There are two kinds of licensing available.

Church Music Rights: These rights give your organization or church, for the one time fee of $100.00 (Canadian Churches add 5% GST) unlimited use of any or all songs written by Steve Bell for the life of your Church or organization. Use includes photocopies, copies for overhead projection, in-house songbooks, and in-house performances. This agreement does not entitle the licensee to audio duplication or broadcast. All copyright remains the property of Signpost Music. To register print out two copies of Church Music Rights and mail with your payment.

Mechanical License: These rights you the right to manufacture or duplicate one of Steve’s songs as performed by an artist other than Steve. The fee is 7.7 cents per copy manufactured (not sold), payable to Signpost Music. For example if you want to record a version of Steve’s song and manufacture 1000 tapes or CD’s, the fee would be $77.00. There is however a minimum fee of $40.00 for any license under 500 copies. To register, print out two copies of Mechanical License and mail with your payment.

For more information contact: Signpost Communications

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The storm itself was named Sidr which means "red eye." After the storm the trees showed significant signs of heat damage - almost as if they’d been burned. We could still see the evidence of this. No one could explain to us the phenomena but there was something in the storm that generated an unusual heat enough to dry out, curl and even burn the leaves. Very odd. Whatever it was that caused this, it has given the storm a mythologically malevolent personality.

One thing we did notice on our drive though southern Bangladesh was the lack of livestock. We saw few cattle or goats - but apparently the storm killed millions. In Canada we suffer so few, and comparably mild, climatic shocks it’s almost impossible to imagine an event that would rob us of our babies, fields and homes, but also leave millions of rotting carcasses on the ground to foul the air and poison the water. My brain simply cannot wrap around the misery and shock that would follow.

We left Loban Ghola (the name of the village we visited) and traveled north east about six hours drive to Khulna. The countryside is wonderful. Again, the population density here is mind boggling. During the whole week, over 40 hours of driving through rural Bangladesh, there was never a view or vista that didn’t include hundreds if not thousands of people. So when I say country, you mustn’t imagine miles of unpopulated space as we are accustomed. Someone trying to help us grasp the reality of the population density here said "imagine placing 140 million people in Manitoba and confining them to the area south of the Trans-Canada highway, and you can begin to imagine…"

Because the plains here flood every year, the roads, pathways, villages etc. are all raised. The major roadways are raised a good 10 - 15 feet above ground level, and most pathways and hamlets at least 3-5 feet. One tends to think of road level as ground level, so the effect is to remember the whole region as endless checkered plains of sunken fields and fish ponds decorated brilliantly by tropical groves and grasses . The roadways and paths are also planted with trees (fruit and other) on their slopes (to prevent erosion) giving a verdant canopy effect which is very picturesque. The colourful dress of the Bengalis, the cheerful ease in which they relate to each other seems a perfect compliment to the steamy, sunlit, tropical landscape. What ever might be said about the suffering of folks here, they seem to be a genuinely happy people.

Since this is a land of rivers, you cannot travel far without having to cross a river on a barge or ferry. This is quite the ordeal. And the presence of white folks is a source of rather intense interest. The boat/barges themselves are rather dilapidated and cause some alarm to those of us that are used to newer modes of transportation and some semblance or at least nod to safety concerns. But they seem to work and the rivers themselves languid and swimable if need be. Often there are large lineups to get on but we have a gov’t representative traveling with us who delights in wielding his powers to bring us to the front of the queue. His name is Rajwan and he surprised us at the airport when we arrived saying "I have been assigned to accompany and assist you throughout your journey here." And indeed he did. We’ve been suspicious about why the government would assign an official to travel with us, but he was very nice and quite helpful throughout. He was with us every moment until we passed through the scanners to board our plane out of the country. Hmm…

We traveled on to Gopalganj where we stayed two nights in some sort of some abandoned government compound. I never did really come to understand the purpose of the place - it was built by a previous gov’t and then abandoned for its original purposes. Now it’s some sort of guest housing. At one end of the compound there was a military barracks with a few hundred soldiers. Across the square from the guest house were several housing complexes but I don’t know who lives there or why. This was not a pleasant place. No screens on windows, no a/c, no electricity for much of the day and evening which means no ceiling fans. Mosquitoes were as relentless as the moist heat and bed bugs, making the stay even more memorable. The beds were rock hard, ancient smelly mattresses with a topography to rival the foothills of Alberta, with no sheets nor blanket, just a bedspread which we chose not to disturb. Bathrooms were filthy - no hot water, decaying, dank concrete and cheerless. We didn’t sleep much at all. We haven’t slept much during the whole trip actually. Nights are a waiting game for the most part with occasional naps to break the monotony. As much as I sometimes rant ineloquently about the excessive toys and gadgets North Americans gorge on, we in jet-lag land give thanks to God nightly for our Ipods.

