If my memory serves me well, I first met Donna Milgaten when I was in Salt Lake City for speaking engagements way back in the mid-1980s. I was there to help out a new Christian Action Council chapter and to help organize sidewalk counseling efforts at the abortion clinic there. Donna was one of a noble few who were taking on these difficult challenges. I was impressed with Donna's love for God and her family, her kindness and compassion, her insight and her musical talents -- and I'm pleased to say that it seems like all of these virtues have only grown stronger and deeper in the intervening years.
This post serves to introduce Donna Milgaten to you...through her music. In particular, I'm suggesting you read these comments from her MySpace page and then that you listen to her very moving song, "American Prayer" which you'll find there as well. It's terrific.
Oh, that the music of our churches was half as relevant, half as biblical as Donna's "American Prayer" is.
From Donna's page:
In this age and place and time we have an odd perspective on the world. We sit like Dorothy on our beds in the midst of the cyclone and watch the images swirling into view on the screen...
* perfectly manicured people in perfectly manicured settings fly by, pausing long enough to tell us what we really need to be satisfied;
* Carl Sagan wannabes ride by on the airwaves wowing us with the wonder of our meaningless existence as cosmic accidents;
* a televangelist relates the gospel that Jesus gives particular attention to the prayers of thousand dollar donors..
...and we get the uneasy feeling that we're not in Kansas anymore.
Look at the faces passing by on the streets- they are "harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd." They are bombarded every day with The Lie that there are no absolutes--and the casualties are strewn among the rubble of a society shaken off of its foundation. We are a culture that desperately needs a Solid Rock to stand on. In one way or another, we all grapple with all these issues of our day. Believers in Yeshua HaMashiach have the incredible treasure of His Word to guide us as we grapple. My searching and struggling to apply the One to the other sometimes takes the form of a song that I can't get out of my head until I've worked it out. I pray these songs will make people think and maybe even consider things from a little different perspective, and that the Ruach Ha'Kodesh will be poured out through all the spaces between each note and word. Thanks for listening!...
Shalom and agape,
Donna Milgaten
