Places Where Our Patterns Were Set

Yellowstone National Park

Another Astoria, A Different Aberdeen

It was a different Astoria than I'd known during my small town newspapering days of decades earlier. Crossing the long bridge, we entered the state of Washington.

So too, it was a different Aberdeen than I'd known in my younger years working at a rock AM station. At Aberdeen, Washington we stopped & piled out of the van at the Young Street bridge over the Wishkah River. We read the plaque informing us (perhaps incorrectly?) that ashes of a rock star, Kurt Cobain, had been scattered on the water after his premature death in the early 1990s. Amid the fame of his band, Nirvana, he was a self-confessed junkie.
After the trip, I am midway through Heavier Than Heaven, a Charles Cross biography of the musician. Musically gifted and artistically brilliant, Cobain spiralled downward inside even as Nirvana's popularity careened ever higher.

What went wrong? More specific to my own evangelical beliefs, what went wrong with Cobain's born again experience and exposure to Christianity years earlier during his teens?


A photo shows Cobain in Olympia, Washington. Behind him is a billboard that admonishes Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. By that time, the message seemed lost on him, although he continued exploring spirituality in one form or another. In a relationship, he sought unconditional love just as we all do.


"Come As You Are" Cobain urged a generation of young people. It is a message we need to hear from the Church -- that Jesus welcomes sinners in need of God's grace.


God chooses to love me, not for what I do but because He simply chooses to. His grace is central to the gospel message. So too, the doctrine of santification warns me that while forgiveness is great, God urges me on to holy living. I may come as I am, but He will woo me and work for a better me, a more complete me.


And another building block of Christianity - hope. Despite Cross' thorough reporting work in the book, I don't know just when it was that Kurt Cobain lost hold of hope.

Fabulous Falls and a Grand Gorge

Posting from Portland . . .

Watching Tony's Toes

He wear no shoeshine, he got toe-jam football
He got monkey finger, he shoot coca-cola
-J. Lennon / P. McCartney


I promise that this will be my only toe jam blog entry. TMI (too much information!!) as the young people say.

At a coffeehouse open-mic evening, I played with Rick and band (dubbed as "Rick S & the Beauty Queens" by some wag) . The lyrics of "Come Together" are . . . very interesting.



"Toe jammed" again several days later, I watched as the main wheel of Toe Jam Music, Tony Melendez, strummed and picked his guitar on the floor . . . playing with his feet. For you see, Tony was born with no arms -- affected in the womb by the drug, Thalidamide.



With his feet, he also directed the crowd in doing "the wave" and tossed frisbees to us. Fun! His music ranged from Tu Eres Mi Dios (You Are My God) to a Lennon/McCartney classic, "Let It Be" to Ritchie Valens' La Bamba.

I'd been aware of Tony's story but his drummer, Tim Pope, fascinated me with his one-handed drumming. He kept full purcussion going with his left hand while the right hand played "bass" on a keyboard.

Yikes! This band has no bass player!

I hold no illusions; I play average bass
Dispensable?
Produce or Be Replaced?

Listen! to Tony's untiring message

urging me on
until one day when I see His face

the message in his life,
in his music
of God's fountain of grace.

The View from the Mountaintop