Suite: Charlie, I read in your Bio that you have spent a lot of time in hurting places: Uruguay, Columbia, India, inner-city Kansas City. What is it that drives you to these locales?
Charlie: You know, I’ve just always been drawn to those who are hurting. I’ve never really considered why that is. I guess it’s the Life that lives inside of me. There is nothing in Charlie Dodrill that is drawn toward suffering, pain or poverty, but when I said yes to Him, Divine Life began a life of its own inside of this body. It is this life that is attracted to brokenness because it is this Life that has the power to make whole again. I guess it’s like when you take a doctor on a mission trip to a place full of very sick people whom he can help. He comes alive in that setting and seeks out people who need him the most. It’s what he is made to do. Jesus, the Light, is drawn to dark places because that’s where light is needed. It is His life that has dragged me along with Him to the same places.
Suite: What are your feelings about the power of music to mend?
Charlie: The thing about music is that it can be a direct shot into your heart. I even started writing songs because of this. When I was a monk those two years, two hours of every day was devoted to worship. Sometimes, I would just start pouring my heart out to Him and I noticed something. I noticed that my heart was open when I was singing in a way that never happened when I was merely talking or thinking. I kept with it and before long, words were coming out of me describing things that existed deep below the surface of what my mind conceived. Soon, these words started rhyming and I was writing songs and I didn’t even know it!
The second thing I saw happen was the effect it had on those who ended up with recordings of these songs. I watched as people began to understand me for the first time as they heard my heart over and over again through the context of music. There are paradigms I have that I have never been able to explain in words very well when I’m just speaking. When people hear a different perspective (especially when it has to do with Theology) their intellectual “hackles” come up and they start to shut down with questions like, “What about this?” and “What about that?”
When they are listening to these same ideas set to music, those hackles come down because I think that we listen to music with our heart. Hearing something over and over set to music can really plant a seed deep in your heart without having to pass through our “filter.” This can be helpful and it takes the spiritual out of a completely intellectual realm and puts it in the realm of the heart and experience. We need both.
Suite: How has it brought mending to your own soul?
Charlie: Countless times, the Lord has spoken to me with a simple song bubbling up in my spirit if I pay attention. He has healed my heart with such things. I love how He works that way. It’s like an amazing artist who can make something profoundly beautiful with ordinary garbage. The Lord takes things that are already in our consciousness to speak to us things from His own great heart.
Suite: You talked a bit in your online journal about the role of discipleship. Has anyone mentored you musically? Spiritually? What was the most important thing you took away?
Charlie: Musical mentoring….not really. I kind of learn as I go. I did have a two-day session with my Uncle Bob when I was 15 on the piano. We were on the same wavelength musically and he could just teach me things really quickly. It was awesome. My mom signed me up for piano lessons when I was a kid, but I think I got kicked out after a couple months because I wasn’t learning to read music. I still don’t read music. Most of the songs I write, I can’t tell you the name of a single chord in the song. It’s sad. I need to fix that when I get the time.
Spiritual…yes. I have been blessed to be around some amazing men and women of God in my lifetime. Bob and Nina Lyon were a couple who had spent 60 years waiting on the Lord (type of prayer) for 10 hours a day. They had so much wisdom that helps me every day. Sesharetnamma from India was a literal “miracle woman” in India with whom I was privileged to spend a lot of time. I had 3 abbots when I was a monk who mentored me to one degree or another. Yeah, I’ve had some of those and I’m eternally grateful for them. My own parents have been wonderful mentors as well…from day one.
The most important thing I’ve taken away from any of my mentors is that life is truly all about Jesus and not about any of the peripheral things we so often focus on. I’ve been completely ministry focused, theology focused, missions focused, church structure focused, you name it, while thinking I was focused on Jesus….but I was not. The most important thing I’ve learned is that He is the culmination of all things and that my focus should never stray from Jesus Christ, the Author and Perfector of the Faith the He gave me.
Suite: What book in on your nightstand?
Charlie: You mean what books? Right now on my nightstand lies, “Therese of Lisieux: the Story of a Mission,” “Pilgrim’s Progress,” “Beginning Prayer,” “St. Martin de Porress: the Apostle of Charity,” “The Normal Christian Life,” “Good Morning, Holy Spirit,” and a Bible in Spanish and English.
No, I don’t spend all day in bed, reading!!!
To read Suite's full review of Charlie Dodrill's "Prologue to the Drama," click here.