During our stay there we ventured out to more remote rural regions through the maze of narrow unmaintained roads and pathways. We visited a village of Hindus belonging to the lowest class of society. Bangladesh is predominantly Muslim with about 10 percent Hindu, two percent Christian and two percent tribal religions. There doesn’t appear to be much animosity between religious groups here. I certainly did not feel any of the hostility we sometimes felt in Ethiopia or that I overtly felt in West Bank.

These Hindus however were of the Muchi caste which is the lowest Hindu class in Bangladesh. The village itself was very poor, mostly mud huts with thatched roofs and no modern facilities. But it was well kept - even beautiful as were the people themselves. They greeted us with carnation garlands, a shower of flower petals and several dances from the children and even an educational skit written to educate the people on the dangers of diarrhea as a result of unsafe drinking water. Dysentery is a major killer here.

Canadian Foodgrains Bank supports a feeding program here so that the children get at least one nutritional meal a day. Education, especially for girls and women, is probably the most important piece of any development program. So a feeding program at the school is so incredibly important not only for the health of the children, but as a way of keeping them returning to school. It takes pressure off of the mothers, who often give up their own rations of food for their husbands and children. This leads to all sorts of health problems including low birth weight of newborns, and physical deformities in these children which add significant pressure to the family and social cost to the community.

The kids adore Nanci - everywhere we go, within a few minutes there is a crowd of laughing, giggling women and children surrounding her. Often the women want to show her their homes and touch her earrings and skin. They love to see pictures of our kids. The camera crew is thankful for Nanci’s diversion creating capacity, so they can get the shots they want uninterrupted by the crowds.

At one point a woman gestured for Nanci to follow her to see her home. I began to follow but was quickly shooed away. I have observed a bond between women that is profoundly moving and mysterious to me. It’s not the same as male bonding - it is more connected to soul and suffering I think, as opposed to the bravado and belching bond between men - which has it’s own charm to be sure.

The next day we visited an excavation site where a thousand workers (paid in food from a program supported by CFGB) were digging out the silt from a massive canal/irrigation/fishery/water diversion ditch. The canal itself is 32 feet across at the top, 8 feet across at the bottom and fifteen feet deep. The flooding from Sidr Cyclone silted in many of the water ways which requires gargantuan efforts to remedy. These folks, using only mud cutting tools and baskets, had removed about 6 feet of silt from the bottom of 5 kms of irrigation ditch in only 15 days. The silt itself is left beside the ditch in a ten foot high mound that the women pound into a road after it has dried out some. The irrigation ditches here help divert water when there is too much and bring it in when there is not enough. They are stocked with fish so folks can feed themselves between growing and harvesting seasons and during the rainy season. They also serve as important transportation avenues. The roadway that is built beside is planted with trees and grasses that stabilize the roadways during flooding seasons as well as providing fruit and lumber for harvesting. Everything here is about managing the good and harmful potential of excess water.

We also visited a farmer who has recently completed a training session of farming techniques to help him increase the yield of his tiny plot of land. He was digging up his first crop of potatoes since the training which has already doubled his usual yield. The whole time we were talking and filming him, he seemed a bit anxious about me, several times trying to say something discreetly to me. It turns out my zipper was down and he was desperate about my potential humiliation. It ended up being a funny moment that brought a lot of laughter and warmth.

Later we visited a fish farmer who also had also recently attended a training program (similarly sponsored by CFGB) which has helped him to double the output of his wee pond. We were lucky to have come upon him right when he and several men were in the water wrestling with a mammoth net pulling in thousands of jumping fish. It was exhilarating, joyful and humorous to watch.

We returned to Dhaka for one more night before catching a flight to Calcutta. Actually, we still hadn’t gotten our visas to enter India while we were in Canada. So we reapplied at the Indian consulate in Dhaka when we arrived here and didn’t know if we would even be allowed access until a few days before we were to go.

