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- Herausgeber: IVP Formatio
- Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
- Sprache: Englisch
Experience Rich Mullins's Legacy of Joy and Real Compassion Beloved contemporary Christian musician Rich Mullins lived his life with abandon for God, leaving the spotlight to teach music among a Navajo community. An accident cut his life short in 1997, but his songs and ragamuffin spirit continue to teach many. In honor of the twenty-fifth anniversary of Rich's homegoing, this edition of Rich Mullins: An Arrow Pointing to Heaven delivers an intimate look at the experiences that sparked praise hits and the values behind his Christ-like candor. James Bryan Smith captures just what Rich wished for when he said, "I hope I would leave a legacy of joy—a legacy of real compassion." See the layers of his story through reflections from friends and family, an afterword by Rich's brother David Mullins, and Smith's own bond with him. And in remembrance, be inspired to enjoy God's world as Rich did.
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TWENTY-FIFTH ANNIVERSARY EDITION
An Arrow Pointing to Heaven
Foreword by Brennan Manning
To John and Neva Mullins,
Contents
Foreword
BRENNAN MANNING
Jesus of Nazareth ruined Rich Mullins’s life. And out of the ruins He recreated a ragamuffin of startling originality; no human being who has crossed my path even remotely resembles him.
Our first meeting took place in a ramshackle restaurant in Wichita, Kansas. We sat for three hours wolfing down drop-dead delicious profiteroles (chocolate pastries stuffed with vanilla ice cream). With a candor, humility, and raw honesty that reminded me of the tax collector in the temple, he laid out his life story with all the sin and failure that had scarred his soul, as well as the personal and professional successes that had established his reputation.
As he spoke I thought to myself, This man knows the real Jesus. Only someone who has experienced the forgiveness and mercy of the redeeming Christ could dare to be so open about his brokenness.
That “our God is an awesome God” is not something Rich read in a book or heard in a sermon. The God, bodied forth in Jesus, that he shares with us in his writings and his music is the God he encountered on the turf of his ragged journey.
Los Angeles poet Lynn Prescott caught his spirit when she wrote, “He was interested in gays and straights, whores and cowboys, alcoholics and people who were broken, broken, broken; he was interested in rainbow people and Franciscan vows; he had an appetite for sin but a voracious appetite for God. Action was his middle name. He had a short attention span and bored readily and quickly. In our day he would best be compared to a medieval troubadour/poet; he was largely a medievalist and not a renaissance man; he was a poet, pure and simple and as changing as the tides; he had many passions, and the ones he clung to most fiercely were his love for Native Americans, his love of Ireland and of children, his love of ragamuffins and of music; and lastly but not leastly, his passion that fired all other passions—his love for Jesus. Even dead and in his grave, Rich has helped me rediscover a lot of the pieces that I had lost; he helped me reclaim myself in a way that no human being has ever done.”
Seven months before he died, I guided Rich on a three-day silent retreat at Chateau Vineyard, a resort sixty miles north of Atlanta. He was in a state of emotional turmoil because of unresolved issues with his family of origin, specifically his father. Like Henri Nouwen’s dad, John Mullins loved his son but never told him so. He was truly proud of Rich’s accomplishments, shared his deep affection for him with other members of the family, but failed to communicate his feelings to the one person who longed for his love.
The two of us bonded here because my experience with my father matched his. When a father’s love is withheld, a child will struggle with issues ranging from shyness and insecurity to a profound and crippling shame over his or her very existence. As Dennis Lynn notes, “As an adult, he or she may find it hard to accept compliments and attention and may even feel like hiding. Often such a person, no matter how conscientious and successful, will feel like a fraud and fear being found out. Or, on the other hand, a person whose [father] was not happy to discover him or her may compulsively seek compliments and attention throughout life without knowing why.”
During the retreat I asked Rich to write a letter to his deceased father. The next day I asked him to write a letter from his father to him. Rich resided in the chalet next to mine. As he wrote, I heard sobbing and wailing so loud that I started crying myself. All John Mullins’s pent-up affection exploded and came cascading into Rich’s heart like a torrent of truth and love. Soon after, Rich came to my place and read the letter, tears streaming down his face.
Next I asked Rich to write a letter to Abba followed by a letter from Abba to him. I shall never forget our festive dinner on the last night of the retreat. His black eyes shining like onyx and his face creased in a radiant smile, he said simply, “Brennan, I’m free.”
