Johnny Horton and the Meaning of Life

So here it is – the game:

1) Learn the #1 single in your country of origin in the week you were born.
2) Find it on YouTube.
3) Post it on your Facebook page without shame.

Sounded fine – a couple of Google clicks and I find out that the number one song on the Billboard Charts in June of 1959 was Johnny Horton “Battle of New Orleans.” I posted, but I cannot say without shame. While Johnny Horton was talented enough to earn a place in the Rockabilly Hall of Fame, and one has to bemoan his early death in an automobile accident, this song has never really done much for me. It was some consolation when I discovered that Wilbert Harrison’s “Kansas City” was atop the Billboard R & B charts when I was born.
So here’s a news flash, there are some things that you cannot change. I appreciate the wisdom of Reinhold Niebuhr’s prayer: God grant me grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed. I did not pray the prayer when I found out “Battle of New Orleans” was the number one song on the charts in June 1959. It really isn’t that tragic. There are things that cannot be changed. We cannot change our genetic makeup. We cannot change our past, including those early experiences for which we did not have words. I think the psychoanalytic insight is spot on, our early experiences, even those for which we did not have words, shape, in part, who we are. Neither our genetics nor our earliest experiences determine fully who we are, but they play a role and we cannot change them. This is part of the mystery of life. “One never recovers from being human” (Michael Eigen, Contact With the Depths, 9).
I just finished reading Rebecca Goldstein’s wonderful novel 36 Arguments for the Existence of God. The final chapter is beautifully written and filled with penetrating insights. We end up beholding a world that is lavished with our own disgust at the uncleanliness that pollutes us, and with our yearning for a mythical purity that remains untouched, and with our vertiginous bafflement at the self that is inviolably me and here and now, and with our desperate and incomplete sense of the inviolable selves of the others that we need so crucially, and with our fear of all that’s unknown out there and that can hurt us, and with our suspicion that almost everything out there will turn out to be unknown and able to hurt us (336).
For good measure, there is this complimentary reflection offered by Michael Eigen. As a human group we are in the midst of a great journey, exploring ways we make contact with reality, contact with subjectivity, ways we constitute reality and reality constitutes us. It is awesome to be a living being who feels, cries, laughs, sings, dies. Who hurts others and is hurt, who goes mad, becomes inspired, or is just happy to be alive to each day to the extent one can. Life never ceases being an unpredictable sea, raising up, dashing down, pressing us through ranges of emotions, more alive, threatened, empty, deadened, eager (Contact With the Depths, 8).
For me, God is part of the mystery and complexity of the human situation. God is one who holds us on the journey. God is the voice calling to us out of the whirlwind of our lives luring us toward wholeness, maturity, graciousness. The God I know in Jesus does not take away the mystery of the world and of existence. I don’t think I could believe in a God who simplifies too much. God is part of the mystery, beckoning with enough light to help us see the mystery more completely and navigate it with a measure of grace.
And so we try, as best we can, to do justice to the tremendousness of our improbable existence. And so we live, as best we can, for ourselves, or who will live for us? And we live, as best we can, for others, otherwise what are we? (Goldstein, 344).
And I see God as a companion on the journey to do justice to the tremendousness of our improbable existence, helping navigate the mystery and balancing living for others and self.
And I cannot change that Johnny Horton’s “Battle of New Orleans” was the number one song in America when I was born.

