English: Christmas cookies Deutsch: Weihnachtskekse (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

First Tennessee Bank took my thumbprint today and it made my stomach and neck and shoulders ache and tremble like guilty for a little while.

So here I am now, changing this whole piece that I first wrote, because something else happened and now I feel more guilty and more responsible and less competent and less caring, but also a need to think back and defend myself.

The apostle Paul felt stupid for defending himself, when he did in one of his letters (or more). I’m not a magnificent Christian, like Paul was, but I’m insecure, like Paul was, so here I go, playing defense.

I’ll leave in the part about feeling responsible, so much so that I gave a sick woman almost my last $5 today, not out of any noble motive, but because I felt obligated.

When I was walking to get the cash, somebody else met me in the parking lot and asked if I was going to St. Therese church Saturday, could I pick up a blanket for her mama. I’ll leave that part in the story for today too.

That’s Just the Way It Is and we should take Bruce Hornsby‘s advice and not say “get a job” just for fun (I guess). Sometimes people can’t find a job anymore, but I still resented giving away my pretty warm afghan blanket, with green and white roses woven in, to somebody else’s mama. (Don’t you think Jesus felt weary, when He said “the poor you will always have with you”?)

I gave away that blanket because I did not feel like driving to St. Therese to get somebody else a blanket this weekend. The weak and poor and needy can wear you out, and now I’m weak and poor and needy myself, missing a blanket. I’m supposed to be more grown-up, not still hanging on to transitional objects for security.

Anyway, I’m about to go home soon and watch some TV, Lord willing. My TV is like a service pet and keeps me company.

Sometimes life makes you feel like wearin’ leech socks, but I feel like a leech myself, always trying to feel worthwhile and leech-less, comin’ or goin’. (Be sure of this, like a friend told me, God will make sure you see the other side of the story, if you’re unlucky (and lucky).

There’s no special virtue in being poor, I’m learning. And the Bible says the wicked prosper, so that’s not the best part of the deal either.

The best financial place to be is somewhere in the middle, because that’s where the backbone is and from there, all things radiate.

Back to the bank story. When I went to cash that check to pay a bill, the bank teller held out this black plastic thing with some slick waxy-feeling stuff in it. She said I had to put my thumb in that container and then put my thumbprint on that check, because some people steal checks and try to cash them, so thumbprints help the bank track thieves.

So now, my thumbprint is on an important piece of paper, floating around somewhere in banker space.

Did you ever wonder why Jesus let Judas Iscariot run the bank, since Jesus knows all things, and Jesus knew Judas Iscariot was a thief?

What has happened? What has happened to the days when all the thumbprints we had to worry about were the ones on Christmas cookies? I love those thumbprint cookies, the cookie part, not the too-sweet icing part. What’s wrong with me, wishing for a perfect cookie?

Now let me do what Paul did and feel stupid defending myself, but stupid is better than worthless: I used to be a bank teller, a newspaper reporter and a library clerk, competent and capable and went to jobs daily, and sometimes at night, like when I had to go to a lake late one night, to report on a drowned body being dragged up…or another night, when there was an armed robbery at Hardwick Farms, here in Cleveland, Tennessee. (One of the robbers became a Christian later).

There are more capable stories to tell, but no more room at the inn right now.

Let me try to think about getting back to the capable place.

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Portrait Ludwig van Beethoven when composing the Missa Solemnis (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A few people smoked their cigarettes in peace while people of all ages milled around or chilled out at Rock the Relief 2012 held off Morgan Road in a beautiful pastoral setting in Bradley County, Tennessee.

I went to hear one band. (TheGoldRoom-bandcamp.com). Before The GoldRoom played, a young woman in a peach-colored cowgirl hat leaned back on her tanned arms and it seemed like her whole soul was happy when she stretched her blue-jeaned legs out in the grass. Two little girls danced and pranced around the front of the stage and one of them wore shoes that flashed pink light when she took her steps.

When The GoldRoom started playing, people seemed shy about the bold clear sound of progressive rock. But as the band played the songs they write themselves, the crowd got more and more interested. Some songs were light, some dark, some slow and some fast. They say whatever is most personal is most universal. The band’s songs, whether about a crisis in a Catholic daycare or the Lone Ranger‘s divorce proceedings, were both.

As the band rocked on, one man in the crowd yelled out, “You guys kick ass!” It wasn’t long before women moved their shoulders and dance-walked. A woman wearing a long flowing chocolate and white sundress floated through the wide open space, gentle like a firefly.

This band’s refreshingly unapologetic sound is so big it seemed like the band perfectly suited to the generous stage that night. The GoldRoom thinks; stuns; mesmerizes; stimulates; soothes; mystifies and satisfies.

When it comes to music, I am not a professional. I cannot tell you one thing about the layers and psychology and technical skills and lyrical meanings and shadings or anything like that about music. All I know is whether music moves me or not, whether what’s happening on stage is real or not. The GoldRoom is real. The sound takes you by the shoulders and won’t let go, but somehow, you know it will never hurt you on purpose.

If one more thing stood out about this band it was joy. These four men plain had fun and you could see they were in their own world but invited you in as well.

That’s what I thought about later–Ode to Joy. I learned that before Ode to Joy was music by Beethoven, it was a poem by Friedrich Schiller. “Joy, joy moves the wheels in the universal time machine…Brothers, above the starry canopy a loving father must dwell.”

And then Schiller, who wrote the poem to honor a friend, proclaimed the privilege of being a friend’s friend, which is what I could sense when I met all the band members before they played that night.

“Run, brothers, run your race, joyful as a hero going to conquest.” And this is exactly what The GoldRoom did, one Saturday night, right under the starry canopy.

http://thegoldroom.bandcamp.com/