This past week marked what would've been by maternal grandpa's birthday. 11 March 2025 was 110 years since the birth of Evan Lamar Stark. He died on 12 March 1976, just a day after turning 61. I was 10 years old at the time. Nonetheless, my Grandpa Stark and I were quite close. I have many memories of our times together, which are probably some of my earliest memories. We did interesting things, like like picking wild asparagus from irrigation ditches and putting our pickings into paper grocery sacks, taking it home, preparing it, and having some for supper.
Next will mark 50 years since his passing. His death was my first experience of someone dying. There was a young girl in our small town, Julie Rose, who died suddenly at about this same time. I remember going into the funeral home, to the room where my grandpa's body was laid out and seeing him. There was an overpowering smell of roses. Ever since, when I smell roses, my mind goes right back to that moment. These days, as opposed to when I was younger, it doesn't seem a bad memory.
Wild asparagus
12 March was also the one year anniversary of the death of Michael Knott. Knott also passed away at the age of 61. Post-mortem, he is usually dubbed an "alternative Christian musician." I suppose the "alternative" adjective is meant to denote that he was not a mainstream CCM musician à la Amy Grant, Michael W. Smith, The Newsboys, etc. Indeed, he was not part of that crowd.
What makes Knott's music Christian in my view is that it is real, grittier than the light pop stuff. In addition to recording 35 albums as part of various groups as well as solo, Michael founded two record labels: Blonde Vinyl Records and Tooth and Nail Records. In an interview, he said something that has stuck with me: "Basically, I'm a human being and I believe in Christ, period. It doesn't make my life rosy, it doesn't make my life terrible, it doesn't do anything with that. I know Christ." Michael, too, battled with alchohol. He did so honestly. I've used this in a homily. If you're interested, you'll want to check out Knottheads.
It bears noting that Knott was raised Catholic and died a practicing Catholic. During what turned out to be his last years, he served as an Extraordinary Minister of Holy Communion, taking the Eucharist to the elderly, the sick, and the homebound.
These seems fitting reflections given that on Ash Wednesday you are urged to consider your own mortality, invited to find life's meaning through the Paschal Mystery, the meaning of your own birth, life, and death. A good Christian understanding of death is, by, through, and in Christ, it is God's ultimate healing.
Being a time for repentance, Lent is a time for healing. Lent, as Trevor Hudson describes it, is "a time gift." Written long before Pope Francis famously calling "the Church as a 'field hospital,' concerned more with those who suffer than with defending its own interests, taking the risk of novelty, in order to be more faithful to the Gospel," our traditio for this Friday of the First Week of Lent is Michael Knott singing his song "Hospital"-
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