Country Strong

          Cause I'm country strong
          Hard to break:  like the ground I grew up on.

I haven't had a chance to see the movie.  I will see it, for two reasons.  I enjoy almost every genre, but being from Dakota country:  country music is the music of my people.  Secondly, I'm often entertained when actors I enjoy suddenly display a talent I never knew they possessed.  Gweneth Paltrow, somewhere, found field cred!  She sings country music with all the heart, soul, and earthiness of someone born and raised with the Opry.  But, this blog isn't about singing the praises of country music and rural life.  (Though there are such praises to sing.)  This blog is about the crossroads of music, lyrics, and fatih.  

Read the lyric.  Hear the beginning of the song on the playlist on the right.  Watch Gweneth.

Photo by Georg Slickers

What is powerful about the above lyric isn't what is said, so much as what is happening in its creation:  reflection, imagination, experience, and implications.  This sounds like prayer to me.  The singer finds herself in a situation where she feels like she is breaking, and makes an imaginative leap.  Break.  I'm breaking.  Farm land is broken for planting.  Farm land is hard to break.  I'm like that land.  Life might be tough, but I'm tough to break.

This is prayer at its creative, imaginative, metaphoric best!  To link what is going on in our heart and soul to what we see, smell, hear, touch, and taste.  If you think it may be a bit faddish to get tips for prayer from the example of country song lyrics:  the imaginative leap the singer takes is similar to another we know well.  When Jesus was having his last meal with friends, he looked down at the food, took the bread, blessed it, and broke it.  This bread is my body, broken for you.

What is going on with you right now?  Do you soar like an eagle?  Skip like a rock?  Move with the wind?  Do you burn like fire?  Are you stretched like a rubbar band?  Broken like glass?  A content kitten full of cream? 

Country Strong is a call to spend some time making imaginative connections.  A call to spend time in prayer.

Metaphores be with you!

Hanukkah Blessings



Source:  www.kochivibe.com

Artist Unknown



To enjoy this wonderful song:  gaze to the right and click "play".  Read the lyrics. 



For years, this catchy song has held pride of place in my Christmas Playlist.  Always in the top three of songs to play, it speaks of ancient traditions in ways fresh and new.  I like that.

 

I also like to celebrate Christmas by tipping my hat to the faith and traditions that Jesus would have been celebrating this time of year.  Jesus would have been remembering how, thanks to God, one day's worth of lamp oil kept the temple alight for eight days.  Striking, isn't it, how easily the lyrics of this song relate to Christmas?  God lifting us out of darkness.  Light and peace coming to a world that often finds itself in darkness and anxiety.  Freedom from slavery, from sin.  Taking darkness and casting joy.  God exceeding our plans and expectations.

These lyrics strike me in a different way each year.  This year, I'm questioning the temptation to let Christmas be December 25.  Come the 26th, it is too easy to let "normal" life resume.  Night after night, one by one, the candles are set alight.  Maybe joy and light are like that.  Maybe light, freedom, and peace require more than frenzied weeks of preparation for one night and day.  (After all, it is the twelve days of christmas, isn't it?)

 

I don't know about you, but I feel called to continue enjoying the lights of Christmas.  I'm perfectly willing to let the jingle bells, TV shows, and the noise of Christmas pass.  After one day, I've had my fill.  But, let the lights linger.  Nature supplies dark evenings that allow me to reflect on an ornamented tree that is a sign of God's activity in the world, bringing light to darkness.  There is an invitation in our very orbit about the sun to turn off our overhead electric lightbulb suns, let nature's darkness be, and let the natural light of candles cast their light. 

God is at work in the darkness around us.  God turns the fear and darkness in our lives into mystery, and -with time- illumination and joy.  Reflecting on such things takes more than a day.  It takes repition. 



Twelve days of Christmas?  Then it isn't even half over! 

I hope you have only begun to see the light!

Silent Night

For a refresher, you can find the lyrics to Silent Night here.   To listen, look to the right and click "play".

Have you ever have a Christmas song that ...just ...gets ...on ...your ...nerves?  That one carol that rubs you the wrong way?  A Christmas song that even Stevie Nicks can't fix?  I usually reflect on songs I have a postive response to, but sometimes it is worth reflecting on lyrics that provoke a strong negative reaction.  Silent Night is my yearly dose of fingernails on a chalkboard.

The lyric is just so much wishful thinking!  Like a mirage, it is an image of what we wish the birth of Jesus was like:  a lush image that, ultimately, is not rooted in the reality of incarnation.  Calm and bright?  Tender and mild?  Heavenly peace?  Silent radiant beams of glory?

