not at home and right at home

The weekend in Didsbury went well - concert on Friday evening, workshop sessions on Friday night and Saturday, worship on Sunday. A moving and humbling experience to reflect with folks about economics and faith, and to hear their stories and questions and wisdom, and to be welcomed in to some very real experiences of pain and struggle and joy.

I continue to find my music most "at home" in congregational settings like this. This is what it's for, and this is where it does its best work.

This seemed even clearer to me after another experience - a lot of fun but for some reason rather disconcerting - at the songwriters open stage at Hulbert's Restaurant in Edmonton last night. This is a favourite and beloved place of Tim Chesterton, a self-described "Anabaptist Anglican" priest who also happens to have an encyclopedic knowledge of traditional British folk tunes, and who, together with his family, generously and graciously opened their home to me last night, and took me to the Sunday Night Open Stage where Tim regularly plays.

A lot of really great musicians - a couple of singer/songwriters with powerful lyrics and a whole bunch with amazing chops on the guitar - and I felt really awkward when I was introduced (with a considerable degree of amazement) as "a FULL-TIME WORKING MUSICIAN!"... as if that's some kind of holy grail, ever-sought but seldom found and never really believed...

This is definitely NOT where my music feels most "at home"... I wasn't sure what to play, so I played "Willowgrove Creek" and "Not for Human Consumption"... and judging by the polite applause and glassy handshakes I felt like they went over like a lead balloon...

Don't get me wrong - I enjoyed the evening, and listening to the different performers play. There is a very special sense of community that has been cultivated there. But it seems very clear to me that this is not where my own musical gift is most "at home"...

Anyway, a highlight this morning was sitting down with Tim and having the doors to the great land of DADGAD tuning opened wide before me... a whole new musical language in which he is fluent and in which I look forward to taking the first baby steps...

And after a delightful day reconnecting with friends here in Edmonton, in a few hours I'll board the train through the mountains to Vancouver. A spectacular ride, by all accounts. I'd better get some sleep.