Category Archives: Music

“the cure”: Olivia Rodrigo explores her view of self and God.

A life in the Spirit, Music, Psychological growth, Spiritual direction, , ,
Latest album cover: “You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love”

Maybe I like Olivia Rodrigo because she says what is on her mind and dares you to do something about it. Plus, I like that she does not have any pretense of being profound — she knows she became famous when she was 17 and knows she is still figuring things out on her latest album.

I first caught up with her when I realized, “Hey, Olivia Rodrigo is Nini from High School Musical on the Disney Channel! (something to occupy grandchildren and Papa during Covid). I loved how talented she is — but when I heard her songs I really liked how hysterically brazen she is.

She is a strange kind of prophet as she analyzes her own dualities and takes down the presumptions and misconceptions all around her.

This quite often makes her depressed.

A mural on Melrose announced the new album

the cure

Today’s song “the cure” (#3 on Spotify recently) caught my attention for how it reveals things about the dialogue each of us is having inside and hints at how one’s view of God makes a difference.

About the song, she says, “It’s karaokable if you’re sad.” Try it!

“the cure” was first teased in May, when two lyric snippets were painted on Olivia’s wall mural in Los Angeles (above). She officially announced the song’s release the following day. She hosted an hour-long session of NTS Radio, where she played sad songs to tease her album, and ended her set by premiering “the cure” two hours early. The mural had fans in a tizzy. As you can see, Google calls it an L.A. tourist attraction. If I were out there, I would probably go see it, too.

Rodrigo has said quite a bit about how this song was written, since it is one of her favorites on the album — and maybe her favorite, so far, in her rather successful career. She says:

I remember trying to fit “I’m unraveled” into another song and thinking that was just a really perfect, poignant way of describing what it feels like to know someone really deeply and feel like, “Oh my God, it’s really terrifying, I’m really raw right now, I’m unraveled.” I think when you’re in a deep, intimate relationship, it just sort of feels like everything you thought you knew about yourself kind of comes unraveled, a little bit, and you’re just naked. I thought that was a really cool choice of word. I remember trying to fit it into this song, and it works perfectly.

I like how, in the verses, the lyrics are super specific. “Tally up the girls that he fucked ‘til I start to cry,” does it get more specific and dark than that? And then, the chorus opens up into this metaphor. There’s poison in my blood and you try to cleanse me of it, but it doesn’t matter because it’s who I am. I just like the dichotomy of those two living together.

She was a rather wise teenager, and she sounds more like Qoheleth all the time.

Her view of self

We have an internal dialogue going most of the day. The messages we speak to ourselves reveal our view of self (VOS) and affect emotions and behaviors. Most days, therapy includes inviting clients to identify and examine their self-talk (those internal messages) in order to see who they believe they are and so mitigate depression and anxiety.  If our self-talk affirms our worth and enhances our ability to endure or overcome life’s stressors, then we are more likely to have a healthy response to those problems. If our self-talk contains a distorted or destructive narrative, then it is much more likely that we will feel and act accordingly.

For instance, imagine sitting down for that first cup of coffee in the morning and just as you are placing the cup to your lips, you spill it all over the front of your clothing.  If your self-talk goes something like, “I can’t believe you did that!  Stupid!  This is going to be an awful day,” then your chance of carrying a lousy mood through the day increases. (VOS: I am a clumsy idiot). But if your self-talk sounds more like, “Oh no! I really love this shirt!  Better get some water on that and get a new one,” then you are probably going to feel temporarily annoyed but you will be able to move past the incident and not set yourself up to have a bad day. (VOS: I am a person who overcomes troubles).

Olivia is having a profound internal dialogue in her song.

All the pretty girls in the foreground of my mind
I thought I’d done enough, but they keep moving the line

VOS: “I’m not good enough” keeps playing in my thoughts. I’m competing with other girls to to be worthy of attention and love, but I never seem to make it.

I thought I found the antidote this time

VOS: I’m waiting for someone to find me and know me. If you love me, I am good.

And all the nights I spent fighting bad thoughts in my room
Feeling so alone, might as well be on the moon
I thought I found the antidote with you

VOS: If I just had another person I would not feel so alone with my terrible self, talking back to the terrible self-talk I do and feeling defeated.

But my head is full of poison, and my heart is full of doubt
I got toxins in my bloodstream, you tried hard to suck ’em out
And it feels like medication, and it’s good for me, I’m sure

VOS: My head, heart and body are yucky and out of control.

The chorus keeps repeating the dichotomy she is examining – great mentalizing! She’s not known for being a Christian, but she often sounds like one. Here she is considering her mind, her heart and her body and wondering why what feels like medication isn’t quite enough:

But it don’t matter how your love feels anymore
It’ll never be the cure

VOS: I’m beyond relying on someone else’s love to make me someone.

Most of the time, the view of self that used to dominate us is still around, but smaller, as our new development takes hold. It has been fun to travel with Olivia Rodrigo as she matures in her art and psychological health. The realization above is one many people twice her age are still working on! — Who I am starts in me, it does not come from you.

I thought I found the antidote this time

But I’m unraveled (I’m unraveled)…
Why can’t it ever be enough? (I’m unraveled)
It’s not enough…

It will never be the cure
It’ll never be

VOS: Like she said in her interview: “Oh my God, it’s really terrifying, I’m really raw right now, I’m unraveled.”

She did heart, mind, strength and now soul as she unravels down into it. I think this is her favorite song on the new album because a new consciousness is being unveiled by love. Becoming naked at the deepest level reveals her own sense of “I am.” For her, singing about it solidifies her confidence in being herself. I appreciate her sense of wonder as she watches it happen.

View of God

Olivia is not singing a song about God, per se. But God is never far from her process, it seems. On the #1-played-song on Spotify, also from her new album: “stupid song,” she says:

Walking through the park with my head high
Past all the college girls and the drunk guys
And if there is a god, he’s the bond that’s between us two

She mentions God (or “a god” in this case) quite a bit in her songs. I love how she identifies the mystery of love in the bond she feels as God between them. She could be writing 1 John.

In the song of the day, “the cure,” she veers right up to the edge of God:

And it feels like medication, and it’s good for me, I’m sure
But it don’t matter how your love feels anymore
It’ll never be the cure

She is bold enough to beg the question, “If this loving guy is not the cure, then what is?” I think her basic answer, so far, is: “The cure is being myself, troubles and all, and accepting my place in the world.” This is amazing for a 23-year-old! It might be easier for her, since she is worth $45 million.

But I get the impression she does not think she is, ultimately, the cure, either.

There has been a lot of consideration, throughout history, about the correlation between spirituality and health. One of the most interesting findings recently is how much of a difference your view of God can make in your well-being, especially your mental health.

Since many of my clients come to me because I am a Christian, we often get into their concept of God or their relationship with God. Many people are skeptical or distant when it comes to God because they have an entitlement mentality or a punishment mentality. They see God as either being out to get you, or God is there to give you whatever you want. Neither matches who Jesus reveals God to be, but they are common views. And neither view will make us pleased to keep getting to know God better.

Research demonstrates how much your view of God can impact your health. Over the past several years Baylor University has conducted several surveys on religion among American adults, and many scholarly articles have been produced using the data. The most recent survey revealed more on the connection between one’s view of God and mental health.

The general views of God fell into three broad categories:

  1. A “deistic” God. God is real, but He is not significantly involved in what happens on this Earth or in one’s daily life.
  2. A “punitive” God. God is angered by sin, is looking to punish sinners, and one has little hope of meeting His high demands.
  3. A “benevolent” God. God is good. He is closely involved in the world and in one’s daily life, and His involvement results in good things.

The Baylor University data showed how powerfully one’s view of God can predict the presence of mental health problems. Briefly, belief in a punitive God means more anxiety, paranoia, and other symptoms. Belief in a benevolent God is associated with fewer such  symptoms.

This effect holds true even in prayer. If one is unsure of one’s connection with God, or trying to avoid God (possibly out of fear), prayer only results in more anxiety. If one’s connection with God is secure, prayer decreases anxiety and related symptoms.

We will see where Olivia ends up. I hope she’s still making music when she is 30. It would be interesting to see what she thinks about this lyric then:

And it feels like medication, and it’s good for me, I’m sure
But it don’t matter how your love feels anymore
It’ll never be the cure

I’d like to ask her then, “What do you believe to be the cure now?”

