About a week ago Luke and one of his friends decided to make a list of their top 100 songs. I thought I’d do the same…and then didn’t have the heart to round out the last few dozen. So…130. It’s in the Rolling Stone’s top 500 format, sectioned off and ascending (the best are at the bottom).
I’ve hyperlinked songs throughout (the blue/underlined ones) that maybe you haven’t heard and mabye you should.
These mist covered mountains
Are a home now for me
But my home is the lowlands
And always will be
Someday you’ll return to
Your valleys and your farms
And you’ll no longer burn to be
Brothers in arms
—
Through these fields of destruction
Baptisms of fire
I’ve witnessed your suffering
As the battle raged higher
And though they did hurt me so bad
In the fear and alarm
You did not desert me
My brothers in arms
—
There’s so many different worlds So many different suns And we have just one world But we live in different ones
—
Now the sun’s gone to hell and The moon’s riding high Let me bid you farewell Every man has to die But it’s written in the starlight And every line in your palm We are fools to make war On our brothers in arms
It was about a year ago that three of us young dudes headed west.
We had bought and prepared a 1997 Dodge Wagon, a beast of a carriage. It was hideous, so we painted flames and flowers and ‘carpe diem‘ on it. It was un-homely, so we built beds in the back and threw down carpet. It was sure to break down, so dear Jesus we prayed.
She was an American made metal camel – sometimes willfully carrying, sometimes having to be dragged across the desert. But we all made it through, east to west and back again. ‘‘Fading West’‘ was something of a last hurrah before college and real jobs and stuff to tie us down.
I’ve been a fan of Springsteen for a while. And this was an attempt at a song of his style from last August recorded on a Galaxy Note 5.
Run
We were rollin’ with fire in our eyes and down the sides of a hippie van,
Into the wild west where dreams waltz up and take you by the hand,
We were runnin’ like a prophet said the end times was near,
Like a deal with the devil gone bad and was runnin’ for the clear,
—
And it’s any man’s guess, how far we’ve come,
It’s every man’s dream, to run like we run,
Run boy run,
—
Someday the strong tie of a family’s gonna hold me down,
And someday my name is gonna mean somethin’ in this here town,
Someday a whole lotta folks will depend on and look up to me,
But today is not that day, today I am free,
—
And it’s any man’s guess, how far I’ll go,
It’s every man’s dream to roam like I roam,
Go boy go,
—
Through the red-rock mesas that run through the desert sands,
The razor blade highways that cut through the badlands,
The California coastline, Montana big sky,
And between the lines, till you get back home,
Keep her between the lines till you get back home,
“But if you want to know what I don’t think, I’ll tell you. I don’t think what you think. I don’t think, and I never shall think, that the mass of ordinary men are a pack of dirty modern thinkers. No, sir… I may be mad, but humanity isn’t.” – Dr. Bull (The Man Who Was Thursday – G.K. Chesterton)
The following shall be my attempt to persuade you to leave yourself at the mercy of thieves and robbers and neighbors. I should think it’s well worth the effort.
photo credit: April Troyer
It’s sometimes said that the south is some years behind the rest of the country. In light of some of our societal navigating, I’m quite thankful for that. This came to mind one day while I was watching a T.V. show called 11.22.63. A man walks through a dark closet in the back of a diner and falls through a time portal back to 1960. During an intense scene towards the end, he desperately needs a vehicle. So he runs down the street trying car doors, finds one unlocked, and speeds away to prevent the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Quite riveting. Unfortunately, had our hero not traveled back in time, he would not have found an unlocked car, and the president of our fathers would’ve been shot right on schedule. Unless of course he’d of tried my car.
I do not lock my car doors for what my dad would say is a matter of principle. I don’t endure brutally hot Julys, grassless lawns, and snowless winters for nothing. I believe my ability to do this lies in two places: youthful ignorance and, more importantly, my perception of ‘them’.
There is in our vocabulary of prepositions one quite curious. It is ‘they’. And by ‘they’ we mean the public at large. Everyone has their own deep-seated opinion of they, them rather. Some people move about with sneaking suspicions. “Strangers are thieves waiting for an opportunity.” “That one there, he’s a crook, don’t let him fool you.” “Hitchhikers are axe murderers, let em walk.”
Personally, I refuse to take that stance. When I park my car at a coffee shop or boiled peanut shack, I leave my keys inside, doors unlocked, and take pride in my corner of the world. I am not in Detroit or Atlanta or Russia or Haiti. I am in the deep south. And this is the important part: I am a law abiding citizen, not an anarchist, and by the grace of God, am standing far in the majority. To confidently leave yourself vulnerable, in any way, is to trust your neighbor.
When you build fences, don’t talk to strangers, and live your life under lock and key, you dwell in a place where, to some extent, citizenship has fallen and anarchy has risen. And if you are blessed as I am to live in a place in this world where people sell vegetables on the honor system and volunteer to be firefighters and cannot drive more than ten miles without passing a church, it is an unfortunate and unnecessary position to take.
