home

While I was away...

- Matthew kept on growing (especially his hair)
- Julie reorganized the house to the point where even I am having trouble dis-organizing it again
- new lambs started arriving in the barn (5 as of this morning)
- the maple trees have their bucket skirts on, and the sap is running

And now...

- it's warm enough to start having my afternoon yerba mate outside again
- we got the bikes out yesterday
- the tomatoes and green pepper plants just made an appearance above the dirt in their window-box

It's good to be home.

a nosehair in the body of Christ

Ahh.. to be a nosehair in the body of Christ...

If you want to know what's going on with the "body," ask a nosehair. The vocation of the nosehair is to be at the periphery, on the edge... and yet a vital and growing (at least at my age!) part of the body... nosehairs PAY ATTENTION to what's going on outside the body (what's "in the air" all around?... what are the particles, the toxins, the signs of spring and new life? What should we be breathing in deeply? What should we be filtering out?), and to what's going on inside the body (as evidenced by what's coming out of it... need I say more...)

Sound like "nosehair as artistic vocation," perhaps?

Or maybe a better image for me, considering I was "on tour" for the past two weeks, would be of a single red blood cell, circulating through the body... entering into and interacting with various "vital organs" in different places... at once "belonging" and "coming from somewhere else"... maybe carrying just a little bit of oxygen that might help feed a tissue somewhere... and returning, spent, to be renewed and sent out again...

Here are just a couple of moments from the second week of my tour when this particular nosehair/red blood cell got a chance to interact with some different "vital organs" and caught a glimpse, again, of the diversity and vitality and struggle and life and work of the broader "body" in action...

- evening concert at Belmont Mennonite Church... last song of the evening, "Peace Be With You," and to my surprise the children already knew it, and were doing some actions for the song that I'd never seen before... so I invited them up to the front, and the children led us by singing this song together, doing the actions, and helping us all to "pass the peace"...

- afternoon conversation with Larry Miller, executive secretary of Mennonite World Conference, about his work of turning the eyes of the church in North America and Europe to the global South... and working at mechanisms like the Global Church Sharing Fund to help the worldwide church to be in solidarity and better distribute resources throughout the body...

- morning chapel, classes, and lunchtime conversation at AMBS... a powerful sense of inter-connectedness with the broader body in this seminary community that exists to prepare and send out women and men to lead and serve and care for the church... a chance to share my songs as resoures for that work, and to hear their feedback and encouragement and reflections...

- uproarious middle-of-the-night jam session at the DSC conference... after a great weekend of connecting with this community of artists that are passionate about Jesus and passionate about their art but who often feel significantly alienated from/disillusioned with/rejected by "the church"... times of conversation and prayer, a healing service... and then, in the middle of the night, hearing Jonathan and friends singing songs of love, of longing, of faith, of struggle that put words to what was going on in my soul, and all I could do was weep...

Having lived in many places, and travelled to many more, I have a profound sense of being most "at home" in the extended "body of Christ," and experiences like these remind me who I am, and who we are.

"For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ...

If the foot would say, "Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body," that would not make it any less a part of the body...

The eye cannot say to the hand, "I have no need of you," nor again the head to the feet, "I have no need of you...

Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it..."

Sounds like good news for nosehairs/red blood cells like me. How does it sound to you?

a gift

It's the halfway point of my tour, and I'm enjoying some Sabbath rest at Charleen and Kendall's place.

As I've said before in this space, I work at keeping my extended touring schedule within careful limits for the sake of healthy living, healthy family and community relationships, and because of my conviction that the "tour! tour! tour! sell! sell! sell!" model of the mainstream music business is spectacularly unhealthy and unsustainable...

But, man, am I having a blast!

What a gift it is to have this chance to be "on tour" for a while...! To travel around and connect with friends old and new, with communities of faith in all of their riotous and glorious variety, and to sing songs together! This sense of connection with the broader "body" is also, it seems to me, vital for healthy living and healthy ministry... It certainly has been life-giving for me...

So here's a quick glimpse at some of the wonderful people I've been meeting along the way:

- Andy and Wendy in Bluffton, Ohio are friends that I hadn't seen in 15 years (and I'd never met their daughters Hannah and Sara). It was great to catch up on the twists and turns of our lives and creative passions since the days when I used to pass myself off as a drummer in their band ("Wendy and the Bovine Boys" I believe it was... with the smash hit "It's Hard To Be a Leftist Cowboy"...). Wendy remains the driving force behind Mennofolk, and Andy's "upper room" workshop is becoming, it seems to me, a kind of sanctuary for his passion for woodworking and craftsmanship. What a delight to be welcomed into their family for a few days!

- Louise runs the Lion and Lamb Peace Arts Center - a tremendous resource for peacemaking housed at Bluffton University. I discovered that the Big Book For Peace which we've had for many years was actually a Lion and Lamb initiative, and that the royalties from that book basically funded the center's operations for a number of years... how's that for a creative and financially viable way for the arts to be part of the peacemaking mission of the church!

- apparently the first MCC Self-Help store (what has now become 10,000 Villages throughout Canada and the US) was in Bluffton... who'd-a-thunk-it...

- had coffee with Lynne Miller, long-time "corporate theologian" for MMA and well-known speaker and writer on stewardship themes... his book "The Power of Enough" is still one of the freshest, most incisive, practical, and memorable things I've read in my recent stewardship explorations... It was fun to see his converted barn home, boat-building workshop, and to hear about his latest initiative of a "50/50 Club" of people who want to increase their giving and do a "double tithe," giving half for the local church and half for the global church... What do you say? You want to join up? He's thinking of planning an annual party for the 50/50 Club, to celebrate and encourage and give some more...

