Wondering If We're Ever Gonna Get Home Tonight...

Some days just call for listening to the blues, and my go-to blues singer is Ruthie Foster.  For those who don't know her music, here's a little bio blurb from her website.

   In the tight-knit musical community of Austin, Texas, it’s tough to get away with posturing. You either bring it, or you don’t.
   If you do, word gets around. And one day, you find yourself duetting with Bonnie Raitt, or standing onstage with the Allman Brothers at New York’s Beacon Theater and trading verses with Susan Tedeschi. You might even wind up getting nominated for a Best Blues Album Grammy — three times in a row. And those nominations would be in addition to your seven Blues Music Awards, three Austin Music Awards, the Grand Prix du Disque award from the Académie Charles-Cros in France, a Living Blues Critics’ Award for Female Blues Artist of the Year, and the title of an “inspiring American Artist” as a United States Artists 2018 Fellow.
   There’s only one Austinite with that résumé: Ruthie Foster. And with the release of her latest album, Joy Comes Back, the Recording Academy might want to put its engraver on notice. Because every note on it confirms this truth: It’s Ruthie’s time.  The small rural town of Gause, TX, had no chance of keeping the vocal powerhouse known as Ruthie Foster to itself. Described by Rolling Stone as “pure magic to watch and hear,” her vocal talent was elevated in worship services at her community church. Drawing influence from legendary acts like Mavis Staples and Aretha Franklin, Foster developed a unique sound unable to be contained within a single genre. That uniqueness echoes a common theme in Ruthie’s life and career--marching to the beat of her own drum.

Having introduced Ruthie to any novices, let me get back to thinking about some of her songs.

Lots of times, when I've got some emotions to sort out, I will turn to some of my favorite singers to search for a lyrical line and a musical phrase that will help me dig deeper into what I am feeling.  In this case, the song just kept popping into my consciousness, so I knew I would have to dig into my Ruthie Foster collection and play "When It Don't Come Easy."  It's a song written by Patty Griffin, sung and recorded by Ruthie Foster on The Truth According to Ruthie Foster.  I linked the album version, and here below is a live version that lets you see her onstage performance.  (And here is  another live version with Patty Griffin and Melissa Etheridge, including a very touching story about music and healing when going through chemotherapy.)


It seems like I'm doing a lot more driving on the highway lately.  More meetings at work mean I'm driving back and forth to Raleigh more often.  Working on building better friendships means getting out on the road to go around the Triangle or around NC to meet up with folks.  I'm also spending more time with a specific friend who, as we have gotten to know one another better, has shown me how we've been able to bring goodness into one another's lives.  Living a couple of counties apart gives me another reason for driving.

The other side of those trips is that I have to drive back home.  And it is that moment the other night when this song kept pressing itself on my mind.  "Red lights flashing down the highway...wondering if we're ever gonna get home tonight."  There is a kind of feeling that comes when I have to leave, kind of like the feeling that comes at the end of visits with my kids or my dad.  All the joy of the shared presence seems like it starts draining out, opening up a little space of emptiness, a kind of heavy emptiness. 

I don't mean to be overly dramatic, and I don't think I'm describing something unique.  It's something that many people feel when they have to leave what has been a time of blessing with loved ones.  A version of it can come after a moving time of worship, a great discussion in class that has to end, and a deep conversation with a friend over dinner.  But I felt it as I got in my car to drive home that night, and this song kept asking for my attention.  I put it off and listened to the baseball game on the drive home; then, at home I fell asleep early.  But the next morning, it was waiting for me when I woke up, so I got out the Ruthie Foster music to listen.

There's a part in the middle of the song that seems to articulate images of what is stirring my own thoughts and feelings these days.

I don't know nothing 'cept change will come.
Year after year what we do is undone.
Time gets moving from a crawl to a run.
Wondering if we're ever gonna get home...

 

You're out here walking down the highway,
And all of the signs got blown away.
Sometimes you wonder if you're
Walking in the wrong direction.

I remember being twenty years old and not knowing what the future would bring.  But it seems like the not knowing at twenty years old is pretty different from the not knowing at sixty-one years old.  As a young adult, growing up middle class, single-family/nuclear family living, white, college-educated, church-going, called to ministry--there was a script written for me that I had largely accepted and agreed to act out.  I would marry after college, go to seminary, learn about adult life and decisions, find a job, consider further graduate school, have some kids, and follow a ministry or academic career trajectory that looked like the lives of people I had been watching for many years.

