The cult of womanhood

As women, and girls who will one day be women, we all have a legacy to share, and a legacy we can leave behind. Let me tell you about the legacy that was given to me. I grew up in a beauty shop. That is to say, my mother had a beauty shop in our home, down in the basement. And our basement was filled with women, four days of the week.

This was during the time when most women went every week to the beauty shop to get their hair washed and curled. They’d sit under a hairdryer for 45 minutes before the curlers would come out. Then a hair artisan like my mom would backcomb and tease it and softly brush and swoop it up into a perfect hairdo.

Every so often, the ladies would come for a color rinse or a permanent. Their voices would rise above the drone of the hair dryers, and then above that, one could hear laughter here, a cackle there. I knew them all, and their voices, and without seeing them, knew which woman was beneath my bedroom, down in the shop, getting their hair done.

On certain days of the week, the distinct scent of permanent wave solution would waft upstairs. It seemed that the back door of the garage was always opening and closing, as one woman would leave and another would come. Mom would climb the stairs periodically throughout the day to put up her feet, get dinner started, and make sure that everything was all as it should be.

Her beauty shop represented a cult of womanhood. Mom was a beautician, and the women were there to become beautified. She also was part therapist, a woman’s bartender of sorts, listening as they confided all their family issues and challenges.

It was a wonderful place for a girl to grow up. Mom’s customers were women who owned businesses, women whose husbands owned businesses, women whose husbands worked with my dad on the railroad, women who had been schoolteachers, women who’d never married, women who sometimes brought their grandkids with them to play. It was hard not to believe this same activity was happening at other peoples’ homes in our neighborhood.

I was grateful to be surrounded by all these women, for my paternal grandmother had died a decade before I was born. My mom’s mother lived more than two hours away, and trips to her home in western Kansas didn’t happen often. Neither did phone calls.

Somehow, it seems, if you are lacking a special person in your life, God will sometimes give you substitutes—people you may not be related to, but can love, just as well. Sometimes, in my case, you get dozens more than what you truly missed out on.

They were in our house every week, some for twenty or more years. They knew everything about us, and watched us grow up. They put special gifts under a little Christmas tree in the beauty shop for mom and I. They ordered Christmas cards and pocketbook calendars from me, so I could earn enough money to buy slippers and a Zippo lighter for my mom and dad and stick them under the family Christmas tree.

They were my teachers about life, and patiently listened while I told them what was going on in school that day. They sat and colored pictures with me. They held me in their lap while we looked at Good Housekeeping and Better Homes and Gardens magazines. They knew when I had my tonsils out, when I got in trouble and had to stay after school, when I had my first date, and when I left home for college.

I tell you all this because I want you to know that every woman has the ability to love and mentor a young girl in their life, if only they will look around you. If only they will sit down and take the time to listen. And ask questions. And care a little.

And if you are a girl or young woman, I want you to look around you and see the amazing group of women around you, who have all sorts of wisdom and love to offer… if only you will sit down and take the time to listen. And ask questions. And care a little.

We all have a legacy to share, and a legacy we can leave behind. The days of the beauty shop may have ended when my mother retired and made her last trip up the stairs, in 1990, but the women I grew to love there will never leave my heart. The love I received from them all—Lois, Helen, Ethel, Lorene, Lucile, Catherine, Dorothy, Elizabeth, and so many others—remains with me even today. I can still hear their voices of encouragement. And I cannot wait to get to heaven and see them all, once again.

They are the women of the beauty shop, the mothers and grandmothers that God gave me as a source of strength and support. I pray that you may find your own cult of womanhood, a special place where women come together to love and nurture each other in a spirit of love.

A Rich Experience

Looking back, I don't think I ever followed up on that post about Rich Mullins... I was writing for some Christian music magazines. One was Rejoice! The Gospel Music Magazine. After trying to get an interview with Rich for years, finally it worked out that I could go talk to him at Roxy's on Douglas in Wichita.

