Honoring an Icon

Ms. Aretha Louise Franklin had an interesting relationship with our hometown. Around the world she was and is beloved, yet in Detroit she was beloved and notorious. Frankly, what world changer is not? What ground-breaking artist is not complicated? What fighter for justice is labeled something as innocuous as ‘nice’?

I’ve had a few interactions with Ms. Franklin, but when I was 16, I sang and recorded with her at a studio in Detroit on a very hot summer day (this is an important detail). I joined a small group of singers that my father directed that was well known around the state. She invited that group, and a gospel choir from Chicago, to sing background on her contribution to the “Tribute to [Princess] Diana” compilation album. It was a long, grueling, hot, confusing day. It was also overwhelming, electrifying, and awe-inspiring.

There was no music, no words, no charts. Aretha shoved the accompanist aside, sat down at the piano, told the 10 of us to gather around her and she played the whole piece, and then plunked out the individual parts that she wanted us to sing. Every time she played a part, it was different. My dad was furiously trying to chart while she was playing the parts so his bewildered singers could have something to read, but then she started playing notes for the sopranos that were… not singable. Whistle-range-only-90s-Mariah-Carey-plus-auto-tune notes. The applicable emoji is ‘😳.‘ In fact, there’s a photo with a couple of us wearing that expression. How do you tell the Queen of Soul, “um, excuse me, Ms. Franklin, we can’t- we- that’s not—?” We eventually pieced together what she wanted and started to record. She wasn’t warm or welcoming; she treated us as professionals and trusted us to get it right. Also….. so much sweat. She wouldn’t allow the AC to be turned on at any room in the studio because it would affect her voice. We were all nicely dressed and there wasn’t really anything we could take off…. the word ‘wilted’ comes to mind.

Yes, when she started to sing, tears immediately filled my eyes, but what shocked my younger self most was her piano playing and her music theory. This was not only a true musician, she was a genius. And I felt this injustice in my soul: No one knows she does this! Everyone needs to know this!

By now you’ve probably read about some famous Diva antics, and that she demanded her payment in cash, in full, before every performance. Mmmhm. You probably would too if you lived through (and it the middle of) the Detroit riots of ’67. In addition, royalties and other artist protections were not suuuuper in place yet. They had started, but it was like, yyeeaaahhh this is sort of gray area still so Ima take all your money.

As such, here are some things for which I will always honor our beloved Aretha Franklin:
-she refused to perform for segregated audiences, no matter how much money she was offered
-a couple times she covered the payroll for civil rights groups that were being persecuted, as well as performing for civil rights benefits and non-violent protests
-she quietly supported numerous organizations dedicated to the rights of Native Americans and Indigenous Peoples
-she forged a breathtaking path of success and inspiration despite so many around her that wanted to take advantage and exploit, despite what was universally expected and accepted as the role of women at the time, despite losing her mother at age 10, despite becoming a mother herself at age 12
-she was a self-taught pianist that grew into a powerhouse musician
-she moved home to the Detroit area from Los Angeles in ’84 solely to care for her ailing father, and has stayed ever since

Most of the Motown roster, plus Aretha, grew up together within 4 blocks of each other. They sang together and played together and wrote together and recorded together and changed the face of American music together. It’s a loss for the world, but it’s personal for Detroit.

She will be so missed.

Course Correction

Who in your life has permission to lovingly correct you?

The most gifted therapist I’ve ever had was in Illinois- her name is Juliana. I miss her still and I’ve been in Colorado two and half years. Over our four year professional relationship there were three times that she looked at me and gravely, quietly said, “Beth, that’s really ugly.” Now, the first time this happened I had already been seeing her for almost a year, and I had told her at the beginning, “I’m not here just to talk, I also need feedback.” Not everyone operates that way in therapy. Additionally, she had already affirmed and encouraged me in life-changing ways, so there was such a loving and true trust in place that I was able to receive this pronouncement. (Hell I would’ve put a tin plate on my head and twirled 6 times on one foot if she’d told me to.) This was not just a bad day, I was not just acting bratty, this was something in me that truly needed transformation and she was there- along with Jesus- to help me. It’s hard to see those ugly places in your soul. It’s hard to look at events in your past that might have formed those ugly places. But we have to. I will get to why……

 

When I lived in New York, there was a particular friend who saw me through the most devastating personal loss I had experienced up to that point. She saw me at my worst and loved me through it with a simultaneous fierce and gentle love. She allowed space for my grief and confusion and despair with supernatural patience to see me through to the other side of it. Because that foundation had been built, I was able to receive her gentle correction when she told me one day, “Sweetheart. Unintentionally, this particular action [you did last week] was hurtful. Let’s talk about it. How are we gonna work on that?” I was horrified, I wanted to run and hide, but she didn’t allow how guilty I felt to deter me from the work that needed to happen for transformation and restoration.

