Revived and Redeemed: Gillian Welch and Heather King

For the past two months, I've been listening to Gillian Welch's first album, Revival, over and over again whenever I have been alone in the car. I love every song on the album. I love Ms. Welch's strong, flexible, homey voice. It's exactly right for the lyrics. I love David Rawlings's guitar. I don't know the right technical vocabulary to describe what I'm talking about, but his guitar riffs seem to grab me right in the chest and pull me along with him. I love the stories in the songs. I love it that the songs are in my range. I'm never happy unless I can sing along. This may be why I only listen when I'm alone.

The song that has really resonated with me this Lent, though, is By the Mark. I spent a long time deciding which of the three available videos to post because they all have their drawbacks, but I've chosen this one because it's the version of the song that's on the album. You might want to ignore the video, it has about 3 times as many pictures as it needs--some good, some not--and the person that assembled them was way too attached to his zoom.

I came fairly late in my life to an appreciation of this type of kind of music. When I was younger, none of my friends or family would have given it the time of day. It just wasn't in my world. I love it now because this type of song speaks to something that is so elemental. There's no complicated theology here, just an acknowledgement that this is the God Who was wounded for His people and that He draws us by the power of those wounds. When He rose from the dead, He could have returned in a "perfect" body, but He chose to come back to us marked with these signs.

Heather King makes a similar observation in her memoir, Redeemed: A Spiritual Misfit Stumbles Toward God, Marginal Sanity, and the Peace That Passes All Understanding.

...it has always seemed to me a deep and shattering mystery that when Christ appeared to His disciples after the Resurrection, He still bore the wounds. One of the things this seems to say is that our suffering counts. Our wounds aren't wiped away, as in a fairy tale: our bodies and souls bear their marks into eternity. Maybe that's how we'll recognize, or classify, or take joy in each other after we die, because maybe then we'll see how our suffering helped someone else, or perhaps saved another from suffering.

About 15 years ago, a friend told me about a young man with Down Syndrome who had recently died. He had been a great friend of her little boys, and they were asking what would happen to Kenny. Their mother said something to the effect that Kenny would go to Heaven and be happy, and that he would be healed and beautiful when they met him there. The boys said, "We don't want him to be beautiful. We want him to look like Kenny."

This really started me thinking about what beauty really is and what we will perceive as beauty in Heaven. I have several friends who have died and I feel just like those little boys. When I see them again, I want them to look like themselves. They were beautiful to me already.

So, maybe Ms. King is right. I don't know. I wrote in another post of how we meet Jesus wound to wound. All of my wounds: the scars from childhood injuries, from operations, from abandonments, from the suffering of those I love, cry out to be subsumed and healed in the wounds of Jesus. We need for Jesus to be wounded.

I love the Anima Christi:

O good Jesus, hear me

Within Thy wounds hide me

Suffer me not to be separated from Thee.

Where is there a safer hiding place?

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Crown Him the Lord of love,

Behold His hands and side,

Rich wounds yet visible above,

In beauty glorified.

No angel in the sky

Can fully bear the sight,

But downward bends his wond'ring eye

At mystery so bright.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I first read about Heather King's trilogy of memoirs, Parched, Redeemed, and Shirt of Flame (although I persist in thinking of the last as, Shirt on Fire) in a comment by Matthew Likona at The Korrektiv. The books chronicle her journey from being "a blackout drunk for 20 years" to being a passionate Catholic. She knows about being wounded, and she knows about being healed. Her books are will worth reading, especially the last two.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

My favorite picture from that By the Mark video.

AMDG

The Eleventh Station~Jesus is Nailed to the Cross~Forgiveness

To those who stood by it must indeed have seemed now that Christ was separated from other men. . . . That was how things seemed to be. But in reality, as Christ stretched out His beautiful craftsman's hands and composed His blameless feet on the hard wood of the cross to receive the nails, He was reaching out to countless men through all time: as He stretched His body on that great tree that was to flower with His life for ever, He gave Himself to be made one with all those who in every generation to come would willingly bind and fasten themselves irrevocably to the cross, for the love of God and the love of men.

For all through time for those who love Christ and who want to be one with Him, love and the cross would be inseparable; but because Christ willed that He should be nailed to the cross Himself in His human nature, love will always predominate and redeem the suffering of the cross.

Caryll Houselander, The Way of the Cross

I'm not sure whether or not I'm conflating these two events, but if they didn't happen at the same time, the second came fairly soon after the first.

About 35 years ago, I went to a day of renewal in another city. It was shortly after I had recommitted myself to following my Catholic faith, and I think it was the first time I had ever attended anything like this. I'm really not sure what was going on at the time this happened but probably the speaker was leading us in some kind of guided meditation. I had my eyes closed and as I was praying, it hit me very forcibly that Jesus had died, not just for my sins, but for the sins of everyone that had ever sinned against me, and that when I refused to forgive someone, I was holding back the forgiveness that He had died for--that I was trying to undo the work of Christ on the cross. I can't begin to explain the difference that this made in my life because at the time, I was very aware of ways in which other people had sinned against me, and I knew that I was going to have to forgive them. What's really strange is that I know that there were these offenses, or perceived offenses that I had to forgive and that at the time they were huge to me, and now I only have the vaguest notion of what they might have been.