Rich had been to Europe, had cut his long hair, grown a beard, was wearing shorts and tennis shoes... I hardly recognized him. It was at the beginning of his time as a student at Friends University, I think. We sat down and had a good long conversation, me, writing notes as fast as possible, recording it on cassette--having learned a hard lesson with the Michael Hedges interview, noted elsewhere on this blog. Still have the cassette... will post my article at the bottom of this update. If ever I find the two photos I took of him, I will try to add them to this, later.

What were my impressions? I felt so fortunate that I could sit, alone, with him and ask basically any question I wanted. I felt blessed he would give me that much time... I was impressed with how candid he was. At the end, he said he didn't much care for the sound of his own voice, singing, and that he really wasn't very Irish, although plenty of people thought he was. Nor was he part Native American, nor did he know how to build campfires, although some might think so, based on the insert from one of his recordings.

I gave him an extra tin whistle I had, with some sheet music and instructions, and a bagpipe chanter I'd tried my hand at, but never had any luck with... he was very gracious, very appreciative.

The day we drove home from McPherson after buying our first "almost new" car--I think it had something like 30,000 miles on it--I was very pregnant, and we gassed up at a convenience store at SW 14th and Main in Newton. I had the radio on while my husband paid for the gas inside... and caught the tail end of a news story about some Christian recording artist that had been in a car accident... details were just coming out... and someone said Rich's name. And that they didn't think he'd survived.

I had to fight everything within me, not to get out of my car, run to the field, fall to my knees and scream... it could not be. Although I would never try to represent myself as being the least bit close to Rich (my introduction to him happened because my sister was his friend), I got used to seeing him on our block, in our neighborhood... got used to hearing his music and words ring in my ears. I admired his talent, the fact he was a true poet, an artist with words... his ability to move people with something he'd created.

I look forward to someday seeing and hearing him once again, in Heaven. Until then, Rich, know that people around the world are still singing Awesome God, despite the fact that you believed your music and your legacy would probably not be very enduring... God is still using you and the work you did, in obedience to Him, as he called you to it.

So here is the article that I wrote for Rejoice magazine:
It's another humid day in Kansas, and Rich Mullins sits on a tier halfway up from the stage at Roxy's, a Christian club in Wichita, talking about his new life away from the stage. Whether playing the keyboards or guitar or hammering away on a lap dulcimer, he's created countless songs of praise that compel audiences to stand and sing.

Just back from a three month Euorpean tour to promote The World as Best as I Remember It, Vol. II, he appears refreshed and invigorated. Earlier last summer, a tired, much older looking Rich premiered the new Vol. II album at Roxy's, introducing and playing cuts with his co-musician "Beaker."
But there's something different about Mullins that makes one wonder what happened during the summer. Maybe he's merely glad to wrap up the tour, to come home and be an everyday Joe, but it's probably his decision to take a sabbatical and complete a degree in music education that makes him seem so animated.

If Mullins the musician was intense, a little eccentric, and hard to pin down ("people want to know what inspired us to write certain songs...they're probably more provoked than inspired," he quipped the night of the Vol. II premiere), then the collegian Mullins is markedly different. His attitude is softer, and he's sincerely concerned about putting something good in other people's lives.

At first glance, he draws a double take. Gone are the long dark locks often tied in a ponytail ("I left my hair somewhere in Holland," he sings with a hint of longing sarcasm), and on this day he abandons his worn-through-jeans/no-shoes look for a t-shirt, running shoes, and a pair of shorts.

He realizes that bowing off the stage means he won't be able to buy everything he wants. Consequently, "I may not be the snappiest dresser on campus, but at 36, being a snappy dresser is a lot different than it is when you're 19."

He also knows the advantages of being an older student. "When I ran out of money in high school, that meant the party stopped. When you're 18 and on your own and run out of money, suddenly your lights get turned off. You find there are more serious consequences. I'm used to being worried about the electricity being off!," he laughs. "It's happened, I survived it, and the world didn't end."

Mullins has been a student for seven years. When asked if he's on the extended plan, he corrects with a slight smile, "It's the extended unplanned plan!" Tongue-in-cheek humor from Mullins is to be expected, but his class schedule this semester is somewhat surprising. He's filled it with seventeen hours of music theory and performance classes: conducting, percussion methods, and cello, to name a few. The ultimate in self-punishment? "I can't think of anything more fun."

