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BE GOD'S; LESSONS IN THE LIFE AND SONGS OF RICH MULLINS - Sept 24, 2017 in Fitzroy

Rich Mullins

BE GOD’S

 

LESSONS FROM THE LIFE AND SONGS OF RICH MULLINS

 

Fitzroy Presbyterian Church

 

September 24, 2017 @ 7pm

 

Free!

 

It was twenty years ago. It was a Sunday morning. I was not very long awake. My friend Stephen Doherty phoned me to say that he had heard news that Rich Mullins had been in a car accident on Friday night. He was dead. 

I was devastated. I had grown to really love that guy. 

Rich had been to Summer Madness in the summer of 1996 and I had told him I would book him for Greenbelt in 1997. Then, due to a few changes at the business end of his life, we decided to put it back a year. Now he was gone. Stevie Doc and I did a Tribute programme on my Radio Show, Rhythm N Soul, that evening.

Rich Mullins was a big name in the world of Contemporary Christian Music. he had written some ‘hits’. I had not paid much attention until he arrived in Dublin in 1992 and stayed in the house I called home, even though I didn’t move in until April 1993. It was there in 78 Eaton Wood Green that he pulled out a hammer dulcimer and played some of his new songs, Land Of My Sojourn, The Colour Green and an instrumental that we told him he should call 78 Eaton Wood Green! 

In May 1993 we got to stay with Rich, first in Windowrock, the Navajo reservation that he was moving to in Arizona and then in Wichita where he had been for some years. My time with Rich was very short. The impression he made on my life was long lasting. 

So, on the twentieth anniversary of his death, we are going to remember Rich’s songs and many lessons I learned from those short few times with him. Expect stunning performances and some deep soul searching.

Here’s a poem I wrote that awful day back in 1997.

  

There are big moments of grace

And times when saints come to touch us

Chance meetings that seem so meant to be

Coincidences far too obvious

And I can hear the water falling

The ocean crash on New England’s shore

The brown brick spine of some dirty brown alley

The shaving that fell on the carpenter’s floor

I can feel the hammer dulcimer move me

That voice proclaim truth and love

Giving me glimpses and clues of this life on earth

And inklings of the promise above

Just a speck upon my time line

That the son caught to make shine bright

Such big, big moments in tiny seconds

Leaving me to follow in your traces of light

How I longed to spend more time with you

Maybe someday that time will come

You left a legacy to think on til then

Thoughts to fill my life and then some

Someone said that you know a saint

By how alive they make you feel

Not by how much they show to you

But by how little they conceal

You left us with broken hearts and souls

Our hope is feebly trying to temper it

We lost so much more than skin and bone

You are the world as best as I remember it.

Comments

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nice

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