 

We have seen some things in the news over the past week about Philandro Castile. Namely, new video footage and the acquittal of his shooter. I am overwhelmed with grief, almost everyone I know is overwhelmed with grief. I am at once heartbroken and scared for my sisters and brothers of color- again. I can’t even fathom what has just happened. My friends are pleading, “Just let us live. See us as human beings. Please.” And thennnnn……….the comments sections. Little space for grief. Little space for questions. Little space for healing. So many accusations. So many justifications. So many threats.

 

This is why.

 

I’m a foster parent. There are probably three main reasons I chose to embark on this intense and difficult journey. (Which I will write about in the future). Racial reconciliation is one of them. I’m not a law maker, I’m not on a public council, this is something tangible I can do with MY life to try and affect systemic racism in our country. The 15-year-old that was just with me for five months has been told her entire life to NEVER go to a police officer if she’s in trouble. If she and I were in the car and a police car drove by or was next to us at a stoplight, her body would shake in fear as she sat silently. She wanted to crawl out of the car and bolt even though she was doing nothing wrong. I attended a forum a few months ago put on by a local church for police officers and pastors to interact. During the Q & A, I raised my hand and said: My foster daughter and all of her friends have been told to never seek a police officer’s help if they’re in trouble. How would you like me to address this with her? What can I say to transform this fear that she lives with? And what are you doing in her neighborhood to bridge this gap? I wish I could say that they thanked me for the questions and had a coherent plan of action. Instead, the ranking officer became flustered and very frustrated with me. And then accused me and my foster daughter’s community of bias instead.

 

This is why. This is why we need people in our lives that have permission to lovingly correct us. This is why we have to do the hard and tedious and emotional work of rooting out the ugliness that lies in all of us, brandishing it to the light, and allowing it to transform. So that we don’t destroy everyone around us. And now-because of social media- everyone around us means EVERYONE. EVERYWHERE. My faith is what propels my consistent quest for truth and grace and love and transformation and restoration. What propels yours? When do you ask questions of your own patterns of thought? Who can you trust to lovingly guide you when you’ve gone too far off course?

 

How do you make sure you are seeing every person through a lens of inherent dignity and infinite worth?

A Universal Apology for my Patterns in Texting

First: I am terrible at texting.

Second: I’m not concerned about getting better at it.

However: If my lack of immediate response, or my response a few days later has somehow personally offended or hurt you, then I am genuinely sorry.

My youngest sister, a master texter, found a BuzzFeed list a few months ago entitled, “19 Things Everyone Who Sucks at Texting Understands” that describes my texting behavior brilliantly. Roughly every one of them applies to me. It is probably baby sis that gets the most annoyed when I accidentally leave my phone at home for the day. Her favored hashtag regarding her oldest sister is #bethdoestechnology. (i.e. Beth hasn’t posted on her blog in 10 months #bethdoestechnology). I think the reason this happens on the reg is that I don’t really live with my phone at arm’s reach every moment of the day the way most of us do now. With the rhythms of solitude and rest and Sabbath that I’ve set up in my life in order to stay healthy, I just don’t feel that I need to be reachable every moment of every day.

When texting first became a thing, I hated it. I want to hear people’s voices, hear their inflections, hear pauses in conversation, and understand context. To be completely honest, I would rather be with someone face-to-face; that is always my preference, but a phone conversation is second. Don’t even get me started on having an entire conversation, like paragraphs, through text. Just…..no. I thought texting was going to be the death of authentic, meaningful human connection. (Little did I know Facebook was on its way, in a big way. This inaugural-ish form of social media was a much taller soapbox for me, until I caved 5 years later.) Unfortunately, I couldn’t stick to my guns for long because I also crave efficiency. It became problematic to be the only one not texting out of principle. No one else was coming with me. It’s fine. It was a long time ago.

Here’s what happens when I receive a text and am not in a place that I can immediately reply: I glance at it and think, “Aw- I’m gonna cry,” or, “Ok. Got it,” fully expecting to reply later…..and then I mistakingly assume I’ve replied because I replied in my head. I KNOW I’M NOT THE ONLY ONE. So, if you receive a reply from me a day or a month later, you know what happened.

