I heard something very helpful recently in a sermon by John Zahl. He said that sometimes in life what seems like the end is really the middle. I think JAZ meant that when your situation feels like -- maybe is -- the end of the world, it may really be the hinge point to "A Whole New World" (Aladdin, 1992).

This insight is true in Christian experience. What looks like the end turns out to be the middle.

Which made one immediately think of Los Straitjackets, that ever welling spring of inspiration that consists of five (sometimes four) surfer/rockabilly musicians in Mexican wrestling masks. These chaps are a gift that keeps on giving. And what you come to find out is that their songs are pretty strictly controlled until the last third, sometimes even the last fourth. Los Straitjackets typically take the listener by surprise by "going crazy", in the best way, right at the end. It's almost a trick, but I call it inspiration. Their songs are the best at the end!

This podcast takes its cue from our masked Mexican-wrestler guitarists. Your life, and maybe now more than ever, is bound to be pretty down in some ways. The pandemic, and also the divided climate in the country, is wrecking a lot of things, and some of them are very good. (Personally, I think the damage to the mainline Christian churches, with exceptions, will prove to be huge. Mary and I watch institutions and causes into which we have poured our whole lives just collapsing, like sand from a shattered hourglass. This is true especially in the Church of England, where things were bad enough before the virus. There was a massive failure of nerve there.)

So hear the musical message of Los Straitjackets. When they sound like they are winding things down, Get Ready! The exuberant explosion is probably just around the corner.