We arrived in Kolkata Sunday morning on route to Patna, a city of about 2 million in the center of Bahir province which is the poorest province of India. 30 million people crammed onto this tiny plot of land. I don’t have the stats on the actual square kms of the province but it seems about as populated as Bangladesh.

When the customs officer in Calcutta saw where we were headed he shook his head and said, "Patna?! Not so nice." I’ve been to Calcutta (now called Kolkata) before and know what that means. The possibility of experiencing worse frightened me.

So right now I’m writing from my hotel in Patna. The hotel is meager by our standards but just fine. It’s clean and even has wi-fi!!! But Patna is easily the most destitute and ugly place I’ve seen in my life. The crowded streets, the crumbling unkempt structures, the smell of feces and urine mixed with rotting food, garbage and diesel, the insufferable heat and the throngs of people, cattle, swine and black smog-vomiting vehicles seem to suck the memory of beauty away.

We arrived here three days ago and had most of that day to sleep and recoup from the rigors of Bangladesh before our week in India. Then we traveled deep into the rural country side to visit two hamlets of the Masihari people. (Masihari means - the rat eaters). They don’t actually eat rats, but often survive by hunting for rat dens and robbing them of the grains the rats have stored there. These are the untouchables - the lowest and poorest cast of Indian society - among the poorest of the world. Life is so miserable here, so dirty and ugly. I had forgotten. I was here back in ‘94 but somehow had forgotten how devastating it is: elderly women living on a hundred dollars a year, whole families living on 70 cents a day. We sat in a circle out in the open sun with the whole village as they told us what life is like here. Those that have jobs work for absentee landowners for a few kilos of rice a day. Every year, during the rainy season (starting in a couple weeks) the plains flood, their whole village goes under water for two months and the villagers survive by huddling on top of an escarpment the government built for them back in the ’70s.

Only one in several hundred children of the first village was in school. They are badly malnourished; the babies dangerously under weight, the women are thin, worn and sad.

The government set up a food-for-work program to help them survive the rainy seasons, but the funding gets swallowed up by various levels of corrupt municipal officers who don’t care about them. The folks we’ve met here are trying to set up education programs to teach the Masihari about their rights and how to defend them. But it all seems pretty hopeless. I asked one of the workers what keeps him going - considering the magnitude of the problems and the unlikeliness anything will change. He just gently smiled and said he loved Christ, and that out of gratitude to God he would work 24/7 for the poor for the rest of his life even if nothing changes. That is something I remember about India, that it is full of Mother Theresas. It’s rather humbling.

Our accommodations in the country were dismal. I think we’re a bit over saturated from experience at this point which brings down one’s toleration level. More bed-bug bites. I hate the bed bugs.

As compared to Bangladesh, the people here don’t seem happy at all. They are friendly for sure and jump up to help at any sign of need. But life here is hot, hard and relatively devoid of the consolation of beauty. A depressed mood has settled over our traveling group and I think we’d all be relieved to be airlifted out of here. Tomorrow we fly to Kolkata and then on to a place by the sea where we’ll visit a few more sites before returning to Kolkata to catch our flight home.

I’m very glad to be here. I’ve learned a lot and met some wonderful folks but this is the definitely the hardest trip I’ve ever taken. Maybe I’m just getting older and less resilient. We’ll be glad to be on our way home.

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Out of 140 million people, half can only read and write their name. 45 percent of the work force are day labourers who work for about a dollar a day. In the rural areas, folks live in tin houses built on bamboo frames and wring out an existence from share-croping and land leasing arangements. Apparently almost all of the land is owned by roughly 10 percent of the population - there is no land ownership among the poor.

But there is alot of energy here. The people themselves are overwhelmingly friendly and hospitable. We get stared at alot, but any small gesture of warm friendliness is immediately returned ten-fold. The people seem quite happy and there is a fond at-easeness among them that is lovely.

Yesterday we visited a small village on the southern coast that was wiped out by a cyclone back in November. The storm brought a 25 foot wall of water that swamped the village at about 9:30 at night - after the sun had gone down. The village itself was decimated and the storm claimed 3000 lives - 17 from this village. We listened to several women speak of having their babies torn from their arms as the waters raged and their bodies were battered and cut open by the sharp edged corregated steel (from the homes) floating in the water. One woman told the most heartbreaking story of watching her husband clinging to a tree with one arm and his child with another as a large beam crushed his arm which released the child and they watched thier child float away into the horrible night.

