From 500 Miles to Come Along Home Now

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith from a place of winter For the Years of Winter…


Helen and I sat up late last night, at least what is late for winter time and winter years, to watch again John Sebastian’s Folk Music Rewind on PBS. We watch primarily to see The Chad Mitchell Trio [1], of course, but we love the other groups, too, and especially enjoyed hearing The Brothers Four sing Hedy West’s 500 Miles Away from Home [2]

I was the Methodist campus minister at Illinois State University when I first heard the Peter, Paul & Mary recording of 500 Miles, and in it I heard the voice of the prodigal son in Jesus’ story about the prodigal father. [The father was prodigal in his love for his children.] I was scheduled to preach on that story at the student [middle] worship service at First Methodist Church on Homecoming Weekend, so I asked Duncan Miller, the director of our Wesley Foundation student choir, to have the choir sing it that day.

It seems silly now to think that would cause any trouble, but anyone over sixty can recall how controversial something like that would be. You used only CHURCH music in church. After some initial hesitation, though, Duncan agreed. The senior pastor of the church decided it was okay as long as I took the heat, which was his bottom line on most things.

The choir sang right after the scripture story was read. Duncan had done a beautiful a cappella arrangement, and the 500 people were struck totally dumb by 500 Miles. I have never stepped into a pulpit in a quieter church. A sermon was totally unnecessary. Needless to say, I preached anyway.

Students, of course, were welcome at any of the three Sunday morning services at First Methodist, and town folk were welcome at the middle service. My preaching style was different from what folks were used to, so in addition to the students, some of whom had never been in church before but were assigned to listen to me by speech professors, we had a lot of curious Normal [3] people and alumni back for homecoming. I think it was one of my most successful worship services ever, because of Hedy West and Duncan Miller.

All those folks who were at that service, even the college kids, are in their winter years now. They’ve put in their 500 miles. It’s time to come home. That’s what this last stage of life is all about. It’s folk music time now. Back then we just sang folk music. Now we’re living it.

As the prodigal son learned by going 500 miles away from home, there is great freedom in coming home.

Helen says she wants The Chad Mitchell Trio to sing Tom Paxton’s, Come Along Home Now at her [not imminent] funeral. “Last night I heard a sweet voice calling, come along, won’t you come along home…”

At one level, it’s just a song about the end of the day. But for those of us in the years of winter, it is something more. Episcopal priest and baritone in The Chad Mitchell Trio, Joe Frazier, says: “My whole understanding of that song has changed as I got older. Now it is indeed about ‘that room at the end of the hall,’ as my friend, Art Podell, has described in a recent song.”

“Come along, won’t you come along home now, Night is falling and the path is steep. Come along, won’t you come along home now, Water’s running and the river is deep.”

JRMcF

1] The Chad Mitchell Trio will be cruising again in 2012, dates and destinations to be determined. You can keep up with it at http://travelingtroubadour.com/. Traveling Troubadours has a Steps of Paul cruise November 3-15 this year that looks interesting, too.

2] The Brothers Four recorded 500 Miles, but Peter, Paul, & Mary and Bobby Bare did the best known recordings in the 1960s. Mary Chapin Carpenter sang the late Mary Travers’ part on it for the Peter Yarrow Sing-Along Special on PBS.

3] Originally ISU was the Illinois State Normal College, Normal meaning it trained teachers. It had been situated in the country a few miles north of Bloomington. As a town grew up around it, naturally it was just called Normal. Needless to say, that created many jokes about normal and abnormal people, Bloomington being just a little below Normal, etc.


{I also write the fictional “Periwinkle Chronicles” blog. One needs a rather strange sense of humor to enjoy it, but occasionally it is slightly funny. It is at http://periwinklechronicles.blogspot.com/}

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