Posted on by Wallis Landrum (Wally)

Tommy 102924

The first opera that spoke to me was “Tommy” by the Who. The wonderful words and moving music were in my native language of rock. In grade 7, after 6 nights of basement-blasting four sides of the LP, I’d spend 1 day in church and youth group. I noticed the same themes. Tommy, a “deaf, dumb, and blind boy”, seeking healing through the connection of “see me, hear me, touch me, feel me.” Jesus, healing the blind, deaf, and lame to open their eyes to see, unstop their ears to hear, get up and walk to follow and do something. Deaf/dumb/blind — blind/deaf/lame were drummed into my head by Keith Moon and the Rev. Dr. Bill Arnold.

Two sleeps ago, Michelle Obama helped me, a man, see, hear, touch, and feel the silent shamed struggles that all women go through. She opened her mouth to open eyes and ears to see and hear the cries of women who are suffering and dying today and whose healthcare is threatened by the future. She invited those with lame excuses to get up and do something. It’s not too late to spend the time of one quarter of a football game watching her full speech on YouTube.

If you have two football games of time, YouTube the same night’s radical rally at Madison Square Garden. To save time, the nine-minute 2017 documentary “A Night at the Garden” will be a revelation of the same words, themes, and location on Feb. 20, 1939. I learned from “Tommy” that power corrupts morality long before I learned it from Lord Acton.

A white christian nationalist called the Vice-President of the United States of America the anti-christ without any sense of earned respect or the two letters of John in the Bible. Another revealed how he sees all women: prostitutes supported by pimps. Tucker revealed radical racism without a border of decency. A deaf, dumb, and blind boy was too dumb to stay mute when he insulted 6 million American citizens from and in Puerto Rico days before an election that might be decided by a few thousand votes in a few states. A decade of indecency created this; when did this become ok?

The deception that he didn’t say it tries to blind us to the fact that the man who created, fomented, and sent this rhetoric into our land is same one who created, fomented, and sent an armed mob to violently overthrow our republic. The black maid Aibelene says to Miss Hilly in “The Help”: “Ain’t you tired, Miss Hilly? All you do is scare and lie to try and get what you want. You a Godless woman. Ain’t you tired, Miss Hilly?”

Two sleeps ago, when a squirrel was darting across the road back and forth as our car neared, my wife yelled, “Choose a side before you get run over!” Do you think it helped?

Posted on by Wallis Landrum (Wally)

Kris Kristofferson 09302024

On my 15th birthday, 2/2/72, my older brother Baylor gave me the album “The Silver Tongued Devil and I” by Kris Kristofferson. He said words matter and these words are creatively and carefully chosen. Oh….. and…… “If you want to know me,” Baylor said, “I’m ‘The Pilgrim Chapter 33’” – from the rockin’ of the cradle to the rollin’ of the hearse the going up was worth the coming down. Two years later I was on the front row to hear Kris and Rita sing “Jesus Was a Capricorn” and “Why me Lord?” During the 3rd of six concerts I attended I helped Kris sing some words he was too drunk to get out by himself; future decades were better.

The song that celebrates what’s good about humanity is “Here Comes that Rainbow Again”. Someone on YouTube put stills from “The Grapes of Wrath” to Kristofferson’s words and music — it’s worth your while to watch. (search YouTube – Kris Kristofferson – Here comes that rainbow again (1982))

So many of his songs form the album of my life, but my vocation comes from “To Beat the Devil” (on his “Me and Bobby McGee” album) — you see, the devil haunts a hungry man; if you don’t wanna join him; you gotta beat him. I ain’t sayin’ I beat the devil, but I drank his beer for nothin’; then I stole his song. And you still can hear me singing to the people who don’t listen to the things that I am sayin’ prayin’ someone’s gonna hear. And I guess I’ll die explaining how the things that they complain about are things they could be changing, hoping someone’s gonna care. I was born a lonely singer and I’m bound to die the same, but I’ve gotta feed the hunger in my soul. And if I never have a nickel, I won’t ever die ashamed, ’cause I don’t believe that no one wants to know.

What movie, poem, album, concert, or song comes to your mind remembering Kris Kristofferson? How do words and music challenge you and inspire you in your life?

Posted on by Wallis Landrum (Wally) · 2 Comments

With God On Our Side 090424

My deepest theological roots were watered by the poetry of Bob Dylan. As a youth I spent hours each day in the presence of two-sided LPs by BD, JB, K3, AG, S&G, and PPM. Meanwhile, each unrhythmic Sunday sermon was sort of listened to one time only. Baez’s rendition of Dylan’s song “With God On Our Side” inspired a lifetime of resisting religious justification for the conquest of violent victories. “If God were on our side, he’d stop the next war.”

As I matured, I learned that the third commandment was not about childish cussing. Using the Lord’s name in a “wrongful way” (or in vain) was more about misrepresenting God. Thou shalt not use God to justify actions that actually go against God’s desire for us. Thou shalt not say God is on our side and against them — when we proclaim “there is no them”. Thou shalt not use God’s name to justify violence, oppression, racism, sexism, pyramids over tables, to name a few.

Later still I was taught that the worst wars and most violent acts in human history have been done in the name of God — and the times aren’t changing today. The song “With God On Our Side” revealed the importance of learning lessons from history instead of ignoring or distorting history; after all, every LP has 2 sides. How many times can a preacher proclaim the all-powerful prefers “his” politician? The answer my friend is blowing in the wind.

Which song lyrics have influenced your beliefs and impacted your life? What songs inspire you,, lift you up, and bring you joy? Which genre of music spoke to each age and stage of your life?

Posted on by Wallis Landrum (Wally) · 3 Comments

How Did You Meet?

