I am unsettled today. Between the pauses in snowfall, briskly three-dimensional and aloof, I sense a strange and perilous lag inside my own skin. Just now, I feel foreign to my space in the world. I am weary of winter and the gray concoctions that inhabit seemingly every second. I find myself longing for more than just the temporal warmth and spring and rebirth of earth and its mavens. The snow is blowing parallel to the ground, north to south, and is as dense as I’ve ever seen in these southern United States. The only green color within my vantage point is the small cluster of longleaf pines across the avenue, now hosting small pockets of cold.

I find myself longing for more than these slow, sublime, occasionally frustrating days I lead, longing toward peace and rest, longing away from here and now, away from encumbered toil and aimless labors. Just outside the coffee shop window, a man is digging at the ground, shoveling away mud and dirt from a trench. The paved concrete has been ripped away, surely the result of a busted water pipe, revealing long-hidden soil and a slow trickle of water. All the while snow floats about, coating the worker and his tools in a baptism of sorts. The pines collect it in their tendrils. It stockpiles atop cars. The earth tends to take such reckless actions. The world is, after all, subject to heaven from whence originates its own christening. Occasionally, I take notice of such occurrences of blessing being bestowed upon the most unlikely subjects. To see it inside a religious sanctuary is one thing altogether expected, but to witness it on the urban concrete of the city is quite another, rather unexpected and most welcome. Sun shimmering through the parted clouds, humanity wheeling and whirling about, the wet painting of falling snow and rain: all the Good and Remembering grace.

I would wish to be settled, to be at peace with this skin I am given, to pause and recognize that my being foreign to this world is not necessarily all that terrible a thing. For however long I yearn for tomorrow, however deeply I long for rebirth, however fearful or comfortable I am with myself is, in some small measure, an entrenched and guttural hope that God continues to prepare a place at his festival table for the slow and peculiar creatures we are, and the blessings we both unknowingly bestow and undeservedly receive, amid all our faith and lack thereof.

The years were 1993-1998. I, and a friend, Kevin Smith (neither the DC Talk guy nor the film director), were in a budding young acoustic folk-rock duet back when folk-rock duets were limited to The Indigo Girls (people sometimes called us The Indigo Boys), Simon & Garfunkel (a mighty nice pair to be compared with) and, more than likely a group you’ve never heard of, Big Bam Boo (my secret favorite ear-candy group of all time). In a move that opened many doors for us, we were invited to tour as Caedmons Call’s opening act throughout the year 1996. We took our 6-song, self-titled EP out on that tour and sold out of them fairly quickly. We then recorded our first and only full-length album in 1997, The Only Thing (produced by Don McCollister). That album, too, eventually sold out.

Fast-forward to 2005. Kevin and I, in a fit of for-old-time’s-sake nostalgia, decided to reprint that album because we wanted it to live on in the world a little longer since we’d had several requests for it over the intervening non-Ridgely years.

Fast-forward to this very day. We haven’t exactly sold out of them since that reorder. Dilemma: I have way too many of them currently taking up valuable space in my attic (AKA, workspace/office) and I want to clear some out so I can carve out an area to set up an easel, lay out some brushes, paint tubes, linseed oil and finally teach myself how to oil paint. So, I’m going to have an attic sale (I love sales, if you haven’t noticed) for the next however many days. Each copy of The Only Thing is $2 (+ S&H). Also available will be boxes of 5, 10 for those who want to spread some new-old music to your new-old friends. “But wait there’s more…. ” To further sweeten the pot, whenever you purchase any 2 of my solo records, I’ll throw in a free copy of the Ridgely CD. That, my friends, in Louisiana, is what we call “lagniappe” (pronounced, “lon-yap”) — a little something extra. Happy Mardi Gras, everybody.