“So, if a rabid bat flies into the car right now, you’ll just appreciate creation more? You’d just be OK with that?”
“No. And I don’t think God expects me to be OK with that. But I wouldn’t blame it on God, and if I survived such an event I would have a choice of how to respond. I could either become neurotic from fear, and base all of my future actions on the possibility of another bat flying into my car and thus be controlled by that fear; or I could use the clarity that is the by-product of fear to understand my position in creation better, and yes, perhaps take reasonable precautions against bats, but let my life and faith be strengthened, not weakened, by such an experience.”
“You could do that?”
“People do it every day.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
I shook my head. “Not with the snake. But yeah, I’ve done it.”
“Are you going to tell me about it?”
“Later. We’re still at the beginning of the story, and that comes closer to the end.”
With that we settled into a cryptic silence. The wheat fields of eastern Oregon were still going by, interspersed every now and then with grazing cattle and tiny towns that appeared to have three gas stations huddled around the freeway off-ramp, and little else. As the first hints of dusk appeared we began descending into the little valley that held the town of Pendleton. In all the years I had been making this drive, I never got to know any of the local eating establishments, but I knew the location of the Denny’s by heart. We pulled off of the freeway and directly into the parking lot.
As we climbed out of the car, Alan said, “There’s no bats in here, right?”
“Ha-ha. But maybe they have fresh rattlesnake on the menu.”
Waitresses in these little towns always look tired, and their friendliness always seems to be begging you to take them away to somewhere, anywhere else. “Becky: Service with a Smile!” showed us to our table, and although I scoured the menu intently, I couldn’t find any offering that included rattlesnake.
5. No one has described this sense of super-awareness in fear better than Gerald May in his story of the bear from The Wisdom of Wilderness.
Chapter 3: Music
For once Alan was quiet as we munched on our chicken strips. You’d think that driving would be easy—you’re just sitting on your butt all day—but it made all of my middle-aged joints ache, and we weren’t even finished with the first of our three days. Still, there must be some secret ingredient in Pepsi and french fries, because after a few minutes of eating I could feel life returning.
“Sorry to keep boring you with all these memories,” I said.
“What, are you kidding? So far as I can tell, by the age of ten you were a Zen-Druid. I don’t know any other Zen-Druids. I kinda like this Zen-Druid kid, though it still doesn’t help me at all understand how he became a Methodist—excuse me, a United Methodist minister.”
“Well, I’m not one yet, not officially anyway. Still a week to go before ordination.”
“Thinking of backing out?”
“Sometimes. I had such different aspirations for most of my life. In some ways I’m as puzzled as you are by how I ended up here.”
Alan thought for a moment. “Was one of those aspirations music? Were you into music as a kid like you are now?”
I laughed. “Oh yes! Remember, I grew up in the sixties, and I really wanted to be a rock star. At first I wanted to be Paul McCartney, but later I decided on being a folk-rock star like Crosby, Stills and Nash.”
“OK, OK! I sense another long story coming. I’ll tell you what: let me get another cup of coffee to keep me awake, and maybe some pie, while you tell me all about becoming a Druid Crosby, Stills and Nash.”
I laughed again. “Well, obviously I didn’t quite make it, but I think it’s fair to say that music has shaped my spirituality as much as my exposure to Zen and nature did.”
I flagged down “Becky: Service with a Smile!” and ordered apple pie and coffee for both of us. As I gazed out the window I could see that, only a few weeks away from the longest day of the year, the sun was still loitering low on the horizon, poised to fall into the Pacific Ocean far away in the West in just a few minutes.
“Alright,” Alan said, settling into his pie, “let’s hear it.”
“Well, growing up in the sixties in the San Francisco Bay Area, you really couldn’t avoid rock music. The Jefferson Airplane hit it big when I was eleven years old, in 1967, followed by bands like the Grateful Dead and Quicksilver Messenger Service; these bands defined the San Francisco, Fillmore West kind of psychedelic rock music. I liked their music—to this day one of my goals in life is to be able to play Embryonic Journey6—but I wasn’t into the psychedelic scene at all. For one thing, at twelve I was a little young, but I also found myself being drawn to a different style of music as I learned to play the guitar.”
“How did that happen?”
“In that same year, 1967, my brother Charlie came down with the mumps and was confined at home for two weeks. Being bored to tears, he borrowed a guitar from a friend and, being a gifted natural musician, taught himself to play. Charlie is left-handed, so he played the guitar upside-down like Paul McCartney. He got pretty good pretty fast, and began entertaining us with Beatles songs and so forth. I couldn’t stand that Charlie could do something that I couldn’t so, using the same borrowed guitar, I started teaching myself as well. Thus began a lifelong, usually friendly, competition between brothers playing music. In all fairness, Charlie pretty much won this competition hands down. He not only had great natural ability, but he became an excellent student, learning to play and excel at the piano and the electric bass. I mostly just farted around on the guitar, but I had another musical outlet.
“In the fourth grade my parents rented me a cornet so that I could begin playing in the school band. Oh, how I loved that cornet! It’s an instrument that has by now been almost totally supplanted by the trumpet, but the cornet is one of the sweetest sounding brass instruments there is. Although I never really mastered the cornet either, playing in band broadened my musical horizons beyond the Beatles and San Francisco rock to the world of classical music. At about the same time my Dad bought a brand new stereo system and recordings of Broadway musicals, which he would play loudly while he lay on the sofa and pretended to conduct. In other words, by the time I was twelve my home was filled with an eclectic and wide range of musical styles, which led to my lifelong love of an eclectic and wide range of musical styles.
“In 1969 I became a teenager, and to be honest one of the big attractions of playing the guitar was that girls liked it. I had long red hair back then and walked around with a guitar strapped to my back, looking for all the world like a young hippie on the upswing. Thank God I wasn’t into drugs, but I was certainly eager to attract a girlfriend. By 1971 my parents were able to buy me my first, and very cheap, acoustic guitar—which I still have—and I took it everywhere. Fortunately for me I found music that didn’t require an electric guitar so, equipped with songs by Simon & Garfunkel, the Beatles and Crosby Stills and Nash, I set forth into the world of teenage girls. I was good enough to attract a crowd of listeners, but ironically it was my trumpet playing that snagged me my first girlfriend.”
“I knew it!” Alan interjected. “I knew we’d get around to girls! Buddy, you’re digressing. Unless your girlfriend was a teenage Zen master, please get back to how music led you to become a minister!”
“Well, sorry, but I guess like everybody my love life had something to do with my spiritual journey. Through playing the cornet, then later the trumpet, I got involved in my high school jazz band. It was a really