The script is never quite as complete as we imagined it would be.  Your companions often have a different version of the script.  You find that there are missing pages, rewrites, conflicting plot lines, and eventually that it fragments more and more into various possible directions without providing an ending.  But at the beginning, those things are not so obvious.  Thus, an uncertain future at twenty seems way more like a clear plan than an uncertain future at sixty-one.  Now one's life may have the look of either mid-career or of the final stage of a career, but which one is not certain.  Many of my students in graduate school come in their late fifties or sixties, starting a new phase in their lives after retiring from another career.  Am I at a point like they have found themselves?  Or am I just getting my stride in the place where I am already?

 

Being this age, according to demographic trends, is far from the end of one's life, even though I've been called a senior citizen for a decade already.  My dad is eighty-nine and thriving.  That's almost three more decades of living if I keep his pace.  On the other hand, Everly and Mom didn't match the years of their husbands.  And the fact that my dad and I live so far apart during this time of his life is another one of those nagging thoughts asking whether I need to make a change.  So life is ahead, and behind, at the same time.  The signs all "got blown away" is an image that makes lots of sense to someone who has lived through at least a dozen hurricanes in his lifetime.  When things get most uncertain, it really can seem that I might be walking in the wrong direction.  "Don't know nothing 'cept change will come."

Ruthie's version of the blues can stare straight ahead into the despair, as in "Ocean of Tears," "Harder than the Fall," or "I Don't Know What to Do with My Heart."  As the bio says, she isn't confined to one genre, and she sings plenty of soul songs that share the wisdom of her community heritage, such as "Mama Said," "Heal Yourself," and "People Grinnin' in Your Face."  Her gospel formation also appears in "Up Above My Head," "Woke Up This Morning," and "Lord, Remember Me."  Actually you can't quite separate these songs into a single or discrete genre, as blues, gospel, soul, jazz, and more intermingle into a mass of healing-struggling-hoping-sad-defiant songs.

However, many of her blues songs intermingle the pain with hope, as is not uncommon in blues tradition.  Foster returns again and again to a kind of hope that has been learned over time because of friendship, family, and community.  She has known and places confidence in friends and loved ones who show virtues of faithfulness in hard times and readiness to reach out, listen, and lift up when one feels lost and alone.

"When It Don't Come Easy" is one of those kinds of blues songs.  It delves into the confusion and pain that arises in our lives.  It expresses the lostness of feeling like one has nowhere to turn, or one who is questioning whether the hard times are ever going to end: "wondering if we're ever gonna get home."  But the self-focused sense of loss gets turned around in the refrain and becomes a message of empathy.  The singer looks away from her own struggle to realize that those she loves also are wondering about getting home.  Sticking with the image of driving down a highway, the song imagines a loved one's car breaking down on some lonesome road.

But if you break down,
I'd drive out and find you.
And if you forget my love,
I'd try to remind you,

Oh, and stay by you
When it don't come easy.

This refrain stands out as the song's hook, the powerful message of connection and care that will not be broken even by the power of disappointment and uncertainty.   The song doesn't depart from the blues genre and get simplistic and goosebumpy.  It doesn't tie up all the loose ends with a closing about living happily ever after.  The final stanza is back to the beginning, driving down a dark road and wondering if home will ever be there.  It keeps things real about life's struggles and our emotional ups and downs.  But sewn into the lining of the blues is a reminder that we can get through things together if we will stand by one another, if we will show mercy to ourselves and those we love, to get through the hard times.

 

A moment of critical self-assessment requires that I not simply hear and believe these words through the normative gaze.  The refrain could easily play into the cultural formation of white men (which I know personally from my own psyche) to imagine ourselves as the heroes of every story.  Conrad framed it through imperialistic and colonialistic eyes as the "white man's burden" to uplift the lesser races (and gender) toward the fullness of humanity.  Hollywood retells the story again and again through white messianic figures who enter into complex issues of socially structured racial and gender politics to fix the problems out of their inherent goodness (and superiority).  

 

I have had to learn through marriage and parenting the hard lesson of interrupting this narrative in my own imagination, to stop trying to fix the problems of my wife or children, and to learn to listen and "stand by" them as they make their way toward using their own strengths, their own power.  I'm not the guy in every story who has a monopoly on power.  I'm not the hero of every struggle that touches the people I care for.  Caring for someone and needing to be the fixer of all problems are not the same things.  But the steady caring, the readiness to give of myself for others, the walking alongside in the struggle--those are the real things toward which the song can encourage my aspirations to be human and to be good.

