Episode 35: Mark Lowry: Approved For All Ages
Transcript
Patsy: Hi, I’m Patsy Clairmont, and I’m a Boomer.
Andrew: And I’m Andrew Greer, and I’m a Millennial.
Patsy: And you are listening to Bridges.
Andrew: Spiritual Connections Through Generational Conversations
Patsy: Season Two is brought to you by Food for the Hungry.
Andrew: Meeting the physical and spiritual needs of people all around the world for over 50 years.
Patsy: That reminds me of someone.
Andrew: Who’s 60 years.
Patsy: Well, you know, he’s got a good down payment past 40.
Andrew: That’s right. A good 50 percent.
Patsy: And he is a funny man with a song in his heart and always words on his lips, and he’s someone you know quite well.
Andrew: He is. He has exhausted me more than once. He is my other co-host. We co-host a show called Dinner Conversations, which you’ve been on many, many times. And Mark Lowry is our good friend, our good colleague, and a good mind, a good heart, a good soul, and he’s going to be sharing a bunch of good conversation with us about the glories of aging but also relating to people of all ages. He’s one of us. Every age — babies to the grave — he loves them all.
Patsy: Good deal.
Patsy: Guess what I have, Andrew.
Andrew: What?
Patsy: A bridge.
Andrew: No kidding.
Patsy: Wow, what a surprise. And this one’s gonna lead us right to our guest, and it is found in Idaho, land of spuds and corn. That makes total sense to me. It is called the Fun Farm Bridge, and people come from all over and gather at the bridge to dive off. Now, it’s a bridge. It’s still active.
Andrew: For fun? Dive off for fun?
Patsy: Yeah, they dive off for fun, but it’s still an active bridge with traffic, so they warn you to be careful. But when you get there, you have to make sure the weather is good, that the water’s not moving to quickly, that you are a confident swimmer and you’ve shown up with a crowd of your cronies, your buddies. And this guest of ours is a buddy.
Andrew: Yes, he is.
Patsy: And he’s an awful lot of fun, and he is someone who makes a big splash when he enters your life, and you want to be around him. You want to be the buddy system with him, and I’m gonna let you say who it is, Andrew.
Andrew: Absolutely. I mean, I feel a little awkward today, kind of on the spot between two of my co-hosts. It’s kind of like who's gonna ask me who’s my favorite, but across from us today we’ve got Mr. Mark Lowry.
Mark: It’s so good to be with you both.
Andrew: Thank you. You’ve been on the top of our wishlist, on Patsy’s especially.
Mark: Really?
Andrew: Yeah. I’m a little, uh, weary, but Patsy’s still in it to win it.
Mark: Well, how sweet. I just thought y’all had me here because you had an opening, you must’ve had a lull, people aren’t returning your calls. What’s happening?
Andrew: Absolutely not. Actually, this is for Season Two, and you know, we decided to narrow down the pool this time, only for the most special people. So you made that list, but one reason that you’re special and one reason that you’re sitting in the chair on this specific podcast is because you know a little bit about intergenerational relationships.
I feel like your whole life, since you were a young man, you have interacted with all the generations. Were you always compelled or drawn to people of all ages?
Mark: I never really thought about it as far as, Okay, I want to relate to all generations. I thought, Here’s somebody who looks like a fun time, and I’d love to go talk to them.
I remember when I was little, when I could barely see over the table, my parents would take me before church to the Wyatt’s Cafeteria in Houston, and I would eat as fast as I could, my parents tell me, so I could go visit all the other tables because I thought that’s what I would find interesting and they would love to meet me, I figured. I don’t know what I was thinking, but I would eat as fast as I could so I could go visit everybody.
And then when I was a little bit older — you’ve probably seen pictures — there’s a picture of me singing for the seniors at our church, and I’m doing, I think, a Louis Armstrong imitation with a straw hat and a cane.
Andrew: Wow. That would fly today.
Mark: Then when I felt I was called to the ministry in college, I started reaching more of the young people, or reaching out to them, doing youth camps, youth services. And I was young. I graduated from high school a year early, and then I had a wreck in college where I broke 11 bones — that took a year off from that — because I was traveling with an evangelist and an 18-wheeler hit us, and that’s a whole other story.
