My knowledge of Dawn Eden, newly ensconced at Patheos, consists of having read a few of her blog posts and assorted interviews. I know the thumbnail sketch of her life: former rock journalist (and by her own admission a bit of a slut) who after Christ entered her life gave up sex and rock’n'roll in favor of pursuing Catholic academic pursuits and preaching the virtues of being virtuous, particularly in the chastity realm. I’m pretty sure Pope Benedict XVI has her on speed dial for any and all theological questions, she’s so deep into pursuing knowledge. But I digress.
Given that Eden (actually it’s Goldstein, but she uses her middle name as her last) last wrote about rock in 2000 or thereabouts, it’s possible she might be familiar with Canadian guitar rock band the Tragically Hip which made its recorded debut in 1987. The Hip, as the band’s fans refer to the quintet, is a long-running institution in its native land, routinely topping the charts and selling out (what else?) hockey arenas from coast to coast, while in the United States it is a solid cult favorite.
I rather doubt Eden rushed out to buy the CD of, or download, Now For Plan A, the Tragically Hip’s latest album which hit the streets last week. I have no idea what kind of music she listens to these days; whether she avoids rock because of past connections, if it doesn’t bother her, if she simply doesn’t care for the music anymore or whatever it may be. On the surface there’s no discernible connection between her traditional Catholicism and band leader Gord Downie’s often inscrutable stream of consciousness lyrics that offer fragments and disconnected threads, almost defying the listener to discern what is being said. Yet whether intentionally or coincidentally, in his latest musings Downie amplifies part of Eden’s thoughts on relationships. To wit:
Baby, when’d you get so Zen? When I used to know you when When you thought all my dreams sucked I was just happy you gave a f—
What, you were expecting moon/June/spoon? This is Gord Downie, folks. That aside, the chorus is the money quote:
And we don’t want to do it We want to be it
In a few words, intentionally or no Downie succinctly outlines a huge part of the fundamental behind Eden’s arguments on behalf of abstinence outside of marriage.
Do we give our bodies to each other for the sake of momentary pleasure that fades the moment we’re done? Or do we give ourselves to Christ the Bridegroom, letting His intense love for His bride the church, a love so great He gave His life for us, shine through us even as a man and woman’s love for each other shines through them as they pledge themselves solely to each other?
Do we celebrate sex’s holy and pure nature as not only the means of creating the next generation, but as a symbol of His love by giving ourselves fully and completely to our sole soulmate? Or do we debase it by turning it into a carnival game with empty orgasms and conquests as our prize?
Which do we choose? Do we choose to do it? Or do we choose to be it?
(It’s worth noting the lyric also brings up the issue of why conservatives and Christians routinely fail to support fellow conservatives and Christians, such as Mark Scudder, in the arts. It’d be far preferable, and I say this as a huge Tragically Hip fan, to have artists on our side we can point to for this illustrations without everyone in unison replying “who?”)
A lyric further along in the song warrants mention:
And all our friends gave us a week And we’re still happening as we speak
How often do couples who refrain from sex before marriage get ridiculed by those who don’t? I suspect, based on what I read and hear, quite often. Yet they are far more often than not the couple that lasts.
To be it, no merely do it. That’s a goal worth aiming towards.
I love this post by Bill Walden (original lead singer for Undercover) so much, I’m quoting it in its entirety. Hope he doesn’t mind.
Over the last few years, I have read many people’s personal testimonies about “leaving the church”. Some are people that I have been friends with (and still am), while others are only acquaintances. Sadly, some now see me (a pastor) as an enemy. Many of these people previously were involved in Christian service, or seemed to have had a genuine relationship with Jesus at one time.
As I read about people’s “departures”, I realize that people’s descriptions of their “departures” may reveal more than they intend to reveal. Words matter, because they are the things with which we communicate ideas, whether written or spoken. I find their words interesting.
For example, people write the following statements: “I left the church”; “I left organized religion”, or “I left the faith”. While those words may be accurate of their experiences, I have never heard or read anyone say, “I left Jesus”.
It can certainly be true that people may leave a church, a religion, or a faith or faith system, but those things were never intended to be the focus of one’s life. I have wondered exactly what people mean when they say such things. If I had the chance, I would ask them, “What exactly is it that you left”?
