We are all devastated by the destruction of Hurricane Katrina. Clothing is desperately needed for the thousands who have lost everything. Go through your closets and sort out the clothes you are not wearing, bag them, and bring them to Golf House Tennessee, 400 Franklin Road, Franklin, Tuesday (9/6), Wednesday (9/7) ad Thursday (9/8) between 9 AM and 5 PM. Outback Steakhouse trucks will then transport the clothing to New Orleans or Baton Rouge. The Tennessee Golf Foundation (a 501c3 corp) will give you a recept for your donation. Please forward this message to your friends in the area who can help. Thank you!!!!
Bonnie Taggert
Tournament Director
The Vinny Pro-Celebrity Invitational
400 Franklin Rd.
Franklin, TN 37069
615-794-9399 fax 790-8600
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What Slidell, LA? - you may be asking. Read here, and here. Then come back and read this update from Don:
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It’s Monday and I still don’t know that I can put down into words the experience of going to Slidell this weekend to help in relief efforts. I will tell you one thing, from where I was and what I experienced you are only getting 1/2 the story on Television. The picture they show of the devastation is real. You cannot “spin” video tape and still photos, you really can’t edit them much to make them say what you want, although the most dramatic visual backdrops will always be used. What
can be “spun” is the words, the thoughts, the actions of a desperate few....looters, rapists, rioters, Kanye West, Shaun Penn and other people who want to turn this political.
Slidell is situated 20 Miles to the northeast of New Orleans as the crow flies, but a million miles away in spirit. The pictures, plus conversation and prayer that we shared with the people there probably would not be covered on the news. It was not tragic enough. I am sorry that I have a tinge of cynacism (ok, probably more than a tinge) about this, but outside of deep sorrow, tears, questions and shock - my overwhelming emotion is anger. Anger at the 2 storms that are being covered. One has to do with the greatest national disaster ever recorded in America - and one could turn out to be worse if we don’t put aside the “who’s fault is it” argument. Easy for me to say 450 miles to the north, but being almost at ground zero I still saw hope, joy, togetherness and work. Much closer to Reverend King’s dream of his children’s children walking hand to hand with each other than you may know.
After we established the supplies inside of Joy Fellowship we realized that the pastor was simply too overwhelmed to have thought of what to do after we off loaded the truck. Here is a tiny little spirit filled congregation with little to no “infrastructure.” A few of us on the trip tend to be a little controlling (read-impatient) about getting thing going. But soon cars began to back up to the church, not necessarily in droves but a steady stream. Person after person when asked what their need was told us exactly what there need was.
“I don’t need any water, but do you have 3 pillows?”
“I don’t need those pillows, do you have any tums or asprin”
“I don’t need that cereal, save it for the babies...do you have any
socks?”
“We have plenty of water, but we need a little food”
Almost to a person they began with what they didn’t need....almost to a person they would tell us who needed a certain item more than they did. I was not prepared for this selflessness. I was prepared for gun-battles, military check points and defense of our truck - later I felt foolish for this.
With each person who pulled up we asked if they knew of anyone trapped, or in deep need. Three beautiful african american ladies who came only for pillows and dry food told us of a story of people in their apartment complex who needed help. We found a mini-van, filled it to overflowing and took off. We found a small U-Shaped two story complex of very simple 1 bedroom apartments - probably 50 units total. As we piled out of the mini van to see who needed what, someone from the pool area came over to ask us if we had ice. He told us that was their biggest need. We asked where the elderly and babies were - he told us to follow him. Under the picnic shelter attached to the poolhouse we found 20 people or so who were gathered during the day to be together...pool their resources and help each other make it better. We found stacks of standard kitchen supplies, items from pantrys and a grill cooking all of the items that were spoiling from refrigerators which hadn’t had power since monday. If you add some music. clean the people up a little bit it would have looked exactly like any Labor Day picnic across the US.
TUESDAY -
So I took a day break from writing this. Luckily the media has begun to cover a little on the positive side.
Ponchatrain road is the 2 mile strip I’ll never forget. It leads from Slidell town center to the bridge that feeds across the Ponchatrain into New Orleans. We were stopped by armed national guardsmen. when they found out we had supplies the let us go in. What we began to see there was mind-numbing. The first “neighborhood” we saw was an upscale golf course community. It honestly looked like a bomb went off in a lumber yard, there wasn’t even a shape of a house, a roof in tact or anything that would let you know there were homes there. Just a field of lumber. Next we pulled in and talked to some people who has survived in a two level apartment. Next door to them was a hair salon - the entire building which housed the salon was about 250 yards back and to the left, in a lumber field. The further we drove the more news crews and FEMA people we saw....it truly made unreal backdrops for news reports...but the thing is, someone lived there.
