Occasionally some incredible gift comes my way. One time my friend Dan wrote me a poem as a Christmas gift, which is charming on its own. But it was also a really excellent poem! It hung on the refrigerator for a long time, and I read it enough to have it memorized.
Another time a neighbor knocked on the door late at night for no reason other than to tell me he loved me. Was he drunk when he did this? Yes, very much so. But men don’t say these things to one another often. You have receive the gift however it comes.
My friend Julie pulled into the driveway one day and walked into the house with the alto sax she played in high school. In had been in a closet for decades, so she gifted it to me. As it turned out, it was a highly-sought antique horn that has made me the envy of several musician friends. After a little work, it plays like a dream.
A while back, my friend Shelly—aka The Voiceover Slayer—told me she was interested in producing an audiobook. She wanted to use me as a test case. I would record in her home studio, and she would do the digital production. All I had to do was find the considerable amount of time it would take to read Our Trespasses aloud. She would edit the raw files into the high-quality product suitable for your favorite audiobook platform. She got an important test run out of this, and I got an audiobook. I believe I got the better end of this deal, but Shelly is a terrific human and diligently spent a huge amount of time on completing it. (Quick shout-out to Beloved Community Charlotte, our little church body that helped us to know one another.)
It’s hard to state what an incredible gift this is. Audiobooks take thousands of dollars to produce, and a truckload of time. So, with a heart full of gratitude, here is the Our Trespasses audiobook, read by yours truly:
Available on Audible and on Apple Books
I have a few free tokens as an introductory offer. If you’d like to download a copy but don’t have a subscription, contact me and I am happy to share.
500 Years of Resistance: My friend Rev. Dr. Benjamin Boswell has been collecting resources and telling untold stories at https://resistance500.com/. He’s also organized some writers for monthly pieces over at Good Faith Media. Mine’s coming soon. In the meantime, take a look at this strong work.
A Quick Writing Exercise: Thomas Merton’s essential spiritual autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain, begins like this:
“On the last day of January 1915, under the sign of the Water Bearer, in a year of a great war, and down in the shadow of some French mountains on the borders of Spain, I came into the world.”
During a recent QC Family Tree board meeting, our board chair began with a quick writing exercise to get the juices flowing. The assignment was to write a beginning for our own story, packed with context, in ways that might illuminate ourselves and the crossroads where we find ourselves.
My colleagues all admirably attempted creativity, refusing Merton’s form, adopting powerful images, and subverting expectations.
I, on the other hand, was content with direct mimicry or even outright theft. My spiritual autobiography thus begins:
“On the 20th day of August,
at the height of a suburban revolution,
into a village of faithful Southern Baptists,
in a strange and Christ-haunted land,
I came pissing into the world.”
Look for a full publication some considerable time down the road.
One Last Note: I neglected to note the Miles Davis centennial in this space. There are, of course, too many Miles tracks. Here’s one from 1953, still in the bebop mode. Following the trumpet solo, the first tenor solo is by Sonny Rollins, recently deceased and remembered here. The second sax solo is from Charlie Parker, playing tenor rather than alto, and recording under the name Charlie Chan, due to contractual obligations with another record label.