Category Archives: Gospel

A Little Love for King Saul …

The Witch of Endor, the Ghost of Samuel and King Saul
The Witch of Endor, the Ghost of Samuel and King Saul

People who know me know I’ve been kicking around the idea to write a novel based on the life of King Saul, my favorite Old Testament character.

            A little love for King Saul, if you don’t mind. Remember: Here’s a guy who didn’t want the job as King of Israel. He spent his entire reign hounded by that weasel Samuel. He never personally profited from his position. He unified 12 feudin’, fussin’ tribes into a nation. He was heroic in battle.

            And he was a good dad.

            Really.

            Today, King David gets all of the good press. By if you line them up side by side, David’s sins dwarf Saul’s. (And Saul always genuinely repented.)

            And there’s the business of the children. But more on that later …

            When Samuel publicly announced to the Hebrew people that Saul had been chosen as their first king, they found hiding behind the luggage (1 Samuel 10:22). Afterwards, instead of demanding a lavish new tent or mansion, he simply went home.

            When the evil Nahash the Ammonite besieged the Hebrew people, messengers found their new king quietly farming with his oxen. (1 Samuel 11:5)

            Saul declined to mercilessly slaughter his defeated enemies. And when he triumphed in battle, he always shared the spoils with his people. Thus by example, King Saul slowly built a stable nation.

            Throughout it all, Saul remained modest and obedient, eschewing the trappings of wealth and power, always trying – despite his many failures – to do what’s right.

            Which brings us back to the dad business.

            We don’t know much about Mrs. Saul. But we know a lot about Saul’s son, Jonathan. Beautiful, loyal, courageous Jonathan. He’s one of the few characters in the entire O.T. who gets a free ride from the chroniclers. He’s always shown in a positive light. And we know David loved him.

            Saul, apparently alone among his kingly successors, managed to keep a good balance between work and family. When he was king, he was king. When he wasn’t protecting the entire nation of Israel against hordes of iron-wielding Philistines, he was back home farming and spending quality time with the kids.

            Jonathan doubtless noticed.

            We can guess from Jonathan’s life that Saul tried to provide a good example, as best he knew how.

            Even during Saul’s darkest days, when faced both with David’s rebellion and the external threats from a dozen powerful neighboring kingdom states, he behaved with moderation and restraint.

            God eventually chose David and so Saul’s reign came to a bloody end. But even then, Saul’s innate nobility and decency shone through. In the time of his country’s greatest trial, he consulted the Witch of Endor, desperately seeking advice on how to save his people. Not for his own benefit, mind you. He risked damnation to help his people. But even from beyond the grave, Samuel chose instead to taunt and humiliate him. (1 Samuel 28: 1-19).

            Some people need to just get over themselves.

            In the end, a massive force of Philistines overwhelmed the loyal soldiers who remained. On that awful day, King Saul stood virtually alone on Mount Gilboa with his sons Jonathan, Abinadab and Malchishu. He could have taken his sons and have fled with the royal treasury. And his sons could have slipped away the night before.

            But they didn’t. They remained steadfast and shared their father’s fate.

            There is more to the story, no doubt, more to Saul we just don’t know:

             The Bible says that Saul died because he was unfaithful to the LORD; he did not keep the word of the LORD and even consulted a medium for guidance, 14 and did not inquire of the LORD. So the LORD put him to death and turned the kingdom over to David son of Jesse. (1 Chron 10:13-14)

        Um, doesn’t that seem a little extreme?

        Think what you will of King Saul, but he must have been a worthy, loving father for those closest to him to remain faithful unto death. How many kings of Israel will be able to say that in the centuries to come?

            And in that, if nothing else he is an example to us today: There is no difference between your life at work and your family life. You can’t be ruthless, corrupt, and dictatorial at the office and yet be gentle and loving at home and expect your friends and family not to be impacted by your example. You are called by God to be equally responsible in both.

There is no separation between the two.

There was no separation during the time of King Saul and there isn’t any such separation now.

It simply can’t be done.

           

On “Found” Writing

 

quartetDavid Licata’s always thoughtful “A Life’s Work” blog has an interesting essay on the use and philosophy behind using “archival” or “found” footage in something like a documentary. In this case, adding archival footage of gospel artists to augment the interviews and “B roll” of his interviews with me talking about The Black Gospel Music Restoration Project.

I know I’D certainly welcome some good gospel music if I was watching a documentary about a white guy who was obsessed with saving gospel music!

As I was reading it, thinking about the differences between a film-maker and a writer, I realized that using “found” documents and stories is exactly what I do in my work, fiction and non-fiction alike. Very little of my work is autobiographical — like most middle class kids, I’ve had a pretty uneventful life — so I am dependent on the stories and vignettes I can find from others to illustrate my writing. Sometimes that information comes from a direct interview. More often, it is something I’ve found in a book, magazine, newspaper article or (more recently) on the Web. Without these “found” moments, I’m sure my writing would be very drab, indeed.

As I tell my fiction writers, The Hero’s Journey model is ONLY about those who respond to the Call to Adventure. They great mass of us don’t respond, choosing to live vicariously through the adventures of others. As a certain Hobbit says when Gandalf shows up unexpectedly outside his hobbit-hole: “No adventures for me today, thank you! Good day!”

The Spirituals and the Labor Movement

W.C. Handy, the so-called “Father of the Blues,” once said on a radio broadcast that he was always inspired by the spirituals and that the spirituals did more for the slave’s emacipation than all of the guns of the Civil War.

I’ve spent the past few years examining the influence of the spirituals, Freedom Songs, gospel songs, R&B songs, and the hymns of Isaac Watts on the Civil Rights Movement. And people like Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga) have echoed Handy’s words as they relate to another fight, 100 years later.

So it shouldn’t have surprised me to discover that the spirituals were used by African Americans in the labor movements of the 1920s and ’30s as well, when the Federal government used American soldiers to slaughter strikers and corporations controlled entire blocs of states, not just their representatives.

This research path has taken me to “New Masses,” “The Labor Defender” and other feisty newspapers and magazines from that era. And in an article on the lynchings in the U.S. in 1933, there is an account of what black Share Croppers Delegation at the Farmers Second National Conference sang that year, to the tune of the spiritual, “We Shall Not Be Moved:”

“We fight against the terror/We shall not be moved/We fight against terror/We shall not be moved/Just like at tree that’s planted by water/We shall not be moved.”

Which brings me to my favorite James Taylor song, “Millworker,” written for a musical version of Studs Terkel’s “Working” project. Few songs move me as powerfully as this:

Now my grandfather was a sailor
He blew in off the water
My father was a farmer
And I, his only daughter
Took up with a no good mill-working man
From Massachusetts
Who dies from too much whiskey
And leaves me these three faces to feed

Millwork ain’t easy
Millwork ain’t hard
Millwork it ain’t nothing
But an awful boring job
I’m waiting for a daydream
To take me through the morning
And put me in my coffee break
Where I can have a sandwich
And remember

Then its me and my machine
For the rest of the morning
For the rest of the afternoon
And the rest of my life

Now my mind begins to wander
To the days back on the farm
I can see my father smiling at me
Swinging on his arm
I can hear my granddads stories
Of the storms out on lake eerie
Where vessels and cargos and fortunes
And sailors lives were lost

Yes, but its my life has been wasted
And I have been the fool
To let this manufacturer
Use my body for a tool
I can ride home in the evening
Staring at my hands
Swearing by my sorrow that a young girl
Ought to stand a better chance

So may I work the mills just as long as I am able
And never meet the man whose name is on the label

It be me and my machine
For the rest of the morning
And the rest of the afternoon
Gone for the rest of my life