It took footage of Mike Shirkey singing "I Believe in a Hill Called Mount Calvary" in an airport on his way to meet Public Servant 45 for me to recall that I once had a lovely conversation with Gloria Gaither. I might be crazy for thinking as much, but I sometimes think civilization hangs on people giving each other permission to think and feel. Gloria does that for a lot of people, but a lot of people might be surprised to know that she loves poetry, The Simpsons, and Shakespeare. The fullness of her witness, it seems to me, is sometimes overlooked by folks who imagine they already have her pegged. I believe I made it onto her radar through my mentor, Joy McKenzie, and her partner, Bob, who gave Michael W. Smith his first job as a songwriter.
Anyway, this is a wide-ranging conversation which, I’d like to think, could serve to overcome a number of gaps and divisions which, for many of us, feel like festering wounds in the sweet old world we share. Do you know someone who loves Gloria Gaither? Here’s one deep gift of a question Gloria puts to me: “How do we apply the gospel, the words of Jesus, the cardinal tenets of our faith, and the model of the early church, to the blogging, Twittering, iPhone, Internet world we live in?”
From there, we talk Jacques Ellul, “worship,” and the necessity of honest doubt to anything that could be rightly called true faith. Please read it and share widely.