Here, for example, in advance of our Good Friday experience, MISUNDERSTOOD, is what I believe I will be sharing with the gathered as way of interpretation. Additionally, we will be performing a host of varied music from Mose Allison jazz with an ironic social commentary to flat-out spirit driven rock and roll from the Police and U2. If you are in town, THIS is the gig to attend! We will open the event with my take on "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" that has a mellow funky groove and we'll close the gig with a female-driven reprise of the same song. Identical words but a VASTLY different take... as befits the event, yes?
+
“Don’t let me be
misunderstood…” Not only are these the words chosen to shape and guide
tonight’s encounter, but they are sounds that leap from the heart of the human
condition. You don’t have to be
religious or even vaguely spiritual to know that all too often our souls ache
and our bodies tremble in fear or sadness because all throughout our lives, WE
have been misunderstood.
It is a common
knowledge the young people the world over feel like no one understands
them. Hell, half the time they don’t
even understand them-selves as emotions swirl and hormones rage and social
expectations try to squeeze them into a variety of molds that just don’t work. Women know a
truckload about being misunderstood by men and mothers, employers and
executives, clothes designers, psychiatrists and advertising moguls who have a
one size fits all understanding of beauty, femininity and what makes for a life
of meaning and satisfaction. And increasingly men
too are beginning to articulate their own confusion about being confined to the
roles and styles of rugged individualism and social conformity.
All around us are signs of
misunderstanding from the culture wars and quest for true equality in our
sexuality to the wounded warriors who after returning home from serving God and
country find themselves consumed by the chaos of post traumatic stress disorder,
unemployment all too often homelessness.
From America’s schizophrenia about race to our economic and political
polarization, to paraphrase the old school dean of rock and roll Jerry Lee
Lewis: there’s a whole lotta
misunderstanding going on – and that fact is simultaneously frightening and
discouraging. It used to that we were an
optimistic and even hopeful people when it came to the future, but that is no
longer true among us.
So, as artists and people of
faith, we asked ourselves: how do we
both talk about hope - and offer alternatives to inertia and despair - in a way
that gets through to tjpse who have lost faith in technology, science AND
religion? Because that is what has taken
place in post-modern society: nobody trusts the market place, nobody
trusts progress and nobody trusts religious institutions any longer. One of my mentors, the rock and roll genius
Lou Reed, used to say: You can't depend on your
family, you can't depend on your friends, you can't depend on a beginning, you
can't depend on no end.
You can't
depend on intelligence, oh Lord you can’t depend on God. You can only depend on
one thing: you need a busload of faith
to get by – so watch it, baby!
THAT, dear people, is the
paradox of this moment – we need faith AND all around us those things
that once held our trust have disqualified themselves through greed, violence,
stupidity and fear-mongering. Enter the
promise and healing potential of music.
+ The artist
once called Cat Stevens who after his conversion to Islam took the name Yusuf
Islam recently spoke about this before being inducted into the Rock and Roll
Hall of Fame: After despairing for a long, long
time about what I could do about the hatred and mistrust in the world… it dawned
on me: Even with the entire world sinking deeper into despair, we can still
sing! The spirit of humanity can be subdued, but
never vanquished. And nothing brings out that spirit like a good song. As a
short film on Nelson Mandela I watched recently showed, he danced and smiled
from East to West, saying, "It is music and dancing that makes me at peace
with the world and at peace with myself.”
So in 2001, after singing "Peace Train" for a tribute concert
at the Radio City Music Hall in New York, in memory of the victims of 9/11, the
sleepy train of peace-making through music began to chug its way slowly uphill
again!
+ That’s
why WE are here tonight – and we hope that is true for you, too. We sense that
by being together in song – and story and silence and solidarity – we can
awaken what is human and holy not just in one another but in our culture. You see, tonight is an act of non-violent
resistance to the fear and loathing that surrounds us. Like Dostoevsky proclaimed in another dark age: beauty can save the world because it awakens
our souls, stirs our spirits and connects us to a love that is greater than
ourselves.
Now I know that some think this is idealistic – or
naïve – or some loosey-goosey hippie mumbo jumbo left over from another
era. But if you know ANYTHING about
movements for equality, justice and peace you know that they are ALL saturated
with song. Congressman John Lewis, one
of the Freedom Riders from the American anti-apartheid movement, said that
without the freedom songs there would have been no soul or courage to the struggle
for racial equality. On
the night brother Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone were assassinated in San
Francisco, gay and straight allies spontaneously walked in candle light vigil
through the streets weeping “we are a gentle angry people… and we are singing,
singing for our lives.” And on and on it
goes…
So here’s what we've tried to
do tonight with our MISUNDERSTOOD creation and we’ll only know if it was successful
when we’re finished: We took the Christian chronicle of Good Friday and
refashioned it with song and story to explore how God – or whatever you want to
call that love that is greater than fear and hatred – can take our
misunderstandings and shape them into something redemptive. I asked each member of this ensemble to
explore some music – and in some cases to write their own reworking of a sacred
story, too – to express how human beings have ALWAYS experienced some degree of
alienation and misunderstand-ing in their lives.
Much as our culture would
tell us otherwise, we are neither the crown of creation nor the center of
confusion: people have been wrestling with misunderstanding for at least six
thousand years and probably much longer. And the distilled wisdom of people who
have listened to the pain and confusion all around them and then searched for a
transformative meaning to it has something to teach us: Namely that if we enter into the pain – if we
embrace the confusion and pay attention to what is absurd, tragic and unjust
within and among us – these very wounds can become our path into peace and hope
and deeper compassion.
+ All the
great religions – all the great artists – all the great musicians share an
understanding that says: if we cannot find a way to make
our wounds into sacred wounds, we invariably become negative or bitter. Indeed,
there are bitter people everywhere. As they go through life, the hurts,
disappointments, betrayals, abandonments, the burden of their own sinfulness
and brokenness all pile up, and they do not know where to put it. And when we do not know how to transform our pain, we will most
assuredly transmit it. (Richard Rohr)
+ Are you with me on this?
When we do not know how to transform the agony of misunderstanding into
something healing, we will transmit it to other people and hurt them! So
tonight we’re going to practice sitting with our misunderstandings – and our
fears – as we go into songs and stories and silence together.
+ We’re
even going to practice sitting together with all of this in utter darkness so
that we might grow a little more comfortable with entering our wounds rather
than running away from them or blaming or wounding others.
This is art as transformation
– this is taking the beauty of our songs and stories – and trusting the silence
– discovering something healing in the midst of all our misunderstandings. The testimony of our elders is clear: we ought not waste our pain – it can
take us into a sacred place – it can give us the strength and tenderness to be
an instrument of peace for others, too.
One of my favorite teachers, Richard Rohr, put it like this when he
looked at Mary the Mother of Jesus:
As an example of holding the pain, picture Mary standing at the
foot of the cross. Standing would not be the normal posture of a Jewish woman
who is supposed to wail and lament and show pain externally. She’s holding the
pain instead; think of the way Michelangelo symbolized this in the Pieta. Mary
is in complete solidarity with the mystery of life and death. She’s trying to
say, “There’s something deeper happening here. How can I absorb it just as
Jesus is absorbing it, instead of returning it in kind?”For until you find a
way to be a transformer, you will pass the pain onto other…
That’s our hope for this
night: to interrupt the vicious cycle of passing on our pain to others. On
behalf of these artists – whom I love and trust with my soul – let me thank you
for coming out to join us. May the
Spirit of all that is holy be alive in our hearts that we might transform our
pain and misunderstanding and so become instruments of God’s peace in the
world.
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