Hi Rich Fans,
I pray that you all had a blessed Christmas and New Year holiday season. Ours was great! One of the highlights of our pre-Christmas celebrations was getting invited to a Marriage Encounter Christmas Program by RichMailList members Alan and Julie Siegman. It was held at the All Saints Catholic Church in Wichita. A friend of theirs, Jean Gengler and her husband Ken, helped put the program together. Long story short, Jean asked Rich to play at the service, and he agreed. The only requirement was that they needed to come up with satisfactory sound equipment and a sound person. That task proved to be much more difficult than contacting Rich (Jean had talked to Rich at the Emporia concert last October, see [RichMailList 88]: Rich in Emporia 10/12). Eventually arrangements were made (though not 'til the last minute), and they were ready.
Alan had his baby grand piano tuned and setup in the sanctuary for Rich to play, and it sounded great! Since Mitch was not there, I asked Rich if he was home in Topeka for the holidays, and he said yes. While I as helping Matt Marney (who was the person that brought the sound equipment), Rich was looking for a guitar pick and couldn't find one, so I gave him one of mine. Not quite the same as having Rich play on your piano, but still pretty cool, huh?
Rich was very relaxed this evening, and it was a wonderful program. Rich played pretty much the same songs as the last few reviews, except for one song. I'm pretty sure this was a new song. It may be from the musical, but Rich never said, and I didn't get a chance to ask him. It was a ballad on the piano and a phrase I remember was, "Jesus, they say you walked on the water once. I want to walk with you."
We heard more about the story to the musical "Canticle of the Plains". As we've all heard before it is about a modern day counterpart to Saint Francis of Assisi named Frank. If you're familiar with Saint Francis' story you'll hear the parallels. Frank comes home from the Civil War and has an encounter with God out on the plains. He ends up in Lawrence, KS and finds a burned out church. There he meets an old black lady, and God speaks to him through her, and they rebuild the church. They end up parting ways in a real tear-jerker scene at the end of the first half of the play. That's when we hear the song "Heaven Is Waiting."
At the end of the program, we all got in a big circle around the sanctuary, held hands, and sang the Worldwide Marriage Encounter's adopted theme song, called "There's a New World Somewhere", which is for the most part the old sixties song, "I'll Never Find Another You." The whole evening was filled with a very warm "we're all family here" feeling.
Since most were there for the Marriage Encounter Christmas program, not specifically to see Rich, there were quite a few people that had not seen Rich before (though most had at least heard "Awesome God" before). I must share something that Alan told me after the concert. We were discussing how many people were new to Rich's music, and he told me this cute story. "A friend of ours who has about eight kids said that one of them, about five years old, asked her, 'Mommy, why is that man at the piano playing Rich Mullins music?' To which she responded, 'because he is Rich Mullins.' The kid mulled that over a bit, and then requested confirmation in a really cute way, 'oh, the man at the piano is Rich Mullins and he's playing Rich Mullins MUSIC?????'."
The next day (Sunday, 12/22) Rich did a couple more performances at a local church for Christmas programs, and I'm assuming that's why we haven't had any advanced warning to some of his concerts lately, because they were last minute bookings.
Here's a quick note about the 12/28/96 Ellisville, MO (St. Louis) benefit concert.
Date: Sun, 29 Dec 1996 14:33:54 From: Jason K. English Subject: St. Louis Concert I saw RM in St. Louis on 12/28 and I think it was twice as enjoyable as his Ragamuffin/Brothers Keeper Tour in the Fall of '95. He only played about 9 of his songs, but he managed to mix in many hymns, choruses and thoughts -- like he used to do in the late '80s and early '90s. He also talked about the musical and played "Heaven is Waiting" as well as a mandolinesque piece of Bach with Mitch M. Rick E. and Jimmy A also played. The concert lasted over 3 and a half hours and was worth the 2 hour drive from my house. I wish though, that Beaker was still around, cause he always made me laugh. jason jenglish@digmo.org