Andrew: I didn’t know that.
Patsy: Whoa.
Mark: It turned into a very funny story called “Pivot On Your Good Foot.” The first time I ever told that story I was sitting in my wheelchair telling it to my church and they were laughing, and that’s when it really dawned on me that I could be funny and I could make this into something that could matter, that people pay attention when you’re funny. And if you want to get your point across, be funny. You’ve learned that, Patsy.
Patsy: I have, I have. It’s such a friend-maker, and it’s such a heart-opener, and it puts you in a position to receive. I love that.
Mark: I do too. And I didn’t even know. I didn’t set out to be a comedian. I don’t even consider myself that now, really, even though I’ve been labeled that because record companies have to label you somehow, and they labeled me early a comedian. But I thought I was a singer who told stories.
Patsy: Yeah, I think we’re storytellers.
Andrew: That’s exactly right.
Mark: I think I’m more of a storyteller. A comedian tells three jokes on a subject, and then they change the subject, and they tell three more jokes. The fourth joke on any subject, I’ve heard, will always fail.
Andrew: Interesting.
Mark: And I’ve actually tried it a few times, just to see if it did, and it usually does.
That’s comedian, but a storyteller, like Patsy and myself, if you laugh or you don’t, I’ve still told my story. And if you don’t laugh where I’m thinking you’re going to, I move on like I didn’t mean for you to.
Patsy: That I didn’t even notice.
Mark: Yeah, you’re not gonna hurt my feelings. I’m moving on. If you’re not smart enough to laugh there, I’ll just…
Andrew: So really y’all are judgmental.
Patsy: Well, maybe.
Andrew: I think it’s true though.
Mark: But stories work all generations, all generations. You tell a story and you tell it well, and if it lays you somehow at the foot of Jesus without them ever seeing it coming, ohhh. That is my favorite thing that happens. And it doesn’t always happen because the story has to make that happen. You’ve got to find Jesus in the story.
Like, for instance, when I went through the tornado on a houseboat. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard this story.
Andrew: I haven’t heard this story.
Mark: Well, it’s on YouTube. You can watch it.
I had a houseboat, tornado hit one night, and I describe how it threw me to the ground. I ripped the curtain open, and lightning was flashing and rain was flying sideways. And I looked over to the other deck, and as the lightning would flash, I would see the broken legs of the peers stretching into the sky, and I thought, Oh my gosh, I hope they’re okay. And I made it to the radio, and I said, “Hey everybody, this is Mark over at the Rest Home.” That’s what I named my boat. And I said, “Is everybody okay?” And finally, someone came to the radio, and they said, “We’re okay. We’re upside down, but we’re okay.”
And then the next morning, to make a long story short, I go to the coffee shop where we always go every morning and have our coffee with all the other people that live on these houseboats. It’s a very fun time, but that morning I was just still shaken and they were laughing. When I walked in there, they were all laughing like it was just another day, and they had been through it before. And they didn’t tell me that this was tornado Allie. It wasn’t in the brochure when I rented my spot. So they’d been through it before, and I started relaxing when they started laughing, and I told them, I said, “You know what? I’d have enjoyed that a lot more had I known I was going to live through it.” And it dawned on me that one day we’re going to get to heaven, we’re going to look back on our lives and say, “Oh, I’d have enjoyed that a lot more had I known I was going to live through it.”
Patsy: Isn’t that the truth?
Mark: I look for those diamonds, I call them, in every situation I go through. And sometimes I find them, sometimes I don’t.
Patsy: Now was there someone in your family that you closely identify with that was always looking for the diamonds?
Mark: My mother maybe. Our preachers always had a good diamond in there. We had very interesting preachers come through our church, like B. R. Lakin, but I come from a family… Among others, B. R. Lakin — you can google him too. He's brilliant. He’s dead now, but he was brilliant.
We’d have these incredible storytellers, and I didn’t need my Ritalin if a story was told well. You didn’t have trouble holding my attention.
The Lowry side of our family, they’re all storytellers. I mean, you go to a Lowry family reunion, everybody’s talking and everybody’s listening, and they’ll be adding to conversations going on around the room. So it’s really fascinating, but you have to be a member of the family to really enjoy it.
