprise me, God.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Once I tried to explain to my mother that I was grateful for my upbringing in the household of faith, but no longer felt comfortable defining myself as Evangelical.<span> </span>She voiced her disappointment by projecting it through my father, long deceased, saying, “Your father would be mighty disappointed in you.<span> </span>He was proud to be Evangelical”.<span> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Ah, yes, Mom will always play the Dad card.<span> </span>But it never works; it stings for a moment, but it’s never a surprise.<span> </span>It’s a Band Aid being pulled off, nothing more.<span> </span>Dad never worried about the drumbeat I was following.<span> </span>Mom feels bad that I’m not in the club any more no matter how much I explain that I am still trying to follow Christ.<span> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">What I don’t say, but perhaps she understands, is that I can’t seem to find Jesus in that world that loudly proclaims him.<span> </span>The fever pitch of the crowd makes it hard for me to hear what the Old Testament calls “the still, small voice”.<span> </span><span> </span>The rants of the church are about hanging on to theological and social real estate, while the whisper of the Spirit is “Let go.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I’m doing my best to let go, by God.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I try to give my mother some comfort in the idea that she is largely responsible for my exit from Evangelical World, after all, she never let the word “Baptist” define her parameters, never caved to the status quo when it would have been convenient.<span> </span>She was a pastor’s wife who didn’t limit herself to playing the piano on Sunday mornings.<span> </span>The open-minded attitude she had as a young woman probably had more influence on my father’s ministry than anything else.<span> </span>They were a team, trying to live out the words of Christ.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I’m their son, trying to live <i>in</i> the words of Christ.<span> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">While I am trying to escape the sound of her voice, I try to silence it by reminding her that her affection for her Lutheran upbringing, with its liturgical trappings, paved the way for me to find life in the closely related Episcopal tradition.<span> </span>I like the ancient prayers, concise and reflective, and empty of ego and emotion, unlike the risky extemporaneous offerings of some long-winded preachers I’ve known.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">But despite my explanations and arguments, I think she is left to wonder if her son is what she used to call “a real Christian”.<span> </span>Why couldn’t I have just tuned out that damned drum beat, and blended in?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">A friend asked me once if I could go back to my hometown and life in the world I knew as a young man.<span> </span>He already knew the answer.<span> </span>Thomas Wolfe said it best, “You can’t go home again”.<span> </span>Indeed, the place of my beginning is dear to me, but it is only a mirage of Home.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Home is what I hope my children sense when my arms are around them.<span> </span>It is a place I see in my Dearest Companion’s eyes.<span> </span>It is the vibration of a lone guitar, tuned to an open D, resonating with the room it sits in.<span> </span>Home is the unmistakable pattern of two drumsticks on a calfskin head; it is the humming that accompanies Pilgrimage.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><!--EndFragment-->Phil Madeirahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09541966641322415672noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8465368768809741489.post-56188124779595264082011-05-22T07:42:00.000-05:002011-05-22T07:42:08.485-05:00Tequila SunsetLike a failing marriage, its walls were cracked from a weak foundation. It had lost value and was, for me, a losing proposition. <br />
<br />
The good news was that I had a buyer for my home. I was ready to be out of an edifice which had been anything but edifying. It was the site of my marriage falling apart, and around it's perimeter, sink holes were appearing and evergreens were dying.<br />
<br />
The bad news was the timing of the sale. The week before closing, I was in Norway having my 59th birthday. Actually, I was there for a pair of Emmylou concerts, but it sounds sophisticated to say that I spent my birthday in Oslo. <br />
<br />
The dollar was as weak as a cup of Cracker Barrel coffee, and it was nigh unto impossible to find an affordable meal to ring in my last year of fifties-hood. The gin and tonic our drummer, Bryan, bought me cost $22. <br />
<br />
Note to self, celebrate next birthday in America.<br />
<br />
We returned from Norway on the Monday evening before closing. I had 3 days in which to vacate the premises. Having already packed some things, I was overly optimistic about my ability to get the job done.<br />
<br />
So, on Tuesday I began arduously packing my life up, and discarding as much of what wasn't "life" as I possibly could. It was difficult work, combing through boxes that hadn't been unpacked since we'd moved in 10 years before. <br />
<br />
I had a box set aside for E, as I knew I'd be unearthing artifacts which might interest her. It had been a while since my garage cleaning episode wherein I'd discovered a part of our life that I'd forgotten, but this time I combed through happier days without reaction.<br />
<br />
The garage held the cache of trash whose presence wouldn't be missed in my next living space. I donned a dust mask and spent hours sorting and deciding.<br />
<br />
The easiest task was determining what to give to charity; if I couldn't sell it on the internet, I would take the write-off and let someone else carry it off. Tools, ladders, furniture, bicycles, and old videos were carted off by two men from Thriftsmart.<br />
<br />
A few friends dropped in at various hours to give some muscle to my madness, and we put all the heavy items into a storage pod. I noted that one of these good men had helped me move in two other Nashville moves. Another had helped me move into my temporary digs during the early days of my split. <br />
<br />
While I'd been in Norway, a songwriter friend named Cindy came over and wrapped all my glassware and kitchen accoutrements. El Paso, a fellow chile releno connoisseur, appeared in my front hall and offered to box up the endless ephemera of my man cave.<br />
<br />
That night, my dearest companion invited me to dinner with her parents, who had just driven in from Texas, and her three kids, all of them gathered in Nashville to celebrate her son's wedding. He and his fiancee had planned a simple yet elegant, family-only affair for later in the week, and they had just arrived in time for our meal.<br />
<br />
We had a fine time, feasting on her delectable cooking, drinking red Zinfandel and eventually retiring to her living room where all three children serenaded us with original songs. That's not necessarily atypical of Nashville, a town teeming with musicians, but when it's your kids (or those of your dearest companion), it's that much more enjoyable.<br />
<br />
I got home fairly late, and spent a few hours dividing my possessions into "keep" and "throw" piles. Dawn arrived sooner than I'd hoped, and I rose early, working a little before one last recording session in my studio. Looking back, it's just crazy that I had booked the session, but it's what I do; I make my living playing on records, and in 2011, no one is turning down work.<br />
<br />
My friend Lari came over and I played accordion and organ on a few tunes she was producing, wrapping up as a helper arrived in the form of Bryan Owings, the aforementioned gin and tonic buyer. We've toured the world together, and on this day, we were both a bit jet lagged from our Norwegian trek, but there he was, lifting a sofa with me and encouraging me to keep a few items I was more than ready to hand off to the Thriftsmart fellows. I was too tired to argue with him.<br />
<br />
A recording engineer who had seen my request for moving help on Facebook, showed up and began carefully packing all the studio gear and instruments. After a while Bryan left, and a songwriting buddy showed up to help with more heavy lifting.<br />
<br />
You know who your friends are.<br />
<br />
Wednesday night was the rehearsal dinner, hosted by my dearest companion at an East Nashville Mexican restaurant called The Rose Pepper. We feasted on deep-fried avocados and spicy entrees laced with chorizo and cilantro, washing it all down with pitchers of Margaritas. <br />
<br />
I drove the Texans back to their hotel and then returned to the nocturnal task of sorting and heaving until 3 am.<br />
<br />
Thursday, the day of the wedding, I woke to do more sorting, but it was the heaving that my body was more inclined to do. I couldn't lift my head without becoming fiercely nauseous. <br />
<br />
I was thinking of calling my realtor and telling her that there was no way I was going to be out of my house by Friday morning, when she walked in with her friend Rusty, and announced that she'd rented a U-Haul truck. <br />
<br />
I lay prostrate on the floor, trying to articulate what needed to be left alone, what needed to be thrown, what needed to be put in the pod, and what needed to go on the truck, while unable to lift my eyes long enough to connect with the faces of the gracious angels come to my aid.<br />
<br />
Rusty, whom I'd never met, knelt beside me and started speaking in tongues, and then prayed in English that God would heal me, and heal me quickly. I had been around plenty of "tongue-talkers" in my crazy days at Love Inn and in Christian music, and to my way of thinking, it's never seemed very sensible to me. But if tongue-talking was going to get rid of my nausea, I was all for it.<br />
<br />
Suffice to say, God Almighty took plenty of time in getting back to Rusty about my illness. <br />
<br />
In the meantime, friends showed up and helped out, as I lay on the den floor between bouts of vomiting the anti-nausea medicine and the last night's tequila. So delirious was I that my collected visions of these good people- Wayne, Bret, Steve, Mark, and even my daughter Kate- are a blur.<br />
<br />
Occasionally, I would test my sea legs to see if I could walk two feet without stupendously hurling. More than once, Hellers leapt aside as I caromed through the halls toward the nearest sink.<br />
<br />
It occurred to me that I needed to rent a storage unit for all the junk in the U-Haul, so I carefully got in my car, with an empty cup in hand (just in case), and drove to a storage place. Mickey, the woman who managed the storage place, led the way through the hot sun to show me what kind of unit I'd be renting, when I began uncontrollably vomiting once again. I apologized and assured her that it wasn't a commentary on her business.<br />
<br />
Discouraged, I signed on the dotted line, and got in my car. Too weary to call my dearest companion, I started writing a text message, surrendering to the harsh fact that I wasn't going to be at the wedding, which would be occurring in less than two hours. I had been asked to sing a song for the bridal procession, and sadly realized that that honor was slipping away. <br />
<br />
Halfway through the word "heartbroken" I stopped.<br />
<br />
"I feel better", I thought.<br />
<br />
I was sorry notto give Rusty and his tongue-talking the credit for my feeling better, butafter all the time God Almighty had taken in answering, I wasn't inclined to start singing hymns of praise. Mother nature had taken her course, and fortunately Her schedule and the wedding were in fair enough sync.<br />
