AWARDS, KEYS, & SIMPLICITY

Last weekend I was at a banquet awards ceremony in Calgary for Christian artists in Canada. It was open to the public. At my table, there were three artists from Nova Scotia, my son Joel, and two people from the city of Calgary who happened to be Dutch.

The awards brisked by, partly because several artists were not there to pick up their awards. As a result, the many ‘thank you’ speeches seemed about half their usual. I was up for four nominations myself. I didn’t win, but I had a good time although I confess it was an interesting exercise in chewing food. Thoughts such as “If I win, do I want roast beef sticking through my teeth as I say thanks” were running through my head. I also had to introduce the Francophone album of the year award, so I didn’t want my Quebecer accent to be sounding like this: "excusez-moi for da carrot shining like la soleil on my lips.”

Things got even more interesting as I had left my keys in the trunk of the car half an hour before the ceremony began. Getting a jacket and transferring out of an Alpaca sweater can be a challenging thing when you’re my age. Great timing. And so it was that while the awards proceeded we awaited the arrival of the CAA vehicle to do the master break in job. I kept telling myself, relax, God is in control, “trust in Him at all times” (Ps 62:8) - even times like these when you are a nincompoop. Amazingly, the CAA guy arrived half an hour later than projected but within a streak of awards where I was not required to be there. He apologized for being late, Friday rush hour traffic and all but I told him it was perfect timing, his arrival that is, which in reality meant that I didn’t have to be anxious about hearing this: “And the winner is…I’m sorry he’s outside right now retrieving his keys in the trunk of his Rio rental car, and writing a song about it.”

At the end of the banquet the Dutch man mentioned that he had only heard three awards on my behalf. While it can be helpful to have someone counting on your behalf, especially when you’re disappearing to retrieve your keys and jacket, I subtly reassured him that maybe it was because my name had not been heard on one of the four due to a mispronunciation –“Mickel” as in Nickel. I could have said, with humility, “I’ll go back and do a recount” but you have to cut some slack in this day and age as we all have different ways of reasoning and perceiving things. Besides any hint of sarcasm might betray the wisdom of fools.

After the meal we all moved on to the second part of the awards in the sanctuary. The sanctuary was the size of two soccer fields with a total of 3000 seats - we were roughly a third of that number last night. The wide theater styled room was set in a church building that looked like it was originally designed to be a mall. There were two massive screens left and right of the center of the stage. Over the center was a wooden cross high above, without the Son of Man on it. The cross seemed dwarfed if not insignificant, but I wasn’t sure if the answer was to have a bigger one that would match the size of the media screens. Besides, what if it fell on someone? I wondered if the cross would work better rooted to the ground.

The concert section of the awards evening was fun, a stage band on hand to back a variety of artists switching like channels on a remote TV. The sound was predominantly rock-pop. At times I couldn’t hear the lyrics accurately - but that’s not so much about age and taste as it was the choices in the overall mix. The real highlight of the night for both my son and I was a new artist from the Maritimes, Jon Bryant, who sang passionately with an acoustic guitar backed by a string quartet and a pedal steel player floating over his heartfelt tune. Suddenly there was an intimacy and longing that filled the air. It felt like someone was reaching thru him, without size or cacophony, to gently touch us and call us to a simpler way of being. Simpler that is, if you don’t lose your keys.