Obviously, emotions are still pretty raw here. We cried with them and felt priveleged to hear their story. It’s hard to know how to respond. Homes can be replaced, the children cannot. However, homes are not as easily replaced here as back in Canada. There’s no insurance and limited government support. Canadian Foodgrains Bank is starting a food-for-work program here to help rebuild the roads. Other agencies are helping but it is not enough.

An average home here would cost two-thousand dollars to rebuild. A parent earning a dollar a day can’t imagine how that loss will ever be recovered. It’s hard to not think about the fact that the cost of our flights here would make a big difference to the lives of a few families in this place. I feel very conflicted about being here. I pray it will turn into some good otherwise.

Tomorrow we will visit several school feeding programs and a water management (irrigation and diversion) project. Then we return to Dhaka (central Bangladesh) to catch a flight to India on Sunday morning. Unfortunately we have to miss a several hundred thousand person Easter sunrise service in the capital.

Nanci is doing great - no allergy problems yet, which is wonderful. We’re both still a bit jet lagged but expect that to be over by the time it’s time to turn around and go home. Sigh…

love you all - feel free to pass this to whomever.

Steve

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 Here is what Byron wrote:

"Just read a fascinating article on Mother Theresa, another well known
stain. (Byron loves to flip the t around - SB) The church is up in arms because she admittd to having doubt about
Christ being in her life since she was a young nun and had just started her
hands on outreaching ministry and stopped teaching. And remained feeling
that way until her death. The church was appalled, having pronounced her a
Saint.

The thing that stuck is how St. Ben’s (the church Byron and I attend - SB) allows doubt and confusion to come
into the light of day, and faces it head on, while it is not de rigeur with
most churches…

In some of her letters she wrote that she felt forsaken, but did not the
man himself say those same words? Was she unconciously trying to be more Christ like? Is there a parallel here? She worried that she suffered from the sin of pride, was it this feeling of sharing the feeling of being forsaken that she worried about?

Her request in her will was for her letters to be destroyed, but the
church would not allow it. Seems to fly in the face of their dismay at what she wrote.

All in all a thoughtful piece."

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House Grand Auditorium in progress www.houseguitars.com

Josh House is a young luthier from Southern Ontario. He came to a concert of mine a few years back to show me a guitar he made. If it wasn’t his first one, it was one of his first instruments. It was a good guitar, not great, but you could tell he had talent and was well on his way to making great guitars. Over the next couple of years he showed up several times with new instruments, each a huge improvement over the last. Now he’s building first class guitars. It’s been great fun to watch him refine and develop.

So now he’s building this one for me. It will be a spruce top, mahagony sides and back with a beveled bout (for comfort, plus it looks very cool) and sound holes cut into the top side (for the benefit and joy of the player). I had to sell a spruce/mahogany Perry guitar a few years back and so I am looking forward to this as a replacement - there is something about the particular spruce/mahogany combination I’ve always loved.

I’m quite eager to get it but I think it will be a few months yet before I do. Josh has been busy with new orders and also preparing to get married soon. I’ll post pictures and my thoughts on the guitar after I’ve had it awhile. It’s like waiting for a child to be born, wondering what unique features there might be…how will the guitar itself influence your playing… what sorts of songs it will inspire. We’ll see…

-Steve B.

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My guitar playing has been most profoundly influenced by Bruce Cockburn and Leo Kottke. The independent (alternating root / 5) thumb thing I got from Bruce, and much of the (right hand) percussion I got from Leo. Both players are unique with quite different melodic sensibilities, but both have a similar capacity to make the guitar the "whole band" which is why it is sometimes disappointing to see them perform with others - the magic of the "band in a box" is lost.

Drumheller Circle was written after seeing Leo Kottke perform live at the West End Cultural Center in Winnipeg. It’s a small, funky theater which seats perhaps 250 max and hosts the most amazing concerts. I already knew a lot of Leo’s material and was looking forward to discovering what crazy tunings and techniques he used to get his outrageous melodies, chords and unique percussiveness. I was quite surprised to discover that most of his material was written and played in standard or simple alternate tunings (drop D); Theme from "The Rick and Bob Report" (My Father’s Face/ 1989) is a particular example. Leo seems determined to wring every possibility out of these two familiar tunings.