Andrew: It’s a little bit exclusive.
Talk about your family. Talk about your mom. There’s a lot of people who know about your relationship with your mom because you would talk about her a lot, she sang some from the stage and on some of your videos through the years, and she’s been deceased now…
Mark: But now that she’s gone, you want me to tell you the truth?
Andrew: Exactly, yeah. Have at it.
Mark: Well, actually, we must be a lot alike because some of the most vicious arguments I’ve ever had with anybody were with her, and they were always about God and we believed in the same one.
Andrew: Interesting.
Mark: I’d have her in tears sometimes. It’s like two dogs on a bone. I would not give in, and neither would she. She loved the Old Testament side of God, and I was in love with Jesus. And she is too, as far as Jesus is concerned, but she really could keep the law real well.
Andrew: She liked the rules.
Mark: And I could break it real well. And I needed grace, and when I discovered grace, I jumped in head first. And I know you say, “Well, it’s a license to sin.” Well, yeah, it really is. Actually, it is. But you don’t want to.
The thing is, like Vestal Goodman used to say, I don’t want to hurt his feelings, and it’s the love of God that constrains you; it’s never the fear of God. And I think that God gives you that freewill.
I know you shook your head no on “license to sin,” and we do need to talk about that because… And it’s hyperbolic to say that, I think. I don’t think anybody who’s ever had an encounter with Jesus wants to break his heart.
Andrew: It’s not a desire to offend.
Mark: And he’s not trying to keep you from anything. It may be fun for a minute, but it could kill you. He’s trying to keep you from things where your body parts fall off, you know.
Andrew: That’s a good question. What is the understanding of grace? What is the full-bodiedness of grace if it’s not a license to sin?
Mark: We might’ve jumped off… Well, Paul says that, you know, God forbid, but he does make room that grace sets you free.
What do you think, Patsy, in your silence over there?
Patsy: I’m just absorbing it.
Mark: Well, I may be wrong. You know, I am a recovering fundamentalist, so I’m not totally sure.
Patsy: But you aren’t the only one.
Mark: But I think that since I discovered grace, of course I have continued to sin. “A man who says he has no sin is a liar and the truth is not in him.” But I’m not happy about it. It’s not like I’m out there looking to find ways.
And my sin, usually, it really just hurts me I think. At least I’m not hurting anybody else. Like when I get in front of a mirror and tell myself what I really think about myself sometimes. If you would learn to control your mouth… Your mouth gets your rear end in more trouble. I heard that all my life.
Andrew: Well, when you talk about you and your mom on either side of that bone just hanging on for dear life — she loved the Old Testament God, you loved the New Testament Jesus — though you both respected and loved and revered all of that, you’re kind of talking about that John 1 thing where Jesus was the perfect balance of grace and truth. And I think we all, in our personalities, like I’m a way err-on-the-grace-side. So when it comes to matters of justice and things like that, I want things to be right, but I really just want people to know they’re not alone or that they’re loved. But then I have friends who fight for justice with all their being, and there’s something very holy and righteous about that too.
So it’s almost like y’all would be a good example for 2021, if you ask me, because how can we come to that conversation as different people who uphold different things but realize it’s two sides of the same coin if we’re followers of Jesus.
Patsy: Well, balance is a very hard thing to attain and much more difficult to maintain.
Mark: If I have to choose, I’m gonna lean toward grace because I need it. I need it.
Andrew: Me too. I’m just a man in great need of redemption.
Mark: Me too.
Andrew: But Patsy, she’s got it together, so she might be more on the truth side. She’s actually thinking about what she feels about us right now, but she’s not saying it.
Mark: Anybody who heard me say grace is a license to sin, I really said that just to shock you into thinking, Could it be? Because I don’t know. I mean, it isn’t, but for by grace are you saved through faith, not of yourselves. It is a gift of God.
Your participation in your salvation is two words, I believe: yes and thanks. Agreeing that you were worth dying for. Believe it or not, you were because you don’t get a choice. The pot doesn’t get to tell the potter what the pot’s worth. The potter has told the pot what the pot is worth, and the pot doesn’t get a vote. God thought you were worth dying for, and how rude not to agree with him.
