When I moved to Nebraska the first time, in 1991, I bought a 1988 Ford Black F150 pick-truck (5 speed, stick on the floor!), a pair of cowboy boots, and I started listening to country music. My New Jersey friends were appalled. I loved that truck, to my own surprise, and it was with great heartbreak that I got rid of it after 10 good years together, in 2001, because the rear-wheel drive was incompatible with the narrow, steep, winding mountain roads of Northeast Pennsylvania where we lived then. The cowboy boots didn't last as long; one full day at the Nebraska State Fair for a Garth Brooks concert did my feet in. (Or was it wearing them for line-dance lessons when I was 6 months pregnant?-- ouch)
Though I am currently truck-less and bootless, I still listen to country music. I also listen to Public Radio (I love that Billy Joel song, "I don't know why I go to extremes!") When I was in seminary at St. Paul School of Theology in KC, my professor Tex Sample taught a January class called "White Soul." Tex also wrote a book by the same name. It was, believe it or not, a class on the history of country music, and how it is essentially the "soul music"of mostly white people, and not just rural white people. In other words, country music is often about real life, real struggles and real people. I don't like ALL country music, mind you. I'm not crazy about the heavy bear-drinking, woman-hating, flag-worshipping, sometimes violent, sometimes nasty songs. But there are many songs that speak about the real pains and joys of life. I commuted to seminary in my pick-up truck for two years from Nebraska, listening to Alan Jackson, Brooks and Dunn, Martina McBride, Garth Brooks ("I've Got Friends in Low Places" will preach!), Trisha Yearwood, Wynonna, Confederate Railroad, etc. During the 1992 presidential election, there was a lot of songs about the working man or woman just trying to be by, trying to get a job, the homeless, the regular guy on the street. There are songs about spousal abuse, child abuse, impossible bosses, trying to get by on minimum wage, raising a daughter in a world where women's bodies are used to sell everything from pop to cars to shampoo. Then there's the just plain fun ones like "Bubba Shot the Jukebox," or "Prop Me Up Against the Jukebox When I Die" and the controversial Dixie Chicks' "Goodbye Earl." Jukeboxes are big in country music, along with trucks, trains, bars, dogs and mama. Country music also pokes fun at the absurdities of life, like in Tracy Byrd's "Celebrity"about the whacked-out life of big stars who can literally get away with crimes. The music also celebrates the simple, good things of life; like fried chicken (never mind the trans fat), long conversations on the front porch, biscuits and home-cooking, and country life.
My moving to Nebraska wasn't my first exposure to country music, it was more like a return to it. My mother, Mississippi-raised, had country music playing all the time on the kitchen radio. I grew up listening to Dolly Parton, Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, Little Jimmy Dickens, and company. Then upstairs on the second floor, my older brothers were playing 60s and 70s rock, so I had a diverse exposure. I learned to especially love Johnny Cash in elementary school. It was a Johnny Cash movie on the life of Jesus that simultaneously made me love Johnny AND Jesus at the same time when I was 9 years old. The day Johnny Cash die I felt an eerie grief, as íf I'd grown up with the man. In a way, I did.
Country music also has great story-songs that'll make you cry and songs about God and Jesus. No other song, I believe, captured and comforted the national heart after September 11th more than Alan Jackson's "Where Were You When the World Stopped Turning?"
I guess I try to do in my preaching what I find in a lot of country music. I try to get a sense of what the regular person in the everyday world is experiencing and feeling and wondering about, and try to talk to them. I want to find out their story, their lived experience. So much TV represents so much false life, people with way more money than any of us'll ever have, doing things that none of us have the time to do even if we wanted to, and they do it all without having to reap any consequences. I like to talk about real people and bring the Good News of Jesus Christ to them. Otherwise, what is the point of any of it? I like the song by Confederate Railroad; "Jesus and Mama always loved me." Now, it doesn't get much more basic than that. Then there's Brooks and Dunn's "Believe"; "I'm finding more and more truth in the words written in red..." Country music, more often than not, is about real life, real heartbreaks, real struggles, real people, and often about the very real struggle to have faith in a world that makes faith so difficult. Sounds like gospel to me.
Music is often like praying for me. Sometimes a song can say what I don't know how to put into words myself. It can lift my heart when nothing else can. It can help me grieve, too, while also reminding me of heaven. It's good stuff. I don't know, it'd be just like Jesus to hang out in the honky-tonks if he came back today. Call me crazy. Jesus always seemed to prefer the down-to-earth, tell-it-like-it-is people over the uppity ones who thought they had it all together. Jesus came that we may have life-- REAL life-- as real people. Who knows? He might even wear jeans to church if he were here.
pmr
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