At the time I was experimenting with all sorts of tunings to rescue myself from going to the same old places musically. But I went home that night with a renewed appreciation for the carrying capacity of standard and drop D tunings, determined to wrestle a few more tunes out of them. Drumheller Circle was the result of that determination.

When I first started to play the song publicly I didn’t have a title for it, but found myself telling the story of my early guitar days as a boy in Drumheller Alberta; my father was a prison chaplain at the federal penitentiary in Drumheller and the inmates used to use the chapel Saturday afternoons to have jam sessions. Occasionally I was allowed to go in, sit in the corner and watch the guys play - some were quite exceptional. But I was quite eager to learn to play myself and when the inmates discovered this, they invited me to join the circle.

Not having a guitar of my own, I joined the Jr. Sales Club of Canada and started selling Christmas Cards to get the money to buy a guitar - Dad told me he’d match me dollar for dollar and I had my eye on a Hofner Acoustic ($120 w/hardshell case, strap and pick - ooooo!) After several months I had 60 bucks, Dad matched it and I started showing up every Saturday afternoon to sit in a circle with Canada’s most unwanted men who taught me to play the guitar. I was eight, I was in heaven and to this day adore those men for taking time to teach me.

Anyway, several months after I started performing this song, and telling this story, my manager Dave finally suggested I call it Drumheller Circle and I have ever since.

A few years ago I was invited back to Drumheller prison to perform a concert for the inmates in the same chapel I learned to play in. Obviously, for sentimental reasons, I was eager to go back and play there. It never occurred to me I’d know anyone, or that anyone would remember me after all those years. But I did. It was so very wonderful and so very sad to see old friends after all those years. It was the first time the awful reality of "life sentence" hit me. Is this really the best our imagination is capable of?

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-Steve B.

A chilly Thursday night in January, and I find myself sitting in a fairly cramped meeting room at the 126th Street office of the Jazz Museum in Harlem. There are about sixty-five of us here, sitting on stacking chairs, sipping coffee from disposable cups and snacking on the veggies and cookies set out as the evening’s hospitality. Some are chatting, while others leaf through the complimentary copies of the various local jazz publications that have been set out for us. Although there are a few younger people here, most of us are on the other side of our 40th birthday, some by more than a decade or two. Well over half the group is African-American, and as the evening goes on it becomes clear that many have deep roots in – and deep affection for – this community of Harlem. Two rows in front of me sits a young bass player visiting from Finland, accompanied by his parents. Coming to New York appears to be something of a musical pilgrimage for this young man, to say nothing of his mother, who at a couple of points all but explodes in delight over the fact that her son is here in so storied a place as Harlem. To my left sits the veteran drummer Rudy Lawless, while on the other side of the room is the vocalist Melba Joyce, both of whom over the years have worked with an amazing array of jazz greats.

All of us have made our way here to listen as the Jazz Museum’s Executive Director Loren Schoenberg interviews bassist and educator Reggie Workman in an installment of the ongoing series, “Harlem Speaks. The interview will take some two and a half hours, with a bit of a break to change the tape in the video camera and to refill our coffee cups. This night Workman’s bass is nowhere in sight; it is his stories, insights and reflections that are centre stage. Much as I would have loved to have heard him play, his words do not disappoint.

Now, I’m a jazz fan, but I have only come to it in the last decade or so, and my knowledge isn’t yet of the kind that can recognize every name and every classic session from across the formative years of this music. Coming in to this evening’s session, I did not really know much about Workman at all, but I certainly recognized the names of the people he has played with: Art Blakey, Nina Simone, Sun Ra, Monk, Coltrane. The very mention of Coltrane caused a kind of spark to run through the audience. This guy – close to seventy years old, with a bearing at once gentle and dignified – had played bass on Ole Coltrane, Africa/Brass and on the great 1961 album Live at the Village Vanguard. We are into the stuff of legend here.

At that stage, Coltrane’s band included Eric Dolphy, McCoy Tyner and Elvin Jones; an ‘A’ list band if ever there was one. Workman recalled the music as being so powerful that when he was first with that band all he could do was rehearse, play, and collapse into an exhausted sleep. Fitting, I suppose, as that was all Coltrane did at this stage of his life. “He was like a monk,” Workman commented. Long after the last set had ended, Coltrane would be sitting with a book laid open on the bed in front of him, reading deeply while he practiced. And practiced. And practiced.

