Lisa's Musings

Better Questions

Todd Agnew has a new album out, "Better Questions", and although I haven't yet listened to all of it, there's one song in particular that I love.  It's a "pop blues" kind of piece, and since I love the blues, I love the bluesy touch he's put into it.  But the lyric is even better.  It seems to encompass why the blues touch my heart- it's a lamentation of someone who is broken and crying out to God.  This song is about honesty before God and how Jesus would respond to the iterant bluesman and the "happy plastic people" that flood our churches every Sunday morning.  Does Jesus value the lamentations of the broken less than the empty worship he hears from many each Sunday? 

Here' s the lyric:

On A Corner In Memphis

Saturday on Beale St. with the drunk and the searching
I hear an old man playing guitar
I can’t make out what he’s saying
But I can tell you that he’s suffered
And that he means every word from the bottom
Of what’s left of his heart… tonight

A few hours later, I slip into church
Singing songs about saving grace
One guy’s nodding off and another hates to be here
And we all mouth the words to save face
It’s 11:15 on Sunday morning
And I wish I was

On a corner in Memphis listening to the old man
Singing out his sorrows and laying down his pride
He’s telling me his story or at least his side
With no need to pretend and nowhere to hide

‘Cause we are all broken here
We’re are all ashamed
I couldn’t fool you if I wanted to
Our stories are too much the same

And what about this Jesus?
They say He drank with the poor and the blind and the lame
Do you think He’d like the songs that we sing?
Or would He feel the same as I do?
What if Sunday School was on Saturday night?

What if their heart-breaking cries of pain
Are the first hymns of tomorrow’s saints?

On a corner in Memphis, we’re singing with the old man
Crying for his sorrows and laying down our pride
He’s telling us our story, or at least his side
With no need to pretend and nowhere to hide

On a corner in Memphis
We’re singing out our sorrows
He’s telling us his story
With no need to pretend and nowhere to hide
On a corner in Memphis

-Todd Agnew, from the album "Better Questions"

Giftedness

Do you remember the movie "Amadeus"?  It made a profound impression on me.  Mozart is one of my favorite composers- one of those whose music brings me to God.  He may not have been as ridiculously obscene as portrayed in the movie, but I know he didn't have the reverence for God that Bach did, yet Mozart moves me more.  That's not the case for everyone, but it is for me.  So I have to ask myself why?  Perhaps it was because Mozart seems more human to me.  Bach was so technically perfect that oftentimes I hear the precision more than the heart.

The movie wasn't really about Mozart, though, it was about Antonio Salieri.  The rivalry between them is really more of a romantic fable than based on truth.  The rumor that he poisoned Mozart and confessed to the murder on his deathbed has no basis in fact, but it makes an interesting story!

In the movie, Salieri is portrayed as a devout man who offers his life to God and desires to give him glory through his music.  He receives a lot of human recognition for his work.  But then along comes this crude, earthy, irreverent upstart, Mozart.  Mozart's genius is not so recognized by the court, but Salieri sees in his music what he himself has wanted to give to the God he loves.  He becomes insanely jealous of Mozart and vows to destroy "God's instrument".

Back to my theory that all "true art" regards man's search for God.  If you look at it, the best of all art truly depicts this.  Even my favorite rock music has this as it's basis.  I can listen to "Pet Sounds" or the Beatles and recognize the search.  It's obvious to me that the artist is pursuing God!  Some of them find Him, but most may not be looking in the right place.  Maybe they are so jaded by the institutionalized church that they no longer feel that the answer can be found there.  But they have been given the desire to find Him.  They've been given a gift that allows them to express how important this search is to them, that it is the essence of their humanity.  It points me to God, regardless of whether their search was successful in their own lives or not.  This is true for me in music, art and literature.

Madeline L'Engle says in "Walking on Water" that "a sad fact which nevertheless needs to be faced is that a deeply committed Christian who wants to write stories or paint pictures or compose music to the glory of God simply may not have been given the talent, the gift, which a non-Christian, or even an atheist, may have in abundance.  God is no respecter of persons, and this something we are reluctant to face...Often we forget that he has a special gift for each one of us, because we tend to weigh and measure such gifts with the coin of the world's marketplace."

In "Amadeus", Salieri may have thought that God was mocking his offering by giving the gift he desired to "give to God" to a course man like Mozart, but the truth was that God had gifted him differently than He had Mozart, that Salieri had his own gifts and rejected them.  The truth was that he was envious of someone else's gift, thought them undeserving, and in his selfishness did not recognize that it was God's gift to give to whomever he pleased. 

We all know that Mozart died tragically, still a young man, impoverished to the point that he was buried in a pauper's grave with no marker.  God did not bless him with worldly recompense while he was here on earth.  It was only after his death that his genius became appreciated.  Hundreds of years after his death his music still points people to God.

"But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, so that the surpassing greatness of the power will be of God and not from ourselves"    2 Corinthians 4:7