I would continue…“ Is it the church that you were called to give your life to? Was it a religion or a faith that you were called to follow?” Why do people use such verbiage? Perhaps it is an oversight, or carelessness….or perhaps it is an accurate description of something they used to follow but don’t follow any longer.
My main point is this: We are called to follow Jesus Christ, and have a relationship with Him. Attached to that is church, faith, and religion, but those things are just the outgrowth of walking with Jesus. They are the accoutrements of a life with Jesus. A church building or church body exists to help a person walk with Jesus. An organized religious expression exists to help someone walk with Jesus. A systematic theology exists to help people walk with Jesus, and sort through ideas about God. Those things, as important as they are, are not the substance of the Christian life; they are the “add ons”. I do not mean to minimize any of those things, but rather, I mean to point out that some people may have experienced the “add ons” without experiencing Jesus
It is entirely possible that people were attached to all those things without ever having been attached to Jesus. Their testimonies of “departure” may be revealing more than they know.
I read about people’s objection to the church, and sometimes I agree. I read of their anger about religiosity, and sometimes I agree. I read of their frustrations and struggles over certain theological issues, and I understand.
But so far, I have never read anyone’s “testimony of departure” where they have said, “I really don’t like Jesus. He treated me badly, He is unfair, He is not worthy of following, etc.”
When “departure testimonies” focus on complaining about the accoutrements of the Christian life, and not on Jesus, I wonder what it is exactly that people are leaving. Could they say that they had a real relationship with Jesus, but found Him to be unsatisfactory? The focus seems to be on people’s dissatisfaction with the peripherals of the Christian life, and not the centrality of Jesus Himself.
Finally, I know that some may now respond that they are atheists or agnostics. I have friends in both categories that I love very much, and pray for often…but I wonder…did they ever really know Jesus? Is it Him they are rejecting, or all the peripherals?
I sometimes imagine them talking face to face with Jesus. Would they be able to say, “You know Jesus, I tried you, but You never came through for me. You are harsh, uncompassionate, and generally you were a huge disappointment. I cannot follow you….no thanks”.
When Jesus walked the Earth, we know that people did reject Him to His face. Perhaps that truth is tucked away in the “departure testimonies” that I read, but I am not hearing that clearly stated. I wonder if we should ask people what, exactly, didn’t they like about Jesus…
I understand people’s frustration with the church, religion, and theology, but as they speak and write of their departures, I wonder….what is it exactly that they left?
I was raised a good Catholic boy (yeah, yeah, I know – where did I go wrong; something my mother often wondered). Part of this upbringing including being severely taught to show the utmost respect for priests, nuns and all other Church members in authority positions. Note that this was show respect, not never question. My parents, especially my father, seldom hesitated to enthusiastically engage assorted parish priests and other officials in even more enthusiastic discourse over various matters of theology and/or local church policy. This duly noted, there was never any disrespect for the position someone held, regardless of whether the individual holding said position was equally well regarded.
Said all that to say this. One of Patheos’ Catholic blogs is Standing on My Head by Father Dwight Longenecker. In a recent post he ripped and ridiculed not only Christian rock itself, but the very notion of it being suitable for ministerial, let alone liturgical use.
Shall we examine his foolishness… er, rationale?
A friend of mine used to quip, “When you’re talking about Christian music it’s pretty safe to substitute ‘bad’ for ‘Christian’.
A friend of mine used to say the moon is a gigantic dusty grapefruit. I didn’t believe him either. But at least he wasn’t a smug, sanctimonious ass.
Who hasn’t had to endure a Christian rock band or sit through a worship with some aging trendy strumming a guitar and inflicting folk music or light rock on everyone?
Gee. I’ve endured many a Christian rock band. I recall many of them giving altar calls at the end. I recall many, many people coming forward to give or recommit their lives to Christ as a result of those altar calls. One of those people was… me. As to worship, I also recall many a moment of folk or light rock bringing many people into a deeper relationship with Jesus, encouraging them to follow Him more closely and be better servants to one another and the world. One of those people was… me. Somehow I doubt Fr. Longenecker has ever been to an actual Christian rock concert or heard quality contemporary worship/praise music. Which, despite his upcoming assertions to the contrary, does exist. In droves.
