Bon Voyage to Joey and Maria

Joey was really in love with Maria, so it didn't matter so much to him that she was carrying someone else's baby. He intended to marry her anyway and raise the child as his own. Blinded by love, he was ready to do anything to protect her. Her face was always in his mind, in his dreams. Whenever they were together, he felt himself to be a true man. Whenever they were apart, he felt himself even more, a man. That meant something--something very precious, very strong, and very. . . ancient, as if they had been together since the dawn of time. In spite of all the trouble and displacement of their immediate circumstances, he felt more a man now than ever before in his life.

What is a man anyway? Someone who takes responsibilities for his own action.

But to take responsibility for someone else's carelessness? That's crazy, especially if it requires a lifelong commitment to some other man's kid.

It wasn't like he could explain why he was willing to do anything for her. She had told him the whole terrible truth about what had happened--how she had gotten pregnant unexpectedly after making some poor choices. He had known her far longer than the guy who had inflicted this condition on her.

But it was more than a condition that had taken hold of Maria. It was a child.

Nothing about that loser mattered now anyway. It was all water under the bridge.

They had left Izmir two days ago. Now, Joey and Maria were stepping onto an overcrowded boat to depart Lesbos. Two sketchy-looking characters were up on the deck, acting like they owned the place, rudely waving their herd of misfits through while checking each one's ticket to make sure they had paid. No freeloaders. The two goons had already turned several off the boat, provoking loud protests from those rejected travelers--protests that were shouted loudly to no avail.

Joey felt secure in one thing; he had paid dearly for their two tickets. It had cost him more than half of everything he had managed to bring with them.

As the goon waved him and Maria through, he felt great relief.

He looked at Maria's face. She was still smiling. It had been days since he had seen her smile. Suddenly, everything was worth the trouble and the pain of whatever the hell they were getting into now, whatever new phase. As they stumbled, then walked, around the stern, and to the other side of the boat. There was an open space at the side. He gently placed his had on her back, just above her perfect derriere, and urged her with a tender guidance to rest for a moment at the railing. This was, after all, a very special moment--one they had talked about for weeks. Now they were here at last, on the boat, bound for Athens.

He looked out seaward, across the bright-on-dark horizon, at the deep blue sea. Soon they would be skimming o'er the waves. Some time tomorrow, they would arrive in Athens and find the place that Gabe had told him about. If they could get there, surely their troubles would be over, at least for awhile.

After surveying that long-expected horizon for a few moments, he looked again at Maria's face. The smile had morphed into what seemed a painful expression. But there was still a smile, somehow, beneath the pain. That's what he loved about her. Now he couldn't resist the urge, and there was no need to anyway. He bent down and laid a a long, wet kiss on her lips; she responded in a way that made him long for a place of their own. But this intimacy could only go on for so long here in this place, on this boat amongst all these straggly people, and then. . .

Then he looked out to the Aegean again, and his mind began to, in spite of itself, jump to the next phase--whatever that might be. He was hoping there would be room for them at the inn.



Smoke

DOMAin

When two fit together as one

and love

from beginnin to end,

and they mend

each other's hearts

and do coitus

with their intimate parts

then all the world be better place,

'cause two take care

each other, make less burden

for society,

and good variety

when twenty-three wi twenty-three

make forty-six:

aint no tricks

'cause they get their kicks

wi each other

stead o spreading it around

all over town--

no EsTeeDee no Hiv

you see?

And when them two fit together

in most intimate parts

with beatin hearts

like screw and nut,

gut to gut.

Then later

when bambino slide out

wi joyful shout,

then life goes on.

be it daughter or son.

They make domain:

DOMAin.

Ask me again and

I'll tell you the same.

Glass Chimera

From baroque Bach to funky Browne

My friend David Browne just consummated his latest musical project with a loving embrace of grace.


Beneath a canopy of powerfully eternal security, he and Patty had established a home base in our promised land many years ago. From that sacred place of intmacy, they were able to raise up a crop of fine young'uns, even as David persevered in the development of his God-ordained musical gifts. Together, the musician and his proverbs 31 bride smashed the glasses of postmodern musical conventionality, which dictates that musicians must confound their lives with exhaustive tours and frantic pursuits of musical success.

But not David. From a quiet place of intimacy with our Creator, D. Browne has been enabled, over the years, to fulfill multiple responsibilities as husband, father, businessman and good citizen; but he managed this legacy of faithful works while composing and recording a prodigious collection of original music.

Reminds me of J.S. Bach.
David Browne's life does parallel Bach; both have that sort of German knack for exquisite musical precision, although David displays his percussionist heart in a decidedly Abrahamic framework. You may even detect a mezuzah hung somewhere in his mezzo-tenored doorway. But as I was saying, the grand master Bach had managed, about three centuries ago, to glorify God in an intricately constructive way without losing sight of what is truly precious in this life.

As Johann had labored long ago at his clanky harpsichord or on some cloistered organ, so David, in our times, caresses and thumps out a toccata of masterful sound in his garage-top studio near the Atlantic Ocean in North Carolina. Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring gets a funky new rendering a few hundred years after the original.

Listening to the new cd, A Place I Go, is for me a little like opening some hobbit hole of contemporary Christian musical passion. Then this awesomely productive audio entity comes leaping out at you in a sound that's thick with warm, furry layers of complex virtuosity. I think the den of unique creativity in which David's labor of love began must have been hallowed out, originally, somewhere near that mountaintop lane--the one pictured in his cover photo. A swaddled child--one of the Browne kids--is seen in the pic going to that place where David goes, a place where he has wisely taken his wife and children. He will take you there too, if you'll give him a listen.

That place is a place of holy intimacy with the God who created us-- the Yahweh of Abraham, Elohim of Isaac, the El Shaddai of Jacob, whose Son was given as the Word made flesh, nailed to a cross and then resurrected, although David never actually mentions, in his tender dynamism, the name of Jesus. But you get the message. You know who he's singin' about--the One who walks with us closer than a brother.

A Place I Go is a sacrificial offering sent forth from the most holy place of profound grace. From his abode of redemption, the artist sends up a smoky thickness of rock-driven conviction, punctuated with delicate piano and smooth acoustic interludes. He even tosses in a dash of rap on "A Better Way," and a smattering of scatty electro-phased vocal, propelled by retrofuture cultural relativity funk on "When I think of you." My favorite is "Promised Land," which sojourns on the "ancient steps" upon which our great faith is founded.


Check out David's new labor of love; he is a unique composer with an expressive gift, and an intense love for our Creator. He is, however, meshugginah.

Glass half-Full