Much of his pain, as Jim Smith remarks, came from the fact that he saw too much and felt too much. His mother, Neva, said, “He could see the pain in another person even before they could see it themselves.” Poets are a unique breed of human beings. They ricochet between agony and ecstasy because they take everything so personally. Where other people feel kicked by an unkind word, the poet feels disemboweled. The slightest provocation can induce a fit of weeping or a fit of ecstasy. Others cannot understand why he does what he does, and the poet is downright clueless himself. Rich Mullins often endured loneliness, as many people do, but he suffered in a way unknown to most of us. Such extraordinary sensitivity is a blessing and a heartache.
Rich taught me an invaluable lesson about the true meaning of repentance. One rainy day he got into a blistering argument with his road manager, Gay Quisenberry. Angry words were hurled back and forth, and Rich stormed out the door, uncontrite. Early the following morning, Gay was awakened from a sound sleep by the loud buzz of a motor outside her house. Groggily, she looked out the window and saw Rich mowing her lawn!
He never said he was sorry; he showed it. It reminded me of a distraught woman who came to me for counseling. She had unfairly criticized her husband several times and feared it was becoming a pattern. Instead of telling her to recite the ancient prayer, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner,” I asked her, “What is your husband’s favorite dessert?” A bit disconcerted, she replied, “Carrot cake.” I said, “Bake him two.” Rich taught me to let the punishment fit the crime.
He walked the way of the ragamuffin. His vivid awareness of his own brokenness made it existentially impossible to sit in judgment on the sins of others. Rich disdained money and material things and secretly gave away most of what he earned. I carry this spirit with me to this day: one hidden act of kindness is worth more than all the burial mounds of rhetoric, all the mumbling and fumbling and tardiness of Christians so preoccupied with cultivating their prayer lives that they cannot hear the anguished cry of the child in the barrio.
Jim Smith has chosen wisely to eschew biography and hagiography in his presentation of Rich’s life. He understands the difference between knowing about and really knowing Rich. Biography tells us a person’s place of birth, family of origin, educational background, habits, physical appearance, and so forth—all those vital statistics so clinically cold that they tell us nothing of the man who lives and loves and walks with God. Hagiography or premature canonization would make Rich shudder.
Let me share a letter I received from someone in Canada:
Dear Brennan,
A year ago I wanted to die. I had accepted Jesus as my Savior when I was eight years old. And the years of living a loveless Christianity have taken their toll. A misfit, a failure and full of grief. I resented the day for arriving and cursed the length of the lonely night. I knew that God was punishing me for my lack of holiness and great works, and that he was ready to cast me into the Hell reserved for the ungodly.
It was God himself by divine appointment who put the music and video of Rich Mullins’s “A Liturgy, a Legacy and a Ragamuffin Band” into my hands. That day, January 2, 1995, I met Jesus and my life changed 360 degrees. How does a heart change? How does something of no value become worth something? Even now in writing this letter, my eyes fill with tears.
But even more exciting is how his CD has changed other people’s lives. It has been sent to Finland, England, Wales, Siberia, France, and Ireland. The lady in Ireland was ready to end her life. She wrote me that she can’t understand how God could work so powerfully through a man she’s never met. She said that her days are getting brighter. My friend Paul came over from France. Clutching the CD in his hands and with tears running down his cheeks, he cried, “I have peace at last.”
As his mentor and friend, I honor my brother as a creative artist and a gifted singer/songwriter, but I honor him even more for an identity that will endure long after all the applause has ceased and all the trophies have been laid down—Rich Mullins, a witness to Jesus Christ.
It is expected that the writer of the foreword will offer a glowing recommendation for the book. Such is the custom. But in this case there is more. Truth be told, I have been stunned by the lyrical power of Rich’s sung and written words and by Jim’s lucid and inspiring commentary.
This book deserves to be read and reread. It is a treasure.
Introduction
I don’t know many people who have died and left so many people saying, “I need what Rich Mullins’s life brought to the table, and I don’t know where else to find it except in looking at his life and listening to what he had to say.”
Rich Mullins stood upon a hill among castle ruins in Ireland. His friend and photographer, Ben Pearson, was standing below. Ben called out, “Lift up your arms,” and Rich raised his arms to shoulder level as if making a cross and said, “You mean, like Jesus?” Ben yelled up, “No, lower.” Rich dropped his arms a little, and suddenly Ben saw something he did not expect. From a distance Rich looked like an arrow pointing toward the sky. Ben yelled, “You look like an arrow, man. An arrow pointing in the right direction.” He snapped the picture. It would be the final picture of the last photo shoot for Rich and Ben.
