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Maybe: A Story of Advent

Wake, walk, wait, return, rest, repeat. Every day was the same for him. His whole life till now, going back as long as he could remember (his memory, of course, was no longer all that good), was this pattern: wake, walk, wait, return, rest, repeat. He'd considered giving up more than once, but another day would come and go, and still his pattern would repeat.

Over time everything else had faded from his priorities--due to his faltering memory, perhaps, or to the vagaries of time passing. The older you get, the fewer the temporalities that can keep pace with you. Really he was down to three. He still had a love for his people Israel, who year after year had like him waited for the restoration of their greatness in the eyes of the world. He still held on to his faith in the God who, so the Scriptures say, once delivered his people Israel with a mighty hand and in the intervening centuries had promised more than once to deliver them again. And then there was this loitering hope of his--hope that this wild-eyed, half-awake vision which had overtaken him so many years ago would be realized, that he would see what he had been told he was meant to see.

Still, that was so many years ago, and if the memory of the old is suspect, the audacious visions of the young are likewise to be taken with a grain of salt. Maybe it wasn't a vision, he occasionally allowed himself to consider; maybe it was a moment of hubris--certainly not his only such moment. Maybe in seeking the fulfillment of this promise from God he was merely indulging a private fantasy of his own importance.

That thought did occasionally cross his mind, but it typically left quickly, its only sustenance having long dwindled with the steady fade of all his other priorities. He was a tired old man now, with little time for hubris.

He had been helped in his endurance by the woman. She was always there in the Temple courts when he walked in to wait, and she always remained after he returned to his rest. They exchanged knowing glances from time to time; those around them all knew that they were both waiting for the same thing, but only these two really knew what it was like to wait.

So today they would both wait again. No one would mock them; their age earned them the deference of the crowds. And in a sense all Israel took some courage from their waiting. They were given space every day to follow the same pattern--wake, walk, wait, return, rest, repeat--a lifelong wait for the ransom of captive Israel, a lifelong wait for their own death and deliverance into the age to come.

Maybe today.

I Got the Music in Me

Last week several of us around Likewise Books participated in a little experiment, inspired by the fine folks at Word Made Flesh. Each of us would pick a song that we would listen to exclusively for an entire workday. Then we would blog about the experience--what, if anything, we discovered about the song, our workplace, our coworkers or ourselves. Keep an eye out here for those posts. This one is mine.

I chose the song "The Transfiguration," from the album Seven Swans by Sufjan Stevens. I've come to think of myself, culturally if not doctrinally, as a "Sufjangelical," a term which I'm proud to say appears only once (probably now twice) on the entire Internet. Sufjan, you're welcome; please drop the restraining order now.

A Sufjangelical, as I define it, is an otherwise orthodox Christian who likes his or her faith the same way avant-garde pop musician Sufjan Stevens likes his music: quirky, multi-textured, playful yet melancholy. An example of Sufjan's complexity shrouded in simplicity comes from the song "Kasmir Pulaski Day": "Tuesday night at the Bible study, we lift our hands and pray over your body. But nothing ever happens." One- or two-syllable words paint a simple picture that evokes sadness and perplexity, disillusionment and yet hope. And that doesn't even take into account the music.

But that song is not this song. In "The Transfiguration" Sufjan is more arcane, more ethereal, as he recounts the story of "when [Jesus] took the two disciples to the mountainside to pray; his countenance was modified, his clothing was aflame." This scene from the Gospels is a seminal moment in Jesus' earthly ministry, when the curtain was pulled all the way back and Christ revealed his glory and the fulfillment of the Scriptures that was taking place in him. The disciples were dumbstruck and comforted only when the transfiguration ended. Then they went down the mountain and everything, for a time at least, returned to normal.

But that story is not this story. "The Transfiguration" is captivating, a fitting song to listen to for eight hours straight. It's a simple rhythm--cyclical, really--that builds by instrumentation and voice as the story progresses. The melody has no real resting point, so that the end blends nicely into the beginning; the first word, when, sung on the third tone of the scale, carries the feel of an interruption, something overheard unexpectedly.

The song is in a waltz rhythm, strummed on a banjo at the start as an indication of an everyman out for an everywalk with a couple of everyfriends. Gradually, as the mystical event unfolds, voices and instruments are added, all of which carry a youthful, minstrel quality. One tinny horn plays a repeated riff; several childlike voices sing along in a unison chorus that dances back and forth between lyrics: "Lost in the cloud, a voice [a sign]: Have no fear! Turn your ear [we draw near]!" Jesus is identified in the chorus as Son of Man, Son of God, Lamb of God, in case the onlookers and overhearers weren't aware of his identity.

