Ben Got Married and the Lightning Bolt

It was pretty busy around here last week.

After the WoodSongs broadcast with the Governor, we had a lot of affiliate promos to record, I worked on the 2008 version of the Walden play, began the draft of the next WoodSongs III book, wrote a song for the next album, spent a lot of much needed Daddy time ... and our friend and band mate Ben Sollee got married.

It was a great wedding. The setting was 7:30PM, Friday evening at a historic home in downtown Lexington, in a garden surrounded by a 6 foot high red brick wall. Lots of plants and flowers and vines and trees and water falls. Abigail Washburn played her banjo along with Casey Driesssen on fiddle. It was all rather lovely, except for those thunder clouds roaming the skies in the distance.

I went with my 8 year old son, who was a perfect gentleman in his jeans and little suit jacket. We sat on a stone fence in the back of the yard as all the white folding chairs were filled. Ben and his bride walked down the garden path and took their place in front of everyone. To a person, most have watched Ben grow up and become a major talent on the cello, traveling the world with the likes of Bela Fleck and Abigail and Otis Taylor. He came to us on WoodSongs (that's Ben on the left of the pic) as a scrawny 17 year old over-playing hot dog ... of course, he's not 17 anymore :)

I watched my little son next to me and wondered what Ben's dad must be thinking at this moment. Time screams through us like a piercing bullet that we have no control over. Life is way too fast.

So it was Ben's moment of moments. The vows were being said. At the very second the bride said "I will" and Ben placed the ring on her finger, a lightening bolt struck in the distance directly behind them in full view of everyone. You could tell who was on their second and third marriage because all their eyebrows flew up on their foreheads.

An omen? I don't believe in such things ... until the fellow offering up the wedding vows forgot Ben's name.

Yikes!

Then, for some reason, I thought of that pretty brown haired girl shaped like my Martin guitar that I met this past Monday. I wondered what it would be like finding a girl like her, standing in a garden like this, seeing her across from me and vowing the rest of your days to loving and taking care of a girl just like that.

Now, there, my friends, was a lightning bolt :)