Feeling the Love at the CMA Awards

The CMA awards tonight were touching and heartwarming to me. I am not usually a fan of award shows and I can’t remember when I watched the CMA awards all the way through, but tonight there was something about all of the performers.

I love that Garth Brooks, who recently came out of retirement, was given the entertainer of the year award. I love that all the famous singers on the front row know all the words to every song sung on stage and they sang along. 

I love that older singers like Reba McIntire were there and performed and are given respect they deserve. And that Alan Jackson was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. Seems not long ago he was one of the new stars. His music is like the old country music I grew up with when my brothers tuned the radio to the Grand Ole Opry coming out of Nashville, TN. Jackson sang two songs on the show, and I was familiar with them. I liked that. It was evident that the audience of stars and fans loved him.

I know country music changed when New York producers and agents moved into town, and older country music stars were pushed aside. But tonight’s CMA show gave me the feeling that the performers made a big effort to show diversity, and they asked for love and kindness to all people.

Although they were cautioned not to talk about politics or the horrors of the mass killings, they managed to show the grief and sadness we all feel for the victims.
 "Carrie Underwood gave an exquisite performance of Christian hymn "Softly and Tenderly" at the 51st Annual Country Music Association Awards on Wednesday night (Nov. 8), as the show's "In Memoriam" video tribute played in the background." 
This almost brought me to tears. She did a fantastic job singing this touching song and all those pictures behind her made a huge impact.

Some asked that we all come together and change things in our country. I didn't see the first of the show when some jokes were evidently made about our present state of politics by Carrie Underwood and Brad Paisley, hosts of the show.

For the first time in a long time, I enjoyed the music on this show. It was not all about tight jeans and sexy outfits so much as it was about getting back to the roots of country music and the values country folk usually grow up with. I might begin to tune in a country station on my Serious Radio sometimes. As a viewer, I felt the love those singers and musicians felt for each other and for their fans.

After the show I picked up a poetry book that was near by, Fluent in Rivers by Kathleen Brewin Lewis, and opened it to this poem that also made me feel warm inside.

Collusion on the Middle Provo

He knows it is my first time

so he is patient, leading me

down the path to the riverbed,

through meadows of red clover,

lamb’s ears, saffron yarrow.

He stands me amid the stones

in the river’s rush, places

the rod in my hand, covers

my hand with his, talks of technique:

how to cast, mend, hook, reel.

And so I unfurl, over and over again,

until I feel what he means:

the tug and tear of a fish on the line.

Let the line run when the fish jerks,

He coaches. Reel it smoothly in as the fish tires.

And when the trout rises, he laughs,

congratulates me, scoops

my fish into his net,

tells me I’m a natural.

He says to wet my hands

in the bracing current, then cup them

while he unhooks, lifts, puts the trout

in touch with me.

I want to press my lips to her,

she is so marvelous, pulsing, sleek

against my palms; instead I bend

and whisper, so he can’t hear me,

that I’m sorry for hurting her

and I wish her well.

I turn my back to him,

lower her into the glistening river

that snatches, bears her away.