By: Kenneth E. Boone, Sr.
When I was growing up, I felt like one day a week was a complete washout. No playing outside, no television, and no going to the store. What was worse was that it seems like the sun was always shining on everyone else. How did I make the best of a seemingly bad situation? Well, I turned on the radio and let my imagination run wild. I'm Ken Boone. Welcome to my Podcast, “MUCH MORE TO SAY” When I was younger, I would have to race home on Fridays because my family observed the holy part of our religion from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday. I used to enter “the Sabbath” with great resentment, but by the time I was in my teens, I already had about 10 years of it under my belt and had developed a few coping skills. Just under 700 miles and 11 hours driving (a little over 3 hours if you catch a flight), in Asheville, NC, Celia hustled to make it home as well. She had the same resentments as I did. But with a lifetime of this lifestyle under her better, she had developed even better coping skills than had I. Sure, I couldn’t watch TV on Saturdays until sunset, but my need for television entertainment was replaced by Family Radio. What’s that? It’s a small network of Christian radio stations modeled after NPR. They featured several local and syndicated DJs spinning all types of Christian music, from choir to contemporary. Celia hadn't heard of Family Radio. I'm not sure if it was because that network wasn't broadcasting in Western North Carolina, or if it was because she was the de facto Family Radio in that neck of the woods. Since she was quite an accomplished pianist by the time she reached her teens, she spent every hour of daylight, and most night hours at church providing the music. As for me, I wanted to own my own Family Radio network! I also longed to own a record label equivalent to Ralph Carmichael’s Light Records. I dreamed of producing dramatic content in the mold of “Unshackled,” a syndicated show styled after soap operas from the 1940s, which told the stories of people who turned their lives around. It was like an AA discussion meeting on super steroids. I was a teenager, so I wasn’t consumed by blind jealousy. However, I knew that those dreams were quite ambitious, so I only shared them with a small number of people. My mom and stepfather weren’t too dismissive of my ideas because they had a lot to do with church. As my godmother so eloquently put it, “at least it beats selling drugs on the street corner.” You had to know Aunt Rose to see that what she said was funny. Celia's dreams were to record and perform both Christian as well as Jazz music in the Atlanta, Georgia region and beyond. In fact, she was well on her way toward making that dream a reality. If only we'd met back then, we'd be in an entirely different place. As time marched on, I got more involved in the performance aspects of Christian music. While I enjoyed that, I still had a secret plan to make the switch from artist to executive. The plan didn’t work out at the time. You know, the old barrier of entry thing. Also, I was a little weak on the planning and execution back then. Fast forward to current times, a lot of cool things are happening. To begin with, I made the decision to move south in 2010. There I met and fell in love with Celia. And what I learned was that if you love someone, you feel safe to share you inner hopes and dreams with that person. We shared and soon realized that those hopes and dreams were nearly identical. I've told you about those hopes and dreams in countless previous episodes, on this podcast as well as others on the network. But I think that the one worth repeating pertains to the role that church plays in our lives. We don't see attending services as a bad thing. Nor do we feel like that one day a week is a complete washout. To start with, we've eliminated the word “desecration” from our vocabularies. It's fine with others being strict adherents to the bylaws of their religion of choice, just respect that we're not those type of people. That's because the price we paid for adherence to those laws and bylaws was way too steep for us. Over the past 10+ years, Celia and I have attended hundreds of services at dozens of different churches in several different denominations. What we found was that we enjoyed most of them. We walked away with the same level of spiritual fulfillment from each of the “good ones”. However, recently we've cut back on attending services. We've also put a pause on performing outside of the house. Come to think of it, we haven't recorded much music either. But we have been busy podcasting. Do date, Celia and I have collectively published over 100 podcast episodes. Nearly all of them have a spirituality component to them. Before we took that break, we recorded over 50 music tracks, with a majority of them being sacred in nature. That's correct. With the freedom to do anything we want; we've still chosen to do what's referred to as “God's Work”! And we haven't been punished with fire and brimstone, plagues, or whatever else they said would happen to us if we failed to walk the straight and narrow. Parting Shots We are no longer disciples of the church we grew up in. But we still strive to do good. We still strive to live our lives in service to others. And although we still “...sin and come short of the kingdom...”, so do those who are still in the flock. To my delight, the majority of our friends have not rejected and abandoned us. In fact, those friendships have only gotten stronger. There was one person who scowled at me for not reciting the company line, but that's okay. You can't please everyone, which was a lesson I learned after I left the flock. To my surprise, I learned that the “Unshackled” producers still record live episodes every Saturday afternoon at 4:30pm from the Pacific Garden Mission in Chicago, IL. To date, they have nearly 3,600 episodes in the can! Now that I'm all growing up, Saturdays are no longer complete washouts. I now can play outside, watch television, and go to the store, any store, without fear of burning in a lake of fire. The sun is shining on me, unless it's literally raining cats and dogs outside! Today's Quote “Life is not always about waiting for the storm to pass... It's about learning to dance in the rain.” Vivien Greene – British Writer
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About the HostKenneth E. Boone, Sr. is a writer, podcaster, music lover, sports enthusiast, and retired accountant. Archives
April 2024
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