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...