The Stage is Bare

The concert had been a sellout. It turned out to be an enthusiastic audience of all ages with waves of laughter and applause between the songs, the laughter, and the moments of deep spiritual awareness.  A great night!

By the time we were finished tearing down displays in the lobby, putting equipment in the bus, and changing our clothes in the dressing room, the building was empty. All the lights were out except for one lone lightbulb dangling by a frayed cord from the ceiling above the stage. As we carried our bags across the stage from the dressing rooms to the back door, we stopped for a moment and talked about the evening. The single light and the huge silent room were such a contrast to the spotlights and the excitement of an hour ago.

“It was a great night,” one of the performers said. “But the question is, do the things we sang and said then work now?”

There is always a danger that politicians will start believing their own press releases, that kids will not be able to distinguish fairy tales from reality, that performers and actors will not be capable of separating the stage and the floodlights from their Monday mornings and daylight.

Bill and I have spent a great deal of time with aspiring young artists, not so much to help them “make it,” but in the hopes of teaching them some things that may save them from themselves when they do make it.

In our culture, talent often results in what the world would call “success,” but it has been our experience that success is often much harder to deal with than failure. In fact, failure is often good for us human beings; we learn from our failures. While we can learn from our failures, we’re more often destroyed by success.

The Palm Sunday story in the Bible carries a very modern application. It’s easy to praise the Lord in a crowd of cheering worshipers, singing songs and “lifting holy hands.” But when the dust clears, and the music stops, and the lights are reduced to a bare lightbulb dangling from a frayed cord, what then? Is our praise as convincing when we’re alone in an elevator? Does it “preach” when we’re the only person in the congregation?

I once heard someone say about a Christian speaker: “I’d be more impressed if I ever heard him pray when he wasn’t on stage.”

My father was a pastor, and I often heard him quote 1 Corinthians 9:27, Paul’s high standard, which my dad held up for himself: “But discipline my body and bring it into subjection: lest, that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should become a castaway” (NKJV). That verse was like a caution light that flashed over my parents’ ministry.  It is a caution light for me. It is a warning for Bill’s and my ministry of writing and speaking and parenting and living in our little town. What we do when the stage is dark and bare is so much more important than what we do when it’s bright and full.

When our traveling groups meet for a time of prayer before concerts, we have often prayed that we would be as real at McDonald’s after the concert as we seem during the concert, that our lives with the stagehands and the auditorium’s staff would be as convincing as our lives beyond the spotlight.

When it is all said and done, I hope our children and our parents, our neighbors, and the ­people with whom we work will see our praise lived out much more articulately than we are ever able to express in words and in print.

May our failures and shortcomings be redeemed by the sweet love and grace of Jesus so that His spirit makes a more lasting memory than our fragile humanity. It was this deep desire and that night on the empty stage that inspired this song. Sandy was there that night, and it was she that first recorded the song.

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A New Thanksgiving

This is the 54th Thanksgiving we have spent in the house we built when Bill and I were teaching high school English.  Our house has always been the Thanksgiving place. We have enjoyed gatherings of 40 and more from both sides of our family. Bill’s parents and my parents have been a part of this gathering along with my sister and her family and Bill’s siblings and their children.  

As the older generation has left our family circle, their spirits have not. They all continued to be a part of our celebration of gratitude, as we retold to each new generation the stories each of the patriarchs and matriarchs made famous.

Always a part of Thanksgiving, too, has been single parents and their children, our kids’ college friends who could not go home for the short holiday because they were from other countries or states too far away, and friends who no longer had family in the area. The families of our grown children’s spouses have been a delightful part of our celebration, as well. So lots of cousins, friends, grandkids, and drop-in guests have formed teams for driveway basketball, music bands, and groups for harmonizing. Fortunately, we always had guitarists, bass players, drummers and keyboardists in our circle who shared a repertoire of pop songs, gospel tunes, and 80s rock classics.

The center of our Thanksgiving, however, has always been the sharing of the Indian corn. The youngest child had the honor of passing a little turkey-shaped basket filled with kernels of Indian corn to everyone gathered around our farm kitchen. Then I am usually the one to tell the story of the 102 passengers and 30 crew who set sail for a 66 day trip across the rough Atlantic in a ship called the Mayflower. That first winter took almost half of their lives as provisions dwindled and disease took its toll.  