Why is it that so often Christian music is so awful?
Because the modern church, with few exceptions, has done such an abominable job of finding, nurturing, supporting, and promoting artists? Naah, couldn’t possibly be that.
I think there are a couple of reasons. The first is that the musicians and their audience mistake a worthy message for talent.
Uh, no. If that was the case, every everything every Christian record label releases would sell. It doesn’t. People do both care and have the wisdom to discern what’s worth a listen.
Then they get a martyr complex if they’re criticized. “You’re obviously not very spiritual if you can’t enjoy my music!
Wrong again. I don’t mind if people don’t enjoy my music or that of the artists I like. Where I do call into question someone’s spiritual discernment is when they apply their cultural bias and personal preference to their alleged discernment. Just because you don’t like it doesn’t mean it’s not good and therefore cannot possibly be used by God. I know people who think Pink Floyd is the worst garbage on the planet. Does that make it so? No. So don’t waste my time bringing your petty preferences, inflated with pseudo-spiritual tripe, into any discussion of art’s value or quality. Like what you like; dislike what you dislike. But don’t drag God into it.
The second problem is that the audience are often either totally uncritical or they haven’t the ability to criticize intelligently. Too often the audience actually like the crap that is being dished up.
We’ve addressed this already. Telling people they’re mindless drones for their musical tastes isn’t exactly what I’d consider a strong opening to winning over hearts and minds. Or winning souls for Christ. Or drawing those who already know Him closer.
The third factor is that market forces are usually not in play. Market forces often have a surprisingly sharp and salutary critical effect. Market forces weed out the junk, but in the Christian market they’re doing it for love, not money, so no one is telling them to get off the stage ’cause it won’t sell.
Already addressed this as well. But hey, keep flailing away at that deceased equine if it makes you happy.
These are all the practical problems. There is, however, a deeper problem. Christian popular music is almost always pretty bad,
Feldercarb. (Look it up.)
but the problem with most “Christian” music is that it is secular music with Christian words.
And what, pray tell, makes music secular or sacred? The style? The sound? Are you telling me God’s such an impotent wuss He can’t use whatever variation of His language — for music is God’s language — He pleases for His purpose? What emasculated God are you following? Not the one I know and in my stumbling, bumbling way serve.
In any decent art style and substance are supposed to match up. The meaning and the media are supposed to harmonize.
Which far more often than not they do. Except to those with open mouths and closed minds.
Most “Christian” music is taken from the secular world. Whether it is the music of Broadway musicals, Country Western, Las Vegas ballad crooners or light rock or heavy rock and roll it’s secular not sacred.
Again… it’s music. Music in and of itself is neither sacred nor secular. Did Paul Simon’s “American Tune,” which is an adaptation of an excerpt we know as “O Sacred Head Now Wounded” from J.S. Bach’s “St. Matthew Passion,” which is itself an adaptation of Hans Leo Hassler’s love song “Mein G’müt Ist Mir Verwirret” turn what started life as a secular tune, turned into a sacred one by Bach, back into a secular song? Really?
When you then add sacred words to the secular music there is a natural disconnect.
To people who serve a whipped puppy masquerading as God Almighty, yes. Or if you prefer, to those who are so petrified of themselves they can’t handle life, thus run and hide and cry out for the bad people and/or things to go away. I’m hardly the strongest person you’ll ever meet when it’s sin-resisting time, but I don’t need musical burqas to protect me from the beat menace.
That’s why so much Christian music (even when it is well written and well performed)
You said there wasn’t any. Make up your mind, will you?
doesn’t really work.
Feldercarb on a stick.
Oh sure, people might like it.
How dare they!
They might even have nice feelings about Jesus by listening to it,
What? People enjoying the notion of there being a loving Savior? Obviously a Satanic trap.
but the secular music was designed to produce certain types of feelings,
So? God can’t use it? Do we really need to repeat how small your God is?
and why should those warm sentimental feelings or hard emotional feelings be linked with worship?
Uh… because we’re human.