It was more than a picture. It was the summation of a person’s life, a symbol that said more about who he was than mere words can. Rich Mullins was a man who stood among the ruins—the ruins created by his own faults and failings, the ruins that result from the ravages of time. In the midst of the ruins he pointed to heaven, to the God who bundles our brokenness and heals our wounds. He felt the winds of heaven as he stood upon the stuff of earth and pointed, through his words and his music, to something larger than even our dreams. Rich Mullins was an arrow pointing to heaven.
Most people know him through his songs. He wrote and recorded dozens of hit songs in contemporary Christian music. If you meet someone who does not know Rich’s name, simply mentioning the song “Awesome God” will usually result in a smile and a response such as, “Oh, I know that song. We sing it in our church.” According to his peers in the Christian music industry—Amy Grant, Michael W. Smith, Gary Chapman, Phil Keaggy, and a host of others—Rich’s songs are some of the most beautiful and inspiring ever written.
But what most people do not know is the person behind the lyrics and the music. I wish that Rich were here to tell you himself; I wish you had the chance to get to know him, to listen to what he had to say, and to see how he lived. Unfortunately, Rich died in a car accident on September 19, 1997. Unless you were able to spend time with him, to draw close enough to understand his thoughts and witness how he expressed them, to see how he lived and listen to what he thought, his life is unknown to you. That is the reason for this book.
HOW THIS BOOK CAME TO BE
A year after Rich died, many people approached his family and said, “Someone ought to write a book about Rich.” After a lot of discussion and debate as to whether or not it would be beneficial, the family agreed that his life merited being written about. In the fall of 1998, Rich’s brother, David, asked if I would be interested in working on such a project. I was deeply honored. I was a close friend of Rich’s during the final years of his life. We became friends in 1990, and he lived with my wife, Meghan, and me from 1992 to 1995. In 1995 Rich left to live and minister on a Navajo reservation in the southwest, but in a sense, he never left our home. He returned every few months, leaving his scent of patchouli and a few of his belongings scattered throughout our house.
Rich lived with us during what I believe were some of the best times in his life. He had come to Wichita, Kansas, and was attending Friends University, a small, Christian, liberal arts college. Rich was finishing his degree in music education so he could teach music to children on a Native American reservation. He lived with his writing partner and close friend, David Strasser (better known as Beaker) in a small house in town. I began teaching at Friends the same year Rich enrolled. I can honestly say that having Rich Mullins in my religion classes was very intimidating. It was a little like having Einstein in your physics class. Most of the time I wanted to hand him the chalk and sit down and listen. Occasionally I did.
When Beaker got married, Rich needed a place to stay, and he asked if he could live in our attic apartment. We agreed, and soon he became a part of our family. During the two and a half years he was with us, Rich and I spent nearly every night (much to my wife’s chagrin) sitting up and talking about God, life’s meaning, the church, our favorite authors, and passages of the Bible we were laboring to understand. We would sometimes talk well into the night. I feel privileged to have been able to engage in these deep discussions.
WHAT THIS BOOK IS NOT, AND WHAT IT IS
After visiting with Rich’s family, I realized that any book written about Rich should not be a hagiography (an attempt to turn him into a saint) because Rich would be the first to say, “I am not perfect. Don’t put me on a pedestal. I am just a ragamuffin. Look to God, not me.” Nor should it be a biography (a chronological account of his life) because that, too, would focus more on Rich and less on what was important to him. And what was important to Rich—the most important thing in his life—was urging people to draw near to God.
When he gave people his autograph, he always wrote, “Be God’s.” That was his signature statement. Many of us want to be “good,” and Rich believed that being good was a noble pursuit. But the highest pursuit was not to be good, but to be God’s. The best thing any of us can be is fully devoted to the God who loves us with a passionate, reckless, furious love. I began to see that the kind of book that would most honor Rich, and most help readers, would be the kind of book that pointed beyond the man himself.
This book attempts to look more at the wisdom than at the facts of a life. While it contains many stories about Rich’s life, it contains more of Rich Mullins’s own words, which are provocative and profound. What he had to say, combined with how he lived his life, is what is most challenging. My hope is that by letting his insights come forth, you will find yourself reflecting on your own life.
This book is best described as a devotional biography. It gives the reader an insight into Rich’s life (the things he did, the places he went, the things he loved), but more importantly, it allows the reader a chance to learn what he thought. Also included are quotes from authors and saints who shaped Rich’s life and faith along with insights and stories from interviews I conducted with his family and friends. Unless they are footnoted, all of the quotes came from those interviews.