Soon after that, and perhaps directly after that, I was praying and I "saw" Jesus being nailed to the cross. It was very vivid and wasn't something I'd been thinking about, but just came out of nowhere. (Well, somewhere, I'm sure.) It was from a position low to the ground and I was looking up His left arm, and could see his side and the back of His head. His left hand was already nailed to the cross, and they were nailing His right hand. Even now, I can see it fairly clearly. It's always somewhere in that back of may consciousness because after that, I knew He did this for me.

Lord,

wholly surrendered

to the will of Your Father

and wholly identified with us,

Lord nailed to the cross

by Your own choosing,

teach us to obey,

to accept,

to bow to the will of God.

CH

AMDG

The Tenth Station~Jesus is Stripped of His Garments~Nakedness

Not long ago Christ had revealed His glory upon a Mountain. He had gone up with his disciples to Mount Tabor, and there shown them His splendour, clothed in garments of burning snow. Now He has gone up into a mountain again to reveal yet another glory that is His, the glory that He gives to sinful men in the hour that seems to them to be their hour of shame but which, when it is identified with Him stripped naked upon Calvary, is an hour of splendour and redemption.

There in Christ is the sinner who is found out, the lover who is stripped of all pretence, the weak man who is known for what he is, the repentant murderer who pays the price of his sin willingly before the world, the child whose disgrace is known to the mother whom he wanted to make proud of him, the friend who is stripped of all pretence before the friend from whom he longed for respect.

There upon Calvary Christ's love for the world is shown in its nakedness, His love for the sinner in its intensity.

Caryll Houselander, The Way of the Cross

In The Hiding Place Corrie ten Boom writes about the incarceration of her sister, Betsie, and herself in the concentration camp at Ravensbruck. They were Christians, but had been arrested for hiding Jews in their home. Corrie was 51 when this happened and I Betsie was 58. She describes the manner in which they were forced to line up with the other new prisoners for processing. These two middle-aged virgins, not particularly beautiful of body, stripped naked and standing in line, being watched over by callous guards. How humiliating this must have been.

During the time that Corrie spent at Ravensbruck, she underwent a different kind of stripping. Instead of becoming bitter and railing against her circumstances--after all, she had been living a sacrificial life and spending herself for God's chosen, and look where it had gotten her--she allowed the Lord to use this time to strip of her fears and faults. Of course, this didn't happen without some resistance on her part, but in the end, she was able to join her suffering to that of her Lord.

Betsie died in the camp shortly before Corrie was released through a clerical error. Before her death, Betsie used to pray for the guards because she was worried about the damage that their treatment of the prisoners was doing to their souls. She forgave them, and wanted Corrie to do the same. Corrie was horrified. She didn't want to forgive the guards; she wanted to hold on to her hatred. But in the end that was what she did. There is a moving article in Guideposts magazine, telling of Corrie's encounter with a former guard who had been cruel to Betsie and the forgiveness that resulted.

Corrie ten Boom's story is an example of the humiliation of physical stripping, and the pain of that stripping that comes from being stripped of our faults, but CH speaks to something deeper. It is the revelation of our very selves, not evil deeds that we could have avoided, but that which most shames us because it is who we are at the very core of our being. Our only help in the face of this most painful nakedness is that Our Lord has united Himself with us in our weakness, and that He can somehow use it for the redemption of the world.

Jesus,

stripped of Your garments

upon Calvary,

give me the courage

and the humility

to be stripped before the world

of all pretence;

to show myself--

even to that one whom I love

and whose good opinion of me

is vital to my happiness--

just as I am,

naked,

stripped of everything

that could hide

the truth of my soul,

the truth of myself, from them.

Give me

Your own courage,

Your humility,

Your independence,

which compelled You,

for love of me,

to stand on that hill of Calvary,

naked,

covered in wounds,

without comeliness whereby

we could know You.

Give me the courage

and the dignity and splendour

of Your love,

to live openly,

without pretence,

even when there is that in my life

which shames me.

Give me the one glory

of those who are disgraced

and ashamed before the world:

to be stripped with You,

Jesus Christ my redeemer,

upon Calvary.

CH

AMDG

Away

I plan to spend the next few days in a cabin by a lake having a little Lenten retreat. I have written meditations for Friday and Saturday, and if Blogger does its job they should appear before you wake up. I won't be responding to comments; however, please feel free to post comments if you wish.

I'm not posting about the Stations on Sundays, but when I get back on Sunday afternoon, I hope to have finished something I've had in the back of my mind ever since I started the blog.

Please keep me in your prayers.

