A journey of unknowns ...

On Friday morning, I checked out of my Twin Cities hotel room. I had a choice: either drive straight home to Winnipeg or drive in the opposite direction down Highway 61. The idea of heading home was appealing: I'd been away since Monday and I wanted to get the drive over with and get home. That would have been the easy and efficient thing to do. But sometimes in life you need to do what isn't easy or efficient.

Life's adventures and memorable moments are found in experiences that challenge us, stretch us, cause us to doubt, and make us wonder if we can succeed. This is the essence of pilgrimage. It's a journey where the parameters are unknown. Perhaps you know where you're going, but you don't know how you'll get there, when you'll arrive, what you'll find, or how you'll get home. My journey down Highway 61 was a pilgrimage. I suspended my obsessive/compulsive need to know all the details and headed for the open road.

As I travelled this mythical highway, I passed through a few small towns and stopped in Red Wing for lunch. I continued on, and the plains and rolling hills gave way to jagged bluffs rising hundreds of feet in the air. Then, less than a mile out of Frontenac, I rounded a curve and met the Mississippi River in all its splendour.



Eventually, Highway 61 brought me to my hoped-for destination: La Crosse, Wisconsin. I walked into Dave's Guitar Shop knowing I'd find one of the best collection of new and vintage guitars in the world. But I didn't know if I'd find anything in the store waiting for me.

Later that evening, a half-hour past closing and more than five hours after my arrival, I left Dave's Guitar Shop with a relic in hand. I had no idea I would find this prize when I set out on my pilgrimage. That's at least in part what made the find so special.

I love blondes: a blonde wife, a blonde Vibro King, and now a blonde 1956 relic Stratocaster. All of them came into my life through unexpected circumstances. All of them required a journey of unknowns. Good things come in threes ... if we're willing to embrace the unexpected.

Final notes from the road:
I left La Crosse about 9:00 p.m. on Friday night. I wanted to get home, but Winnipeg was 1000 kilometres away. How far I could drive before the fatigue set in was impossible to predict. I simply hit the open road with a black-eye Starbucks in hand. I made it back to the Twin Cities, then to Alexandria, then Fargo/Moorhead, then Grand Forks. At 6:00 a.m. on Saturday morning, I crossed the U.S./Canada line and rolled into Winnipeg at 7:00. I'd made it home. Later that day, I introduced my new blonde to the other two.

One last note: while in La Crosse, I made sure to stop at the Bath & Body Works store and pick up some lotions and soaps for my favourite blonde!

A postmodern pilgrimage ...

I'm here in the Twin Cities for 3 days of training on Adobe Creative Suite 3. Great software. So-so training. A worthwhile experience overall.

I wasn't really looking forward to the drive from Winnipeg to Minneapolis/St. Paul, but this time it turned out good. Here's what I think made the trip an adventure:

• On the way out of Winnipeg, I stopped at Starbucks on Pembina Hwy. where I grabbed a grande Caffe Americano. An Americano is essentially espresso coffee plus water. In the grande size, it's a triple-shot of espresso. That's 174 milligrams of caffeine, which is more than two cans of Red Bull or four cans of Coke!
• When I crossed the border, the U.S. Customs official asked me the usual questions: citizenship, destination, occupation, etc. When I told him I was a pastor heading to Minneapolis and La Crosse, Wisconsin, he asked me, "What's in La Crosse, Wisconsin?" I enthusiastically replied, "La Crosse is the home of Dave's Guitar Shop." That piqued his curiosity: "So, are you a musical pastor?" I responded, "I'm a rock 'n' roll preacher" ... at which point he insisted on searching my trunk. There he found something he had never seen before. "What's a Pignose?", he asked. After a short explanation, he let me cross.
• Filled up the gas tank at the BP in Grand Forks. Mid-grade for the same price as low-grade. Cool.
• I offered up a prayer of thanks as I crossed over the Red River from Fargo to Moorhead, Minnesota. Moorhead is the home of my pride and joy: a Fender Custom Shop Vibro-King. Blonde tolex on oxblood grill cloth, birch ply cabinet, 3x10" Eminence speakers, hand-wired, and 60 watts of all-tube power. My friend, Jeff Homuth, was the original owner of the Vibro-King from 1999-2004. He put about 10 hours of use on the amp and 5 hours on the matching 2x12" extension cabinet. It gets used proper now.
• My goal was to eat cheap on this trip, so when I hit Alexandria, Minnesota, I made my usual stop at the Wal-Mart. I found lots of great food for my three days in the Twin Cities: canned tuna, canned corn, canned fruit cocktail, all-bran crackers, Perrier, and spring water. Sweetness!
• Before I left Winnipeg, I loaded up my nano with my "Minnesota Road Tunes" playlist. Lots of Eric Clapton, Rick Elias and the Confessions, Arlen Roth, John Mayer, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Allman Brothers, and Manitoba Hal. I ran my nano through the car stereo and cranked 'er up. Wow, the miles go by a lot faster with good music. Before I knew it, I was passing the smiling water tower at Freeport, which meant I was just 100 miles away from the Mississippi River in downtown Twin Cities.
• Did you know there's a red-barn DQ in Albany, Minnesota? I bet the beef and chicken is REALLY fresh at that DQ! Just down the road from Albany is Middle Spunk Creek (great name).
• As I drove the last stretch to my hotel, I passed by Medicine Lake. This is a bona-fide lake in the middle of Minneapolis, with houses along the shore. Wow. Beautiful. (See below.)

