Missing John and Karen

I miss John Denver and Karen Carpenter, especially on down days and Karen on many rainy Mondays. What passionate voices those two possessed, and their writing was unbelievable. I never saw Karen Carpenter in concert as that was one of those things I meant to do but alas, never did. I did see John Denver live several times and still remember the experience. I’m not sure if either was of my faith choice, and I don’t know a lot about their private lives. I choose to not read biographies of people whose art inspires me and make me feel better about life. I read one article about Karen’s battle with anorexia and it made me so sad I decided to not read anything else about her. For my money she had the best female voice of all time. John Denver didn’t have a hall of fame voice, but his enthusiasm and love of life made up for any and all vocal deficiencies. I listen to John Denver and I smile. I see majestic mountains and a pure blue sky and the world’s a much better place thanks to John.

Who makes you feel better about things? I’m exempting Matthew, Mark, Luke and John from this endeavor as it’s a given we get much of our life-oomph from scripture and prayer. Feel free to be secular for a moment and focus on music or words or faces. Who makes you feel it’s all worth it? To whom do you turn to feel better or to gear up for another tough experience? How does it help you?

When I was running in road races I would make sure I listened to certain music before each race. I would turn on the music while warming up and would slowly slip into the groove I needed to push myself to my honest limits. I used this to set me apart from my competition; in my mind, it was me against the world (thankfully it was a very, very small world). I’ve been told it’s not good for Christians to allow themselves to be set apart in life. I disagree. God sets us apart from our sin and our base humanity. When we pray we are praying as one individual to our God. There are times we are at our best when we set ourselves apart from the fray. This is especially true if the act of setting ourselves apart drives us to be better at what we do for God…which, by the way, is supposed to be everything we do.

With thanks to the memories of Karen Carpenter and John Denver,

Michael McCullar