<br />
God Almighty nonetheless had provided good friends who provided a miracle of sorts by joining in the task of moving me out of a place that never felt like home.<br />
<br />
Speeding back to the house, where a crew had continued working, I realized I might be a few minutes late, but I would indeed be at the nuptial celebration.<br />
<br />
I quickly showered and shaved, brushed the hell out of my teeth, and dressed up in my Sunday best. Speeding up I-65, I called my Southern Born woman, and said I was running late, but not too late. Wise one that she is, she had implored her talented daughters to have something ready to sing, just in case.<br />
<br />
Nothing goes without a hitch, and as soon as I arrived at the wedding chapel, I unpacked my guitar to find that its strings had been loosened to death for the flight back from Norway. Everyone waited quietly while I tuned. Tick tock...<br />
<br />
And then I sang. <br />
<br />
I don't even remember the song I sang. Even while singing it, I was somewhere else, caught up in the miracle that 90 minutes hence, I'd been sick as a dog. <br />
<br />
We all enjoyed a lovely private evening together watching two people attempt the thing that a few of us hadn't been successful at. <br />
<br />
Marriage.<br />
<br />
As I listened to their vows, I thought of the cycles of life. I thought of the happenstance that brings each of us into this old world, and I thought once again that, despite the circumstances of failure and accidents, I've never for a moment believed that anyone exists without God meaning for us to be.<br />
<br />
I looked at this young man, full of grace and confidence, face shining with optimism, and I felt thankful for knowing him. I thought of his mother, my Dearest Companion, and her tireless love of her children. <br />
<br />
Naturally, my musings led me to my own daughters, who are always with me, always in mind, always loved. I thought of the failed marriage that had brought my girls into the world, and the house of an errant dream, which seemed so culpable in my undoing, now left groaning and empty, save the ghostly remnants of echoed unanswered prayer.<br />
<br />
The vows were said, and I watched a tear grow in my Dearest Companion's left eye, until it spilled joyfully down the side of her face, marking a milestone in her journey.<br />
<br />
I was emotionally full and physically empty. I'd spent a few days purging, quite literally, and now I was at a feast, and I might add, I had an amazing appetite. <br />
<br />
Regarding my violent nausea, there's a part of me that feels like 'fessing up and admitting that I probably went one margarita over the line. But maybe the truth is, I was sick of a house that had given nothing back for all it had taken.<br />
<br />
The cycles of our lives bring us sadness and goodness. They bring love and hate, forgiveness and unforgiveness, wealth and poverty. Life is a liturgy that is summed up in Christmases, Good Fridays and Easters, lives, deaths and resurrections, between which we make whatever we might of our desert pilgrimages and evergreen homecomings.Phil Madeirahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09541966641322415672noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8465368768809741489.post-29056822157662362312011-04-24T20:26:00.001-05:002011-04-24T20:33:11.837-05:00Bully Pulpit<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvfeoBJePbnbuviYsMYH-IhInFUDwI3uWcLE_1qVZ5YgyDjm2VBrrDoCwxOfygtH_eJ5v-9l4BlmatYCCc_ae0uNC4VEBymFi48YoMhyphenhyphenoOLajBmApRWlQ4srpt2uBlXUhJ8lSwNEZ7f2w/s1600/Kane09_15_JohnnyRebCannon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="167" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvfeoBJePbnbuviYsMYH-IhInFUDwI3uWcLE_1qVZ5YgyDjm2VBrrDoCwxOfygtH_eJ5v-9l4BlmatYCCc_ae0uNC4VEBymFi48YoMhyphenhyphenoOLajBmApRWlQ4srpt2uBlXUhJ8lSwNEZ7f2w/s320/Kane09_15_JohnnyRebCannon.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px;"><br />
</span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I used to live near Crockett Road in Williamson County, Tennessee. Tennesseans lay rightful claim to Davey Crockett, the famous frontiersman for whom this little patch of asphalt was named. Anyone who grew up in the ‘50s and ‘60s can still sing the Disney song “Davey, Davey Crockett, King of the wild frontier”. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">A little known fact about Davey is that when he was a US Representative, he opposed Andrew Jackson’s resettling of Native Americans. History remembers Jackson as a bully, moving the Cherokee and Seminole Nations and others down the trail of tears beyond the Mississippi.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Davey’s stand in Tennessee cost him an election, and he headed to Texas, where he died in San Antonio, defending the Alamo from</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;">Antonio López de Santa Anna</span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, the dictatorial President of Mexico, who history also remembers as a bully.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">~*~</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I was driving home from The Perch one day, all jacked up on my free refills when traffic slowed down. I noticed a policeman and several other folks walking briskly up the hill on the right side of the road. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">What’s the fuss?</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> I wondered. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Slowing down, I caught a glimpse of a boy thrashing another boy, literally hurling him across the otherwise idyllic landscape. It was clear that the boy doing the bullying was much bigger and apparently the one with the power.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I wanted to pull my car over and see how it all ended, but it didn’t seem like the right thing to do, just as one shouldn’t rubberneck at the scene of an accident. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The event got me thinking. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Watching the policeman and the vigilant adults hiking up the hill as the action didn’t cease made me wonder what the real situation was. I supposed it might have been boys at play, roughhousing as many will do. In a perfect world, the grownups would be greeted by two laughing rascals, who were surprised by the sudden interest.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">It looked like serious business.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">As the grownups moved closer, the bigger boys seemed intent on finishing the business of showing the smaller boy what for. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I wondered about the dominant boy, the one getting his licks in. In wealthy Brentwood, TN, I imagined the boy’s banker father shrugging off his son’s violence with a pat answer. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Boys will be boys</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, he might say, smiling, and perhaps slightly proud that his son prevailed</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Odd phrases get tossed around. The weaker boy </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">had it coming, asked for it</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">. Perhaps his father was ashamed of his son for not </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">taking it like a man</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, or for not </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">winning</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Who knows what they were fighting about? These days, I’m just happy to see a child out in a field doing </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">anything</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">. Most children seem to be flexing their thumbs sending text messages or playing games on their phones. So, maybe the sight of two boys playing outdoors was what all the fuss was about.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Everyone remembers the neighborhood bully of childhood. My personal bully was several years older, solid as a brick, and equally dumb. What he lacked in brains, he made up for in brute force, and no one liked seeing him riding down their street on his fat-tired Schwinn with its banana seat, and other Hell’s Angels in the making accessories. I wasn’t a constant target, like some children become; I just happened to be in the way on one occasion. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I can remember standing in the middle of Roberta Drive, when he rode up, stopped his bike, smiled and slapped me so hard that I rode home bawling. If I had begged my father to do something about it, I don’t think I would have found an advocate so much as a comforter. Dad was simply not going to kick any one’s ass, although every boy hopes his dad is capable of it.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">My preacher dad was a farm boy from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, who wrestled in high school and college. Wrestling may have been fairly scandalous in his family, whose ancestors were peace loving Mennonites and River Brethren, traditionally known for being pacifists.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Dad was a killer softball player, swinging like Mickey Mantle, hitting line drives and home runs to his boys’ delight. But competition wasn’t his deal, other than competing with himself. He loved the experience of a game, whether it was Scrabble™ or softball, but his attitude was so beautiful and so sportsman-like, that one never felt like he was out for blood, even when he won.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I don’t recall my father teaching me to fight, although I would have appreciated it. I guess he figured that two scrapping sons would teach each other how to survive, and didn’t want to encourage the idea of settling things with fisticuffs. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">It’s not that he was disengaged; I remember him hovering behind me, teaching me to hold a Louisville Slugger, and I remember him pitching baseballs to my brother David and me. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">But teaching us combative skills just didn’t square with his spiritual philosophy, or with my mother’s either. We were never given toy guns for Christmas or birthdays, and I never received the Remco Johnny Reb Cannon I begged for one year (further proof of the South’s magnetic pull on my soul). </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Nonetheless, the neighborhood was full of guns; it was a veritable arsenal. I would borrow Dickie Schmitt’s tommy gun, or Butchie Allen’s Luger, and off to war we’d all go, in The Woods, a few acres of marshy woodlands at the end of our street. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The Woods was the perfect place for a boy to climb trees, chop down skunk cabbage, be the hero of his own war, defeating all comers while returning home with tennis shoes full of black mud from The Brook. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">It was as if no other grouping of trees existed apart from The Woods, and seemed as if all rivers and seas flowed toward our neighborhood through The Brook. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">We waged war across the span of time, as knights, revolutionaries, civil warriors, and GIs. We were usually on the same side, shooting at imaginary foes with our plastic artillery. As the sons of pacifists, we were failures, and we reveled in being armed.