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- Margaret was honored with a Lifetime Fellowship by the Episcopal church in the diocese of Delaware for her work to end world hunger and promote interfaith understanding.
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MQ: Let's talk a little bit about songwriting. Where do you find inspiration?
MB: For me, it's just everyday experiences. I'm one of those people that, I'm listening to everything that's spoken. Sometimes people say the most incredible, little snippets or tag lines and they don't even realize it. I think, "Wow, that would be a great song title!" I'll go home and write or if I'm away, I'll call my phone, and sing it back to my phone, and put a little melody to it. But I just have a running tab of all that sort of stuff that happens in everyday life. Because the material is out there, it's just learning how to recognize it and being disciplined to get it down. Honestly, that's the biggest inspiration I have. And then after that...I believe in what I call "creative budget." It may not be a lot. For example, when I made a lot less money, my creative budget went towards candles. I had some really great smelling candles at a certain point in the week, I'd light those candles and just sit down and air out, and try to think about what ...things...you know, just think - open up your mind, enjoy yourself, think for a minute and relax. It's amazing what 'creative budget' can do. Now, my creative budget is if I'm in a city - playing in a city, my creative budget is that I need to get to the local art museum and I take a pad, and things that hit me, I'll write down. We all have little moments like that that are inspirational to us.
MQ: Do you have a favorite song that you've recorded through the years, or maybe that's had a certain reaction?
Jody: 'Say the Name' would be my favorite. It's 'INSPO' without being 'INSPO'. (laugh) It somehow rang the INSPO bell and I never meant it to. And every single chart it charted on - and I had no idea it was going to do that. Actually it's a really convoluted concept about protecting the name of Christ in our culture and not misusing it. So I was so surprised when it connected. And, in the chorus, it has a word 'immutable' and I never thought that would get past anybody...but somehow. (laughing)
MQ: When you sit down and ponder God, what things most amaze you about Him?
MB: Well certainly His grace, right what off the bat. God's grace - meaning the unwarranted favor. God's extension of His unwarranted favor to me, every single day, all day long. I've especially experienced it when I've least deserved it. The times that I've really messed up, when I've deliberately messed up, chosen poorly and so squarely against God. And yet, what He does in those situations is... He doesn't reward evil for evil. He somehow manages to not only allow the conviction to come on the poor choice but then also allows the grace to seep through - the grace in that instance being the will to press on, the will to be forgiven, and to forgive yourself and go forward. That's the most amazing thing to me about God.
MQ: What do you love most about music in general?
MB: Hmmm. I love that music bypasses the internal grid. When you're listening to a speaker, you can kind of put up your dukes a little bit and go, 'No, I don't think so...' - and when you're reading a book you can do the same thing. But music, because it has so many components - it has language, melody, instrumentation - there's so many different ways that you're being 'assaulted' in a sense, at one moment, that one of them is bound to slip through at the appropriate moment. It's one of the few mediums that translates that way across the globe. It bypasses all the things that we put up so we don't feel or get moved. It manages to get right beyond them.
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