Well that was strange. I wrote a blog about the new documentary, Paul McCartney: Man on the Run -and somehow another blog-in-the-works showed up today.
As longtime Beatles and McCartney fans we had to watch but it confirmed what we've long known, that we've never been Wings fans and never will be. But I did appreciate the portion of the doc about the period as the Beatles were breaking up and Paul assessed what would come next in an interlude when he wasn't on the run.
He's said that one of his goals was to grow up and at age 27 he chose a remote farm in Scotland to get that underway. He'd purchased the run-down property on the advice of his accountant but he had no real interest in it, But when he needed a hidey-hole from the oppressive media he went there with wife Linda and their kids to start over. He puttered and repaired and played, generally becoming a regular human being after years of being part of one of the most popular bands in the world. He also wrote music even though he'd thought of giving it up after a decade of a magical collaboration with John Lennon. Both McCartney and Ram were products of that time of creative fermentation.
Here we are in the season of Lent when lots of Christians chose to honour Jesus' forty days in the wilderness before his public ministry began by participating in different forms of reflection and self-denial. I'm not comparing Paul with Jesus ( John once compared the Beatles with Jesus and it didn't turn out well) but it is interesting that many people have needed their wilderness, or at least pastoral, interludes to recharge and reassess life's meaning.
During my years of ministry I had a couple of sabbaticals of several months and they were rejuvenating and spiritually enriching. The irony is that day-to-day, Sunday-to--Sunday ministry can become a soul-sapping grind. During one of those sabbaticals I spent a couple of months on a back-of-beyond farm at the end of a dirt road. Ruth was working but came for a three-day weekend every week and we loved the solitude. I also grabbed pockets of time for a few days or a week along the way, including three periods at Ghost Ranch in New Mexico. This is place of wild beauty where Georgia O'Keefe painted and Oppenheimer was filmed, All these experiences were important,
McCartney was one third of the way through his long and energetic life (to date) when he headed to the wilds. He's reinvented himself several times since then. I've never read or heard anything about Sir Paul's spiritual inclinations but renewal takes many forms. Sometimes we need to stop, look, and listen to experience the holy.
Here's a link for the CBC Radio interview with Oscar-winning documentarian Morgan Neville about working with McCartney and making the film :
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