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Once, my father discovered the borrowed camouflage tommy gun I’d hidden in the garage between battles. “What’s this?” he sternly asked. I think his concern was less that I had a forbidden weapon, and more that I might have stolen it. It’s an odd memory, and perhaps he really was disturbed about a Weapon of Destruction under his roof.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Years later, the boy who exists down in my soul bought a real gun, a Remington Rolling Block Saddle Carbine from the 1800s, a relic to lean next to a rustic fireplace, hearkening back to days of conquest and trails of tears. Eventually, I sold it; perhaps I’m more my old man’s son than I thought.</span><br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px;">~*~</span></div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I have a friend who is built like a linebacker. He can be a bit intimidating if he’s had a few drinks, because he gets surly and loud, argumentative and ungentlemanly. Once in a while, he talks about “settling things like real men do” and teaching his son something about “how a real man deals with” adversity. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">That kind of talk seems </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">so</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> Dark Ages to me, and I’m surprised when I hear these things come out of his mouth. I wonder about the degree of pain present in a person’s life who wants to strike another human being. I have a theory that bullies beget bullies, just as dictators beget dictators, and tyrants beget tyrants. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">In my line of work, bullies are everywhere. They usually have a lot of money and a badass lawyer. The little guys like me usually have no recourse, but to take it on the chin, cut one’s losses, and hopefully avoid bawling while turning tail and heading home. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Certainly, the temptation to be the Alpha Dog is out there for anyone, and I’ve seen the finest of Sunday churchgoers go ape on Monday, whether they’re taking the Alamo or taking back their promises. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">When I think of “settling things like real men do”, I look at the best of men, my Dad. I never heard him raise his voice to another person, never mind raise a fist. Dad’s kindness and politeness were marked indelibly on his character, and he wasn’t about to give away his soul in the name of power, money, or property. He talked about a spiritual inheritance whereas so many of our society speak of entitlement. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Dad’s life was a sermon. I guess every one’s life is, to one end or another.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span>Phil Madeirahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09541966641322415672noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8465368768809741489.post-24522256479045279682011-04-17T20:38:00.003-05:002011-04-20T10:13:21.308-05:00Getting Down With The Joneses<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZ-4tWH8YrIX9dUowabLCjM0MTendw_fOqRftoLQQHEU24BVhpJs0-nDydhDY7nFBHm-AFRarZ9Xqhsv3inl87oLTy_XMSi8_vApAWzISK8IUoQpFqjw3j0BIygcjXDjy-1Mrl8px7J_o/s1600/thing.7332883.l.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZ-4tWH8YrIX9dUowabLCjM0MTendw_fOqRftoLQQHEU24BVhpJs0-nDydhDY7nFBHm-AFRarZ9Xqhsv3inl87oLTy_XMSi8_vApAWzISK8IUoQpFqjw3j0BIygcjXDjy-1Mrl8px7J_o/s1600/thing.7332883.l.jpg" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">It was a miracle when E and I moved into our first house. My parents gave us the $7500 down payment on what seemed like a lot of money at the time- $45,000 in 1984. Our little log cabin on Nebraska Avenue in Nashville’s Sylvan Park was funky and warped, but cozy enough. It was small, too, but we enjoyed it.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">From Sylvan Park we followed several friends and families out to Bellevue, on the western edge of Nashville. Wayne and Fran Kirkpatrick lived a street away, which led to a life-long friendship with them, as well as a musical relationship with Wayne. A few hillsides away lived Bonnie Keen, who was and remains one of my dearest companion’s dearest companions. <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">It was in that happy little Bellevue home that we received our two daughters, but we weren’t there long enough for them to have much memory of it.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Next came a move to Green Hills, a popular Nashville neighborhood, which gave us a fine elementary school, and a coffee shop I could walk to every morning. The home was a large, brick cottage with an English appearance about it. It had character, along with a damp basement, cracking plaster, and beautiful hardwood floors.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">That house stood witness to a marriage that was starting to implode, and it was the site of our attempt to try and save “us”. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Yet, the happy times outshined the sad moments, and if my children are sentimental about any place they’ve lived, it is that Green Hills house.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">But greener hills, or so they seemed, called. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I found a McMansion in boring Brentwood, with something as rare as a basement in Tennessee. Its high ceilings would give me a perfect recording environment, and the housing division would provide E with a tennis court, and the kids with a community pool and good schools.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">People were shocked and disappointed when we made the move. One friend decried our situation, “You’re going to live among the Republicans!”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">And so it came to pass.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The Land Rover and the Mercedes sat proudly in the driveway. The piano teacher showed up on Tuesdays. The pool key hung on the back of the laundry door. The neighborhood association sent polite warnings about keeping things uniform, along with invitations to cocktail parties. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Apart from Leon, the friendly neighbor behind us, we never met our neighbors, most of whom were nine-to-fives who drove through yawning garage doors at the end of the day, only to be seen on weekends, tending to lawns and gas grilles.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The neighborhood was called Raintree Forest, which didn’t sound so much like a real place as much as it did a feminine deodorant product. The mirage of better schools and of a better life dissipated into a reality which included finding a private school to accommodate my daughters' needs which had been so well met in Nashville’s school system. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The neighborhood was pleasant, but not vibrant. The house was big and beautiful, but lacked character. It had no history other than the sad story we would bequeath to these walls. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">After the split, which I’ve written about elsewhere, E was smart enough to seek out humbler digs. I felt like selling the house would bring one change too many for the kids’ already rollicking world. I wound up staying in the big house, as it were, and indeed the sprawling 4,000 foot house was more of a prison than a home. I went through seasons of indecision about staying or selling, and when I finally decided to let go, the property had lost an amazing amount of money.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">My real estate agent gave me the bad news- “You’ll need to short sell”, she said. Suddenly, the trajectory of an adulthood of buying, selling, and upward mobility brought me to the bottom. Years ago, when we bought our first home, we had barely imagined being <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">home owners</i>. 27 years later, I hadn’t imagined a day coming when I would once again be a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">renter</i>.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">In the process of selling, I received a notice from a collections attorney whose name was so ridiculously close to the word <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">cheater</i>, I had to laugh. This particular cheater was trying to saddle me with thousands of dollars in attorney fees that didn’t add up. "Cheater" was well-known in the real estate and banking community, and no one was arguing with the uncanniness of his surname. Somehow, I was led to a person who helped me to get out from under the shadow of a lawsuit, but I still shudder at the precariousness of the situation. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">A contract on my home finally materialized, and I started looking around for a new place to live. The first place I looked at had its possibilities. It was about 2/3 the size of my first house in Sylvan Park, and the rent was three times my old mortgage payment.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I continued looking, and while I felt good about the possibility of being debt-free, and tried to embrace the idea of starting over, the American Dream’s indelible thumbprint had pressed long and hard into my psyche. I felt overwhelmed by what I didn’t know, and thought of how impressive my stock portfolio <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">wasn’t</i>. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">In the meantime, friends from Colorado had signed me up for a daily quote from a monk named Richard Rohr. Every day, it seemed as if Richard were reminding me that ownership was a myth and that I might as well let go of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">everything</i>. I’d go to sleep at night and wonder if, like Jesus, I would wind up with a rock for a pillow. This wasn’t what I’d signed up for, but in my heart I knew that the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">American Dream</i> had never been my dream.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">My Southern Born Woman was encouraging and sweet, affirming who I was, not what I’d accomplished, yet hopeful that my aspirations and efforts at rebuilding my material life would pay off.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">One afternoon after leaving her place, I couldn’t find my prescription Ray Ban™ Wayfarers, the nicest sunglasses I’ve ever owned. Without flinching, I had sold vintage guitars that meant the world to me, rare old Ludwig drums that I’d never see the likes of again, and even the beautiful piano I’d written a few bona fide hit songs on, but somehow losing those replaceable Ray Bans was a sad thing to me. They’d been around the world with me, and (let’s face it), gave me some needed cool factor in the face of my uncool circumstances.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I drove as the sun sank low, and I pulled the visor down and squinted. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I’m in the middle of a short sale, and I’m sad about my sunglasses! What’s wrong with this picture?</i> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">As is often the case with lost key rings and glasses, they turned up a few hours later under the passenger seat of my car. I was overjoyed, frankly. They’re prescription glasses, i.e., expensive; and they only work for me. Anyone who finds them, assuming I lose them again, will just get a headache from wearing them. (But they will look cool.)</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">A few days later, my Dearest Companion and I walked to the Belcourt Theater, a landmark in Nashville’s Hillsboro Village. We watched “Of Gods and Men”, a beautiful film about the Martyrs of Atlas, 7 monks who were martyred in Algeria in 1996. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Watching the portrayal of their life of simplicity, and the wholesome affection these brothers had for each other, was almost disturbing in its beauty. In contrast to my downsizing from 4,000 square feet to 1600, here were men living in small cells, silently going about their menial tasks, and ministering to the small Muslim community with medical aid and other comforts. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">In one beautiful scene, one of the brothers walks into the kitchen where the others are waiting to eat. He opens two bottles of red wine, and blasts Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake on a cassette player. The joy of communion, of sharing a common cup, elicits laughter and beaming smiles from brother to brother, yet as the music gains intensity, tears of joy mingle with tears of loss, tears of the inevitable, ultimate Letting Go.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I’m writing these words midway through Lent, at which time I’ve chosen to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">let go</i> of alcohol, fried food, and sugar. I’ve never enjoyed the burn of club soda as much as in the last few weeks. I’ve never enjoyed a “feast day” (Sundays or Holy Days) as much as in this particular Lent, when a taste of Bushmill’s isn’t taken for granted, but savored and sipped and contemplated.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">There are times when I’ve flat out given up Lent for Lent. Let’s face it; it’s a miracle that I have anything to do with “organized religion” after all the years of punching the clock in Sunday School, youth group, Wednesday night church, and a childhood of Sundays voiding out fun. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">This year, I’m embracing Lent like it’s a brother monk come to teach me something of the Spirit. There’s a sensitivity that the self-imposed lacking has rewarded me with. Tomorrow, I might be my brash, carpetbagger self, but today, I’m listening. My Dearest Companion has spoken wisely of these days of letting go. “Baby, you’re going through a death, and what better time than Lent? Soon enough, Easter will be here”. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I’m looking forward to Easter, at which time I am going to get sick on a few morsels of chocolate. I’m going to take my Dearest Companion to the park before the sun comes up, and we will spread a Tennessee Titans blanket on the damp grass that overlooks a wide field, with a hilly backdrop, which will slowly glow blue to green to orange to yellow as we ponder the Resurrection of Jesus, and the power tangled up with letting go.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I’ll fire up the Coleman Stove (which I guess I won’t be letting go of) and I’ll cook bacon and eggs over its blue flame while she reads me <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Times</i> or Flannery O’Connor, or better yet, a poem of her own. Who knows, maybe we’ll bring the Book of Common Prayer just to organize things a bit. Maybe I’ll be done with letting go, for a season, and no doubt, we’ll lift a glass of Bushmill’s to our broken stories, while we’re thinking of Resurrection. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">And perhaps for a moment, we will bask in the joy of love and communion, and of not keeping up with the Joneses, while a tear falls, unseen behind my sunglasses.</div></div>Phil Madeirahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09541966641322415672noreply@blogger.com20tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8465368768809741489.post-31824501059521821882011-03-16T21:22:00.001-05:002011-03-17T01:34:28.979-05:00The Times They Are A-Changin’<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjP0mlER6hazLLt0N05khRIUrbst649TuUToHf7t5ZvgiEa5BFQCpVhmQoAsGFd2UXCe9A_SSG_jC8Z-3xF87yWK9k0lCAwAZRQFQE_OaMXkFIMaOQGfB6emQvAtWX2kd592WNecx3-Zmk/s1600/Woody-woodpecker-title-card.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="242" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjP0mlER6hazLLt0N05khRIUrbst649TuUToHf7t5ZvgiEa5BFQCpVhmQoAsGFd2UXCe9A_SSG_jC8Z-3xF87yWK9k0lCAwAZRQFQE_OaMXkFIMaOQGfB6emQvAtWX2kd592WNecx3-Zmk/s320/Woody-woodpecker-title-card.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal">In Tennessee, a late February Sunday morning brings with it a number of certainties.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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<ul><li><span style="font: normal normal normal 7pt/normal 'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span> </span>The weather will be uncertain. It may fool Nashvillians into thinking Spring has arrived, or it might pelt us with furious and icy raindrops, and remind us that we shouldn’t really do any hoping until March.</li>
<li><br />
</li>
<li> The New York Times will lay, wrapped in blue plastic, on my dearest companion’s front walk. If I’m in the neighborhood, I’ll carry the Times into her house, separate its many sections, and read our favorite columns aloud in a particular order.</li>
<li><br />
</li>
<li><span style="font: normal normal normal 7pt/normal 'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span> </span>Most of the South will be in church. </li>
<li><br />
</li>
<li><span style="font: normal normal normal 7pt/normal 'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span> </span>I will, in all likelihood, not be.</li>
</ul><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The Sunday Times is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">the</i> newspaper, of course. When I was a newspaper boy in Barrington, Rhode Island, I had one or two customers who wanted the Sunday Times, in addition to the heavy Providence Sunday Journal. In those days, it was 50 cents. The Sunday Journal was 35. My brother and I each had a paper route, and if we’d gotten along better in those days, we might have realized that we had a monopoly in the neighborhood. Who knows what possibilities that would have led to? </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Dave was clearly the better paperboy. He was organized, and competent, with his mind on the work at hand. I doubt that he took more than an hour a day to get his papers delivered.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I, on the other hand, took my time, waylaid by a friend here or there, occasionally even paying a neighbor girl named Carole 25¢ to finish the job for me. My mind was on music, drums in particular, and I marched to the cadence of a waking dream, mindless about the papers I delivered.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The paper route was the vehicle by which my parents assumed I would finally learn responsibility and organization. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I might have learned something. I just can’t remember what.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Sunday mornings, long before Dad was getting ready for church, Dave and I were out on our bikes, filling chrome baskets with fat newspapers, careful lest we tear them on the woven wire. Once torn, a marred newspaper would be reserved for a non-tipping or generally grouchy customer. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">My least favorite customer was Mrs. Lewis over on Brook Street, whose side porch was a toxic container of cat stench and cigarette smoke. Sometimes, the odor would be so completely overpowering that I couldn’t stand in her house long enough to wait for her to count out the 42 cents for her Monday through Friday subscription. Her terrible lack of hygiene paid off, for her, I guess. I always saved the most ragged newspaper for her.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Another customer, whose name thankfully escapes me, had a small but dreadfully violent dog, probably named something innocuous – Fluffy or Bubbles. Every time I would approach its house the dog would charge me. Once, it bit me, tearing my pant leg and the skin on my thigh. The owner came out and cheerily said, “Oh, he doesn’t mean anything.” I yelled, “He BIT ME!,” to which she said melodiously, “Oh, of course he didn’t”. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">On winter days in Barrington, you could expect snow, and on snowy Sunday mornings, my father would wake with his sons, lower the tailgate of his Ford station wagon, and drive us through the deep and drifting snow. We would ride on the tailgate with stacks of Sunday Journals, jumping off and back on, quite literally relaying the news.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Those were good days, which still bond me to my father and my brother. Dad was delivering something of a message to his sons, as we delivered the news.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">All those years ago, I never perceived myself as a messenger, carrying the Sunday Journal to sleeping customers. Indeed, we are all messengers of one thing or another.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I don’t know if such a thing as a newspaper boy still exists. Someone delivers The Times to my dearest companion, but I suspect it’s a grown person who needs the extra income, not a boy saving for a new set of drums.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Newspapers are shrinking in size and in circulation. The smell of newsprint, the scanning for a favorite column, folding the pages in a particular way, the sound of a rustling paper- moments our senses take for granted- they are already from an age past, heaped upon the junk pile of yesterday with the scratching sound of a vinyl record, the static of a transistor radio, and the mechanical sound of a radio dial.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Damn, we are getting old. I wonder if our grandparents came to mourn the absence of clippity clops on cobblestone streets? I wonder if my mother misses the crackling sound of electric streetcars; (I can remember that sound, which I identify with the city Providence, but not enough for it to have made a real footprint on my aural landscape). </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I miss the sound of recording tape running off the spool, flapping wildly, wreaking havoc. I miss the sound of tiny hammers whacking ink onto white paper as typewriter keys are being struck, the imperfect rhythm of a furious mind at work.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Things change.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Yet, some people don’t. I think about Mrs. Lewis in her stagnant sty on Brook Street, cigarette butts piled high in receptacles on her closed in porch. What a metaphor! <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Closed In Porch</i> sounds like a Tennessee Williams title. And the clueless dog owner, unwilling to see the evidence that her pooch had indeed bit me. It’s odd to me that the recluses and the clueless even want a paper, although Mrs. Lewis’ cats certainly could have made use of it.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Roll over Beethoven and tell Tchaikovksy the news. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">On a recent Fat Tuesday morning, I was startled awake by an incessant knocking on my bedroom wall. It was early, and I was groggy, but I recognized the haphazard rhythm of a woodpecker, insistently head-banging, something that I would, of course, take personally.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I pondered as he pounded. I wondered about God’s creature visiting my home, and I decided to embrace this quite natural occurrence with a sense of spiritual openness. No, the woodpecker wasn’t prophesying, but I took its knocking as a friendly wake-up call to seize the day, to expect a full measure of effort from myself and to listen to the world around me. And what better timing than for Woody to be knocking away on the day before Lent, that season in which my senses would be heightened, and I might be at my most contemplative and receptive.