It was friendly native Americans who, come spring, taught the remnant of survivors to plant crops that would grow in the new land: corn, beans, squash and herbs. About 40 of these first “pilgrims” were separatists who were seeking freedom to worship away from the state-run religions. Others of the group were secularists who came for adventure, prosperity, or a fresh start in a new land. That first harvest and the game and fish from the new land became the first day of feasting, games, and music in gratitude for not only the harvest, but life itself.

Often, we read aloud the poem by Felicia Doretha Hemans “The Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers.” As the little basket is passed again, each person drops a kernel of corn into it, and he or she tells what they are most thankful for since we were gathered in this circle last year. Every year for 54 years the year has brought joy, pain, breakthroughs, some losses, and many years a new baby. The privilege of expressing to each other our gratitude for someone’s kindness, someone’s support, someone’s encouragement, someone’s forgiveness is an unforgettable moment.  

This simple tradition makes us all so glad to be alive, to be together, and to be so blessed by the delicious spread on our kitchen island, groaning with the everyone’s special contribution to the feast.

This year this traditional celebration will not happen for our family and for many other families across this great land. Because of the Covid-19 pandemic, Bill and I wrote a letter to our loved ones, telling them that we won’t be gathering in this great old house this year. We sent a big puzzle to each family, looking forward to a time when we can once again spread the puzzle pieces across our cleared dining room table and make together a grand scene that can never be complete without each person’s pieces.

But not being able to carve a turkey together cannot keep us from being grateful. It cannot cancel the memories we’ve shared or the music we’ve made, or the crafts we’ve created together after dinner is cleared away. It cannot silence the voices of our elders who have put so much into our family DNA, nor cancel the greater impact of their teaching, prayers, and life-skills they’ve built into us all by example, humor, and hard work.

I look at the history of our country and the years since that first Thanksgiving, and have to admit that, like most big families, our nation has made some mistakes and have at times hurt each other and been anything but Christ-like to each other. But even so, I know how to say “thank you,” as our daughter Suzanne and her husband Barry wrote in their song. And one thing for which I am most thankful is that our loving Lord deals with us all not just with justice but with mercy and grace. May all families grant these holy gifts to each other.

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O, Come Let Us Adore Him

When God shows up, we can do nothing but fall down in praise and adoration.  That’s what happened the very first time God made an appearance on this earth in human form.  It’s what will always happen whenever we find ourselves in the presence of the living Christ!  All discussions of the “how’s” and “what’s” of worship styles, or worship aids and devices, will fall silent in the presence of the Holy One.

When God is present we will at first stand in awe, fall down in wonder, or bow low in repentance; then, finding our voices, we will sing, shout, weep, dance, beat drums, play instruments, clap hands, make banners, march around the altar (or the manger or the stable or the living room)….  Indeed, we will not be able to find enough ways to express our praise.  We will not argue about old songs or new songs, hymnals or screens, robed choirs or blue-jeaned worship teams, pipe organs or guitars.  We only argue about such things before God shows up or a very long time after He’s gone away. 

But when He comes – when God Himself is born among us, we may have to shut up entirely and let the angels sing.  One thing for sure, there will not be dissension and fussing and dividing of services or churches.  No, there will be peace on earth, goodwill toward men, and women, and children, and neighbors, and strangers, and all the world!

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Visiting Presidents

Bill and I have spent many hours over many years traveling the United States and Canada in our tour bus.  You’d think we surely had seen most of the beauty of America and visited every national shrine, but the truth is we mostly have driven right past the wonders of this great country because of the tyranny of our schedule.  Most of the time we have traveled at night after a concert to get to the next date; we have awakened in the backstage parking lot of another city arena or auditorium.

 Last summer we asked our driver, Jimmy, if he could block out some days to go with us to see some of the places we have missed.  Bill is a history buff and his reading is mostly biographies of great world leaders and our American Presidents.  When he finishes a biography, we see together every documentary we can find on that leader until we have exhausted the subject and then move on.

