Welcome to the Future

If you've been reading along with my unfolding book The Varieities & Illusions of Religious Experience, well, God bless you! You must be as crazy as I am.

Here's a bit of a break from weeks of heavy intellectual lifting as we head into a holiday weekend.

I'm a native Pennsylvania boy from the city. I now find myself living in West Texas having a slowly growing romance with country music and cowboy boots (I was already sold on "dress jeans," sweet tea, straw hats and barbeque). I don't like a ton of country music but the one artist I follow religiously is Brad Paisley. I love Paisley's voice, guitar skills, intelligence, humor and wry social commentary. Plus, he seems like a legitimately nice guy. So, two days ago when Paisley's new album American Saturday Night came out, I drove by WalMart to buy it.

You might hate country music and you might hate the track I'm about to recommend, but Paisley's song Welcome to the Future brought tears to my eyes. When I got home I played it for my wife and she started crying. I cried again.

It would be best to hear the song on a good sound system up really loud. In place of that here's a YouTube link which will probably go inactive for copyright violation as soon as I post it. If the link below is inactive click on this link and go to Paisley's site where you can play Track 3 Welcome to the Future on your computer.



The lyrics to the song:

When I was ten years old,
I remember thinkin' how cool it would be,
when we were goin' on an eight hour drive,
if I could just watch T.V.

And I'd have given anything
to have my own PacMan game at home.
I used to have to get a ride down to the arcade;
Now I've got it on my phone.

He-e-ey...
Glory glory hallelujah.
Welcome to the future.

My grandpa was in World War II,
he fought against the Japanese.
He wrote a hundred letters to my grandma;
mailed em from his base in the Philippines.

I wish they could see this now,
where they say this change can go.
Cause I was on a video chat this morning
with a company in Tokyo.

He-e-ey...
Everyday is a revolution.
Welcome to the future.

He-e-ey...
Look around it's all so clear.
He-e-ey...
Wherever we would go and well we...
He-e-ey...
So many things I never thought I'd see...
happening right in front of me.

I had a friend in school,
running-back on a football team,
they burned a cross in his front yard
for asking out the home-coming queen.

I thought about him today,
everybody who's seen what he's seen,
from a woman on a bus
to a man with a dream.

He-e-ey...
Wake up Martin Luther.
Welcome to the future.
He-e-ey...
Glory glory hallelujah.
Welcome to the future.

Obviously, it is the last part of the song that catches me. I know there's a lot of concern from people in my life (again, I live in West Texas one of the reddest areas in the US) about President Obama. But as a Christian and an American I'm just grateful that I got to see, live, the election of the first African-American President. From slave ships to November 4, 2008. What a sad but heroic journey. I wish MLK could have seen it. As well as the unnamed souls who were brought in chains to this City on a Hill.

Welcome to the future.