I love to hear stories about how people met a significant person in their lives. Today I’ll share mine.

A few months after moving to the church I’d serve for 24 years, I was asked by Susan and John to officiate their wedding. I met with them for several sessions of pre-marital counseling — mostly my questions about their expectations on a variety of relationship and family systems topics. 

At their outdoor wedding rehearsal I met the pianist, Nancy, and discussed the wedding music. She had written a piece in high school, and Susan, her best friend from first grade, made her promise to play it when she got married. Almost 20 years later she was going to fulfill that promise by playing her composition for her best friend’s wedding the next day.

At the rehearsal dinner, Nancy shared that she was divorced from a man she’d helped put through seminary before he decided he didn’t want to be a minister or her husband. I didn’t share that I was privately separated from my wife. After our divorce a few months later, I asked Nancy to go see the musical “Ain’t Misbehavin’” at our auditorium. 

I gave Nancy my “Letterman Top Ten” reasons why we shouldn’t date. While she was not a member of my church, her sister and brother-in-law were church leaders and their daughters were the center of our youth group. Susan was her brother-in-law’s sister, so they are aunts to the same two girls. I didn’t want to mess up my friendships with all her family in our church if our relationship didn’t work out. We ignored the top ten list; it worked out.

Today is our 30th wedding anniversary. We came forward during Sunday worship to exchange our vows and rings. The date was chosen as the Sunday before a bi-state youth event I was leading; it happened to be Valentine’s Day.

For the past thirty years, I’ve had my answer to the question: How did you two meet? I simply say: “We met the night before I married her best friend”…. then wait for a response.

What are some stories you have about how you met significant people in your life?  How did your past set the stage for and prepare you for those meaningful relationships?

Posted on by Wallis Landrum (Wally) · 1 Comment

Cotillion

Prior to Dancing with the Stars and Miss Manners, there was Mrs. Burke’s Cotillion of Louisville. After the Great Depression, Mrs. Burke had been a ballet dance student and instructor in New York City before coming home to teach ballroom dancing in the 40s. For four decades, she annually enrolled an equal number of boys and girls in Cotillion (her former assistants currently continue the tradition).

Unlike the legend, I was not put on the waiting list at birth, but I went to Cotillion from 5th-8th grade at the Louisville Country Club. Over a hundred of us would gather every other fall Friday. Chairs were lined up along the wall on each side of the ballroom’s polished wood floor. The girls sat on the left “with both feet on the floor” and their white-gloved hands in their laps. I took a seat on the right in my sport-coat and tie; suits were not required due to the financial strain of growth spurts.

We learned a lot about manners along with the waltz, fox-trot, and jitterbug. More than manners, she taught me about treating others like I’d want to be treated with more practical examples than my church’s golden rule. In the midst of my body’s and society’s changes from ’68-71 I was placed in a bubble of consistency for a few months a year.

My most comforting consistency was Ruth. Dancing began when the boys were all told to “walk” across the room to ask a girl to dance. While I dreaded the risk of taking the initiative, I was relieved I wasn’t a girl who was asked last. After a few sessions, I asked Ruth to dance. We became dance partners for four fall seasons, except for the one time a guy made the mistake of beating me across the floor to ask her.

Our familiarity enabled us to dance really well together; our pact assured us of a partner we liked. Her flowing red hair enabled me to easily find a seat directly across before my run for the roses. By the third fall, her newfound height made the twirls challenging but we carried on. I never saw Ruth outside of cotillion but I thought of her in college the night a tiny dancer and I took second at our bar’s disco contest.

How were you initiated into treating others with decency and respect? In choosing a partner for the dance, do you appreciate consistency or seek variety? Who teaches you to treat others like you’d want to be treated? How do you put those lessons into practice?

Posted on by Wallis Landrum (Wally) · 2 Comments

Preaching to the Choir

Our children’s choir practiced and performed a Christmas Cantata with our adult choir at church.   I still can sing a song or two from “Lo! A Star” (1962) although I resisted the impulse to get the one copy on eBay this morning.  During weekly worship I would observe the choir as they sat and sang before us and behind the preachers.  Their expressions often changed but their faces remained steadfast.

In the decades to come pastors moved, the message was reformed, but the same faithful faces remained in the choir.  While some new singers took the place of a few, and while all of them aged over the decades, the constant choir was a reassuring testament to an enduring faith in God’s love, justice, and purpose for the creation in every church I served.  

When Lynn Turnage led 6000 Triennium youth in singing, moving, and miming the Nylon’s song “Face in the Crowd” I would internally sing a face in the “choir”.  

The Moberly choir was “a fellowship group that sings.”  That was a way of practicing hospitality to anyone who wanted to join us, but it had a deeper meaning.  Like other choirs, ours was a small, supportive, and sensitive community who were committed to the church and to each other in weekday rehearsal and Sunday worship.

In various churches I’ve felt the year-long grief of life-long choir members seeking new ways to worship and support each other from a distance after we learned that “singing is like a 5-minute cough.”  (And that was not just a critique of my singing).  As with all grieving, we “grieve with hope” for something better to come that is waiting to be born.

I’ve often heard the phrase, “she was just preaching to the choir” – a preacher who invites people to be faithful followers of God when the only listeners are already faithfully leading worship each Sunday.  It seems to me that a lot of media proclaims opinions by preaching to their own choir — reinforcing beliefs and biases already held on the full spectrum of points of view.  

If one purpose of the church is to “comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable” how are you supported by or challenged by those you watch and hear?  What refrains are being repeated to you?  Are they helpful or harmful?  How do you sing your songs of Zion in a strange land? (Psalm 137)