Monday Morning Music Ministry

10-11-21

One of the most familiar and quoted American poems of the Twentieth Century – after advertising jingles – is Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken.”

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both / And be one traveler, long I stood / And looked down one as far as I could / To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Though as for that the passing there / Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay / In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh / Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I – I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.

Frost’s poem, at least the first and last phrases, frequently are quoted. And it often is misidentified as “The Road Less Traveled,” which title lends an air of misty fatalism instead of melancholic speculation… or a dozen other meanings. Not that Frost intentionally invited more analysis than depicting an everyday happenstance common to humanity. But one scholar, Dr David Orr, wrote a whole book deconstructing the poem. At the other end of the spectrum (and not likely addressing Frost) Dr Yogi Berra stated his unique view: “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.”

I have been thinking about Frost’s ubiquitous imagery and symbolism (for surely he intended to evoke larger contexts). In our contemporary world, especially in America, there is so much argumentation and accusations and anger that an observer might assume that neat and clear Divisions reign amongst us; that there are two camps continuously at loggerheads. Friends or enemies, black and white, right or wrong.

Yet society’s divisions are not bifurcations – not dealing with “two sides to every story.” In practice these days, many issues are rhetorical reticulations: multi-faceted, as discernible as little cracks in a windshield, as easy to trace as strands of cotton candy. To return to our analogy, roads in a yellow wood that are overgrown by tangled brambles and vines. Most “debates” I hear these days are subsumed by ferocious tangents.

I try to keep Christ’s example as my lodestar; not to be judgmental, but for discernment, or to learn new viewpoints, or perhaps have an opportunity to witness. Even, or especially, when non-spiritual questions arise. It’s not always easy. A friend this week asked my opinion about whether to attend the funeral of an estranged in-law. Two roads diverge? Ask Yogi Berra. Not all questions are right or wrong from a Christian perspective. We can try to apply that perspective, however.

More seriously, a dilemma was shared with me recently. A friend who is an airline pilot and opposed to the Vaccine is threatened with dismissal and all that would portend, if he does not submit. This is more than a question of conscience: it is a question of livelihood. Athletes on charter flights take off masks in the terminal, and on the field, as do tens of thousands of spectators. Their jobs are not threatened. Two roads diverge in a yellow wood.

His is not necessarily a Christian dilemma, although proponents of the two alternatives might make cases. America has gotten to the point where people argue about a thousand little things, then torture themselves over two clear choices. I have many friends, from congenital skeptics to my own doctor, who vehemently oppose the Vaccine. The System is forcing us to make excruciating choices despite ourselves. And we are threatened.

Some choices we make willingly or with insouciance, even on matters recently regarded as grave. Another friend whom I have admired, and assisted, on public issues we zealously pursued, just abandoned them because they “have not gained traction”… with hardly a test of traction. I cannot criticize those choices, when a hundred factors might be at play. People are choosing, in political matters, whether to compromise or resist. Increasingly, we come to roads diverging on our pathways that once seemed straight and clear.

It is not only COVID but dozens of issues. Local school board meetings have become battlegrounds, and our own government is calling concerned parents “terrorists.” The internet should be allowed to censor and spy? We are to be under suspicion for having more than $600 in bank accounts? Can we call politicians murderers when they want to allow babies to be killed? Oh, that’s hate speech… but all we’re doing is trying to love babies.

The Lord knows I do not condemn my friends with whose choices I disagree. I have made tough decisions, and probably am making some wrong decisions right now. That is one reason God instituted prayer; and a reason that we have friends, and cherish friendships. Let us be charitable and generous to each other in these awful times.

But for Christ’s sake, literally, let us think and pray when we come to moral forks in the road.

Do you remember that old saying about not understanding someone unless we can walk a mile in their shoes? We should imagine others’ choices, not only our own, when the roads of life diverge before us.

And maybe, more often than we are used to, we can walk down those roads together.

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Click: When I Get To The End Of The Way

9-23-13

A theme song of cynics – there are many; many cynics and many are their themes – is the famous sentiment written by Shakespeare: “The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones” (Julius Caesar, Act 3, i). But the hopeful among us must see that this is honored in the breach, that the exception proves the rule. We must not merely be convinced that fights for righteousness and honor and creative expression are worth the fight in this difficult life… but that the fight ITSELF, not only the goal, is worthy.

Cynicism is challenged by uncountable examples of service and sacrifice by kind souls, by acts of charity, a word whose original meaning is “love.” Challenged in the over-arching sense by the work of weary toilers in the fields who sometimes are bent but never broken. And in the very personal examples of artists who die without ever knowing the effect their work eventually has on other people. There are stories we all know from history.

