Carman's Music

I hope that these powerful songs will bless you greatly.

"Radically Saved"

==========================================

"Lord of All"

===========================================

"No Monsters"

Even though my folks and I never were crazy about horror flicks or violent shows, I still found his song "No Monsters" to be a blessing.

Here's why.
When I was in second grade and still going to public school, I had been transferred in the middle of the year because of religious persecution. In my old school, my last homeroom teacher there had been very Snape-like(in fact, was marginally worse than Snape.) She had a oppressive hierachy in her classroom in this order: At the top were children who shared her religion and would seek to please her in any way they could including harassing the others; in the middle were those souls who were either undecided or had been converted to this religion and had not been admitted to the top tier for social reasons; at the bottom were people like me who had been taught the Christian faith or had decided to be true to themselves by doing what they had always done.
She was particularly unfair to children who were monotheistic, which is frankly weird considering that those of us she had to work with had been raised to respect authority and were careful to not cause her trouble. That was one major source of stress.
The second ingredient of my nightmares was comprised of the reading material she assigned us. Again, as in other matters, she showed partiality in the reading portion of her curriculum. Monotheistic kids were getting almost nothing but horror stories and the darker side of fantasy(I can remember seeing, though not reading, Goosebumps on her shelf), stuff about witches, vampires, and ghosts. She would push these books harder at me if I said something Christian. She had almost nothing normal, or even normal fantasy(stuff about critters like fairies, unicorns, elves, griffins).

I had to read this noxious stuff because the teacher kept giving me assignments that made not reading not an option. That teacher kept insisting that I keep those tomes, even when I protested. I did not like it and with good reason because it did affect me adversely. I found it increasingly harder to be good and nice(I have wanted to be like Jesus my whole life). I had more and more trouble remembering to pray. My sleep was becoming more and more restless. Nightmares came much more frequently with the passing weeks. For the first time in my life, I feared closet monsters and other boggles that seemed to love to tramp through my room in the dark.
It took only a fortnight for my mother and father to put two and two together. During this time, we had gotten a recording of Carman's music that included the "No Monsters" song. Between that and Mom and Grandma telling me that God allows His children to tell demons to get lost and that we don't need to live in fear, I began to revert to my old self.

In the end, I was transferred to a school where my teacher was much more tolerant of differing beliefs. I remember her fondly since she was kind to all of her students and gave everyone in her class a fair hearing.

At my new school some weeks later, my new teacher told everyone to bring their favorite book in to read to the class. At the time, my favorite book was "No Monsters" which was based on the song. I badly wanted to bring it in, but my imagination immediately sped back to that one horrible teacher's behavior(even though I knew my new instructor was alright and not like my old one at all)and for a minute I was afraid. In the end, I did bring it in. I was very glad I did. The other students loved it! A number of them also knew the "No Monsters" song and were happily chattering about it for the rest of the day. Even my teacher seemed pleased with it. She even invited me to bring it in again sometime!