AMDG

The Ninth Station~Jesus Falls the Third Time~Brokenness

In this meditation, Caryll Houselander writes about the many people who are following Jesus on the way to Calvary: those who hate him, those who love him, those who he has healed, the poor who hope he will establish a new kingdom.

They wait, straining forward, struggling to come near to Him, breathless with suspense, some through fear, some through hope; all tense, expectant, waiting!

And what does He do? For the third and the last time, Jesus falls under the cross!

This is the worst fall of all. It comes at the worst moment of all. It tears open all the wounds in His body; the shock dispels the last ounce of strength that He had mustered to go on. It shatters the last hope, the last remnant of faith, in nearly everyone in the crowd. It is triumph for His enemies, heartbreak for His friends.

* * * * * * * *

The last fall is the worst fall. In it Christ identified Himself with those who fall again and again, and who get up again and again and go on--those who even after the struggle of a lifetime fall when the end is in sight; those who in this last fall lose the respect of many of their fellow men, but who overcome their humiliation and shame; who, ridiculous in the eyes of men, are beautiful in the eyes of God, because in Christ, with Christ's courage, in His heroism, they get up and go on, climbing the hill of Calvary.

Caryll Houselander, The Way of the Cross

This meditation reminds me of Lord Sebastian Flyte in Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited. We meet this beautiful, charming, younger son of the Marchmain family in Oxford where he is living an elegant and dissolute life, and leave him "a sort of under-porter" at a monastery in Tunis where he is "an odd hanger-on" under the care of the Father Superior, when he isn't off on a drinking spree. In the eyes of the world, he is a hopeless drunkard, but hopeless is exactly what he is not. Although he knows that he will never overcome his alcoholism, he never gives up hope, always stumbling back to the monastery after a fall. "Holy" is the way his sister Cordelia describes him.

Lord,

fallen under the cross

for the last time,

grant to me, and to all those

with whom You identified Yourself

in the third fall,

Your courage,

Your humility,

to rise in Your strength,

and in spite of failure upon failure,

shame upon shame,

to persevere to the end.

CH

AMDG

The Eighth Station~Jesus Speaks to the Women of Jerusalem~Weeping

In her meditation on this station, Caryll Houselander asks why Jesus, Who has from the beginning of His life accepted whatever help men have been willing to give Him, seems to reject the compassion of these women. She says:

Is this a refusal, a rebuke or a warning?

In a sense it is none of these, but a showing, a pointing to something which, if these women miss, and if we miss today, they and we will have missed the meaning of Christ's passion. Which if we miss, all our devotion to the person of Jesus Christ in His historical Passion, all our meditations and prayers, will be sterile and will fall short of their object to reach and comfort the heart of Christ. He is pointing to His passion in the souls of each of those women, in the souls of each of their children and their children's children all through time. He is pointing to all those lives to come through all the ages in which His suffering will go on.

* * * * * * * *

It is in order that we should seek Him and give our compassion to Him, weep for Him in [especially those that suffer alone and ignored], that Christ showed His need for sympathy in His earthly life and on the way of the cross. We must weep for Him in these and in our own souls, in these day, the days of the dry wood: "It is not for me that you should weep . . . you should weep for yourselves and your children. Behold, a time is coming when men will say, It is well for the barren, for the wombs that never bore children, and the breasts that never suckled them. It is then that they will begin to say to the mountains, Fall on us, and to the hills, Cover us. If it goes so hard with the tree that is still green, what will become of the tree that is already dried up?" (Luke xxiii, 28-31).

When CH said, "days of the dry wood" she was speaking of the days during and after World War II in England, where, of course, there was much more suffering than in the United States. I think, however, that we can rightly appropriate those words for the times in which we live, and almost beyond a doubt for those that are to come.

When I was younger, I thought a lot about that passage from Luke which says that it is well for the barren. I wondered what that meant, and supposed that it was because mothers would not be able to provide for their children and that they would have to watch them suffer. Then, I always thought about it in terms of babies or young children, but now I can see that it also applies to mothers of adults.

What never occurred to me in the past was that people would say it was well for the barren because they thought that their lives would be so much better without children. Today, we have seen that phrase that speaks of mothers' selfless love turn into a phrase that denotes a complete selfishness. And I think that one of the things that CH would tell us about this is that Christ is suffering in these women who have made a decision against motherhood, and that we ought to be weeping for Him in them. This, of course, is not our natural inclination, and that is why Lent and devotions like the Way of the Cross, are so important to us. They give us the time and space to look at things from the perspective of Jesus's Passion.

Father,

do not let me find consolation

in sensible devotion

to the person of Jesus Christ

while Jesus Christ passes me by

unrecognized,

unknown,

unsought,

uncomforted

on the Via Crucis

we travel together.

* * * * * * * *

Do not give me tears

to shed at the feet of the crucifix

while they blind me to Christ crucified,

unwept for

in the souls of sinners

and in my own sinful soul.

AMDG