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Just the fact, that I didn’t get out my pump-action Daisy air rifle and end the hammering signified that perhaps I was still in flux, still changing, shifting, and embracing another way to look at life. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I sent a haiku about my morning visitor to my Southern Born Woman, who promptly researched the meaning of the species in mythology and folklore. Among those who pay attention to the family of animals, woodpeckers symbolize the need to allow for a change of attitude, and the embracing of opportunity and creativity. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">It wouldn’t be the first time an animal has taught me something; you may have read other chapters in which I speak of the horse or the owl quietly reminding me that my journey is not over; there is more to learn and more to change.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">So perhaps, I could learn from this tenacious, insistent creature, to keep knocking on doors, to continue to pursue dreams and excellence, to strive for those who depend on me, and to stay open-minded.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Good morning, Brother Woodpecker. I’m listening.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div>Phil Madeirahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09541966641322415672noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8465368768809741489.post-12845395103456909932010-12-10T12:12:00.001-06:002010-12-17T16:36:18.831-06:00The Full Monty<div class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh98IZyoXBFeCZKMksFLWdnsOmD8uW7XwpT503uPpa0dkFY5cmhXPj2MaFamjX3-wsafQYQLWnacnrKip-29REgUxJGA15VfIs1_UA1XTRF1K5PfvhXk0x2CgQPZOzZJpSMyHtSRZmZun4/s1600/3-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh98IZyoXBFeCZKMksFLWdnsOmD8uW7XwpT503uPpa0dkFY5cmhXPj2MaFamjX3-wsafQYQLWnacnrKip-29REgUxJGA15VfIs1_UA1XTRF1K5PfvhXk0x2CgQPZOzZJpSMyHtSRZmZun4/s320/3-1.jpg" width="210" /></a>I sat in a Nashville coffee shop, the one across from the library, waiting for a meeting with someone who had apparently found better things to do. I had secured a quiet table near the back, away from the ceiling speakers which were playing “Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands” as people my children’s age sipped sweet mocha drinks and laughed in sardonic tones, void of joy, evoking a dark, flatly cynical melody which curled through the shop like steam off a dragon’s tongue.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Waiting, I toyed with my Blackberry™, hoping for a positive sign from my wayward appointment.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I heard a low voice asking, “May I join you?” in a French accent. I could hardly refuse; my table was large enough for several people and the one available seat was being held for my meeting. I said, “Well, I have someone coming, but, sure, have a seat until he arrives. By the way, I’m Phil”.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“Bon Soir, Phil. I am Edmund.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Interested, I said, “Nashville has many citizens of foreign blood, but I can’t say I have ever encountered a Frenchman here before. Are you from Quebec?”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“Non, mon ami, I am from Marseilles, France.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“Well, mon frère, I’ve done a lot of traveling, but as far as France goes, I’ve only been to Calais, and that was just a ferry stop on the way to Belgium. I would love to see Paris someday.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“Ah, yes, Paris. Well, it has changed considerably since I was last there. I hear I wouldn’t recognize it.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Realizing my meeting was never going to happen, I asked if I could buy Edmund a coffee.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“Oh, no, thanks, it’s on me”, he said, summoning the barista. “Please, two caffe au laits”.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“Yes, Mr Dantès”.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Dantès? “You must be named for the protagonist in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Count of Monte Cristo</i>”, I said.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“Oh, no, my friend, I <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">am</i> The Count of Monte Cristo; I’m Edmund Dantès”.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">What amazing luck to be drinking coffee with one of my favorite literary characters!</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I told him that I had become aware of his story as a young boy, reading a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Classics Illustrated</i> comic book of Alexander Dumas’ wonderful book. I had never forgotten the pictures of Edmund tunneling through the prison rock, hoping to escape, only to meet another would-be escapee, the Abbé Faria, an old priest. The comic tickled my fancy, swashbuckling and escapist, and centered on revenge.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I don’t know how old I was when I finally read the actual novel, but I have read it several times over the years.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Now, here I sat with the richest man of his time, the Bill Gates of the 19<sup>th</sup> Century. I wondered if he had any interest in making a record; he could solve all my financial problems, and if he had any semblance of talent, the technology of 21<sup>st </sup>Century Nashville could make him a star, as it had plenty of mediocre singers.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“You know, Ed”, I said, “Your story is remarkable. I mean, you were a very naïve sailor who trusted some very evil people. Ironically, it was your naiveté which got you into prison, Prison, hardship, failure, and misfortune led you to becoming educated, and to your treasure, your fortune, and fame.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“True. No one learns much from comfort, my friend. But isn’t it funny? I went from being a man who believed in the goodness of humanity to a man who very nearly ruined myself by becoming obsessed with power and vengeance, the worst traits of humanity. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I was given a choice between repaying evil with evil or taking the higher road of forgiveness. I chose to repay evil in kind. Despite my wealth and fame, I carry a burden of remorse."</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“Okay, Ed”, I conceded, “Humanity is fallen, that’s a given. None of us are perfect. But it seems to me that you got lucky. You didn’t have your moment of repentance until you’d avenged yourself against every one of those bastards who’d put you into prison. I mean, you got richer than sin, killed all the bad guys off, and then had your ‘come to Jesus’ moment. So, even though you’re one of my heroes of literature, it’s kind of hard to totally sympathize with how your story ended.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“Sir, would you care to see the scars on my back? Alas, what I wouldn’t give to have not gone to jail and been tortured for 14 years. What I wouldn’t give to have just kept the girl in the beginning of my story, lived a simple, modest sailor’s life, and died an old man with loving grandchildren and children gathered around. Instead, I had to lose my woman, my Mercédès, to my supposed best friend, who hated me all along. You know, Philippe, betrayal leaves a deep gash in one’s soul. Have you been betrayed?”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Hmm. I didn’t know about that. I guess everyone’s been betrayed, haven’t they? Haven’t we all experienced the fallout of The Fall? Sure, I’ve been stiffed, I’ve been sued, and I’ve been wrongly accused. (I’ve been rightly accused, too, by the way.) But I haven’t suffered, really suffered, and I don’t know many who have. I spent a night in jail for hitchhiking one time, and the sheriff purposely left the window outside the cell open in the middle of January, just to be mean, but I’ve never suffered in the way Edmund Dantès had. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Edmund ordered up two more decaf lattes, and some gluten free cookies as well. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Now was as good a time as any.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“So, Ed. How much of the treasure is left? You were a sailor who found a lot of dough; I’m just wondering if you were good with money or if you were more like a trailer park guy winning the lottery?”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Turns out, Edmund Dantès had learned a thing or two in prison. The Abbé had taught him several languages, mathematics, economics, and ethics, long before he revealed the secret treasure of Monte Cristo. Edmund used this education to economically ruin his adversaries; there was suicide and murder involved. I assume he got better grades in Calculus than in Ethics. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">It occurred to me that perhaps he was still living because he’d paid for the services of a magician, a witch, an alchemist, or wizard to keep him alive for a few hundred years. Of course, I asked.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“No, my friend. I live across the street. But it gets stuffy in there, and it’s so bloody quiet with all the shushing and four-eyed glaring, that I often come here and see if anyone will remember me. Alas, it’s quite rare to find anyone who reads these days, never mind someone who’s read my story.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“Yeah, well, there’s the movie, right?” I asked.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Edmund’s eyebrows raised, owl-ish, and he just whispered, “Please” in an exasperated tone.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“ Sorry, man.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">With that, he made his way back to the library, while I sat in disbelief.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Why has that story held me for so many years? </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I like this man, who fights against impossible odds and wins. Who doesn’t like the idea of finding and having more money than God? Likewise, I don’t mind that justice finds his old enemies and has its way with them, as justice isn’t altogether a bad thing. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">My own story is one of redemption, plain and simple. It’s unfolding as I go, and I’m not writing it, but I am turning the pages, and I do have something to say about what the protagonist does. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Does he find his treasure? Indeed, he’s found it in the love he gives and the love he receives.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">What about revenge? Does he get revenge? Well, I’ve thought about my “enemies” and the vengeance that might be fun to have on those who’ve burned me or mine, and to be honest, I like me better when I’m letting go of old foes. The scars have a better chance of healing and disappearing if I don’t speak of them. If I can come to a place of imaging they never existed, perhaps they’ll completely heal.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Does he win in the end? Indeed, I can assure you, he does. I’m not leaving without a fight. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">In the meantime, I’ll have another latte.