I don’t want to be a Christian who forgets how to feel—who hides behind answers, quotes verses like shields, and silences sorrow with a song. I don’t want a faith of romanticized abstraction, where resurrection is polished, and the cross is theory. Give me something real—flesh and blood, grief and grace. I want to weep with eyes wide open. Tears that speak truth. Tears that rise from the ground of compassion, from the jagged knowledge that the world is not as it was meant to be.
Real flesh-and-blood encounters are not only what matters to me each day, but also what I remember when reviewing the ups and downs of each week to discern where I might have met the Lord. These days, I no longer have much time for abstract ideas or whatever obsession has captured this moment’s news cycle. Don’t get me wrong: I don't ignore what passes for the “news.” In fact, I often find myself praying tears of exasperation, grief, or solace for what I see on TV. But I strive to take it in and then let it go, as Jesus tells us in the Sermon on the Mount: Do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Let the day’s own trouble be sufficient for the day.
Once upon a time, like many who are overeducated and reasonably comfortable, I was consumed by politics and news programming – and many of my friends and colleagues still are. But three insights helped heal this addiction: First, no matter HOW much I disagree with what I see on the news – no matter how much I rant and rail at politicians on both sides of the aisle or weep in solidarity over the violence in Gaza, Ukraine, or Sudan, to say nothing of the agony caused by natural destruction like tsunamis or earthquakes – there is precious little I can do to effect change on behalf of compassion and right relations. Yes, I make financial donations; and write letters, too. But when it comes to the grand issues of the day, I can neither touch them in any significant way nor make any real difference in their outcome.
Second, the older I get, the more it becomes clear that social transformation comes and goes in waves, and it’s impossible to predict where things will land in the short term. I once heard this story…
There was once a farmer in rural Japan. He didn't have much money and, instead of a tractor, used an old horse to plow his field. One afternoon, while working in the field, the horse dropped dead. Everyone in the village said, "Oh, what a horrible thing to happen” but the farmer said simply, "We'll see." He was so at peace and so calm that everyone in the village admired his attitude and gave him a new horse as a gift. Over and over, the community said aloud: "What a lucky man to receive such a gift." And the farmer said, "We'll see." A couple of days later, the new horse jumped the fence and ran away. The whole village shook their heads and said, "What a poor fellow!" To which the farmer smiled and said, "We'll see." Eventually, the horse found his way home, and the community rejoiced, crying, "What a fortunate man!" And the farmer said: Well… we’ll see. A year came and went and the farmer's young boy went out riding on the horse, fell and broke his leg, prompting the village to weep: "What a shame for the poor boy” but the farmer said, "We'll see." And two days later, the army came into the village to draft new recruits. But when they saw that the farmer's son had a broken leg, they decided not to recruit him. "What a blessing has come to this young man," the villagers proclaimed while the farmer just smiled again – and said: “We’ll see.”
No wonder Jesus advised us to chill out, hold off making final judgments, and trust that each day carries with it worries and wonders sufficient for the day: a second perspective that brings a measure of inner and outward serenity is choosing NOT to rush to judgment.
And third, is a notion that I've been exploring for a long time but only recently found words to describe it: prefigurative sacramentality. That's an all too lofty way of describing my dedication to the aesthetics of beauty that creates a hint of what could or might become real.
Decades ago, the late Elie Wiesel wrote an op-ed for the NY Times at the dawn of Yom Kippur. It has long nourished and haunted me as well. The essence was this: Wiesel was still furious, perplexed, and bewildered with God, given the anguish, death, and cruelty of the Holocaust. That will never change, he confessed. At the same time, however, he had now decided he would embrace his tradition’s response to absurdity and staggering violence: he would dance. Rather than try to comprehend or find meaning in his grief, he would engage the dance of paradox, resistance, courage, and even grace rather than submit to vile chaos.
St. Leonard Cohen echoes Wiesel’s challenge in “Dance Me to the End of Love” as does St. Lou Reed in both “Dirty Boulevard” and “Busload of Faith.” It is an aesthetic refusal to surrender the spirit of love to avarice as our inevitable destiny. It is a rejection of reality as only the art of the deal. A worship and praise song put it like this: “we have another world in view.” Dostoevsky believed that “beauty could save the world,” and Solzhenitsyn, in his acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize, wrote that when truth and goodness have been corrupted, compromised, or else held ransom by totalitarian propaganda, beauty alone can subvert power by touching our hearts and inspiring a rebirth of solidarity and moral integrity.
That's what I believe our two bands, Wednesday’s Child and All of Us, are about:
we, too, have another world in view. It is a worldview that respects rather than fears diversity, trusts that a love greater than self guides the cosmos, recognizes that joy regularly dances next to grief, that celebration often sings in the same key as suffering, and that a mystical yearning for authenticity and life itself pervades both all of creation including human nature. The writers at this month's Friends of Silence recently wrote that our awakening to autumn reminds us of this:
Early Autumn reminds me of this “and” mentality. I wake up and put on a sweater only to sweat and remove it moments later. I watch the young growth from my late summer succession planting while pulling old tomato stalks to mark the end of their time. We move about during the day like it is still summer, only to be ushered back inside by an earlier sunset into the more reflective inner work of the incoming season. Each day holds room for it all, just as you and I are a manifestation of the myriad.
We are grateful.
We are overwhelmed.
We are joyful.
We carry deep sorrow.
We are changing.
We are eternal.
We are dying.
We are alive.
I knew someone who stopped using the word ‘but’. Everything was ‘and’. It cracked open the hard pericarp of my thinking, revealing a pithy inner chamber. It substituted phrases like, “It was hard, but I did it,” with an empowering reminder that one does not preclude the other. “It was hard. I did it.” A subtle but meaningful change. Not in spite of the difficulty, which certainty also feels true, but alongside the difficulty, with the difficulty. (Friends of Silence)
As I was packing up after the gig, someone said to me that this gathering felt different – there was a palpable sense of community and trust – and they wondered why this time was different from other concerts. Well, I thought, it has something to do with intentionality: we are very careful in our choice of songs and poems. There is a profound commitment to bringing our best to the music, too. And, dare I say, we are willing to be vulnerable and counter-cultural. As if in affirmation, today I received four liturgical clerical stoles from Bethlehem in Palestine. They are stunning. Yet another small sign of artists committed to giving shape and form to a worldview bathed in beauty.