The hard part about coming off tour means he has to switch tracks and do weird things like wake up in the same room each morning and make his own bed. "I do like clean sheets, and I do like my bed made, so every morning I have to go through the conflict of, 'Gee, do I want my bed made badly enough to make it? Do I want clean sheets badly enough to change them?"'

He's been on the road so long that traveling doesn't bother him anymore. "I would say we've been gone now for about two or three years, and it's always hard when you come back to the place you live, and it doesn't feel like home. Not because it's not home, but because you've forgotten what home feels like. You forget what it's like to be able to visit with the same people day after day, to know exactly where the laundromat is, so that if you only have an hour to do your laundry, you can do it." He paused "Laundry seems to be a big issue here..."

The home he's returned to is a modest two-bedroom rental house that sits in a quiet middle-class neighborhood of Wichita. The neighborhood reminds him of his boyhood home, though it's far from an Indiana farm. But he's very comfortable here. Why doesn't he trade up for a bigger place?
"I live a very ordinary life because I'm a very ordinary guy. A lot of musicians give themselves a lot of slack because they've been told over and over how exceptional musicians are. I think people are people. An exceptional plumber is as exceptional as an exceptional musician. I don't buy the idea that musicians are a unique breed of people who need to be pampered. I tell them, 'You know what? I get to make a living doing what I love to do. Isn't that favor enough?"'

Mullins seems hesitant to talk about his success. It's not that he takes it for granted, but he believes his life as a musician can be overshadowed. "I think there's much more power in living a brilliant life, in letting every moment be brilliant, than in all the songs I ever wrote, or all of us wrote together. One truly Spirit-filled life will impact the world more than the entire Christian media combined.
"If the impact of my life at best is gonna be similar to the impact of the lives of other Spirit-filled people who have lived in the vitality of that Spirit, why would I waste a large amount of energy and create a lot of tension around a career that will be less successful than my life? The problem is, in my life now, my career is much better than my life. I've talked to people about commitment, about being a good neighbor, and I've seen other people practice it. I just want to see if I can do it."

Somewhere between here and Europe, Mullins decided to come out of his comfort zone, to let people in. "I had this sharp realization that, 'Wow! This was the first time I sat down and had a conversation with a non-Christian for a long time, that I really have become real picky about doctrinal issues that I don't think are real essential issues. And when that happens, that indicates to me that my focus is way off. And whereas I may be doctrinally correct, I am not focused where I ought to be."

He thought about what he wanted his life to be like for the next two or three years, the kind of person he wanted to be. "I want to be a loyal customer. I want to trade at the same grocery store. I want to get to know people by name. I want to go there a couple of times a week when I go and buy my potatoes and Corn Chex, and say, 'Hey, Sally!' to the girl at the check-out stand, and 'How's school going, Billy?' I want to give them some self-esteem."

As a kid, Mullins was exposed to people who drove by him as he toiled away. They refused to look at him, he says, because hard work was somehow beneath their dignity. He recalls a four-year stint as a cashier in a parking garage. "There were people who went out that never looked at me. They'd hold their money out the window and never slow down on their way out. They were regular people.
"Later on, other people told me, 'Man, we used to hang out and wait until the rush was over so we could come out and talk to you, because we loved to sit and talk.'" All this made him realize there's no such thing as someone who's just a cashier, that everyone and everyone's job is important.
"If I can communicate that to the people in the grocery store, the mechanic, my neighbors, the people in my church, the students at my school, then that's the kind of person I want to be."

For Mullins, ministering to people doesn't end just because he's put his guitar in the case. While he thinks performing is a great opportunity to minister, he also believes simple things like going to a restaurant or even planting a garden give the same opportunity. "Beaker planted a garden a couple of springs ago, and we never got to eat anything out of it. The nuns next door came over and ate our tomatoes. Different people from the community took them and ate them. And I think, 'What a terrific thing!'"