 Our list for last summer’s trip was to see three of the Presidential Libraries and really absorb the beauty of our great land, especially the Grand Canyon.  What an experience that trip was!  We found each Presidential Library to be as unique as the personalities and passions of each President they celebrated.  The regions of the country that nurtured the formative years of each life were evident in the strengths and viewpoints each brought eventually to the Office.

 Abraham Lincoln was every bit a product of the Midwest—Indiana, Kentucky, and Illinois—that shaped his values and developed his courage to walk alone, if he had to, to do the right thing.  It molded his sense of justice and mercy.  His library is a down-to-earth experience of the simplicity of his childhood, reflecting the long strides not only of his tall legs, but of his determination to walk the lonely road to freedom for the oppressed.  Yet he battled depression and was belittled and ridiculed by the press.

 We drove across the vast belly of the country that has come to be known as “the bread basket of the world” to Abilene, Kansas, and the Eisenhower Presidential Center.  On the grounds are not only the library, but the Eisenhower family home and the whole restored neighborhood where Dwight Eisenhower grew up, and a chapel called the Place of Meditation, where Eisenhower himself and First Lady “Mamie” and their first-born son are buried.  Also, on the grounds are an Eisenhower statue placed in a circle named “Champion of Peace” and five pillars, representing the stages of the President’s life.

 The Kansas small town neighborhood, the traditional house, and the Chapel of Meditation all seem to represent a well-grounded man who knew balance—a man who went from being one of our history’s greatest generals and Commander of all NATO forces of World War II to being a peace-building President who opposed war and the military-industrial complex.  Yet, as is true of all great men and women, he was flawed and imperfect.

 The third Presidential Library we visited was the Clinton Library in Little Rock, Arkansas.  Our son had checked with some friends to see if President Clinton might be in residence there.  It turned out he was and graciously agreed to meet us before opening hours, though he was leaving that morning for a trip.  It was a rare opportunity to hear first-hand the ideas this 42nd President had wanted to have built into his library to capture the tone and history of not only his administration, but also the nineties and the turn of the century.  The long corridor-style building implying the journey through each year he was in office (1993-2001) ended with a two-story tall glass wall looking toward the outside representing the future.  Along the elongated central walkway are alcoves containing visual and archival collections documenting the cultural, governmental, and global happenings day-by-day of each year, including Clinton’s own successes and failures.

 On our trip we stopped in Durango, Colorado to visit our grandson.  He took us on a picnic up, up to a clear mountain lake high in the pines.  We inhaled the air, refreshing yet still hinting at the smell of the destructive fires that had recently swept through the forests below.  We filled our eyes and souls with the wonder of God’s beauty and provision.  We drank in these precious hours with our handsome, strong nature-loving grandson and the gift of being with him this day.  This moment.  This place.

We went on to visit the Grand Canyon, which I had never actually seen because we had always passed it in the night, even once parking the bus on the rim of it so our driver could sleep a few hours.

 We had planned to stay where we could watch the sun slip from full day to sunset, casting ever-changing shadows and revelations of color at day’s end.  What candy for eyes it turned out to be!  Every artist must long for paint and a canvas, yet knowing that this changing panorama could never be captured in a painting.  We stayed in a rustic lodge and went back the next morning to see what tricks dawn had up its sleeve.  Turned out morning had more light-shows that we could have imagined!

 The canyon, our sweet picnic by a mountain lake, and the visits to the archives of three American Presidents was a study in perspective for me.  It reminded me that relationships are more enduring than power or politics. It made me remember that each of us is a motley mix of strengths and weaknesses, even those who hold the highest offices in our land or positions of power in the world. We each—even Presidents—are a combination of great gifts and fragile flaws, or, as Shakespeare said, a “brief candle...a poor player who struts and frets his hour on the stage and then is heard no more.”

 This Presidents’ Month I want to remember to appreciate the gifts of national leadership we have been given over more than two centuries and be grateful.  I want to remember that only God is God and His Kingdom is not of this earth; it is an invisible Kingdom built mysteriously in the hearts of those who believe.  I want to remind myself, too, that this Kingdom’s work can never be achieved by earth’s systems, but only by each believer being faithful to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, take care of the children, lift up the fallen, embrace the lonely, and pray for both our leaders and the powerless.

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