Remembering Rich

Ten years ago today the Lord called Rich Mullins home. Rich was more than a Christian recording artist; he was a poet and a prophet. He was inspired by the example of Francis of Assisi and did his best to follow Christ with Francis as his rolemodel. During my sophomore year at Franciscan University our student activities committee scheduled a concert with Rich for the fall semester. It was an intimate evening with just Rich & Beaker in the campus chapel, more of a worship night than a concert. In the follwing spring our student activities committee got a call from Rich. He said he was going to be near the school while on tour & had an open night in his schedule. They told him that they already had their spring concert and had no money left in the budget. Rich told them he'd come for free along with the rest of his band just because he remembered how great that fall concert had been.

Rich didn't profit from his fame. He took a modest salary and donated the rest of his income to his church & helping the poor. The last few years of his life was spent living on an Indian reservation in the Southwest teaching music to children. One of his final projects was assisting some of his friends with a musical based on the life of St. Francis set in the American Old West called the Canticle of the Plains. They called themselves the Kid Brothers of St. Frank.

The video below is for one of my favorite songs by Rich, "Hold Me Jesus". Everytime I hear it it cuts to the heart almost as if my spirit is praying the lyrics through while I listen.

so much to say, so little time to say it

I've been wanting to blog for some time now but just can't manage to find the time. Between my hour long commute and the girls' hectic after school schedules and starting RCIA classes (as a sponsor) it's usually pretty late by the time I can get a few moments alone with the computer. Even then it can be hard to get up the will to do anything with it after working on a computer all day long. Well, here are a few topics for discussion I hope to explore soon:

In light of the recent gospel readings over the past couple weeks, Jesus' "hard sayings" just don't jive with so much of Westen Christianity, especially evangelicalism and/or Pentecostalism.

I've been thinking about a line from a Caedmon's Call song Faith My Eyes: "But I get turned around/And I mistake my happiness for blessing/But I'm blessed as the poor/Still I judge success by how I'm dressing". That's got me thinking about what it really means to be Franciscan, and how to live out that calling in a secular setting while trying to raise my girls and give them the best I can.

On the sixth anniversary of 9/11 I'm still trying to figure out how a Christian responds to terrorism and rampant patriotism.

Here's a nice quote from Benedict XVI from his book Jesus of Nazareth:

"At the heart of all temptations, as we see here, is the act of punishing God aside because we perceive him as secondary, if no actually superfluous and annoying, in comparison with all the apparently far more urgent matters that fill our lives. Constructing a world by our own lights, without reference to God, building on our own foundation; refusing to acknowledge the reality of anything beyond the political and material, while setting God aside as an illusion--that is the temptation that threatens us in many varied forms."

Isn't it ironic?

I'm sitting in my living room watching this episode of Good Eats on the Food Network. The topic for the episode is making cocktails. As they went to a commercial break they showed a screen shot with the symbol for the United Methodist Church and the voice over said that tonight's episode of Good Eats was being brought to us by the United Methodist Church whose opinion on alcohol is pretty well known. Can you say ironic?

Great Quote

I was talking with a friend who was telling me about how he described his attraction to Catholicism to his non-Catholic friends. When asked about why he would want to get involved with such traditions and such his response was simply, "I found beauty there." I wish I had thought of that quote.