Bob at 70 - Together Through Life

Interpreting spiritual things to those who are spiritual
I Corinthians 2:13

Just to think that it all began on an uneventful morn.
Bob Dylan, “Shelter from the Storm”

My first memory of a Bob Dylan song came from a Young Life group meeting I attended in high school. There was this song book that included “secular” songs along with explicitly Christian songs. I remember singing, “I Shall Be Released.” I also recall a locally produced Christian newspaper, put out by the Jesus people group I was part of at the time. One article making a case for Christian faith cited Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower” – No reason to get excited, the thief he kindly spoke. There are many here among us, who feel that life is but a joke. But you and I, we’ve been through that, and this is not our fate. So let us not talk softly now. The hour is getting late.
When I began to ask questions about the Christian faith as I knew it then, one place I looked to expand my mind was to the music of Bob Dylan. Those song lyrics that I had heard or sung spoke to me. What more might I learn? I remember buying my first Dylan albums - Greatest Hits and Greatest Hits, Volume 2. There they were: All Along the Watchtower, I Shall Be Released - - - and a whole lot more: the biting lyrics of “Positively Fourth Street,” the tender lyrics of “Tomorrow Is a Long Time,” the ache of “Just Like a Woman” and “I Want You,” and the phenomenal “Like a Rolling Stone.” How does it feel? It felt pretty amazing. Remarkably, this guy was born in Duluth (like I was) and grew up in Hibbing, the north country. I wanted to know more, and hear more. My school library had a copy of Writings and Drawings of Bob Dylan and Anthony Scaduto’s biography. As I could, I bought albums (vinyl then!). Street Legal was the first new Dylan album I bought when it came out and I have bought each new album in turn, even the Christmas album (I am glad proceeds went to charity).
Dylan’s music, with roots deep in a variety of American popular musical idioms, and his sometimes brilliant lyrics, were sparks igniting intellectual flames in my young mind. This was one cornerstone in the growth of the horizon of my self-understanding and my understanding of the world. There were others along the way – the psychology of Abraham Maslow, the thought of Alan Watts introducing me to non-Christian religious tradition, Kerouac’s On the Road, Ginsberg’s Howl. I’ve not been quite the same since.
My journey brought me back to Christian faith, but it was a faith that could be more open to the world - that could listen to rock, jazz and Dylan, that could think with and about other religious traditions, that could be in dialogue with psychology and philosophy. Dylan’s music has been a part my journey for many years now. I am currently reading Robert Stolorow World, Affectivity and Trauma, subtitled “Heidegger and Post-Cartesian Psychoanalysis”. I came to the chapter titled, “Our Kinship-In-Finitude” in which Stolorow argues the importance of persons connecting with each other in our common experience of finitude. We seek out “brothers and sisters in the dark night” and such connection (“deep emotional attunement’) is especially important if we are to be able to integrate our traumatic experiences into our lives. The essay begins with an epigraph from…. Bob Dylan. I’ll be with you when the deal goes down.
This week Bob Dylan turned 70. This summer I turn 52. I am grateful that our days have overlapped and grateful for this music which is part of the soundtrack of my life, these words which are part of the poetry of my life.


With Faith and With Feathers,

David