When Rainbows Were Real

My Reaction to the Death of Keith Green

When Rainbows Were Real

That's when rainbows were real.
That's when they weren't just optical illusions.
That was when the woods of the northern rainforest were completely soaked after a good long rain.
A good long storm.
That's when the rainbow appeared, bright, shiny, radiant, solid, against the clouded skies,
When the leaves were dripping with raindrops
And the ground was wet with water without being messy with watery mud.
And the air was cool without being cold
And the bark was damp.

That was when rainbows were real.

That's when rainbows were real.
That's when bright, iridescent rainbows appeared,
And if you follow them,
And if you follow them long enough,
They can lead you to a magnificent and marvelous treasure,
Making you a very wealthy person in an instant,
Or they can take you to a hidden or long-lost paradise,
Where the people you meet
Harmonize and resonate with you,
A place where you will never leave if you were given the choice.

That was when rainbows were real.

That's when rainbows were real.
That's when they were never questioned.
When they appeared, they seemed to last forever.
And they actually took you somewhere
Or to something
Or to someone
Someone meaningful
Someone relevant
Or maybe someone who was on a journey
Just like you
And you shared something in common
Or a few things
Maybe a number of things
Wherever the end of the rainbow brought you
It changed your life
For the better
Sometimes
For the best.
It was amazing.
It was awesome.
It never disappointed.

That was when rainbows were real.

But now people have been taught since they were young kids
That rainbows don't exist
They are actually tricks of the eyes
They're not as solid anymore
They're not as bright anymore
They don't show up as often after the rain
After the storm
Science has explained it all for them
How they appear
When they appear
Where they appear
Why they appear
Now when you see a rainbow after a good storm,
And you follow it,
You will follow it and follow it and follow it
And never get to the end.
You follow it and you follow it and you follow it
And it seems to get further away rather than closer
And instead of the end of the rainbow having a clear destination
It starts getting fuzzy at the ends
Then it starts fading away, sometimes slower, sometimes not.
All in the same day.

The thrill is gone.
The magic is gone.
The hope is gone.
The anticipation is gone.
It's just a nice decoration
Hanging in the cloudy sky
Like the moon
And the stars
And the twilight and the dawn.
Nothing to pay attention to.
Nothing to notice.
Because scientists has told you they have It all figured out.
Nothing to see here.
But wet muddy ground.
Not in the northern rainforest
But on the sidewalks of the city.

You better take your meds.

************

Okay, so why did I write this?

I wrote it because I watched a video on YouTube about the biography of Keith Green.
In the late seventies and early eighties, I had just gotten back into Christianity, but with even more of a determination. I came back on my eighteenth birthday after some woman I'd never seen before saw me on the bus wearing a blue cape I made (I didn't know how to make a cloak and I couldn't find the pattern for it), got the guts to walk fast toward the front of the bus where I was sitting, plopped down beside me, and started abruptly "sharing" the good news about Jesus Christ.

I told her no, I wasn't interested. I left the Lutheran church a year after I was confirmed, not just because I wasn't ready for what I experienced, (the sanctuary was already missing decorations and wasn't interesting), but I was not only bored, the next week after I was confirmed, I was suddenly slammed with a package that came through the mail that had envelopes for donations for church offerings on Sundays when they passed around the offering plate during intermission when music from a famous classical German composer or other baroque music writer played on the organ upstairs. Other things which came through the mail were a copy Guideposts magazine and one from some guy named Norman Vincent Peale. I did know it at the time, but the church I was going to a conservative branch of Lutheranism. Not only that, but my godparents, Paul and Martha Meüller, were into what was called the New Thought Movement...something I never heard of but wasn't able to get away from in my teenage years after I started staying away. So after my (what I consider) my brief time in Christianity, and it being a time when the sixties generation was going away yet Ronald Reagan (and Margret Thacher) hadn't ascended to power yet....

Anyway, here was this person pressuring me to accept Jesus and my Lord and Savior. But as with virtually all evangelists, she didn't know what the word "no" means. I tried to politely and patiently explain to her why I wasn't interested. I heard the gospel before. I already knew about the Garden of Eden, about Adam, Eve, the snake, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, the Tree of Life, sin, Satan, suffering, death, Jesus, the cross, the sacrifice, salvation, Hell, Heaven...pretty much all that. I tolerated the whole Sunday School teaching for about seven years. It was boring...just as boring as grade school later became. But she wouldn't stop talking about the gospel. She just kept going.

Sure, I was about to lose my cool a couple of times, but since I was raised by an overbearing person who wouldn't stop talking on Saturday mornings after the workweek when the radio talk show hosts were on (Rush Limbaugh, anyone?), I reigned myself in a couple of times. But unlike other people, she wouldn't take no for an answer. She just kept going with every rebuttal. After about maybe twenty minutes of this, and not being able to escape this because she blocked my way by sitting right next to me (I wasn't in the sideways seats meant for the disabled), I could only get her to shut up and relent to letting her pick me up one Sunday evening and take me all the way out to the burbs for church service. She was so convinced I was going to hell because I was wearing a cape and interested in the occult. What was she doing riding the bus to college when she already had a nice car? But some weird reason, I didn't think that far ahead when she pulled up to my parent's place.