Ruthie doesn't write all of the songs she sings and records, although she has written some great ones.  But she fills each of them with a soulfulness and power that doesn't leave me asking whether this is "her song" or someone else's.  Thanks, Ruthie, for trying "to remind" me that even when by myself and feeling a little empty, the music can fill up that space with memories and commitments made to "stay by" one another "when it don't come easy."

Shepherds, Why This Jubilee?

The Christmas season sweeps over people with wave after wave of emotion, a wide range of feelings that reflect the memories of family time, of fears, hopes, dreams, and disappointments.  I'm one of those people. 

I don't remember much mixture of emotions when I was a child. I think when I was a younger adult, part of the mix of emotions was being tired from finishing papers and projects in school.  There was the excitement of giving and receiving presents, and the inevitable disappointment that the long-anticipated presents were not going to actually make life perfect or even very different.  Eventually, the joy was in seeing the happiness of our own children, mixed with the nagging sense that we had sold our souls to the consumer gospel and had accumulated way too much junk.  Now as I look around at the boxes still unpacked from my move to NC from Texas, I still know that it is true.

So this Christmas Eve has been no surprise.  I've had the satisfaction that my adult children and I have agreed to cut back on the orgy of consumption and share time together without the pressure of last-minute shopping or checking off lists from the the tit-for-tat gift mandate.  For that reason, we are able to enjoy being together better, taking care of preparing meals and reveling in them together.  I hung out part of the day with brother-in-law Jim and Dad.  Most everyone relaxed and napped a while.  Jim played some Andy Griffith episodes to make us laugh.  Then our old man trio went to Black Mountain Presbyterian Church for Christmas Eve liturgy. 

Even while waiting and listening to the preparatory organ music, I was drawn to a beautiful hymn and prayer printed in the order of worship:

Jesus is our childhood's patter; day by day, like us he grew;
He was little, weak, and helpless, tears and smiles like us he knew...

God of the commonplace,
we confess that we have bee seduced by human wealth and power.
We do not expect to meet you in haggard faces,
cold barns, or lonely watches.
We are slow to receive your word when it comes from improbable places.
God of all creation, intrude on us this night.
Let the clamor of angels and the hurried steps of shepherds
echo in our hearts, until we, too,
spill with good news of great joy.

That waiting, that anticipation, those moments shared so many times with my beloved Everly and Hugh Delle, began to overwhelm me.  Sitting between my dad and a woman who sweetly greeted me when I joined her on the pew, my face clouded and tears flowed.  A knot seemed to swell in my chest, a tension formed of deep longing for what is out of reach.  In our first Christmas without Mom and now the fourth without Everly, I don't really think this kind of feeling is going to ever go away, until a day comes when I don't even know myself any longer.

When I looked ahead and saw the lyric line, "Shepherds, why this jubilee? Why your joyous strains?", it struck me as a summation of my thoughts and feelings in the moment.

My longing and discomfort in this season in inextricably tied to not having Everly and Hugh Delle in the room with me, but it spreads from there to many other things.  There is a great sorrow weighing on me because of the discouraging events and social uproar of this moment in time.  It is a time when people of my generation may have hoped we would see taking shape in our world some element of redeeming change, of movement toward overcoming the racialized structure of the world, of seeing an end to the centuries of Eurochristianist-Muslim hatred, of dividing and despising people for bodily differences. But if we are honest with ourselves, we have to recognize that much of what we hoped might be changed has remained a molten magma under the surface of false civility.  Granted permission and encouraged to set aside pretense of politeness, the fabric of social existence seems to be dissolving around us.

I'm not generally inclined to believe all is lost, but there are times when it is hard to see the hope.  A quarter century ago the long and deadly Lebanese Civil War which had divided a previously peaceful country into camps ruled by warlords, came to a tenuous peace, only to be followed a few years later by an outburst of violence among Rwandans that seared every conscience.  Bolstered by social theory that questioned the inevitability of human unity and highlighted the depth of disagreement as far beyond the conventions and capacities of rational agreement, I wondered if Lebanon and Rwanda might be the future toward which modernity is inexorably plunging.  Next came our family's heartbroken departure from a church in which too many members were asking, "What would be wrong with being an all-white church?" It was not a future I hoped for my children.  But I'm drifting that way again with Syria, deportation, Muslim registries, gun and weapon extravaganza, police killing, racial profiling....