 

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The is Peter and Paul Day! Catch up with how the two influential disciples of Jesus became tied together in the history of the Church at The Transhistorical Body. 

A song lights the way: Journey through dark times

A life in the Spirit, Music, Psychological growth, Spiritual direction, , , , , ,
That beautiful blonde hair behind the the statement red head on the left is our treasure.

I will miss the day when my granddaughter no longer invites me to hear her perform with the Commonwealth Youth Choir. Their very existence moves me to tears, and then they start singing. I prayed they could feel and ponder their selections as they sang the other night. Their songs were showing us the way out and in.

The concert was a fine ending to a good day. We got up early and walked on the beach. Then we listened to Till We have Faces on the way home and finished it just as we turned into our street.

As I often explore with my clients, the good moments need to be elongated, shared and revisited. That makes them stick with us instead of slipping away into nothing. Especially these days, when every day seems to have a new indignity or bit of destruction to torment us (as if we didn’t already have enough), we need to dwell on what is good.

So let’s do that together.

The song right on the edge of freedom

Fortunately, one little song on the concert program that night was very sticky: “Who I Want to Be” by Coty Raven Morris (arr. Saleel Menon) [link].

I lead with my spirit
keeping love in the circle around me,
expressing my spirit,
loving what I see and cannot see.
I take care of the vessel I’m in.
I love the me that’s under this skin,
taking care of my mind,
envisioning the me
I want to be.

At one point, selected singers went to the mic to voice the goodness that is in them. It was a blessing to hear what every psychotherapist must wish their clients were singing.

However, I have to admit there was a bit of a trap waiting in the song for the unsuspecting. It so firmly begins with “I” — and it is such a burden to be in charge of one’s spirit! But at least they were keeping a circle of love around them — love is so uncontrollable, it disabuses us of the idea we can control everything. And they included expressing love for what they “cannot see,” which led to the deeper places in the next song.

The song about the Great I Am

If they missed the connection with God I hoped they would make as they led with their spirits, the kids had another chance to connect with something bigger, along with the rest of us, during “Spirit,” Beyonce’s contribution to Disney’s live-action Lion King [link].

The wind is talkin’
for the very first time
with a melody that pulls you toward it
paintin’ pictures of paradise…
Spirit.
Watch the heavens open…
Go into that far off land
and be one with the Great I Am.

Beyonce grew up singing in the choir of St. John’s United Methodist Church in Houston.  Methodism can come with lots of rules and labels, but it is hard to miss the personal and universal spirituality John Wesley experienced within it. The “strangely warmed” places are where the Queen B has landed.

Her song is not too far from Jesus offering some of my favorite sentences in the Bible [link]:

Jesus answered, “If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing. It is my Father who glorifies me, of whom you say, ‘He is our God.’ But you have not known him. I know him. If I were to say that I do not know him, I would be a liar like you, but I do know him and I keep his word. Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad.” So the Jews said to him, “You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?”[ Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.” So they picked up stones to throw at him, but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple. — John 8:54-59

Here are the seven “I Am” statements of Jesus in John [link].

The quote about entering the the far off land

People come to the Great I AM in strange and mysterious ways. I think sometimes they are with Jesus and don’t even know it. Often, quoting a Bible verse is no more help to people than their latest walk in the park — and could prove to be much less helpful. C.S. Lewis is honest about that. If you read his spiritual memoir, he is just being honest about his own journey.

We bought the audible book of Till We Have Faces in March and finished it in June — we have not become preoccupied with the immense library of stuff we can listen to. But the timing turned out to be just right. The ending was a great prelude to the questions the kids were singing.  At least they were questions I hoped they were asking as they began their journey into the “far off land,” rather than just consuming nice words and music, as we are tempted to do.

C.S. Lewis gets at the heart of why our spiritual journeys are often long and convoluted [Audible]:

When the time comes to you
at which you will be forced at last
to utter the speech which has lain
at the center of your soul for years
which you have, all that time,
idiot-like been saying over and over,
you will not talk about the joy of words.
I saw well why the gods to not speak to us openly,
nor let us answer.
Till that word can be dug out of us,
why should they hear the babble
that we think we mean?
How can they meet us face to face
till we have faces?

I know it is not obvious what Lewis is talking about in that quote. It is not crystal clear if you read the whole book! But it is at least as clear as Beyonce calling us to be one with the Great I Am. Crystal clarity is way over-rated.

About the video: Aneel Aranha is good at A.I. He came to faith later in life, but he is making the most of it. 

The quote that sticks in my mind

No matter what scraps of truth and love I find along the way to my destiny, I rely on God to make a feast of them and to host the feast, to boot. Though we try to sit in God’s seat and host our own party, grace is new every morning. We are pulled toward the light like my lilies, growing more in the shade than they should be. I see myself, my children,  grandchildren, and my clients stretching toward the light all the time.

They lean, even though they are, like we are all, to a degree:

hearers of the word and not doers,
they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror;
for they look at themselves and, on going away,
immediately forget what they were like.
But those who look into the perfect law,
the law of liberty,
and persevere,
being not hearers who forget but doers who act—
they will be blessed in their doing.. — James 1:23-25

Every little doing of reaching out and up matters, no matter what your core story keeps repeating. Every step of keeping love, of going to the “far off land” — both that vast inner territory and the vast times and places yet to be known, matter.

May the good songs elongate in your head as you go. May God bless us children as we take our first steps, next steps and repeated steps, and bless us all as we persevere on the journey.

Ozzy Osborne brings it to the War Pigs: The prophecy lives on

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During the Grammy memorial for notable members of the music industry lost in 2025, a group of all-stars paid tribute to Ozzy Osborne, maybe the most notable of them all. The song they chose to play is notable, too: War Pigs.

A long-gone YouTube creator connected a video to War Pigs that is the most-viewed version of the song, now at 108 million since 2014! — that’s the year Russia seized Crimea and “insurgents” blew up buildings in Donbass, the Taliban insurgency continued, and the Syrian civil war raged — the fingers of the U.S. and Russia in all of them. I think her video is quite moving [link].

The film the YouTuber repurposed is a 2009 work from a German film school named Motherland — it shows what music can do to bring your film to life. The original soundtrack is kind of limp [link]. She did not bother crediting the filmmaker when she substituted War Pigs, but likely received the income from the 30 million more views it got lately. But I’m not sure how YouTube works.

The other day, my grandson, the rock and roll drummer student, was part of the Black Sabbath tribute at his concert. They played War Pigs. I admit, Christian that I am, “black sabbath” has never been my favorite name for a band. But I can forgive them for trying to distinguish themselves with the name in 1969. If you want to see the originals play their hit, here they are in 1970.

At the concert, I was predisposed to grinning and bearing the song. But the lead student singer was actually rather good and I caught wind of the words into which I had never tuned.

Generals gathered in their masses
Just like witches at black masses
Evil minds that plot destruction
Sorcerers of death’s construction

In the fields the bodies burning
As the war machine keeps turning
Death and hatred to mankind
Poisoning their brainwashed minds
Oh Lord! Yeah!

Politicians hide themselves away
They only started the war
Why should they go out to fight?
They leave that role to the poor

Time will tell on their power minds
Making war just for fun
Treating people just like pawns in chess
Wait ’til their judgment day comes
Yeah!

Now in darkness world stops turning
Ashes where the bodies burning
No more war pigs at the power
Hand of God has struck the hour

Wow! Just like Amos!

Day of judgment, God is calling
On their knees the war pigs crawling
Begging mercy for their sins
Satan laughing spreads his wings
Oh Lord! Yeah!

Oh Lord! Yeah! The rock students reminded me of the Old Testament prophet, Amos, laying out the war pigs that surrounded the northern and southern kingdoms of Israel. And he did not spare the homeland either! Amos’ list is a recitation of what the war pigs have always done. And it is what they are doing right now, only now with the most destructive weapons ever, directed by A.I.!

