What it is to love truly - plug for Nicky Mehta's CD

Picked up Nicky Mehta's CD "Weathervane" again... (had it loaned it out, didn't get it back, got impatient & (since it's helping support and indie artist) bought another copy of the CD... (www.spiritriver.com or www.nickymetha.ca)

it's, well, it's hard to describe... it's the most beautifully depressing CD I've ever listened to... so many of her songs deal with death & funerals & such, or divorce, growing up, losing/finding yourself, loss/gain of faith... the CD tackles incredibly heavy topics but yet in each lyric, each line, each melody, there is so much hope woven in the middle of the sadness... the album succeeds to make tragic things beautiful, to fill you with thoughts of rich hope & love in the middle of feeling the pain of sadness, the sting of loss....

My favorite track is the sole live track on the album called "Truly".... I think it's about the Air India bombings (or at least I'm pretty sure it's about some airplane being blown up):

"It may be when you find a man in a field
Sitting upright still belted in his seat
More than angels fall from the sky
Though they were surely angels on that flight
Or it may be when you pull a suitcase from the sea
Or when things are sorted in a makeshift infirmary
Though no one will be walking up that frigid beach
You fold the clothes neatly for safekeeping

It may be when you realize their last moments
And you feel their lives in yours for just one second
And the strangest thing is to arrive half-beckoned
You think you may know finally, what it is to love truly

It may be when a man lets it go for half a second
Grieves beyond the details ever mentioned
Or when we're done wondering how these things ever got by
Our careful, constant vigilance, our ever-watchful eye
Cause she was a girl in dance school and a boy we never found
He was a silent, hurting father and a mother unrenowned
Well no one is coming back to this empty house
They closed the door behind them and we're forever locked out

It may be when you realize their last moments
And you feel their lives in yours for just one second
And when you choose to surrender all of this anger
You may just know finally what it is to love truly

Some were awake...Some were sleeping
Some will always wonder what their husbands were thinking
And our children will never know the gift of love's painful teaching
We received

It may be when you realize their last moments
And you feel their lives in yours for just one second
And when you choose to live instead of all this suiciding
You may just know finally, what it is to love truly "

The words, as powerful as they are, are nothing compared to hearing the song, the melody of instrument and voice combined to further shake your heart. It took me months of listening through the album before I could listen to the song without tears... and yeah, listening it today brings back all those tears - maybe it's the week I'm having, maybe I'm just tired, maybe it's just the song.... but yeah, I'm trying to mop up the tears here & hope no one wanders into my cubicle at work & wonders if I'm losing my mind...

but I love the idea of "what it is to love truly"... and just how real love sneaks up on you.... that you sort of don't realize how much someone matters to you until you watch them leave... and then suddenly it's this rush of emotions that you never knew you had & you're craving one last minute with them, one more chance to soak up their presence.... and you realize that all the stuff that you thought you didn't 'love' about them really doesn't matter - that all that matters is them and you wouldn't change them if you could just have them back again....

I lost an uncle recently (month or two ago). He died in a farming accident. And yeah, it was kind of shocking for me to see how it affected me way more than I figured... I hardly hung out with him 'cause of the distance, but when he died there were all these memories of hanging out with him as a kid & just all kinds of moments where you wished you'd have talked with him that much more.

Mike Mason in his book, "The Mystery of Marriage" has a chapter on "death" and how death can be used to help strengthen a marriage. Odd concept at first glance, but he explains how we have this tendancy to take people for granted and forget that our time with them is short. He talks about how at funerals we end up saying our eulogies to the dead - often they are all the things we wished we said in life... in the book he encourages the readers to "eulogize the living" - to not wait until death to tell people the things we want to say to them (good or bad). he talks about how the meditation on death, the realization that we are all finite, should help fuel our desire to love, should help increase our capacity to give love & receive love, to learn "what it is to love truly"....

.... and yeah, oddly enough people look at you like you're weird when you start telling them just how much they really mean to you - not that it can ever be really described 'cause it's more this weight of emotion... in the moments where I realize how much someone matters to me, it becomes this huge lump in my stomach/chest and then as I try to speak the words it's like trying to push that lump out of your mouth & it usually gets stuck somewhere on the way out...and you're more choked with tears & emotion than to say anything cohesive an intelligible...

but yeah, it's easy to look, in moments like these at all the places where love hasn't been expressed, where the pettiness, the selfishness, the impatience, etc. etc. has crept in and where I forget what people mean to me... and, as I walk away from the song, I'll likely do the same thing - even the phone call interrupting me in the writing of this, I didn't say what I maybe wanted - didn't communicate my excitement at hearing my friend's voice on a low day...

I wonder what it would've been like to see Jesus in the flesh and to see how He loved truly... the way he embraced the little kids, the way he touched the lepers, the way he hung out with the prostitutes & 'sinners', the way he talked to Judas, the way He walked with his disciples, the ways he looked at you, or spoke to you... I wonder what it must've been like to hear him talking about his own death... and how it felt to watch him on a cross after arguing about who would be greatest in the kingdom or when he'd bring his kingdom to earth & realize that none of that really mattered, all that mattered was this friend, this beloved, this Lord who was now dying...

...and yeah, I hope to learn how to love truly - hopefully before tragedy hits... but yeah, makes me realize how we're made for love... and how the selfishness culture of north america chokes out so much of what is good - we're made to love & yet we trade that for 'self-satisfaction'(which doesn't really satisfy).