Searching for paths toward another future, I continued to study and converse and experiment toward a new way of ecclesial practice in community that would form in the world a counterpolitics of beloved community.  In time, that led me into relationships with radicals and innovators--people who, unlike me, were not writing a story in academic language, but remaking neighborhoods and cities and race relations in their corners of the world.  Most of my direct work has been in community organizing, and I've supplemented that with relationships among those who are doing Christian Community Development, who are forming intentional new monastic communities, and who are crying out a prophetic word toward moving Forward Together at Moral Monday rallies.  I still can stir passion to teach and preach that these springs in the desert are the real path toward good news for the poor and despised of the world. I tell myself this is the new wave of Christian renewal. But if that's true, it's so slow. What I've had to accept for a long time, that this world is not on an upward path of progress, remains a painful lesson to learn again and again.

At Christmas time, when all my children who live in three different states have come together, and I sit in church without their mom or grandma still in the world, it becomes painfully, desperately, dismally slow. How have I and my generation of church people failed in our imaginations, in our strivings, in our comfort with this world, to live a gospel radical enough to be a sign of hope in this world? When my friend Chanequa Walker-Barnes asks whether those attacking "Black Lives Matter" can understand the "sheer horror of people objecting to the statement that our lives are valuable?", it drives home the disillusionment with the times. When the NC legislature, elected through illegal voting districts and voter suppressive laws, insists that the heritage of allowing harm to people because of their body differences is too close to their hearts to repeal, it dissipates hope. When people insisting on being known as Christians vote and cheer for the very things that Christians ought to oppose, it begins to clarify the world in which we live.  In an era when churches' primary de facto liturgical expression has become "where are the young people?", I'm feeling a bit lost on how to offer an answer of why young people should give a damn about the church.

Sitting in a church full of white people tonight, I was deeply moved by the liturgy, but it was not lost on me how the message of turning away from fear toward hope seems as out of reach as ever in that context and so many more. The pastor's remark, mid-meditation, that the church has been guilty of peddling fear in order to turn around and offer hope, hits very close to the core of the problem.  Churches of all sorts, having aligned with the tide of culture, are playing the same games. Promote fear, then offer yourself as the solution--sell your product, line your pockets, seek your own interest. I'm pretty sure that's the church my kids and their generation see. I know it has been sold to me many times, and I've willingly bought it. But I hoped I knew better. My friend Deborah Boston and I talk often about the difficulty of believing churches can or want to make the changes they need to make in order to be the gospel here and now. The chilling truth is how much that is true of my own way of being in and of the church.

The beauty of tonight's liturgy, to me, was in its recognition that this advent's waiting was not just pretend. The harshness, horrors, terrors, and struggles of the world are real. When false evangelicalism has told me, "You should not be living under the circumstances. Rise above them!", it was so much bourgeois claptrap. The circumstances are crushing and destroying the very people we claim God loves and wants us to love. Aloof discipleship that looks for a fantasized solution outside of human suffering does not fit with the story of this night. There have been too many times in this almost 59 years of living that I've been willing to let a spiritualized gospel replace the true gospel that took form in a shit-floored shed where a naked baby clung tenuously to life, surrounded by just his homeless, refugee parents and various domestic animals. As Steve Harmon reminded me tonight, the memory of that stable opens up a great mystery--it wasn't a gala party with dressed-up people, a sterile hospital full of highly skilled technicians, or even the comfort of home with family and neighbors helping and praying. The animals in the stable, not the self-important humans hoping for a photo op, were the first witnesses of Jesus in the world.

O magnum mysterium,
et admirabile sacramentum,
ut animalia viderent Dominum natum,
jacentem in praesepio!
O great mystery,
and wonderful sacrament,
that animals should see the new-born Lord,
lying in a manger!

By the next day, Joseph must have had to go out and hustle up some water, some bread, and whatever other food he could buy or beg.  Mary must have been exhausted as she relinquished from her very body's strength to carry, give birth, and feed the infant Jesus

Beata Virgo, cujus viscera
meruerunt portare
Dominum Jesum Christum.
Alleluia!
How blessed is [Mary] the virgin whose tender flesh
was deemed worthy to bear
our Savior, Jesus Christ.
Alleluia!