This was my third visit to Harlem for a Jazz Museum event in just over a week. In New York to spend a couple of weeks at General Theological Seminary on a study leave, I had come across an ad for a free concert at Nubian Heritage by the Patience Higgins Quartet, and decided that it was just right for the budget conscious jazz fan. I had already been to the Village Vanguard to see the Kenny Barron Trio, and had tickets to go back there once my wife had joined me for the last weekend of my time in the city, but the $30 and $40 cover charges at the big name rooms was soon going to push me beyond my means. While initially drawn by the prospect of free music, I was quickly hooked by the spirit of these events. Whether a concert – and the Higgins quartet was really very fine that night – or conversation – and alongside of the “Harlem Speaks” event, I attended a session of the “Jazz for Curious Listeners” series, in which Loren Schoenberg helped me to really hear the Bill Evans song “Blue in Green” from Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue in a way I had never been able to hear it before – there was this sense of delight in all that these folks were doing.

I am a priest of the Anglican Church of Canada, and for most people when they hear the words “Anglican” and “music,” the associations are with pipe organs, choral music and hymnals. There have certainly been explorations of other music within this tradition, including forays in to the jazz vespers tradition pioneered in New York by St Peter’s Lutheran Church, and in fact my own church community offers a jazz mass every three or four months as an alternative to our already alternative approach to worship music. Often, though, people aren’t sure what to think of jazz in the church. Is it primarily a concert, punctuated by prayers and readings? A church service that includes some instrumental music? Even the worship leaders can seem a bit unclear about the project. Do we jazz up some hymns, or try to redefine as sacred a music that is otherwise generally thought to be secular? Too often the lack of real integration is self-evident, and while the people present may all agree that it was a nice change, do they get much of a sense that the music has carried our prayers, or that the prayer has swung with delight? In the attentive listening, has anyone heard the voice of the Spirit, “interceding for us in sighs to deep for words?” (Romans 8:26b)

A good friend of mine – and as it happens, a colleague in priestly ministry – once told me that he really quite dislikes jazz. He finds it individualistic and at least a little self-indulgent, marked by endless solos and an oftentimes competitive spirit amongst the musicians. He was actually sharing this opinion after having recently been at a church conference that had included a jazz vespers service, and it was pretty evident that to his mind jazz is a form of music least suited for corporate worship. The congregation is left with a role as the passive listeners, while the musicians are performers, specializing in soloing. How can this possibly draw the people of God together, in a shared offering of praise?

At the time I was aware that while I did not agree with his perspective (in part because our own community’s jazz liturgies have managed to move us pretty close to the kind of integration to which I refere above), I did not have the language to mount any kind of a coherent response. Reggie Workman has helped me to discover at least the beginnings of that language.

I’d be the last person to suggest that some jazz musicians aren’t self-indulgent, competitive, even arrogant in their approach, but maybe what those players most need is a little time with other, more seasoned musicians; players who have experienced the sort of real ensemble play that humbles by its power rather than exalts by its technical thrills.

Workman told a story of one such experience from his days with Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers. Typical for Blakey, he had gathered a group of young and promising musicians in that incarnation of the Messengers, and was forming them – pushing an disciplining them, really – into a mature unit. The band was in California to play at a club there, and when they took the stage Blakey discovered that Dizzy Gillespie and Billy Eckstine were sitting at the front table. Blakey, who was normally the demanding, even dogmatic elder of his band, became like a boy in the presence of these two, who numbered amongst his own mentors and elders. Workman remembers the transformation take place, as Blakey pushed himself to play as never before, wanting so much to earn the respect of these men he himself so deeply respected. The young band took up the challenge, and as Workman tells it, the audience experienced something rare and precious. “We took the music so high…” he said, his voice trailing off to the point where he was rendered, quite literally, speechless. It was an astonishing thing to watch this veteran fall into such silence, head bowed and hand held to his teary eyes. He was at that moment anything but self-assured or arrogant; he was instead overwhelmed and humbled in the memory of having been a part of something that transcended prowess and technique. It is like the contemplative mystic, who spends a life-time cultivating a discipline of prayer, and then finds herself one day lifted – if only for a moment – into the very presence of the Holy. The experience is at once shattering and defining; a great and consoling in-filling, that leaves a longing both deep and strangely resolved. One comes away from such moments anything but arrogant.

