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Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground

Sitting in for Jarvis Cocker on BBC6music’s ‘Sunday Service’ today was Alison Mosshart of The Kills. With a theme of ‘Death and the Devil’ she span some suitably dark tunes from The White Stripes to Robert Johnson, Johnny Cash to the Stone Roses via Neil Young and Laura Marling.

But it was Blind Willie Johnson’s Dark was Night, Cold Was the Ground that particularly stood out. Not a song you’d expect to get any airplay – but isn’t that why 6 music is always worth listening to? – it’s three and a half minutes of slide guitar and moaning bluesman.

Mosshart told the story that it was included on the Voyager Golden Records. These were phonographic records placed aboard the Voyager Spacecraft as part of  a collection of images and sounds sent into space to portray the diversity of life on earth. Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground was chosen as the human expression of loneliness.

Jack White called it ‘the greatest example of slide guitar ever recorded.’

Check it.

the Scared is scared

6.15 this morning, browsing my twitter timeline as I sat drinking my coffee and eating my porridge, I happened upon this wonderfully imaginative and moving film.

Take 8mins out, watch, and smile.

 

<p><a href=”http://vimeo.com/58659769″>the Scared is scared</a> from <a href=”http://vimeo.com/user7252450″>Bianca Giaever</a> on <a href=”http://vimeo.com”>Vimeo</a&gt;.</p>

Nice enough to make a man weep…

As I prepared to speak on the opening chapter of Ecclesiastes I struggled to think of a time, aside from actively seeking them out through google searches and podcasts, that I’d actually heard a sermon exploring this book. Perhaps this shouldn’t be too surprising because it is a dangerous book, as Medieval Old Testament scholars would no doubt attest to.

It poses difficult questions without obvious answers; it is inconsistent and full of paradox and contradiction. But it’s precisely because of this that it is a very human book – a sentiment astutely observed by a member of our congregation and echoed in American author, Thomas Wolfe’s wonderful assertion that Ecclesiastes is ‘the highest flower of poetry, eloquence and truth.‘

Like the best poets, songwriters, film makers and authors it reflects deeply the human condition, not shying away from the inherent tensions found within. Tensions characterised by a world that can seem so incredibly meaningless, but in which we so long for meaning; that acknowledges the wondrous gift of life amidst the suffering, poverty and brokenness that is so prevalent; a world in which very bad things happen to very good people; a world whose history forces us to reconcile our potential for awesome creativity with our power to destruct.

‘We need a coat with two pockets’, Parker J. Palmer notes. ‘In one pocket there is dust, and in the other pocket there is gold. We need a coat with two pockets to remind us who we are.’

This is the story we inhabit and which we see echoed throughout the pages of scripture: the life of slavery that longs for freedom; the life of exile that longs for homecoming; the life of death that longs for resurrection. A narrative not outside of the gift of life we have been given but fully entrenched within.

However, like so many Good Friday sermons that dwell all too briefly on the crucifixion – let alone encourage contemplation of the apparent divine absence of Easter Saturday – we jump to the resurrection, shielding from the more vulnerable side of our humanity.

In his crucifixion Jesus was dislocated from those structures that provide meaning – indeed more than the physical pain, it was the shame of crucifixion that was a deterrent to those opposing the Roman Empire. Jesus absorbed and experienced the doubt, the pain and the suffering that is such a part our experience.

I wonder how often the irony is lost that it is to this cross, the ultimate symbol of rejection and vulnerability, that we now look to for hope. To live the resurrection narrative, we must face the reality of the cross and have the reality of our humanity reflected back on us. As Walter Bruggemann says, ‘The coming joy depends on the present grief…the sorrow of death permits the joy of new birth.’

Not so we might celebrate, revel in or trivialise our despair, but that in vocalising, in naming the reality of our humanity we live the salvific narrative of God’s story of transformation; the infinite collides with the finite, the temporary (the meaningless, the smoke, the vapour that is life articulated by the writer of Ecclesiastes) is infused with the eternal.

Ecclesiastes is poetry in its purest form because it gives us permission to be who we are. As Robin Williams pronounces to his impressionable English class in the film, Dead Poets Society, ‘we don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute; we read and write poetry because we are members of the human race.’

I finished my sermon by reading The Bluebird by Charles Bukowski. An alcoholic, womanising, gambler, it was entirely because of his cracked humanity that Bukowski was able to write such beautiful prose. I’ve only recently come across this poem but it certainly resonates deeply with the themes discussed here.

Read by the man himself:

When the Ship Comes In

I was intrigued when I come across top-notch theologian Tom Wright performing Dylan’s, When the Ship Comes In. Whilst the vocals may lack a little of Dylan’s gravel-voiced poignancy, the choice of song, and talk of it’s eschatological significance, are spot on.

For my BA dissertation I used Dylan as a case study to explore how popular art acts as a vocabulary for liberation. As When the Ship Comes In was a notable song used in that work and I thought I’d share some of those thoughts here:

When the Ship Comes In is a most specific articulation of the central theme of this study. It is a song written about a certain incident (trivially enough, about Dylan being refused entry to a hotel) and at a critical time during the height of the civil rights struggle. It is a song drawing inspiration from the past that communicates a future utopia into a present reality. Sometimes moments in history surpass the point in which they occurred and appear relevant and inspiring to the generations that succeed them. While not defined by it, the value of this song is only heightened through its context.

On 28th August 1963, when 200,000 people gathered in Washington D.C. to join the March for Jobs and Freedom, Martin Luther King emphatically announced, ‘I have a dream’. Perhaps it was no coincidence that Dylan was amongst the performers at this march and, fittingly, played When the Ship Comes In:

‘The “ship” may serve as a metaphor for many things, but, there can’t be much doubt that on this day, and in this era, that it symbolised that complex of insurgent social forces commonly dubbed “the movement”.’ (Mike Marquess).