We think of van Gogh; of Poe; of the composer Schubert and the novelist John Kennedy Toole… and of Eva Cassidy.

Some serious critics have called Eva the greatest American vocalist. Do you ask, “Who?” Her relatively sparse playlist has swept record charts around the world. Some of the era’s greatest singers and producers have attested to her uniqueness. The acclaim and sales have all come years after she died. Eva was born in Washington DC in 1963. Self- (and dad-) taught on several instruments, she listened to the great performers of several genres she rapidly mastered herself: blues, jazz, gospel, country, pop standards.

Eva played in several clubs in the Washington area. A college town, DC is replete with jazz clubs, music venues, performance clubs. As a student there myself in ancient times, I was privileged to enjoy, in places like the Cellar Door, Emmylou Harris, Linda Ronstadt, and Randy Scruggs before they were nationally famous. Later, Eva Cassidy attracted a local following and made a few CDs, but her fame was fairly restricted to the District. Pros and record execs who heard her music were astonished, but many of them simply did not know in which category to place her. All of them later regretted their short-sightedness. Her voice was angelic (if angels were to sing the blues); her interpretations were miraculously emotional; her guitar style was unique.

When she was 30 she had a malignant tumor removed from her neck. Three years later she was dead, the melanoma having survived within her body, spread to bones and lungs. After her diagnosis (three to five months to live, no hope of survival) she returned once more to her stage of choice, DC’s Blues Alley, and sang “What a Wonderful World.” That choice, as much as hearing her music, confirms what a wonderful person, not merely a musical talent, Eva Cassidy was.

But it was five full years after her death before the world really heard about her, and heard her. A stray CD made its way the BBC Radio studios in London. Airplay on a morning show lit up the proverbial switchboard. Fast-forward this story to Number One on British record charts; five CDs in the Top 150; continuing presence in England and Ireland, especially, but also Germany, Scandinavia, Switzerland, and Australia… and, finally, America; and sales exceeding 10-million CDs.

It is easy to lapse (thusly) into numbers and statistics. But it was Eva Cassidy’s astonishing talent, and her effect on listeners, that is the story. She had a gift for making mundane lyrics special, for discovering spiritual nuances in standard love songs, for making happy tunes blues-y and turning sad ballads hopeful.

That her “success” is posthumous is ironic at least. Yet once we take account of life’s vicissitudes, we should take heart. The good that we may do DOES live on “after our bones are interred.” When we do the Lord’s work, sharing hope and sunshine, we are eager to see the “seeds” we plant take root and bloom. But we don’t always know if, or when, it will happen. Mostly, we cannot know. As servants of the Word, it really is the Holy Spirit’s job to “close the deals,” and we should resist the temptation of pride if we are too concerned with the seeds we plant. We can plant those seeds; we can even cultivate; but only God can make life grow.

In fact there is a legitimate spiritual satisfaction in not knowing these details. When writers, artists, singers, songwriters, poets, and all people graced with God’s creativity set their works out (as it were) like baby Moses in a basket, among the reeds and into unknown waters, we don’t know who will discover them. But, trusting the God whom we serve by serving our fellow men and women, untold numbers of people, and their families after them, may be profoundly touched. Even if one person’s spirit responds, we have done our jobs.

If we, any of us, exercise the talents wherewith we have been graced, if we see our lives as parts of the cultural continuum of civilization, just as we are woven with the scarlet threads of redemption, then some of us might be the next van Goghs, Poes, Schuberts, Tooles, and Eva Cassidys. And be content that the value is in the working and the works, not the accolades of the world. And the rest of us? We can feel blessed that we are witnesses of these great talents.

Remember the Yogi Berra quotation, “It ain’t over till it’s over”? Memo to Yogi: sometimes it only BEGINS when it’s “over.” The theme song of THAT truth is sung by Eva Cassidy.

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One of the only videos of Eva Cassidy singing is an amateur camcorder capture of her and her guitar at Blues Alley. It often brings tears to viewers’ eyes for the unique interpretation and commonly untapped meanings from a pop standard previously considered without spiritual depth. “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” was recorded the year of Eva’s death, 1996. I commend this performance to you, and its compelling whisper to your soul: “Somewhere over the rainbow, skies are blue, and the dreams that you dare to dream, really do come true. … If happy little bluebirds fly above the rainbow, why, oh why, can’t I?” When Eva sang, she made it a spiritually rhetorical question: We can.

Click: Somewhere Over the Rainbow