IVP - Strangely Dim

The Soundtrack of a Long Silence

Some songs, I think, are meant to be heard after a long silence. I recently heard such a song probably for the first time in years: “Lean on Me.” I’m not talking about the “pump it up, homeboy” version of the 1980s; this was the classic, with Bill Withers singing over a slow, deliberate piano, with a soulful chorus joining him intermittently and the gradual fade “Call on me . . . Call on me . . . Call on me . . .”

Songs get overplayed these days. Pop radio formats require frequent repetition of the songs of the moment, so that even the most moving piece of music quickly starts to get on your nerves. Add to that the song-as-soundtrack phenomenon that means every time a movie ad or a truck ad or a shoe ad crosses your television or radio, so does that same mind-numbing song. It’s often taken completely out of context, so that it ceases to mean what it meant to you the first time you heard it. A song that once spoke to your soul now causes you to grimace.

But after a long silence, such a song can still reclaim its spot in your soul. Maybe it’s how I was feeling when I heard it, maybe it’s what the DJ said in the lead-up, maybe it’s the conversations I had the night before or the subconscious worries that plague me every day unawares, but that day when “Lean on Me” came on the radio, everything else came to a halt.

A song like that, in the right moment, reminds me of the friends and family who might just need to lean on me right now; I’m reminded of the people I know whose burdens are more than they can carry but whom I only occasionally help to carry on. I’m reminded of the weariness of the world, and I’m struck by how the weary world of 1972 must have reacted when the first four measures of “Lean on Me” hit the airwaves. After a decade of strife and turmoil, finally came three minutes of rest, and an offer of more where that came from.

Lots of songs can do that: “Everybody Hurts” by REM is one, I think, and even peppy songs like Billy Bragg’s “Waiting for the Great Leap Forward” will get my head nodding in reflective agreement. These are the types of songs that, at age eighteen, I would have fought to the death to have as prom themes or played ad nauseum on my record player alone in my room, to the point where their poignancy would be eclipsed by their nagginess. But after a long silence—when I’ve had time to learn more by experience than by declaration that everybody does occasionally hurt and that waiting for the great leap forward can be a devastatingly discouraging time and that there really are, if you’re lucky, people to lean on when you’re not strong—that’s when I’m ready to hear what they have to say to me.

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Read a great review of Bill Withers at PopMatters.com.

Out of My Head and into My Body

I know this sounds crazy, but I've just become a regular contributor to a sports ministry website.

I've never been one for sports, but when I moved to the Chicago area I fell into a crowd of sports-guys. I figured I'd better do what they asked, since any one of them could crush my head like a blueberry, so I started going to football games and even playing the occasional round of golf.

It's still not me, but along the way I've developed a new appreciation for athletes. They were all really nice to me, for one thing. Not one of them threated to turn my head into jelly, and not even once have I been the subject of a pile-on tackle. But I've also learned by experience some stuff that I should have embraced as a kid.

First off, the body is good. God made us each with one. Exercising our body is as important an expression of our humanness, therefore, as exercising our mind or our soul.

Second, sport binds a community together. Ask your friends, and eventually you'll wander into stories centered around a Super Bowl or a World Cup or simply a round of golf or a day of fishing.

So now, I write for sportsoutreachusa.com, an organization that helps churches reach out into their neighborhoods and build community through sports. I even try to raise funds for them by golfing for twelve hours (which works out to about one hole for me). Shoot me an e-mail if you'd be interested in sponsoring this exercise in futility next week.

Shameless plug, I know, but that's how the game works. If you'd like to read my inaugural sports mini-essay (I may have just coined a phrase), visit www.sportsoutreachusa.com and click on "In the Field Training." I'm currently the last article on the list, which is as it should be, I think.

Deep Calls to Deep All Over the Place

By David A. Zimmerman

I catch a lot of grief for a suggestion I made once, in a meeting that was supposedly a free-flowing brainstorming session, for the title of a book: Deep Calling Deep.

You're probably having the same reaction my colleagues had: "What in the world is that supposed to mean?"

Well, I could be a jerk and say, "If I have to explain it to you, you wouldn't understand." Or I could be an even bigger jerk and say, "What? Don't you read your Bible? It's from Psalm 42, you moron!" But that would just be deflecting the question, because I actually don't know what it's supposed to mean.

Nevertheless, I'm seeing the phrase all over the place these days. I first started hearing it in song lyrics in the mid-1990s, but lately I've seen it featured prominently by books and magazines and websites. It's probably on a t-shirt or necktie somewhere too. It may be too early to tell, but I think it's in the running to become the theme verse of the emergent church.

Lots of people have theme verses, some biblical phrase that has proven particularly meaningful or inspirational to them. Ministries tend to have a particular passage of Scripture in mind when they organize, and that passage becomes their institutional theme verse. But as those organizations will tell you, an important ingredient of a theme verse is intelligibility: ideally, you know what you're saying to the world.