“God thought you were worth dying for, and how rude not to agree with him.”
Patsy: Amen.
Andrew: We’re in agreement, and you know what? We’re gonna be in agreement about more things, potentially, when we come back. You’re listening to Bridges with…
Patsy: Patsy Clairmont, the Boomer.
Andrew: And Andrew Greer, the Millennial. We’ll be right back with Mr. Mark Lowry.
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Patsy: Hi, you’re back on Bridges, and we have our wonderful guest Mark Lowry.
Mark, I know you’re still a very young man, but what I’d like to hear from you is, in the process of maturing, what have been the hard things and what have been the easy things. What would you say to someone 20 years younger than yourself in the way of encouragement?
Mark: Learn to love to exercise. I never did. I still hate it. I’ve always said my body is for no other reason than to carry my brain from place to place. I would rather have a root canal than walk 10 feet — that’s hyperbole again — because at least with a root canal you get gas.
No, I wish I did. I keep thinking I’m going to walk around the park with my dog Bella, but I just never do. My doctor says I need to, I know I need to, but I’m not going to. It’s too late. I’m 62 and don’t care. I will walk to the dinner table though with quite a hasty step.
Andrew: Yes. And down that cafeteria line.
Mark: Yes, I love a good cafeteria.
And the COVID thing, I’ve gained weight there. What was the question?
Patsy: Don’t you think all of us have kind of gained a little weight through the COVID because we did some emotional eating and trying to fill all our spaces and waiting for everything to open back up, eat our own cooking. Oh, for heaven sakes.
Andrew: I mean, is your eating emotional, do you think?
Mark: No. No, no, no. Not for me.
Andrew: It’s just a love of food.
Mark: Listen, I enjoyed the COVID year. It was a great year for me because I’m ready to stay home anyway. You know, I took the year off before. I missed God by one year. I took the year off before the COVID hit, and then I took the year off of the COVID and have just started back to doing a few things here and there, and it’s like I’ve got to go relearn everything.
Patsy: Oh, I hear ya.
Mark: You know, but it’s funny. But I am slowing down.
So your question was what would I tell someone. I’d say learn to love to exercise. I wish I had. And don’t sweat the small stuff. Enjoy the moment. Live in the moment. If you could ever learn, and we’re talking to the 62-year-old Mark now, but if you could ever learn to just really totally live in the moment, not the future, not the past. I think God’s the great I Am. He’s not the great I Was. He’s never in your past. He’s never in your future. He’s always in the now. So he won’t wallow with you in your past or worry with you about your future, but when you do walk through it, he’ll be with you because it will be the now.
“God’s the great I Am. He’s not the great I Was.”
Andrew: Okay, I’ve got a question about that.
Mark: Alright.
Andrew: Because actually, that triggers an old conversation that my college pastor, the pastor of our college Bible study, would always talk about. It was a way of encouraging us to interact with God in the present, to believe that he is a part of our dailyness. But he would say, “Even though God is sovereign…,” that he is omniscient, that he does have the power to know everything. He is all powerful. But as an all-powerful being, that means he can also exercise the power of restraint to potentially be bringing up the sunrise every morning and setting it. He can potentially restrain himself to be active within our daily lives. Because some people would hear what you say and say, “But he’s sovereign. He knows everything. He can’t extract that from himself to be just the I Am right here in the present.”
Mark: Well, yes he can. He did it. He laid down when he came. He humbled himself as a servant and laid down his ability to be everywhere at once. When God came to earth, he put on the human flesh. He got hungry. He had to poop. He had to nurse at his mother’s breast.
Andrew: What else you got there for us?
Mark: He had to learn how to talk. The Word of God had to learn how to talk. He was totally human. He was 100 percent human. He did not know everything. He would walk into a room and say, “Have you all seen Peter?” I’m sure he would. He said I don’t know when I’ll return. Only my Father knows, or you’ll have to wait till John Hagee gets here.
Andrew: Some may not get that one.
Mark: But Jesus said I don’t know when I’ll return, but my Father does. And just like Jesus, we have to get our information from our Father.
