Don Williams

   When I was in college, I went through a brief love affair with country music.  It was more of a fling than an affair I guess, because for the most part I have emerged unscarred from the experience.  It started out because the guys I was living with at the time were enjoying country music and it developed for a little while because I was not a thrill chasing rock-and-roller, I was not a high-browed classical music lover, contemporary Christian music was simply not any good at the time, and my developing adult personality was much more like an outdoorsy pick-up-truck-driving good ol' boy.  Country music just seemed to fit what I saw my character was like.  The music was simple and fun.  I enjoyed a few musicians of the day like Alabama, George Jones, and John Anderson.  But my favorite was an old cat named Don Williams.  I even went to one of his concerts.  No pyrotechnics.  No back-up band.  No bouncers.  No nothing.  Everything was just stripped down.  The only thing on stage was a rocking chair.  Don Williams came out with his guitar, sat in the chair, played a bunch of music, and got out of the chair two hours later.  It was great.
   Even today I can still remember the lyrics to several of his songs as they echo somewhere inside my psyche.  Love, loss, trucks, Oklahoma -- all important thematic ideas but honestly none of it was complicated.  It was all so simple.  I yearn for simple again.  But I am blessed.  I need to appreciate the simple and the honest and the genuine things about my life.  I have the love of a beautiful woman.  I have the love of my children and grandchildren.  I have a strong extended family that is rallying around me to clean my house and support my wife and do the things human beings ought to just do for each other but don't always.  I have faith.  I have hope.  Life really is not complicated.  It is simple.  I think I will find time to listen to some Don Williams music today.  All I need is a rocking chair.  You should appreciate the simple today too.  Pull up a chair and notice.  Look and listen for the simple beauty in life.