Ragamuffin Movie

When everything that could be shaken was shaken, and all that remains is all you ever really had.

--Rich Mullins, "Home."

Official trailer for the "Ragamuffin" movie:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NF7qbCTFja0

It premieres in Wichita in January 2014.  I will be there.  I am so incredibly excited.
Purchase tickets for the premiere here:
http://www.itickets.com/events/314057

Ironically considering how important music is for me, I was a very late bloomer in developing any kind of musical taste.  I listened to nothing but "Psalty the Singing Songbook" until I was about fourteen, and then started ordering Christian music tapes through a music club.  I was more drawn to Michael W. Smith and Amy Grant than I was to Rich Mullins initially.  I might regret that for a very long time, since that meant that I never got to see Rich Mullins in concert.  Music works in a funny way.  One of my friends once commented that the songs that get into your head and heart until you have to play them over and over aren't necessarily -- or usually -- the songs you love most upon first play-through.  Even at the very beginning, I felt like Rich Mullins had captured something of the world that I had thought was my private experience, with the opening to "Sometimes By Step" and the way listening to it felt like flying between the low-hanging clouds and the ground.  I decided he was my favorite singer when I heard "Growing Young."  I can say with certainty that no other single person has affected my thoughts and my theology and my writing the way Rich Mullins has.

That's not the primary reason I'm so excited about this movie, though.  One of the producers answered the question (paraphrased), "since Rich would probably not want a movie made about him, why are you doing this?" with (paraphrased), "as Christians, we don't own anything, not even our stories, and if our personal stories can be of benefit to others, then that's part of the legacy we leave behind for God to use as He will."

Since some of the music leaders at my old church had been friends with Rich Mullins, we had one quasi-book club discussion for anyone who wanted to come listen to hear them reminisce.  I came with a few friends.  I commented to one that Rich Mullins was one of my heroes, and she said that he would be horrified to hear me say that.  That was basically the end of that conversation (oh, well, it was years ago) -- but I didn't mean what I think she thought I meant.

I did my first biographical essay in my college Essay Writing class about Rich Mullins, and since then I've been a kind of informal student of his life (informal because I've never done any official research, or even read/retained the official biography all that well -- but, for example, I've watched/listened to everything the "Ragamuffin Archive" Youtube site has to offer).

Actually the Ragamuffin Archive is worth linking here, and so is the kidbrothers.net site:
http://www.youtube.com/user/theentrtnr
http://www.kidbrothers.net/

In Rich's songs, I see echoes of some of the things I find the hardest to explain or describe.  "Here is my song, take what you want, I have no heart for it anyway, I've half a mind just to cut it loose and if it sails off into the blues, I'll just let it soar, and the skies better keep it, and I won't be any poorer for giving it its freedom" -- isn't that a perfect description of what it's like when no one reads your posts, or when you work tirelessly to try to communicate this awesome insight and the person you try to talk to just doesn't get it?  "I'll carry the songs I learned when we were kids, and I'll carry the scars of generations gone by, I'll pray for you always and I'll promise you this, I'll carry on, I'll carry on" -- that was my anthem for college and beyond, the way that it was just not possible to leave certain types of scars behind, but I also carried within my heart the music of my childhood and the resolution to pray even for those I'd never see again, and those two things together were enough, they had to be enough.  "Maybe she can come to Wichita, maybe we can borrow Beaker's bike, let the road wind tie our hair in knots, let the speed and the freedom untangle the lies," -- coming in the context it does, within a song that is all about dark riverbanks at night, those lines stand out as a breath of daylight, and it's like ... the way it feels when the world changes, when something shifts and it's painfully obvious that today is just a moment in the span of eternity and the moment itself is so breathtakingly beautiful without losing any of the reality surrounding it.

But the same thing applies to what I learn of Rich Mullins' life.  The more I learn, the more I want to know, and it's not because I have some fangirl delusion that he was perfect.  Maybe ... it can be best summed up in an autograph that I remember hearing that Rich wrote, but I don't remember who to: "Grow up.  No, don't.  Be God's."  Or, from "Brother's Keeper," "my friends aren't the way I wish they were, they are just the way they are."  He was a man who did some incredibly heroic things, yet didn't seem them as anything particularly special, who made conscious decisions about the things he would know and not-know (much to his producers' frustration), who ... to me, brought to life the concept of being God's.  Of having true humility enough to forget oneself, of being loved not either because of or in spite of flaws, but of just being ... and then being loved.  Rich had the courage to toss aside social taboos (like, "you don't call your friends at two in the morning no matter how desperately you may need them" or "you step carefully around intimate details instead of entering into others' lives fully").  In doing so -- at least with what I can see from my way-removed outside fangirl perspective, he created a group of friends who were ... like no others I've ever heard about / read about / met.  People who embodied the concept to carry one another's burdens and love without reservation.  I don't think Rich Mullins would have called me stupid for loving people who didn't love me back.  He would have told me that love is always a risk.  Like Aslan himself.  It's not safe, but it's good.

I used to wake up angry, knowing the sun would shine, but the light would get lost in the clouds / I used to be so lonely, wishing that love was mine, but never knowing where it was found ... I never heard the music 'till the day I met You, Lord.

--Rich Mullins, "Never Heard the Music"