In preparing to write this book, I was pleased to discover a wealth of Rich’s words recorded in articles and interviews. After studying this material I began to notice ten themes that Rich spoke a great deal about: the importance of our families, the role of the church, the love of God, the person of Jesus, the beauty of creation, the struggle and pain we experience in life, the joy of living simply, the struggle with sin and temptation, the call to love one another, and the reality of death and bliss of eternal life. Each chapter centers on one of these themes.
NO, IT IS CHANGING ME
No one I have ever met has challenged me to “Be God’s” like Rich Mullins. I will never lose pictures I have of him in my mind. I am a better person for having known him. After I began writing this book, I felt a sudden fear. I was afraid of only one thing—that I would be changed. My fear was well founded. I took a year out of my life to live, eat, breathe, and think about almost nothing but Rich Mullins, and in doing so I have been deeply moved.
I have been changed. I now look at my own family heritage with more awe and appreciation. My love for the church, even in its weaknesses, is deeper. I live more freely and joyfully in the “furious love of God,” as Brennan Manning calls it. I cannot look at a tree or a star or a flower without praising God. I look at my own troubles, and the troubles of those around me, with a deeper appreciation because I know they are opportunities for growth. I have less interest in the things of this world. I am learning to look to Jesus and my friends for support when I feel the pull of sin. I view others with less judgment and more compassion. I am not as afraid of death, and I long for heaven more than I ever have. I would like to think that I am a little more of God’s for having worked on this book.
Toward the end of his life Rich said, “I think we cry at funerals—even at funerals of people we don’t like—because we realize what a miracle a life is. You realize, ‘This will never happen again.’ There will never be this exact combination of genes, there will never again be the things that have created this person to be what he is. God has spoken uniquely here, and it’s gone. It’s over. And I think there’s some regret, because we all realize, boy, we didn’t pay enough attention.”1
This book is my attempt to help us pay attention to the uniqueness of Rich Mullins’s life. God has spoken uniquely through his life and his words. Though Rich’s life on earth has ended, his eternal life has just begun. As Dr. Steven Hooks said at Rich’s memorial service, “There is a ragamuffin loose in heaven, and he is walking barefoot on the streets of gold.” Until we reach the other side of the veil, we have his words and his music to help us on our own journey. It is my prayer that as you read this book you will come to know more about this man whose life, insights, and music were so powerful. But more than that, I hope you are somehow able to draw near to the God who made him who he was.
CHAPTER ONE
First Family
UNDERSTANDING HIS ROOTS
Never picture perfect
Just a plain man and his wife
Who somehow knew the value
Of hard work good love and real life
Think, for a moment, about your lineage. Try to imagine your ancestors, at least two or three generations back. See if you can picture them. What did they look like, where did they live, and what did they do? Do you think it is possible that they ever dreamed of your existence one day in the future? What did they hope for, dream about? What hurt them? Did they ever fall in love, know heartache, savor joy?
Thinking about these questions forces us to realize that our ancestors were real people. A part of Rich’s spiritual journey, and one that had a great effect on him, was the awareness of his own legacy. He was keenly interested in the coming to America of his great-great-grandparents, in his Irish/English/French heritage, and in his father’s Appalachian upbringing.
In an interview Rich related:
A few generations back, there were twin brothers who were orphans in France. As young teenagers eager to find a better life, they stowed away on a ship bound for America. One of them was my great-great-grandfather. I remember the first time I flew into New York and saw the Statue of Liberty. I thought of those twins, my ancestors, both of them fifteen or sixteen years old, standing there on Ellis Island. They had come to begin a new life. They didn’t even know the language. And I wondered what it felt like to them, years later, when they were eighty years old, with grandchildren, knowing that the dream of a better life had come true.
I remember, too, the first time I ever saw the Lincoln Memorial. I probably spent three or four hours sitting on the steps before I even went in to read the speeches. I’m not particularly patriotic, but that experience was just overwhelming. I don’t know that the United States is “God’s Country,” but the church has been so strong here, and because of its influence, we hold life to be sacred and we believe that individuals have dignity. This is part of our legacy. I thought of this when I stood before the Lincoln Memorial, and when I saw the Statue of Liberty for the first time. Imagine the millions of people who have fled to America because of those very ideals. Somewhere back in my ancestry, from several different directions, people came to a country that was totally new. If any of them had not done that, I never would have happened. At least, I would not be who I have become.1
PURSUING OUR LEGACY
One of the first things we learn as children is our name. Our surname and our mother’s maiden name become the dots through which we connect our past, as we discover the names and dates, births and deaths of those who went before us and somehow led to our being. But the people who form the branches of our family tree are more than names. Rich became interested in who they were, what they dreamed about, how they lived, and what they loved.
