Dear friends:

I finally got around to renting the DVD about Johnny Cash, "Walk the
Line."  I had resisted because I had heard his songs were sung by the actor
and not Johnny himself, whom I liked a lot.  But other good things I heard
made me want to see it.  Although a native Tennessean, I am not a
country-music fan, but I like Johnny Cash's rich, soulful voice and the
unique, special sound of his accompaniment.

The acting and singing were superb.  Joachin Phoenix did such a good job
mimicking Cash that it was almost spooky, such as with voice and body
inflections and nuances.  Phoenix had what appears as a cleft palate and
online research revealed that Cash did not, and it turned out that Phoenix
does not either, but it is a birth mark.

Reese Witherspoon also did a fantastic job doing June (Carter) Cash, in
both personality and voice.  Her voice imitation of June Carter was so real
it gave me nostalgia.  I met June Carter one night when I was visiting my
grandmother in Cookeville, Tennessee when I was a teenager back in about
1946.  Before they were so famous, June, Mother Maybelle, and the Carter
Family were performing at a nearby drive-in theater, and I decided to
go.  I was able to meet and speak with the then 17-year-old June, just one
year older than I.  With her effervescent voice and countryfied, twangy
accent, she looked at me and blurted, "You've got the prettiest
eyeballs."  I'll never forget it.  My brush with fame.  (If not so young
and timid, I would have gotten her phone number.  But God had other and
better plans for both our lives.)

Both Johnny and June were committed Christians, and God brought Johnny from
the depths of difficulty.  A later close fried of Billy Graham, his
spiritual journey was rocky but a testament of God's grace.  Although a
believer in Jesus Christ from childhood, Cash fell hard, then describes his
epiphany in Nickajack Cave on the Tennessee River:

"By early October 1967, I'd  had enough. I hadn't slept or eaten in days,
and there was nothing left of me. J.R. (his friends called him that) was
just a distant memory. Whatever I'd become in his place, it felt barely
human. I never wanted to see another dawn. I had wasted my life. I had
drifted so far away from God and every stabilizing force in my life that I
felt there was no hope for me.  I knew what to do. I'd go into Nicajack
Cave, on the Tennessee river just north of Chattanooga, and let God take me
from this earth and put me where He puts people like me.  If I crawled in
far enough, I thought, I'd never be able to find my way back out, and
nobody would be able to locate me until I was dead, if indeed they ever
could.  I parked my jeep and started crawling, and I crawled and crawled
and crawled until, after two or three hours, the batteries in my flashlight
wore out and I lay down to die in total darkness. Absolute lack of light
was appropriate, for at that moment I was as far from God as I have ever
been.  My separation from Him, the deepest and most ravaging of the various
kinds of loneliness I'd felt over the years, seemed finally complete. It
wasn't.  I thought I'd left him, but He hadn't left me.  I felt something
very powerful start to happen to me, a sensation of utter peace, clarity,
and sobriety. I didn't believe it at first. I couldn't understand it.  How,
after being awake for so long and driving my body so hard and taking so
many pills--dozens of them, scores, even hundreds--could I possibly feel
all right? The feeling persisted though, and then my mind started focusing
on God. He didn't speak to me--He never has, and I'll be very surprised if
he ever does--but I do believe that at times He has put feelings in  my
heart and perhaps even ideas in my head. There in Nickajack Cave, I became
conscious of a very clear, simple idea: I was not in charge of my destiny.
I was not in charge of my own death. I was going to die at God's time, not
mine. I hadn't prayed over my decision to seek death in the cave, but that
hadn't stopped God from intervening."

Cash then goes on to tell how he got out of the cave. He just started
crawling in the dark, felt a breeze and followed it out until he saw
light.  By God's grace, he continued to follow the light.

Jim