Author: Gary Furr

I am a musician, writer and Christian minister living in Alabama. I am founder and President of the Alabama Coalition for Healthy Mothers and Children.
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On Blogging Without Politics

Gary Furr

Okay, after a long hiatus, lots of personal changes—a move, and more things than I’d tell here, I’m warily resuming my blog again!  I have been busy with work, life, family, grandchildren, parents and other miscellania (!).  I have also completed a first solo book (I’ve been part of seventeen books previously, mostly collaborative or as a contributor, and primarily theology and professional non-fiction).  This was my first foray into something of my own, creative, and self-publishing. It was a great experience!

MBBCI’m glad to be back, writing about this and that, avoiding politics, which is currently antithetical to everything I love and care about. Where my vocation is to employ words in the search for depth and life, our current American politics (at least in the media) seems bent on being the greatest cause of the death of the spoken and written word ever. Partisan politics now is mostly about obscuring things, misusing them, mischaracterizing others, or polarizing people. It is beyond distasteful. It is lifeless, a paean to piddlyness. So, no politics of the partisan variety.  Ideas are worth discussing, but they deserve respect, not domestication.

Continue reading “On Blogging Without Politics”

Christianity, Faith, humanity, Jesus, Lent, Pilgrimage, Prayer, Spiritual disciplines, Spirituality, Theology, Theology and Life

Our new book: Encountering God in the Prayers of Others

Gary Furr
Encountering God in the Prayers of Others is
our latest collective effort. It springs from experience
in our spiritual lives of prayers
composed by others that have “spoken” to us.

The Trinity group is a self-named group of friends, all Ph.D. grads

CONTRIBUTORS Paul Basden, R. LaMon Brown, Brad Creed, Gary Furr, Fisher Humphreys, Dwight A. Moody, Richard Francis Wilson
CONTRIBUTORS Paul Basden, R. LaMon Brown, Brad Creed, Gary Furr, Fisher Humphreys, Dwight A. Moody, Richard Francis Wilson

in theology or closely related fields who have chosen to journey together theologically for 25 years. The group was initiated by our teacher-friend Fisher Humphreys.  It includes missionaries, pastors, college and seminary professors and a chaplaincy supervisor.

Through the years, we have created a space, meeting once or twice a year for multiple days, to have intellectual, spiritual and theological freedom to read, study, comment, question and debate any subject together that interested or troubled us. The glory of such freedom has enhanced all of our lives.

One of our founders, Philip, died six years ago this March. He was the first close friend some of us had lost, and he was in so many ways a force and center of our group. His loss was enormous, but we carried on. That experience, of walking with a friend to his grave, literally in my own case, was profound. And it mirrors what happens in the theological journey—it is always, inevitably, personal at the same time that we seek the loftiest and most universal of vantage points from which to do theology. Continue reading “Our new book: Encountering God in the Prayers of Others”

Blues, Country Music, Creativity, Culture, Folk, Jazz, Literature, Modern Life, Music, Rock and Roll, Songwriting, Songwriting, texas, Texas music, Writing2 Comments

Everything’s Bigger in Texas: the Oxford American 2014 Music Issue

Gary Furr
The Oxford American Music Issue

For many years, a member of my church who knows my weird tastes in music (if most people have never heard about it, I might have; if mass media doesn’t write about, I will) gives me the annual Oxford American Southern Music Issue.  Given my roots and rootlessness around and on the edges of this bizarre and wonderful region (politics=absolutely bizarre; unelected people generally fascinating and gracious; land, music and layer of cultue—wonderful), he knows it lines up with my interests.

The OA is a journal with as colorful and eccentric history to match the region it writes about, but plenty has been written about it elsewhere.  Just a few lines to mention the music issue, which isn’t cheap ($12.95) but well worth it.  Every year, a particular state’s rich heritage of famous and not-so-well-known songwriters and performers are showcased.  Continue reading “Everything’s Bigger in Texas: the Oxford American 2014 Music Issue”

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“The Man I Didn’t Kill” and Paying Attention

Gary Furr

In 2008 I wrote a song called “The Man I Didn’t Kill.”  The story of the song is pretty simple in a way.  I get song ideas all the time just from observations of life.  I never mind a drive to the hospital or the million other tasks I have to do in my work as a minister.  It is an ocean of songwriting material, because it’s simply life experience.  I really admire the great songwriters who live in Nashville, sit in an office all day and crank out lyrics.  I’m not sure I’m that imaginative.

Gary Nancy Greg

My ideas come from life.  I walk through, listening to people in trouble, solving problems, managing a congregation, dealing with budgets, praying for the sick.  All along, though, the artist in my brain tries to pay attention.  I’m not looking for songs, but I’m paying attention for things that interest me. Kate Campbell talked a lot about being curious—noting things you care about and trying to understand why.

So songs, or at least ideas, pop up everywhere.  Back about 2008 or 2009, I wrote a song that ended up on my cd “Overload of Bad News Blues.”  It’s called, “The Man I Didn’t Kill.”  It came from a close call.  One day a pedestrian walked out in front of me without looking.  I was watching him, so I hit the breaks and, for the first time, he saw me.  Small bit of life. Continue reading ““The Man I Didn’t Kill” and Paying Attention”

Aging, Bluegrass, Doc Watson, Family, Fathers, Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, Jim Hurst, Music, Shades Mountain Air, Songwriting, Songwriting, Thankfulness4 Comments

“Sixty is Just Alright”

Gary Furr

It’s a good time to polish up friendships, love family, forgive, thank and bless.

So I turned sixty, and for some reason the people around me celebrated for a week.  I know with Ebola, the Ukraine, ISIS  and Israel causing the end-of-the-worlders to crank out their book my firthday isn’t a big deal globally, but it has been to me.

Sixty
Sixty is alright for sure.

Over the last five years I have laid to rest a close friend, a father-in-law (who was a second father to me) and a mentor and colleague I have known for 21 years and was my predecessor.  The Shadow has been around lately.  I have grandchildren.  There is likely more life behind than before me years-wise.  You know—morbidity hangs around.  Joints ache a little more.

You’ve poured a lot of concrete by sixty.  Decisions, patterns, character, and events harden into tracks out of which it’s hard to escape.  On the other hand, those same tracks give a certain comfort and stability to life.  It’s hard to break them up.

The upside has surprised me, though.  A certain amount of “I just don’t care about that anymore.”  I don’t care very much at all what others think about what I think.  I don’t need to correct them all Continue reading ““Sixty is Just Alright””