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div>Phil Madeirahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09541966641322415672noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8465368768809741489.post-14974004225909935542010-11-12T23:52:00.012-06:002010-11-13T07:04:47.400-06:00Maw-Tucket<div style="font: 14.0px Arial; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7oPMYzVZN6Ejm8T1zRyRBlirIK92VVf8V2rrpA_wgz9U3hZRNturebAaXoPjgEheYEM7DnnZ_hxvbuvEGbwpJZAqxdonlMxbV4GwmLhBSI_jK8PBLRXqbO-woWS1PZS5WBl8TW1zeb3w/s1600/6a00e54ed05fc28833011570faaf88970c-800wi.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7oPMYzVZN6Ejm8T1zRyRBlirIK92VVf8V2rrpA_wgz9U3hZRNturebAaXoPjgEheYEM7DnnZ_hxvbuvEGbwpJZAqxdonlMxbV4GwmLhBSI_jK8PBLRXqbO-woWS1PZS5WBl8TW1zeb3w/s320/6a00e54ed05fc28833011570faaf88970c-800wi.jpg" width="216" /></a></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">I'm writing in a chilly hotel room in New England on a fine November day, after having just had a good walk with Rickie and Bryan, two of my bandmates in The Red Dirt Boys. With Thanksgiving just around the corner, and with so much to be thankful for, holiday or not, I'm thinking about thankfulness.</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">This quote from GK Chesterton is something I might apply more heartily to my good life:</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></div><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink.”</span></span></blockquote><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Summer 1974, I was home in Rhode Island, trying to earn a little money before heading back to Taylor University for my junior year. I got a job at Hasbro, the toy manufacturer in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. </span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">It's pronounced </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Puh-tucket</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">, by the way. I remember when the Pawtucket Red Sox came to play the Nashville Sounds some years back, and a Sounds fan was jeering the boys from Rhode Island.</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">"Hey Paw-tucket!! Where's Maw-tucket?" I guess it could have been worse.</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Pawtucket is an industrial city just north of Providence. The Industrial Revolution in America started there with Samuel Slater's Mill. </span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">I was working the second shift, 4pm to 11pm, on an assembly line making accessories for the popular GI Joe dolls. A vocal opponent of the Viet Nam War, it was an ironic job to have, making weapons of mass destruction for GI Joe, with his popular Kung Fu grip. </span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Aware of the irony, I went home one night, and sat at my mother's grand piano, and wrote a Christmas Ballad called "GI Joe", about all the little children who'd be receiving him and his accessories on the birthday of the Prince of Peace. It was a nod to two of my heroes, Jesus and Randy Newman.</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Now, </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">there's</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"> a pair.</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">My job was to drill a hole and insert a screw into a piece of plastic, the end product of which I can't remember. It was the worst job on the assembly line, not quite enough work for two people, but a little too much for one, at least it seemed so to me. The conveyor belt would bring gray pieces of plastic to me faster than I could send them along to the next person, and before I knew it, I was backed up and buried by these non-descript parts.</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Most of the people on the line were speaking Portuguese, and only they and God Almighty knew what they were yelling at me. Eventually, the line supervisor would come to my aid, inserting the screws while I vigorously drilled holes. It was endless and futile. Alas, I was not in the same echelon as Rosie the Riveter. </span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">After my first shift at the new job, I went home discouraged. I couldn't imagine surviving a summer of being the slowest drone at Hasbro. Here I was, a college educated, well-traveled and literate young man, being humbled by illiterate immigrants who had a way with plastic. </span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">I told my parents that I didn't think I could last for long; that either I'd give up on Hasbro or Hasbro would give up on me. Either way, I'd be a Hasbro has-been.</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">My mother suggested that I read a book by a Pentecostal preacher named Merlin Carrothers. I cringed, naturally. I've been cringing for many years now, with the book suggestions from dear old Mom. "Have you read the John Stott devotional I bawt you fuh Chrismiss yet? I sent one to the President; I wunduh if he's read it."</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">It's hard enough finding time to read the books I want to read, never mind the ones she thinks I should read. However, on this hot summer night, reflecting on a summer of futile hole-drilling, I was desperate enough to give some consideration to my mother's literary suggestions.</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Reading a book by a Pentecostal would be a stretch, but the name Merlin must have softened me to the idea. Maybe some </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">deep magic</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"> was at work. After all, a guy named Merlin can't be all bad.</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">The book was called "From Prison to Praise", just one of many "Praise" titles the good Merlin had written in his literary career. Merlin's magic spell was really a scripture verse: </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">In all things give thanks</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">. He believed one should literally thank God for everything in their lives, no matter how terrible those things were.</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">He would cite story after story of people whose difficult lives were transformed by thankfulness. Torn-up lives would somehow be restored by the resolute speaking of the words "thank you"; practitioners of this rite would often move from the worst of circumstances to the best.</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">I'm sure Merlin was praising God Almighty all the way to the bank.</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Nonetheless, it remains a radical idea, doesn't it? </span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span> </span> </div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Yet, the belief that God is involved with the details of our lives raises more questions than it does answers. Something good happens to me and I say "Thank God"; maybe I just missed getting broad-sided by a drunk driver, or maybe I just made a killing in song-writing royalties. "Glory to God in the highest!." But then the person who </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">did</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"> get broad-sided comes to mind, and, on the one hand, "Thank God it was him not me", but on the other... Is the victim's family saying "Thank God"? If I could understand the ways of God, I suppose I'd </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">be</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"> God.</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Dreadful things can happen in this world of ours, things which make us feel so far from God Almighty's care, things which make Existentialism seem palatable. The idea that God is involved in the details has always been with me; I was raised with it. As a bald man, I chuckle at the scripture verse which says, "He numbers the hairs on my head". No big deal, Lord.</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span> </span> </div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Thinking about a summer on the assembly line, I had few options.</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">So, there I sat reading story after story about miserable circumstances shifting in the light of the words "Thank you". And I was miserable enough at my Hasbro workbench to begin meditating on the praise of God Almighty. I started my second day on the second shift with a will to thank God for my job. For the next 7 hours, I kept my mind busy with the words "Thank you, Jesus". It is an odd remembrance, the willful occupation of my thoughts with the goodness of God, because, frankly, I've GD'd unpleasant situations more than not. I say this not with pride, but as a matter of fact. I'm not some stellar Christian with a Sola Gloria attitude.</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Back at the drill press, with the praise of God repeating silently in my mind, nothing seemed to change. The concrete floor didn't get any more comfortable under my Converse All Stars. I didn't get any faster and the conveyor belt didn't slow down. The gray plastic pieces would start crowding up as workers down the line tapped their fingers. In my mind, </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">I thought, well, this is ridiculous, but thank you, Lord, that I'm in a job I'm unsuited for, and that it's not going great</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">. </span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span> </span> </div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Whether it was Providence or just Industry watching out for itself, my little Portuguese supervisor would come to my aid, and catch me up with the assembly line. </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">It must be working</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">, I thought, and I'd keep on thanking.</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Friday morning came with a new job offer from a man at Dad's church- Bob Glover. I was offered the job of a laborer for the construction firm that Bob was a foreman for. </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">God be praised</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">, I could kiss Hasbro good bye, and I did. I can't remember, but I probably didn't even bother showing up for the second shift to say "You can't fire me, I quit!". I was happy to move on, and of course, I thanked God, and decided that Merlin's spell worked.</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">I enjoyed working construction so much that it never occurred to me to continue my newfound rite of thankfulness. It was as if annunciating the words "Thank you" were a spell which I no longer needed. (It would seem that we learn little from good outcomes, although I would hope that's not really true. Perhaps with some reflection, my lesson has become clear after three decades of cloudiness on the subject.)</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">I recently read, and unfortunately can't remember where, that God is well-suited to receive praise. It isn't neediness which causes the Almighty to desire our thanks; but perhaps it's just as simple as God's </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">deservedness</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">. When we narrowly escape from the speeding car, to whom else do we give our gratitude, whether an Almighty Hand was involved or not? The life which God gives us continues for another sunrise, another day of enjoying the beauty of the earth, of enjoying the companionship of friends, and another day to bask in the delirium of love.