We might like listening to Christian country Western or a sweet Broadway type ballad about Jeezus or we might get all hyped up listening to Christian rock, but is it worship? Is it really inspiring us to draw closer to God? Is it really deepening our spiritual life or is it just music we like which makes us feel good and it makes us feel even better because it talks about Jeezus too?
Let’s think back a bit about something mentioned above that takes place during so many of those “awful” Christian rock concerts. Altar calls. Exhortation toward Bible study, fellowship and discipleship. Obviously thin disguises for warm fuzzies. But back to reality. You see, Fr. Longenecker, maybe — just maybe — in spite of your sarcasm in regard to and loathing of contemporary Christian music, God uses it anyway. The evidence is all around you. Too bad you’ve chosen to close your eyes to His work.
Forgive me for being cynical,
Don’t push your luck.
but think about it.
I have. Which apparently puts me one up on you.
The worst example is Christian Rock music.
And here we go…
At the risk of sounding too puritanical,
Reality isn’t really a risk, sir.
rock and roll music was, from the beginning highly sexualized, laden with rebellious, heavy and nasty rhythms
Nasty? What is this, a Janet Jackson revue?
linked with the drug culture–designed to alter consciousness and demolish self restraint. The acid rock and heavy rock was also obviously
Obviously.
linked with an occult and demonic sub culture.
And because a few losers played the devil game, stealing God’s language, we’re supposed to concede? Uh-uh. We’re stealing it back.
So you want to put cozy Christian words to all that?
Try listening to the Rez Band song again, then get back to me on that “cozy” thing.
To my mind that’s like putting a gospel tract inside a porn magazine.
Why not? We’re supposed to be reaching sinners, aren’t we?
The same criticism applies when the musical style is not quite so bad as acid rock. You name the popular secular style–the music wasn’t written to deepen prayer, lead to worship or open the soul to the sacred. It was designed to produce shallow emotions about love and romance at best, and lust and sex at worst.
Because we as Christians have been so shallow we’ve let the world run wild. We haven’t promoted our artists. We’ve held them back at best, actively ridiculed and opposed them at worst. We have made ourselves culturally irrelevant. We have paralyzed ourselves into being afraid of our own shadow. We have abandoned the things of God and settled for perpetual self-appointed second class status. That’s why we’re losing.
Pope Benedict XVI comments on this in his book The Spirit of the Liturgy. He acknowledges that down through the ages this has been a recurring problem in the church. Sometimes the hymn writers put Christian words to beer drinking songs. At other times they adopted the popular operatic style. Now they adopt light rock, hard rock, and virtually every other secular style.
Yeah, it was really rude of our forefathers to try and use God’s language for its intended purpose.
The antidote is to be more aware and appreciative of sacred music.
We are. You’re not.
There is a kind of music that on its own–even without words–is designed to open the mind and heart to the sacred.
Yes. It’s called “whatever God wants to use.”
Gregorian chant and sacred polyphony which evolved from it–is the music of worship.
I happen to love Gregorian chant. But it is not the only arrow in God’s musical quiver:
Especially in the liturgy this is the music which we are supposed to use because the music lends itself to worship.
As does most everything else when you let God be God and stop trying to squeeze Him into your box of what He can and cannot do.
It opens the heart and mind to a new dimension and reveals the spiritual aspect to our lives in a way that secular music with Christian words does not.
I’m sure this would be true… if there was such a thing as secular music.
That’s what sacred music is. What is required is catechesis about this music and an effort to appreciate it. Truly sacred music is an acquired taste. It takes some effort. It also takes some effort to produce it at a good and worthy level.
So when are you going to put in the effort, Father?
The problem in most mainstream Catholic parishes is that they’ve had nothing but crap music in church for as long as anyone can remember. The people actually think its okay because they have never heard anything else. They take on board the blend of muzak, Broadway tunes, folk music and light rock thinking that this is all there is. Then if they ever do hear Gregorian chant or sacred polyphony they hold their ears and say, “Geesh, why does Father want to bring in all that gloomy music? We’re outta here.” Alas. Its true.
Yeah, sucks when people want to live in the twenty-first century. Again, I love Gregorian chant and traditional hymns. They’re wonderful. But they don’t always work. Our God is a mighty God. Why, then, attempt to tie Him down as to what He can use? Let God be God. He’s much better at it than anyone else.