Will I ever get burned? Probably. Probably at some point a person of the minority will steal my guitar out of my backseat or my backpack out of the floorboards. And then someone will say, “Ah ha! We tried to tell you – people can’t be trusted.” And for a single day they will be right. Out of 5,000 days I could only trust civility for 4,999. I happen to think it might be worth it. I live among a people of decency – and that’s a gift I don’t want to waste. If we’re a few years behind the rest of our nation, maybe we ought to keep stomping the brakes. And this too, Mr. Gambino, is America.
I may be mad, but humanity isn’t.
You start to look like what you believe You float through time like a stream If the waters of time are made up by you and I If you change the world for you, you change it for me
Is this the world you want? Is this the world you want? You’re making it Every day you’re alive
Several weeks ago one of my friends, who recently taught a short period of high school literature, said she was going do the essay she’d assigned her students and asked if I’d do it too. This is what came of that. And below is a political cartoon I sketched today.
6/28/18
Three Things Concerning Hobbits
The story of the hobbits in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings is beautiful for three reasons. It illustrates telos gone right. The hobbits are given a purpose in middle earth, and they carry out that purpose well. The story illustrates the paradox concerning how limitations broaden potential and create opportunity. Because the hobbits are such small creatures, their task is an especially great one in the context of their weakness. And thirdly, the story is beautiful because of the faithfulness of Frodo and his fellow hobbits. The task of carrying a magic ring across the expanse of the earth and into a mountain of fire is unlike anything any hobbit has ever been asked to do – yet Frodo does not shrink back.
Socrates was once challenged to a beauty contest by a fellow philosopher named Critobulous. Socrates, a man famous for his ugliness and bad hygiene, accepted the outrageous challenge and made his case in front of the audience.
Socrates: “Do you hold, then, that beauty is to be found only in man, or is it also in other objects?”
Critobulous: “In faith, my opinion is that beauty is to be found quite as well in a horse or an ox or in any number of inanimate things. I know, at any rate, that a shield may be beautiful, or a sword, or a spear.”
Socrates: “How can it be that all these things are beautiful when they are entirely dissimilar?”
“Why, they are beautiful and fine,” answered Critobulus, “if they are well made for the respective functions for which we obtain them, or if they are naturally well constituted to serve our needs.”
Socrates: “Do you know the reason why we need eyes?”
Critobulous. “Obviously to see with.”
Socrates: “In that case, it would appear without further ado that my eyes are finer ones than yours.”
Critobulous: “How so?”
Soctates: “Because, while yours see only straight ahead, mine, by bulging out as they do, see also to the sides.” (West)
Socrates ended up losing the contest, but he pointed out that the beauty of a thing lies in its ability to serve its intended purpose, its telos. On some level, Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings” is an epic rehashing of Socrates’s argument. Instead of bulging eyes, we are shown shrunken hobbits. The intended purpose of Frodo and his friends was to make a long journey across mountains and into hells they’d never dreamed of, and still they consented to see it through. These hobbits recognized their purpose and forged ahead even while the end was uncertain and doom seemed imminent.
To the modern standard of beauty, hobbits are supremely obtuse. They are of small stature, live in mounds of earth, and walk about on large, hairy feet. However Tolkien chose hobbits to carry the ring of power not in spite of their limitations but because of them.
Sometimes limitations expand potential. Any sport, basketball a prime example, is entertaining simply because of the limitations placed on the players. You cannot move the ball without bouncing it. You must shoot within the given time frame. You cannot go outside a certain area and so on. Without these limitations to give context to the actions being performed, basketball would be meaningless. Tolkien wrote hobbits with great limitations in order to expand the meaning and implications of the story. The limitations of hobbits created a need for community, or as the story goes, the fellowship. The hobbits were not very strong – so they leaned on Aragorn. They were not very wise – so they followed Legolas. They lacked courage – so they looked to Gimly. The limitations of the hobbits make the story beautiful.
The beauty of The Lord of the Rings lies also in the faithfulness of the hobbits to the tasks handed them. For a long long time, these tasks were little more than growing food and throwing birthday bashes. But when once they were whisked away on mission that would draw all the realms of middle earth to a final battle, they did what only they could do. They bore what only a hobbit in his innocence could carry. And they walked into the mountain of fire where only their small hairy feet could go. Like Socrates’s deep set, ugly eyes, the hobbits served their true purpose to the good fortune of a million years. When the whole of middle earth was hanging in the balance, it looked itself over for something noble and true. And there, waiting in the wings, was a hobbit.
“Shall I tell you the secret of the whole world? It is that we have only known the back of the world. We see everything from behind, and it looks brutal. That is not a tree, but the back of a tree. That is not a cloud, but the back of a cloud. Cannot you see that everything is stooping and hiding a face? If we could only get round in front.” – G.K. Chesterton
“For now we see through a glass darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.” – I Corinthians 13:12
“Then Elisha prayed, “O LORD, open his eyes and let him see!” The LORD opened the young man’s eyes, and when he looked up, he saw that the hillside around Elisha was filled with horses and chariots of fire.”– II Kings 6:17
I wondered why we cannot see things the same way –
then I wondered why we cannot see the same things at all.
