A spirituality of rock and roll (and probably some jazz, too)...

NOTE: In 2006 my doctoral dissertation was accepted at San Francisco Theological Seminary under the title, While My Guitar Gently Weeps:  A Spirituality of Rock Music.  It was the distillation of my thinking and experience on the subject after nearly 40 years of playing music in the church. It continues to be one of the essentials of my inner life to say nothing of one of the many outward expressions of God's "still speaking" love for the world.  So, for a period of time, I am going to review and share some of the ideas articulated in While My Guitar Gently Weeps as both a way to review their on-going validity as well as to explore revisions and/or changes. As always your wisdom, comments, questions and concerns are valued.

REASON TO BELIEVE:  Part One. In 1981, Bruce Springsteen released the stark album, Nebraska, to a bewildered audience. Gone were the familiar sounds of his New Jersey rock band - drums, electric guitars, keyboards and saxophone - and all that remained was a lone acoustic guitar and harmonica. Gone, too, were his songs of love and lament over innocence lost. Instead, Springsteen offered up a collection of sobering musical vignettes about the multiple wounds ordinary people endure every day - from dead dongs and broken hearts to stolen cars and economic recession - as well as humanity's courageous commitment to find God's grace amidst the pain. 

Part Flannery O'Connor and Woody Guthrie with equal doses of Robert Johnson and the Apostle Paul, too, the Nebraska songs articulate for a modern audience the paradox of the Paschal mystery.  That is, "we know that all things work together for good for those who love God and are called according to God's purpose." (Romans 8:28) Not that all things ARE good, but all things can work for good.  Indeed, these songs were an antidote to the naive obsessions with happiness that often filled our churches in the emerging era of "praise music."

The closing cut, "Reason to Believe," is written as a lament. It intentionally takes the traditional chords and phrasing of the blues to evoke an incarnational spirituality which always weaves together hope with sorrow. In his introduction to Eugene Peterson's new translation of the ancient psalms, The Message, front man for the rock band U2, Bono, explains the importance of the blues as an expression of incarnational theology:

The words of the psalms were as poetic as they were religious... Before David could fulfill the prophecy and become the king of Israel, he had to take quite a beating. He was forced into exile and ended up in a cave in some no-name border town facing the collapse of his ego and abandonment by God. But this is where the soap opera got interesting. This is where David was said to have composed the first psalm: a blues. That's what a lot of the psalms feel like to me, the blues. Man shouting at God, "My, God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?  Why are thous so far from helping me?" (Psalm 22)

I head echoes of this holy row when the un-holy bluesman Robert Johnson howls, "Sometimes I feel like a motherless child." Texas Alexander mimics the psalms in "Justice Blues" when he sings: "I cried Lord my father, Lord kingdom come. Send me back my woman, then thy will be done." Humorous, sometimes blasphemous, the blues was backslidin' music but, by its very opposition, it flattered the subject of its perfect cousin, gospel. Abandonment and displacement are the stuff of my favorite psalms. The Psalter may be a font of gospel music, but for me its despair that the psalmist really reveals and the nature of his special relationship with God. Honesty, even to the point of anger. "How long, Lord, wilt thou hide thyself from me: forever?" (Psalm 89) or "Answer me when I call." (Psalms 5)

In a thoroughly secular setting, in a cultural context steeped in "feel good religion" and the social amnesia politics of the Reagan era, Springsteen - the bard of the Jersey Coast - was reclaiming the soul of incarnational spirituality and making the ancient psalms come alive once more.  Robert Mouw, has suggested that "it may be worthwhile to examine popular culture for a legitimate critique of the shortcomings of theology that has so distanced it from people struggling to believe... We must probe the hidden places: looking for the sings of eloquence and grace to be found there; listening for deep calling unto deep; searching, not only for the Deeper Magic, but also for the Deeper Quests, the Deeper Pleasures, the Deeper Hurts and the Deeper Plots."

Twenty two years later, cut to a cool San Francisco Sunday morning in July, where 500 bleary eyed souls gather in Washington Square Park for worship - but there was no preacher, choir or printed liturgy. The word church was never uttered, no vestments were donned and most of the crowd would not have spoken of the event sacramentally. But as soon as the Sun Kings (a local Beatles cover band) struck the opening jangly guitar chords to "Help," strangers became friends for a time, a palpable sense of community was experienced and everyone at the North Beach Street Fair sang along reverently from memory.

Middle aged yuppies danced with wizened street people, children were cherished and respected, black and white adults shared bottled water and blankets, and everyone knew their favorite parts by heart:  "Help me if you can, I'm feelin' down - and I do appreciate you being 'round - help me get my feet back on the ground: won't you please, please help me?" As the prophet Joel once proclaimed, there will come a time when "I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams and your young shall see visions." (Joel 2: 28b)

One year later, millions of people across four continents replicated the North Beach experience in what Leonard Cohen calls, "the street - the  holy place - where the races meet." The musicians of Live 8, the concert for African debt relief, led a time of worship as authentic as any found in a cathedral, mosque, temple, church or ashram. And when former Beatle, Paul McCartney, joined U2 in singing, "It was twenty years ago today Sergeant Pepper taught the band to play..." hearts, souls and voiced joined together in a cry of compassion that was simultaneously healing, joyful and prophetic.

This was the culmination of a campaign in which the world's ten wealthiest nations agreed to forgive the debt owed by the world's 38 poorest countries.  It was the rock and roll equivalent of the poetic prophet Isaiah's vision where in "the Spirit of the Lord came upon God's servant to proclaim a year of the Lord's favor... to give a garland of flowers instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit... so that they shall build up the ancient ruins, raise up the form devastation's, repair the ruined cities and the devastation's of many generations." (Isaiah 61:-4)

Mikal Gilmore, a rock critic who has studied the social significance of the Beatles, identified part of what was taking place in a New York Times Op Ed piece:

The Beatles demonstrated that musical and social change could emanate from the shared spirit of the sambe body politic. Rock and rool, of course, had already shown it could stir cultural tumult. In the 1950s's, Elvis Presley and numerous rhythm-and-blues and rockabilly artists had brought new audiences and sensibilities into the mainstream. Rough, rude and provocatively rhythmic music - from both black and white upstarts - had broken through the barriers, meeting fierce opposition, until the new spirit was almost tamed... While Elvis Presley had already shown us something about using rebellious style as a means of change, the Beatles helped incite something strong in American youth... something that started as a consensus, as a shared joy, but that in time would seem like the prospect of power - a new king of youth mandate (for) the threat implicit in the 1960's music... was about setting things loose, about changing or upending the world.

What Gilmore overlooked, however and what I want to emphasize is the spirituality of this music and these gatherings.  The rockers in North Beach and Live 8 - like Springsteen, Garth Brooks, U2 or those at Lilith Fair events across the world - know that when they come together for encouragement and witness, celebration and lament; they meet to remember the past and change the future:  they gather to hear a word of hope and transformation; they meet for worship and justice.  And while God is rarely mentioned explicitly in these gatherings, clearly the Lord "is in the house."

So there is the set up... more to come.