Where Am I Going?
Listen: “Where Am I Going” (live, remastered HQ) by Gino Vannelli
My love for music was nurtured through my relationship with Phillip Warwick Kemmerly (1960-2004). Phillip and I became friends at Plaza Junior High when we were in the sixth grade. We played baseball, whiffle ball and basketball together, caused mischief together, found recreational drugs together, and listened to hours of music together. Phillip’s whole family were musicians (his parents, Kenneth and Janice Kemmerly, and his three brothers, Steve, Paul, and Dave Kemmerly). Phillip would usually play the bass guitar lines while we listened to bands like Kansas, Yes, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Return to Forever (Chick Corea), and Gino Vannelli. Phillip and I were meeting together in 2004 when he was struggling to overcome substance abuse issues and tragically passed in October of 2004 at the age of 44. I owe my love for music to Phillip Kemmerly. May his memory be a blessing.
In 2017-19 I was battling my own, newly acquired substance abuse demons, and I went through a very public downfall in November of 2018. The loss of my marriage, my church and my career led to a crisis of faith. I felt “lost” in the sense that: (1) I didn’t know who I was anymore and my identity was shattered; (2) I didn’t know what I believed anymore and my faith was shattered; and (3) I didn’t know where I belonged anymore and my community life was shattered. I felt isolated, humiliated, and abandoned. I felt like an atheist and didn’t care if I died.
My recovery has been an ongoing process. In 2019 I started attending weekly therapy; I started attending daily twelve-step recovery meetings; I started attending an interfaith clergy support group; and I started reading books by Richard Rohr and authors of his ilk. Rohr’s book, Falling Upward, got my faith off the ventilator.
As I have progressed in recovery, I have found new life and identity in new places. My previous identity was wrapped up in my Evangelical heritage and Evangelical view of God, Jesus, and the Bible. I was raised in a Southern Baptist church and came to faith in Jesus at a Southern Baptist youth camp when I was sixteen. I remember telling Phillip Kemmerly that I was following Jesus and was going to stop doing recreational drugs. I invited him to attend church with me, which he did on a few occasions. I went on to attended a Southern Baptist university and seminary, and was ordained in a Southern Baptist church. I served in Southern Baptist churches before I moved back to Kansas City in 1990 and founded a new non-denominational, somewhat progressive Evangelical-style church in Kansas City, Missouri with the Vineyard movement of churches.
Finding new life and new identity hasn’t been easy. My forty-year history of networked relationships and identity among Evangelicals largely evaporated after my downfall. This added to my sense of homelessness as it related to my identity, my faith, and my community. It’s almost like there was almost no room in the Evangelical world for honest questions, doubts, and disillusionment as I processed through enormous loss and trauma.
One song from my teen years, when I was listening to music with Phillip Kemmerly, has come back to me again and again. It’s a song from Italian-Canadian jazz-pop singer-songwriter Gino Vannelli’s third album Storm at Sunup—“Where Am I Going.”
The lyrics rattle around in my head almost weekly, even though I haven’t listened to the song in decades. It’s amazing how songs from our youth are so sticky. It’s a song that Vannelli wrote in his early twenties about growing old. The song is almost eight minutes long, and I find the lyrics haunting and poignant, yet resonating with where I find myself in recent years:
Where am I going
Have I gone to far
Have I lost my mind
Where are my eyes
Oh have I seen to much
Have I lost my touch
Losing directions from growing infections
Poisoned desires of reaping life so young
And I will grow to the age of maybe eighty years
In such little time
With this venturous mind
What am I saying
Don’t I know myself from experience
I’ll never change
Nor cease to sail the sky
Till the day I die
I’ll come to conclusion with fear or illusion
I’ll live how I feel
Cause no matter how fast or how slow
Youth will go
I think we all hit seasons in our life when its appropriate, even necessary, to reevaluate everything (usually brought on by new ideas and experiences or painful losses). A season in which we examine the beliefs and the values which we have inherited from our ancestors. In this reevaluation we discard some of the old, hang on to some of the old, and then transform the old into something new—something less toxic and more loving, gracious and beautiful. Jesus taught and practiced the importance of renewing old traditions. Old traditions can become worn out, brittle, and even harmful. Jesus was a radical reformer of a beautiful, ancient Hebrew tradition. Jesus said, “Therefore every scribe [or student of Torah] who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like a master of a house, who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old” (Matthew 13:52; ESV). Here are a few of the new (and old) places where I am finding new life.
Community. The twelve-step community practices an open and gracious spirituality. It allows for all persons, regardless of their faith tradition or lack thereof, to navigate their own spiritual path, which usually results in connection with self, with others, and with something greater than themselves that is loving and caring. Imagine that—a loving, more caring God or Higher Power. Most recovery groups provide a safe place to fall apart and rebuild. Churches, synagogues, temples, and mosques would do well to learn from this tradition of recovery and spirituality.
Better questions. Questions, doubts and disbelief are part of the faith journey. If you read the Bible, notice how many of the main characters lived with questions and doubts about there own faith journey like Job, Abraham, Jacob, Moses, David, Solomon, Ruth, Jeremiah, Jesus, and most of the disciples of Jesus. Questions serve the faith journey better than answers in many situations.
Therapy. So important. Work through your issues with a good therapist. You and your loved ones will be healthier because of it.
Meditation. Find a good meditation/centering prayer group. It’s good for you. It’s good for your body, your brain, your emotions, and your thoughts; and it’s good for your connection with God. (Contact me if you need some help finding one.)
Journaling. After years of sporadic journaling, I have finally incorporated journaling into my morning prayers, readings, and meditations. I recommend using Julia Cameron’s book The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity as a guide for the practice of journaling and creativity.
Jesus. I still love Jesus. I am rereading Jesus. I am paying close attention to the questions Jesus asked, the struggles Jesus encountered, the criticisms Jesus endured, the outsiders and marginalized whom Jesus embraced, and the path of nonviolent love and forgiveness for God, neighbors, and enemies which Jesus walked.
Shalom
©realfredherron, 2022