I love (pretty much) anyone that texts me, so please have grace for my seeming deficiency in this area.

Three Broke Girls

How to Create a ‘Poor Girl’s Hot Tub’ in 10 Easy Steps:::::::::::
1. Buy a $9.99 plastic “kiddie” pool and $4 plastic tarp.
2. Borrow a long hose from a friend
3. Open the pool and roll it out in a strategic* backyard location.
4. Hook up one end of the hose to kitchen sink, make sure the other end of the hose is inside the pool. Hose may need to go through a window or back door. Air conditioning will survive, but try to fill pool as quickly as possible.
5. Turn on HOT water.
5b. Make sure the sink nozzle is fit snugly to hose. Otherwise, water will spray everywhere. If spraying occurs, move away full rolls of dry paper towel or any other items that may be damaged by a small flood.
6. Wait for pool to fill with hot water.
7. Once pool is filled to the designated height, turn off water and unhook hose from sink. 7b. If one section of pool wall doesn’t fully stand up after filled with water, you may need to fasten a stake or rod to that section of the pool wall so that water does not eventually spill out of that side. Hopefully, you have 1x or 2×4 scraps in your garage, basement, or neighboring gravel pit. Shish kabob skewers will also work as long as they are water resistant.

8. After lawn service comes, retrieve a strainer from the kitchen to fish out grass clippings and other debris.

9. Place tarp over pool and tuck edges underneath the pool.*

10. OPTIONAL: Create “Adults Only” sign and post it next to the pool. Purchase small, floating fountains or underwater light show apparatus. http://www.amazon.com/Small-Underwater-Floating-Light-Fountain/dp/B008HW41P8

*Strategic may mean far away from next door neighbors’ small, unruly children that terrorize your dog and bang on your glass doors. Or, not on a hill.

*If possible, complete step 9 directly following step 7. This will omit step 8 altogether.

Update:::::::: If left uncovered on a sunny day, the sun disinfects the water and there is no need to concern yourself about bacteria, mold, etc. If you find the water does not stay sparkling clean you have the option of buying small salt tablets or chlorine tablets to drop in the pool. (Read directions carefully). These are helpful especially after a heavy storm. If the water temperature is not where you would like it on a specific day, a few gallons of boiled water should bring it up sufficiently. Again, the sun is very useful for temperature regulation considering the depth of the water.

Feel free to leave ideas and suggestions for our hot tub and/or other knock offs in the Comments section!

Background Info

For so long, people have been telling me that I need to write. My reaction has been similar to the reaction I had after being told I should consider going into ministry; I plugged my ears, sang “lalalala” over and over, and ran the other way.

 

The reasons for my slow army crawl into writing (in a public forum) are slightly different, but it has been easy for me to put ‘writing’- this ambiguous, cavernous term- on a very high shelf of things I may get to someday. Up there with opening a shop full of pretty things, or running a dog training and rescue facility, or building a public juice and smoothie bar. All things I could do and have interest in…but things that would take A LOT of work and that are not in my come-very-easily-to-me-everyday-wheelhouse-gift set.

Writing seems like an overwhelming undertaking for me because of three reasons: 1.) I don’t see myself as having something original to say. What’s my angle? What’s my niche? Who’s my target audience? Because I have lived such a varied life– different industries, very different groups of people, very different places– and because my opinions and thoughts do not fit into one or even two boxes, I don’t know what kind of field to narrow myself into. Daily anecdotes? A specific field of study? Can I be amusing? Sure. Can I be informative? Yes. I love words and I can arrange things nicely. But I don’t think I have anything to say that someone else hasn’t said better! Truly.

2.) I don’t like not being good at things. I know that everyone thinks they can be a writer now because of social media–everyone ‘writes’ all day long. After all, now you can get a book deal for blogging about a funny project. But not everyone should be a writer. I am a voracious reader and have been for a long time…I devour books and articles and I’m normally reading three different types of books at a time. When riding the subway was an everyday activity in my life, reading a book a day was normal. As such, I am constantly in awe of the minds of writers- especially writers of fiction. Theirs is such a specific gift; an art form that has changed the thinking, the practices, the fabric of entire societies for millennia while breaking down emotional barriers and pointing out behavioral flaws. As a fellow artist, as a former actor, as a sometimes songwriter, as a chronic connector of dots I am just enough on the outside edge of that gifting that I can see what it must take to do what writers do, and the gap between where I am and where they are is absolutely expansive. So. I respect these minds very much. (It’s kind of an extension of my Reason #1.) The fact that there are people walking around with entirely different worlds rolling around in their heads (Hello, Ms. Rowling) and the fact that there are people whose natural, easy response to a bad day or egregious injustice is to sit down and write instead of take a walk or play with the dog has made it easy for me to leave it to those people. It takes so much more for me; so much silence, so much concentration, so much time that I don’t have, so much more work than operating in my main gifts. Writers are good at writing! On top of having a raw talent they’ve studied, they’ve practiced, they’ve been critiqued, they’ve honed and sharpened. There is a standard for good writing and I don’t like not being good at things.