Does this mean that Christians should listen to nothing but Gregorian chant and sacred polyphony? Is that all we should ever use in the liturgy? The purists would say so.
I’m very happy for them having discovered backwards time travel and all.
But I’m of the opinion that we have to work with what we’ve got. We have to meet people where they are and move on from there.
Which you are doing in this article exactly how, reverend?
Chant and polyphony are the foundations of the music we should use. In addition to this we have the library of sacred hymns (and there’s enough there to warrant another blog post completely) the worthy ones of which will serve to complement the words and actions of the sacred liturgy.
Fr. Longenecker… please go away. And don’t come back until you’ve gained some wisdom.
Again you announce while you whirl and bounce Intentions to pounce on the beat menace No woman or man could ever withstand The devious plans of the beat menace
Come to lay you low, we’ve come to vex your soul
Feeling the heat, hell at your feet Don’t even speak of the beat menace Something to take away your innocence Someone to blame it on
Helps you to defeat Dancing in the street
Come to lay you low, we’ve come to vex you
Resolved in your mind- the nature of crime Is to swallow the line of the beat menace Imagination’s on the rise again So hide your heart away Dust off the fears and guilts and lies again The beat is here to stay Your satellite can reach that Eskimo He buys a suit and tie Re-styles his hair like girls in Tupelo And sings “Sweet Bye And Bye” He’s meeting all your strange requirements He thinks you can’t be fooled He’ll get the rules and laws and sacraments By sending checks to you
Today is Easter Sunday, the day we who believe celebrate Christ’s resurrection from the dead and atheists get their collective panties in a wad. The poor dears.
Militant atheists are conspiracy theory fruitcakes’ kissing cousins. Whereas conspiracy theory freaks and flakes claim any evidence provided to disprove their theories in fact validates their manifested psychosis, militant atheists invent out of whole cloth their “proof” there is no God, claiming there is no scientific or archaeological evidence to “prove” that which people have based their faith upon. Then, when confronted with evidence to the contrary, they claim that since the presented evidence is based on faith, a faith whose validity they deny since it is nothing they share, it is therefore invalid.
To the militant atheist, any evidence of a loving God is based on faith, therefore is outside of their personal belief system and therefore cannot possibly be true. Why? Because they don’t believe it. To the militant atheist, that settles the matter. They see Christians as being bigoted and blinded to reality and reason by the faith to which they cling. In reality, they themselves are blinded by their own stubborn insistence that there is nothing in which to have faith. They are what they profess to oppose, but are too blinded by their own pride to realize it, let alone admit it.
Atheists relish in the belief that since love exists outside of faith, and hatred exists in spite of faith, therefore there is nothing in which to have faith. This is an extension of their belief that if I don’t see it, it doesn’t exist, although it’s usually wrapped in a container of “if it can’t be proven, it doesn’t exist.” Very well, then: prove that God doesn’t exist. Go ahead, we’ll wait. Even the atheist’s patron saint Richard Dawkins can’t do that.
Atheists claim that the flawed nature of man proves there is no God. Very well, then: how can the flawed prove there are flaws? What defines a flaw? What constitutes a flaw? That which general consensus agrees upon? Search history and note how often general consensus has condoned that which is now considered evil: war, murder, rape, enslavement. Note also how despite the alleged advancement of man these horrors still exist among us. Who are you to say those who believe these things are wrong and you are right? What is your measuring stick? If it is yourself, again it must be asked: who are you to say what is right and what is wrong? How can flawed man promote lovism and free thought unless you are without flaw? If you are not without flaw, why should anyone believe or follow anything you say? How are they to discern what in you is right or wrong? How can imperfect man claim to determine perfect right and wrong?
Atheists amuse me. They sharpen rather than challenge my faith, much as liberal believers who treat Scripture as a cafeteria sharpen my belief that God’s word is His word. They reinforce my dictum to let God be God and let everything flow from Him. Life without God makes sense only to those who believe themselves to be self-enlightened. In fact, they are the darkest of dark, living in darkness and refusing to admit there is a light.
As is obvious to anyone who’s been here lately, I haven’t been here much lately. A bit of the writing funk. Well, time to get the funk out.
