Music: Personally Listening

Music is such a personal thing. I think sometimes when we listen we make judgments about ourselves and other who like or dislike the songs and singers we like or dislike. I have a friend who really likes Tupac (now deceased) the rapper. I mentally vomit at the crass called rap, but to others they hear rhyme and rhythm, righteous indignation and social commentary. The crass language and crashing beat of rap moves them, like it does my friend. I keep him as my friend because our friendship is rich and supportive, stimulating and compassionate. We just don’t listen to his Tupac together. I'm not sure if he'd enjoy Cat Stevens as much as I do, or whether he'd just fall asleep.

Sometimes we should listen to each other’s music and listen beyond or behind the beat that jars our senses, or the words either too bitterly profane or too saccharine sweet for our tastes.

For a number of years (before my son turned 18 and could no longer pursue the Eagle rank) I was involved with the Boy Scouts. My son was a Life Scout, and I was an Assistant Scoutmaster. There was this one boy, Evan, who would always seek me out just to talk—any campout or troop meeting—and eventually he’d always mention the music he loved, or a song he’d just memorized. And he’d sing me snatches of lyrics that sometimes I’d raise my eyebrows at. But I think he really knew how much I liked him anyway. We’d laugh, joke around and I would be tolerant of hearing about music I’d never want to hear by myself. He even burned me a Blink 182 CD because he cared so much.

I could never quite understand his persistence to persuade me into liking his style of music, but I think he thought if I learned to like it I’d like him even more. Such is the power of music to sway us.

A Y.A.H.O.O. reflection: on the way to Mexico.

As we drove down to Tecate, Mexico to build three simple houses through Amor Ministries, I wrote these thoughts:

“I’m seriously wondering how wet it will be down there in Mexico. All through California it’s been raining. I brought a rain poncho, a jacket and hat, but this will be serious. Mud-caked shoes, soaked jeans, chilled fingers. But think ~ the people who we are going to help are living in cardboard shacks—makeshift huts with mud flooring. They are shivering even as I travel south—warm and comfortable as soft music lulls me in-and-out of sleep and reflective moments.

For four days I’ll shiver and stink, gripe of the mud and hammer nails into swollen wooden planks, but maybe I’ll get to leave behind a roof that won’t leak, a floor that won’t squish underfoot, and windows that will leave the weather outside for a happy family. ~ At the next rainstorm brown eyes beneath a mop of black hair will peer outside and those eyes will twinkle.

Some of the saints of old probably would have entered into this whole experience with relish and sublime delight all the while mud would run in rivulets down their forearms and drip off their elbows. With sandals sunk deep into the muck around them they’d hoist the boards onto their shoulders like the beams of puny crosses and embrace the feel of the wood as a sweet imitation and participation in the crucifixion of their Lord and Savior. For to these saints Jesus is truly Lord and Savior, not one without the other. With every nail they’d hammer they’d hear the nails that pierced their Lord’s wrists and the sound of the metal on metal would be the very utterance of Love Divine.
That’s how the saints would receive this commission: with arms of Love. How will I enter into this mission? If mud be dried to dust, or dust be soaked to mud, will either matter? If my fingers be slit by slivers or the rain makes me shiver will it matter? Will I be able to encourage the teen that saws next to me, and laugh with the grown-up across from me? Or will my thoughts be wrapped up about me, my comfort, my pleasure and my needs?
Oh, Lord, help me to remember the saints of old, and welcome this time as they would."

Standing Under When Understanding Fails

Understanding at last fades away into the unknown, the mysterious and wonderful. What remains, what reveals itself—even as it conceals itself—as more important than understanding is the act and passion of standing under. I look skyward and take in the vastness of blue riddled with tufts and clumps of clouds, bare tree branches starkly silhouetted against this canvas, and I understand truly so little. So I stand under instead. And it is enough: to take your stand under the heavens above, grasping only the rudiments of the physics involved, but reveling in the aesthetics beyond it. This is enough: it is the right response—not to turn away into my four-walls-and-a-roof in order to escape my non-understanding, my ignorance and feeble facts. To stand under the sky and to stand under the branches of the forest, to stand under the mountain’s shadow and the weaving ribbon of geese in flight: Now this is life and health, hope and wonder. In this my mind rests and finds peace.