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I’m going to be live blogging Gene Robinson‘s interview at Greenbelt, which starts in a few minutes. (Live blogging a sermon is an odd experience, given the kind of language that’s used, but Gene’s a pretty unique dude, and a pivotal figure in so much of the dialogue around gay rights as well as more specifically he dialogue between the church and the gay community)

[1.29] Gene is Bishop of New Hampshire, and I’ve really enjoyed all the writing of his that I’ve read. I’m really pleased he’s here at the festival.

Intro by Martin Wroe: there’ll be loads of time for questions at the end. “Rumour has it that bits of the church are upset that a Bishop can be called Gene – some people don’t think Bishops should have girl’s names” (laughter, followed by massive applause for Gene.)

[1:32] Gene starts by praying – standard form for a Bishop 😉

“I’d rather you thought of this as a conversation, what I’m going to say is my own experience. Your’s will be different, and your own. All we have is our own story. We get in trouble when we tell people what their story should be.”

Gene’s Story – how to stay calm in the eye of the storm. The storm in question is when Gene was put forward for ordination, and a load of lies were written about him being involved in porn etc.

[1:39] Anyone attempting to live the Christian life, will get in trouble. The boxes we try to put God in are always too small. If you preach that, you’ll be in trouble.

The beatitudes are radical – all the blessed conditions in the Beatitudes – mourning, hunger, persecution – are things we really don’t want. Why are they blessed? because it’s when we’re stressed and troubled, we know our need of God. We lose our false sense of total control.

[1:43] For Jesus, that mistaken behaviour involved Justice. Good news for the poor, sight to the blind, Jubilee. In the same sermon, he says that God’s love is bigger than just for the people of Israel, he got in trouble – God was too loving, too compassionate, to merciful.

[1:46] Gene starts to describe growing up gay in conservative Kentucky. Homosexual was a word that was only whispered. No Will & Grace, no Ellen, no positive role models, definitely no-one who was Christian and gay. You were totally on your own. There was no way of talking to your parents about it – 2/3rds of the homeless kids in LA are there because they’ve been thrown out for being gay or lesbian.

Gene went through therapy (the ‘ex-gay’ movement), and even got married… stayed married for 13 years, then went back to church to end it, with a eucharist service, asked each other for forgiveness. They returned their wedding rings. A wonderful and healing experience.

If God intends anything for us it’s to live with integrity – for our inside to agree with our outside. If there’s a disconnect, we do God a disservice.

[1:52] It took Gene ages to discover that God’s love could include him, a gay man. God called him to be whole, to come out, to be whole. He ‘knew’ that in 1986 his ordained life in the church was over… until the late 90s, he felt called to put his name forward to become a bishop. He knew it would be difficult… just not this difficult (laughter). Had no idea it would last this long.

He was phoned up by arch-bishops telling him not to do this, but instead waited for God to tell him. He just walked forward, trusting God to lead.

“God calls us on a journey and we don’t have the luxury of seeing the other side (x-ref Moses and the parting of the red sea) – we need to trust”.

The call to become bishop was followed by death threats, which continue to today. When you see the note that has a picture of you and your partner, and they’re covered in letters cut out that spells out ‘I have a bullet for each of your heads when you least expect it” – at his consecration, he and his partner had to wear bullet-proof vests. It scared the crap out of his daughters. He had to tell them that not living your life was a worse thing than death. He didn’t want to die, but if it happened, he would be fine.

“when people ask if I regret what’s happening, I have to say no, not at all. Because when God feels that palpably close, how could you regret that? Learning to count on God was a good thing not bad.

When evil comes your way it’s so tempting to return evil for evil, that the only way to deal with that is to be silent. Rather than resort to that. The Psalms have a lot of this…

[1:10] “my spiritual director told me I talk to much in my prayers. Also made me aware of the possibility of impersonating God’s voice, to get the answers I want. I was encouraged to do nothing, but just imagine being a child of God, being loved, and feeling that love as warmth. Just allow yourself to be loved, let God do what God does best”.