With Faith and With Feathers,

David

Surf's Up

And so this is Christmas, or at least the Christmas season. I should be listening to Christmas music, and I have a little. But The Beach Boys recently released Smile, an almost mythical album in rock history, and I have been listening to it. BTW there are two releases, a two-CD edition and a multiple-CD edition with countless outtakes and rare moments. I am writing about the two-CD version, particularly about the Smile album.
In the first edition of The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock and Roll (1976), Jim Miller writes: Designed as Brian’s crowning achievement, Smile would supposedly place the Beach Boys right next to the Beatles in the pantheon of arty rock. Intended as a follow-up to Pet Sounds, Smile was never released. There were rumors that Brain Wilson had destroyed many of the tapes, which were obviously false. His notes to the new CD are wonderful.
Some of the Smile songs were released, some in slightly different versions, on subsequent Beach Boys albums. In 2004, Brian Wilson performed Smile live and released a CD of the songs performed by his band. This was an updated version of the original, with some new words and arrangements. And now the original Smile sessions are out.
So as I am listening, I am particularly struck by the song Surf’s Up. I am attaching a link to Brian Wilson’s 2004 performance of the song, and will post the youTube video on my Facebook page. It is a delightful and enchanting song – complex and beautiful. It is an invitation to wonder and to love. Brian Wilson has said “Music is God’s voice,” and listening to this song there is, for me, that quality about it.
Here’s what’s particularly fascinating. I am hearing this song as if for the first time, but I know it can’t be. In college I listened a lot to the Beach Boys, mostly Endless Summer. But that album did not have one really great Beach Boys song, Good Vibrations. So I bought a later compilation that did. I dug it out of the box in the closet where my vinyl records are stored. There it is, side two, “Surf’s Up” – one of the Smile songs released later. I must have heard it then, but it didn’t register. In 2004, I bought Brian Wilson’s Smile. Surf’s Up is there, but again, it did not grab hold of me.
Why now? It’s a bit of a mystery to me why this song has found its way into my heart and soul. I am glad it is there. If music is God’s voice, maybe this experience says something about that voice of God. Maybe we will miss it the first time we hear the story or song, maybe even the second and third and fourth times, but keep listening.
I heard the word – wonderful thing! A children’s song. A children’s song – have you listened as they play? Their song is love and the children know the way.
Might be a Christmas song after all. Surf’s Up!

With Faith and With Feathers,

David

Brian Wilson: Surf's Up

Thanksgiving

Being who I am, one of the apps I have on my i pod is the Poetry magazine app. Yesterday I thought it might be enjoyable to take a spin on that app looking for a poem for the day. The Poetry app allows you to spin for poems in certain categories – and you can choose different combinations of categories. So I looked at “gratitude” which could be paired with “youth,” “aging,” “family” etc. I paired it with “life.” To my delight I found this wonderful poem:

Although the wind
blows terribly here
the moonlight also leaks
between the roof planks
of this ruined house.
Izumi Shikibu, translated by Jane Hirshfield and Mariko Aratani

Under new Facebook policy, this blog will no longer be posted there, so I will also send this poem to my Facebook site with the appropriate copyright information listed there.

I like this poem a great deal. The joy and gratitude are mingled with eyes open to see the harsh winds and the open spaces in the roof of the house. Thanksgiving is a wonderful time to give thanks for the good gifts of life: family, friends, home, music, books, movies, eyes to see and ears to hear. For those of us who are theists, we thank the God whose goodness sustains all life’s goodness and who is at work in the world inviting greater goodness. While giving thanks, I cannot forget those who are hurting, suffering, in need. I cannot forget the sorrows I feel sometimes. Still, through the cracks in the world, moonlight shines, and I am grateful for that.

With Faith and With Feathers,

David

Reading

This afternoon I participated in a panel discussion for book groups organized through the Oreck-Alpern Interreligious Forum at the College of St. Scholastica. I have been the convener of a fiction book group since this effort began in 2006. Here is what I shared.

I would like to offer some reflections on the fiction book group that has been meeting since October 2006. My intention is that these brief remarks will respond to the questions we were invited to consider, but as may be appropriate for a fiction group, the response is rather literary, weaving in the words of others.

In his remarks upon accepting the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism in 1984, John Updike said the following: Whatever art offered the men and women of previous eras, what it offers our own, it seems to me, is space – a certain breathing room for the spirit. (Updike, Higher Gossip: Essays and Criticism, 423)

Reading fiction and discussing it together creates space in a too busy world, space for the spirit. It is important space. It is difficult to say which books we have read over the past five years have created the most meaningful discussions. Even the book most found their least favorite, Orhan Pamuk’s Snow, the only Nobel Prize winning author we have read, by the way, even Snow invited good discussion and I, for one, still carry images from that book within. The impact of this group seems cumulative – five years of reading and conversation flowing through us like water shaping stone.