I started out talking about mixed emotions across a wide range.  Mostly here I've been dwelling on the sadness of this Christmas Eve.  I don't mean by digging deeper into the sorrow that I'm now fixed in one frame of mind and heart.  Yet it seems that I should at least feel the wave of sadness all the way through in this "get over it," "move on, already," "accentuate the positive" age. It's a world in which commercial interests aim to stir up happiness through encouraging mass consumption of trinkets and gadgets.  In the morning, Momma won't be getting me up to have breakfast.  Everly won't be organizing us to look in stockings and unwrap packages. Trinkets, gadgets, and positivity won't change that. And the epidemic of indifference, greed, and hate that has swept our world will still be convulsing all around us. It's not suddenly easy being born or giving birth.

With all the promise of joy that angels announced to the farm workers on the hillside, those marginalized workers still had their hard work to do.  Mary and Joseph, holding on to that tiny baby, still had to find a way to make a living, a place to live, and food to eat. "Shepherds, why this jubilee?" Can such a lowly, outcast moment two millenia ago make a difference now? Looking at the churches of this land, it seems unlikely. But it still seems there is enough good news in the holistic gospel that's worth fighting for. As my friend Matt Jantzen said this week, "I'm angry, and I can't stand to just wait around while things get worse, and not try to do something about it." I hear you, Matt. I can see only glimpses of the path in the dark of this midnight. Y'all who still hunger and thirst for justice gotta help me see where that hungry baby is calling for me to bring some milk, a blanket, and an arm and chest to rest on.

Emotions Stirring on Election Day 2016

Yesterday was very busy by my standards.  I was doing communications work for church and community organizing most of the morning.  I had a meeting that lasted an hour and one-half at noon.  Then I had to drive to Raleigh for another meeting at Shaw.  I stayed in my office after that to do some email catching up and get some preparation work done for the faculty retreat.  The next thing I knew, it was after 5:00 pm, dark outside, and the security officer was locking up the building now that all classes were over for the day.

I went on to the car and started the drive home.  The traffic fates had mercy on me, and there were only a few slowdowns with red brake lights shining, so I made good progress.  It's always tempting just to pick a restaurant and buy dinner on the way home, but nobody can afford that all the time.  On the other hand, going to a restaurant by myself gets pretty old.  I had made a plan for supper, and I knew Naomi would need to eat, too.  So I went straight home and started getting dinner on the table:  baked potatoes with Brown & Brummel's yogurt/butter spread and cheese, fresh snow peas, and corn on the cob.  I have to admit, we needed another potato to fill out the meal, so before long I was turning to the "Little Debbie food group" to reach complete satiety.

On that drive home I found myself in a roller coaster of emotions.  Listening to music or listening to news, everything was setting my thoughts off into deep reflections.  Suddenly, without any clear reason, tears welled up, and sent my investigative mind searching for "why?"  Rather than hiding, buried down deep as usual, my feelings stayed thick in my consciousness all the rest of the evening.  I did some more work on a project I'm trying to finish.  I read more up-to-the-minute analysis at the FiveThirtyEight and RealClearPolitics websites.  I listened to the song I am supposed to sing lead on this Sunday at Mt. Level.  I read and meditated on lectionary texts from the past few weeks, especially the Prophets.  I chatted with a friend who helps hold me up.  I got a report of one of Everly's cousins' having passed away in hospice.  I listened to more music, finally getting back to one of my fall back artists, Bruce Cockburn.  And this morning, the mood remains.

Identifying why moods come and go is never as easy as I would wish.  If I could find the simple cause and effect, I guess I imagine that I could take charge of this embodied self and put me back on an even keel.  Hanging around long enough, knowing Everly for so long and her far greater familiarity with the stirrings and proddings of emotion, has taught me enough that I don't tend to react with an overwhelming effort to suppress.  My upbringing taught me to own the feelings as mine and stop looking for ways to blame them on something or someone outside of me, and I think I do a fair job of avoiding that.

A situation like this one really comes with a complex set of events and changes going on.  Naomi is in the final lap of finishing her dual masters degrees, and I feel the pressure she is under.  I'm at that point of the semester when all my unfinished work is piling up on me, with deadlines I hope I can meet.  As has often been the case, I puzzle in such times about whether what I am doing now is the best I could be doing for my calling to follow Jesus.  Naomi will be job hunting, and she may soon need to move out of the house we share to take up her calling.  W.D. is living far from all of us in Salado, and I wish there were a simple solution to his not being isolated.  It's quite a few things, and not any one of them.

