Sparks from the Fire

Pete’s pick for most Inspirational person this month is a friend.

I’ve known Jon McLaughlin for several decades now. We played high school football together, right next to each other – he, left tackle and I, left end. I’m glad I didn’t have to play against him. I’m glad I was on his team. In practice, whenever coach would say to anybody, “You line up against Mac.” you knew you were in for it. It usually wasn’t a pretty sight. The boy/man was a bulldog. He still is.

He re-emerged in my life several years ago with an unlikely project. It turns out that he had been teaching Sunday School for many years and had evolved his teaching of the Ten Commandments into something more palpable for teenagers. It is written in the form of accessible poetry and presents each commandment through the eyes of God’s love for man. Though he wrote it for his teenage classes, I found it to be a modern approach to these ten ancient laws for the whole family.

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The Lyrics

I like story songs. And I love a parade. There is great drama in a parade. You stand on the curb and wait excitedly for it to come. Whatever ‘it’ is – it could be your daughter playing the piccolo or your high school marching band or the queen of the day waving in the back seat of a convertible. It’s proceeded by bands and clowns and majorettes and often followed by the same. You stand on the curb and await the big moment as the excitement ratchets up. You crane your neck in anticipation of the big moment.

And then it’s there! And the tears come to your eyes, and hope is restored and somehow the wait always pays off in a laugh or a ‘wow’ or a splash of pride.

And then it passes by and continues on its journey. And you wish you could prolong the moment, but you can’t. It’s the very nature of the parade. It gives you a taste, but for a moment. Sometimes you can run along with it for a moment or two trying to prolong it, but usually, by then, it’s over. The crowds are too much and ‘it’ moves on down the road to another place in time. (more…)

A woman called several weeks ago to thank me for a sacred song I’d written that she sang as a solo in church. We had a most friendly talk and near the end of the conversation she said proudly, “I just want to assure you that I sing your songs with absolutely no emotion.”

This took me back a beat and so I asked her what she meant by that and she explained, “Well, I think there should be no personality in church singing whatsoever, that the solo should be performed emotionless.”

As we talked I discovered a real confusion in this poor soul about the art of sacred solo performance. She was essentially confusing bad acting with emotion; and since she basically did not understand the craft of acting through song and did not like it when other singers “hammed it up” in a church solo, she had made the wrong decision that all acting/emotion in a performance was bad. I tried to help her make sense of all this, but she would have none of it.  To her, ‘emotionalism’, as she called it, did not belong in the church service.

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