Rich Mullins

You know that nostalgic feeling you get when you hear music you used to listen to in your parents' house or car while you were growing up? As I was driving around with my kids the other day I couldn't help but feel like a really cool Dad when it dawned on me that they'd been getting a steady diet of Rich Mullins (and Caedmon's Call and Michael Card et al.) ever since the beginning, right along with their mother's milk.

They could do worse.

Rich Mullins is an especially important figure to me, and at risk of sounding weird I've always felt a connection to him. I can still remember the day when my friend Annie Warren (now Welty) called me and told me he'd been in a fatal car wreck. I wept about it. It was really devastating to me. He was there for me at my conversion, and he's really been there along with me (in his music) at every stage in my "faith journey" (as people call it). He was even at the last stage. Lots of people have remarked that there are certain "Catholic overtones" in his music, especially his late music, but I don't know how many people know that he was entering into full communion with the Church when he died.

Here's a brief article about it. Amusingly, I came across something else on the web entitled "Putting a Humble Man on a Pedestal," which claimed that Mullins "almost became Catholic, but decided against it in an attempt to remain truly ecumenical and focus sincerely on Jesus." (Because, you know, you can't do that sort of thing if you're Catholic.)

Like me, it looks like he couldn't wait for the next Easter Vigil and had finagled a way to get in earlier. ("I have to have the Body and Blood," he told his priest.) Specifically, he was going to enter in on the Feast of St. Francis, and anyone who knows about Rich Mullins' life can see how appropriate that would have been.

Anyway, one day I'll write a tribute to the man. Meantime: We miss you, Rich! Ora pro nobis!

And His outstretched arms are still strong enough to reach

Behind these prison bars to set us free

So may peace rain down from Heaven

Like little pieces of the sky

Little keepers of the promise

Falling on these souls the drought has dried

In His Blood and in His Body

In this Bread and in this Wine

Peace to you

Peace of Christ to you