- experienced some serious (for me) psychedelia at Trevor and Susan's place... I've never "seen" music on a screen quite like that before... To be expected, I guess, when visiting someone who teaches theology and digital culture as Trevor does... hadn't seen Trevor for probably 17 years (and yes, we too played in a band together in high school... "Obsessed With Crayons"...)

- Miriam and Everett graciously took me in at the last minute, and shared delicious home-made pie with me (March 14 was "pi" day, after all - 3.14 - Marian teaches math), showed me Pittsburgh and gave me my first ever experience of a Toyota Prius hybrid car... and the adults at Pittsburgh Mennonite Church sing and dance with as much or more wild abandon as their children...

- Kurt made an extra last-minute trip to get more sound equipment, and along the way explained that Somerset, PA is close to where the 4th plane went down on September 11, and there are plans to build a memorial of some kind... and that close by lives the one who "blew the whistle" on the Abu Ghraib prison torture story, and that Kurt's efforts to get the local Congressmen to officially recognize that person for his significant role have not been warmly received...

- Elaine at Laurelville bound up my wounds and gave me some basic "first aid on the road" education after a pre-concert wipeout that tore my jeans and scraped up my knee pretty badly... I'm glad to report the knee is healing up nicely... oh, it's a hazardous job being a touring musician...

- Lois in Morgantown, West Virginia helped me find me way through the hills to the worship service on Sunday morning, and kept me well plied with tea and coffee while I was there... and I learned that Morgantown was the home of Don Knotts of "Apple Dumpling Gang" fame (yes, I'm old enough to remember those movies)...

- and last night, at Kern Road in South Bend, Indiana, before the concert with an enthusiastic gang of "small and tall" we had a jam session like I've never seen - or heard - before... with two basses (one acoustic and one electric), a cello, viola, guitar, trumpet, French horn, a whole bunch of drums and a number of singers... Wow!

Today it's time for some rest, some laundry, a celebratory meal, a good long walk...

What a gift! To know that we are not alone, that we are part of the same body, that God is up to something... all over the place... and we get to be a part of it...

on my way

The visa came through, and I'm on my way!

Last night we heard coyotes howling as we were doing dishes. I wondered what they were saying... but now I know:

"You're going to get to sing with the children in Bluffton after all! Yip - Yip - Yippee!"

Update: 2:45 pm Just heading out the door, and just heard that tonight is the memorial service in Bluffton for all who died in the accident. Please continue to hold that community in your prayers.

first, the good news...

The good news is that apparently there is a way to try to speed up the visa process for my tour in the USA...

The bad news is that it takes something called "congressional intervention."

The good news is that "congressional intervention" in this case is not as ominous as it sounds - it means calling the local Congressperson and seeing if they will make inquiries on your behalf...

The bad news is that this is something, apparently, that I should have set in motion a couple of weeks ago.

The good news is that Andy and Wendy are heroes, and have been making calls, and that the people in the Senator's office have been very kind and helpful - I even got a call from them yesterday afternoon, letting me know where things stand.

The bad news is that I don't have the visa yet, and that the "best case scenario" of receiving the approval on Monday (and making it in time for the first concerts on Tuesday) is "possible but not very likely."

The good news is that the "worst case scenario" - apparently - is that the process will take a few more days, and although I may have to miss the first few events (I hope not!), I should be able to proceed with the rest of the tour...

I'll keep you posted!

The first scheduled stop on the tour is Bluffton, Ohio, a community that is going through a traumatic time as a bus accident involving the Bluffton University baseball team killed 7 people and injured many others about a week ago. Please join in prayer for this community and all of the people affected by the accident.

I really hope to be there soon.

okay, now I'm beginning to worry...

I did everything just as they said. I filled out the forms, paid the fees, got signed contracts for each and every engagement on the tour, submitted it all 90 days ahead of time...

And I still don't have the visa for my two week tour in the USA... And I'm scheduled to leave on Monday... with only two business days left until then...

Interestingly enough, on Sunday I spoke/sang at Rouge Valley Mennonite Church, and their theme throughout Lent is "Let go, and enter in..."

Hmmm...

learning to do things badly

Lately I've had to remind myself, again, about something I've spent years working on...

Learning to do things badly.

This has, and continues to be, a huge and important challenge for me, as I have a tendency to be perfectionistic... (is that how you spell perfectionistic?)... and a friend once confronted me about this tendency and suggested that, perhaps, what I'm dealing with is good-old-fashioned "pride"... and that, for my own health and the health of those around me, perhaps I need to learn to do things badly...

A vital lesson for me, and one toward which (I'm proud to say) I have been making tremendous strides... (no, wait...)

In any case, a current example is that it's March 1, and I'm still working on my "February" delivery of songs to my members... I need to do some more recording, but the challenge today will be to convince the snowmobilers and the wind to keep the noise down just a bit...

On a very different note, last week I had the joy and privilege of being in the room when my brother defended his PhD thesis (on "Heard and Overheard Prayer" in the Psalms - great stuff - hopefully I'll blog more about it sometime), and then heard the long-anticipated words: "Congratulations, Derek, you have passed the examination, with minor revisions..."

What a great day, and what an achievement! Congratulations, Derek!

Although... I don't know... it seems to me like you could still learn a few things about "doing things badly"... trust me, I'm an expert... with lots of experience...

(GRIN)