Most popular music I just don't get. I was raised in the era of classic rock. Growing up, I'd hear my dad's 1960 vintage RCA record player crooning 1940's pop standards, show tunes, and a little classical music. So I had no idea who Amy Winehouse was. I just knew her as a current pop diva whose outrageous lifestyle and substance abuse made her the butt of late-night talk show hosts' jokes. Then she drank herself to death last July, and the jokes weren't funny any more.
But I was listening to NPR a few weeks ago, and I caught a snatch of Amy and Tony Bennett singing that great old Johnny Green song, "Body and Soul." They sounded swell together--slow and nostalgic like a lingering dance in a smokey nightclub. So, on a whim, I took myself down to the Barnes & Noble and sampled Amy's Back to Black CD.
Wow.
This London-born girl, whose native dialect made her speech almost unintelligible to American ears, sang kind of like Billie Holiday. She had a throaty, bluesy sound, and I thought to myself as I listened to the track samples, "This kid's really good."
And then I thought: Twenty-seven years old. Damn. How sad. How very, very sad.
You see, I have this really stupid, romantic, sentimental spot for doomed artists and poets. In the years I've spent in parish ministry, I've often been called to stand at the graves of gifted, lovely people: beautiful souls full of talent and love and promise, who, for one reason or another, just couldn't seem to get it together. Alcoholics, addicts, the family screw-ups, the ones who couldn't catch a break. They frustrate the hell out of the rest of us, but they have such God-given spirit that we always forgive them. And they break our hearts when we lose them.
So they're not famous like Amy Winehouse. They don't have to be. They were special to us, and that's all that matters.
This is being written on the November 2nd, the Feast of All Souls. In the Lutheran liturgical calendar, the significance of this feast is combined with that of the Feast of All Saints (November 1st) because we teach that sainthood is not dependent on canonization by the Church. Indeed, a saint is nothing more than a sinner who is made whole through God's grace. In that way, we are all saints.
I've also come to believe over the years that every human life is an epic. We all know the dizzy joys and crushing lows. We all pay the price for being human. And we are all beloved by God. It's only a question of whether we realize it or not.
The other morning I sat at a table at my local bakery, enjoying a bagel and coffee, and thinking about my All Saints Sunday homily. For some reason I remembered that corny old gospel song, "His Eye is On the Sparrow." It's a referrence to Matthew 10:28:
"Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father."
Son of a gun if--just at that very moment--a sparrow didn't kamikaze into the window directly in front of my table. BOOM! and then fell to the sidewalk with a thud. Now, I'm not really that into birds, but I found myself feeling very sorry for this little creature as he fluttered, stunned on the pavement. He had landed upside down and struggled to right himself. I didn't know what to do. I wondered if I should go outside and scoop him up and take him to the animal hospital. While I sat there, some guy left the bakery, saw the dazed critter on the pavement, and tore off a piece of his bagel for the bird.
No fall goes unnoticed. No life is insignificant. And God's mercy and compassion are for everyone.
Now, as the days get shorter, darker, and colder--before the cultural insanity of what Americans call "The Holidays" swallows us up--I think it's right that we remember those who have fallen. Not just those who fell in battle or specific national tragedies like Columbine or Katrina, but all of the souls--the saints--who mattered to us. Let's make time to mourn them, miss them, remember them. Let's think of how much they mattered, and maybe we'll realize how much we matter.
"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted."
Matthew 5: 3-4
Blessed are you, my saintly friend. Thank you for reading.
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