Gospel Jamboree

Praise the Lord
for Sprague’s pipits.


A concert was going on in a park near our campsite in Malta, Montana. Some of the music was pretty good: “Will the Circle Be Unbroken?” “Spirit in the Sky,” “I Saw the Light.” But the worst and loudest music was saved for the end: a rock band with drums, electric guitar, electric bass, and vocals loud enough to be heard over the rest of the banging, throbbing, and squawling. It was nearly 11:00 before they quit and we could go sleep.

In the morning, we drove east of town to the Bowdoin National Wildlife Refuge to look for Sprague’s pipits, which we had never seen. A ranger had told us where to look. We heard grasshopper sparrows—“pi-tup, zeeee,” in Roger Tory Peterson’s helpful transliteration—but saw no sign of Sprague’s pipits. A bird flitting in the grass was a savannah sparrow. But then I heard them! The songs of Sprague’s pipits! “Zhing-a-zhing-a-zhing- a-zhing-a-zhing.” Swirling and descending in pitch. But the birds were invisible. The voices seemed to come from the sky, but there was nothing up there. We felt stupid. The songs were all around us, but we couldn’t see a thing. We tried scanning the sky with binoculars, and finally Laurie spotted one. I located it, too, and we followed it as it alternated between flapping its wings and soaring, and the songs came while it soared. After a while, it descended rapidly. A second bird flitted into the air as if to meet it, and they both settled down in the grasses. Soon, one of the birds flew again, gained altitude, and began singing again. We watched several more performances.

Back in Malta, we needed information from a BLM office, but it was Saturday, and the office wouldn’t be open till Monday. A poster told us that last night’s music was the opening session of the Milk River Gospel Jamboree. Since admission was free, we decided to stay and listen. The first musicians were a man and woman singing with recorded accompaniment. They called themselves Make Way. One of their songs said, “Life is full of troubles and trials, but soon we’ll be going home.” The next group was Spirit—all electric guitars and drums—but they were one of the groups we had liked the night before. They opened with “Spirit in the Sky”: “When I lay me down to die / Goin’ up to the spirit in the sky … When I die and they lay me to rest / Gonna go to the place that’s the best.” They also sang “Battle Hymn of the Republic” and “I Saw the Light.” The Sodbusters, from Swift Current, Saskatchewan, played old-time instrumentals: “In the Sweet By and By,” “Where the Roses Never Fade,” “Bringing in the Sheaves,” and other classic gospel tunes. The first song by the Johnson Brothers—something about “We Are Children of the Lord”—was great: wonderful music on organ, guitar, and two sets of drums. But the band members clearly belonged to the God-bless-you school, and their next song was a slow one, along the lines of, “I wish you this, I wish you that, but I wish you Jesus more than anything.” The next song began, “I love your grace, I love your mercy…. You know, I love your presence most of all.” These songs, these people, I was thinking, are so removed from the life around us.

The next group, Double Portion, were good singers and musicians, but they, too, exuded born-again Christianity. Mom especially had a good voice, but they sang contemporary songs, and it struck me that there had been no progress in the lyrics. They sang something about “salvation out of his great love.” The words were meaningless, which I could forgive in old songs, but not in ones being written today. I also noticed the way Double Portion talked about mundane events. They had come down from Canada the night before and didn’t have any mishaps. “God was gracious,” they said, “in bringing us down safely.” The truth was that their lives were no different from ours except for the causal attributions they made. Things that needed no explanation they explained as the workings of God. Hell, all they did was drive down from Canada.

Here’s what I was figuring out: The world is a gift from God, but that doesn't mean it's something we should enjoy and take care of, as we would with other gifts. That’s because God screwed up the world for us in retaliation for our sinfulness. Consequently, “this world is not my home”; it’s full of “troubles and trials”; it's something to “get through” until we attain the next world. But we do need to be good. (At least, I think we do, although I don't think anyone actually said that.) Otherwise, we might miss the chance to “sit at Jesus’ side.” One thing that puzzled me, however, was that, if we were all good, how could we expect there to be enough trials? Did that mean that we all had a responsibility to be bad at least part of the time so that other people would have enough trials? Unless, of course, the trials were all supplied by Nature, which I suspected was the crux of the matter. But that’s a whole other topic.

Double Portion’s mom, introducing another song, said (and the song reiterated), “Just let go, and let the Lord take control.” What did that mean? She seemed to consider it serious advice. To me, it halfway sounded Zen, but I'm sure it wasn’t. It also sounded like an abdication of responsibility. Surely, God expected his children to take responsibility. In order to live right, you didn’t “let go”; you did the right thing. And the crucial question was: What is the right thing? “Just let go” was no answer. If there was anything to pray for, it was for insight into the answer to that question. “Just letting go” on the assumption that God would somehow “take care of it” was irresponsible. The next performers were a couple who called themselves Glory Bound. After “Just a Closer Walk,” they sang a song that went, “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus … there’s something about that name.” This was getting hard to take. As often happened, I couldn’t get past the impression that names and words were the most important things to these people. Being good had less to do with a person’s actions than with how consistently he or she interpreted everything—spoke of everything—in terms of God’s goodness, God’s guidance, God’s love, and one’s own mindless adoration of God.

The next group was High Valley, three teenagers with guitars and drums who came from eight hours north of Edmonton! When they stepped on stage and launched into more pabulum about Jesus, I went for a walk, and Laurie soon followed. The first thing that bothered me was imagining those guys driving all the way from eight hours north of Edmonton to play the same crap we could hear on any Christian radio station. On top of that, the last two groups’ oppressive Christianity was more than I could stand. Later on, when the music sounded better, we went back. Make Way was on stage again. One of the men in the group said he had grown up in a Mennonite home where music and dancing were not allowed. “The Lord gave me a different direction,” he said—as if he felt guilty about betraying his family and, instead of accepting responsibility for it, blamed God.

The sky above Malta was filling up with dark gray clouds, and lightning began flickering and streaking to the southeast. The next group to perform was Three for the Cross, a man and two women from British Columbia. The man who did most of the talking for the group had the same vocabulary as the previous groups: “God is good,” etc. (Praise the Lord, by the way, for the Sprague’s pipit.) The man said he and the women had been anxious about the border crossing, but God provided for them and it was easy. (God. Not the customs officers.) When lightning and thunder moved closer, Laurie and I returned to our campsite.

It wasn’t that I wanted to take credit for finding the pipit instead of giving credit to God. It was true that Laurie and I had developed some skills at recognizing bird songs and spotting birds, and we exercised intelligence and perseverance. But that wasn’t the point. The point was simply that we looked for a Sprague’s pipit and found it. There was nothing that needed an explanation. Did we do it by ourselves? Did God help us? Did the pipit offer a vision of itself to us? Who cares? Is there an Angry Unicorn on the Dark Side of the Moon?


NOTE

"Is there an Angry Unicorn ..." is from Edward Abbey, Confessions of a Barbarian (Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 1994), p. 116: "Is there a Gawd? Well, is there an an Angry Unicorn on the Dark Side of the Moon?"