I've always been a voracious reader.
I listen to books more than I read them these days. The responsibilities of my job are such that I can listen to podcasts and audiobooks all day long. It's one of the joys of my job, which sometimes can be few and far between.
When I was in high school, I had a one hour a day reading class, and the first class I did not understand the assignment. I've always been a fast reader and I also back then had a near perfect photographic memory, so I devoured books. Well the first week of class you read and based on how many words you read, was the amount you had to read for the whole semester. And I read a lot that first week. So that class actually became one of my hardest classes, because I had to read so many books that semester. I was reading War and Peace and Centennial and Shogun and every Stephen King book my mom had just to make it by the end.
This will lead to Glen Hansard. Don't worry.
There are some books that you end up loving so much that you read them over and over and they never get old.
When I was young, that book was Where The Red Fern Grows.
When I was in high school, there was a fantasy trilogy by Patricia McKillip called The Riddlemaster Trilogy. I still read (now listen to) that book at least once every year.
And when I was in ministry, the book I read more than any other was a little known book called The Wind In The Wheat.
(In the below picture, you can see that it is still on my bookshelf, along with Where The Red Fern Grows on the far right, hidden by the photograph)
The author of The Wind In The Wheat is Reed Arvin, who played piano and produced several of the musical projects of Rich Mullins. (If you go back in my archives, you can find a post about me talking about how the death of Rich and the death of another person was one of the many paper cuts that killed my faith.) I think that one of the reasons why this book never gained much traction is because it sounds like some kind of historical romance novel.
It was not.
It was a thinly veiled portrait of Rich Mullins.
Most of the details surrounding the main character of the novel were different from Rich's life, but it was pretty obvious who the source was that Reed was drawing from. In the novel, a young gifted musician named Andrew Miracle is discovered by a Christian music producer and agent who takes him and develops him into a bonafide star. It's about that journey, and how the pressures of the music industry, as well as the fandom, can change someone's life in both good ways and bad.
Andrew Miracle played piano. I mostly played guitar (I mean I still can but I don't play much anymore). But there was a part of this book that I read over and over again because I felt like it described how I played guitar when I was leading worship. Here's the excerpt:
"What kind of thing is it? John told me that what happens when you play is extraordinary." She looked slightly away, avoiding Andrew's eyes. "He seemed to think there was some unique spiritual event happening."
Andrew sighed thoughtfully. It was hard to say just what happened in those Sunday services. He pictured the church in his mind, packed with parishioners. He saw Paster Mathews, squeezed into his suit, wrapping up his message, and giving Andrew the signal to begin. What happened next was something he never really understood himself.
"I guess I just minister," he said at last. "When you break it down, that's about it. I sing, and I play, usually after the sermon, but sometimes even in place of a sermon. The pastor kind of gives me the floor, and it gets real quiet in the place. I sort of close my eyes, and..." Andrew's voice trailed off uncertainly. "And what?" Carolyn asked intently. She seemed to be trying to see in her mind what Andrew was talking about.
Andrew looked up at her, uncertainty showing in his eyes. Talking about his gift was uncomfortable in the best of times because he knew deep down that he didn't control the gift and there were times that it actually controlled him. Those were times of ultimate trust. It was beautiful, but it also seemed wild and unsettling. At those times, he thought about some of the prophets in the Old Testament, how they had ranted and acted almost like madmen with visions...Andrew liked Carolyn, and he had no desire to come off like some mystic freak. It seemed a great risk to reveal this most intimate thing in his life. But as Carolyn gazed back at him expectantly, he suddenly, inexplicably felt safe. He decided for the moment to open the door.
"I guess I just pray with my hands," he said slowly, "if that means anything to you. I sit down, and I start praying. Only I don't speak. I just play."
Andrew goes on for awhile and explains that actually not everyone likes it. Carolyn asks how that could be, and Andrew says:
"They just don't. I mean I don't always play sweetly, you know? It's not always a peaceful thing. It's not always exactly safe."
Even today, I still think about that interaction. Andrew then tells a story about an old woman at a retirement home that he would volunteer to play at, and that story gets me every time (maybe I'll talk about it in a future post).
And now we get to Glen Hansard.
I first discovered Glen like most people did by watching the movie Once when it came out in 2007. I don't think I saw it in the theater, I think I bought it when it came out on DVD. And like most people, I ended up loving that movie very much. The story of a street busker meeting an immigrant in Dublin, both with broken hearts and dreams of making music, was so moving and sweet and sad that I have watched it several times. But what really got me was how Glen played the guitar. It didn't feel like it was an instrument, it was an extension of who he was. He played loud and he played hard and he sang forcefully and you could feel every emotion, every single heartache and joy, in the way he performed.
And I was hooked.
And if you ever saw me lead worship after that, you saw me in my small way emulate what came naturally to Glen. There was always a running joke about me breaking strings on stage and having to change a string in between services. Before I got my Breedlove guitar, I had a Larivee (I eschewed the normal worship leader guitar route, always went with smaller independent brands. My first guitar which I still have is a Takamine, which is the same brand Glen used) and I had played it so hard that I was developing a hole in the body, just like Glen had on his.
And if someone asked me why I played so hard, I would echo Andrew Miracle. Because I prayed with my hands. My guitar wasn't just an instrument. It was almost like a weapon, an agent of violence. Not violence in a bad way. Violence in that it wasn't always nice and peaceful. Sometimes it was angry.
When my brother died, I remember a few months later leading a song at church, not knowing if I still believed the words anymore. I remember almost yelling out the words and playing my guitar so hard that I probably looked like a madman. When I was alone, practicing and most likely weeping, I would hammer out songs on my guitar and let all my emotions just pour out. On stage, even though most of the time I wasn't always authentic about who I was and what I was struggling with, I prayed with my hands. As I've told people who have asked me about those last days in ministry and church, I couldn't at that point figure out where the line was between bleeding all over the stage, letting people see how mad I was at everything and how sad I was about my brother - and acting like the good Christian, the Jesus junior who had all the answers and didn't struggle with anything because...God.
Glen was only eight months older than me. He died in a single motorcycle accident, probably doing what he loved. He was a man who had his faults, just like all of us. But if you've watched some of the videos that people have posted recently, you saw a flawed man who loved being with people, who wore his heart on his sleeve, who never forgot where he came from, who befriended anyone and everyone, and who would occasionally still stand there on a corner in Dublin, this famous performer, and play in front of a few people. And his intensity and his passion was always the same, no matter who he was playing for.
They say to never met your heroes. I think Glen was an exception. And I wish I had met him more than through his music and movie. Thank you Glen for praying with your hands. The world won't be the same without you.
(Look up "Say It To Me Now" from the movie Once on Youtube to get a brief glimpse as to Glen's playing)
