The truth about songs of your youth is they raise your heart’s curtain. They do mine, anyway. Time punches the accelerator; neither you nor I can slow it down. My thumping ventricles make me dream of being saxxy, but my veins are in their seventh decade of service and feel each season peeling out into the next. Continue reading
Some folks find idols playing their songs of yesteryear depressing. Not me. I’ll take old performers over their younger versions any day. Continue reading
Dear Everyone,
I woke up singing this morning, a losing-weight-but-still-fluffy guy sliding into jeans and the Baja hoodie Kathy lovingly de-hooded for me years ago. Gimpy Watson had to pee, so out we went, the song coming along:
Somewhere beyond the sea
Somewhere waiting for me . . .
Out back, where Watson kills the grass with his pee, where I hum Bobby Darin.
The trouble with this swaggery Bobby Darin thing, which I both love and hate, is I don’t know all the words. Back inside, I finished putting myself together and noodled around with the signature lines:
I know beyond a doubt (HA!)
My heart will lead me there soon
HA! is the best part—so dated, so got-the-world-by-the-stones, so satisfying. Darin could walk on stage, say, “HA!” and I would cheer. Forget the lover on golden sands and birds flying on high. HA! and a smirk are plenty.
I crooned these juicy lines a few times, each HA! rattling the windows.
“Somebody’s peppy this morning,” Kathy called from the bathroom.
“That’s right,” I said, praying another song would break into my head. Yelping out HA! eventually triggers the gag reflex and makes you light-headed.
If your home has its standard measure of weirdness, a family member turning twelve lyrical words into a mantra might not be noteworthy, but in the midst of my heart dragging my smarm around the house, I noticed: I was singing. This hasn’t happened much recently, and certainly not upon waking, which generally amounts to a twenty-minute game of drag-ass.
About this singing, I’ll observe only that it’s not because I’m leaving one pastoral call and moving to another. Nothing is ever simple, is it? It’s possible to be both excited about a destination and bone-sad over a departure. My heart doesn’t know how to beat right now.
Which is why I appreciate the present singing. Before morning coffee, “Beyond the Sea” was relieved of duty by “End of the Line” by the Traveling Wilburys. Ah, Roy Orbison’s sweet warble, Tom Petty’s blessed assurance kissing me in my plump Chevy HHR:
Don’t have to be ashamed of the car I drive
I’m happy to be here, happy to be alive
“This is most certainly true,” my Lutheran-Zen brain answered. Ashamed of the car I drive? Ha! I have better shames than transportation. Happy to be alive? Why, yes, don’t mind if I am. Happy to be here and receive all kinds of music.
In the last couple of weeks I’ve realized a beauty that has always been offering itself to me. When I walk from the house to the car, at least one bird is in the sky or on a wire or atop a tree. Friend Mary could tell me all their names, just as Kathy can identify nearly every flower. My memory is Teflon with such details, but I can witness and give thanks.
A bird that friend Mary can certainly identify (Credit: Wikipedia)
I make that forty-foot trip from house to car and back again multiple times a day, and only once has a bird not accompanied me. Sometimes it’s a tiny, lone eye-song flying on high. Why have these companions been invisible for so long? A hardened heart and blinded eyes, maybe, projects of my own doing?
But gladness improves vision. As peace increases, the commonplace comes alive. Right before Kathy and I headed out the door a few hours ago, the kitchen windowsill said hosanna.
Tomatoes from Kathy’s garden ripen, only after I had given up and decided to make cream of green tomato soup out of them.
Rosemary from friend Denise, basil in water experiment, a ripening peach–each one a “hosanna.”
And yesterday Elena, Cole, and I had homemade vegetable soup and bread for lunch. As my wonder-of-a daughter poached eggs, my savior-grandson walked toward his bedroom and said, “Pop, come. Pop, come.” The message was of burning-bush proportions. I followed.
Cole is into hammering these days, so we went at rubber balls and his miniature electronic drum set, which said “Let’s jam again soon” each of the hundred times he turned it off. After lunch Elena got out his new piggy bank, and we all counted as he slipped in coins.