When we got as far as we could go on Ponchatrain Rd before the bridge to New Orleans I saw a refrigerated truck, hoping it was ice that we could take back to our friends at the apartments gave me some hope. It was then that we were told it was a temporary Morgue. We had heard that up to 80 people had perished in one apartment complex near by.
By the time we returned to Joy Fellowship we received the good news that the word had begun to travel out and they had a steady stream of evacutees coming in and getting the supplies they needed, and only what they needed. Today is tuesday, we’re back at work, and my friend Jay tells me of the great works that continue to happen out of the Joy Fellowship. As he said “once we got out of there they started ROCKIN.”
We hear that the goods you supplied have been gone through, and replenished, and gone through again - for a total of three times! They have established a “drive through” where they are issuing goods to people including hot meals. They have had 5 generators donated so the entire church is back in the electricity business! Also, they are housing Red Cross workers and Pilots who are shuttling evacuee’s to other areas.
Sorry to be so long winded and disjointed, but I wanted to get this out before too long. Once you get me started talking about it it really is hard to shut it down. There are many, many stories to tell - but I feel like you deserved a bit of a play by play since this really was about YOUR generacity. Thank you for being the heartbeat, hands and feet of God. There are a few thousand people sleeping on pillows with a full belly and a clean shirt on tonight because of you.
Don
Don Donahue
President
Rocketown Records
On September 4th I cracked. I drove six hours to Boone, North Carolina, walked into an arena where 700 kids and their youth ministers sat waiting for me to play and I thought to myself, “I’m thirty-one. There has to be more for me. This feels hollow. It doesn’t matter.”
A couple weeks ago I was in El Salvador visiting impoverished children and their families. I heard about molestation and rape, about child labor on coffee plantations, about the rich oppressing the poor. I also saw the Church in El Salvador, with support from the Church in the U.S., fighting against these heinous forces and winning. I thought to myself, “I’m thirty-one. I’ve never felt more alive. This feels substantive. This matters.”
In the months before that trip I’d grown restless in my role as a Christian musician. I made myself learn how this industry works: How radio stations operate, how labels operate, how mainstream music operates. I read about art and faith and how they “should” combine. I prayed. I talked to other artists. I digested everything I could about this work I do in search of a purpose, an ethic or direction with spiritual substance at it’s center - something that would matter to me. I wasn’t looking for God in this business. I know He’s here. I wasn’t looking for the godly. I’ve met them as well. I was looking for what God wanted ME to be about in this business. I was looking for direction, a purpose, a point to my career. And, honestly, I was looking for a way to crack the system, play the game, as a way of doing something bigger for God - as if God sees what I’ve done and am doing as worthless and small right now. I’m an idiot sometimes.
This trip to El Salvador didn’t create this struggle in me. If I hadn’t gone to El Salvador this would have been a phase. It would have passed. El Salvador wove it into me. It made magnified my questions and made finding an answer imperative and not elective.
I’ve counseled and encouraged and provoked to righteousness countless people over the last five years. God’s done that through me and in spite of me. I’ve felt useful. It’s felt substantive, like every day mattered. But it doesn’t any more. Now I feel discontent. As my best friend, who is going through this same thing in his life, said tonight - I feel “antsy”. I feel small. Less than I was made to be. I feel ready for more or different. I feel uninspired by music making and industry and money and so much else that once held my attention.
I don’t think my life before this period of discontent was shallow though, or off course in any way. I don’t think my once caring about music and my work and all the rest of it was disobedient or less spiritually mature of me. I just think something’s changed in me. The part in me that allowed me to fully engage in those things is worn out or gone altogether. The part that made me want to be PRIMARILY about those things is out of order. I’m broken.
Most of the time these days this discontent drives me to reading and researching poverty, theologies and theologians and ethicists who’ve written about these things that seem to be fueling my brokeness. I told Becky I feel like the main character in Close Encounters of the Third Kind - the guy unexplainably urged from within to make mountains of mashed potatoes and mud, not knowing what this new fascination of his means or if it means anything at all. And Becky feels the same way. Odd.
And this discontent is usually these days driving me to prepare for the answer to the questions “What CAN I be inspired to be or do now? What’s next? Why this interest in other things suddenly?” I’m preparing for this answer by selling my house, simplifying my life, eliminating the money factor in my obedience. If God says “go” or “do” or “be” someday I want to be obedient without hesitation or friction financially or in relationships with label, friends or family. I’m preparing them all for the phone call I hope to get from God eventually that could demand something from me and will surely dislodge me from this discontent I’m in.