In the same sense as King’s trailblazing speech, When the Ship Comes In is a cry for human completion.

Indeed, biblical stories of liberation are central to the song’s message:

And like Pharaoh’s tribe,

They’ll be drownded in the tide,

And like Goliath, they’ll be conquered.

Both the exodus story and the story of David and Goliath are characterised by the oppressed receiving liberation; an outworking of God’s salvific character throughout history with God not detached from historical reality, but central to it:

‘It is a matter of partial fulfilments through liberating historical events, which are in turn new promises marking the road towards total fulfilment. Christ does not ‘spiritualize’ the eschatological promises; he gives them meaning and fulfilment today.’ (Gustavo Gutierrez)

In Luke 4, Jesus proclaims that he has been appointed to tell the Good News to the poor and to set the captives free. Oppression, injustice and inequality hold no place in the kingdom of God and, as such, if we are to represent our creator, we should strive to rid the world of them. Indeed, the image of the ship coming in, in the context of time, is extremely profound. It acts as a metaphor for humanity tarnished, lost at sea through the marginalisation of segregation, but that, one day will finally dock. It evokes images of the second coming, the moment in history when all will be put right and the kingdom of God will be seen in all its glory. Foes will be defeated, injustice eradicated and human beings will fulfil their purpose. Dylan articulates the joy, freedom and, ultimately, the liberation when humanity is restored to its true nature. The authentic power comes in his ability to express salvific images within a concrete, human reality to vocalise the tangible nature of this liberation:

‘the sun will respect every face on the deck…the seagulls will be smiling…the sea will roll out a carpet of gold…the rocks on the sand will proudly stand, the hour that the ship comes in.’

Life is like a handful of Play-Doh

As one of the youth group observed:

It’s not about how much you’ve got or what colour it is. It’s the shape you mould or the imprint you make.

Levon Helm: May 26, 1940 to April 19, 2012

A sad loss and forever proof that bands with singing drummers don’t have to make you cringe.

The Gravel Voiced Songsmith salutes you.

Canterbury’s loss is Cambridge’s gain

A friend of mine sent me this today which I found wonderfully inspiring for us indigenous Cambridge folk awaiting Rowan’s arrival:

Australian theologian Benjamin Myers has a story in his new book on Rowan Williams’ theology that sheds an interesting light on the Archbishop.

In an address to the House of Bishops, Elizabeth Templeton asked her audience how they would respond to a situation in which a man at a bus stop said to them he wanted an explanation of the resurrection in the two minutes before his bus left.

Bishops came up with various responses but not the answer Templeton was seeking. “The resurrection is really so important you will have to miss your bus to hear about it,” was the reply she was looking for.

Williams scratched his beard for a moment and came up with a different reply. “I think I’d ask the man where he was going and then I’d offer to accompany him on his journey,” he said. As Myers comments, this illustrates the way Williams does theology by adopting a different perspective and seeing things in ways others have failed to notice. It also shows an understanding of how to carry out effective evangelism many of us could learn from.

Thoughts on creativity

Creativity shouldn’t be seen as something otherworldly. It shouldn’t be thought of as a process reserved for artists and inventors and other “creative types.” The human mind, after all, has the creative impulse built into its operating system, hard-wired into its most essential programming code. At any given moment, the brain is automatically forming new associations, continually connecting an everyday x to an unexpected y.

Johan Lehrer

Greater love hath no (wo)man than this…

I’ll be honest I’ve never read The Shack (after much discernment I’m still undecided if that’s a salvation issue or not?!) I did start it once, I just never finished it.

However it did come in useful as I was preparing a reflection on John 15:13 as I remembered this story from one of it’s opening chapters:

The Columbia River gorge in Oregon is breathtakingly beautiful. Multnomah Falls is a popular destination for many hikers and tourists. The legend of the falls tells of a beautiful Indian maiden, the daughter of the chief of the Multnomah tribe.

The princess was the only child left to her ageing father. The chief loved his daughter dearly and picked out a husband for her, a young warrior who was a prince of the Clatsop tribe, whom he knew she loved. The two tribes came together to celebrate the days of the wedding feast. Just before the feast began, a terrible sickness fell on the men of the tribes killing many of them.

The elders discussed what they could do about the wasting disease that was so quickly decimating their warriors. The oldest medicine man among them spoke of his own father, when aged and near death, had foretold of a terrible sickness that would kill their men, an illness that could only be stopped if a pure and innocent daughter of a chief would willingly give up her life for her people. In order to fulfil the prophecy, she must voluntarily climb the cliff above the Big River and then jump to her death onto the rocks below.

A dozen young women were brought before the council, all daughters of the various chiefs. After considerable debate the elders decided that they could not ask for such a precious sacrifice, especially for a legend they weren’t sure was true.

But the disease continued to spread unabated among the men and eventually the young warrior, the husband-to-be, fell ill with the sickness. The princess who loved him knew in her heart that something had to be done. After cooling his fever and kissing him softly on the forehead, she quietly slipped away.

It took all night and the next day to reach the place spoken of in the legend, a towering cliff overlooking the Big River and the lands beyond. After praying and giving herself to the Great Spirit, she fulfilled the prophecy by jumping without hesitation to the rocks below.

Back at the villages the next morning, those who had been sick arose well and strong. There was great joy and celebration until the young warrior discovered that his beloved bride was missing. As the awareness of what had happened spread rapidly among the people, many began the journey to the place where they knew they would find her. As they silently gathered around her broken body at the base of the cliff, her grief-stricken father cried out to the Great Spirit, asking that her sacrifice would always be remembered.

At that moment, water began to fall from the place where she had jumped, turning into a fine mist that fell at their feet, slowly forming a beautiful pool.