We carry in us the genes of a thousand men and women long gone. For many of us in America, those thousands of people came from other parts of the world. Even as a child Rich wanted to hear about these people. He said, “From when I was real little, I heard stories about people from Holland, people from Ireland, people from France, wherever our family came from.”2
Some of us trace our roots hoping that one of our ancestors was a king or a queen or a famous hero. Much of the quest is fueled by pride, but for Rich the journey to find out where he came from actually had the opposite effect:
What I discovered is, heritage doesn’t puff you up with pride. It really humbles you. If you look at the lives of the people you have come from you kind of go, “If they had married anyone else, if they had moved anywhere else, if their lives had been one iota different, I wouldn’t be here.” And so you have, not a big debt, not a crushing debt to pay, but you are part of an ongoing thing. You are not alone in the world. You are part of an ensemble.3
Rich discovered that his own life was the product of an amazing process of endless decisions made over countless centuries. If one of our ancestors had married a different person or died before giving birth to the next branch of the tree, we would not be here. This was a startling insight for Rich.
THE SERENDIPITY OF LIFE
Rich grew up in a small town near Richmond, Indiana. Even the way his family ended up there was, for Rich, a serendipitous circumstance, an accident that would forever affect his life. He told the story this way:
My dad grew up back and forth between Kentucky and Virginia because his father was a coal miner. And when my dad was fourteen my grandpa came home and told my grandma to load up the truck ’cause they were gonna move. And when they took off they were going the wrong way—she just assumed they were going back to Virginia—and they were headed somewhere else. So my grandma said, “John, where in the world are we going?” And my grandpa said, “Well, Rose, we’re going to Detroit.” And she said, “Why in the world are we going to Detroit?” And he said, “Because I don’t want my boys to grow up to be coal miners.” And so they got as far as Indiana and ran out of gas—and that’s how I got here.4
Not only are we dependent on whom our ancestors chose to marry; even the place we call home could depend on something as simple as how full a tank of gas was. The whole process was, for Rich, mystifying and humbling. Somehow, in the midst of the myriad decisions, God orchestrates our coming to be. Before the foundations of the earth were laid, the Scriptures tell us, God foreknew our existence, even through the happenstance of human choice (Eph. 1:4–5).
What is passed down to us determines much about our lives. Rich’s maternal great-grandfather was a gifted man who was educated to be a doctor. But a series of events led him down a path into alcoholism. Unable to function as a doctor, he worked at different jobs but sometimes disappeared for weeks at a time, leaving his oldest son (Rich’s grandfather) to take care of his family.
Commenting on this, Rich said in an interview, “A legacy is something that is passed on to you that you have no control over. I had no say in that my great-grandpa was an alcoholic. I had no say in the fact that my grandpa and grandma moved from Kentucky to Indiana. . . . There are all kinds of things that are pushed on us and we have no say over, and they shape the way we see everything.”5
Despite our insistence that we are self-made men and women, we are dependent creatures. We like to think that we determine our destiny, but in reality we have very little to do with it. The people who raise us, our parents and our older siblings and our extended family, have tremendous influence on who we become.
The Bible is full of genealogies. Though we may find them dull, dry reading, they are there for a reason. The writers knew something we easily forget: that we are a part of an ongoing process, that we are dependent on others for our existence, and that our identity is related to genealogy. The blood of our great-great-grandparents flows through our veins, and a part of them continues on in us.
MOM AND DAD
No one influences our lives as much as our parents. Rich was born Richard Wayne Mullins on October 21, 1955, to John and Neva Mullins in a small town in Indiana, near Richmond. His family called him Wayne. Though his first name was Richard, he went by the name Wayne until he went to college. Friends there called him Richard. When he began his music career, he became simply Rich. He insisted, though, throughout his life, that his family still call him Wayne. On one visit home a niece greeted him by saying, “Hi, Uncle Rich,” and he gently reprimanded her, saying, “When I am with you, my name is Wayne.” It was his way of guarding his family identity and staying connected to his roots.
Neva Mullins is a quiet woman with a reputation for godliness. She comes from a long line of Quakers, a denomination that focuses on silence, simplicity, and nonviolence. Rich’s father, John Mullins, who died in the spring of 1991, was well known for his hard work and honesty. Having grown up the son of an Appalachian coal miner, he learned quickly that life is difficult and not kind to the fainthearted. He was raised in the Christian church, a movement that emphasizes the authority of the Bible, hymn singing, and weekly Communion.