Most of the time this discontent fills me with nervous energy, anticipation of what’s next. It usually invigorates while irritating, fills me with longing for something I’ve yet to find and makes me content to wait for that something while enjoying life here and now. It makes me silent for hours and then suddenly explodes into a commaless rant or passionate unwieldy blog posting or essay. This discontent makes me “antsy” but it’s usually good. It has been good - very good and positive.
Until September 4th. I still don’t know why but it changed direction. I got angry. (I sort of know why: ONE trivial complaint seemed extra trivial that night in light of the serious issues faced backed in El Salvador for starters.) I’m ashamed that I did but I did. Really angry. Makes no sense. Great promoter. Great audience. Great food. Great travel with friends. Great show. I’m still not sure all of what or who I was angry about. Every attempt to put it in writing or conversation has failed. All I know for sure is that I felt like I didn’t belong, I wasn’t what was needed and the crowd wasn’t what I needed. I didn’t appreciate them and they didn’t appreciate me but it was deeper than that. Like I said I can’t explain it with words. It’s a sense that can’t fit in my mouth at all. I didn’t fit. And not just for that night but it struck me that maybe for always now I won’t fit. That scared/scares me. And that for some bizarre reason made me mad at everything including myself.
So tonight I got honest with God and a good friend. I shot straight with both. If I could quit music, if I had no contract today, I would. (Though I have no idea where I’d go or what I’d do.) I’d leave. Not because I hate it or anyone in it, but because I don’t feel like I fit here right now. This isn’t me right now. There’s something else that needs me. Maybe for a month and maybe for the rest of my life. Something needs me. This job, these people, this industry, this country maybe, doesn’t anymore. But I’m staying - for now. And I’ll stay joyfully. I haven’t been told what’s next. And I look forward to counseling and provoking with my music every chance I get until God breaks this silence and explains to me in small words where I’m needed. In the meantime I’m not angry anymore. It left me as quickly as it hit me. And thankfully no real damage was done.
I say all this here on a blog - which is very uncomfortable and unconventional - because some of what I’ve written here lately has been under the influence of this stuff I’m sorting through. Some of the angry, as fleeting as it was, seeped into my words here. I regret that. But I’m also thankful for it. It was honest. If there’s one thing I know God wants me to keep being it’s that - honest. He uses that. There are scores of Christians content right now with arriving at death safely and filling the time between now and then with religion and routine. They believe - as I once did - that believing is enough and that after a sinner’s prayer we’re to take a seat, blend in and enjoy the scenery. I’ve been against that from the beginning of my career. I’ve been against that since a car accident in high school disrupted MY scenery, filled me with discontent, made me thirsty for more and taught me how too write songs in the process. My reason for doing this job in the first place was to infiltrate an industry feeding this kind of placid piousness with a loud unrelenting dose of jagged costly discipleship - substance. Now some of those religious people thankfully come here. They’re my fans. They’re my friends. And I want them to see me crack and break and struggle and fight God right now. I want them to see what a faith that is in flux and maliable and sometimes ugly looks like in the fire, on the anvil, under the abuse of the Hammer. And I want them to see what happens when the flames cool, to see what can be made of a mess like me. I want them to see that it’s worth it to be discontent and miserable and angry so that one day we can be content and inspired and humbled and more useful than before.
So I’m going to bed to toss and turn once again, dreaming of what’s ahead. And I feel better just letting you know what’s going on. I haven’t lost my mind. I’m just enjoying an extra large portion of discontentment. Mmmm good. Ask for some.
An organization has been founded this week that specializes in finding families in need after Hurricane Katrina and matching them up with churches and other Christian groups for sponsorship. Once a family is sponsored they will have all of their needs met by that group or church for one year: housing, work, psychiatric treatment, child care, food, spiritual counseling and anything else. Sponsor churches and groups will be a family to these families who’ve lost homes and livelihoods for twelve months, but hopefully will make connections with one another that last a lifetime.
I’ve signed on as a spokesperson for findshelter.org and receive updates often from the leaders of this group. I am asking questions regularly of their staff and doing my best to make sure this program constantly operates with integrity and effectiveness. Feel free to call or e-mail them with questions of your own and please consider this opportunity to meet every need of a family in crisis through your group or church.
This is the Church taking care of the least. Join us. Check out findshelter.org.
