Who You Are

This past week someone reminded me of an old friend named Jack McEwen. When I was in high school, Dr. McEwen was the interim pastor at my home church. He was this very interesting guy who’d been an English professor and pastor for many years. He was wise and articulate and I really admired him. This is one of the things I remember him saying:

“Want what you have, do what you can, be who you are.”

Let’s think about this.

Two weeks ago Michelle and I went to see a Garrison Keillor performance at the North Charleston, SC, Performing Arts Center. Dear friends had given us tickets and we’d been looking forward to the trip since Christmas time.

For those of you who aren’t aware, Garrison Keillor hosts a weekly radio program on National Public Radio called, A Prairie Home Companion. It is an old-style radio variety show with skits and stories and live music. I love the portion of the show called the ‘News from Lake Wobegon,’ a fictitious small town way out there on the prairie in Minnesota, Keillor’s home state.

Each week Keillor tells stories about the apparently ordinary happenings and goings on in Lake Wobegon during his artful monologue. But, if you pay close attention to the events of the weeks and the comings and goings of the residents, there is often a deeper message woven carefully into the tapestry. This message is always funny, sometimes profound and often redemptive. Michelle and I found this to be the case in Charleston, as well, where Keillor appeared onstage with a single stool and a mike and talked about his life and growing up in Lake Wobegon. He told stories for two hours, each building on the one before with common threads running throughout.

His last story was about majoring in journalism, finishing college and moving to New York City. There, after time beating the streets for stories, he had an epiphany. He realized that his calling was to home, a place he knew, telling stories about what he knew best. That summed up his life in Lake Wobegon. As we left the theatre that evening we wondered, How much of his fictional Lake Wobegon is autobiographical? I assume much.

You know, there is something to appreciating what you have and enjoying what you’ve been given. There is joy in doing all you can and being who you are. I would call this gratitude. Or thanksgiving. Or stewardship.

I hope your life is filled to the brim with each of these today.

Blessings,

Ande

Do you have comments? Write to me at: ande.myers@gmail.com

Passing by...

This week I re-read and old article I had saved from the newspaper…

What do you think would happen, hypothetically, if one of the world’s greatest violinists performed incognito before an audience of over 1000 people? What if he performed on a violin hand crafted by Antonio Stradivari in 1713? What if he performed the greatest pieces of music written for violin, masterpieces, for nearly an hour? What if he performed the pieces flawlessly? And, what if he did this in a very busy place in the middle of rush-hour? What might happen?
Well, the Washington Post wondered this very thing and enlisted Joshua Bell, possibly the world’s greatest living violinist, to don a baseball cap, a t-shirt and jeans and to play his 3.5 million dollar (yes, 3.5$ million) violin in a subway station in Washington, DC. Bell opened his case and began playing the violin.

At the end of an hour he’d made $32.17. Twenty-seven people had passed by and put money in his case; one person recognized him; a few people, less than 10, actually paused to listen to the music. But – here was the shocking thing – 1070 people hurried by like he wasn’t even there. 1070 people missed the greatest violinist in the world playing on the greatest instrument, a Stradivarius, playing masterpieces. 1070! Can you believe it?

As I re-read this article I felt so very sad. I also wondered if I would’ve been one of the ones who passed by. There are videos of this on the internet, for this experiment was filmed. There are also interviews with people who passed by and missed it.

You can guess the responses people gave for passing by: it was Friday and I was in a hurry. I couldn’t hear – my ipod was in. I didn’t have time. I didn’t recognize the music.

I noticed one interesting thing in the excerpts from the video of this experiment…when the violinist was playing, men and women passed right by nearly every single time. Caucasians passed by, as did African Americans. Indians passed by, so did Asians. But all the children who walked by noticed the music and wanted to stop and listen. And every single one of them was hurried along by his or her parents.

This experiment raises bigger questions: Do we have time for beauty in everyday life? How often do we miss the moment? When is the last time you rushed by never noticing a beautiful thing? (The article was: ‘Pearls Before Breakfast,’ by Gene Weingarten, The Washington Post, 04.08.07)

Blessings,

Ande