It’s good when your conscience receives big wounds, because that makes it more sensitive to every twinge…. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us. Franz Kafka, letter to Oskar Pollak, January 27, 1904 (The Basic Kafka, 290)

In a world that often numbs us with reality television which is more surreal than real, or by the sheer pace of modern life, it is good to read books that break our hearts, break them with sadness over the condition of others in the world, break them open to care and to see beauty and tenderness.

Martha Nussbaum, who will be coming to St. Scholastica in February, writes these words that we have used in advertising our fiction group: Through the imagination we are able to develop our ability to see the full humanness of people. (Not For Profit, 107)

Our reading has helped keep our eyes, and imaginations, open in a world that often blinds with the constant flashing lights of the momentary. Our imaginations have been opened to the variety of ways of being human religiously.

We tell ourselves stories in order to live. Joan Didion, The White Album

To be human is to live by stories and our lives are richer, more open, more insightful, for having these stories and these conversations woven into our stories. With all the issues facing the human community, a gathering of people reading fiction seems an escape, a luxury. In some ways it is a luxury. Yet, if the human community is to work toward solving its most pressing issues thoughtful, open, insightful people willing to learn even more about themselves, others and the world will be required. We tell ourselves stories in order to live. This is part of the story of our group.

With Faith and With Feathers,

David

Sadly Beautiful

I have long known the joy of discovering something that touches deeply, that excites, that brings a smile. As a boy there was the joy of discovering a favorite player in a package of baseball cards. Along the way there have been the joys of discovering a long-sought book in a used book store, an idea that helped articulate something I was feeling or thinking but had not found adequate words for, an idea that opens the world up in new ways, a poem that penetrated to the depth of my soul, a song which moved me.
I am not sure what led me to want to find out more about The Replacements, a 1980s band founded in Minneapolis. It think it was a thread of reading which led me to read about this band and think to myself, “I would like to give them a listen.” In the ‘80s the Replacements blend of punk guitar and pop melodies garnered them critical acclaim but little commercial success (The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock and Roll). I am experiencing some joy of discovery.
One song that has captured my attention is “Sadly Beautiful.” The song has little punk to it. The title describes the song – sadly beautiful. The idea in the title and song describes so much in life, and life itself - - - life will end in death for us all and yet it contains so much that is beautiful.
To live a more fully human life, we need to see life’s sadness and beauty. To miss one or the other regularly is to have a distorted view of life. There is much that leaves one sad – hungry children, war-torn countries, dysfunctional relationships that harm, small disappointments and hurts. I take these seriously. They cry for compassionate response. Yet when I spend too much time and give too much attention to those things that leave me sad, I am in danger of missing the wonder and beauty in life – a blazing sunset, a full moon rising over a lake, the tenderness in so many relationships, small kindnesses and acts of generosity, work large and small for a better world.
And the joyfully discovered idea, poem, song is often helpful in keeping perspective.
Sadly beautiful.

With Faith and With Feathers,

David

Once Only

Steve Jobs died October 5. Since then we have heard a great deal about his life and the impact it has had on our world. I have i tunes on my computer, have both and i pod classic and an i pod touch. Technological change in my life time has been astounding. Two of my favorite activities have been transformed – listening to music and reading. I have over 6,000 songs on my i pod classic – and I remember carrying record albums to college parties. I can carry hundreds of books on my Nook – though I don’t have that many on there. It was great to put songs from cds on an i pod, but no one yet has figured out how to get the books you already own on an e-reader.
I enjoy my e-reader, but there are still some things about reading a book that one cannot replicate with an e-reader. While you can browse with some ease on a Nook or Kindle, you cannot really flip pages the same way. One gift of such page flipping is the discovery of hidden or forgotten treasures.
Last week I used a poem from Denise Levertov’s book of The Great Unknowing in a devotion for our Board of Ordained Ministry. At other times during our meeting, on breaks, in my room, I allowed myself the joy of flipping through the book, and discovered this little gem.

