Thoughts on Rich Mullins.
I got my driver’s license when I was 16 years old. My family was living in Dayton, Ohio at the time and we had a big blue Volvo station wagon that my mother would haul the four of us boys around in. I loved the freedom of leaving my parents and brothers at home and just going for a drive all by myself. We lived in a small neighborhood that had quiet streets and sidewalks so going for a leisurely drive was no problem at all.
I would get out on the streets, roll down the windows and listen to music while driving 25 miles per hour weaving through the streets of our town. It was peaceful. Simple. I had no responsibilities other than going to school and practicing my piano and guitar lessons. Life was a wide open stretch of road. Uncluttered and impressionable.
Music has always been my passion and I soaked it up like a sponge when I was in high school. Driving around in my mother’s station wagon, I would listen to Rich Mullin’s World As Best As I Remember It, Vol. 1 over and over again. I love listening to music in the car. It’s like a personalized soundtrack for your own little journey to the grocery store or whatever errand you happen to be running. That’s exactly what Rich’s music became for me all through out high school and into my early college years: the soundtrack to that period of my life.
And I heard his songs (”Calling Out Your Name”, “The Howling”, “The River”, “What Susan Said”, Here In America”, “I’ll Carry One”, “Hello Old Friends”) so many times that I started to feel as though I never needed to hear them again because they were so much a part of my life…to me it felt as if they had transcended themselves as pieces of music and had become a part of my soul.
Of course, I have gone back and listened to them again since then. I’m older now and have a wife and a son and songs of my own.
Rich never married. He spoke about his singleness sometimes saying, “if you can do without her, do”. I tried that little nugget of wisdom until I met a girl I couldn’t do without.
There was a restless sort of freedom to the way he lived his life. He found his peace in Christ and not in the typical things most folks grasp for peace in. Although he made large sums of money from his songs, he lived on a simple salary and insisted (to his accountant) on not knowing how much he really had so that he could more easily give it away. While most successful recording artists travel by tour bus, Rich preferred driving himself in his car. It seemed like the more successful he became with his music, the more he would give away of himself and his resources instead of piling up his treasures.
His songs came from the deeper waters:
“They spread out their coats and cut down palms
For you and your donkey to walk upon
But the world won’t find what it thinks it wants on the back of an ass’s foal
So I guess you had to get sold
Because the world can’t stand what it can’t own
And it can’t own you because you did not have a home”.
(”You Did Not Have A Home”)
“From the place where morning gathers
You can look sometimes forever ’til you see
What time may never know, what time may never know
How the Lord takes by its corners this whole world
And shakes us forward and shakes us free
To run wild with the hope, to run wild with the hope
The hope that this thirst will not last long
That it will soon drown in the song not sung in vain
And I feel the thunder in the sky, I see the sky about to rain
And I hear the prairies calling out Your name ”
(”Calling Out Your Name”)
“I kissed the earth on my daddy’s grave
Said goodbye to my brave young companions
But when they hoist that sail I know my heart will break
As bright and as fine as the morning
And I don’t know where this road will take me
But they say there’s a place there for a man
And I’m only afraid that my dreams may betray me
And I’ll never get home again
So I’ll carry the songs I learned when we were kids
I’ll carry the scars of generations gone by
I’ll pray for you always and I promise you this
I’ll carry on, I’ll carry on”
(”I’ll Carry On”)
“I can see some traveller’s footprints
There’s a little bit of blood in every step he made
I wonder what kind of burden he’s bearing
That has cut him so deeply every step along the long, long way
In the west I see an evening
This scarlet thread stretched beneath the gathering dark
Red as the blood on the hands of the Savior
And rich as the mercy that flowed from His broken heart
And I can hear the wild wind howling
And I can feel it in my bones
And I know that the howling will take me home”
(”The Howling”)
I never knew Rich personally. I did meet him a few times and had brief conversations with him but I never really knew him. I loved him just the same.
Yesterday marked 10 years since his death. I miss him still and I’m so thankful for his life & music.
“When you remember me, it means you have carried something of who I am with you, that I have left some mark of who I am on who you are. It means that you can summon me back to your mind even though countless years and miles may stand between us. It means that if we meet again, you will know me. It means that even after I die, you can still see my face and hear my voice and speak to me in your heart.”—Frederick Buechner
Godspeed, Rich Mullins.
