Night Vigil

Kentucky rains keep pouring down. We’re getting one good thunderstorm a week, and tomorrow promises to be another clashing of fronts over our lands.

I am vexed that fall has not arrived in more definite ways. Sure, there are plenty of concocted expressions of fall about: Halloween decorations are emerging from storage, football games are being played, pumpkins are being sold outside grocery store entrances. But, that’s about it really. Only the occasional crisp night has kept my spirits up and reminded me fall is surely to come.

The good news is that tomorrow is supposed to be the tipping point. Another front is to move in, and this – they say – will be the one that sends us into harvest moons and chilly nights. It would be wonderful if it does, for Thursday I am to travel to Evansville, IN for an afternoon at a fall festival. Eating caramel apples and drinking apple cider just won’t feel right if it’s still in the upper 80’s, which it has been the last few days.

I came to Kentucky for the fall after all. Well, not entirely, but that was certainly a key part of the decision: the gray, cloud-filled skies, the full moon shining behind a cloth of fog, the amber remains of corn fields harvested and dying, the lick of flames close to cold skin from a blazing bonfire, the feel of jeans and sweatshirts on a Saturday afternoon while raking leaves under crisp, crystal blue skies. Clearly being away from fall has left romantic visions.

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I learned today that Jon Brennan lives in Owensboro. The name didn’t strike me at first as being anyone worth mentioning; perhaps it doesn’t you either? But upon further discussion, I was reminded Jon Brennan was the “cowboy” on the Real World 2: Los Angeles. That may ring the bell for you. But for those of you still clueless, I’ll fill in the rest of the picture.

Jon Brennan was one of the fortunate few to be selected as a member of the Real World – a show begun by MTV in the early 1990’s that brought a group of young adults together who were beginning to make life happen for them. The first year was a wild success – complete with aspiring singers, actors, dancers and Eric Nies. The second year, then, was much anticipated, and it was much more competitive for people to be selected. Jon Brennan just happened to be selected, for God only knows what reason.

He was a cowboy with a passion for family and Jesus. In fact, he might be considered the first token Christian to be placed in a reality TV show – someone destined to be ridiculed and destined to provide good drama. Both were true of Jon Brennan. I remember watching as a teenager the Real World 2, and recalling how absurd it was to cast a good ol’ boy from the country in a show grossly about hedonism and in a city of fast lanes and low morals.

My dismay over MTV’s decision has only been compounded and multiplied. Now that I have lived in Los Angeles, and now that I currently live in Owensboro, I can’t think of a more shocking and disjointed cultural trick than taking Jon Brennan out of Owensboro and dropping him in TV land.

But if Jon Brennan found the Real World to be too big of a pond for his small town values and dreams, it didn’t take him long to find a place more his size. He returned home. He returned to Owensboro, where he continues to live, and he lives here having earned a great deal of respect from this community (no doubt the result of being largely ridiculed by wider American culture). He sang here for the 4th of July, finding nothing but applause and wild enthusiasm for unashamed patriotism. He works as a music and youth director at one of the local churches, continuing to proclaim through his wardrobe and actions that “real men love Jesus.”

All the world is a stage, Shakespeare said. Perhaps it is more appropriate to say that the world is full of stages of varying exposures. There are cosmopolitan stages, national stages, regional stages … and then there are places like Owensboro.

…

That reminds me of a quote I heard recently, which has no connection to Jon Brennan or fall, but I enjoyed it:

“God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.” – Voltaire

Blessings,

Wes