Anguish and Grace: I Interview Kevin Prosch

From my mid-teens on, I grew up on the music of Kevin Prosch. I discovered him during that odd time of my life when I was attending a Presbyterian church but dating a Vineyard gal and avidly reading the Morninstar Journal out of Charlotte; it was as though I was trying to preserve the ecstatic fruit of my Assemblies of God past amid my rationalist Reformed church-going. Kevin’s music helped keep me sane – or was it insane with a visceral longing for friendship with God and real-world emotional vulnerability? Either way, I kept listening to Kevin even after I outgrew certain aspects of charismatic Christian culture, even as I departed the PCA.

Then…Kevin disappeared from the scene, amid rumors of scandal. Years later, as suddenly as he had dissappeared, he was back! It looked like he began a new life, one of transparency, integrity, and grace. To top it off, he’d cut one of the most moving albums of his artistic career to that point, Palanquin. Listen to this song from that album:

The words are worth meditating on in their entirety:

There’s a harp in my heart,
and only you can play it
There’s a song in my broken soul,
and only you can sing it
You’re so unpredictable, God,
just like the rhythm, the rhythm of weeping
And my life is so upside down
But you keep on coming, coming around
You keep on loving, I still let you down

There’s a harp in my heart,
and only you can play it
There’s a song in my broken soul,
and only you can sing it
I hear those curfew bells are ringing,
but I just can’t stop my singing
I’ve got to tell just one more person,
Never give up, keep on dreaming
Quieter than rain, He knows all your pain

There’s a cry I have had
that I could love my brother
And not look at that race,
That religion or That color
You love those Presbyterians, God
you love the gays and the lesbians
You love the Buddhists and the prostitutes
You’re not like us, we always change
You see through our sin, and You love us anyway

Oh, I wish you would put those words in my mouth, God
To tell the world what you’re realy like
Not some dead God who lives in some building
But a Father of kindness, a son of forgiveness,
a Spirit who helps me
Yeah that who you are

After all these years of enjoying Kevin’s music, we were finally introduced via a mutual friend, Don Milam. Thanks to Don, I was able to connect with Kevin via phone to interview him for the mega-esteemed Homebrewed Christianity podcast! Ohh yeah. We talked; it’s an absolutely riveting hour as Kevin pours out his heart and soul.

As they wrote on the Homebrewed hub,

His story is incredibly fascinating — from his troubled relationship with his abusive father as a child, to stockpiling arms and being held captive by gold miners — with music being an important source of comfort throughout his early life. His conversion to Christian faith and involvement in the early Vineyard movement led to his career as a musician, both in recording Christian worship albums, and in the mainstream with his band The Black Peppercorns. But later he sold all of his equipment, feeling too broken and unworthy to continue, only to reemerge later restored to ministry at More Church in Amarillo, Texas, and visionary of the Music Coope Festival (June 9-11), where artists are coming together to create music in the context of community.

So there you have it! Listen here. You’ll be glad you did.

And be sure to check out the Music Coope artists’ collective, their upcoming Festival, and More Church in Amarillo.

Zeitgeist vs. Paraclete – A Prayer Conspiracy

I was able to write an autobiographical reflection on the role prayer has played on my life, for the fine folks at Conspire magazine. Here’s an excerpt from the fourth issue:

Ah, Prayer – what a complicated relationship I have with Thee. Are You talking to God, or are You what happens in the spaces between the words?

What is prayer? Ask a dozen people, you’ll get at least a baker’s dozen responses. From books of common prayer and missals, to extemporaneous evangelical prayer (punctuated with the unwritten mantra of ‘holylordfathergodwejust’ every few seconds, used as a kind of prayer-comma), to ecstatic glossolalia, we followers of God in the way of Jesus are all over the map on the varieties of our prayer experience. Is prayer about asking God for things? Does it form the basis of our much-vaunted ‘personal relationship’ with God, a grand I-Thou dialogue? Is it the glue that holds together churches, neighborhoods, faiths, and countries? Yes, absolutely.

Yet as comprehensive as the above laundry list of prayer might seem at first glance, it actually eclipses its meaning for many of our most significant poets, mystics, lovers, and rapscallions through the ages. For a wise minority both inside the Church and without it, prayer is a difficult-to-quantify exchange-less exchange, occurring between people and a God beyond imagination, after words have been spent or when they’ve been gently laid aside.

This ground clearing – the release of words – is, ironically, a whole lot easier said than done. For me at least. I am deluged with words from morning ‘till evening – can I get a witness? And I was raised on prayer with words – asking God for stuff in my Baptist beginnings, which I continue to believe is just fine.

In my Pentecostal years, heartfelt, exuberant prayer was emphasized – we sang and danced prayer, to the beat of drums and tambourine. And glossolalia, or ‘praying in tongues as the Spirit gave utterance’ was encouraged, subject/object boundaries collapsing between you speaking to God and God speaking in and through you. The emphasis here was on ‘power with God,’ your prayers for self and others augmented via being directly ‘plugged in’ to the Paraclete, the Helper, the Holy Spirit of God. Tongues were like Popeye’s spinach for training ‘prayer warriors,’ heaven’s storm troopers who would kick butt and take names for the Almighty. I was never a really good prayer warrior as it turned out, but unlike a growing number of people who are part of Pentecostal churches these days, ‘tongues’ weren’t just a fad with me. They were a gift – a permanent stage you might say – and I continue to enjoy these hotly contested ‘other tongues’ to this day, some 15 years after my Assemblies of God days.