The uncertainty, volatility, and hatefulness of the election season also takes a toll on me, and I can't help being afraid of what some results might lead to.  I have no delusions of American exceptionalism or divine destiny being fulfilled as the USA becomes the Kingdom of God.  I believe the opposite.  The sins of this nation, piled up, reach to the sky like a tower of Babel.  Trust in false gods of violence and wealth, oppression on every side while most of us enjoy such ease--"Woe to those who are at ease in Zion."  Almost all of the hope I can muster looks to the local possibilities of working for the common good.  At the national and state level, it too often seems like our work is defending people from the worst that leaders can do, holding off the extremes of greed, violence, and indifference.  I've cast my vote toward not stepping deeper into a cesspool of hatred for so many whom God loves, regardless of where they were born or how they pray.  One election can't transform this world into something it has no desire to be, and comparing options for least bad outcomes takes a toll on our hearts if we long for justice and beloved community.  That's my discouragement talking today.

As I write, I realize that four years ago, Everly was able to vote in the election, there in Salado, Texas.  So much has changed since then, and as months pass, the cumulative effects continue to unfold.  My beautiful David, Naomi, and Lydia keep progressing through their adult lives, passing through challenges and victories, and I wish she could touch them and tell them how proud she is and give them little trinkets of her affection.  She can't do that, and she couldn't go to her cousin's bedside, as he did for her in 2013.  His classically Southern name, Ben Tom, to distinguish him from uncles named Ben and Tom and another cousin named Ben, matched perfectly with a gentle, loving Southern way of caring for and encouraging others.  May God receive him in glory and love, and may the family know the presence of God in these days.  I am a witness--God will never leave you or forsake you!

Election days, if we can get ourselves out of the boxing ring and the horse race long enough, are days on which we think about the world that is coming: weeks, months, years ahead.  How do our choices, made in anger and rage or in lust and greed, shape the future lives of child workers in Bangladesh, fast-food workers who have to apply for welfare, and young men and women who will be sent to die for someone's profit margin and vacation home?  May we face this day with appropriate sobriety, and may our hope rest somewhere beyond the battle of Demicans and Republicrats whose record of caring for the poor and outcast, the marginalized and the worker, has been dismal at best.  May those elected catch a glimpse of the grace in which they stand, and may their endurance produce character, and may character give rise to a hope that does not disappoint.  Is it too much to ask?

How Far Gone

As I experience it, grief is a consuming state of existence.  I would say "state of mind," but it is not merely mental.  It fills the body and more.  In its moments of intensity, it expands to fill the griever's universe.  That intense state, however, is not sustainable.  Sometimes it lasts a few seconds, sometimes much longer, with an aching that erupts physically.  The tears, sobs, body movements, catching of breath, moaning sounds--these usually bring a measure of relief.  They may also leave behind a residue of cloudiness, of fatigue, and of distraction.

What I read in books, and what I hear from friends who have lost spouses or children or other beloved ones, is that grief can make a kind of progress.  My friends bob and mj patterson-watt are insistent that it is not what some people want to call "moving on," which implies that their daughter or my wife becomes less relevant or central to who we are.  Rather, I think it is that the freshness of the would can begin to heal as one adjusts to the new situation.  My relation to my beloved has entered a new season, dominated by memory and memorial rather than by touching, seeing, smelling, hearing bodily presence.  This does not say that Everly is not still in my life, even in me, speaking in my thoughts, singing and dancing through my imagination, pointing me in the right direction as my partner and guide.  But admittedly, this presence is now muted and even more thoroughly mediated through my perspective on who she is.

Sometimes disturbing, and sometimes to my relief, is that this progress seems to include longer periods of coasting along within my day-to-day affairs.  Frankly, I need to be more consistent in carrying out my responsibilities and duties at work or in family business.  People are very gracious on this matter, respecting what I have given in the past and honoring my current inability to focus as well.  What I am trying to explain here, and simply to understand for myself, is the slow evening out of my emotional road through sloughs and valleys and potholes and pit-traps.  At first, every day was a struggle.  Then there were more level days mixed with sad days several times a week; then, maybe once a week.  I'm not saying that every day does not bring its moments of tears, but over time they have become less likely to dominate the days.

If we call it progress, it is worth noting that it is not exactly inevitable.  The leveling out of emotions may not always be a sign of improvement.  It can also be a superficial dampening, a deadening of the loves that drive humans toward the good.  Our language is filled with imagery about what keeps people going, what urges people to action.  There are the motion words:  motive, motivation, what moves someone, e-motion.  Words like passions and drives speak of what stirs a person and draws a person forward.