Andrew: I mean, that’s a wonderful though. What do you think, Patsy?
Patsy: Um, I’m not responding right this second. I’m still taking it all in. Y’all talk fast.
Mark: Which part is bothering you?
Patsy: Oh, none of it. None of it’s bothering me because I believe that he did sacrifice the holiness of who he was to become like us so that he could be that sacrifice. No buts to it. So I’m in agreement with that.
Sometimes just the way that guys verbalize what they’re thinking takes me a minute to process it in the feminine brain.
“He did sacrifice the holiness of who he was to become like us.”
Andrew: Isn’t that interesting?
Patsy: To soften the corners.
Mark: Well, I mean, think about it. Think about here’s God, Jehovah. He’s coming to earth. He laid down his omniscience. His omni-presence is laid down. His ability to know things he had to learn. What was that like for him?
Patsy: I can’t imagine.
Mark: To humble himself. I mean, what would it be like for me to now go without a cell phone and have to use a map again? That’s going backwards, right. Just think how far backwards God had to… I mean, what all did he have to put aside? It’d be like us losing our sight, our hearing, our… I don’t know what it’s like losing for him, but he had everything. He was self-sufficient. He had no need of anyone or anything. I don’t know what caused him to decide I’d like to love something, but he didn’t have to. He didn’t need it. There was no need in him, but he decided to love something, somewhere. Of course, we’re thinking linearly. I don’t understand all that. When we get home, we can ask all those questions.
Andrew: I do think so. And I think we can get into this a little bit, but when you ask him all those questions when we get into heaven, when we get to be with God, as we were designed to be.
Mark: Will we already know as we are known?
Andrew: Well, I don’t think so. At least…
Mark: I hope we still learn.
Andrew: Me too.
Mark: I want to learn. I love the joy of discovering.
Andrew: Because can you imagine eternity of knowing everything? That doesn’t sound like a relationship to me.
Mark: And that doesn’t sound like home.
Andrew: That sounds like a destination that has no purpose.
Mark: Yeah. But you know what? I’ll tell you what I do know: Eyes have not seen, ears have not heard, neither has it entered into the hearts of men what God has prepared for those who love him.
Patsy: It’s gonna be good.
Mark: And what’s not to love? I mean, what is not to love? How hard is that? When everyone sees him, they’ll gladly bow their knee and say, “Oh Lord.” You know, every knee will bow, every tongue will confess. So I think they’ll all… I’m not gonna say what I think.
Andrew: About us all making it.
Mark: Well, by one man all fail, by one man all are redeemed — that’s all I’m gonna say.
Patsy: Okay, let me ask you.
Mark: Please edit that out. Please edit that out.
Andrew: It’s Scripture.
Mark: It is Scripture. Don’t edit it.
Andrew: It’s putting it forward. It’s putting it forward.
Mark: Okay, go ahead, Patsy.
Patsy: Okay. I want to ask. You have a reputation not only for your humor and your beautiful singing voice but for your wonderful mind. How would you tell a younger person things they could do to nurture creative thinking?
Mark: Think outside the box. Question everything, maybe not out loud but to yourself, and out loud when you’re safe, when you’re with someone you trust, an older person that you trust that has proven to you that there’s nothing you could say to them that could shock them. That is a wonderful person to have around you.
Read. Even though I don’t read a lot, I listen to a lot of books because I can’t read very good for some reason.
Andrew: Well.
Mark: My brain wanders.
Andrew: Yes. Well, right, when you’re on the page, you’re thinking about other things.
Mark: Yeah, and then I have to go back and read it again. Like I love to do my reading of the Bible with this app. We went through the whole Bible. First time I’ve ever done that.
Patsy: Is it Dwell or which one?
Mark: It’s called Holy Bible, that one.
Patsy: Oh sure.
Mark: And then I click that, and it puts me right where I was last. We are now today at John 1. And then while he’s reading, I read along with him. So it’s so much easier for me to pay attention.
Andrew: Plus, it’s got great music.
Patsy: Yeah. I tell people all the time: Know your own learning style and work with yourself. If you cannot read and retain, then listen. And if listening isn’t enough to keep it with you, listen and read the same thing at the same time because it’ll help it go deeper and hold on to it longer.