3.) I don’t like crying. Many close friends wouldn’t know this since I cry, or get choked up, on an almost daily basis. Even though this is the plight of an empath, I do not look for those moments. In fact, I do everything I can to stay away from those moments because I would much rather sustain a cheerful disposition all day! And I don’t like fights! The blogosphere is mean! Polarizing and hateful comments are the norm! Writing is a surefire path to tears for me. If I’m going to write anything of truth or authenticity or value, it will always be connected to my spirituality. I simply can’t separate writing from my relationship with Jesus…. and that is an open door to all the feels.

So why now? Much like my shift into full-time ministry, it’s God’s fault. Over the past year, He has become more insistent that I begin- whatever it looks like, however it ends up. In fact, I started crying when I realized this truly was something He was putting on my plate because then it became an obedience issue, and a discipline issue, and I wasn’t ready. I mean, I’ve written things. I went to grad school for goodness’ sake. And I have a journal that I have the patience to write in a couple times a year.

But this is different.

I’m taking some encouragement from good ol’ Ernie Hemingway. I’ve always felt close to Hemingway because I grew up with a cat that might have descended from his brood of polydactyl cats in Florida. My cat’s name was Elliott, after T.S. Eliot, also a writer. Full circle.

Art Music Worship Part 1

Why do we use art and strive for excellence in worship to God?:::::::::::::::::::::::::

Faith is found in that soul-deep space in the human experience.  Sometimes it is difficult to express using mere words, so we employ art.

As artists on the platform or behind the scenes of a particular service, we have an important aesthetic and theological responsibility. We need to understand that art communicates worship in a powerful yet particular way.

We know that many people who come to church are not at their best. The writer of Psalm 51 asks God for a broken and contrite heart and many of our people come through the doors in such a state. If we, as worshiping artists, do our job properly we are helping the congregation on a path to the heart of God. In this, we strive toward excellence to get out of the way. If we do our job poorly, it could be an obstacle for the people. The awkwardness of being ill-prepared, the jarring nature of an out-of-tune chord, these are the ingredients of distraction during worship. Thus, we strive toward excellence to help the faith of the people; for the sake of bringing people closer to Jesus. Are there different standards of musical or artistic excellence? Absolutely. Could we dissect these differences in standard? Ugh. Of course. However, I would rather focus on this: We are looking for a volunteer’s best account of excellence, trusting that God ‘inhabits the praises of His people’ and is pleased by our sacrifice of praise, and our offerings of talent.

Let’s take a look at 2 Chronicles 8:14 which reads, “[Solomon] also assigned the Levites to lead the people in praise and to assist the priests in their daily duties.” In Old Testament worship, the Levites performed tasks that can be compared to those of the worship leader or worship team’s tasks today. Assisting with offerings, leading celebrations with praise and music, theirs was a calling that was very set apart. The people of God were able to come and participate in worship because of the service of the Levites. Not only that, the Levites were used in battle on the front lines! When Jehoshaphat’s soldiers marched against his enemies, the Levites walked ahead of the army, empowered by the Spirit of God, singing praises to God. The enemy soldiers turned on each other and fled in confusion, leading the people to praise God and resulting in peace for Jehoshaphat’s kingdom (2 Chronicles 20:14-30). Even though the tasks differ as I suspect the Levites didn’t worry about wireless microphone battery life, the calling and the set-apart nature of a lead worshiper is a reflection of this millennia-old post.

As lead worshipers it’s our job to help our congregation employ art/music to praise, communicate with, and honor God. The God that created artistic expression. The God that is the Author of all creativity. (A whole post about this idea alone is needed!!) In melodies, in color, in shapes, in poetry, in prose, in light, in rhythm, and in harmonies, our church family experiences echoes and images of God- Father, Son, and Spirit- even as we use art as a function with which to glorify Him.