Date: 29 October 1996
To: RichMailList
From: scatcat@kidbrothers.net (Danl Blackwood)
Subject: [RichMailList 90]: Gainesville, FL 10/25 review

Date: Mon, 28 Oct 1996 16:49:19
From: Chris Larson
Subject: A Rich Review--Gainesville, Fla

This is my first post to the Rich Mailing List that you have going. I really
appreciate you keeping up with everything. I've told several people about the
list and they enjoy it too.

Well,  I went to see Rich in Gainesville, Florida this past Friday night. Let's
just say that it was totally different than Atlanta (Brother's Keeper) and 1,000
times better. Instead of the full Ragamuffin band it was just him and his roomate
Mitch. Not that I don't like the band mind you, it was just different. Informal
and intimate.

As you have already noted here before, Rich explained that the teaching job he
was trying to get in New Mexico fell through and he has some leads to work with
the Navajo children in a school run or funded? by Compassion.

Anyways, enough about that. The song list is pretty much the same as an earlier
post. If not exactly the same. Rich and Mitch (poet and don't know it) played old
stuff and new stuff including some songs from the new musical he and Beaker and
Mitch just finished writing. Mitch even played some of his own stuff which is
very good. I really think Rich attracted a young "Timothy" in Mitch. Anyways, the
musical's called Canticle of the Plains, I think. Based loosely on the life and
person of St. Francis of Assisi. Since they really didn't know what Francis would
be like, they changed his name to Frank (cause of all the "homophobes" as Rich
says) and made him a cowboy somewhere out west during the late 1800's.

By the way, Rich Mullins doesn't mind offending anyone. The church where the
concert was was an Assembly of God and Rich came right out at the beginning and
tried to offend as many people as possible I think. He was cracking speaking in
tongue jokes and Baptist jokes left and right. What a guy!

Anyways, it was just incredible. He told this story toward the beginning of the
concert about how the Irish were always scared of the ocean. Not because it was
big and frightening, but because they weren't very good at making boats!

So the wives of the men who had to make their living at sea -- fisherman,
sailors, etc. -- would knit the intricate patterns that you find on todays big
Irish sweaters. Anyways when bodies would wash up on shore, the bodies were so
disfigured from being eaten and decomposed that they couldn't identify them. So
the men would wear these sweaters that their wives made them so that if they
drown and washed up on shore, their wives could identify the bodies.

At the time Rich told us this story everyone was like , oh, ok. Gee, Thanks Rich.

But then, at the end of the night he was trying to relate how many of us will
live rough, hard lives. How some of us will love so much that our hearts will
become unrecognizable. How some of us will question so deeply that there won't be
any left to question and they won't settle for so many of the lies that many of
us settle for.

But when our bodies wash up one day on heaven's shores, Jesus will come over to
us and look at our disfigured and half eaten bodies and smile. An angel might
say, "How can You tell if it's Yours?" And Jesus will smile and say it's because
He knows that it's His clothes that we are wearing.

Chris Larson
Jupiter, FL