  • they have threshed Gilead
        with threshing sledges of iron. (1:2 – Israel in Lebanon)
  • they carried into exile entire communities (1:6 – ICE)
  • he (Edom) pursued his brother with the sword
        and cast off all pity;
    he maintained his anger perpetually
        and kept his wrath forever. (1:11 – sounds like all sides in Iran)
  • they have ripped open pregnant women in Gilead
        in order to enlarge their territory. (1:13 – Russia in Ukraine)
  • he (Moab) burned to lime
        the bones of the king of Edom. (2:1 – U.S. and Israel kill Iran’s leaders)
  • they (Judah) have rejected the instruction of the Lord
        and have not kept his statutes,
    they have been led astray by the same lies
        after which their ancestors walked. (2:4 – all, especially the U.S.)
  • they (Israel) sell the righteous for silver
        and the needy for a pair of sandals—
    they who trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth
        and push the afflicted out of the way (2:6-7 – the 1% and minions)
  • you (Israel) made the nazirites drink wine
        and commanded the prophets,
        saying, “You shall not prophesy.” (2:12 – look in the mirror)

I am not blaming the wars of humankind on you with that last parenthesis, but I know I have colluded with people who want to still the voices of prophets. I didn’t even listen to Black Sabbath until 2026!

We should all be out on the streets shouting with Amos and Ozzy Osbourn every chance we get. But let’s be honest; when the news channels treat a No Kings Day like it is just a brief traffic tie up or a long line at the airport and we put up with that, we’ve already colluded with the war pigs by fitting our prophecy into the oligarchs’ business plan. When we politely argue about the Iran debacle on Facebook like there are two sides to a war pig, we are just acclimating to the same old slavery.

Jesus before Pilate — Jean Fouquet, 1470

Jesus is prophecy in action

What does Jesus say to a war pig? We have scant evidence because he spent most of his time with marginalized people (take note, Empire-trained American Christians!). But my favorite example is when he has a moment with Pilate — the Roman representing the biggest herd at the trough in the Lord’s time, who is apparently slightly nervous about his imminent murder of the Son of God.

Then Pilate entered the headquarters again, summoned Jesus, and asked him, “Are you the King of the Jews?”  Jesus answered, “Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?”  Pilate replied, “I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests have handed you over to me. What have you done?” Jesus answered, “My kingdom does not belong to this world. If my kingdom belonged to this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.” — John 18:33-36

He’s saying, “It is the people I came to save who keep fighting for the kingdoms of this world.” Oh Lord. Yeah! Thank you Jesus! Your kingdom is not from here!

In a few days after talking to Pilate, Jesus rises from the dead (April 5 this year, if you’re just getting to know him). By the end of the New Testament John has his amazing vision and there is Jesus, the wounded lamb, sitting on the throne! There is a prophecy for you!

Let’s keep talking, doing our art and marching. Even if we feel like lonely Amos (even when we’re in step with millions, around the world), let’s force ourselves to keep telling the truth about the war pigs. They are eating people alive! Don’t just do what you can do because justice should be done. Do it because we want God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven, an endless will to bring life from death and love to hate.

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Today is Joachim of Fiore Day! Speaking of prophets! This one is more influential than you know. Visit him at The Transhistorical Body.

Apocalypse: The trauma intuition of CAS

A life in the Spirit, Music, Psychological growth, , , ,

As I listened to Laufey sing Christmas songs on Apple Music, I was, again, impressed by how well she does everything. I was basking in her warm voice when another song came on that did not fit the feed. Since I don’t know much about music apps, I was surprised. I thought it might be Laufey, trying out “edgy.” But it turned out that Laufey’s deep alto and Greg Gonzalez’ tenor are closely matched, to me at least. I had run into Cigarettes After Sex (“CAS” in what follows).

CAS in Brussels, 2017

I had never heard of CAS and , I admit, I asked in my head, “You named your band that?” When I found out more, I added, “Aren’t you from El Paso?” But, like so many people, I was intrigued by the song that showed up on my feed: Apocalypse (hear it here at a worship-like concert in London).  As of August, the song had two billion streams on Spotify, so you’d think I might have run into it. Gonzalez and the song have Wikipedia pages. Regardless, the line “Your lips, my lips, apocalypse” said so much, I needed to know more.

Background for Apocalypse

Apocalypse was on the first album the men put out in 2017 and it never got on any charts. But it went viral in 2022 when it was background music for a  TikTok trend in which people put up a photo from their childhood to remind them to be kinder to themselves.

I love how A.I. sums up their style: “Cigarettes After Sex is a dream pop, ambient pop, and indie rock band known for their ethereal, slow, and sensual sound, often described as ‘androgynous pop noir’ with hushed vocals, dreamy guitars, and romantic, melancholic themes. Their style draws from shoegaze and slowcore, creating a hazy, cinematic, and intimate atmosphere, perfect for winding down or late-night listening.” I needed a dictionary for that description, but it is apt. The NYT says CAS makes “woozy” music that Gen Z loves — and people all over the world do love it. 40something Gonzalez has a loyal — and notably young, fan base in Poland, India, Indonesia, and South America. The U.S. has only recently caught up to the rest of the world as one of their top markets.

About the song Apocalypse, Gonzales says, “The imagery is surreal, and it’s not something that could have happened. But the way I think about that song is, before I left my hometown, it was me and two different girls I’d dated and then kind of become friends with. It felt that we were like beautiful losers — stuck in our hometown with these big ambitions. At that time, it felt like it was impossible to get out of the city, and so when I left and moved to New York, I thought about them again.” You may relate.

He continued to recall the aspirations they all had, and while he escaped to follow his dreams, the friends remained where he had left them. “They wanted to be screenwriters, painters and actors. But they were still in my hometown, kind of like the song says, ‘sort of trapped there’.…Thus, the song at the end is really about being there for people, when you’re all alone.”

Trauma-informed dream pop

My interest in the song piqued when I went to YouTube and found a lyric video. I loved how the thought fragments referenced memories that are too personal to understand completely but universal enough to evoke some feelings. They showed an intuitive sense of how trauma locks people up emotionally and undermines the intimacy we all crave.

In some sense, the band may have been riding the wave of “trauma-informed” everything moving through psychotherapy studies and into society when the song came out in 2017. That wave may or may not have crested by now. I was riding it myself around then, teaching doctoral classes on trauma in 2019 and 20. Then the whole society experienced the trauma of Covid-19, George Floyd, Palestine, and now we have King Donald reorganizing Venezuela. We are all considering what to do with trauma. CAS is doing their part, providing gauzy, thoughtful, background music for us with some tenderness.

Here are 5 ways the song concisely hears us and comforts us where we are traumatized.

  • Kisses on the foreheads of the lovers wrapped in your arms. You’ve been hiding them in hollowed-out pianos left in the dark.

Gonzalez acknowledges the deep emotional pain a new partner has suffered from previous relationships and heartbreak. In its gentle, supportive way, Apocalypse captures trauma not as a dramatic rupture, but as a quiet, lingering condition — a way of being emotionally stranded even in moments of intimacy. What makes the song psychologically insightful is its restraint: the singer never names trauma directly, yet the emotional patterns align closely with what clinicians recognize as post-traumatic attachment issues and dissociation.

Here is the song accompanying the troubles of an old love trying to reconnect with a past love in a new body(!) in The 100.

  • You’ve been locked in here forever, and you just can’t say goodbye.

Being emotionally “stuck” is what we call it. Trauma can be an ongoing “reality.” One of the song’s central insights is how trauma distorts time. The emotional voice feels suspended between past and present, as if the relationship exists in a perpetual aftershock. Trauma often prevents experiences from being fully integrated into memory, leaving someone to relive emotional states rather than recall events. The song mirrors this by dwelling in atmosphere and repetition rather than progression. There is no narrative resolution — only a looping sense of longing — which reflects how trauma resists closure.

  • Your lips, my lips, apocalypse.

The view of intimacy in the song is also psychologically precise. Closeness feels just out of reach. Any touch has to penetrate a veil of numbness and melancholy. When it does, it may feel dangerous. This aligns with trauma-related attachment patterns, where connection feels simultaneously necessary and unsafe — even like an apocalypse. Rather than joy, intimacy triggers vulnerability, and vulnerability recalls loss. The result is a muted, almost anesthetized form of love — tender, but distant.

The song accompanies such a twisted experience in  SnowPiercer

  • You leapt from crumbling bridges, watching cityscapes turn to dust, Filming helicopters crashing in the ocean from way above.

