Author's Note
During the years Rich Mullins and I were out of contact, my life became a disaster on an escalating scale. I began to surface from a marriage that had kept me out of touch with all my old friends and which had gone from dangerous to worse. I was told Richard had been trying to contact me through his songs for years. After he died, I discovered that he had recorded nearly a dozen songs that had included my words from our conversations in the lyrics.
I was not at liberty to contact him at the time, so six months before his death he had a friend tell me that he wanted me to hear his television broadcast, “Live at Studio B”. He had several messages in it for me: especially, I was told, the first song. I had always wanted to be the one to be strong for him, to be able to somehow shine the love of God to him. I’d always wanted to be his lifelong friend, and for more than ten years now I had let him down. I couldn’t imagine what he would want to sing to me at this point of my life. More than ten years after his death when I finally listened to the broadcast, I heard a song about the Beatitudes: “I Will Sing.”
In April of 1997, I felt I’d experienced the proverbial flood; the rains had come down; the waters had risen, and the winds had blown and beat against that house, and great had been its fall. All three of my children had been suicidal. I had ended my marriage; I had sold my home at a loss to move on; I had gone through a career transition. As fearful as I am of the expectations of others, I could hardly hold up my head in public. And Richard had the creativity to show me a new point of view: the Beatitudes in my own life.
Then he spoke of art; and how “God takes the junk of our lives and makes the greatest art in the world from it”, and I knew God had given him the grace to see me and my disaster that way. And Richard was not just talking, but living his words: his actions showed me exactly what he meant. Richard had taken the junk of my life, and from it, he had made the most breathtakingly beautiful songs.
It was Jesus who said, "No man comes to the Father except through me." When we find ourselves in the arms of pure, unconditional Love and look back over our shoulder, whatever it was that led us there is Christ, the anointed, Himself. As we stand protected by the arms of love, we may see it was the small mercy we showed, the large mercy someone else extended to us, the compassion we were given, the compassion we showed to the one we respected least. That beggar who intruded himself in the crossroads was Jesus. In these loving moments of sacrifice, the shape of the cross begins to appear.
There is no access to redemption without incarnation; inevitably, as Richard said, the love of Jesus must put on flesh and bone. If we say Christ lives in us, we acknowledge that he lives not only to redeem each of us, but to touch the lives that intersect ours with his love. Christ’s spirit embodies still, for "Wherever two or more are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them." In the center, the crux, the cross: at the point of sacrifice.
Somewhere between the world as best as we remember it, and the pictures in the sky.
I was not at liberty to contact him at the time, so six months before his death he had a friend tell me that he wanted me to hear his television broadcast, “Live at Studio B”. He had several messages in it for me: especially, I was told, the first song. I had always wanted to be the one to be strong for him, to be able to somehow shine the love of God to him. I’d always wanted to be his lifelong friend, and for more than ten years now I had let him down. I couldn’t imagine what he would want to sing to me at this point of my life. More than ten years after his death when I finally listened to the broadcast, I heard a song about the Beatitudes: “I Will Sing.”
In April of 1997, I felt I’d experienced the proverbial flood; the rains had come down; the waters had risen, and the winds had blown and beat against that house, and great had been its fall. All three of my children had been suicidal. I had ended my marriage; I had sold my home at a loss to move on; I had gone through a career transition. As fearful as I am of the expectations of others, I could hardly hold up my head in public. And Richard had the creativity to show me a new point of view: the Beatitudes in my own life.
Then he spoke of art; and how “God takes the junk of our lives and makes the greatest art in the world from it”, and I knew God had given him the grace to see me and my disaster that way. And Richard was not just talking, but living his words: his actions showed me exactly what he meant. Richard had taken the junk of my life, and from it, he had made the most breathtakingly beautiful songs.
It was Jesus who said, "No man comes to the Father except through me." When we find ourselves in the arms of pure, unconditional Love and look back over our shoulder, whatever it was that led us there is Christ, the anointed, Himself. As we stand protected by the arms of love, we may see it was the small mercy we showed, the large mercy someone else extended to us, the compassion we were given, the compassion we showed to the one we respected least. That beggar who intruded himself in the crossroads was Jesus. In these loving moments of sacrifice, the shape of the cross begins to appear.
There is no access to redemption without incarnation; inevitably, as Richard said, the love of Jesus must put on flesh and bone. If we say Christ lives in us, we acknowledge that he lives not only to redeem each of us, but to touch the lives that intersect ours with his love. Christ’s spirit embodies still, for "Wherever two or more are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them." In the center, the crux, the cross: at the point of sacrifice.
Somewhere between the world as best as we remember it, and the pictures in the sky.