Each time Cole says “Pop,” I stand on holy ground.
When I said, “Pop has to leave now,” Cole said, “Cole leave.” Referring to yourself in the third person is not only charming when you’re almost two, but also infectious.
“Oh, you want to go with Pop?” Elena said. “No, Cole has to stay here.”
My little buddy sagged at the screen door, his face widening into a pitiful toddler cry as I waved goodbye. By the time I reached the Chevy, I could see he was on to the next attraction, tears already drying.
“Pop, come.” Cole is calling me. Birds and songs are, too, as is the Lover of Souls: “Wake up, child,” Love whispers to me, “greet your sky-neighbors and sing. Two lines are enough. Even a HA! of joy will do.”
Love,
John
“Change me!” (Credit: Ocean / Corbis)
In one of my favorite poems, Randall Jarrell’s “The Woman at the Washington Zoo,” a plain woman dressed in “dull, null navy” grieves her loneliness and observes the animals, “these beings trapped / “As I am trapped, but not, themselves, the trap, / Aging but without knowledge of their age.” She ends her monologue with something like a prayer to a vulture. “Step to me as a man,” she begs. “You know what I was, / You see what I am: change me, change me!”
Jarrell isn’t an exclamation point junkie. At least in her mind, the woman is shouting. I can’t sit with this poem without being close to tears. The woman at the Washington Zoo, with her common clothing and numbing existence, speaks for me in those moments when I understand that some of my flaws are probably life sentences. Her plea is my prayer: “You know what I was. You see what I am. Change me. Change me!”
Credit: Wikipedia
A couple weeks ago knowledge of flaw gave itself to me not at a zoo, but in a small sanctuary, and not during a liturgy, but during a concert. The Misery Bay Dulcimers were playing at Abiding Hope Lutheran Church in Erie, Pennsylvania, where I serve as pastor. Wife Kathy and daughter Elena were with me in the back row, which is like a ringside seat in large churches. Gentle music from sixteen or so dulcimers graced my ears and touched my closed eyes. Was it “Danny Boy”? Or “Wild Irish Rose”? I don’t remember what song brought me to myself, like Jarrell’s woman, like Luke’s Prodigal Son.
“You’re not really here, John,” the dulcimers sang. “You’re off to Next, and you don’t even know what’s Next. Stay with us, brother. We’ll take care of you.”
You promised to wait for me, Next. Where are you, you creep? (Credit: Corbis)
I’ve spent embarrassing energy in recent years staring at my own reflection, greeting age spots, explicating crow’s feet beside my spirit’s eyes. And wondering: “At fifty-two can I learn to be where I am, when I am, how I am, who I am? Can I mute the restless gravity that pulls me away from now and pushes me toward Next—without more medication, that is?
Hell, Next could be scooping litter boxes or scouring neglected dishes, but his rasp is relentless: “Let’s go. It’s time to go. You’ll be at peace only when you’re facing my way, taking the first steps in my direction. Never mind that when you get to me, I’ll be gone, laughing at your sorry ass and limping into the distance.”
As the dulcimers offered love, Elena leaned into me. I put my arm around her and rested my hand on Kathy’s shoulder. What better place to be? Ah, but Next. Stubborn shithead Next, with his tobacco-stained fingers and dank breath. I always hear him in my chest. His commentary translates into anxiety, like static electricity in the spot where you get choked up.
Grandson Cole. Hope 1, Next 0. (Credit: Elena Thompson)
But hope lives. My days aren’t enslaved by Next. I’m often fully present, though sometimes in peaceful, sacred moments, the old deceiver nags: “Listen to me, small man! Fragile man!”
“You know what I was,” I prayed to the God breathing on me through strings and fingers. “You see what I am. Change me. Change me!”
Sweet dulcimers. They persisted. A woman made a little wooden puppet do the jig on an oar. And minute by minute, they sang and danced Next mostly silent. “Dear one,” they said, “you still have time to find peace. Hear us. Be still. The Loving Mystery is always trying to kiss you.”
A Napper's Companion 