Augustine sometimes employed the word "loves" to convey this idea.  The "loves" for Augustine are about our desires, our longings, what we want, what we need.  Rightly directed, they draw humans toward, or push toward, the good for which human life is intended.  Most famously, he speaks of this in the opening lines of Confessions, saying, "Lord, you have made us for yourself, and our hearts find no rest until they rest in you." 

Thus, to have dulled emotions, lessened hopes and aspirations, diminished joys and sorrows, may not indicate progress.  It can sometimes be a diminishing of desire and love for what is good.  It can be a forgetfulness that hides the beauty for which one rightly grieves.  Forgetfulness is a dangerous pattern of life in many ways, covering over good and evil from the past and how they should shape our living now.  Forgetfulness is a favored stance in a culture such as ours, whose wealth is founded on slavery and sustained through oppressive neo-colonial economic systems.  We don't want to remember those things.  They create too much dissonance in the midst of prosperity. 

Personal forgetfulness allows a person to think, "I am self-made.  Look what I have achieved, all on my own!"  But no one is self-made.  Anyone's success emerges from a network of relationships and help from others.  Forgetfulness is the opposite of what I want from grief's progress.  It is in remembering well that I believe progress will come.  Remembering the blessings poured into my life from knowing and living with Everly--this is what I hope will continually grow and take the foreground in my mind and body so that the memories of losing her, though present, take their place in the background.

This wordy prologue is my way of trying to say that it seems to me that I have been coasting for some weeks now.  In one way, it is a kind of drifting that means I have reached a point in grieving where the next steps will be a challenge.  In conversations with friends, I have been wondering how to discern the path God has for me in the remainder of my years.  Up until now, I have believed that the path of my life was united to the path of Everly's life.  God's leading of Everly and God's leading of Mike were one and the same leading, and our discernment was worked out in an unending conversation about our faith, hope, and love.  More than thirty-three years of that process leaves me unprepared to go on with her now present but muted voice.  She remains in and with me.  Her words and deeds are etched upon my life.  Our joint destiny is embedded in the genes, faces, and hearts of three extraordinary, marvelous young adults.  But the conversation is harder.  I'm trying to circle around to its echoes by talking with friends who have known us and share many of the convictions Everly and I have lived by.  Some are telling me it's time to go deeper with grief counseling, and I think that is right.  I am not above seeking help where it can be found.  So one part of the leveling out can be seen as drifting as I consider how to keep going.

Probably another aspect of coasting is my pulling back.  Sometimes, pressing into a struggle is too daunting.  So I've tried to put my energy into work as I can, although that's not yet up to what it should be.  I've had some spells of working on a couple of research projects.  I've been trying to carry water on some things my Dean needs done and for which I am well-suited.  I think this also means that I have pressed into the grief struggle a little less.  That may be a kind of self-preservation.  My emotional energy capacity has never been very high.  In graduate school, I remember confessing to a colleague that I was feeling a lot of anxiety.  His incredulous response was, "Mike, what would it look like for you to be anxious about something?"  Part of the reason for being even-keeled is that I quickly get worn out by intense social interaction and emotional investment.  So I tamp down the emotion to keep myself going.  That may meant that I'm probably dealing with some grief fatigue.

I hope, however, that some of the difference is also that I am making some progress.  I am too inexperienced to know what progress in grieving should look like, but I suspect it includes a kind of wound healing that allows a person to experience the loss of a beloved without becoming constantly or steadily overwhelmed.  What once manifested as days and hours of deep sorrowful longing seems to come over time to reappear as sharp moments of poignant grief, a few tears, a mixed memory of loss and blessing, amidst more usual day-to-day experiences.

I am describing the process of my own experiences.  My three children are in the same time capsule in which I live, under the shadow of death cast by a powerful, enchanting, winsome, loving personality whose manifold tendriled threads append themselves to, even invade, every moment and space we inhabit.  How they find this process unfolding, whether they see progress or stasis, differs in each life.  It is clear that we are not all on the same schedule, that our setbacks are different, and that our sense of progress, or lack of it, varies with our times and places.  One of the heartaches of being their dad is wishing for them to have the gifts of their mother in their life, gifts that I cannot replace.  Everly and I were drawn together by our common loves and our fascinating differences, and in her absence I am left offering the loves we shared, my differences without hers, my brokenness and learning to mingle with theirs.