The song begins with a dramatic scene of destruction. I often depict trauma like the shock of some unknown force blowing up one’s village — suddenly everything is rubble. In the song, the metaphor also describes the chaotic end of a tragic relationship — again. Such destruction seems inevitable, even expected. The subject is catastrophe, but the delivery is calm, almost resigned. Trauma survivors often normalize emotional devastation, treating it as the background condition of life rather than an exceptional event. Some therapists might feel this is more realistic than setting our sights on some ideal happiness — a goal line that might feel like it is always being moved back. By presenting emotional collapse in such a subdued tone, the song captures how trauma dulls one’s senses, even alarm systems — things are less likely to feel shocking anymore, even the end of the world.

A fan used the song to sum up an episode of  The Last of Us to that effect.

  • Oh, please. Come out and haunt me, I know you want me.

The lyrics are a plea for the lover to let go of their fear and the emotional cycles that keep them “locked” in their past. The dreamlike music evokes a sense of dissociation. The vocals, production, and pacing feel submerged, as though we are all slightly removed from what we feel. This mirrors a common trauma response: staying emotionally present enough to function, but detached enough to avoid being overwhelmed. The listener senses feeling without having full access to it, which is how dissociation often manifests.

  • Sleeping soundly with the locket that she gave you clutched in your fist.

Ultimately, the song is a comforting message of support, with the singer promising, “When you’re feeling low I will be there too.”  Its refusal to assign blame or seek meaning is itself psychologically astute — trauma doesn’t always come with clear villains or lessons. Often, what lingers is simply grief, confusion, and longing for something that can’t be restored. Apocalypse honors that ambiguity. It doesn’t try to heal the wound — it empathizes with what it’s like to live inside it. I think people sing along with this song at the concert because they love being seen and are passing on that good feeling to others. The whole arena is living inside the wound together, clutching what little comfort they have, but also hearing the hope that someone else is with with them and even for them.

CAS demonstrates an intuitive grasp of trauma psychology — not through explanation, but by creating a descriptive musical environment. The song feels the way trauma can feel –soft, repetitive, unresolved, and quietly devastating.

While not a direct narrative about PTSD from war or a specific traumatic event, the song deals with the themes of being haunted by the past, emotional turmoil, and the struggle to move forward in a new relationship, which all align with aspects of trauma recovery.

I think the whole song also aligns with Jesus walking with us in our “lowness.” Especially this week, during Epiphany, God’s message to the world is “When you’re feeling low, I will be there too.”

Moving into the third level of awareness in everyday life

A life in the Spirit, Music, Spiritual direction, , , , , , , , ,

I went to a large memorial service recently. It was full of stories and very moving because the woman being remembered was influential and beloved. I went because she prayed for me.

When we first landed in Philadelphia to plant a church, I knew we were likely to fail if we did not call on gifted people to pray for us. I collected scores of people to intercede who got a regular letter listing our triumphs and trials. Grace Holland was among the first to join in. Whenever I saw her she told me how she was praying and often had a question about something in our letter that intrigued her. She might not have known how much that meant to me; and she might not have really cared, since praying was a reward in itself for her.

Grace’s family is so full of faith and the wildness missionary kids often carry it would have been hard not to have an interesting and spiritually-stimulating morning at the memorial they held. I had a wonderful time. In fact, I have kept mentalizing about it, which led me to write this post.

As a person who has led many meetings for stories, teaching, ceremony and worship, I know members of an audience are not having a singular experience. At any given moment, someone is receiving what is offered with their ordinary awareness, perhaps exclusively. Others will be experiencing it with their spiritual awareness. Still others are blessed in their deepest hearts with an awareness of the presence of God.

Thomas  Keating, the main instigator in the Centering Prayer movement which got rolling in the 1970s, drew a simple target graphic to explain his common-sense description of what is happening when we turn toward God. I have been re-reading Cynthia Bourgeault’s classic expansion on his chart in Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening.

Ordinary awareness

Some people who attended the funeral probably experienced it entirely with their ordinary awareness. They might have been children. They could have been a distant relation or acquaintance unfamiliar with the family or their brand of Christianity and were caught up with the curiosity of it all. Or they may have been spiritually undeveloped due to lack of opportunity or resistance. People with childhood trauma or children of parents who did not nurture a secure attachment often find it difficult to connect with other people or God and spend much of their time feeling so responsible for their well-being they can’t do anything else.

Ordinary awareness is the reflexive consciousness that only humans have, as far as we know. I have several pictures of a son staring at his fist as a baby coming to the realization he is a separate being from his mother. We all have the capacity to stand outside ourselves and look upon ourselves in the third person. We come to know ourselves as distinct from others with attributes and gifts that need to be expressed to “be ourselves.”

So I experienced the funeral with my ordinary awareness. For instance, I thought I had left with plenty of time to spare after the long drive from Philly to Harrisburg. But I actually just made it to the memorial in time, since the turnpike was jammed due to a car having caught fire. We saw it melted on the shoulder with its poor owners watching the firemen mop up. The feelings stuck with me. Then I entered a large meeting room with quite a few people I had not seen for years and a few I did not want to see. My “monkey mind” was hopping.

At any given moment our awareness is full of stimulating things coming at us which often  stimulate things we have stored up: random thoughts, memories, associations and sensations. We get “triggered,” we like to say, and habitual reactions may lead to a chain reaction that can set off our anxiety. If we did not have that sense of “self” that can step back and see what is going on, we might not be able to endure the chaos. That self-reflexive “I” is probing and measuring the universe all day, and even when we dream it asks things like, “How am I doing?” “Is it safe here?”  “What did she mean by that?” “Am I OK?”

Bourgeault says, “Another name for ‘ordinary awareness’ is ‘egoic thinking.’ It is the normal functioning zone of the human mind. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a Ph.D., a bishop, a nuclear physicist; how brilliantly intellectual or intensely devout you may be. Without spiritual training, your sense of the world and your sense of yourself will be formed at this level of awareness. Even the so-called self-awareness tools of our times, from psychotherapy to Meyers-Briggs  personality typing to the enneagram, spend most of their effort merely resorting and clarifying the characteristics: ‘I am an INFP,’ ‘a gut-centered type,’ ‘a five,’ etc. This may add insights into the workings of the personality, but it’s till ordinary awareness.

Spiritual awareness

The funeral lasted about two hours. So there was a lot of opportunity for ordinary awareness. Plus I had to catch up with some old friends which occupied my mind and heart with pleasantries and tragedies.

Thinking together about our experience afterward, my wife and I realized that shortly after we arrived we had already soaked up the emotion swirling around the room, as a psychologist and psychotherapist might be prone to do. We were primed to be moved beyond our ordinary awareness and into our spiritual awareness. Grace was a well-known worshiper, so a time for that was  included. Almost with the first note, both of us began to cry. And we were drawn beyond ourselves.

As the worship continued, it would have been hard to miss the experience of spiritual awareness all humans are equipped to have whether someone was a Jesus follower of not. The meeting was like a first glimpse of Yosemite Valley, which seems to make everyone pause with awe. I first experienced such wonder under the stars in the Anza-Borrego desert. You may have felt it during a beautiful fall sunset last week. At times I have been drawn in when my friends were dancing or we were meeting an emergency together. And, of course, babies have been born.

Bourgeault says “spiritual awareness is actually a way of perceiving, just as ordinary awareness is a way of perceiving. As with ordinary awareness, there is a sense of identity or selfhood generated through this mode of perception. The big difference between them is that whereas ordinary awareness perceives through self-reflective consciousness, which splits the world into subject and object;  spiritual awareness perceives through an intuitive grasp of the whole and an innate sense of belonging. It’s something like sounding the note G on the piano and instantly hearing the D and the B that surround it and make it a chord. And since spiritual awareness is perception based on harmony, the sense of selfhood arising out of it is not plagued by that sense of isolation and anxiety that dominates life at the ordinary level of awareness.“

Holy Spirit awareness.

I was delighted with the smorgasbord of spiritual food we shared with Grace Holland’s family. I think she would have loved it – even the parts she thought we not fully baked yet. She would have loved how the meeting regularly veered into a thin place where we could reach into the bull’s-eye of the target, the goal Father Keating called our “divine awareness.”

The moment in the meeting I remember most, and these moments are usually relatively fleeting for all of us, was when we sang one of Grace’s favorite songs. Her son, Mike, recounted it was a tune that might pop into her ordinary awareness and lead her beyond it at any moment. I have also been moved by it since Maranatha Music released it on Praise 4 in 1980: “I Love you Lord.”

