On Being Chet Atkins

Christ in Winter is a reflection on faith from one who lives in a place that is defined by winter and who is in the winter of his years…


Hardly anyone listens to cassette tapes anymore. Players for them are not included in cars, or anything else. But I have quite a few tapes, and I have a player, so why not? So I’ve been listening to a tape of Chet Atkins Christmas music.

It reminds me of the time, a year or two before his death, that Chet was on a cruise. He was passing an empty room and saw a guitar, so he went in and started toodling around. Some folks heard him and stopped to listen. Finally one man said, “You’re pretty good, mister, but you’re no Chet Atkins.”

He had an idea, a wrong one, of how Chet should look and play. That happens a lot through our years. People have particular ideas of who and what we ought to be, and we try to live up, or down, to them.

Old age gives us a chance to slough off old identities that don’t really fit us. It gives us a chance to be who we really are.

That is salvation, for being anything than one’s true self is sin. That’s what sin is: separation—from God, from others, from our own true selves.

Old age provides a chance at wholeness, the wholeness of being our true selves.