Worship Meditations

November 5, 2007 — I've decided to call these pages what they are — less of an intellectual/spiritual self-debate over what worship of God consists of and doesn't, and more of a day-to-day journal. Over the past year-and-a-half I've picked up a few insights about the above subject, developed my opinions a bit and maybe even learned a thing or two along my journey (Journey), so I'll be inserting some of that in here as well. But the last several entries were journaling anyway, thus the name-change. I think I'll keep the header the same, though, partly because I'm too lazy to create another one right now, but mostly because these are still my worship experiences.

My life revolves around worship. Some of that is, of course, due to the fact that I've played guitar all my life and now live in an era of the Church where the guitar is becoming more of an accepted vehicle for taking a church body into the presence of God. I'll tell you why I think that is. It's because most of the movers and shakers in churches nowadays grew up listening to the Beatles — women grew up fawning over them and men grew up wanting to be them. The Beatles played guitars, so there. You can add in every other rock band along the way, including all the current worship bands who are heard regularly on "Christian Radio"... they ALL owe it to the Beatles, for better or worse.

So here I am, a pretty good guitarist and not a bad singer (and I know LOTS of Beatles songs), living in an age where one can do these two things and make a nice living as part of a church staff. It helps if you've spent time on the road as part of a successful worship (insert Christian Rock, Contemporary Christian, etc.) band — something I never did. But since 1975 I have led many people into the presence of God, starting with fellow teenagers, moving up to fellow twentysomethings, thirtysomethings, fortysomethings, about to become fiftysomethings. There were a couple of brief stints as an "official" worship leader — one ended because of my decision, one because of theirs — enough to know that I would probably not be able to long endure being part of the inner political workings of a local church. Mostly I was a fill-in for then the real worship leader was out of town for whatever reason. Maybe I'll write more about that later.

So I'm supposed to start writing my "story" as part of an exercise in the new small group we've decided to join. I'll start that here. Warning: It may not look much different from what I've written previous to this.

November 6, 2007 — Like Bill Cosby, I started out as a child. But my childhood was mostly of the small-town variety. El Dorado, Ark. was about 27,000 population back in 1958 when I was born and during my childhood commenced its slow, steady decline as the big industries — American Oil and Monsanto, notably — shut their doors. El Dorado had been a boom town in the 30's and a southern oil capital during the 40's and 50's, but started running dry in the 60's and by the 70's was looking for a new identity. To my knowledge it still hasn't found it, other than being the biggest town between Camden and Monroe, La. I don't return there much. My mom still lives there, but I usually see her at my aunts' house near Hot Springs on holidays and such.

So there I was, growing up on the extreme south end of a small south Arkansas town on the east end of a dead end street with a 12-acre pasture beyond the dead end. That pasture was my refuge as a child. I chased crawfish in the creek, flew kites all the way across — the prevailing southwest winds were perfectly aligned — and started a pretty nice butterfly collection. The owner of the land was an old man who had worked it years before, but now mostly left it alone. Some summers he would let some of the neighbors plant rows of sweet corn. Mostly he would just hire a bush-hog once or twice a year to keep it somewhat clear. It was sold years ago and is now all woods.

On the far side of the pasture was part of the black section of town, and in those days we just didn't go there ("we" meaning the next-door-neighbor kid and me). The closest we would get would be if one of our kites went down and we had to retrieve it. We could really fly the kites. Jay (the neighbor kid) had a nice spool with a crank on it that his dad had made that held several hundred yards of string, and he would let it all out once his kite got airborne. My string was on a big stick, but there was just about as much. The kites wouldn't be much more than a couple hundred feet in the air, but they'd be really far out, so it would look pretty impressive seeing a faraway kite dancing in the air. When the kites would finally go down, we had a long walk to go get them, winding the string as we went, trying to get back before dark.

The field was full of wildflowers, so butterfiles were in abundance, from the basic whites and sulphurs to the big swallowtails. We had a porchlight that faced the field which would occasionally attract one of the large saturnid moths, like a Luna or Cecropia.

I didn't realize at the time what a big part of my life that field was. It was wild, with its insects, flowers and meadowlarks, yet it was safe — I was always within sight of my house, though sometimes several hundred yards away. The old proprietor has been dead now 25 years or more, but I'd like to bring him back to tell him all my pleasant memories of that field.

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