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?
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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.
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My favorite picture from that By the Mark video.
AMDG
Oh, I do love that Gillian Welch record! There's something very special about it. The song you picked is wonderful, as you say. (I think my favourite song, though, is "Acony Bell". It has nothing to do with Holy Week though.)
ReplyDeleteWell, I don't know, it's about hanging out during the time of ice and snow and troubles until it all melts away and everything is Spring. Seems to fit in pretty well.
ReplyDeleteAMDG
Mine, too! (the picture). That one and the picture of the little girl on the pony, because it is uncannily like a similar one of my wife at the same age. She's *so* happy, and every time I look at it I hope that in heaven I'll somehow be able to see the actual event. She remembers it quite well--the guy with the pony was going around charging people to let their kids have their pictures taken on the pony. Could it even have been the same pony?!
ReplyDeleteAnyway--I love this album too, of course. And I often wonder about that mystery of the wounds, though the answer to questions like the one about Kenny remains as inconceivable as ever.
About ten years ago I found a picture of my mother that was taken by her first husband who died in an accident not too long after they were married. She has an expression of absolute bliss on her face. I have never seen her look anywhere near that happy in my life, and I wish I could see it. I guess in Heaven she will look even happier.
ReplyDeleteAMDG
I have a picture of my Dad on a pony like that, too. He's dressed like a cowboy. I'm fairly certain that it's not the same pony.
ReplyDeleteIf I had been on the pony, I would probably not have been smiling. Even after 4 years of riding horses at camp, I just never got the knack of it. I never met a horse that did not now immediately that he was my superior and then take serious advantage of his superiority.
AMDG
Karen's in a cowgirl suit. Makes it even cuter.
ReplyDeleteHorses really are pretty scary. I've only ridden a few times and it was sort of fun but I certainly didn't feel in control.
I miss cowboy suits. I ought to start a business making them because I bet all the grandmothers who are our age would snatch them up like hotcakes.
ReplyDeleteAMDG
Cowboys outfits, I guess they are. I can see by your outfit that you are a cowboy--not by your suit.
ReplyDeleteAMDG