Once Only

All of which, because it was
flame and song and granted us
joy, we thought we’d do, be, revisit,
turns out to have been what it was
that once, only; every initiation
did not begin
a series, a build-up: the marvelous
did happen in our lives, our stories
are not drab with its absence: but don’t
expect now to return for more. Whatever more
there will be will be
unique as those were unique. Try
to acknowledge the next
song in its body-halo of flames as utterly
present, as now or never.

Wise words well composed – and I will have the joy of discovering this poem by flipping through her book once only. But that is enough.

With Faith and With Feathers,

David

Soul Work

Allow me to tell you a bit about my week last week. I will begin with Saturday morning October 1. That morning I attended a workshop about the new vital congregations initiative in The United Methodist Church. Beginning January 1, we will be submitting certain statistics every week for our congregation: average worship attendance for the week, number of professions of faith for the week (that is, people joining the church who are not currently members of another church), number of small groups that met that week for support and growth in faith, number of people engaged in ministry in the community, and dollars given to mission.
Bookending this workshop were two other ministry events. Earlier in the week I visited with a woman who had recently moved into a memory care facility. Her family felt it best for her own well-being that she no longer live in her home alone. They are genuinely concerned for her, and concerned about how her memory has been deteriorating in recent months. Anyway, I visited her and she was a little confused about all that was going on. She was mourning loss in her life. She was also mourning the death of a good friend and church member who had passed away a week before at age 90. During my visit, emotions welled-up in this woman, and her eyes filled with tears. I reached out and held her hand as we continued to talk and as I prayed with and for her. Two days later, I officiated at the funeral for her friend, and a much-beloved member of the church I pastor. The woman whose life we celebrated was remarkable in many ways. Her kindness was exemplary. Her faith was strong and matched with an inquisitive mind. She had survived the loss of three sons on one tragic night, three boys swept into Lake Superior. She not only survived this, but continued her journey of faith, continued to grow in kindness.
I pay attention to numbers. Every week, I check what the worship attendance has been and I continue to keep this before the leadership of our congregation. We give generously to missions here and pay our apportionments (monies given to our denomination for mission and ministry) faithfully. There is not a year gone by here when we have not welcomed some new persons by profession of faith. We have a number of small groups and this number has been growing due to intentional work by the congregation. Our people are very active in the community and we have begun some new church-based initiatives which reach out to the community. I understand numbers matter. I also know that one of the assumptions of this new initiative is that “our denomination has an adverse reaction and fear of metrics as a means of accountability.” I cannot be the only person who sees some irony here. To raise even constructive criticism of this vital congregations initiative is to be seen as part of the problem, to be seen as one who has only an adverse reaction to and fear of metrics as a means of accountability.
I am going to risk this. I will be submitting my numbers weekly and helping my congregation pay attention to them. I will also be asking us what other numbers might be helpful to us and meaningful for us as we assess our ministry together. Still, I also have to acknowledge that some of what we do in the church is simply difficult to count. There will be no place on any form to quantify holding the hand of a grieving woman. Now if a lay person does this, I can count that – and we have a wonderful lay visitation program at my church. My visit does not “count” though. I cannot count the 200 plus people who gathered to remember and celebrate the life of a remarkable disciple, but remembering and celebrating such a life is immeasurably important to us. It is one way we let people know that the journey of faith is one we take with others. It is one way we care for others. It is one way we communicate that a life matters to God. In soul work, not everything that counts can be counted.
At our best, we United Methodists understand this, even in our renewed fascination with numbers. After all we still follow one who once said something about gaining the whole world and losing our soul.

With Faith and With Feathers,

David