Remembering 1972

I turned 16 just before the summer of the famed Explo '72 Jesus Music Festival at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas, Texas. I hadn't even heard of the event until after it was over. But that autumn the Jesus Movement arrived in my hometown of Edmonton—in a passenger car filled with college students from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. They'd been caught up in an "outbreak" of revival, and got to Meadowlark Baptist Church after dark on a Saturday.

That evening a coupla my church buddies and I were out cruisin' pool halls and lookin' for fun. We happened to drive past our church, and noticed lights on in the basement. There were out-of-province plates on a few cars parked out front. We thought of only one thing: girls. So we parked and went inside.

Indeed there were a handful of lovely girls in the basement, and one of them had the "witnessing button" above pinned to her jacket. Hm, never seen that kinda thing before. The guys and girls were all out-of-towners, which was even odder. "How'd you get into our locked church?" It turned out their leader, Dave, had stopped at a phone booth when they hit the outskirts of town, and called a Meadowlark member he knew, asking if they could go pray in our church basement. "You're just . . . praying in here?" They invited us to pray with them, and since they were so friendly—and the girls were so cute—we agreed. It was about 8pm.

None of us got out of there unscathed.

I don't remember anything in particular that I or anybody else prayed. Only that I instantly felt abhorred by my own lukewarm apathy, and that I desperately needed God's forgiveness. I kept hearing car doors slamming outside, and people coming downstairs. When I looked up I saw several of our own church teens praying—and weeping, just like me. I remember wondering why there was a puddle of water on the table in front of me . . . then I realized I'd been weeping, and was soaked in perspiration. 

The praying and weeping went on and on as more young people arrived. Without cel-phones or social media, Meadowlark kids kept arriving all thru the evening, somehow drawn like moths to a flame. Those of us who had come earlier had received the forgiveness we sought, and the Holy Spirit had filled us with such love and peace—and joy! So we went upstairs to give our downstairs friends the privacy they needed to work through their business with God.

Upstairs we visited, we hugged, we shouted, we laughed, we jumped up and down. We all had to phone home, because it was now after midnight. About a dozen of us Meadowlark kids were  in the basement that night. Some adults had arrived and made arrangements to host the Saskatoonians overnight.

At church the next morning, our pastor introduced Dave, who briefly described the awakening in Saskatchewan, then invited us Meadowlark kids onto the platform to tell what God had done for us the night before. Boom! It happened again—this time upstairs to grownups in the middle of church. It was bedlam, lasting 'til mid-afternoon. The Jesus Movement was in full bloom—and my church, along with hundreds of people in Edmonton that fall, would never be the same.

Yesterday: a film about memory, music, culture & love

My Top 5 movies up 'til yesterday—which is when I saw Yesterday—were, in no particular order: Raising Arizona, Local Hero, Chinatown, Tender Mercies, and True Grit (2010). I may have to slip one of those down to number six.

I never saw Slumdog Millionaire or Love Actually, no offense to their writers or directors. But the breathtaking premise of their new movie—a 12-second glitch in the planet erases The Beatles from history and from the memory of every living person, save one hack musician—knocked me off my feet. That the film effortlessly pulls off this audacious conceit in the first 20 minutes is testament to the power of suspended disbelief. Well, and to the skill of the filmmakers, obviously.

Like everybody else who was alive in April of 1970, I first heard "The Long And Winding Road" on the radio. I hadn't yet celebrated my 14th birthday. But the Beatles had already been a constant on my mental playlist for nearly half my life—starting, in my case, with their appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show in February of 1964. I'd collected Beatles trading cards, gotten a mop-top haircut, wore a Nehru collared shirt, and was just beginning to wonder what it would be like to say I-wanna-hold-your-hand to a real live girl.

But in the movie, the struggling hack musician—Jack Malik—is challenged by a slightly jealous Ed Sheeran to a songwriting duel. Each would go away for ten minutes to write, then come back to sing a brand new song for Sheeran's band and crew. Best song wins. This challenge takes place just minutes after Jack's first major concert performance, opening for megastar Sheeran in Moscow, Russia. Every one of the songs Jack had sung on stage that night—Beatles songs of course—had slain the crowd, and Sheeran wanted to bring Jack down a notch.

So the ten minutes are up, and Sheeran goes first: strumming and singing a tender, intimate love song that is sweet, and nearly memorable. Jack's turn. He sits at a piano and sings a plaintive, heartfelt rendition of "The Long And Winding Road." I am undone, tears streaming down my face: that used to be just a Beatles song to me. But now, nearly 50 years later, I have myself actually walked a long and winding road. How did you just demolish me here in the AMC Spring Hill Cinema 12 with a song I've heard a thousand times before?

Ed Sheeran has been pummeled too. He offers stunned applause in mute surrender.

The story is woven alongside the life of Jack's boyhood pal, and longsuffering "manager," Ellie, played by the radiant Lilly James. They are not a couple, romantically speaking, though as the film unspools, we keep wondering why not. And this is exactly what the filmmakers want us to wonder.

Because the picture is so new, I won't spoil the ending, except to say it addresses the ethical dilemma Jack wrestles with, knowing these aren't really his songs. Jack's course toward the deeply satisfying conclusion is set by his revelatory visit to an artist who looks as though he may well have written songs, but has instead put brush to canvas all of his life.

There is astonishing grace in the end. There is the highest, and noblest, and most time-honored tradition realized in the end. In the end, the young man who struggled to remember lyrics and melodies that would thrill audiences around the world, selflessly proves love really is all you need.