What was clear in Workman’s story was that the audience – those who bore witness that night – was not incidental to the power of the music. Gillespie and Eckstine were, of course, front and centre, but they were not the only ones whose presence was part of the experience. In fact, Workman wanted us to realize that the audience is always an integral part of the creation of jazz, and that if there is any truth in the observation that jazz is currently going through a low ebb it is because there are not enough regular gigs for players and listeners alike. In those formative days from the ‘40s through the early ‘60s, there were live clubs on every corner, creating a potent milieu for the cultivation of this art form. Practice – important as it may be – is not the same as playing live. It lacks witnesses, whose responsive energy is part of what shapes and fuels the whole.

According to Branford Marsalis – who also spent formative time with the Jazz Messengers – Blakey was fond of telling audiences that “Jazz is the only music that comes directly from the Creator, through us, to you.” The church – a people gathered in a shared desire to offer praise to that Creator and to be collectively open to the movement of the Spirit in the world – does well to attend. And maybe not just in the context of something like jazz vespers. Maybe, just maybe, we first need to learn to discern the Spirit of God in the jazz club or in the sound of the street corner busker’s saxophone or on the recordings of the Coltranes and Blakeys and Workmans of this world; people whose love of sharing the music brought them close to gazing upon the very face of the Divine.

reggie workman

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April 2007

3am. Not the ideal time to be up and writing… but indeed the time my heart tells me. There is an underworld of night-crawlers sneaking through the city while it sleeps. Dozens of individuals that eat from trash bins after midnight, and only feel safe to explore the world by moonlight. Lost souls, purposely hiding.

When I reached Eddie beneath the bridge, he was inconsolable. I sat closeby and just waited until he could bring himself to speak. But before that ever occured, I noticed two things. One - something was missing. Two- something stunk. Before Eddie could gather himself up, I put things together.

"Where’s Shiloe?" I leaned in. Eddie wailed even louder. So I stood and followed the smell. I lifted the grey army blanket resting beneath the concrete beam, and there he was. Shiloe, dead.

When Eddie ran from his abusive home nearly a year ago, he took his best friend with him. The only one he could trust. The family do, Eddie’s solace since age 5, "Shiloe." The one he clung to at night during dad’s dgrunken outrages, and the same one he clung to in the hidden alleyways of the inner city.

There is another group of people who roam in the darkest hours of the night… these are the night-feeders; those that prey on others. Those that steal, and beat, and hurt others to feed their weakened bodies and confused minds. When old Shiloe tried to protect Eddie from the night-feeders, faithful in a way only a good dog can be, he paid the ultimate price. They stabbed him to death. Faithful to the end.

Eddie finally stuttered out his words. Told me what he wanted. It wouldn’t be the first time, or the last, that I have stumbled around fuzzy lines of health issues or property acts. But… we carried Shiloe’s old brown and grey body through the shadows for about a kilometer. Then we spent an hour with some old pieces of board, digging a grave at the side of the railway tracks, where they would walk.

Many of you reading this letter have a dog at your feet, or a cat curled up on your lap even now. Others will see them on walks in the park later in the day, or at the end of the street. Today when you experience your cherished pet, or see someone else so likewise (especially a boy and his dog)…won’t you say a prayer for Eddie? And for the countless "Eddies" running, hiding, and doing their best day-to-day, across the nation.

As we stood over the secret grave, Eddie said, "I’ll see you soon Shiloe." In a terror I have known too well, I put my hands on his shoulders and said "One day. But not soon, okay? Not soon."

Love. Pray. Act. Believe.

Written with teary eyes and hands that still stink…

Wearily, Tim  

Tim Huff has just written and illustrated is first children’s book, The Cardboard Shack Beneath the Bridge / HELPING CHILDREN UNDERSTAND HOMELESSNESS. It is available at most bookstores, including Chapters, Indigo, all Christian bookstores, Augsburg Fortress Distributors and the Castle Quaye Books website. Visit www.castlequaybooks.com

Castle Quay Books will also be publishing Tim’s upcoming book, Bent Hope: A Street Journal which includes many stories such as the one above. I’ve read the book several times and am each time moved by the tender dignity by which Tim portrays his street friends and aquaintances. It’s an important read.