The really exciting times, he says, are when the concert's over, "and you've gone into the lounge at the hotel, and you're sitting there having a Coke, and you end up talking to the bartender, and he tells you how he was in Bible college, and how he got from Bible college to bartending school, and he opens up to you about the confusion he really feels about his faith, about the guilt he has. He really opens up and shares with you, and then during some point he says, 'Man, I have no idea why I just told you all of this.' "And you're able to say, 'Well, I know why. Because you needed to tell someone. Because in a sense, if you take the Bible seriously, I'm a priest, and I came in here to take your confession, to tell you the blood of Christ still washes away the sins of the world; that there is no sin committed too great that cannot be forgiven, and to encourage you, that the Lord hasn't given up on you yet.'"

Although Mullins takes his church membership seriously, he admits to not attending regularly since many concert dates have fallen on the weekend. Pursuing a career in music education would mean leaving the Midwest, and his church as well. "I think that when you join a church, you pretty much throw your stuff in with theirs, and it's kind of like, 'I'm here for the duration.' I hope that the church will continue to be supportive of me when I leave and that my commitment will not be something they thought lightly of. Very honestly, I'm not as committed as I should be, and very honestly, that's part of the reason I came off the road. Because, man, it's easy to talk about accountability when you're on the road. But it's impossible to have, unless you're making the kind of bucks where you can take your elders with you or something. Staying home is where the rubber meets the road for me."

Success has come quietly but steadily to Mullins since Amy Grant recorded his Sing Your Praise to the Lord, earning a nomination as song of the year in 1983. Since then, he's produced a string of top-charted singles for Reunion Records. His long list of nominations for Dove Awards (Awesome God has been nominated three times since 1989) without ever winning is perplexing.

Born in Richmond, Indiana, between two older sisters and two younger brothers, he counts himself blessed to have Christian parents. The solitude of growing up on a farm perhaps stirred in Mullins a desire to look beyond the obvious, to appreciate things usually taken for granted, and use his imagination to amuse himself.

"I spent many afternoons and evenings all alone, back in the field. There were times I was terribly lonely, but I think isolation is good for kids. One reason I have an imagination that is still pretty active is because I was really dependent on my imagination. I didn't have MTV. We didn't watch much television. I think one reason I became a writer is because I spent so much time on a tractor, and I would make up songs and rhymes and dirty limericks and anything else to entertain myself while I was working. It made me a very bad farmer, but that was possibly the beginnings of what a lot of people say is a pretty creative streak."

The first job his father gave him was counting calves. This, he points out, was a brilliant teaching technique. Not only did he learn to count, he learned to distinguish heifers from steers. It was the start of a very wholesome appreciation for sexuality. "Wow! Talk about getting the facts straight! By the time you're ten on a farm, you've seen every animal breeding in every kind of position imaginable. You're pretty much aware."

When the work was done, there was time to learn the rules of fair play. "You couldn't be really picky about who your friends were, and so you learned how to have arguments, how to fight and then have the winner ride you home on his bicycle, that if we didn't work a friendship out, we'd just be without friendship, and that at times it's better to be by yourself than to have to endure someone else's hang-ups."

He thinks that being involved with natural things might also take away some naive notions about prayer. "I think it's possibly easier for people who plant to pray because when you plant, you realize you're not gonna harvest until the right season. Sometimes people view prayer like it's a slot machine; if you put in the right amount of money, cry the right amount of tears, believe with the right intensity, then God will automatically - in the next five minutes - turn the world around to suit you."

Mullins has thought long and hard to find the right words to describe his best friend, Beaker. "One of the things that is most attractive about Beaker is also the scariest to a lot of people: he places a very high premium on honesty. And I respect that very much. It does make him into a bit of a skeptic. On the other hand, he's not gonna dish out a lot of stuff he doesn't believe. He's not gonna tell you what you want to hear, unless you want to hear the truth.

"He's kind of quiet. He's a lot more off to himself than I am. He wouldn't talk only because he had an interview, but only if he had something to say. So he has a very different approach to things than I do. And I definitely respect his approach and love him because of his values and because of the integrity I see in him. That's a rare thing to find.

"Beaker's even more accidentally a musician than I am. He really has no interest at all in being a musician, of becoming a great rock star or a contemporary Christian star. He's planning on being an English teacher. He does like to play the guitar, and to me, that makes him more interesting to talk to and to work with. He enjoys trying new things. He's not afraid of challenges. In these ways, he's one of the funniest people I've been around."