This week was the week in which the 18th of the month came and went.  That marked eight months since Everly died.  There was a heaviness around me for days.  Moments of painful grief kept cropping up.  So Friday morning I made a point of doing something that often helps me focus and uncover thoughts and feelings just below the surface.  I turned on some music.

This time it was an album by Kyle Matthews, See for Yourself.  One song began with lines that hit me hard.  It is written from the point of view of Lazarus, the friend of Jesus who died and whose life was given back when Jesus went to his grave.  It begins by referring to his sister's grief.

Mary's anger could not be denied,
'If you'd been here, he would not have died.'

While anger has not been a dominant emotion of my grief, I don't deny that it has cropped up at times.  But rather than anger, the response I have to such an image of this sister's grief for her brother is more like that of a child who feels helplessly deprived and wishes intently for any way to recover the loss.  The words awakened this helplessness buried just below the surface.  The song goes on to describe Lazarus's thirst to know the stories of God's deliverance, coming to the statement, "Guess I never knew just how far gone I was."  Whatever it means in the framework of this song, it struck me as describing the depth of my sense of helplessness, my aimless drifting, my intensity of sorrow.  The awakened emotion began to stir as a storm in my chest and throat.

How deep is the loss?  There is no clear answer.  It goes as deep as I have existence.  It's not like losing an object or a possession, something that is not part of oneself.  So reflecting on "how far gone" I am points to the absence of the one who was united to me, in whose life my life participated.  "How far gone I was" reminds me that it is not only Everly who is gone, but it is the "us" that is gone, or at least demolished so thoroughly that it requires a rebuilding under new conditions of existence.

The other song that touched me most deeply is one of Kyle's most well-known compositions, a reflection on baptism called "Been Through the Water."  It links three episodes in the life of a man, from his youth, his young adulthood, and his old age, and examines the significance of baptism across the long narrative.  The final stanza depicts the man with his grandson, gone fishing, and commenting on his old-age pains, "Soon I'll be free from these pains."  Now this is, of course, an aspect of Everly's death that is very present to me.  She spent the last years of her life struggling with a great deal of pain.  The last two months seem to have intensified her pain even more.  The words reminded me that she has been set free from her pain, the pain in her stomach, her back, her arm, her hip, her leg, and just about any part of her anatomy.  For this, I have tried to rejoice.  I would not have her back with me only to again suffer great pain.  She deserves to be free of it.  Yet it seems I would have her back at any cost.  So this thought both reminds me of the price she paid to continue loving us, and the reason I ought to be happy for her not to endure any longer in this world.  It's a joy mixed with hurt, a mournful joy.

The refrain of the first song again spoke to me in those moments.  It has Lazarus telling what it is like to have life flow back into his body.

'Cause I feel my heart start to beat again
'Cause your word is life.
Your word is life.
Your word is life to me.
And I feel my chest start to breathe again
'Cause your word is life.
Your word is life.
Your word can breathe the life back into me.

Now a narrow baptist reading might take "word" to strictly mean the Bible, but that is not the primary use of the term theologically.  It is a way of describing the movement of revelation from God to humanity, whether in creation, in prophetic proclamation, in the Spirit's quickening, or in the incarnation.  It is a way of saying that God has come to humanity with good news.  James Evans argues that the doctrine of revelation and the doctrine of liberation are united, for to begin to know who God is, is already to be liberated from the false gods and ideologies that justify domination systems and enslave human beings.  This word of hope rang true to my sense of helplessness.  However far gone I was, God's word brings light, life, liberation, and restoration to my predicament.  Because Everly now rests in the loving presence of God, I also may receive the grace of being in the presence of God with her.  For God, the Hound of Hell, pursues me to whatever depth I might dig for myself or fall helplessly into.

So Friday morning was a day to find myself immersed in the work of grief.  Rather than coasting along, I was pulled back into the intensity of loss that is Everly's death.  But the very way that it happened is a reminder that I am not alone in it.  It was the words of a song, shared by many people, written by a friend, and infused with life by the Spirit, that stirred me to this important work.  I can't say for sure if it is progress or stasis.  But I do know that as I grappled with these matters, the same Spirit stirred another friend to invite me to get out of the house, take a walk, and converse.  That crisp morning among the trees and hills of north central Durham helped me frame my inner life in the larger realm of creation and redemption.

I am wounded, perhaps broken.  Healing is possible, and in fact seems to be happening in tiny steps.  And I am not alone.  Somewhere in there may be some progress.