Rich had a very close relationship with his mother. In her he saw many of the ideals he longed for. She was kind and nurturing, and though very intelligent, she was not outspoken and rarely raised her voice or spoke an unkind word. Rich recalled how his mother was friendly toward an eccentric woman. “You know, I have a great mom. It is just wild that this woman and my mom are friends. I asked, ‘Do you ever feel weird around her?’ and my mom said, ‘Yeah, sure I do!’ But here’s the deal: No one was ever won into the kingdom of God through snobbery. We come to know Christ through love. I really believe that.”6
His mother’s love won Rich into the kingdom as well. In fact, all of the Mullins siblings attest to the power of Neva’s faith and commitment in their lives. Rich’s sister Debbie Garrett says, “She gave me birth, but she also gave me life, life with God.” Neva’s gentleness and desire to be holy were two qualities that dramatically influenced Rich.
John Mullins worked with his hands, first as a tool and dye maker, then spending the latter part of his career running a nursery. Rich admired his father, who grew up in difficult circumstances, and was curious about his dad’s Appalachian upbringing. He labored to understand this man who was, on the surface, very different from him. Rich said:
My dad was an Appalachian, which is a very polite way to say that he was a hillbilly, and in junior high I was always embarrassed about my dad. He never dressed right, he never had a suit that fit him, and always had dirt or grease under his fingernails. In my junior year of high school we went to a funeral in Kentucky where my dad had grown up. My dad, who wasn’t a sentimental, gushy kind of guy, pulled off the road. We walked around for a bit, and my dad said, “This is all changed. Somewhere out here there was a swimming hole and a vine we used to swing out over the water on.” And I suddenly realized that my dad had been a kid once. At the time the most convicting verse in the Bible was “Honor your father and mother.” And I realize now that that verse means that if you cannot honor your father and mother then you can’t honor anybody. Until you come to terms with your heritage you’ll never be at peace with yourself. That was a real breakthrough moment for me. So, what I needed to do was come to understand the Appalachian life, so that I could know more about my father, who had been a stranger to me all my life.7
As a way to gain understanding of his father’s Appalachian heritage, Rich purchased a hammered dulcimer and quickly learned how to play it. In the years to come, that instrument became a key part of much of his music.
It is a strange awakening to discover that our parents were once children, that they were lonely and afraid and unsure of themselves. It helped Rich to realize that much of what he could not understand about his father could be explained by looking at where he came from. It is a healthy moment in our lives when we realize that our parents are human beings.
Rich appreciated his father’s work ethic and especially his unpretentiousness: “My dad was very honest about who he was [and] . . . his weaknesses and strengths. He never pretended to be something he wasn’t.”8 Most who knew Rich agree that if he had one outstanding quality, it was honesty. Sometimes Rich was painfully blunt. He had a kind of courage that allowed him to be vulnerable. This quality that he saw in his father, perhaps more than any other, became a very real part of Rich.
After they discovered Rich’s love for music and obvious gifts, his father was the first to insist that he receive music lessons, and he worked hard to pay for them. His mother also did whatever she could to make sure Rich got the necessary training. She went without a coat one winter in order to pay for his piano lessons. When asked about this story, she replied, “Well, I probably didn’t need a coat that much.”
Rich said of his mom and dad:
I think my parents were really smart parents. I think they were, actually, pretty progressive for the time. The one thing that they really wanted me to know is what makes me tick, what I am about, how I approach life. And I think what my parents really wanted for me was for me to be who I am. I think a lot of parents hand people over a blueprint and say, “This is how you’re supposed to do it.” And my parents, I think, kind of drew a picture and said, “Here’s the good stuff in life. How do you get there?”9
For his parents’ fortieth wedding anniversary, Rich wrote a song. In it one can sense his appreciation for them and for the impact his early home life had on him.
First Family
My folks they were always the first family to arrive
With seven people jammed into a car that seated five
There was one bathroom to bathe and shave in
Six of us stood in line
And hot water for only three
But we all did just fine
Talk about your miracles
Talk about your faith
My dad he could make things grow
Out of Indiana clay
Mom could make a gourmet meal
Out of just cornbread and beans
And they worked to give faith hands and feet
And somehow gave it wings
I can still hear my dad cussin’
He’s working late out in the barn
The spring planting is coming
And the tractors just won’t run
Mom she’s done the laundry
I can see it waving on the line
Now they’ve stayed together
Through the pain and the strain of those times
And now they’ve raised five children
One winter they lost a son
But the pain didn’t leave them crippled
And the scars have made them strong
Never picture perfect
Just a plain man and his wife
Who somehow knew the value
Of hard work good love and real life
Talk about your miracles
Talk about your faith
My dad he could make things grow
Out of Indiana clay
Mom could make a gourmet meal
Out of just cornbread and beans
And they worked to give faith hands and feet
And somehow gave it wings
John apparently liked the song very much, but one day he turned to Neva and said, “How come you get to be described as the one making gourmet meals, and I am the one out cussing in the barn?”
