Songs to Pray By (sneak peek)
Well, the music is beginning to solidify for the Songs to Pray By album I recorded March 24th with City Church Eastside. Tomorrow I’ll be playing with the band at the Festival of Homiletics and we wanted people to have the chance to hear the album. On top of that we were asked to submit a track to the Wild Goose Festival benefit CD. So here’s a link to that first song, a raucous take on the Celtic song, Be Thou My Vision. The download is free for now, but I do ask for your email so I can reaach out to you when the full CD is released.
Also save these CD release dates:
June 19- Atlanta
June 20- Charlotte
June 21- Wild Goose Festival
Skyline Chili, Grater’s Ice Cream and Busken Bakery in our future.
After 12 years in Atlanta (the longest I’ve lived anywhere), we’re packin’ up and moving to… Cincinnati, Ohio. I know, it’s not the most likely of moves, but then again maybe not that surprizing.
Back in seminary I attended church with a few couples from Cinci, so Kelley and I had our eyes on it in 2004 when I graduated. But it fell off the radar as things in SW Atlanta began to really get traction. Our time in Atlanta is impossible to summarize in a few sentences. But suffice it to say we enjoyed some great experiments, learned and taught in amazing seminary settings, saw deep life change through several shared faith communities, curated worship and arts in churches around the city, shared countless meals, laughter and love with all sorts of wonderful folks in our inner-city community and played a part in building a vision and approach in SW Atlanta for community-based youth leadership development.
Then about a year or so ago, news that our Presbytery would be pulling denominational funding from Neighbors Abbey combined with other seemingly random closed doors to wake Kelley and me up to the possibility of relocating.
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Wrong Number
Like chapter and verse
the wrong numbers pop up in my phone:
404:767:0431
and 770:471:9255
and of course the apocryphal “Unknown”-
calling me
every morning and afternoon
looking for the same
person, “Lanett Character”
And like Bartley the Scrivener
I’ve abided months of sermonette after sermonette of the addressed person’s trespasses,
late bills, possible eviction, UHAUL left overs.
You name it.
I’ve begun to check the obituaries
expecting to find that,
not only did she mysteriously die months ago leaving a trail of unpaid bills,
but that she suffered from dyslexia
and simply entered my number instead of hers-
interchanging a
15 for a 51
or a 934 for a 943.
Like a pigmy born the wrong place at the wrong time,
one of us confused with the other
and left to the damnation of the ignorant collectors!
Either that or to read that she was killed by Goths and Vandals whose numbers she had listed fraudulently to evade responsibility for her expenditures, but who’s zero sum religion required a sacrifice.
And my newfound freedom,
no fault of my own,
by grace alone
just a stroke of dumb luck.
Some days,
I hope for the disability,
others for the displaced revenge.
But its always one or the other.
Isn’t it embarrassing how death seems the only legitimate closure available to my imagination?