I've been told that The Whittenburg Door, a satirical magazine about American Christianity, picked for its theme verse 1 Chronicles 26:18: "At Parbar westward, four at the causeway, and two at Parbar." But even picking a verse so arbitrarily makes a statement: "Theme verses are for chumps."

So, to redeem myself among my colleagues and to support the theme-verse-challenged among us, I welcome any and all insight into what "Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls" means, and more specifically, what it would mean for someone wearing it on a t-shirt. I do like the rhythm of it, and it could well be a fine theme verse, perhaps followed immediately by something like "It's an emergent thing, you wouldn't understand."

Meanwhile, if I were to give myself a theme verse, I think it would have to be one that is not so much inspirational as descriptive. I can aspire to all sorts of things, but ultimately I am anchored by the reality of who I fundamentally am, complete with all my failings and foibles.

I actually have a verse in mind, and it just so happens to come straight from the mouth of my namesake, King David, in 2 Samuel 6:

"I will become even more undignified than this, and I will be humiliated in my own eyes."

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Don't think that's a good theme verse? Check out the streaming video at ivpress.com. I'm sure you'll see the sense of it.

Recalling John Paul

by David A. Zimmerman

I met Pope John Paul II once. Well, met is perhaps too strong a term. I saw him once, from about a thousand feet away, and I was about four feet tall in a throng of six-footers at the time, so perhaps saw is too strong a word as well. But considering how little I remember clearly of my childhood, the fact that I remember my encounter with the pope is in itself significant.

I was nine when the relatively new pope came to Des Moines, Iowa, in 1979. The rock band KISS was having a concert that night, and I must confess, I wanted to go to the concert. I wasn’t too familiar with KISS, but they wore funky outfits and I could buy their action figures in the toy store. The pope did not have an action figure, and for a nine-year-old sensibility, that made him second-rate.

I remember my aunt and presumably her boyfriend coming to town to see the pope with us. I remember parking at K-Mart and taking a long and hilly walk from there to the Living History Farms. I remember entertaining ourselves with songs and word-games and various other distractions. I remember John Paul stepping off a helicopter and kissing the earth. I remember next to nothing of what he said, but I remember thinking that our deacon must be pretty important, as he was in the progression of church officers who greeted our special guest.

I’ve not regretted missing KISS since the pope came to town, but I have wished that I had a better memory or a better attention span, or that I had been taller or older when he came. But that’s mainly because I am biased toward my intellect: the fact that I was one person among thousands who traveled great distances simply to be the church is less significant than the likelihood that I missed out on something memorable that the pope said.

Where does this elevation of words come from? Why is a pilgrimage, however short, less substantial than a sermon outline, however wordy?

A few years after my encounter, Marvel Comics published a comic-biography of John Paul II. In the comic we read the perspective of a reporter experiencing something very similar to what I experienced on the outskirts of Des Moines: the pope greeting the faithful throng in what was called New York but what could have been Des Moines, Mexico City, Toronto, Warsaw or Havana.

Like me, the reporter’s attention drifted from the words of this speaker to the life and deeds of the pope. Here was a man who had suffered through the Nazi and Soviet occupations of Poland, who had represented his faith throughout the world even before his ascendancy, who had been thrust into the papacy after the sudden death of his predecessor. He was younger than you might expect a pope to be, and for someone so in love with the ground, he spent a lot of time in the air, flying from country to country.

The comic culminates in an assassination attempt and, more important, the forgiveness extended by the pope to his assailant. At that point, all words fell short, and the measure of this man was made clear through the witness of his actions.

I have a friend who has taken an audience with John Paul. He keeps a photo of that encounter in his office, and the look of serenity on his face is more telling than the words he uses to describe the experience or even the words the pope might have spoken to him. I will miss John Paul, not so much for his words or even for his actions: I will miss him because in 1979 I knew that I was not alone, that even when the day ended I remained surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses that extends beyond myself or my house or even my generation. And to be in that number—to have experienced the grace of God that translates so naturally into forgiveness of even the gravest of sins—that is enough.

Alias, Elektra

All right, all you Alias geeks. I wanted to let you know about an article I wrote for inthefray.com about your little action-adventure show. I paired Sydney Bristow up with my own heroic obsession, Elektra Natchios, to look at the evolution of female action heroes. It was posted yesterday, just in time for the release of the Elektra DVD release. Just for kicks, here's the first line of the article, which should send some of you into immediate histrionics: "Jennifer Garner walks funny."

So, here's my challenge to you: read the article, and if you like it, go to all your little Alias or Elektra chat rooms and tell all your little friends about it. And if they really like it, tell them to go buy my book and save me from the shame of going out of print.

Comments are, once again, welcome. Hope you all had a nice April Fool's Day.