One of Those Times in a Life - Songs by the Campfire

By the time you read this, we will have celebrated lighting the 49th and final campfire of this particular journey, this Pilgrimage, with a concert and the release of an album of fifteen new songs. I am filled with gratitude, thankful to discover I had the grit, and thankful for the grace given and received. I look forward to the next adventure(s), but not before taking some time to truly appreciate this one.Thank you to all those who have shared the journey and have helped make it possible.

As I reach this moment in the journey I am reminded again how long life takes and the fact that it is over in an instant. I am surprised that the last three stages of life turned out to each be ten year long. It was certainly not planned that way. While I’m too close to it to judge the quality of it, telling my story around forty-nine campfires has certainly been the most important and satisfying work that I have ever done.

There were a lot of significant benchmarks in the summer and fall of 2015. There was my 50th high school reunion and 50 years of friendship and musical partnership with Mike McCoy. My older brother celebrated his 70th birthday and my younger brother retired. Those moments combined with others involving lifelong connections or friendships made me realize that, in my own way, I was arriving where I started and able to see things with new eyes and as if for the first time. 

As the pace of lighting these campfires increases—and the goal of lighting the “last campfire” on May 13th approaches--I realize what a luxury it has been to meander slowly through the memories and discoveries of a lifetime.At this campfire I talk about becoming part of a Civil Rights Pilgrimage in the fall of 2014. Preparing for those nine days on the bus awakened countless memories and connected me in new ways to who I had been and what I had thought and believed in 1968 and 1969. Looking back I realized how much faith I had in March of 1968. When I turned twenty-one that first day of spring I believed that Robert Kennedy would become the President, that Martin Luther King, Jr. would live long and eloquently. The recently released Kerner Report, looking at the Detroit riots of a year earlier, offered a road map to racial reconciliation. I also believed that the Viet Nam War would soon be over. I mean, even Presidential candidate, Richard Nixon, tapped his coat pocket and talked of a secret plan for peace. Twelve months later so much had changed. I also learned during that time that my father had been in a mental institution when I was born and much of what I believed was suddenly in doubt.To be able to see that time from this place is enlightening for me both from a perspective of where I was and we were then as well as shining a different light on where we are now.Understanding what it means to be part of a larger Pilgrimage has also helped transformed my personal journey into a Pilgrimage. That realization fills me with gratitude. 

When I started this journey of Gratitude, Grit, and Grace I thought it would be mostly one of awakening and recording memories. I continue to be surprised—pleasantly for the most part--at how much of it is about discovering and discoveries. By shining light into dark corners I am seeing things differently or for the first time. By opening long doors long shut I am able to make connections and see pathways. All of it has proven harder and more satisfying that I could have ever imagined.