Always About the Lyrics

THIS BLOG WAS WRITTEN IN NOVEMBER, 2014.

           True story: Folk singer Woody Guthrie, who had stood with the unemployed at the height of the depression, watched as thousands of Oklahomans, and Kansans, and Texas panhandlers headed west to California during the dust bowl, was incensed over Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America,” that melding of civil into religion that should give any devout Christian pause. Guthrie’s response was to pen “This Land is Your Land”

            “This land is your land, this land is my land

            From California to the New York Island;

            From the redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters;

            This land was made for you and me.”

            I love that song. I love the imagery Woody Guthrie creates with Biblical clarity as “the fog was lifting, a voice was chanting, this land was made for you and me.” The lyrics; it is always about the lyrics. They can move you, sustain you, give you hope. Nowhere is that truer than in here.

            Each morning around 4:00 I begin my day with the Episcopal liturgical calendar. I’m not Episcopalian, but on my 50^th birthday a dear friend delivered the Episcopalian “Book of Common Prayer” to me at the jail. I’ve had it with me ever since and begin each morning with the day’s verse selections. Each day begins the same with Psalms, lyrical poems of praise, or anger, or fear, or just asking God “why” – why this, why me? Each morning I take a 3X5 index card and jot down a verse to contemplate throughout the day. The Psalms, those lyrical, powerful, gut-wrenching Psalms, provide me clarity – and hope.

            I don’t get most music today. I’m stuck in a warp of great old tunes, songs that mattered. I don’t get singing – or rapping – about “bling,” and Hennessy, and large butts, but I pause and think often of Peter, Paul and Mary singing “If I had a Hammer” or “Blowin in the Wind.” Folk singer Pete Seeger penned “Where have all the Flowers Gone.” He was blacklisted and attacked by a drunken, hateful Senator McCarthy during the red baiting of the ‘50s. Pete just kept on singing … about civil rights, and war, and the water. McCarthy fell and died in alcoholic oblivion; Pete kept singing into his 90s.

            They told Peter, Paul, and Mary if they marched in Selma they’d never sell another record south of the Mason-Dixon Line. The trio said the music mattered more than record sales. For almost 50 years they sang – in the face of Nixon’s battle with Vietnam War protesters, in El Salvador standing with the churches decrying the killing by both left and right. The lyrics mattered. The lyrics always matter.

            Almost every blog I write has some song lyric or Bible verse attached. Those words give me direction. I keep a large folder of song lyrics in my locker, close to two hundred songs. There are songs that speak of heartbreak and lost love; songs of the future; songs of protest. Each one contains lines which cry out with emotion and truth. And truth is so hard to find these days.

            Today begins the Christmas season, Advent, the coming of the long-expected Messiah, Emmanuel, “God with us,” Hymns, beautiful hopeful hymns I recite as I run the track. And, while hearing those songs, I remember John Prine’s “Christmas in Prison.”

            “It’s Christmas in prison

            There’ll be music tonight

            I’ll probably get homesick

            I love you. Goodnight.”

            Psalms, songs, poems, lyrics all speaking to who we are, who we want to be. The lyrics matter, especially in here.