(photo by Jeannie, wheeling Daddy up the trail to Ash Cave)
I’ve got this gospel playlist ready for my Daddy’s
72nd birthday today, & I want to share it with you. And I want
you to play it loud & often, sing along no matter how out of tune, &
dance around the house with a blessed smile upon your face. But before we get
to the tunes, I have a few things I want to say about my family, about my father
Kenneth Smith & what an amazing witness he is for Jesus.
Growing up, I took for granted what a
gospel-saturated ethic & Christ-soaked consciousness surrounded me at home
& at church. Even more than that, I never quite appreciated (even as I somehow
assimilated & ultimately adopted) the profound commitment to the details of
peace, civil rights, feminism, & social justice as rooted in the Bible, in
prophetic worship & witness. Essentially, my parents are what were called
70 years ago “liberal evangelicals,” faithful activist followers steeped in what today we call “progressive” Christianity, ours with a distinct mystical &
contemplative bent.
Being raised in Brady Bunch pop-culture by Barbie
& Ken Smith, we also had this typical all-American aspect to our upper
middle-class family. But my suburban peers didn’t have parents who marched with
Martin Luther King in Selma, who participated in an urban “emerging church” in
1960s Chicago that was steeped in counterculture values.
As a teenager in the
1980s, on the verge of rejecting the church for about 20 years, I cut my
philosophical teeth on Dorothy Day & Jim Wallis & celebrated turning 18
with a string of arrests for nonviolent civil disobedience in anti-nuclear war
protests. My Mom & Dad supported me every step of that journey into radical
anti-war activism well into my 30s, & often joined me, as we went together
as a family in the early 2000s to the annual witness against state-sponsored
terror at the School of the Americas in Columbus, Georgia.
Although my parents were never music fans like I’ve
become, their modest collection of vinyl LPs wired into my pysche the marriage
of social protest & spiritual celebration. It was the 1970s, & the
music of the Beatles & Bob Dylan, Odetta & Joan Baez, the soundtracks
to Godspell & Hair, alongside our peripheral proximity
to the Jesus People whose influence I loosely felt at church summer camp in the
rolling hills of western Pennsylvania, all washed my brain with a baptism into
my ultimate embrace of both my Jesus Freak and Tree Hugger identities. Moving
deeper into Appalachia as a late twenty-something, I found a region of the
country where both of these seeming dissimilar paths feel quite comfortable
united. Now, back to Daddy.
As some of you know, earlier in this century, my avid
card-playing Daddy got dealt the bad deal of a degenerative disease called
Parkinson’s. Watching Mom & Dad wrestle with this reality has been just
another testimony to what the love of Jesus can do when you apply it plainly
& passionately to your everyday life. Somehow despite all the daily
discomforts & visible symptoms that are just impossible to miss, Barb &
Ken have maintained such a marvelous, grateful, & courageous attitude
throughout the entire struggle to this point. And as long as Ken has suffered,
he has also struggled still with an inner flame & amazing attitude,
suggesting that he’s not ready to give up this fight anytime soon.
About ten days ago, we were in southern Ohio for a
family reunion in the Hocking Hills. One of the most epic & majestic open-air
caves in the state park called Ash Cave is accessible to all via a short, paved
trail. Just before dusk after a really hot day, we rolled Ken back to the cave in
his new wheelchair. I was struck by how many people wanted to smile at or greet
my dad. But then we reached the end of the paved trail, where it gave way to a
sandy path. Ken seemed satisfied to sit at his perch while Jeannie & I
explored deeper, but a few fit & friendly folks insisted on maneuvering him
in his chair further into the cave. Somehow, his smiling vulnerability only
brought out the generosity of strangers.
With the Saturday’s last sunlight dipping &
dripping through the trees to cast a perfect glow upon the entire scene,
suddenly about 30 people of all ages marched into our view & headed
directly for the dramatic overhang. All dressed in the “plain style,” it turns
out they were a local Mennonite congregation. The already profoundly pristine
scene got transformed again as our new neighbors proceeded to treat us (& a
couple dozen other folk)s to an impromptu acapella gospel concert, enhanced by
the surroundings & the subtle echo of cave acoustics.
We were blessed by heart-moving renditions of
standards such as “How Great Thou Art,” “I’ll Fly Away,” & “Nothing But the
Blood.” When the music ended, several of the singers immediately walked over to
visit with us. Like the strangers who lifted his wheelchair just a short time
before, these folks were moved by the witness of Dad’s weakness, the paradoxical
power of powerlessness that’s central to not just his situation—but to our
entire faith journey, to our mortality as humans, & to the Christian
mystery itself. It’s that concert & those moments & Daddy’s strong spirit
that sparked me in love into making this playlist for his birthday.
–Andrew William
Smith
5 June 2012