The only thing not fun about Beaker, Mullins says, is his harrowing pursuit of truth (as he begins to explain, an impish grin creeps across his face, and it's as if he's about to burst out in laughter), "because I can sometimes be real full of bull. And he's got a detector on him that doesn't let me get away with it. So I can go into a Sunday school class and fool every kid in there that I am this great spiritual giant, and then I get back in the truck and Beaker goes, 'Wow! Good job!'"

There are still a few things Mullins wants you to know about himself: that he shouldn't be taken too seriously; that magazine articles about himself sometimes make him look too perfect, like Superman; that there are times when he wishes he were married, and a lot of times he's glad he isn't; and that he admires the Irish for their love of poetry and song, and their adamant stand against change, but any amount of Irish in him is probably pretty negligible.

If you come to Kansas and pull up beside an old pickup at a stoplight, and there's a couple of big dogs in the back and two ornery guys up front, it just may be Mullins and Beaker. If it is, you can smile, knowing they're more than just two ordinary guys with ordinary lives.

Copyright 1993 by Rejoice! Magazine

Laying Crowns at His Feet

'Twas the day before Christmas Eve, and the pastor thought she’d spread some holiday cheer. So she loaded up some Christmas gifts and headed out to the country to make some deliveries. It was raining and lightning and thundering, a strange day for December. The rain was pouring down hard… she turned off the gravel road, to a dirt one.

Pretty soon, she started sliding, the back wheels heading south. She turned on the four-wheel drive. But little did that help. Soon, she was stuck sideways in the road. Hadn’t the GPS said the house was just a little farther?

So she abandoned her vehicle, grabbed her purse, and got out. The mud was quite squishy—it pulled at her shoes. Soon they were caked with so much mud that the pastor didn’t know how she was going to keep walking.

She plodded along, remembering from her childhood how, if you stay in the grass, it will give you better traction and wipe the mud off, all at the same time. Well that worked awhile, until she ran out of grass, and had to walk across the road. She decided to climb up onto a cornfield, littered with broken stalks. That helped some, but there was more mud than anything.

She crisscrossed the road, back and forth, trying to find the best, least wet route. She fell over. She reached out to steady herself, and grabbed a barbed-wire fence, which bit her. How much worse could it get? She thought. How am I to get out of here? There was no house in site… although she kept hoping it would just be over the hill. She began to sing praises and prayers to God—

We fall down, we lay our crowns at the feet of Jesus

The greatness of His mercy and love at the feet of Jesus

And we cry Holy, Holy, Holy

We cry Holy, Holy, Holy

We cry Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lamb

She cried out to the Lord, to help deliver her from this experience. And He reminded her, that this was why He came. To deliver us all… He came as Jesus the baby, born in Bethlehem, after his parents had walked a long, hard journey—just as she was walking, that dreary December day. She thought of Mary and Joseph. She also thought of the wise men, who later made that long journey from the Orient to see the child that was a king.

We fall down, we lay our crowns at the feet of Jesus…

What are the crowns that we must lay at the feet of Jesus? The symbols that make it known to all, how important we are, how powerful we are in this world? One of the most moving scenes from a Christmas program that I can recall was when three grown men, the fathers of the church, paraded down the aisle in flowing garments as wise men. They carried gifts to the infant Jesus, then lifted their jeweled crowns off their heads, placing them at the feet of the manger, bowing in humble respect.

Now I don’t know if the wise men really wore crowns. Some say they were more like scientists than kings. But it makes one wonder: can a king be identified as a king if he’s not wearing his crown? Doesn’t he look just like everyone else? Is a king who lays his crown at the feet of a child who will one day be, for the world, a spiritual King, acknowledging that child’s power, and giving up some of his own? Isn’t that what we all must do, give up some of our own earthly power, and humble ourselves, in order to give Him his rightful place as ruler in our hearts and minds?