Mark: Oh, and I’ve discovered stuff. This year of reading along to the Old Testament I’ve discovered how much more I love Jesus. I would never have survived back then. I would have been stoned. I would have been killed. And you know what, Patsy? A lot of that just doesn’t sound like Jesus. I’m thinking, Oh Lord, I can’t wait to get to Matthew.
Patsy: That’s the sinful heart of man, I tell ya.
Andrew: Well, and perhaps that’s also, in our thinking of God, it’s a bit of the linear. The whole picture doesn’t seem like we have the whole picture. I know that we have this beautiful canonized, and I think there is something divinely inspired about that, but it’s interesting that it seems that we discover a lot about God from many pieces of literature. I’m not putting the Bible underneath any of that. I think the Bible, like we talked about yesterday, is the greatest written revelation of who God is, so it is important. It has proven itself. It’s time-tested.
But we learn about God through relationship with each other. I mean, if a Scripture itself talks about the Word of God being written on the hearts of man, and to be discovered throughout creation, you know what I’m saying? So when you talk about asking questions, never stop asking questions, some people, I think, don’t ask questions because they think it means they are a doubter. Some of their questions may come from doubt, but I think questions come from people who want to discover, who are curious. And if they never stop being curious, like my parents are in their 70s, and I don’t feel like they’re irrelevant, but I think that’s because they keep asking questions.
Patsy, you know, you’re somewhere in that age range.
Patsy: You can say that again.
Andrew: You still ask questions. You do have more information than I do. You’ve lived a little longer. You guys have had more experience, and there’s something to be heeded there. But what I respect and admire about you guys, why I would enjoy hanging out with you and do, is because you haven’t stopped asking questions. So I think it goes both ways. Those are the people who are most interesting.
Mark: Yeah, I’d tell a young person to ask a lot of questions. Hang around people smarter than you. Find a Gloria Gaither in your life that you can call anytime you want, argue with her about stuff or not.
I love to argue, if you can’t tell. It’s never to really win; it’s to discover more. Like could you possibly know something I don’t? But what about this, and but what about this? Well, then there’s that. I love that kind of stuff.
Andrew: I do too.
I am sitting in between two people of great discovery. I’ve discovered a lot through my relationships with them. We’re gonna come back to wrap up our time with Mark Lowry here in a minute.
I am Andrew Greer, the Millennial. And I’m with…
Patsy: Patsy Clairmont, the Boomer.
Andrew: We’ll be back.
Patsy: Andrew, I understand, word is out, that you do another podcast with a friend of ours. Tell us about that.
Andrew: Mr. Mark Lowry, who was a guest on this podcast. He’s my co-host for Dinner Conversations with Mark Lowry and Andrew Greer. We have a ton of fun talking about all kinds of topics around the table, and you can find them at dinner-conversations.com.
Do you know something that we both love a lot of, Patsy?
Patsy: What’s that?
Andrew: That’s books.
Patsy: Food
Andrew: That too. But I hear you have a book club.
Patsy: I do have a book club. It’s called Porch Pals Book Club, and you can find out more about the book club by going to patsyclairmont.com.
Food for the Hungry Sponsorship Message
Patsy: Food for the Hungry is giving us a wonderful opportunity. I’m so glad that they have put this program into effect because of the literacy issue around the world, and this is going to help tackle that, plus bring the light of Christ into the lives of children that will be spread throughout the villages and the homes and the hearts of people. I love it. I love it. Tell us more.
Andrew: We have been given the opportunity through our friends at Food for the Hungry to purchase Bibles for people in communities around the world. The beauty of these Bibles is that they come ready to read. No matter where these folks are — that may be a community in Bolivia or Cambodia or Haiti or Kenya — all across the world, these Bibles are translated in their native tongue, which we think of being able to procure a Bible anytime we want, either through our technological devices or going to a bookstore, picking one up, or Amazon. It’s not as easily or readily available to other communities that are more rural and more impoverished around the world.
And so of course, Food for the Hungry has been committed for decades to not only meeting the physical needs of people around the world, and of course, we helped do that through chickens last season. This season we’re getting to complete their mission, and that is meet the spiritual needs through the offering of a Bible.