</span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Back on the assembly line, where nothing seemed any different, perhaps the most unlikely of changes was indeed occurring, the slight smoothing over of the rocky terrain of my own heart. </span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 14.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></div><div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">And if that's the case, may wonders never cease.</span></span></div>Phil Madeirahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09541966641322415672noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8465368768809741489.post-67501673103183022092010-10-31T22:19:00.000-05:002010-10-31T22:19:19.129-05:00Horse Sense<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDBMGByMPgWkUxsP1YIR0ab7iAQai2SSVktK4lq-jlDElcEDytFf8xpl7xeWsK1rlO8XKRtCn9MNqZ0NIQc9pRQbX-tWESMqkT8G0zkvbTqeA3qMpMgEKU-r-NRhGrk811cR48RbCnrjI/s1600/MyPicture.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDBMGByMPgWkUxsP1YIR0ab7iAQai2SSVktK4lq-jlDElcEDytFf8xpl7xeWsK1rlO8XKRtCn9MNqZ0NIQc9pRQbX-tWESMqkT8G0zkvbTqeA3qMpMgEKU-r-NRhGrk811cR48RbCnrjI/s320/MyPicture.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Phil Bailey must have been one hell of a guy, because my parents gave their third born child his name. That's all I know about him; I've got his name. Nothing else. He faded away with the state of Maine in Dad's rear view mirror on my parents' move to New Hampshire, and all that I remember are some vague stories about pranks and outhouses from days long before my time.</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">I had a baby sitter named Pricilla Ferrin who called me "Flip", much to my chagrin. "Philip!" I would retort to no avail. Pricilla was a character- very funny and witty and sweet, and I'm sure if I saw her all these years later, she would still call me "Flip", but now I'd take it a little better. She married a mortician named Karl, and I've no doubt that she nicknames every cadaver that rolls through their doors. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">I'm "Phil" to about 99 percent of those who know me. Those who call me “Philip” are either related or are truly intimate friends, except for one guy named Daniel, who calls everyone their Christian name in a condescending fashion. I call him “Dan”.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">I have grown into my name, but as a young boy, I was jealous of my brother David, who was named for my father. To make me feel better about the situation, my father told me that my name was a great name, and that it was fitting for a boy who liked horses as much as I did. Philip, you see, is Greek for "lover of horses". </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Indeed, the horse has always been my favorite animal. As a boy, along with pictures of Sherman tanks, pirate ships, guns, and airplanes, I was constantly illustrating my schoolwork with horses. Somewhere in a box of boyhood treasures I have a small plastic white horse, a keepsake from a large set of Revolutionary War soldiers that Dave and I played with. It's scratched up and imbedded with dirt from the constant handling of a red-blooded American boy's hands.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Our father grew up on a farm in Pennsylvania, and shared a horse named Tony with his brother Gene. I used to think what a marvelous thing it was that my Dad grew up riding horses. Sometimes, armed with a bunch of carrots, he'd pull his car up beside a horse in a random pasture, and feed it with his bare hand, which seemed brave at the time, but Dad knew horses. He loved all animals, but like me, had a soft spot for Brother Horse.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">In 1964, our family took a cross-country trip from Rhode Island to Los Angeles and back. It took 5 weeks, and it was the greatest trip of my boyhood. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Riding in Dad's brand new, metallic blue Chevy Bel Air wagon, we saw America's wonders- the Grand Canyon, the Grand Tetons, the Mississippi River, and Disneyland. I have many wonderful memories of our odyssey, but the one that involves a horse is from Utah's Zion National Park.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Camping there for a day or two, my parents sent Dave and I on a horseback riding adventure- a trail ride up the walls of Zion Canyon. We zig-zagged our way up the side of a sheer cliff on sturdy horses, sure-footed and reliable. At one point, high above our starting point, David's horse reared, spooked by a snake. He was all of 14, and hung on for dear life. He was shaken, but he lived to tell about it, and it made our shared adventure a much more interesting story. Such are the moments that make big brothers heroic.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Two years later, I was 14, and my parents had sent me to Camp Brookwoods in New Hampshire. At the time, going to camp for a month was my reward for getting passing grades in 8th grade. Now, I realize that my parents were the ones being rewarded by the absence of their beloved black sheep. It was a well-deserved break.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Brookwoods was full of upper class boys in Izod shirts, boys with more money in their savings accounts than my dad made in a year. Like many well-to-do camps, there were stables there, and horseback riding was an available activity. Western style was beneath Brookwoods; we learned the proper "English" method, on saddles with no horns to hold on to.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">I was assigned a large palomino, 16 hands high, named Butternut. He was quiet and easy, and the tallest horse I've ever been on. Every day of that long, hot July, I would amble from some sleepy activity- making lanyards or wallets- and find my way to the stable to see my old friend Butternut. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">To say I had a way with horses would be an enormous lie. I believe Butternut had a way with me, patient and bemused, much like Bree in CS Lewis' </span><i style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The Horse and His Boy</i><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">. He never threw me, reared, or acted up. Maybe he was too old to care; one hoof on a banana peel and the other in the glue factory, but if a horse can be kind and forgiving of a slow learning boy, Butternut certainly was. We had a riding instructor, but Butternut was the real teacher.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">When I was in college, I took a semester of horseback riding for phys ed. It was fun saddling my horse, and galloping through the open fields of Nowhere, Indiana, the wind blowing through my hair- yes, I had hair then. These critters had some life in them, and it was a thrill to feel the horse beneath me, surging forward with a gentle nudge of my heels, and riding like the wind.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">It's been a long time since I hoisted myself onto the strong back of a horse. I can't even remember when that might have been. But horses will always catch my eye, perhaps knowing my name, <i>Lover of Horses</i>.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">It's that affection for Horse that makes one shameful story all the more ironic and sad.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">We'd been snowed in for a few days, a rare event in Nashville. On the first day of the snow, my friend Tom Howard passed away, but that is a story I've told elsewhere in this collection of tales. After a day or two, Nashville dug itself out, as it always does. My Southern Born Woman and I decided to drive out to one of the many parks that dot Nashville's borders. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">We made our way slowly up and down the single lane drive, and rounded the bend finding ourselves grille to grille with a large pickup truck towing a horse trailer going the wrong way on a one-way road.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">I was annoyed. A woman got out of the passenger side, and was hoping to wave me past the truck, but I wasn't going anywhere; I had no idea what lay under the leaves and snow on the side of the road, and didn't feel like scraping the belly of my car on some hidden sharp rock. </span><i style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Besides</i><span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">,</span> I thought, </span><i style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">what is with these self-entitled people thinking they can drag their asses and their horse the wrong way up this narrow road? </i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">I was too annoyed to care about the woman's story of rescuing their horse, and of having to drive the wrong way for whatever reason. Hey, for all I know, it was just a story, right? </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Of course, my genteel, properly raised passenger was aghast that my first thought wasn't to help them. I sat, not moving, for what seemed like minutes, because of the inconvenience to me, and then finally, half-arriving at my senses (not fully, mind you), proceeded over the road's shoulder with no damage to my car, but plenty to my soul.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">It was an event that she and I thankfully didn't speak of for quite some time. I didn't wish to remember it; I had enough self-awareness to know I'd been an ass, and just wanted to move on.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Some months passed, and we found ourselves discussing why I would be so inordinately put out with these people and their horse. It was a moment of utter shame for me, bitter and poignant and embarrassing, yet potentially pivotal and life-changing. I was repentant and remorseful. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">A week doesn't go by in which I don't think about the horse incident. The impact of my own selfishness on that winter afternoon continues to be real, and continues to reveal truth to me about the human heart, and about the ways nature can speak to the human condition.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Of note is that, in this unfortunate episode, I never laid eyes on Brother Horse or Sister Horse. For all I know, perhaps that trailer carried the progeny of my old friend Butternut, who'd been such a gracious teacher to me as a young boy. Whatever the case, once again, Horse was teaching me a lesson.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">As I now think on that noble beast of burden, I wonder of my own burdens, and which of them would weigh enough to make such a beastly man of me on that cold Sunday afternoon. Meditating on Brother Horse, I think of the dignity with which every horse carries itself, even under the greatest of loads. And again, I wonder, what burden do I carry whose size leaves no room for me to walk with dignity? </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">It's said that a tamed horse, returning to the wild, quickly sheds the habits of domestication. With freedom, The Wild returns to the horse, who remembers its true nature. No longer a beast of burden, Brother Horse runs free and noble, spirited and joyous.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">I wonder what happened to the horse in that trailer. Sometimes I fantasize that it was set free in some beautiful meadow, never again to feel the weight of so much as a saddle blanket or the cold steel shock of a bridle's bit. And I pray, <i><span style="font-family: inherit;">Love, free me of the burdens of selfishness and pride, let me run with dignity and beauty, but keep the bridle close at hand</span></i>.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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</div>Phil Madeirahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09541966641322415672noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8465368768809741489.post-28138217009063891852010-07-30T14:09:00.001-05:002010-07-31T14:13:31.389-05:00The Chick Upstairs<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9URszWlXLNYJad61HFpfEH94Std2hWmnfOS_nymLo0e-FjJkCdHAxyeY0q_BCWjEGffMbLhXJTQMtEPkRvgY-oZ1hKaZ0-GDXtAjNrDHV5rg8W69_rPRRr8J34-C63_WxUar7CqSWDas/s1600/8523_191918078635_597898635_3973928_5698683_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9URszWlXLNYJad61HFpfEH94Std2hWmnfOS_nymLo0e-FjJkCdHAxyeY0q_BCWjEGffMbLhXJTQMtEPkRvgY-oZ1hKaZ0-GDXtAjNrDHV5rg8W69_rPRRr8J34-C63_WxUar7CqSWDas/s320/8523_191918078635_597898635_3973928_5698683_n.jpg" /></a></div>God knows she’s a mystery. She plays like a song in my head that I can’t turn off, because I’m still wrapping my mind around its meaning and its structure. She’s a complex blues tune, beyond 3 chords and the truth. She’s a melody that rolls like “Georgia On My Mind” or “Send Me Someone to Love”. And her lyric, well, don’t ask me. Maybe she taught Dylan his stuff, and William Blake, too.<br />
