There is a house in New Orleans....
It seems like the lyrics of Amazing Grace can be sung to nearly any other song on the planet.... well, this is likely a bit of hyperbole, but I do remember back in the day going to Hope Mission in Edmonton with the church group I was part of & singing Amazing Grace to both "the Lion Sleeps tonight" & to the theme song from Gilligan's Island. (the former was met with silence by the assembled homeless people/worshippers, the later was met by comments of protest saying that the poor guy who wrote Amazing Grace was spinning in his grave).
This morning on the snowy, backlogged drive into work, I caught a rendition of Amazing Grace by the Blind Boys of Alabama singing the lyrics to the melody of "The House of the Rising Sun".... It took me a while to recognize the tune & when I did, the voice of the protesting homeless guy sounded for a little bit in my head... but I got over it. Oddly enough it was a really beautiful rendition of the song & oddly, powerfully redemptive...
The 'musical quote' (I love this concept - we 'quote' in writing all the time, never realized that you can do that in music as well) from 'The House of the Rising Sun' has been appearing in another tune that's been nibbling at my brain lately.
"The Saints are Coming" - U2/Green Day ( by Richard Jobson & Stuart Adamson)
There is a house in New Orleans, They call The Rising Sun.
Back in my days at the Gathering, I got caught up in the hype that God was leaving messages for us in the world around us & would look at everything as being somehow this secret hint from God about something he was up to. I'm not saying that I don't still kind of do that now, I'm just more cynical with it... Part of me totally believes that God whispers to us through art (& everything else) around us... but the other part of me knows that I have an overactive imagination & so I don't trust myself so much anymore with the 'insights' that I think I get.... (it's no wonder I fear becoming crazy when I sit there waiting for God to talk to me about what He's doing on the planet... though you've gotta wonder how often the prophets of old thought they were going bonkers... not saying that I'm a prophet, I'm just saying that to open yourself up to the possibility of the divine voice speaking into your live means that you open yourself up to walking the fine line between sanity & the funny farm).....
... keeping this in mind, I've been captured again & again by this song. Before Christmas it was on near constant repeat on the internal tuneage in my head... Over & over again - the saints are coming, the saints are coming... I ended up giving the single for the tune to a couple of people for Christmas hoping to catch their heart/spirit impression of the tune. Haven't heard anything from either of them, so i assume it doesn't really register with them as anything of significance & so maybe I'm just over-reacting.....
... the video for the song throws an entirely different slant on the song, too. Proceeds from the song go to support relief for Hurricane Katrina victims (hence the New Orleans connection) and the video shows 'news footage' of the hurricane Katrina victims crying out for help & then the headlines read that the military is called back from Iraq to help the hurricane victims & you see these lovely doctored/computer generated images of apache helicopters & bombers/cargo planes flying in & dropping off supplies (it almost looks believable 'cept for the occasional magic hovering plane)... & yeah, not sure what to think with the statements that are being made. I'm torn with the war in Iraq. Some days I think parts of the war is good, some times I think it's a really bad decision. Maybe most days I think it's both....
...but I have to admit that some of the imagery in the video sends shivers up my spine....
...maybe it's just that I sense the 'groan' through this song.... Romans chapter 8 in the Bible talks about how all of creation 'groans' in birth pangs, waiting for the new, the 'condemning of belief' (in that once we see what we hope for, we don't have to believe/hope for it any more 'cause it's there in front of us).... For years & years, maybe my whole life, I've felt this groaning - longing for the better country, for the city made without hands.....
....and yet we live in the place of groaning, the place of continually asking 'how long now?', in the land of a million little disappointments & little deaths... life ain't easy.... for me in general day was good - lots of lessons of being 'late' & learning that it doesn't really matter - that God has me (trapped/caught) in His timing & my moments are ordered by His hand.... so it was a good day to live in grace, to live in learning to rest.... but yeah, the people around me go through their tiny victories & disappointments... & yeah, I feel the groans....
....maybe it is only those who have been to the house of the rising sun who experience the riches of amazing grace.... maybe we only really understand grace, are amazed by it, after we have let the groans make a shipwreck of our lives... where the ache in our soul, the void deep within each of us has tried every other door, every other pleasure/pain in the hopes of finding something that makes us feel alive, maybe after we've failed at everything we finally fall on the cornerstone in brokenness & this is the place where grace really happens...
...maybe I don't really know....
posted by Kirk Holloway | 12:01 AM
1 Comments:
kirk - this is corey.
That song has stirred me up as well...jared made me listen to it in december - and i think about it often. don't have a clue though...hang on to it ok?
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