God want to love. all of us. And wants us to love the rest of us. We live our lives with a line drawn around us, separating us from them. What God wants for us is to draw the line ever-further away, until there is no ‘them’ only us. The christian life calls us to treat our enemies like that. to never allow ourselves to treat them as a child of God, no matter how much I disagree with them.

“Our job is to be continually be reaching out to those who’ve been marginalised, disrespected, abused, disregarded, vilified. God is not there to make it easy, but will be with you. There’s no greater reward than that” (massive applause).

-oOo-

[Steve’s note] – Gene talks the language of a bishop, but he brings a message that has its roots as much in the experience and history of Ghandi, MLK, Wilberforce etc… The call within the God-stuff for respect to be extended to those we hate, for dialogue to continue, for acceptance, respect, grace, is SO vital, so important, for all of us, believers, or not, sceptics, doubters, atheists… He’s a pretty radical voice, but one with a soft tone, and an amazing gentle soul. It’s been a privilege to listen to him.

I don’t know about you but i’ve read countless articles on how to act/behave/play once you’ve got yourself a gig. That’s all very good and there’s some great advice amongst it but really, that’s the easy bit. Learning not to act like a tool shouldn’t be too difficult, the hard part is finding the gig in the first place!

I’m far from an expert on the subject, but I’ve recently landed myself a few european tours as a sideman with a blues-rock cover band; i’m getting my expenses covered and paid on top of that, not alot, but I won’t be out of pocket and i’ll be doing alot of playing.

This particular gig I managed to get from a posting on a music classified website (I think it was musofinder.com) by complete chance, just googling to see what turns up. And most of the time, not alot does but as this demonstrates something good does appear once in a while ( As an aside most gig’s I get offered come from people I already know and work with anyway, so this is a bit different from all that).

What worked for me was having the confidence that I could do the gig, regardless of anything else. The ad stated they were after someone over 25 and in the Yorkshire area. I’m neither, but felt like I could do the gig  and was willing to do what it takes.

It helps to have a sample of your playing on hand, even if it’s pretty rough. I sent them a youtube video of my group playing Autumn Leaves, nothing over the top, but just to show I could function in a group setting. I don’t think 8 minutes of Billy Sheehan-esque shredding would’ve gotten me too far;  but I digress.

After sending them all this information along with a little history of my bassing thus far I got a reply. The VERY first thing that was commented on was my appearance, apparently I look like Berry Oakley. This, as it turns out, was one of the reason they gave me an audition!

All of the info thus far is stuff that gets reiterated thousands of times by pretty much every successful musician. And they were right, who knew?

That’s getting the audition. Now for actually doing it.

I try to be as flexible as I can with dates, I think there was only one date that I was definitely not able to do. Everything else could be shifted around with varying degrees of difficulty, as for the tunes themselves I had 16 songs to learn in 12 days, quite alot maybe, but not impossible.

I made the decision to really learn, memorise and internalise all of the tunes. It seems a much greater first impression if you play those tunes down cold as well as you would on a gig and also means you don’t have to be fumbling around with bits of paper with hastily scrawled notes written on them.

Fast forward a few days and i’m heading up to Hull for the audition. I live in Northants, so this is a £50+ train journey, I don’t really want to have that wasted, another incentive for getting everything down!

The audition itself was a 3 hour affair, longer than i’m used to but with 16 songs it makes sense. By this point all the groundwork should be done, it’ll be obvious whether you’ve done the work or not and there’s nothing that can be done by this point.

The songs were run through, I was given the full list of tunes (a good sign) and told they would be in touch. The next day I got an email saying the gig was mine if I wanted it! Very nice.

Most people know what they need to do to nail an audition, it’s obvious, you play the songs well with good feel and tone, make sure you act nice and that really does seem to be it, the appearance thing is helpful but I don’t consider it an essential, just an extra bonus.

As for finding the gig it’s a healthy mix up of searching everywhere you can think of and having a good group of friends who will hook you up because they know you can do the gig.

Those four criteria have worked for me, so that’s what i’m sticking with!