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She defines passion. She’s got a temper, fiery and hot, but not before her graceful patience is pushed to the edge of reason. Occasionally, regret drives her to extremes, but the immensity of her heart somehow reins in her contradictions; try as I might, I can’t find fault with her. <br />
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And Lord, she’s got a killer sense of humor. <br />
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She’s as understanding as only a mother can be. Sometimes I imagine her asking, “Philip, where did you come from anyway?”, as my own mother used to ask when baffled by her bluesman son’s antics. But this woman knows the path of my pilgrimage better than anyone, because she has walked every mile of it, often leading the way, often warily tagging along. She appreciates when I stop and ask for directions, but knows that more often than not, I’ll go all male on her and seek to find my destination without help.<br />
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She’s all-loving, but never doting. Omnipresent, but not annoyingly so. She’ll give you all the space you want.<br />
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And, Lord, she’s handy, like a good shade tree mechanic. She’ll repair that aching engine of mine every so often, cooling it down just by laying her hand on my heart.<br />
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God Almighty. The Chick Upstairs.<br />
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In truth, I call Her “Him” because my picture of God is decidedly paternal. Growing up with a reasonable and loving dad never made the masculine image of God anything but good to my eyes. My mother and her mother before her wouldn’t have engendered my trust for a feminized she-god, meddlesome and insistent upon always being right. Oh, Lord, She’d be bugging me about washing my hands, and reading my Bible, and changing my underwear just in case I wind up in the emergency room. I wouldn’t be able to question Her without being accused of blasphemy. <br />
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But I’ve always said, God may be God, but he’s no narcissist.<br />
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I imagine God the Father quietly nodding as I ramble on, giving me a grin like my old man would have when I played some boogie woogie version of a hymn, and kissing me on the lips when I showed unannounced at his back door. <br />
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Nonetheless, I’m not sure what’s so riling when some Christians encounter inclusive language regarding the Person of God. I still cross myself and the brows of my woman and my children, intoning the words “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit”, and am quite comfortable doing so. At Christ Church Cathedral, the traditional language of the Trinity is sometimes altered to “Creator, Savior, and Sanctifier”. I recently read of a proposal in the Presbyterian Church to use this alteration: “Mother, Child, and Womb”. What can I say? Point well taken, but... <i>womb</i>? I’ll take the comfort, but not the claustrophobia. What happens when <i>that</i> line gets translated back to male language? <br />
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The gospel narrative is beautiful to me with its perfectly loving parent, sending the willing heir to save a reckless world from itself. The language of love is hard to put into words; in our attempt to pull the Divine down to our level, we forget that God has already descended to us in Christ, coming as a servant. In Divine Servitude, perhaps God allows for our tainted images of him/her/it, if only to begin an eternal conversation. And perhaps our blurred images diffuse the blinding beam of Who God is, so that we can endure the light of his presence. <br />
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While I don’t have a particular need to see God as She, I find it amusing that believers want to limit the scope of God’s image to “The Man Upstairs.” <br />
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We like to see God as one of our type.<br />
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God Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, existed before gender, before limitations. And a great irony of the Creation, in whatever manner it occurred, is that things came into focus and definition, and Man gave those things names, from Armadillos to Zebras. <br />
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When God’s glory was exhibited to those nomadic Hebrews of old, they would proclaim him “Lion of Judah”, “Morning Star”, or “Rock of my salvation”, giving definition and understanding to an infinite and fathomless God. Someone somewhere has probably likened God unto an armadillo. If we can call him “Rock”, “Lion”, “Star”, why not “Mother”?<br />
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There are those who want to keep the masculinity of God in tact, and there are those who want to neuter him completely. Neither party seem to be in it for the praise of God but more likely for the praise of their own identity. Even so, it’s as if an involuntary muscle is acquiescing to the notion of God Incarnate, God among us, Emmanuel. Or should I say Emmanuelle? <br />
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Growing up in my father’s fairly progressive Baptist Church, it was only a matter of time before I encountered a real live Christian Feminist. Sue was a tall and very vocal woman, whose passion was the reclamation of a woman’s full measure of self and place. She and her husband would often have me over for a meal, and inevitably, conversation would turn towards Dad’s church and how not enough was happening to advance women in our congregation. <br />
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Sue would criticize a prayer that Dad had intoned, wishing it had been more inclusive, and bemoaning the word “Father”, which Dad often used in addressing God. Naturally, I was defensive of my dad, knowing his heart, and particularly knowing how often he had made strides for the advancement of women within his church governing body. It was Dad, with great encouragement of my mother, who made sure women could serve Communion and become deacons at Barrington Baptist. Sue must have sensed this, because she continued to attend.<br />
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Years later, when I was an elder in a conservative Presbyterian (PCA) church for a brief season, I cringed at the fact that PCA women were relegated to bake sales and nursery duty, and barred from leadership roles. Thus, when we elders would convene to nominate new elders and deacons, the names I threw in the hat were those of capable women. My fellow elders chuckled at my apparent lack of theological correctness, and nothing changed. At least Sue would have been proud of me for trying.<br />
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When a friend sent me a book called “The Shack”, I was intrigued by the presumably Evangelical author’s device of using a large, black woman to portray the parental image of God. Yet, the Almighty Matron was called “Papa” in the book, perhaps giving a full acknowledgment that God is all masculine and all feminine. <br />
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The male and female facets of God’s self have been distributed to humankind in ways that are manageable and portable in this lifetime. Perhaps, when the Almighty gathers us all together in that great day of Christ’s return, we will be restored to a likeness of God that is equally full of the feminine and the masculine.<br />
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We cling to what we know, good and bad. God can reveal himself in beautiful, redemptive movements, yet remain stigmatized by the images we confine him to. If being someone’s child was a less than wonderful experience, it’s likely that we’ll imagine God the Father or Mother as a killjoy who douses our passions with the glib fact of his disinterest in us. <br />
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And so, one turns away from the blurry image of a Curmudgeon God, and picks up a paintbrush and allows a canvas to dictate an unforeseeable outcome. And as if from dust, something of beauty appears, something of our own making. This is why we write, paint, compose, and imagine, and that is the only kind of predestination that makes sense to me: We were created to imitate our Creator. <br />
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Created in God’s image, we create. When it comes to theology, we tend to create God in our own image.<br />
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In our search for intimacy with the Divine, given to imagination as we are, we give our image of God a shape and an identity that we can put our trust in. The idea of a shape-shifting God is beautiful; this is a confident God, adaptable and congenial in his willingness to be seen from another angle, yet with his character remaining fully in tact. The triune God revealed as Creator, Savior, and Sanctifier, unbound by our imagination, yet bound to the integrity of who only God Almighty can be. God.<br />
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It’s hard for me to see Christ as something other than God the Son, but it’s not difficult to embrace the Oneness of the Trinity as gender-free and shapeless, magnificent in Its mystery, confident in Its mission to reconcile the world unto Itself, and earnestly being about the creative business of redemption.<br />
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So much of my own redemption has come in the form of the woman who loves me, that considering God Almighty as feminine seems plausible and attractive to me, not that God will be emasculated, but that his vastness will be made larger to me. <br />
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He, She, It. Ai ai ai. Sometimes the better names might be what God Almighty is doing: Redemption. Restoration. Rejuvenation. Revelation.<br />
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Beholding the burning bush, Moses asked God Almighty for some identification, and heard the words “I am.”<br />
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In a way, that’s all that matters. The Chick Upstairs simply <i>is</i>.<br />
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">Painting by Phil Madeira</span>Phil Madeirahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09541966641322415672noreply@blogger.com17