We fall down, we lay our crowns, at the feet of Jesus…

At one point, when it seemed all hope was gone, when the pastor’s legs were so tired she didn’t think she could go on, she looked down through fogged-up glasses, and saw two long sticks laying on the ground. In her mind, she heard the 23^rd Psalm—“Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.” She picked them up. One was sturdy enough to be a walking stick. The other was just a bit smaller. They steadied her, and instead of avoiding the mud, she finally gave into it, shuffling down the road like a cross-country skier.

She remembered how her grandfather, a hunter, a trapper, a miner, a skier, had been caught in a Colorado avalanche a hundred years before, and how he’d made it out alive… how his persistence and God’s saving grace was the reason she was here now, two generations later.

She thought of the people in the Bible who remembered their ancestors and all that God had brought them through, and how that had given them great strength, in their own affliction.

She wondered if her grandfather, buried alive in snow, had called out for his God, for

help… for a way out… for the strength to keep on going. "Just one more step. Carry me, Lord… carry me." And in that moment, she felt compassion for every person who suffered and wondered if, and when, their God would show up, delivering them from a time of great trial.

Finally she saw a gravel road in front of her. The end was in sight… she was almost there. No more sloshing through the mud! When she reached the road, she thanked God over and over. Hallelujah! Praise Your name!

She had faith that someone would drive by and stop to help, for she was pretty certain she had heard cars traveling along. Just a few minutes later, she spotted a truck coming toward her. She waved both her sticks in the air. A man in the pickup stopped and asked if she needed some help. She dropped her sticks by the side of the road, and climbed up into the cab.

On the way back home, she learned he didn’t attend church, hadn’t grown up in church. She told him how she didn’t know how anyone could go through difficulties without having faith that God would be there for them, and would help carry them through whatever came their way. He was a Godsend, she told him. No matter what he believed, she knew that he had come to her that day because of God. And he agreed with her.

There is an old saying, “In traveling in strange areas, it is well to have both a good map and a good guide. The Christian has both; the Bible shows the way; Christ has promised to go with us all the way. He is the Way.”

Amen.

A flash from the past... once, I started a blog, when there were but a handful online, I suppose... 2004. Six long years ago... was I working at the ad agency then? Were they drilling through concrete right next to me, to open up a stairwell? Somehow, we did work through it... now it is so quiet where I work, we can hear the coyotes howl at night. No trains... no sirens... only an occasional car passing by, a dog barking... and the wind howling, at times.

Some dreams you leave along the side of the road. Others you never knew were in you, until something pops the top off of them. At some point, when you take a lefthand turn at Phoenix, you run into new dreams that seem to fit like a glove.

For a decade or more, the thought of becoming a pastor had entered my mind. At least, I tried to find books about it at the Wichita Library. And I did ask my spouse what he thought of the idea. (It wasn't a good one, in his mind.) Eventually I found myself standing in front of a lectern in the chapel where I went on the Walk to Emmaus, looking down at the open Bible before me, reading the story of Phillip helping the Ethiopian eunuch understand the word of God. Never did I think that I might be that person in someone else's life, one day.

And then I found myself buying books on pastoring, for heaven's sake, at the local used bookstore. What was I thinking? Who (or what) was causing me, prodding me, to do all these strange things? It certainly wasn't a part of my plan.

The time I spent lying in a hospital bed, which I've recounted here, in an earlier post, gave me this incredible passion for people 1. who find themselves in a similar position, and 2. who experience longterm, physical pain.

When my job at the magazine came to a sudden end, I used the time to have a second surgery. Now I have something of a kevlar vest across my gut, a big hernia repair from the first time around. I cannot complain. It has been several years ago, I feel much better, and things are not the same, but it all worked out.

At some point, I had an amazing day following a hospital chaplain around St. Jo hospital, during which I felt as if I were walking on holy ground. Then a stint as a marketing director, and a long-searching process to continue my candidacy for ministry. (Along the way, I became a certified lay speaker.) Just when I was wondering if I needed to do ministry part-time or full-time, my marketing position was eliminated... and I received the answer I was looking for.

Again I shadowed a hospital chaplain, only this time, for a longer duration... something of an internship. I would walk into a room, identify myself, and some of the most amazing conversations would happen... me, just sitting, listening... and I knew this was something I truly wanted to do, if life really was short, if life really needed to be spent doing something meaningful.