Richly treasured

I wrote awhile ago that I'd write more about Rich Mullins later. But I'm not feeling too inspired this morning. Rich had the gift for inspiration. He'd get that funny raspy sound in his voice that made you lean closer when he was about to say something so profound and thick with meaning that you could pick it up with a fork...

He seemed ahead of his time, but I'm not sure that time would have ever been ready for him. Much has been written about Rich by people who knew him a whole lot better than I did. But pretty much anyone who encountered Rich walked away with a memorable story. This is mine.

Right after I graduated from KU in 1989, we moved to Wichita. I wanted to be closer to my family, especially if I was going to start my own. I still believe this was a great decision, although it may have stunted me a little professionally. My sister hooked us up with a landlord who was an elder at her church, and rented property owned by the St. Joseph Convent or Hospital. We landed at 3719 E. Zimmerly. We didn't have much, so everything but our books fit nicely. I loved it most because it was secluded and had a fireplace...

My first son, Gannon, was born here. Well, actually it happened at Wesley Hospital, but it was the little house on Zimmerly where we brought him home to.. where we retreated to the basement with an outside door those late afternoons in spring when the tornado sirens wailed... and it was often that I had supper on the stove and had to turn it off in the middle of cooking that year. 2000. McConnell got hit. Hesston got hit. Not a good year to be pregnant or have a newborn.

Anyhow, I didn't know much about Rich, other than he was this singer who went to church with my sister at Central Christian. She'd given me a tape of another singer from her church, so it didn't seem to be anything unusual or largely significant.

Rich and Beaker, his roommate and co-musician, lived in this little white rental house and paid their rent to the same landlord we did... they drove old pickups with the big round fenders and played outside in the front yard with their big dogs. They'd be gone for months at a time...

Behind us lived Doris Howard, wife of Maurice, a preacher that Rich had followed to Wichita from Indiana, who pastored at Central before his sudden death. I came to know and love Doris and especially her daughter, Sherri McCready. God spoke to me in a magnanimous way through the hours I spent copyediting Sherri's books, which told about her deep, thick encounters with God. How she trusted God to bring her teen ministry transportation, so naively, so trusting that she sat on the curb and waited for it to come. It did.

Then my sister divorced, and moved from one little house south of our brother's to the back of one just south of us, right across the street from Doris. If you can picture a square, we were at the top of it, or the north... Cheryl and Doris were on the street south of us, or at the bottom of the square... Rich and Beaker were on the street west, or on the left side of the square.

If the left side of the square extended farther up than the top of the square, that was where Rich's manager and fellow singers/musicians Nicki and Lee Lundgren lived. They were part of the original Ragamuffin Band. I fed their cats while they were off touring or on vacation one time. I was in Rich and Beaker's house once, while Cheryl went over to check the mail or something. She cleaned house for them from time to time.

I almost forgot to mention. Just east of us, on the top of the square, was Rich's friend from college in Cinncinatti, Kathy Sprinkle, but everything just knew her as Sprinkle. She was one of the first DJs for Lite 99 radio station. I sat on the front porch a lot and watched Rich walk back and forth from his house to Sprinkles. We never talked much, never acknowledged each other much...

Later, when we moved to the west side of town, I grew to appreciate Rich's music with much more understanding and spiritual passion. It filled something inside of me, gave words to my anguish and longing and joy and exasperation I felt toward God. I got into Christian music, and noticed there was something different about Rich's creations. So different. So unpop. So against the stream...

My sister started getting into booking and staging Christian concerts, and that allowed me to interview people like Billy Sprague and Eric Champion when they came to town. But I longed to talk one on one with this mysterious creative genius known simply as Rich.

And that is where I'll end this entry. More later.