So go to fh.org/bridges, and for $12, you can purchase a Bible for someone who is waiting to receive it across the world. And don’t forget: Your gift is tax deductible.
Mark Lowry singing “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms”
What have I to dread? What have I to fear?
Leaning on the everlasting arms
I have blessed peace with my Lord so near
Leaning on the everlasting arms
Leaning, leaning
Safe and secure from all alarms
Leaning, leaning
Leaning on the everlasting arms
I’m leaning on the everlasting arms
Andrew: Alright. Well, we’re back with another Boomer.
Mark: Yeah, I’m a Boomer.
Andrew: Mark Lowry.
So Boomer’s a derogatory term now, huh?
Mark: Well, recently I’ve heard the young people are saying, “Okay, Boomer,” and kind of as a putdown.
Well, if it wasn’t for us Boomers, you would Millennials wouldn’t be here.
Andrew: Well, that is a great point. It does take the generation before to produce the next generation.
Mark: I remember what I thought of my grandparents is, well, old of course, but boy, they were fascinating. Nanny and Papaw, that’s where I learned to sing. Stand in between them as we drove out to the country store, and we’d sing the old hymns. That’s why I still love them and I know every word. And if I go the way of mama, which was dementia, I’ll be able to sing those to my grave because you never forget them.
Andrew: Isn’t that interesting.
Mark: Doesn’t matter if you have dementia, you don’t forget the music.
Andrew: Music, right? Music is a line that can’t be cut.
“Music is a line that can’t be cut.”
Mark: There’s something about it. My mother could sing those hymns till the very end, and songs she wrote but didn’t remember she wrote them.
Andrew: I know. Tell about that. I love that.
Mark: Well, we were singing. I had the phone out, and I was recording her at the nursing home, and we were singing the song she wrote called “I Thirst.”
He said "I thirst,” yet he made the rivers
He said "I thirst,” yet he made the seas
"I thirst,” said the King of the ages
In His great thirst, He brought water to me
So we’re sitting there singing it, and she’s singing the harmony. At the end, I say, “Do you know who wrote that?” She goes, “No.” I said, “Oh, you know who wrote that.” She said, “No, I don’t.” I said, “You wrote it.” She said, “Oh, I did.” Then she said, “That’s pretty good.”
So she still knew a good song when she heard it.
Patsy: That reminds me of my mother who had Alzheimer’s, and she didn’t seem to know who I was, so I ask her, “Do you know who I am?” She said, “No, but you seem very nice.” I said, “Well, you raised me.” She said, “I did a very good job.”
Mark: Oh my goodness.
Andrew: I love that.
So I need to start putting out my line of questions for when you guys go the way.
Mark: So your mother was sweet, wasn’t she?
Patsy: She was. She was very sweet.
Mark: Because you can tell that way she responded.
Patsy: Yeah. Actually, the deeper she got into her Alzheimer’s, the sweeter she became.
Mark: Same with my mother. Why do you think that is?
Patsy: I don’t know because usually you get feistier.
Mark: Well, she did get feisty with my father when he was trying to be her caretaker, and that’s when we said, “Okay, we can’t let you kill him.” So we found a good nursing home. There are good nursing homes now, and we found one in Bedford, Virginia, 17 miles from their home, mama and daddy’s home, and they loved her.
And the way you find a good nursing home is very easy. You walk in. If it smells like pee, you walk out. That’s all you gotta do. And then, do they love the people? Well, watch them. These people loved my mother.
What was so great — and I say that in it was horrible, dementia is horrible — but she forgot all her dogma. She forgot all her convictions, which were really nothing but preferences. A lot of our convictions that we’ve been raised with are really nothing but preferences. They wrap a Scripture around it and call it a conviction.
Well, how long your hair is on your son, that was the big deal when I was young. 1 Corinthians 11:14 — "Doth not even nature itself teach you it’s a shame for a man to have long hair?” Oh, that’s why we had to get a haircut.
The next Scripture says, “But if you’re going to fight over it, it’s no big deal.”
Andrew: And then there’s Samson.