Give me a break!  First of all, I was raised in farm and ranch country.  Mangers and stables are NOT silent and peaceful.  Sheep are neither clean nor quiet.  If Jesus' first bed looked like our popular, rustic, and ultimately romantic images:  well, let's just say that stable hay is a less than sanitary choice of bedding for a newborn. Secondly, the lives of too many people look like the reality of what stables are.  I think of the lives I've met as a Priest of the Sacred Heart:  at risk children, immigrants, victims of abuse, those struggling to find a place in society, workers concerned for their economic future.



Battle Of Shanghai Baby - Retouched

Photo By Bellhalla;  Original by Office Of Emergency Management

   

I can't help but believe that Christ's incarnation was more, well, carnal.  That is the word we use:  incarnation.   We are talking about taking on flesh, of choosing a life that, all too often for far too many, means suffering.  Pain.   

Was the night of Christ's birth a silent night?  Did Mary smile down upon a peacefully sleeping baby?  We wish that for newborns, but that image is not incarnate.  

I ask you:  what is the reaction of babies who find themselves in the last place one would choose for a child?  And, I believe that Fr. Leo Dehon would ask us all:  if this a season of light and redemption, what is our response to a world too often filled with darkness, cries, and screams?

Thank You For Loving Me

Read the lyrics.  Watch the video on YouTube.  Listen by clicking "play" on the playlist to the right.

Every once in awhile, even celibates contemplate marriage.  At least this one does. (Especially when a great picture of a married couple arrives in my email.)  Marriage reveals something of the mystery of Christ's love for us.  Well, not quite.  Maybe it would be more accurate to say marriages:  marriages are that window into Christ's love.  I'm not talking about some abstract ideal.  What reveals divine Love is actual marriages.  The marriages of family, friends, the couple at the next table, in the next pew.  You get my drift.

What makes this song by Bon Jovi stand out is that it isn't about the usual youthful fare that mistakes desire, longing, or fire for love.  The love in Thank You... is centered on commitment and action.  Sure, there is an element of passion in seeing a new sky in blue eyes and having one's dreams and world collapse in the gaze.  (It is a bit scary to think that this might reveal something of God's love:  that God might want us that completely.)

Photo by Mary Lou Griffith

What makes this song stand out is that the passion is an undercurrent for a deeper, more lasting commitment.  In this lyric, love is an action:  it reveals what is hidden, it resuscitates, is for better and worse, it rescues, risks, and gives wings.  Of course, the video centers on a young couple, but it doesn't stay there.  It simply can't.  This kind of love is best revealed through the wisdom and experience that only time offers.  The young couple's hope is fully found in the commitment of the mature couple.  (And, isn't the group of nuns that the bride passes on the way to the wedding an interesting visual choice?  Are they merely a prop on Roman streets, or is the video suggesting that this sort of love is, in its own way, found in the commitment of celibates to their life of service to others?)

Maybe when we next see a mature couple dancing together, sharing laughter, eye's locked together, we are getting a glimpse of Divine Love.  (As a Dehonian, I would call it a glimpse of the love contained for us in the Sacred Heart of Christ.)  At such times, there is no choice other than to say to God:  "Thank you for loving me..."

Just A Dream



Read the lyrics.  Watch the video on YouTube.  To listen:  look to the right and "play" away...



Cover Art:  Just A Dream



I know that this blog is supposed to be about the intersection of faith and lyrics.  But, I can't help but mention that the first thing I thought when seeing the video for this song was William Shakespeare.  (In my defense:  sometimes I am tempted to think Shakespeare's words are divinely inspiried.) 

Nelly's lyric of a man who lost his love due to failure to commit, combined with the images in the video, instantly reminded me of lyrics from a much older song in Much Ado About Nothing.

         

          Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more; 
              Men were deceivers ever;
          One foot in sea and one on shore,
              To one thing constant never;

          Then sigh not so, But let them go,
              And be you blithe and bonny;
          Converting all your sounds of woe
              Into. Hey nonny, nonny.

From National Portrait Gallery

London, England

...nice earring, Shakespeare!

What is it about men...   well, I don't want to be sexist.  What is it about men and women that make us afraid to commit?  Though I am a celibate:  I understand the lyrics Nelly sings.  The Church gave me six years to make my profession of final vows.  Though I could have professed after three years:  I took all six. 

Sometimes, as the lyrics of this song suggest, we spend so much time dreaming about what could be we fail to see the life and people right in front of us.  Nelly realizes that he should have put it down, got that ring, and made a commitment.  He realizes that life in the clubs, single and free, is not as happy as the missed chance he had for a wife would have been. 

