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1/13/04

Hi Friends,

Happy New Year!

Good luck seems to follow me around this week… I’m just back from New England where Saturday night I played in Boston as the Pats won a nail biter. Sunday night I returned to perform here in the Philadelphia region and the Eagles won in overtime. If our military families are in need of elementary school teachers to educate their kids, I think I could be of no small assistance as, everywhere I go, I seem to attract crowds of hoarse, spittle strewing red faced men who insist on foisting pop spelling quizzes upon folks at the top of their lungs... (What’s that spell!!!? EAGLES! What’s that spell!!!? ) Very cold weather seemed to follow me around as well. Football fever and frostbite notwithstanding, my thanks to Gary Kavanaugh and all the folks at the Steeple Coffeehouse, Café Fantastique, and Fox Run for making me feel so welcome on the road.

I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to write but to paraphrase the late John Lennen- life is what happens while you’re busy avoiding updating your web page.

The last months have been busy.

In my last note I alluded to running 13^th marathon the week before Thanksgiving. I had trained pretty seriously for the race with few concessions to early-middle age. (The one major exception being that for the first time I trained on alternate days only, theoretically giving my body time to recoup and heal up after 10- 12 mile runs and track workouts. This I hoped would allow me to emit fewer of those annoying creaking and, or, groaning noises when I got out of bed each morning. So much for theory… ) The race was run in beautiful weather but my performance was well short of the PR that I was hoping for. I experienced intimately what runners euphemistically refer to as The Wall. I not only ran into this wall – I was moving so fast at impact that I dislodged part of it causing it to buckle, sway slightly in the late autumn breeze, and finally topple over on me. At mile 20, while turning back from Manayunk for Kelly Drive and the final six miles of the race that led to finish line at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, I was thrilled to be given an excuse to stop running for a few minutes when a bad cramp in my hamstring caused me to break stride. It was at this point a fan in the crowd recognized my cowardly, limping, grimacing, Vaseline smeared body and informed me that she loved my songs but that I’d do much better in the race if I actually resumed running…. Oh well, there’s always next year.

One event that surpassed all expectations was the Johnny Cash tribute concert at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. My thanks to Lisa and Kris Kristofferson for making it possible for Beth and I to attend. Moving and heartfelt, the concert ran over four hours with each song receiving a standing ovation. Along with the Kristofferson family, we sat with Mary Miller and her son Dean. Dean has the looks and wit of his dad, Roger Miller. It’s impossible not to smile in his company. Mary, on hearing that I have been involved in kids music, told me that her late husband felt that making a child laugh and sing was the truest immortality any songwriter could ever hope to achieve. Her words have played in my heart many times since.

As I wrote in a recent post card, Christmas saw the taking of a friend’s life with the shooting death of Juli Thompson. Some have asked if this horrible and apparently premeditated act has caused me to change my stance on the death penalty. The short answer is no. I believe the pain that Juli’s confessed killer Stephen Clarke has caused is simply too profound to be in any way eased by yet another killing. Even one (ESPECIALLY ONE) that is sanctioned by the state. I believe more strongly than ever in the option of "life without parole". We are truly flawed beings and imperfect justice is probably as much as we can ever strive for. Balancing this is, however, the promise that the ongoing struggle to forgive… even to forgive those we might easily come to think of as monsters… the struggle to even DESIRE to forgive them… will purchase for each of us a limitless mercy that, in some place and time now unknown, we will all desperately need.

I am reading a book by a man named Gil Bailey called "Violence Unveiled". It was given to me by a young priest named Kyle and its central idea seems to be that society has always been based upon the idea that violence falls into two categories: violence that unleashes chaos and violence that controls chaos. To that end religious and state sanctioned violence has always been seen as indispensable to civilization. The problem , according to Bailey, is that fire no longer fights fire. A vicious circle has truly been formed, like a bicycle wheel that just keeps spinning faster and faster despite the words of a few old Hebrew prophets and a young carpenter from Galilee who tried to teach us how to slow it’s momentum by thrusting a cross into its spokes… All violence does anymore is create the fuel to feed its own insatiable hunger- more suffering and more victims. From the streets of LA to the streets of Baghdad., it is evident that violence is truly feeding upon itself causing an ever spiraling escalation. In the author’s opinion, this escalation, if unchecked, will eventually become the dynamic that we have always referred to as apocalypse.

I was very proud of Willie Nelson when I read the words to his new song "Whatever Happened to Peace on Earth". My response to his courage is a new song called "Long Live Willie". The lyrics are posted below and you can hear it online at: http://metta4records.com/long_live_willie.mp3

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