Of course, this would cause me no end of confusion during my soon-thereafter Presbyterian days, where tongues and tambourines designated you as lower-class, theologically inferior, mentally ill, or all three. (Turns out they were on the money with two out of three; sometimes the ‘planks’ you call in brothers’ eyes turn out to be right after all…) My Reformed friends, in this particular church at least, liked acrostics: In youth group we learned that the most pleasing way to talk to God was to act up – or, to ACTS up. That is, we approach God with Adoration, Confession, (oh gosh, I forget what the T is – Thanksgiving? Lemme Google this, be right back…) Thanksgiving (yes indeed), and Supplication – a weird word that means you finally get to ask God for stuff. I always got ‘Adoration’ and ‘Thanksgiving’ confused – kind of like which way to go in the Box Step whenever I’d try to learn the waltz over the years. This was especially awkward when doing it with a partner – praying or waltzing. I’d step all over the other partner; it was like I was all left feet.

Then one day in the late 1990s, during my freshman year in college when the Internet barely existed in popular use but it was already consuming more and more of my time, I felt a calling: Not to abandon all of these beloved (and sometimes frustrating and contradictory) prayer forms, but to transcend them for something sweeter: the call to ‘Be still and know that I am God.’ (That’s not me talking; it’s God. It’s in the Psalms. Look it up.) I remember when I first heard this siren song: sitting on a bench in a beautiful wooded area on my 28,000-acre campus, probably avoiding homework (or maybe even cutting class), transfixed by this little book by evangelical mystic Jerry Coulter called Beholding and Becoming. This passage is indicative of what caught my heart:

[Jesus] wants to be “with” us now. He wants us to experience that same intimate relationship with him that he had with his disciples. He wants to walk and live with us constantly. He wants us to sense his loving presence in our daily circumstances. He has made provision for this intimate with-ness for each of us. He has prepared a place for us where we may be “with him where he is.” Right now!

Jerry goes on to describe this path as one of koinonia, or fellowship with (and within) the Godhead that takes place in the depths of the human spirit; this romance of language and shift of perspective almost instantly gave me a whole new, more alive reading of Scripture that freed it from the more wooden interpretations of my youth. I wanted to be such a fellowship-er, what I learned Christian faith has named a contemplative. I wanted to have a more significant, intentional living into the One in whom we live, move, and have our being; the One who, it is said, is the All in all. (See Acts 17 and Ephesians 4, you Bible-lovers out there). If Jesus’ own prayer to our Abba in John 17 was true, this was an invitation open to everyone who begins a journey along the Way – to be hid with Christ in God, the same way Jesus was cloaked in his Father’s essence while treading our humble and blessed earth.

And so it has been. From that ‘call’ at the tender age of 19, through my 30^th birthday just a few days ago, I have been a wannabe contemplative, stumbling and faltering through the absurd possibility that our faith offers us – to be friends with God, and participate in extending this friendship to all creatures for the healing of the world. What I’m going to share now is what I try and fail at, as taught by some pretty adept folks toward living into this audacious goal. In my faltering attempts I see our enabling Paraclete graciously inviting herself into increasing palpability and centrality in our lives – collectively and personally – as she seeks to put the mighty Zeitgeist, the spirit of our frenetic age, in its place as servant rather than master of our most precious resource: our attention.

– to read the rest of this piece (this is only the first third), go here to find out how you can pick up a copy from an intentional community within driving distance from you, or online.

Pentecost Prayer

Come, thou Holy Spirit come:
and from thy celestial home
send thy light and brilliancy.
Come, thou father of the poor,
come who givest all our store.
What is filthy make thou pure,
what is wounded work its cure,
water what is parched and dry.
Gently bend the stubborn will,
warm to life the heart that’s chill,
guide who goeth erringly.
Fill thy faithful who adore,
and confess thee evermore,
with thy sevenfold mystery.
Here thy grace and virtue send,
grant salvation in the end, and in heaven felicity. Amen

– From a 13th century Latin Hymn, courtesy Paraclete Press

Please, Come Talk to Me…

Have you ever experienced a breakdown in communication, and felt like, if only the two of you could have an un-guarded, ego-free conversation, all would be healed? Peter Gabriel strikes to the heart of the matter in this incredible song.

Here is one song, recorded in two different eras, with two different connotations. (The first is with Paula Cole, and the second with is daughter Melanie). Powerful stuff.

ROM in the News – Fast Fitness on Fox

ATLANTA (MyFOX ATLANTA) – In the age of fad diets and quick weight loss programs, there’s now a new workout to add to the mix. Two machines are making their way into the U.S. from Europe. One of the machines is called Fitvibe and the other is the ROM.

The ROM, or Range of Motion Machine, is part recumbent bike and part stair stepper.

In just eight minutes, four minutes on the bike side, another four minutes on the stair stepper side, the ROM offers to give a total body workout by combining strength training with cardio.

The equipment claims to burn up to 150 calories, by using a fly wheel that delivers to 85 pounds of resistance.

Trainer Ankita Shah at the Arista Spa in Buckhead said the ROM was designed for those who just can’t find the time to work out and want fast results.

“Because there’s resistance involved and you’re using muscles for strength training while you’re doing cardio you can burn calories even after you’re done working out,” said Shah.

Read the whole article & watch the video here!

(To see my complete ROM health & fitness journey to date, go here!)