I haven’t been writing much lately. And I’ve been trying to figure out why. I think it has to do with me working more and more. This has been happening for over a year now. That and there is a certain numbness that comes with being busy. I really think the numbness is allowed to settle in like so many warts because there is no acidic joy to pierce it. And of course there is no joy where there is no grief. And grief is exactly what got drowned by the business and pettiness and drunkenness of work.
There is something else, though. I write to give voice to my soul. Many times when I write I learn how I feel, what I think, what I believe, who I am. Thoughts condense into words as they sink into black against a cool white canvas. They collect against the roof of the green house and trickle down its sides into dark, damp soil where life grows. It is good. But then, once in a decade or so something else comes along that sings my soul’s song as if God were reminding me that on the seventh day he rested and so must I. The something else this time is Jon Foreman’s little EP’s: Fall, Winter, Summer, and Spring. I list them in that order, not knowing what Jon intended, because that is the order I first listened to them, and that is the order they still sit like old friends around the communion table of my playlist, “strumming my pain with his fingers, singing my life with his words”. And it is good, too.
It really takes a lot to shock me. I’m sorry about this. I’m sure I’m the worst one to share news with. I can remember now several times when my wife or a friend has come to me all aglow with some excitement to blow me away with, only to meet a lackluster hoorah. And then there’s the moment when someone realizes I was dead on about something or someone, and they can’t wait to tell me how right my intuition was all along and roll out the wonderful “I told you so” red carpet for me to strut upon. But I think red carpet looks better on the wall. And then there’s the shock of finding out about some great crime, some great offense, some great sin, some great evil right here in River City. No snap, crackle, or pop there, either. I don’t think this is numbness in me, no matter how it actually comes across. I think it’s acceptance. I took Ayn Rand’s advice a long time ago—the advice about no one being as naïve as a cynic. But that’s where Jon Foreman’s words, words like these exposed the cynic hiding behind my eyes:
I'm gonna miss you, I'm gonna miss you when you're gone
She said, I love you. I'm gonna miss hearing your songs
And I said, Please, don't talk about the end—
Don't talk about how every living thing goes away. She said, Friend,
All along, thought I was learning how to take,
How to bend not how to break,
How to live not how to cry,
But really I've
Been learning how to die
I've been learning how to die.
I have been learning how to die, I really have. The classroom seems to follow me around, sitting me in a desk for another lecture or standing me up against the back wall when I’m too tired. The lesson is hard. When you’re still trying to keep from dying, that is. It’s hard to eke out a living when everyone is taking from you—payments, taxes, bills, losses, crashes—like so many leeches sucking the life out of you. But like I said, I’ve been learning how to die. Beat ‘em to the punch. Give more than they require. And it’s hard to love your friends and keep them, too. But someone will have to keep them for you when you’re dead. Again, beat ‘em to the punch.
This is just one song of the many that has been raising its voice in my stead. Maybe they'll keep it up. But it feels like a Monday morning.
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