The song arose in the late 1970’s when it tumbled out during Laurie Klein’s quiet time before her toddler woke up. It found its way to Jack Hayford’s Church on the Way in Van Nuys, California, which I visited. It was recorded by several musicians in the budding Christian music scene, including 2nd Chapter of Acts, who I followed. It gained general  recognition when Maranatha! Music published it and now Korean choirs sing it, too.

As we sang it, I felt the presence of God course through my body. I was one with God, with those gathered and with everyone who has sang that song throughout my life and throughout the world. I enjoy remembering that experience.

We all have a place at the center of us where our own being and God’s being are mysteriously interwoven, even if we are not aware of it. Bourgeault says, “The divine indwelling is the cornerstone of contemplative prayer. Thomas Keating refers to it as ‘our personal big bang,’ for it reveals the Source of our own being – the explosion of divine love into form which first gave rise to our personal life. It also reveals the direction our heart must travel for a constantly renewed intimacy with this Source. As we enter contemplative prayer, we draw near the wellspring from which our being flows.“

The whole world is full of glory

The big, noisy funeral I attended did not have much silence at all. Maybe I will leave that as a request for own funeral. But I carried a silent place with me as I attended which has been formed by years of attention to God-with-us. We meet God deep within us and all around us. It is beautiful when a song flows out of your personal, private quiet time. But the whole earth is full of the glory of God. We meet God-with-us wherever we go. We can’t make an appointment, per se, but we can expect that glory to erupt into our awareness.

Bourgeault points out that ordinary awareness and spiritual awareness are both necessary for functioning in this world. “But the idea in spiritual transformation is to integrate and reprioritize these levels so that our ordinary awareness is in alignment with and in service to our spiritual awareness (which in turn, as we have seen, is in service to the divine awareness). In that alignment our being flows rightly, from innermost out. When something needs to be done in the outer world, we have sufficient ego strength to do it. But unlike ordinary awareness, which is always doing things to assert itself or fulfill itself, action grounded in our spiritual awareness merely flows out of the divine abundance without regard to outcome or any need to draw attention to itself.”

To hear her family and pastors talk about her, the heart of God and Grace’s own heart were in a deep embrace at the center of her and much of her action flowed from that abundant life. I took that away as a lesson. But more so, I experienced its legacy at her funeral and joined with her in the eternal life of it.

Does God protect us? : The music sends a message

A life in the Spirit, Music, Spiritual direction, , , , , , ,

During my four years In college, I was in a choral practice every day, Monday through Friday. I think I loved every day — at least I do now, as I look back on it. I learned a lot about much more than music, but it is the music that keeps rising up to bless me.

On Friday, the music was there to meet me as soon as I woke up. I was startled awake because of a dream. I won’t tell you all of it, but the part that woke me up was about being on a straight road going very fast and then realizing I had fallen asleep. When I jolted awake, I did not know where I was. I eventually found out I had gone to Maryland in my dreams!

I know how this actually feels because I did fall asleep once when we were driving to San Francisco for the weekend from So Cal – back in the day when all-night things were pretty normal. I fell asleep at the wheel and woke up just as I was about to enter an overpass curving over a railroad track. I still remember the feeling of shock and terror, then relief.

I definitely felt protected by God in my dream and in my experience.

Does God protect us?

In my dream, though, I felt a bit ambivalent. Was I protected? Honestly, my unconscious was having an ongoing intellectual discussion just before I woke up.

But even before I opened my eyes, a song came to mind. It was a solo I sang in college. We performed Honegger’s King David, which is a rather difficult, not-too-melodic drama. I did not really get it. But my director often gave his ignorant protégé solos which were over his head and labored to help me perfect them. He had one good reason to deploy me: I actually felt what was behind the sacred music. We were in a secular setting and he was surrounded by music majors who cared more about Honegger’s technique than his motivation. I never got the technique that well —  my mentor had to mark my scores with endless instructions. But I did get the faith.

I realized years later that the little solo he gave me in King David was really half a solo. A new, older tenor had joined the choir who read music like I read the newspaper, and he wanted a solo in the piece. My director did not want to disappoint him, so he gave him the first half, which was more like an intro to my second half, which might be the most melodic measures in the whole work.

My one line was a soaring moment of assurance God gave David in his old age. Essentially, it was, “You’ll be OK even though Absalom has upended your kingdom.” Whether Psalm 121 is really about that, who knows? I didn’t even think about it. I just sang,

He will not suffer thy foot to be mov-ed,
for he is on high, watching above.
The Lord who is thy keeper neither slumbers nor sleeps.

That one line of music has stuck with me my entire adulthood. It pops up at just the right time, over and over.

To hear the pro sing it, you’ll have to scroll to section #21 “Psaume” at about 54:00

I’m not sure I can promise what you want

Again, and again in my life, especially when I feel threatened, that one line of Psalm 121 comes to me in a song. I’m thinking about it today, but I normally don’t. It just happens.

In my dream, God protected me. He kept me. God is my keeper, even in Maryland.

Intellectually, I would not defend that God can be relied on to keep me from flying off an overpass and into Bakersfield. But in my dream, I definitely felt God had protected me when I woke up in Maryland. I told God as we pondered together, “I don’t believe you constantly protect me,” because my experience tells me otherwise, and I cannot justify why God would not protect everyone who is abused by more than I have been. But I also said, “I do believe you watch over me and suffer with me,” since inexplicable grace happens and I feel God suffering with me and comforting me, heart, soul, mind and strength.

Practically, the fact is, I risk and imagine further risks almost every day under the assumption I am protected, that my future is in God’s hands. I prayed, “Your lack of slumber is the eternity in which I wake and sleep and defy death.” God being with me and me being with God is what is safe, not being kept unharmed. Escaping harm is exciting and comforting, too, but it is kind of the surface of things. One day I will, in fact, die. I will then only defy death because I am with God and God is with me. God will not keep me from the “harm” of dying. When I finally die, Jesus will take my hand and lead me into the fullness of eternity.

Feeling the confidence to live the risky life we all live is better than avoiding the troubles I fear. I think the world has so much trouble right now there will never be enough avoidance to deal with it!

But I can promise grace will happen

I have had the blessing of faith my whole life which has allowed me not to worry too much about my safety. But I have many clients, especially those who have been traumatized, who struggle every day with how God did not save them and how they can’t save themselves. They’ve flown off the bridge from which I was saved.

I can’t make a promise God will keep them, like the psalm appears to promise. (But let’s be clear, Absalom had already raped his father’s concubines in public, so David’s foot was mov-ed a lot!). Even so, I do have evidence that gives me hope that even the more damaged, distressed people can find security.

Grace happens all the time. It is as hard to explain as waking up just before you were going to fly over a guard rail. For instance, once a client had a vision in which a significant spiritual figure met them while they were meditating. The person saw themselves crouching in the dark, and the spiritual figure put a hand on their shoulder and said, “You are not a loser,” among other things. When I heard that, I did not reply with a therapeutic “That’s interesting.” I yelped with glee. I welcomed that extraordinary experience and was shocked at the same time. I saw it coming about as much as I expected to fall asleep at the wheel.

God comes to meet us all the time. Jesus knows we need the immediacy. We need the ongoing incarnation of his truth and love. He said, “I am with you always, to the end of the age.” As sure as the angels instructed the shepherds, God watches over us.

Having trouble believing angels talk to shepherds? Look up in the air, more. Look beyond the limits you have imposed on the sky’s boundary. Help is on the way. If you don’t see it, it may already be here. At least I know God is here.

The rulers need slaves: Chains shall He strike

A life in the Spirit, Music, Psychological growth, , , , , , ,

For, some reason, when I sang “O Holy Night” for my sister on Smule the other day, I changed a word in the third verse. Instead of “Chains shall He break, for the slave is our brother,” I sang, “Chains shall he strike!” I think the line could have been translated from French either way. But I  may have had a  “Freudian translation slip.”

Click for Mom’s favorite version (Andy skips the verse in question)

I think I wanted a more violent image. I’m mad about the enslavers enslaving. I was trained as a systems psychotherapist, in part, and the system is not on my side. Our leaders are more interested in profit than health. If I hear right, they think profit is health — even our health system must return a healthy profit for us to be healthy, even if it makes us unhealthy. I’m upset about all the examples of young people, especially, ensnared by things they will find hard to escape and which may, like a slaver, use them up and throw them away. Those chains and chainers need to break!