What is the happiness that God intends for us?  Do we hold off on commitment until "it" happens, whether that be the "perfect" job, career, spouse, or situation?  Shakespeare expresses it as keeping one foot in sea and the other on shore.  Is that elusive "it" we are waiting for, as Nelly suggests, just a dream?  What if happiness isn't "it", but is being aware of and seeing what is in front of us, and saying "yes...", "I do...", or (in my less frequent case) "I profess..."   Nelly tells us that happiness is found with commitment.  When we do commit, our eyes are opened and we realize that all else is only a dream.

 

I'll Be Missing You

Read the lyrics.  To listen on MyDehonianPlayist:  just look to the right and play.

This week I had a chance to attend a workshop on the coming translations that will be used at Mass.  These translations got me thinking about our images of God.  I noticed that many of the original Latin texts express a relationship to a God who is distant, wholly other, greater, over, and above.  We approach this God in great humility.  We are not only servants, we are slaves, and God is Master.  We do not look God in the eye.  This is a God who deigns to give us attention.

This is a legitimate image of God and has its place in our prayer life.  God's thoughts are so beyond our thoughts, God's ways are so beyond our ways, and perspective is so beyond our perspective that it is the height of arrogance for us to assume any relationship other than to be supplicative.

By Arthur@NYCArthur.com



Yet, I couldn't help but have this song by P. Diddy play in my mind.  I remember a funeral for a teen in Fort Thompson, South Dakota.  His death was sudden, unexpected, and tragic.  A winter auto accident.  His friends and siblings -heartbroken, vulnerable- played this song at the graveside.  Huddled together against the cold around their sound system, it was the lyrics of this song that gave final expression to their pain and brokenness. 

The lyrics, though not addressed directly to God, are certainly in God's presence.  They talk about a God who is the God of life, who hears our prayers, who is concerned about relationship and bonds that break, who responds to heartbreak, who is present for every step, every night, every move we make.

There are times we need to come before God in the most humble of terms.  Yet, as a Dehonian, I must admit that image fails to speak as poignantly as the time some Fort Thompson teens stood before a God who was listening to P. Diddy, as he gave words to their vulnerability and faith when they could do no more than huddle against the cold, together in God's presence. 

Pray For You

Read the lyrics.  Be entertained by the video.  To listen on MyDehonianPlayist:  just look to the right and press play.

From www.jaronatlrtl.com

I had a great discussion about this entertaining song's lyrics over pizza yesterday!  The verse sets us up for pious and nice thoughts, and the chorus delivers with prayers that jar the listener like a flowerpot from above.  A visit to church and a sermon about praying for one's enemies brings the singer to pray that their brakes go out on a downhill trip, among other things.  All with organ music waxing holy in the background.

Hypocritical?  Maybe not.

I am reminded of a traditional Jewish... well... blessing... I guess.  Relying on Yiddish's unique combination of wit and wisdom, this sort of prayer would go something like, May your engine stall while you are flying high, God Forbid!  Begin with words that express one's baser -but honest- desire.  End by placing the desire in God's hands.  (To learn more, check out page 214 of The Complete Idiot's Guide to Learning Yiddish.)  I don't think the similarity between the song and the blessing is by accident.  Jaron David Lowenstein, singer and co-author of the song, was raised in an Orthodox Jewish home.  Chances are, he grew up knowing this rather unique sort of blessing.

What if there is wisdom in this song?  As a Dehonian, my belief is in a God who is profoundly interested in relationship.  God is interested in our Sunday best.  God is also interested in our Monday morning rush-hour worst.  Honesty.  Who we really are.  For better and for worse.  At our best, we can be incredibly generous and self-sacraficing.  But, I don't think I am the only one who occasionally wishes that someone's path is crossed by a rapidly falling flower pot.

What if there is some value in expressing our worst desires in prayer?  God forbid!  Such a prayer keeps us honest with ourselves, honest with God.  At the same time, such prayer also tempers that desire by placing the matter in God's hands:  "I would like the brakes on their car to go out, but your will, not mine, be done."

I know that sometimes I try to stifle and stuff my worst desires for others.  When I do, they usually find a way out.  Usually in ways that end up being destructive of relationships.  In ways that end in regret for my actions and words.  In ways that require forgiveness and consequences. 

Of course, the Gospel calls not just that we pray for enemies, but that we actually love them.  Maybe a few honestly expressed words, between God and I, followed by putting the matter in the hands of Providence will start me down this "high road", as the song calls it.  Love is the desired end, but to be honest before God, it isn't always the starting point.

          He said you cant go hating others who have done wrong to you.
          Sometimes we get angry, but we must not condemn.
          Let the good Lord do His job and you just pray for them.