What a concert!
Yesterday I wrote a Catch about how music might have affected the large political gathering at the Capitol building last week the way music addressed another political crowd gathered near the nation’s capitol back in 1963 during the civil rights march on Washington where Dr. Martin Luther King gave his famous “I Have A Dream” speech. Peter, Paul and Mary; Bob Dylan; Joan Baez and Mahalia Jackson were some of the singers at that event. We could have benefited from some singers last Wednesday.
It made me think about the power of music to create an opportunity for deeper reflection about who we are and what we are about to do. So I asked our Catch citizens to become concert promoters for a day and come up with songs and singers they would like to have represented at such a gathering. The result was an incredible list from “Amazing Grace,” to the “Epilogue” from “Les Misérables,” to “Humble and Kind” by Tim McGraw, or “On the Turning Away” by Pink Floyd, or anything by U2, to name just a few. You can read down the list and imagine the songs you know in your head and reflect on the potential truth-telling and healing that music can provide.
For your reflection today, I have selected two songs, and by executive privilege, one of them is mine. It’s one of my lesser-known songs, “All Fall Down,” off a lesser-known album, “Casual Crimes,” and I chose it because it surprised me with its relevance to today’s situation. I make no apology for having a prophetic gift that sometimes goes beyond me, and expresses itself mostly in my writing when I write something I know that is right though I don’t understand it at the time, and I realize that what I wrote comes into its own years later. This song was written in the 1980s and is suddenly more relevant than ever.
All fall down
Pieces on the ground
All fall down
Pieces on the ground
They live in high places
They’re keeping everybody under
They smile with two faces
But they can’t hear the coming thunder
The pride and the glory
The imposition and the power
The right hand; the left hand
The clock hand turning in the tower
The walls of this city
A fortress keeping us apart
The law with no pity
Around a barricaded heart
All fall down
Pieces on the ground
All fall down
Pieces on the ground
The falling down is the collapse of everything as we know it — what we’re used to; what we thought we could control. And the first verse refers to the hypocrisy of any authoritarian or political rule. The second verse refers to the corruption of power. “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” (John Acton) It also refers to the division on the right and the left that we experience right now, and the dangerous extremism on both sides. And the last verse could almost have been written about Inauguration Day, 2021. A day that should be about unity is going to be a day of walls (or fences) that separate us, law that has no compassion and the worst sort of barricade — one that surrounds and isolates a human heart.
So why is any of this a good thing? Because when everything falls down, God can start over. At least that works in a life. We come to the end of ourselves before we can experience God ’s love, forgiveness and power to remake us. Failure is the way you discover that everything comes from God and nothing from you. And the assumption that the church could accomplish anything through politics is something we need to let fall down and walk away from in order to rediscover the kingdom of God.
And finally, there’s no doubt about the last song in our concert. It’s the way Brian Wilson ends his concerts, so that people walk out with, “Love and mercy is what you need tonight; Love and mercy to you and your friends tonight” playing over and over in their heads. Love and mercy are how God rebuilds our lives and how we reach out to others with the grace He gives to us turned outward. It’s an understatement that love and mercy is what we all need right now.
If you’d like to hear these songs, click here for “All Fall Down,” and here for a beautiful rendition of Brian Wilson’s “Love and Mercy” by our good friend Randy Stonehill.
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