The latest enslavers

Within my clientele and relationships, here’s evidence of enslavement. They often willingly collude with their masters, but there are masters, just the same, scheming to dominate them and use them.

  • Microchips: In general, machines that deliver the internet have taught us to serve them. For instance, I walked out of the house without my phone, again, when I went to worship today. And again, I kicked myself because it is the key to me getting back safely! The King of Apple was down at Mar-a-Lago the other day to make sure it stays that way.
  • Porn has colonized teenage boys (and younger). The Progress Action Fund put out an ad telling young men that pervy old Republicans were going to invade their masturbation time by restricting porn. It seemed like an emergency to them. The porn industry is unregulated because it is deemed free-but-not-harmful speech, but it is a freedom stealer.
  • Gaming and social media have eaten up many a client’s time and self-esteem. The games are designed to keep us playing (and buying or adding to ad views). The social media platforms are designed to connect us to products – and become one to be exploited ourselves. Prominent Silicon Valley creators are well-known for limiting their children’s access to technology and social media, essentially not allowing them to become addicted, because they know what their creation has become.
  • Gambling: The newest enslaver I hate is online sports betting and other gambling. There is absolutely no benefit  to luring people into the “fun” of giving their money to ever-available casino. The oligarchs call it de-regulation. I tune into a news story and before I get there NBC  gives me a pitch for Philly Harrah’s (in Chester). I watch the Eagles and Jamie Foxx will be onscreen constantly luring me into the latest scheme.

https://youtu.be/5eYKXiZex68?si=jmDH216q5RhFMIfh

  • Drugs: Everyone uses drugs. Some of the substances are needed and I thank God for them. But there is so much avoidance-using! And I’m surprised we still think recreation drugs are fun after an opioid epidemic — which is capitalism at its most obvious. What’s more, I’m discouraged with how many people think pot and booze enhance their life — put them to sleep, wake them up, make them someone else, etc. Sounds like a prison guard, right? And hallucinogens have become big business — especially now that the FDA approval process is deep-state “socialism.” If you ever watch commercial TV, you can’t miss how often we are promised freedom from any malady we can imagine via a weirdly-named new drug, along with every side-effect we can’t imagine.

Slaves are needed to protect capitalism

I refuse to blame individuals for how they “use” all these things. The oligarchs are using them. Capitalism is not a freedom-loving economic system; it needs slaves. Our socialism for the rich means Elon Musk can buy elections and function as an unelected, unappointed, unaccountable government agent, right there in the Presidential box at the Army-Navy game. Billionaires are able to create a government-adjacent slush fund (inauguration / transition fund) for the billionaire-in chief. Do you imagine they will allow anything to steal their riches, like your real, systemic freedom?

There is always an enslavement scheme in the back pocket of every billionaire capitalist or oligarch in any system.  Saying that out loud might sound crazy — that has been suggested before about me for other reasons, so you decide. But let’s remember, when the U.S. went to war over freeing slaves, someone had been teaching that slaves should appreciate how the masters supply them beneficial work. They claimed the Bible taught slaves to obediently stay in their place. In fact, it was taught slaves try to escape because have  a mental issue — much like homeless people are described today, or anyone else who lives outside the system.

Samuel Cartwright of Jackson Mississippi (1779-1863) invented a disease to explain the cause of runaway slaves. He called it Drapetomania — the “disease” that caused slaves to irrationally run away from their awesome plantations, not considering the death-dealing infection the plantations were themselves. People made wealthy by the system often patted themselves on the back for bringing civilization to savages and lifting them out of poverty. Job creators.

From the perspective of people who supported slavery and were supported by it, preserved it was necessary to save the country. It is the economy, stupid. George Fitzhugh wrote in  Cannibals all! or, Slaves without Masters (1857):

We warn the north, that every one of the leading Abolitionists is agitating the negro slavery question merely as a means to attain ulterior ends, and those ends nearer to home.

They know that men once fairly committed to negro slavery agitation – once committed to the sweeping principle, “that man being a moral agent, accountable to God for his actions, should not have those actions controlled and directed by another,” are, in effect, committed to Socialism and Communism. To the most ultra doctrines of Garrison, Goodell, Smith and Andrews – to no private property, no church, no law, no government, — to free love, free lands, free women, and free churches.

I had never read that until recently. But I have heard the principle espoused in one way or another my whole life, like in the last election. I’ve heard it preached.

Chains shall he break

I know the third verse of “O Holy Night” has issues. Singing “For the slave is our brother” is benevolent, but of course it is sung from a place of privilege. The slave is not singing with him. And women are excluded. It was written in 1843, after all!

But we mustn’t throw out the sentiment with its dirty bathwater. Jesus is the anti-capitalist of all time. It is his intent that we throw off our masters. I’m not going to get into whether capitalism, socialism or fascism is the better system, since I think  they are all oligarchical. And regardless of the system, people under oath to save the system — who would kill to save it — the leaders/owners/dictators, are often saving themselves. They are as good as gods. Regardless of them all, Jesus is, in truth, without rival.

“In his name all oppression will cease,” no matter what the system. The system is not God; it is not our master. Jesus is Lord. And if you think economics Trumps Jesus, you’re right where the masters want you. If you mindlessly consume their latest scheme to dominate you, you are not free.

A few tweaks to improve “Draw Me Close To You.”

A life in the Spirit, Doing Theology, Music, Spiritual direction, , , , , , , ,

I was walking in the woods listening to music, which I love to do when I am not walking with my wife — I like her even more than my music!

I realized something about my music as I walked. I have three versions of one song on my playlists — one by the artist who made it popular, Michael W. Smith (Kelly Carpenter wrote it), one by Marvin Winans, and one by me! I guess I like “Draw Me Close To You!”

But now, after further meditation, I want a rewrite. I will record mine again with improved words, once I am done writing this.

The original song was written because Kelly Carpenter was tired. He was doing church hard and losing the reason he was doing it. He saw himself getting in the way of God’s work. He wanted to get out of the way, to get back to his first love and do things the right way, regardless of the cost.

That’s OK until it goes too far. His lovely little mantra has inspired renewal all over the globe by now (i.e. – a Malagasy version). But I think people may take away some unfortunate messages from it.

A few lines of “Draw Me Close” need a re-write

Draw me close to you
Never let me go
I lay it all down again,
to hear you say that I’m your friend

There is a problem here. I think underneath the lines, he is saying, “I don’t believe you love me unless I lay down my life.” Some people miss the whole point of the gospel because when they hear Jesus saying, “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends,” they think Jesus is teaching them a lesson rather than giving them a gift! They think Jesus is putting the sacrifice on them instead of himself!

You are my desire
No one else will do
Cause nothing else can take your place
[I wanna] feel the warmth of your embrace

No rewrite needed here. It is so true. “All my loves are reflections of yours, Lord.” But let’s go on.

Help me find the way
bring me back to you.

I think there is an emphasis in this song, and in most of Evangelicalism, that reinforces, “I need to find the way.” I suppose if you’re not sure you are God’s friend, you probably feel lost most of the time. Several of my Christian clients just can’t be found. Being a lost seeker is their identity. If they stopped being one, they would betray who they are, be false to themselves, lose control.

[Cause] You’re all I want

This might be the worst line. I don’t think it  is true. This song is full of a lot of other wants. He wants to feel better. He wants to live the right way. He wants to stop wasting his energy on foolishness. He wants to look good in the eyes of others. He wants to write a good song. (He wants credit for writing it, even if Michael W. Smith got all the money and fame). He wants God’s approval. He wants security that he is close to God. He wants to feel things.

Some of his wants are needs. Some of them are desires. Most of it is mixed up and that is just how it is with us.

You’re all I’ve ever needed

This might be the best line. So true. At the bottom, top and all around our needs is our need to live securely with God in the love of Christ and the nurturing of the Spirit.

You’re all I want
Help me know you are near.

When I sing this, this is what I mean: “Ultimately, you’re all I want. In the meantime, help me.” Because I don’t always know what I want or know you are all around me. What’s more, I don’t respect my desires, which often makes me feel like I ought to be in control of myself and what going on around me, when I obviously am not.

Maybe we just don’t know what we want

When it comes to desire, Christians, especially, are not too conversant. They think things like, “I need to lay down my own desires so I can get in line with what God desires for me.” Philip Sheldrake wrote a whole book about getting over that error in his thinking. Here is a bit.

