Tag: loss

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Song for Today #7

Jonnyfun.ELeave a comment
Black Muddy River – Grateful Dead
This is the best version I could find – the original album version.  I was looking for a live version, but this is pretty hard to beat. It’s a Jerry Garcia and Bob Hunter song – Bob Hunter wrote the lyrics to Black Muddy River when Jerry was in a diabetic coma in 1986. It was the second to last song that the Grateful dead played at the concert on 9th July 1995, just a month before Jerry Garcia died.  If you listen closely to this song from their last show at Soldier Field Jerry actually says “the LAST muddy river” in one of the verses. He emphasizes the word very clearly so there is no doubt that it was not an accident.  
The song that closes the 1995 concer is another Bob Hunter lyric, from much earlier – Box of Rain.  Hunter wrote the song with bassist Phil Lesh, at a time when Lesh’s father was dying.
“Lesh wanted a song to sing to his dying father and had composed a piece complete with every vocal nuance but the words. If ever a lyric ‘wrote itself,’ this did – as fast as the pen would pull.”  Lesh practiced the song driving to the nursing home where his father lay with terminal cancer.
The river picture in ‘Black Muddy River’ is a very ancient metaphor for death, and here in the lyric ‘I don’t care how deep or wide, if you’ve got another side,’ the hope is held out that this life is not the end. 
Even more than that … the words can speak not only of the aloneness that we face when dealing with suffering, but also of the hope that we will get through the trials that we are currently facing.
When the last rose of summer pricks my finger
And the hot sun chills me to the bone
When I can’t hear the song for the singer
And I can’t tell my pillow from a stone

I will walk alone by the black muddy river
And sing me a song of my own
I will walk alone by the black muddy river
And sing me a song of my own

When the last bolt of sunshine hits the mountain
And the stars start to splatter in the sky
When the moon splits the southwest horizon
With the scream of an eagle on the fly

I will walk alone by the black muddy river
And listen to the ripples as they moan
I will walk alone by the black muddy river
And sing me a song of my own

Black muddy river
Roll on forever
I don’t care how deep or wide
If you got another side
Roll muddy river, roll muddy river
Black muddy river roll

When it seems like the night will last forever
And there’s nothing left to do but count the years
When the strings of my heart start to sever
And stones fall from my eyes instead of tears

I will walk alone by the black muddy river
And dream me a dream of my own
I will walk alone by the black muddy river
And sing me a song of my own
And sing me a song of my own

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What are the temptations we need to avoid – as a church ?

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There might be many temptations to avoid, so I’ll focus on the one that comes to mind, the one closest to my heart.  My fear is that as lockdown eases, we will all breathe a sigh of relief and go back to the way we were.

Here’s a quote from Bishop Nick Baines blog, posted recently:

“Christian faith does not assume a life (or world)of continuous security and familiarity. It is fed by scriptures that speak of transience, mortality, provisionality, interruption and leavings. But, they also whisper that the endings are always beginnings – the leavings open a door to arrivals that could not have been experienced otherwise. In other words, the loss can be seen as a gift – what Walter Brueggemann calls ‘newness after loss’.

The temptation at the moment is to want to move on too quickly from our experience of loss, and so lose things of immense value that we can learn.

Back to Nick Baines again, who has a useful tool for helping us examine ourselves at this time:

He has suggested to clergy in the Diocese of Leeds, that it might be helpful to ask these four questions:

(a) what have I/we lost that we need to regain in the weeks and months ahead? 
(b) what have we lost that needs to remain lost – left behind in another country? 
(c) what have I/we gained that we need to retain in the future? 
(d) what have we gained recently that was useful for this season but needs to be lost if we are to move forward?”
My last post was Song of the Day #4, home, by Foo Fighters.  I chose it before I decided what to write here, but it does seem appropriate.  What we all want is ‘to be home.’  To have a sense that we are exactly where we belong.  To be in a place – maybe, but not necessarily geographically – where we can grow.

But to find the road home we will have experiences of what the Bible calls exile.  Where we are far from home in order to learn what is really important.

This prayer, attributed to Sir Francis Drake, is one of my favourites.

DISTURB US, LORD,
When we are too well pleased with ourselves,
When our dreams have come true
Because we have dreamed too little,
When we arrived safely
Because we sailed too close to the shore.

Disturb us, Lord, when
With the abundance of things we possess
We have lost our thirst
For the waters of life;
Having fallen in love with life,
We have ceased to dream of eternity
And in our efforts to build a new earth,
We have allowed our vision
Of the new Heaven to dim.

Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly,
To venture on wider seas
Where storms will show your mastery;
Where losing sight of land,
We shall find the stars.

We ask You to push back
The horizons of our hopes;
And to push into the future
In strength, courage, hope, and love.