Close Encounter With A Mat Knife

OK, so I had one. I had just changed the blade to a new one. Extremely sharp. Not paying attention and talking away while doing some paper cuts, before I knew it, I had slashed my thumb to the bone. It was so fast I didn’t even feel it until after it happened. Then, oddly enough, there was only the recollection of pain – there was never a pain in the moment of slashing. Later on I realized that in the recollection I was just making the pain up, because in the moment of the cut the blade was so sharp and the act was so fast that there was no time for the pain.

My brain remembered the pain where it should have been, but wasn’t. So what was pain but something my mind made up.

Meanwhile blood everywhere, rush to the bathroom, clean the cut, (pretty scary looking, but straight and simple) apply the bandages. Wonder: Should I get stitches? Very deep. Decide to just bind it with a bandage. A half inch slash on the meaty tip of my left thumb. War hero.

I handled fear. After all… Just a thumb. Then I began to learn for the next 2 weeks just all the amazing things a left thumb does in life. Can’t tie shoes, can’t button my right shirt sleeve, can’t shower with any normalcy, can’t play the guitar, and on and on.

Every three days I change the bandages. Looks about the same each time, but I can just feel all those little guys in there just knitting and mending away. It’s kind of exciting, really, how the body heals.

So I decide to experiment and stimulate the process. Each morning as I wake I lie there and envision the knitting. I’m into quantum physics and so I take it to the atomic level in my imagination – right down to the shifting and organization of the molecules and atoms. I stop looking at it to determine the extent of the injury and instead hold the vision of the perfect thumb in my imagination. The atom/molecule reorganization game is just a mind game that I play with myself for a few moments every morning.

But it works. After 2 weeks I discard the bandages for good. Let the air in. Oh, I’m careful with it. I baby the left hand. But I hold to the thought of the perfect thumb and mentally rearrange the atoms into their rightful place.

It’s now 2 weeks since I removed the bandages. 4 weeks since I encountered the mat knife. I still feel those little guys workin’ away in there hauling and shifting those atoms, but from the outward appearance there’s no cut, no scar – just normal thumb.

What happened here? I mentally reconstructed my body. In the normal order of things I always had a perfect thumb, but fear resulting in a confused mind created a gap in that concept – a cut. When I got my mind back in order, my body followed suit. I know that if I were stronger mentally, I could have done it faster. It just takes practice. Must have something to do with the way Jesus worked. “Whatsoever things you see that I do, you can do also.”

Pretty amazing.

Tom Tipton

Tom Tipton grew up in Washington D.C. As a child he would get up every morning before school and hustle over to the White House and shine the shoes of the visiting dignitaries outside the fence as they entered for meetings with the President. Later on in life he was invited to sing for three different Presidents there in that same hallowed building.

I just finished 5 intense days of recording with Tom here in NYC. Tom just celebrated his 75th birthday and is this man ever still going strong! He still does probably 200 dates a year and is best known for singing at Rev. Robert Schuler’s Crystal Cathedral as a regular – over 120 times. He’s traveled the world and in between takes he kept me totally entertained with the stories of his amazing life – including the one where as a child he sat on the knee of the great Mahalia Jackson.

We’re doing a “Best of Tom Tipton” CD that will cover the musical highlights of his life. I had the great opportunity yesterday to sit and listen to his 7 CDs made over the last 40 years – a treasure trove of music defining the history of the African American Negro Spiritual. These were and are songs that are the backbone of our country, the heart of America, irrespective of color – songs like Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child, That Old Rugged Cross, Every Time I Feel The Spirit, What A Friend, How Great Thou Art. The list goes on and on.

We also recorded four new ones. Well, not new songs, but new recordings of classic songs. We did What A Wonderful World (the classic rendition recorded by Louis Armstrong a number of years ago). Move over Louis. This is a new version that will just make you glow and be glad to be alive.

We recorded a little known, but gorgeous Irish air called In A Cottage In Old Donagle that has one of those melodies that only the Irish can seem to come up with. An African American man singing an Irish air, you say? Made a believer out of me. Tom puts you in the green hills of Ireland on a moonlit night in the spring. He puts you there – goose bumps and all.