On the other hand, desires undoubtedly overlap with our needs and neediness, although it is still possible to distinguish between them. Both may be conscious or unconscious. In fact, it is not unusual to experience a conflict between the conscious and unconscious levels of ourselves. As we reflect on our lives, we can come to understand more clearly how unconscious needs had the capacity to drive us to behave in ways that we actually disliked or that failed to express our truest self. For example, we may be driven by a deeply buried need to succeed, and to be seen to succeed, while on a conscious level we say to ourselves and to others how much we desire to operate differently!

When we choose to talk of befriending desires rather than simply responding to needs we are implying that desires involve a positive and active reaching out to something or someone. Such a movement goes beyond our temporary reactions to immediate circumstances and actually touches upon deeper questions of our identity and our ideals. — Befriending our Desires Philip Sheldrake

Rather than laying down our desires and pretending we know what we want, we should respect our God-given capacity to desire and work out our desires in love.

Strangely enough, David Brooks touched on the same subject last week as he lamented the state of the U.S. culture, dominated, as it is, with micro moments of dopamine jolts which keep us from realizing our deeper meaning. He says:

The problem with our culture today is not too much desire but the miniaturization of desire, settling for these small, short-term hits. Our culture used to be full of institutions that sought to arouse people’s higher desires — the love of God, the love of country, the love of learning, the love of being excellent at a craft. Sermons, teachers, mentors and the whole apparatus of moral formation were there to elongate people’s time horizons and arouse the highest desires.

The culture of consumerism, of secularism, of hedonism has undermined those institutions and that important work. The culture has changed. As Philip Rieff noticed all the way back in his 1966 book, The Triumph of the Therapeutic, “Religious man was born to be saved; psychological man is born to be pleased.”  — “The Junkification of American Life” by David Brooks (NYT Sep 5)

“Draw Me Close to You” is probably another little dopamine hit for a lot of worshipers. When they heard the first few piano chords the night the video was made, they got a chill of recognition and anticipation. The next song after the video was another little hit with little content but lots of feeling that left them wanting more.

When the “psychological man” (it was 1966, sorry women) gets to the words, looking to be pleased, I think they are more likely to be displeased, essentially unpleasable and perpetually looking for the next thing that might satisfy their unbridled hunger.

Maybe Rieff should have also said the “psychological beings” are born to be pleasing and never quite achieving the necessary splendor — TikTokkers getting abs to get clicks, Christians getting passion worthy of their ideal self and God’s approval.

Let’s make a few adjustments

Draw me close to you
Never let me go

Let’s keep these lines. Just think of them another way. Don’t sing them like you’re a wild bronco resisting  and needing to be broken. Sing it like a  distraught child who needs to be wrapped in security and comfort. Try it. See if you can be drawn in close to God right now. God is close to you.

Instead of  “I lay it all down again, “ try

I tune my ear for grace again

Instead of “to hear you say that I’m your friend,” try being more present, less aspirational,

I hear you say that I’m your friend

Or have you never heard that, personally, even though Jesus says it in John 15?

Let’s keep this part:

You are my desire
No one else will do
Cause nothing else can take your place

Just a small edit, below. Because it is so true: all my loves are reflections of yours, Lord.  Let’s lean into that. I don’t just “want to” feel your embrace; I welcome it right now.

I feel the warmth of your embrace

Instead of “Help me find the way
bring me back to you” try:

Guide me on the way
Through the dark to you.

I general, I think this song could use more mystery and less transaction. Regardless, let’s not be perpetual prodigal children, wandering in our individual wilderness. We are not in or out of salvation, we are in it all the time. I think this song was always about being in it with God, even when I feel a bit in the dark.

Instead of “[Cause] You’re all I want,” try

You’re who I want

Let’s keep it personal. God is not merely a better desire than the other desires I can choose. Besides, she chose us, according to John 15, we did not choose her.

Let’s keep this:

You’re all I’ve ever needed

It is so true. At the bottom, top and all around our needs is our need to live securely with God in the love of Christ and the nurturing of the Spirit.

You’re all I want
Help me know you are near.

Let’s just keep in mind, we’re saying, “Ultimately, you’re all I want. In the meantime, help me.” Because I can’t even keep myself in the reality of your nearness.

With just a few simple tweaks

Is it OK to tweak a very popular song? I obviously think so. So does Michael W. Smith, since he changed the words to the original (which actually made more sense than his). I think my tweaks help us in three important ways:

  • They help us get out of our power struggle with God.
  • They acknowledge we are full of needs and full of desires. Our needs are not always aligned with our desires. Our needs matter to God. Our desires lead us to experience God. There is a tension between them, but not a dichotomy. We need to be aware of the tension and not think our needs are desires and vice versa.
  • They help us not to lie to ourselves and God. Saying, “You’re all I’ve ever needed,” acknowledges our sense of never being satisfied.

Let’s amplify that last bullet to close and acknowledge we are all needy right now. Even as I sing “You’re all I’ve ever needed,” in the back of my mind I am worried I am spending too much time writing this post and wondering if anyone even cares if I did. What’s more, I responded late to someone’s email and I think they’ll think poorly of me. I also ate too much for lunch at a smorgasbord yesterday and feel like I need to get up and get some exercise.

Singing “You’re who/all I want,” also acknowledges the largeness of our desire. Desire is what I worship with. It is what gives me hope of something better. It is place in me where I decide to do something that is from my best and meets God’s best like a kiss. “You are my desire” answers back to God’s desire for me and the burning passion of Jesus to see me come to fullness of life.

Simple songs make a difference. I can sing Kelly Carpenter’s song and let it mean what I want. But I can also sing it with him and relate to the strain he felt when he wrote it. He felt a bit bad about himself and how he was blowing it. He wanted help to get on the right path. Not so bad.

But I just want to note, his desire for God had apparently already put him on the right path. After he had his epiphany, he went home and wrote a song God was drawing him close to write. All over the world, people use it to express their deepest desire.

Most of our worship should acknowledge how much we want to be close to God, not just how much we would like to be close if were weren’t so terrible. Because God has drawn close to us and is close to us right now.

My brief tour of American excess

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I always wanted to go to Michigan. Now I have. And now I only have North Dakota left  before I can brag about visiting all 50 states!

When I travel outside the U.S., I am often delighted to wander into a place I did not know existed. Once there, I am often even more delighted to experience something that gives me deeper insight into the culture I’m visiting and the character of its people.  I travelled like that in the U.S. this time and it was revealing.

As we compared our trip to Michigan to trips in other countries, we kept saying, “The U.S. is rich!” We’re so rich we can afford to be excessive, and we are.

So beyond the charming people we met along the way, the helpful guides, the winsome (really!) fast-food servers, and our good friends, I want to highlight the fascinating excesses we discovered along the way.

Cleveland —  The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

I rolled into Cleveland and managed to find our hotel and find parking. I got to the desk and dug out my confirmation when they had trouble finding my booking. I was at the wrong hotel! “You’d be surprised how often people do that!” the nice clerk said.

Just down the street on the waterfront (a short walk from our actual hotel) was the beautiful Rock and Roll Hall of Fame building, an excessive tribute to Boomer music right on the spot where “rock and roll” was invented to name the new art form. I loved it, since I am smack dab in the middle of the Boomer demographic and I was right down to the real nitty gritty in Cleveland.

This museum is almost as overwhelming as the Smithsonian. I particularly enjoyed seeing the tribute to one of my favorite bands, Nirvana, and seeing one of the many guitars Curt Cobain broke on stage (another one sold for $596K at auction in 2023, speaking of excess).

Dearborn — Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation and Greenfield Village

Outside of Detroit (in Michigan!) is a museum complex we went to because someone heard we were going to Detroit and said we should go. We’d never heard of it. It is a huge tribute to Henry Ford that Henry Ford started himself.

Webster House in New Haven, 1927

To make his new faux settlement, Greenfield Village, Ford moved the schoolhouse of his youth to the site and replicated his childhood home meticulously. The village is a giant dollhouse for an exceedingly rich guy to play with. He preserved artifacts or replicated those of his heroes too. He has Noah Webster’s actual house, moved from Connecticut — he’s the entrepreneur who created American English with his dictionary (1828) and then sold books to teach it.  There are a lot of Thomas Edison’s original workshops, too, since he was a real-life hero of Ford’s.