Neva replied, “The truth hurts, doesn’t it, honey?”
As related in the song, John and Neva Mullins raised five children and lost one, Brian, to spinal meningitis when he was only a few months old. Rich was only two at the time of Brian’s death, but as he grew he admired how “the pain didn’t leave them crippled,” and in fact, the scars “made them strong.” John and Neva, “just a plain man and his wife,” gave Rich faith and a steady example of strength and godliness put to work.
The Bible gives us a commandment and a promise concerning our parents: “Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the LORD your God is giving you” (Exod. 20:12). Rich found it easy to honor his mother because he had a deep respect for her and he constantly felt her love. But he found it difficult to honor his father during his teenage years even though he admired him, primarily because his father had difficulty communicating his love for him. Neva explains, “John’s generation of men did not express their feelings to their children. As long as they didn’t say anything to you, you were OK. It was the mothers who expressed love for their children . . . not the men in those days. I think it is a great thing that this has changed.”
Very few people have “perfect parents.” They are human beings, which is a way of saying that they, too, can be shortsighted and petty, that they are not all-knowing and all-seeing, that they can be as selfish and sinful as the next person. Why would God command us to honor them? The command to honor them has to do with the fact that, like it or not, they are the parents God gave us, and to honor them is, in a sense, to honor God. It is to live in the awareness of our dependence, which is the death of pride. In short, it is coming into the right order of life.
God created the system we call the family. It is his design, and in order for it to work properly, parents are to train and care for their children; children, in turn, are called to honor and obey their parents. When these two things are happening, there is harmony. When either or both of these are missing, there is chaos. Always. The command to honor our parents is not a painful burden but a prescription for happiness. That is why the commandment carries with it a promise: “Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the LORD your God is giving you.”
Rich’s father could never tell him that he loved him, and this made Rich feel angry and distant. But the trip they took to Kentucky helped Rich to see his father as a human being, as one who was once a kid, as one who was the product of his environment. Rich realized that even though he didn’t verbalize it, perhaps his dad really did love him. It was just not something he was trained to do.
Though the two had a difficult relationship, later in his life Rich made peace with his father. Rich went on a private retreat with Brennan Manning during the last year of Rich’s life. Brennan gave him several exercises to do, including writing a letter to his father and writing a letter as if his father were writing it to him. This was the most healing event of Rich’s life, he told me later. When he wrote two words—coming from his father—“Dear Wayne,” he began sobbing uncontrollably.
Neva recalls, “When Wayne left home, he grew his hair out and often had a ponytail. His dad did not like it at all, and sometimes they fought about it. Eventually they just stopped talking about it.
“Several years later John and I went to a concert, and Wayne didn’t know we were there. John came up from behind him and gently tugged on his ponytail. Wayne turned around and saw his dad smiling at him. Wayne told me that it was at that moment that he knew his dad loved and accepted him. That was a real turning point for the both of them.”
It is a glorious thing to think about Rich and his father in heaven. I am certain that John was the first to meet Rich when he entered the gates, and I imagine that his father hugged him long and hard. Maybe he even came up from behind and tugged on his ponytail.
DISCOVERING HIS LOVES: MUSIC AND THE CHURCH
One of the ways we learn to survive in the world is to discover our uniqueness, our talents, and our gifts. For Rich, music would become a passion. He would work out his pain, as well as his highest aspirations, through music. He showed unusual musical abilities from an early age.
Rich’s sister, Debbie, describes the first time they realized he had musical gifts: “When I was about ten years old and Wayne was four or five, I was taking piano lessons. My teacher told me to practice the hymn ‘Abide with Me,’ and I played it over and over but kept messing up on the same part. I got up to go into another room. Mom had been listening all the while as she was working in the kitchen. The next thing she heard was the hymn being played without a mistake, and she said, ‘Oh, Debbie, you’re really getting it.’ She walked into the room, and there was little Wayne playing the song. He had been sitting there listening to me practice it for so long that he knew how it was supposed to be played.”
