it's coming from the sorrow in our streets...

This searing poem from gentle Wendell Berry speaks to this ugly moment in time. "Questionnaire" is to contemporary poetry what Lisa Fischer's interpretation of "Gimme Shelter" is to live music: brilliant, challenging, without ambiguity, piercing, confessional and so real it hurts. 

How much poison are you willing to eat for the success of the free
market and global trade? Please name your preferred poisons.

For the sake of goodness, how much
evil are you willing to do?
Fill in the following blanks
with the names of your favorite
evils and acts of hatred.

What sacrifices are you prepared
to make for culture and civilization?
Please list the monuments, shrines,
and works of art you would
most willingly destroy

In the name of patriotism and
the flag, how much of our beloved
land are you willing to desecrate?
List in the following spaces
the mountains, rivers, towns, farms
you could most readily do without.

State briefly the ideas, ideals, or hopes,
the energy sources, the kinds of security;
for which you would kill a child.
Name, please, the children whom
you would be willing to kill.

As our band, Famous Before We're Dead, played an open air street festival in Kent, CT yesterday, I kept hearing Fischer's remaking of my favorite Stones' song. While taking in the Ottawa Jazz Festival four years ago, Lisa Fischer and Le Grand Baton took the stage on a perfect summer evening. Just two weeks before the show, a young white man, Dylan Root, had gone into the Mother Ship of African American Christianity in South Carolina and opened fire killing nine innocent people. As Fischer introduced "Gimme Shelter" she openly wept over the madness - and as the song ripened with improvisation it became a lament that brought all of us together in prayers of petition, confession and grief. It was simultaneously cathartic and convicting, a call to embody love beyond terror that was every bit as moving as any sermon I've ever heard. 

If you have seen the documentary, "20 Feet From Stardom," you'll know Fischer as the long time back up singer for the Rolling Stones. For a few decades she sang Merry Clatyon's part whenever the Stones hit the road - and a whole lot more. It would seem that after sharing the music of the Stones for all those years she gleaned insights into the deeper nuances of these songs. Taking the cocky, macho disco groove of "Miss You," Fischer turns it inside out so that it becomes a sultry torch song. With equal wisdom and finesse, she takes on "Jumpin' Jack Flash," too. That she's joined by three other musical geniuses who are equally at home in jazz, rock, fusion, pop and various versions of world music only adds to the grandeur. Just for kicks, why not take the time a listen to their take on "Flash"? Fischer harmonizes with herself, adds vocal percussion to accent the feel, and recreates this kick ass rocker from 1968 into a hymn of triumph for all of us facing hard times. Fusing Middle Eastern and African chant-song to a signature classic of Western rock'n'roll is brilliant by itself. But Fischer et al turn the chorus, "But it's all right now, in fact it's a gas," into an anthem of affirmation giving shape and form to the mystical renewal and exuberance of a soul on fire. It is IMHO freakin' brilliant... Further, this "woman of a certain age" shows us all - men as well as women - what embodied spirituality can look like even as we grow older.

Yesterday, in the midst of our sorrow and anger over the epidemic of white nationalist violence and hatred raging throughout the USA, our wee band created a few moments of solidarity and even joy through our songs. For a few moments in time there was dancing, laughter and singing out in the open albeit in a tiny Connecticut hamlet. There were open hearts, too in spite of our fears. And there were a few musical moments of transcendence when we slipped into a zone that lifted us all beyond this realm for a time.

Like Lisa Fischer - and Richard Rohr - I believe all religion, spirituality, art and ethics begin with mysticism. That is, with an encounter with a love that is not only bigger than our wounds, but evokes awe and trust. "Everything stems from mysticism, or primary religious experience, whether it be revelation or a personal mystical state of consciousness," wrote Wayne Teasdale. "We need... direct contact with the divine, or ultimate mystery, even more (than religion.) Religions are valuable carriers of the tradition within a community, but they must not be allowed to choke out the breath of the spirit, which breathes where it will." (Richard Rohr's morning mediation, August 5, 2019) Teasdale goes on to say: 

Each great religion has a similar origin: the spiritual awakening of its founders to God, the divine, the absolute, the spirit, Tao, boundless awareness. We find it in the experience of the rishis in India; the Buddha in his experience of enlightenment; in Moses, the patriarchs, the prophets, and other holy souls of the biblical tradition. It is no less present in Jesus’ inner realization of his relationship with his Father, who is also our Father. And it is clear in the Prophet Mohammed’s revelation experience of Allah through the mediation of the Archangel Gabriel.

Yesterday, for a host of reasons, my encounter with the holy in the midst of our humanity was renewed. Bringing songs of hope and challenge to small groups feels like church once did for me: holy ground. How did St. Leonard Cohen put it in the midst of his brokenness? 

It's coming from the sorrow in the street

The holy places where the races meet
From the homicidal bitchin' that goes down in every kitchen
To determine who will serve and who will eat
From the wells of disappointment where the women kneel to pray
For the grace of God in the desert here and the desert far away...

Rave on...