Down In The Valley To Pray recorded with vocals by Doc Watson who brought the song to contemporary notice and Alison Krauss who brought it to prominence on the O Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack.
This album features an accomplished grouping of instrumentalists, but on this song its the lyrics, harmonies, and vocals that carry everything.
Here’s an album cut of the live performance.
Here’s some video of the same with a bit more commentary beforehand.
The greatest mark that the gospel leaves on a soul is not the capacity to never get it wrong, but the capacity to incarnate grace, forgiveness, and community in imperfection.
This can only occur when we have a more developed understanding of how the Gospel brings renewal and recreation to the events and relationships of our lives have shaped our own weaknesses and flaws, than any insight into with weaknesses and flaws of others.
From Diary Of A Pastor’s Soul:
I’ve spent years of ministry watching my parishioners constantly make another choice about their employment, who they would love, and where they would live – thinking that they would change their lives through these choices. But they were just rearranging the living room furniture. For real change they have to deal with their Creator, who can redeem the hurts of what they received from family and transform them into a mission worthy of their lives. We never get to create our own lives.
Diary Of A Pastor’s Soul, M Craig Barnes, Brazos Press, 2020, pgs 74-75.
The same experiences can lead to a pastor’s soul being an expression of trust and gratitude or lapsing into distance and cynicism.
There will be injuries, but scars speak of an experience of healing while open wounds speak of ongoing (unrecognised / unaddressed / unresolved) pain.
The pastor is not someone who has avoided injury, but who surrenders injury to the Father, and by that example encourages others to yield their hurts to the Father as well.
From Diary Of A Pastor’s Soul:
Typically, people with gravitas are older, but it really has less to do with age than with their response to the way life unfolds. They have scars, which are strangely attractive, but not open wounds. They’ve settled into themselves, and in the people God has given them to love, without any irritating plans for improvement. But they remain curious about the most ordinary things they find in those they care about. People with gravitas have discovered that the Holy haunts the landscape of life, and they gently probe every glimpse they find, whether it’s buried in the ordinary, the fleeting moments of delight and surprise, or the places of pain, as it often is.
No one is born with gravitas, and it’s not exactly a spiritual gift. It comes as a result of good responses to hurts, blessings, failures, achievement, boredom, and obligations, all of which are surrendered to the Creator. Some who have the sxact same experiences turn instead to cynicism. But should with gravitas somehow choose to receive their lives, such as they are with gratitude.Diary Of A Pastor’s Soul, M Craig Barnes, Brazos Press, 2020, pg 13.
Travel plans for July now not possible. Our vaccinated selves will stay home instead.
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