Mark: And so she got so sweet. I would hold her hand, and we’d sing songs, and we never argued anymore about God or heaven. She used to say so many… She’d say, “When I get to heaven, I’m going to go in crawling on my hands and knees.” And I said, “Not me. I’m kicking the door down and saying, ‘Ain’t y’all glad I’m home?’” Because I have every right to be there, because Jesus said so. He’s gone to prepare a place for me.
Andrew: I wonder if some of that’s that childlikeness, that sweetness coming out. That’s kind of where our common denominator is, especially in faith — Jesus calling the children maybe because it’s not that we’re not intelligent…
Mark: If you don’t come as a child, which what does that mean? I think it means forget everything you knew about God; we’re starting over. Bring me a clean slate. Let God tell you who he is.
Andrew: You learn through relationship, right, rather than through the religion of it.
Well, it’s fascinating. You two are fascinating. I’m gonna ask you guys a question that you each can answer for us to wrap our conversation today.
Let’s say that you know you’re drawing your last breath, okay. Let’s say you know that this is your last few hours on the planet and you could give just one takeaway, whether it’s for the person next to you, the people around you, or for the whole world to hear, doesn’t matter. What is that one takeaway?
Patsy: Well, I think I would whisper forgive. And the reason is that I carried too many grudges for too long, and it ate up my joy and it kept me at a distance from people that I ended up loving very deeply. So I would try to expedite, the people that would be around me, expedite their journey toward recovery of relationships by saying forgive.
Mark: You’re gonna be dead a long time.
Patsy: Long time.
Mark: Live while you’re here.
And I hope that I’ll be seeing things on the other side at that time and can say, “Oh, y’all, it’s true. It’s true.”
Because He lives, I can face tomorrow
The part of that verse that says: And then His death gives way to victory, I’ll see the lights of glory and I’ll know He reigns
And I always thought, That’s odd that she said no, because I always felt like I know he reigns now, but do you? Until you see, can you know? You can hope. You can believe, and “to as many as believed, them gave thee the power to become the children of God.” Believing is enough. But when we see…
Have you ever gone to YouTube and looked at the people who are colorblind? And then they put on these glasses, and they see color for the first time. Go watch them. That’s what it’s gonna be like. That is what our faces will be like. We will probably weep at the colors, weep at the peace that is palpable. We’ll be back home.
Why do people get drunk? Why do people use drugs? It’s because we’re all trying to get back to Eden. We all remember Eden. It’s written in our DNA. But we’re not going back to Eden; we’re going to the new Jerusalem, which’ll even be better.
But I think that is proof that there’s a God because how can you long for something you don’t remember being there but you know you have. And I think in every human being, there is the thumbprint of God on their hearts, and when the Holy Spirit opens their eyes, they can’t help but see it.
That was a long answer for a dying man.
Andrew: Yeah, he had a lot of wind left before his last breath.
Patsy: I loved it. I loved it. I was thinking he is a fun farm guy. He does dive off and go to depths, and I’m glad we got to be part of the circle that was there for it. Thanks for being here.
Mark: My pleasure.
Andrew: Yes, thank you, Mark. Thank you to both of you for the way you’ve helped us see and discover and continue to do that.
You’ve been listening to Bridges with my wonderful co-host.
Patsy: Patsy Clairmont, the Boomer.
Andrew: And I’m Andrew Greer, the Millennial, and we will see you next time. Thank you, Mark.
Patsy: Bridges is produced by my co-host, Andrew Greer.
Andrew: And co-produced by my co-host, Patsy Clairmont. Our podcast is recorded by Jesse Phillips.
Patsy: And sometimes my son, Jason Clairmont.
Andrew: At the Arcade in Franklin, Tennessee. Jesse Phillips is also our editor and mixes our show. And our theme music is written by Kyle Buchanan and yours truly, and all of the instruments of the music were played by Kyle Buchanan at Aries Lounge in Spring Hill, Tennessee. Our transcripts are provided by Rachel Worsham. Thanks, Rachel, for all your work.
Patsy: If you like what you’ve been listening to, you can help us out by leaving a five-star review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to our show.
Andrew: For more information about Patsy, myself, or to read transcripts and to listen to more episodes, go to bridgesshow.com.
Patsy: Catch you next time.