People often associate Minneapolis with the home of the Twins, the Vikings, Target, and General Mills. For me, Minneapolis is the beginning of Highway 61, which becomes the blues highway south of Cairo, Illinois. (The blues highway was travelled northwards by black folk leaving the south and looking for a better life in Chicago.) You can take Highway 61 all the way down to Memphis, through Mississippi, and on to New Orleans. In Clarksdale, Mississippi, the junction of Highway 61 and Highway 49 is known as "the crossroads" where legend has it that Robert Johnson supposedly sold his soul to the devil.

Travelling Highway 61 to the south is my idea of a postmodern pilgrimage. It's the discovery of a rock 'n' roll religion rooted in the musical idioms of blues, gospel, and country music. It's the search for a sound that is equally adept at expressing spiritual and sexual ecstasy.


And sitting at the start of this journey is an inauspicious store, which furnishes pilgrims with their provisions for the road. Dave's Guitar Shop is celebrating its 25th anniversary this week and while I may not be able to travel all the way down the blues road this time round, I will make my way to this wonderful shrine. The first floor features the latest wares from Fender, Gibson, Martin, etc. Walk upstairs and you'll find the holiest of relics: vintage guitars and amplifiers from the 50's, 60's and 70's.

Who knows? I might even find the Holy Grail this time at Dave's.

The birth of a Rock 'n' Roll Preacher ...

Last year, I read Michael Austin's Explorations in Art, Theology and Imagination. Austin talks about the different ways art connects to life, and one of his most interesting ideas in that art plays a prophetic role in our lives. In other words, art tells us how to live:

The artist, whether consciously or not, asks questions of us. The artist can and does often confront us with truths to which we would prefer to be blind and compels us to pay attention to them. Art can widen our perceptions of ourselves and of others and of our responsibilities and duties.

Art plays a prophetic role in a way that circumvents our rationalistic defenses. We allow art past our brains to the heart. We make space for art that we will not make for philosophical propositions and logical arguments. This is not to say that art is illogical or irrational, or that reason and art are opposed to each other. They simply work differently. As Austin says, “reason and imagination, argument and intuition, philosophy and the arts do work in identifiably different ways – ways which cannot be satisfactorily explained in terms of the other’s ways of working”.

My own life story attests to the prophetic power of art … and to the limitations of artless forms of communication. When I received a New Testament from the Gideons in Grade 5, I got up early in the mornings to read the Scriptures. I couldn’t understand a single verse. Sunday School didn’t help either, and neither did "hearing the Word" at my friends’ churches. I never could put the propositional pieces together. By the time I hit my high school years, I gave up on God. I decided to live life on my own terms, which, for a teenager, meant living for cars, guitars, and girls.

During high school, I landed a job as a guitar teacher at a local music store. It was a sweet gig, paying almost twice minimum wage and a lot better than flipping burgers at McD's. In June 1981, a few of my guitar students, who I knew were “religious”, kept talking about a rock band coming to Winnipeg – The Joe English Band. I’d never heard of the band, but the band leader/drummer (Joe) had recorded and toured with Paul McCartney and Wings. (You can hear Joe on the Venus and Mars, Wings at the Speed of Sound, and Wings over America albums.) I decided to go. What I heard at the concert was some of the best music I had ever heard in my life. The lyrics were laden with a spiritual message, but it wasn't really the lyrics that got my attention. It wasn't the message; it was the medium – the music. The medium WAS the message that night. My moribund images of God, spirituality, etc. changed as the music played on. The transformation was vivid and powerful. The music captured my imagination and I began to perceive new things about God intuitively through the great vibes sent out by Joe and his band playing together. The prophetic power of art accomplished its task.



Yes, there was more than art that spoke to me that night. Before the last set of the night, Joe put down his drumsticks and spoke about his spiritual journey. He talked about living the rock n’ roll dream and how empty it felt. He talked about meeting Christians who seemed to be fanatics at first, but whose lives convincingly conveyed the grace and truth of Christ to Joe. He talked about letting down his defenses and admitting he needed Jesus to forgive his sins and lead his life. As Joe spoke about finding Jesus, it helped me understand for the first time ever how Jesus could change my life. I went backstage after the concert to talk shop with one of the guitar players from Joe's band, who deftly turned the conversation to Jesus ... and me. A few minutes later, I was in a “prayer huddle” with Joe and the band, praying and finding my own connection to God in Christ. I went home that night a different person. And it stuck.



Looking back on that day more than 26 years ago (June 21, 1981), I can say that if it hadn’t been for the music, my life would not have changed that night. Music still speaks to me in ways that nothing else can.

p.s.: Joe told me that I was the first person he ever led to Jesus. However, I wasn't the only person touched by his music. Check out the The Gospel According to Joe, the story of a pair of music-deprived teenagers, John and Petie, growing up in rural Arkansas. Joe blew through their town in 1980 and left a lasting legacy.