The song is like a dance, and--especially when played in an eight-hour loop--the song is like an eternity. Often we hear or even sing the words of "Amazing Grace"--"When we've been there ten-thousand years bright shining as the sun, we've no less days to sing God's praise than when we'd first begun"--and the faintest hint of a distressing thought might creep into our consciousness: Oh, I hope not! That sounds dreadful! But when we overhear eternity sung, when we look on while mourning is turned into dancing, the thought of ceaseless praise starts to make sense and even entice the imagination.  

I hereby apologize to my coworkers for repeating the same 3-4 minutes of music some 135 times last week. Fortunately for them, "The Transfiguration" is not a whistling song, or someone might have lost it. This song won a friend and (now former) colleague of mine over to Sufjangelicalism when he first heard it, and he now counts it among the quintessential examples of what Christian music ought to resemble, and for good reason: here is theology faithfully presented, grounded in Scripture, presented in story, intended for dance. Here is a moment in time that transcended time, some two thousand years later set to a rhythm that doesn't constrain it but sets it free. Eight hours later, I still love it, and I still love Jesus. Not bad for a banjo, a tinny horn and some quirky musicians.

Life Verses Versus Living Verses

I still remember the first passage of Scripture that compelled me to take notes as I read: "Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will take care of itself. Each day has enough worries of its own" (Matthew 6:34). I liked it because of the implicit paradox: there's plenty to worry about, so relax; you need to worry at a sustainable pace. For a time I designated it as my "life verse."

The quest for a life verse has wide appeal. Individuals and organizations alike pursue the practice. InterVarsity Press turned to the Word of God for a means of encapsulating our corporate mission in our tagline--"Heart. Soul. Mind. Strength."--quoting Jesus' quotation of the Deuteronomic Shema to explain that we publish holistically, integratively, from a Christian perspective. Likewise, Likewise Books effectively adopted Jesus' exhortation to "go and do likewise" as our name and tagline to evoke the active, thoughtful, compassionate faith of the good Samaritan for our publishing program.

So between myself and my employer, I am well versed in the art of finding that one key phrase to organize your thinking, to focus your mission, to represent yourself to the world. But the practice has its blind spots. A friend of mine tells me that the Christian satire magazine The Wittenburg Door used to have as one of its favorite verses 1 Chronicles 26:18: "At Parbar westward, four at the causeway, and two at Parbar" (KJV). By aligning itself with such an obscure reference, the Door was challenging the notion of a single life verse, daring its contemporaries to figure out what eternal truth they had in their finite wisdom determined was more important than every other statement contained in the Old and New Testaments.

Lately I've been enjoying the music of artists such as Sufjan Stevens, Half Handed Cloud and, most recently, the Danielson Family, all of whom in their songwriting take a playful approach to Scripture. This music isn't irreverent by any stretch--in fact, some of it is profound in ways that more radio-friendly music rarely achieves--but it's quirky, odd, an acquired taste. From Sufjan's reflections on Isaiah 55 in "All the Trees of the Field Will Clap Their Hands" to Half Handed Cloud's description of a purge of vice among the Israelites in "Let's Go Javelin'" and the Danielson Family's similarly scripturally rooted "Singers Go First" and "We Don't Say Shut Up," these songwriters have found a way to dance around the Bible in a way that rings true to the text without being cliched, doctrinaire, humdrum.

I find that my appreciation for these songwriters has affected my approach to Scripture. These days, rather than look for the one verse that would make a good tattoo, I tend to read any given passage and imagine what it would be like to actually feel the emotions being conveyed, to actually perform the actions being described, to firmly believe the assertions being made. It's made Bible reading more vibrant to me, more creative, more playful, more--dare I say it?--fun.

I've had fun with the Bible before. When I was in school my friends and I would giggle our way through passages that mention people's private parts, portray particularly gruesome deaths or describe bowel movements. I suppose my new discipline is similar to that earlier, sillier practice, only now without the crass irreverance. I think maybe I'm approaching the far side of simplicity as it relates to the Bible, where God's Word has moved from an archaic jumble of weird words describing ancient odd events, to a desperate search for one Word that justifies my existence, to an embrace of the Word of God as a generous gift.

Or something like that.