Favorite Gospels part 9
I've got a lot to say about this one, so to kick us off, please welcome back the Man in Black!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LswawDxfGrw&feature=related (Hello, he's still Johnny Cash.)
Imagine this without the instruments, and you're back with me at the Church of Christ in Turkey, Texas, population somewhere around 300, half of them related to me one-way or another. A dust-bowl town from the early 1900's, on flat red west-Texas dust and tumbleweeds, and surrounded by cotton-farms, home of Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys, main-street less than a mile long from city limit to city limit, and just inside the western entrance is my family's dry-goods store.
My great-grandfather, Jack Lacy, and his wife Velma, built that dry-goods business during the Great Depression. He sold clothes, shoes, fabric, sewing supplies, and even some minor hardware. He built his house in the 50's for Velma, specifically with a storm cellar, because she was afraid of the storms. He let me sit in his lap while he was driving, and help him work the steering wheel. Some days, he'd take me down to the drug store or the hardware store and buy me toys and knick-knacks to play with. He'd always come outside and watch me climb the big split-trunk tree in the back yard, or roll me around in a wheelbarrow, or help me roll wheelbarrow wheels down the cellar door.
This was his favorite song. When they sang it at his funeral, I bawled like a little boy (which, at the time, I was.)
At first listen, you might think this song is as maudlin as the previous two, but on closer listen, it's not sad, just humble, and I think that's what Grandpa Jack liked about it. He was a man happy and at peace with his place in the world, and his place was that of a shepherd, steadfastly tending a flock and seeing to the well-being of the sheep. I like to think that's where some of my instinct came from (a treatise on what all I got from my family may follow; I am the heir of many good traits).
I was really looking for an acapella version of this hymn, because that's how we always sang it, but my thanks to Johnny Cash for doing it justice even with instruments. Also, thanks to Mr. Cash for the brief history lesson at the beginning. I need to look up that author he named.
This song captures the sense of wonder we should have if we just stop and admire some of what is around us, the kind of appreciation we should have for anything larger than us. Whether you say "God is Great" or "The Universe is Awake," you acknowledge the same thing. That's what this song is all about. Grandpa Jack knew his place in the Universe, but he knew it was a much bigger Universe than some people realized.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LswawDxfGrw&feature=related (Hello, he's still Johnny Cash.)
Imagine this without the instruments, and you're back with me at the Church of Christ in Turkey, Texas, population somewhere around 300, half of them related to me one-way or another. A dust-bowl town from the early 1900's, on flat red west-Texas dust and tumbleweeds, and surrounded by cotton-farms, home of Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys, main-street less than a mile long from city limit to city limit, and just inside the western entrance is my family's dry-goods store.
My great-grandfather, Jack Lacy, and his wife Velma, built that dry-goods business during the Great Depression. He sold clothes, shoes, fabric, sewing supplies, and even some minor hardware. He built his house in the 50's for Velma, specifically with a storm cellar, because she was afraid of the storms. He let me sit in his lap while he was driving, and help him work the steering wheel. Some days, he'd take me down to the drug store or the hardware store and buy me toys and knick-knacks to play with. He'd always come outside and watch me climb the big split-trunk tree in the back yard, or roll me around in a wheelbarrow, or help me roll wheelbarrow wheels down the cellar door.
This was his favorite song. When they sang it at his funeral, I bawled like a little boy (which, at the time, I was.)
At first listen, you might think this song is as maudlin as the previous two, but on closer listen, it's not sad, just humble, and I think that's what Grandpa Jack liked about it. He was a man happy and at peace with his place in the world, and his place was that of a shepherd, steadfastly tending a flock and seeing to the well-being of the sheep. I like to think that's where some of my instinct came from (a treatise on what all I got from my family may follow; I am the heir of many good traits).
I was really looking for an acapella version of this hymn, because that's how we always sang it, but my thanks to Johnny Cash for doing it justice even with instruments. Also, thanks to Mr. Cash for the brief history lesson at the beginning. I need to look up that author he named.
This song captures the sense of wonder we should have if we just stop and admire some of what is around us, the kind of appreciation we should have for anything larger than us. Whether you say "God is Great" or "The Universe is Awake," you acknowledge the same thing. That's what this song is all about. Grandpa Jack knew his place in the Universe, but he knew it was a much bigger Universe than some people realized.