Fast forward to Keith Green. I don't remember what or when I heard his voice for the first time, but being the person I am, I tried to get as much of his music into my life as I could. Him and the 2nd Chapter of Acts were the thing. I must have really listened to his music over and over again on my tape recorder a lot, though I never bothered to sing along. I just wanted to absorb the sound. There wasn't a musician, Christian or otherwise, that could touch him. No, I didn't consider it worship music. I just considered it not just Christian music, not just the best Christian music, but the best music. It took me away from any misery I had in my life (which was a lot and was building as time went on. Christianity was not making it go away either...it was making it worse, in spite of the young, laid-back fundamentalist atmosphere of the church I was going to that was held in a large warehouse...something that would have attracted people my age to...in spite of it being in a middle class part of town). That was the music of my lonely life.

I don't know how long it was between the first time I heard Keith Green's music, but one day when I was driving down the street alone listening to the radio, I heard the announcer on the Christian radio station I was listening to say that Keith was killed. Killed. Like, wait what? Are you serious? After that, there wasn't anything the announcer could say in consolation that was going to take my shock away. I didn't want to accept what happened. I didn't know how he died or if the announcer mentioned it, but imagined he was in a car accident. Whatever the case, I was devastated. I was crushed. This wasn't the news I wanted to hear driving home. No, I didn't cry over it, but I did go to church and talk about it with other Christians I knew in this megachurch, but all they did was justify it in a sober tone of voice. It was disturbing, but it didn't sink in that this wasn't the normal group of people. These were Evangelical Fundamentalists, no matter how young and relaxed they were. They were Jesus believers. Whatever they were, it didn't make my perspective much better. I just had to wait for my shock to slowly fade away. He just wasn't with us anymore. That's the way it is.

So here it is, decades later, miles later...that is, miles away from where I used to live, long after Tower had went out of business (not that I bought his music there), but I'm just giving you an idea of the distance between then and now. I'm watching YouTube when the algorithm comes up with the story of Keith Green. Keith Green. A name I hadn't heard for a long time. When I found out there was a biography on him, and it was only done a couple of months ago, I had to stop everything and watch It, no matter how long it was, no matter what time it was. By now, I was pretty sure Keith's death didn't hit anyone as hard as it did me...or that was the impression I was getting. It ended up that I knew absolutely nothing about him. I just knew what his voice sounded like, and that's it. It's not like I had any other means of finding out more about anyone, let alone him. It was just the radio and the tape recorder. (Dad wasn't liberal with money.)

What opened up was a person and a world that was so much other than mine...so unfamiliar. He was a full-blood hereditary Jew. I was nowhere near that. I was what people would probably call a mixed-breed, a mixed-blood, a...something. But I'm Black. Part Geechee. I hope I never consider myself "other" than Black and a Black woman. Who cares what I look like in a hat or a scarf? Generations of ancestors can't...won't...get erased by mislabeling. But I digress.

When I was watching this, I didn't know Green was a musician prodigy. He was already taking music lessons, and even made on tv and was already signed to a record deal. He did all that before reaching adulthood. He was far more than what was presented to me in the late seventies/early eighties. I can't tell you how impressed I was, considering my own dad blocked me from moving forward in music, because he not only felt like he didn't make it (he sang like an Irish tenor but he couldn't read music. He just played piano by ear...not good enough for the music world back then). What he didn't know until way later is the son he left behind because of a divorce ended up playing backup for some of the most famous guys in the fifties and sixties. Me? He stopped me experimenting on the piano whenever he heard me getting too good. Whatever the case, hearing Green's backstory made my appreciation go off the charts.

Just knowing a more full account of him caused me to see him more surrealistically. He lived such a life that wasn't even possible for a female, let alone a woman like me. It also made me see that music like his was the only thing that made me see life back then in a more...trancendent?...ethereal?...other-dimensional?...some kind of non-ordainary way. Ever since him and the 2nd Chapter of Acts, there wasn't another Christian musician or group that could touch them. And when The 2nd Chapter broke up and two of the three got married and lived ordainary lives, that was it.

Maybe Andres, Blackwood, and Company came close, but as much as I wanted them to take their place, they couldn't. Is it because these songs weren't just worship songs? Was it because they told stories or they spoke to a different era? Was it because the lyrics were put together better? What? I don't know. But after them, every other Christian in music just sucked. I don't know how else to say it.

************

Oh, I didn't realize I composed this in June, during Pride Month. It was a coincidence. Rainbows and all that.

Rainbows are a myth.