The Museum of American Innovation is enormous, big enough to house 260 vehicles from the earliest to the latest models, not to mention Teddy Roosevelt’s buggy and the car in which JFK was riding through Dallas. I thought the Louvre  was a bit much, but the sheer excess of this exhausted me even more.

Indian River — Cross in the Woods Catholic Shrine

I did not realize that the Michigan Shore of Lake Michigan is essentially a Cote d’Azur where I least expected it. Anywhere there is a coast, it seems, Americans turn it into a cute replica of a scene from Carousel. We bought designer chocolates.

Our friends invited us to pilgrimage to the nearby site of the largest crucifix in the world, since they got the idea we do such things. (We’ve been to Chartres Cathedral twice, after all!). When I saw this cross, I was speechless. I asked how this got built and was told a priest thought Northern Michigan needed a place for Catholics to visit. Sounds like how most of the cathedrals in Europe were built.

Just as excessive, was the newly refurbished doll museum at the shrine, which the cashier said we should not miss. She was right. It might be in the top ten of the weirdest museums I’ve ever visited. Dolls and mannequins of all sizes were dressed in the habits of traditional monks and nuns, mainly pre-1970, the Boomer childhood. I doubt any order was missed. I marveled at the absurd, excessive dedication to minutia and irrelevance in documenting this recently-bygone era. It was a bit like Henry Ford immortalizing his childhood.

Frankenmuth — Bronner’s CHRISTmas Wonderland

I wanted to stop in Frankenmuth on the way up because it was advertised on billboards as the location of Bronner’s, the largest Christmas store in the world. I stopped at Bronner’s for the same reason I go to South of the Border when driving to Florida and Wall Drug in South Dakota (and now Buc-ees whenever I see one). I made sure I got there on the way back — just as Michigan experienced the heat dome.

They were not kidding. It is large. This might be the Protestant answer to the largest crucifix. (CHRIST is intentionally advertised in their name and there is a church in the store). Christmas music my mother would recognize was playing. We wandered. The store is 2.2 acres, almost two football fields. We queasily passed through all of it. I usually like little ornament stores, but the sheer excess and kitsch of this one was overwhelming.

The wedding of Christ and capitalism at Christmas has always been a thing with me. My mother aspired to a Bronner’s-like house that I helped her concoct for the holiday, even though she was not a Christian in any noticeable way. When I became one, I disappointed her by insisting the day belonged to Jesus and I would not do it anymore. I think Bronner’s gave me flashbacks in troubling and good ways. I didn’t buy anything.

This brief sojourn in the Midwest mostly had to take place on Interstates. Interstate 75, for instance, is a top-notch road through the middle of nowhere in northern Michigan. My Itchy Boots motorcycle YouTube fav was recently in Bissau-Guinea which provides a sharp contrast. My main lesson remains, “Americans are a rich people and our excesses show it.” And often their Christianity reflects it.

It is amazing that so many beautiful people sprout from under that excess, like when all those ferns appear from under the leaves in the Poconos each spring. I know I don’t sound appreciative of all the art and ingenuity represented in my stops. I am not sure it was all well-used. But you’ve got to love it. I suspect Jesus does — he loves every drop of creativity in creation, doesn’t he? Even that colossal angel trumpeting over my head in the picture above took some God-given imagination.

Music matters: A message to Boomer prison guards

A life in the Spirit, Film/TV, Music, , , , ,

Is it just me, or do you sometimes feel like you will never be released from your Boomer music prison? I was in the dim sum restaurant celebrating 8th-grade graduates and one of them stopped eating dan dan noodles as soon as “Build Me Up, Buttercup” came on the background music. We belted out, “I need you (I need you) more than anyone darling,” which was sweet. But I also thought, “Will we never be free of this song?”

Graduation Day

I went to two commencement ceremonies (loved them!) and heard 8th graders singing Boomer anthems to Boomers. But most of their parents were born in the 70’s and 80’s, weren’t they? In the first ceremony  the kids actually sang “Graduation Day” which was a hit for the Four Freshmen in 1956! I went down to gym floor as the director was cleaning up the band music to congratulate her, “Extra points for ‘Graduation Day.’ Where did you discover that?” She said, “Oh, we always sing it. It’s a tradition.”

How did that piece of fluff become a tradition? You could say, “The same reason your son  makes the Jello dessert for Thanksgiving your mother’s family still calls a salad.” Touche. But still, any use of that song does not make perfect sense to me.

I was out in the Redwoods with ten-year-olds where we discovered our cool farmhouse VRBO had a TV in their room with the Disney channel. We turned it on and there was the new Beach Boys documentary being headlined. I was interested in the Beach Boys, so we watched a bit. But I thought, “The Beach Boys hold some interest for the Disney Plus watchers?”

The Boys also came to mind during the first commencement, since Brian Wilson was obsessed with the Four Freshman and much of the brilliant harmonies he built into surf music were directly from them. The Beach Boys also recorded “Graduation Day.”

The first record Brian Wilson bought when he was a teenager in Hawthorne, CA (about an hour from where I lived), was the Four Freshmen’s 1955 album Four Freshmen And 5 Trombones. The story goes that 30 years later he still loved the album. He told an interviewer, “They had a demonstration booth where you could listen in the store and I found the Freshmen album. My mother said, ‘Do you really want to hear this?’ and I said, ‘Sure.’ So I went into the little booth and played it and fell in love with it.”

I aspired to BE one of the Beach Boys when I was young. So I find them very appealing and have almost all the songs from Pet Sounds on my playlist. But “Graduation Day” was a bit of nostalgia when the Beach Boys were young! What was it doing in an amazingly diverse class of 8th graders in Philly in 2024? Has it become “America the Beautiful?”

I turned to the grad’s older brother and said, “Couldn’t they find a more representative song than that?  Do they think people have stopped writing music?” He wasn’t really listening to me complain but he was polite. I went on to suggest, “How about ‘What Was I Made For?’” (which I recently Smuled for my sister). That would be a great commencement song for the present generation, some of whom were dressed like Barbie before our very eyes.

Forever Young

The next day we celebrated with an even more diverse class of 8th graders and they were also programmed to sing for us, which they did very nicely. But what song did their Boomer teachers (or were they GenX?) pull out for them to learn? — the classic “Forever Young” by Bob Dylan, written for his son in 1974. He recorded a couple of versions but, honestly, I have never been able to listen to him sing. Here’s my favorite of his interpreters:

Last year there was a Joan Baez documentary, too: I am A Noise. I watched part of it because I have always admired her voice and activism. She’s inspiring. It ends with her dancing in a field as an old woman, but much like any hippy would imagine Joan Baez dancing.

But what was Dylan’s song doing in a commencement ceremony 50 years after it was written? Has it become classic, like the “Hallelujah” chorus? I looked at my wife when the kids first sang, “Forever young,” and said, “No thank you.” Who in the world would want to stay young, especially always in 8th grade? I want them to be full of the brightness and hope of that moment, but I am not sure they’ll make it if they are stuck in Dylan prison.

My mind turned to all the other, more recent, sentimental music they could have used. I think Dear Evan Hansen’s  “You Will Be Found” from 2016 would have been much better. It is just like Disney but always makes me cry. This year’s grads endured the pandemic, after all.

Music matters

We live in an environment in which every sound wave is monetized. Molecules will probably soon come with pop-up adds. There is a lot of competition for our attention, which means were are mostly not attending at all. But we need to listen to the music. Music matters. The Boomer/GenX teachers keep sampling the past for feel-good nostalgia, for the muffled sounds they heard in the womb, I suspect. That’s OK. But that’s not real enough.

Music is such a wonderfully integrative art, especially singing, if we let our whole bodies get into it. That’s why churches are holding out as a place where singing in public still happens (well, there is the Phillies games and Luke Combs concerts, too). Singing is a spiritual discipline. But even if you aren’t disciplined, or aren’t really listening, it is still a spiritual experience.

The teachers, it seems to me, chose to keep their kids enclosed in a small space — the kind of space stores offer when they dish up more “Build Me Up Buttercup” while you’re looking for polenta (which they keep moving around!). The kids of the future will need a lot more than sedation or amorphous feelings of well-being. They will need a lot of spiritual imagination to get out of the mess they are in. As the atmosphere gets warmer and the warzones get wider, they will need real music to live on, not just leftovers. I hope they learn to remember way beyond 1956 and dare to write the soundtracks of healing and building way into the future.