We agree on next to nothing. Politics, music, church doctrines, what it means to be a good citizen, whether or not the pitcher should have to bat. The only thing left to do is agree to disagree as they say. The ancients did it for fun; Plato’s Republic is just a bunch of guys sitting around arguing about ideas for hours and hours. I admire good debaters, but I wonder how much the differing of our worldviews has to do with interpretation, and how much sheerly with witnessing different things.
No one chooses the perspective from which they stand to view the world, not completely. In the movie, “The Soloist”, that poor musician didn’t choose to hear voices screaming in his head. Will Byers, the young boy in “Stanger Things”, couldn’t understand why he must be the one constantly getting dragged into another dimension where monsters chase him into the woods. Why do some people have panic attacks or lay in bed all day chained up by depression? For some reason higher than mortal men, these things come upon us. And while they may be considered abnormal, we can hardly say they are false, fictional, smoke and mirrors. To some maybe. But to others the voices and the darkness are more real than anything else. The group’s fortunate inability to see or hear something, does not discount its existence.
Then I saw all that God has done. No one can comprehend what goes on under the sun, despite all his efforts to search it out, man cannot discover its meaning. Even if a wise man claims he knows, he cannot really comprehend it. – Ecclesiastes 8:17
We see and know so little, but I think sometimes we get glimpses. For fleeting moments we feel a little of the powers and realms that must exist out there somewhere. Good things. Bad things. Nice things. Sad things. A funeral or a wedding. A friend walking away. Falling in love. Summitting a mountain. A movie or a concert. There’s a weighted motion coming down on you, and you know, you know, that it’s far beyond the dust you’re made from. There are a thousand people sitting in this room, am I the only one seeing this? And when it passes, it hasn’t become untrue. You simply turned your head around the tree to see that it wasn’t a tree at all – only the back hiding something. Maybe heaven is the gathering of all the eyes and ears – the stories from all of us about what was really out there.
I think this phenomenon, that different people see the same world and a different world altogether, accounts for more than we realize. I scream and shout during debate to validate what I’ve seen – trying to convince my neighbor that I’m right. I know what I’ve seen. But he objects, he was there too; we all were. And he seen a demon where the angel is said to have stood.
But it’s more than just hearing voices and being plagued by depression. Why do some people feel so strongly, insist so intently, about certain ideas? Why do people hate rock and roll or only drive black cars or drive no cars at all? We’re living on the same planet, but somehow we’re seeing things from different angels – and different things altogether. The difficult thing to discern is when to trust my neighbor and his account and when to oppose him. I love the practice of philosophy. It fascinates me that people used to sit around for hours and hours just to debate each other, to convince each other of ideas. But to look someone in the eye and say, “Alright, I trust you. I don’t see what you see, but I love you anyway.” It’s not an easy thing.
I don’t know why some people see the demons. Why do only some witness the horror and panic? Why are some eyes blinded and some eyes opened? And for how much longer must we stand on the back side of everything?
Come Lord Jesus, spin this world on its heels, that we might look it in the eyes and smile back.
Today I sit down with my grandpa and grandma and ask them what it was like starting a community almost forty years ago. These two people are definitely heroes of mine. And, odds are, if you live in Oconee County, it’s due in part to them.
Today we’re giving away That Printer of Udells – Harold Bell Wright as well as the Tarzan Soundtrack – Phil Collins.
*Shoutout to Esther Kauffman for sponsoring all the books we gave away. It was very kind of her.
Congratulations to Friday’s winners: Roshona Beachy (That Printer of Udells) and Aleisha Boley (Tarzan Soundtrack).
Today my friend Trina Beachy and I drink French press coffee and ponder why it’s important that we read books. We also talk about The Hiding Place, The Lord of the Flies, and other cool stuff.
Today we’re giving away All Over but the Shoutin’ – Rick Bragg as well as Anything Worth Saying – Aaron Shust.
Congratulations to Thursday’s winners: Maria Mullet(The Man Who Was Thursday) and Mike Dienner(The Gathering).
Today Lavon Bacher and I talk about mission trips, learning from other cultures, and what it means to be faithful to your own community. Lavon is a family man, small business owner (Swing-O-Things), school board chairman, and a hockey fan. He’s the kind of guy you want in your circles.
We held this conversation outside where a bird and the wind made guest appearances.
Today we’re giving away The Man Who Was Thursday – G.K. Chesterton as well as The Gathering – City on a Hill.
Congratulations to Wednesday’s winners: Travis Miller (The Ragamuffin Gospel) and Teresa Coblentz(City of Black and White).
Today my good buddy Andrew Hollinger and I sit down and talk about Parkinson’s Law, rites of passage, and Earnest Shackleton. You’ll learn about why it is that you never seem to do your homework and why adolescence seems to stretch on and on in America.
This was a really fun conversation.
Today we’re giving away The Ragamuffin Gospel – Brennan Manning (book and movie) as well as City of Black and White – Mat Kearney.
Congratulations to Tuesday’s winners: Ben Smucker (Bridge to Terabithia) and Janane Doutrich (The Beautiful Letdown).
*Before reaching into the hat to pick a winner, my brother Luke declared, “I’m gonna draw my own name.” And then he did. But he decided to forego the glory and pick again.
javen.bear. 