Recently on YouTube I posted a quick rendition of an old worship song I recorded in 2002. The actual recording is what you’re hearing in this post. But as I sit in my new apartment in downtown Boston, I’m remembering “messy desk zen,” a 2012 post I wrote for my WordPress blog - Breathe Deep. The old blog could stand a redesign, but no rush.
While I (hopefully) gather a little unemployment for the next few months, I’ll take some time to monetize some of my old creations. A wise cooperating teacher in Haverford Public Schools named Ken Peters told me in 2003, “Keep writing for your church … this version of the Jonah story is better than most children’s productions I’ve seen. You could make tons of money with this side gig.”
I smiled a Cheshire Cat grin and didn’t tell him the extent of my ambition: I would be the next Andrew Lloyd Webber. Or maybe part of a collab, like the brilliant trio of Claude-Michel Schönberg/Alain Boublil/Herbert Kretzmer, who brought the legendary Victor Hugo novel Les Miserables to life onstage in London. They also launched Filipina goddess of song Lea Salonga to worldwide prominence through Miss Saigon.
Could I be a great like Sondheim or Salonga? Not likely, but you never knew. My dreams of fame weren’t unrealistic given the praise I’d received from the moment I stood on a church stage and made a bake sale announcement. Ever since, I’d traveled across the globe singing, dancing, and speaking fearlessly the truth as I understood it.
Even an ancient Polaroid of me with a bottle shows a kid who knew she was being watched and liked it. According to the literature of attachment theory, this is normal. If a loving caregiver is holding the camera, you gaze back with sincerity and courage. If it looks like earned confidence, just call me a second child. I had the legendary Isaac for a wiggly big brother; I could smile at his side in order to prove a new star was born. Also, girls generally develop fine motor skills & verbal acuity a little faster. I kept pace with my bro in order to get into similar shenanigans and look cute doing it.
The brilliant author Marilynne Robinson has a book entitled When I Was A Child I Read Books. Robinson’s English prose is among the finest to come out of the Americas in the past century - I got started with Gilead and have since read almost everything she has published.
If I wrote an early childhood autobiography, it could be called They Passed Me Around & Sang. My parents were active in Evangelical circles throughout my childhood, and everyone who remembers my birth knows that a weekly home-based Bible study in our Upper Darby row-home saw me giggling as each Jesus freak took turns holding me. When someone talks about “chosen family,” I say that I knew the sounds of big love from inside the womb. Kathy McLean played guitar & my dad did too; everyone sang, bread was broken, occasional wine was poured. But mostly they saved wine for special occasions & shared juice and noodle-based casseroles: that was the Presbyterian vibe of Philadelphia in the early 1980’s.
Like Marilynne, I was a voracious reader. I may have tackled Hugo’s Les Miserables in the unabridged English translation in 7th grade as a flex; literally - that 1600 page tome was a high intensity interval training workout in and of itself. My true good fortune, books aside, is that I always knew the embrace of a large circle.
It makes me proud that many fine musicians had an early taste of social media “fame” because they sang a goofy song with me in the years 2009-2013 for a platform called YouTube. I was teaching at Stoneridge Children’s Montessori School in Beverly. I wonder to this day if the sweet taste of Hot Cross Buns in a parent’s Facebook feed inoculates a person from needing to become an Insta-Starlet or influencer. Some of them have lucrative performing careers, and some of them enjoyed that for a while before getting into teaching, nursing, engineering, or social change work.
In a world of career changers, I’m grateful to be an Evangelical in the truest sense of the word. I was taught the Greek word evangelos means “good news,” and I am never without hope. I was schooled in Christian spaces and dove deep into all the world’s major religions at various points in my growth, but it’s the cultivation of long-term connections that buoys me the most. Occasionally old friends reach out when I most need it. Lately, I’ve needed it a lot.
Here’s my invitation for the month of November: call up your dead. That’s right. Listen for the voices of your ancestors. Many brilliant voices from the dawn of time have encouraged us to do this, and now the concept of ancestral healing is spreading like a wildfire that has been stoked for thousands of years.
But go a little further, if you claim the name of spiritual warrior. Check in with your heart and consider texting back or writing a letter to someone you’ve been avoiding. “Ghosting” people is normal these days, and while it means nothing to some, to others it is a wound akin to torture. If you feel a repeated nudge in your spirit to extend an olive branch, it might be time to put pen to paper, remind them of a delightful old memory, or take some other risk.
You don’t need to go crazy - most people don’t want a Say Anything moment - but if they loved the movie when it came out, maybe that’s exactly what they want. For me, heartache is only salved via gratitude, growth, and a soulful expression of my grief. For me, this comes in the form of grunting (working out hard), groaning (with relief/anger/sorrow), and grit (cleaning/shaking off the dirt/etc). Each of us has our own methodology for healing and healing is unpredictable. No one can direct you to a perfect path. There are no shortcuts in the work of healing.
But some of us don’t want shortcuts. Some of us are crazy enough to take a deep dive (thanks, Steven Curtis Chapman & Ricky Staggs). If you’re one of US (and I mean the people who care deeply without holding back), I hope you will consider subscribing to my Patreon page by looking up “team44point4.” This will fund the publication (via small press & pdf shares) as well as the translation of my 2007 memoir The Stretch Project into a new book that is an exploratory journal for people of any cultural background.
Thanks for reading/listening/considering, and may we all be brave like Nichole Nordeman, audacious like U2 (& Audacy, who produced this incredible video of the underplayed tune Every Breaking Wave), collaborative like my friend Peter Lupien, and fearlessly forthcoming like Taylor. Like our good pal Natasha Bedingfield, we know all the best stories are still Unwritten.
Note: this picture was taken by Isaac Mell or Jeff LaBonde on New Year’s Eve in Salem, Massachusetts, as we rang in the new year of 2008. Acclaimed photojournalist Ashley E. Smith & I were just getting ready to dance our hearts out on Lafayette Street.
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