We did an international version of Sibelius’ Be Still My Soul that ought to stop war on earth for once and for all. This is a great classic melody that I’ve known all my life, but I’m sorry to say that I’d never stopped and investigated the words. I think my favorite is the second verse.

Be still, my soul: the hour is hastening on
When we shall be forever with the Lord.
When disappointment, grief and fear are gone,
Sorrow forgot, love’s purest joys restored.
Be still, my soul: when change and tears are past
All safe and blessèd we shall meet at last.

I’ve saved my favorite till last. Goin’ Home is another great melody I’ve known all my life, but the words, oh Lord, the words… This song just kills me. And I ask here and now that this be sung by Tom Tipton at my memorial whenever that may be. This is a great classic rendition that will go down in recording history as one of those moments where singer meets song and a moment beyond human reach is created. If it sounds here like I’m bragging, I’m not. I’m simply proud to be a part of the greatness of this man and the greatness of this song. This is what a life in music is all about.

Studio work is tough – exacting, focused, concentrated and exhausting. This 75 year old man was like a racehorse – always ready to do another take, always connected to the moment, learning, teaching, laughing, making me weep and leading the way with his rich mellifluous voice and his deep understanding of this superb music. At the end of the five days he sat on my couch and spoke of his fatigue. We were both worn out. But that is not what I’ll remember about this experience. What I’ll remember is Tom singing his life in my studio and the rare opportunity to produce a piece of history.

To listen to Tom's newest album, please click on the blog entry's title and be automatically redirected to our website.

Fear or Confidence-A Question of Balance

In tough financial times like these the choice always seems to lie between fear and confidence. Simply put, we fear running out of money and lose confidence in the support of the financial systems around us. Then everybody stops spending and begins to hoard their money out of fear. Result: recession.

When times are good we’re confident that our supply will be there tomorrow and so we buy what we need – not necessarily what we want, but what we need. We live civilized, without fear, in a state of grateful ‘enough’.

There is, unfortunately, a third choice that has no reality, no practicality. It is the selfish choice of overspending – better known as debt.

America is clearly at the result of this third choice today. And it’s not just big business, government and Wall Street that is to blame. It is the gross misconception that we, as Americans, deserve to have more than we produce. It is an unbalance of reality, a confusion of the truth.

Several years ago my wife and I cancelled all of our credit cards. I was an abuser of this faulty system. Gratefully I woke up one day and saw the light, and today we buy what we can afford. If I can’t afford something I need, then I work harder for it. I save for it. I am a happier man for this practice. We now live relatively debt free, separating the needs from the wants, buying only what we can afford. Once we got used to living this way, we found ourselves much happier and freer.

This is the true American way. Hard work and good thinking is the foundation that America was built on. Today America staggers because it has lost touch with its foundational thinking. Most Americans live in debt, that is, live out of balance with reality.

Our times simply reflect our thinking as a nation. It is time to rebalance. It is time to live clean.

This does not mean that we should live in fear and hoard. That too is a mistake. We must return quickly to confidence, to balance.

Confidence in what? Government? Big business? Wall Street? Heavens no! Rather, confidence in the eternal fact that God supplies. God directs. God controls. “Ask and it shall be given” is the Bible’s imperative. But I don’t believe that this means that God goes on supplying those who greed when debt is the result of greed.

I believe that God supplies those who need. That means that those who produce, receive supply equal to the quality of their production. What goes out comes back in. I understand that this is the way it works. I understand it because I see the principle manifested this way in my life.

I cannot speak for the poor. I’ve been penniless, but never poor. Poverty is a trapped mindset, a depression of hope. We, as a people, are just as responsible for poverty as we are for greed and gluttony. They are the two ends of the spectrum of human thought.

What can we do about it? Pray for the extremes and live clean. Give to the poor when we can and actively protest those who greed, but first clean up the poverty and gluttony in our own lives. First balance our own individual lives. Regain confidence in the right source of supply, the open font and spend God’s gifts wisely.

A rebalancing at this time is good, but we all need to participate. We all need to do our part, however small, in the rebalancing of America. If everybody stopped and reconsidered the balance of supply in their lives and adjusted accordingly, I can’t imagine that this would not be once more a nation of financial confidence.