A large part of the problem has been yours truly doing an unfortunately excellent job of beating himself up lately over what he’s not doing. Which, naturally, leads to nothing being done.
Rather than acknowledge how I am legitimately doing my best to land the next gig, I’ve been berating myself every moment spent not looking online and elsewhere for one, enjoying nothing and berating myself over everything. I’ve tried to do it all myself instead of trusting God that it will work out, I am in His care and doing the work — in this case, to get work — does not translate into me being the one-man gang, whipping myself into frustration and hopelessness leaving me lashing out at God for apparently not caring when in fact He’s never stopped loving me and looking out for me.
It is frustrating beyond words to face each day with the “come on, you’ve got to grind it out” mindset dominating my thinking. I can’t afford to take a day off from the job search. I know this, and thankfully I haven’t. However, I also can’t afford to beat myself up over what boils down to both disrespect for my own efforts and disrespect for God’s providence. Certainly I want this to end now. But if it doesn’t, does God love me any less? Am I working any less hard at finding work? Am I any less in His will or under His care? I’ve filled out eighteen applications thus far this week. There will be many more. I’m constantly studying how to improve my presentation and approach. The sniggerings of the “get a job” crew aside, what else would anyone — including myself — like me to do?
Time to pull back getting on my own back about things, start trusting and start scheduling my time more efficiently. First priority has to be more prayer, Scripture and fellowship time, letting everything else flow from this. Otherwise I’ll continue to be a self-paralyzed, embittered soul. Which is no good for anyone.
Time to reject the tyranny of the urgent and re-embrace the love of God.
P.S. Giving credit where credit is due: the term “tyranny of the urgent” comes from an excellent pamphlet by Charles Hummel.
I was fortunate during my schooling years in that I had many truly wonderful teachers. One of them was my high school social science teacher — a very cool dude. I remember that he and I made a bet of a can of Coke on who would win the 1975 NBA championship, me of course supporting my beloved Warriors and him thinking the Washington Bullets had it in the bag. He did pay off the bet in front of the entire class. I’m thinking it’ll probably be 2075 when the Warriors win another championship. But I digress.
One day, he was teaching class during a period where there was much tumult within the student body over the possibility of our flexible class scheduling system being changed to a rigid one. We talked about it for a bit, with him finally chiming in after allowing the students to have their say. His comment was that we should follow his philosophical example. Namely, and I quote: “Let it slide.” Don’t get too freaked out over, or caught up in, the moment. Relax. Things happen. Things change. It all works out in the end. Which, in this case, it did; the school board decided to not change the scheduling system.
“Let it slide.” Kind of a hippie paraphrase of Romans 8:28, if you think about it. But a quite accurate paraphrase, really.
It’s important to enjoy the moment, something I freely confess I have struggled with for many, many years and I’m only now beginning to learn how to do. But in learning how to enjoy the moment, when the moment is in fact enjoyable, I’m beginning to wonder if, in addition to enjoying the moment, I should learn how to start enjoying the future.
It makes a certain amount of sense. Since none of us knows exactly what the future holds, stressing out over it a rather futile exercise. Certainly we should plan for, and prepare for, the future as best as we can foretell it to be. But there are so many things about it we don’t know, and can’t know. So why freak out?
So many times the moment is not the be-all and end-all, nor is it the ultimate definition of what is and will be. In what is now the present, but was once the future, the situation that looked hopeless turned out to be not hopeless at all. In what is now the present, but was once the future, the relationship we thought was irreparably broken finds healing and reconciliation. As the Scripture tells us, sorrow endures for a night but joy comes in the morning. And there will be a morning.
That’s my goal. It’s not only to become more adept at enjoying the moment, but to learn how to enjoy and anticipate the future. This isn’t based strictly on the belief of an eternity spent in heaven with Jesus, but on the shared joys of love, life and laughter with friends and family in the here and now. As comedian Michael Prichard puts it, when we get to heaven the first thing God is going to ask us is, “So how did you enjoy My amusement park?” As long as we’re here, we might as well learn to enjoy the rides.
Including the slide.
P.S. The song doesn’t have anything specifically to do with the post. But it fits.