From when I was real little, I always liked music. My great-grandparents lived right next door to us and they had a piano, and I would go over all the time and play. And—I think my dad didn’t want me to get involved in it totally because he wanted me to be a jock. And, like, there was just no way that was gonna happen. So I think he finally just gave up. Then, in elementary school he let me take piano lessons as a consolation prize. And actually the consolation prize turned out better than the grand prize.10
Sometimes our parents have an agenda for us that does not fit who we are. Rich’s father was a farmer and an athlete, so it made sense that he would expect his son to be the same. It was probably difficult for John to have a son who had a passion for something that was foreign to him.
Rich was not particularly good at farm work. Every member of the family has a story to tell about his ineptness. Once when he was riding the tractor, the wheel inexplicably fell off. Another time, his father had dug several holes in which to plant trees. While driving through that part of the field, Rich managed to get not one but all four wheels stuck in holes. His dad had to tow him out. Rich simply had no real mechanical skills. He wanted to be a good farmer and athlete; it simply wasn’t in him.
As his mother puts it, “He just had music in him. He had to play.” They eventually arranged for him to take piano lessons from a woman who would have a great impact on him. She helped Rich develop an overall understanding of music, why it is important to God and how it ought to be played. He described that relationship:
I had a very good music teacher, Mary Kellner, who not only introduced me to some of the great composers, but she was able to capture my imagination and make me excited about what I was supposed to be learning. When I was in fourth grade, I got asked to play the Communion meditation at church. I practiced and she worked with me, which was cool because she was Quaker, and they don’t even have Communion. Anyway, I went back Tuesday to my lesson after I had played Sunday, and she said, “How did you do?” and I told her, “Everybody said they loved it, everyone said I did great.” And she said, “Well, then you failed.” I was crushed, but she put her hand on my shoulder and said, “Richard, when you play in church, you are to direct people’s attention to God, not to your playing.”11
That experience shaped the way Rich looked at music, especially in church. For the rest of his life, if asked to play in church, Rich would lead worship but never perform for fear of drawing attention to himself.
Rich’s family discovered that he had another unique love: the church. Neva says, “There were two things I never had to tell Wayne to do: practice the piano and go to church.” Even as a little boy, Rich came home and retold all of the stories he had learned. His sisters marveled at his ability to understand the preacher’s sermons. He could recite parts of each sermon in detail.
While most children want to grow up and do something exciting or heroic, Rich wanted to follow God. His sister, Debbie, said, “Wayne was a funny kind of kid. . . . When you asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up, he said he wanted to be a missionary. . . . No policeman, no fireman, he wanted to be a missionary.”12
Rich learned a lot about the Christian faith from his extended family, particularly his great-grandmother, who he described as “a wonderful woman [who] had a very down-to-earth approach to religion. She said bad words sometimes, and I loved that. That’s why I always liked Christmas—because it was the only time you could say ‘ass’ in church. I used to sing that line out of that carol over and over again.”13
Rich often described his family tree as being filled with “a bunch of heavenly saints and a few notorious sinners.” He believed that our families teach us about life by their example. If their lives are exemplary, we see in them certain virtues that we would like to cultivate. If their lives go badly, it may be that we try to shun the vices that spelled their demise. Either way, they—both the saints and the sinners—represent all of humanity and are in a sense a microcosm of the world.
The early years of Rich’s life were shaped by great-grandmothers, uncles, cousins, and all kinds of people who in their own way communicated the faith. But he would learn that his faith would not make life easy.
ADOLESCENCE: THE OUTSIDER
During his teenage years, Rich struggled to fit in. He was raised in Indiana, a state known for basketball and farming, and Rich was not good at either. Musical proficiency and spiritual understanding were not high on the popularity list. Consequently Rich was shy. As he noted in later years, “I have no physical genius about me. I can’t dribble a ball and run at the same time, I can’t do lay-ups—I’m not an athlete. But my experience as a kid was, I was made fun of so much that what I did then, is, I wouldn’t participate. And I think I cheated myself out of a lot of fun.”14
Rich further reflected in a radio interview:
When I was young, I was angry and I was kind of going, “God, why am I such a freak? Why couldn’t I have been a good basketball player? I wanted to be a jock or something. Instead I’m a musician. I feel like such a sissy all the time. Why couldn’t I be just like a regular guy?” The more I thought about it, the more I realized that, you know, sometimes God has things in mind for us that we can’t even imagine. And I think that maybe it was good for me to grow up being picked on a little bit, because then I realized what it meant to be kinda the underdog. And then to have someone who is not an underdog, someone like God, say, “Hey, I want you to be with Me,” then you kinda go, “Wow!” And so maybe for that reason, grace is more important to me than people who have been able to be more self-sufficient.15