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Consumption is the process by which we lay ahold of something in order to use it up, leaving only waste. Simone Weil suggests that much ill comes from "eating what we should only look at." Yet we in the West have become the high priests of an empirical religion defined by the twin commandments ‘commodify’ and ‘consume.’ And so we commodify all things: people, relationships, experiences, art, health, ministry, even protest. Recently I read that that as bio-genetics becomes the new growth industry of this century, there are already companies attempting to patent certain genes so that, for instance, if you want to genetically alter something (like a potentialy "faulty" fetus, for example) you just may have to purchase the rights from the owners. Walter Brueggeman calls this increasingly unassailable trend/religion ‘Theo-capitalism.’

Anyway… from the Bread for the World website I learned that if we took all the arable land in the world and divided it equally between each person on the planet, our individual allotment would be roughly nine acres. In Ethiopia, the average farm family survives on less than five acres - some much less. In Canada, about 30 acres of land is required to sustain the lifestyle of the average individual. And here’s the kicker… for everyone on the earth to live the lifestyle of the average Canadian would require the land resources of four or five more earths. It’s a stat that keeps playing in my head like an unwelcome song.

So I’ve begun the deliberate, albeit pitifully slow process of learning to live with less. One of the first things I have begun to let go of is the luxury of a fully lit home. Simply put, I turn off lights in rooms no-one is in. It seems like such a small gesture, but having begun to attend to this, I am a bit surprised by how wasteful we have been with our "right to light."

I have also decided to drink less coffee. Actually, this has taken on the form of a fast where I don’t drink coffee at all during the week. But happily, in true orthodox fasting tradition, Sunday is feast day! - and one musn’t fast on feast day. Yay! Other than insisting on fair trade coffee, I’m not sure if this helps anyone else very much , but it does help to teach me, as Dallas Willard once said, that there is nothing wrong with the world when I don’t get what I want.

I’ve also begun to make Wednesdays more of a deliberate fasting day. I don’t collect or even look at emails all day and only access the Internet at all if my work requires it. Brueggeman says that the purpose of fasting is to break the false assumptions, loyalties and linkages we’ve unwittingly allowed sovereignty over our lives. It’s amazing how hard it is to go a whole day without checking email. But it has really helped me face the reality that perhaps I’m not as important as I think.

I have also begun to eat only plain bread for breakfast and lunch (on Wednesdays). No big sacrifice here, but it does serve to focus one’s prayer on the reality of so many millions who don’t get enough food never mind the endless varieties, delightful combinations and opportunity to experience food mearly for pleasure or entertainment.

These are such puny starts. But already, in such a short time in the shallow waters of asceticism, I have begun to experience the world as less disappointing, less boring, less frightening. I’ve even had moments of near rapture, or joy. My priest says it is the fast that makes the feast!

Another change… I have started taking the bus and leaving the car at home. This has been a more demanding change. Out lives revolve around the assumption that process is evil (time wasting) and product is divine. There is so much good to do, how can one justify getting less work done because it takes longer to get there? Yet in our increasingly obsessive pursuit of productivity, so much is lost and so much damage done; environmentaly, communaly, bodily. Yet it already occurs to me that I don’t need the (second) car at all. Nanci’s work demands it, her job often requires her to travel out of town. But my work doesn’t. I can adjust to a slower pace and so I should. "We can’t do everything, but what we can do, we must do." So the current plan is to sell the second car and redirect the roughly $400 a month it takes to keep a car on the road in order to upgrade the insulation on our older home which often gets frost on the inside walls during winter.

Now that I’m learning to slow down, to walk, to take the bus, I’m feeling much more connected to neighborhood, my body, and to my surroundings. I’m starting to recognize people on the street and have even begun to wave to some who are beginning to seem almost like fond aquaintances even though we may not yet have spoken. It’s nice.

The other day, I was asked to come sing at the opening of a homeless shelter (Siloam Mission) in downtown Winnipeg. This wasn’t a media event, it was the actual first-night availability of 60 new beds for folks that don’t have access to one. When I got there, the doors were not yet open and there were several dozen people waiting in line to be let in. John Mohan, the executive director, assured everyone of their absolute welcome. Then he read a scripture, said a prayer and asked me to sing a song before the doors opened. As I was singing, I recognized a woman standing patiently in line. Afterward I made my way over to her to learn how it was I knew her when it suddenly dawned on me - "I’ve seen you on the bus!" She smiled warily at me and said, "My name is Kristine. Next time, say hi!"

I look forward to it.

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