Mrs. Dude (she doesn’t like her name being mentioned on the Internet) and I were delighted to be at the celebration of your fiftieth wedding anniversary yesterday. It was our privilege to spend time with you, your family and your extended family; the people whose lives you have touched throughout the years devoted to ministry through missionary work.
I especially thank you for the gift you gave all of us in the presence of your three children.
Most noticeably, their individual and collective insanity.
Only an insane person in the early 1980s would decide to throw themselves into the maelstrom of playing Christian rock at a time when doing so put anyone daring to expand the boundaries of what was musically acceptable into the immediate category of at best being marginal within the grand scheme of things church-wise. It was embracing a hardscrabble existence of sporadic gigs, broken-down buses and record labels whose primary function was lining their own pockets at their artist’s expense. Yet this is what your children did, they and their brethren in rebellion one drum beat at a time.
And they’ve stayed insane throughout the years, long after the records stopped being made and the tours stopped being slogged through. In fact, they were insane as recently as 2005, when they had the certifiably nutso notion of having another concert; they and their friends playing the songs from two very long decades ago.
I went to that concert, a burned out, embittered and indifferent quasi-believer who had long ago quit on a God I thought had quit on me. Oh, there was still some threads of faith hanging around. But not many, and they all were of the honey badger variety. Namely, don’t care.
That night, I started caring again.
That night, I looked at myself no longer with pity, but with a wondering if somehow I could reconnect with the joy I knew when I first believed.
That night, Jesus became real to me again.
It’s been a rugged road since then, with assorted heartbreaks and hurdles to overcome. But I’ve stayed the course as best I can.
All because of what happened at that concert.
The one made possible by your certifiably insane children.
Yesterday would have been my aunt Beth’s ninety-fifth birthday. She made it to ninety-three, a fact of which she was quite proud even in the growing dementia that plagued her during her final years on this planet.
As I remember her, it occurs to me that in mourning her loss I am as much mourning my eventual passing as hers. In the faces of our elders as they fade and fall away we see our own inescapable fate. For we too will one day fade and fall away, joining them in the dust. We can rail against their fate and ours all we wish, but it stands nonetheless.
Then I consider the face of Christ, bleeding and dying on the cross, and am reminded of life eternal.
It makes the fading bearable, both theirs and my own.
Time indeed is slipping away. Jesus’ love is eternal.
As I knelt on the floor, the weight of a dresser on my back, trying to keep my son’s head and neck straight as I rolled him to his side so he wouldn’t aspirate on his own vomit . . .
{Was God amazing?}
As I stood shaking in the ER, wanting to be with him (needing to be with him), terrified of being in the way as I heard them trying over and over and over to get him intubated . . .
{Was God faithful?}
And, only minutes after a nurse had told us he would be in room 201, went over the use of the respite rooms, admonished us to be strong for him, as the surgeon came in and told us he couldn’t save our son . . .
{Was God good?}
It isn’t really something we post to Facebook quite like that, but even in tragedy, God is amazing. He is faithful. He is good. Because His character is not dependent on my circumstances. He has done many wonderful things in my life, but His character is not revealed through my wealth nor through my safety nor through my comfort.
His character is revealed through the cross.
And as I think of my son crushed, his skull broken, his form lifeless, I can think of only one thing.
Our Father did it willingly. For me. For you. For the world He loved so much He gave His only begotten son.
I eventually realized I had to get right with God to get out of the mess I’d made. I finally learned “getting right with God” doesn’t mean purifying your liver, scraping your virginity off the Shell station floor and never, ever sinning again. It means admitting you’re a mess and that you need help and that you’re incapable of being worthy of said help. That… I can do.
My knowledge of Dawn Eden, newly ensconced at Patheos, consists of having read a few of her blog posts and assorted interviews. I know the thumbnail sketch of her life: former rock journalist (and by her own admission a bit of a slut) who after Christ entered her life gave up sex and rock’n'roll in favor of pursuing Catholic academic pursuits and preaching the virtues of being virtuous, particularly in the chastity realm. I’m pretty sure Pope Benedict XVI has her on speed dial for any and all theological questions, she’s so deep into pursuing knowledge. But I digress.
