Sunday, March 01, 2009

Wounds

The theme of love, of believing that God is truly a good God in a world suspended in greys and twilights is not one that has escaped my life experience, and perhaps its important that it hasn't. It is a human theme. We need love but people let us down. How can anyone truly love without fail? I know i can't, so it becomes as hard to fall in love as it becomes to accept love. Falling has always required trust and has never been safe. If you are left without arms to fall into too many times it becomes nearly impossible to trust again. But faith makes or breaks us. Unfortunately I think that a cold and embittered heart has become the preference for all too many people. Even  though I should understand love more than most people from my life experiences alone, i still struggle on this point. This is why it is important to be honest on this point. no one needs me telling them something that i have difficulty believing myself. I have to wonder about those people who seem to have blind faith. Seems terribly dangerous to me. Maybe stupid. Definitely weird. Although if thats you, then cool. Sit me down for coffee and tell me how its done. Meanwhile I fall in with the broken and hurt and imperfect and ungodly. Maybe more like the samaritan woman at the well than anyone else. I want to know. I want to believe. I need to believe, but we know that sometimes its hard. I can't see the sun for the daylight: can't see His breath for the wind. But this is what faith is. And if there's anyway for the devil himself to stop my service is for him to convince me of the absence of grace and love.  If only for this reason we need each other to help us see the light in the darkness... 
But I only meant this as an introduction to a few songs that I've crossed recently that I thought were quite beautiful and spoke on this -very human- topic. 

I've really come to enjoy "You Found Me" by The Fray.  Isaac Slade, the lead singer expressed the song meaning in the following words from two different interviews: 
"You Found Me" is a tough song for me. Its about the disappointment, the heart ache, the let down that comes with life. Sometimes you're let down, sometimes you're the one who lets someone else down. It gets hard to know who you can trust, who you can count on. This song came out of a tough time... It takes so much of my faith to keep believing, keep hoping in the unseen. Sometimes the tunnel has a light at the end, but usually they just look black as night. This song is about that feeling, and the hope that i still have, buried deep in my chest.
I kept getting these phone calls from home - tragedy after tragedy. If there is some kind of person in charge of this planet - are they sleeping? Smoking? Where are they? I just imagined running into God standing on a street corner like Bruce Springsteen, smoking a cigarette, and I'd have it out with him." 

I found God on the corner of 1st and Amistad
Where the West was all but won
All alone, smoking his last cigarette
I said, "where've you been?" He said,  "Ask anything."

Where were you, when everything was falling apart. 
All my days were spent by the tephone that never rang
And all i needed was a call that never came
To the corner of 1st and Amistad

Lost and insecure, You found me, you found me
Why'd you have to wait? Where were you? Where were you?
Just a little late, you found me, you found me. 


Another record I've been enjoying recently is one called "the Heat" by Need To Breathe. 
Their song "Again" painfully and beautifully paints the fear of falling in love. 

I won't leave you roses to watch them die. 
You won't be the heartache that keeps me sleepless
You won't be the songs that I could never write
I don't want to stay, I don't want to fall
I don't want to have to see you leave me. 
I don't want stay, I don't want to fall in love...

"Looks like love" resolves the conflict later on the album

Our hearts can only shake when there's risk that they could break.
Yea its a risk that I will take. 
Raise your head. Its time to say those words that I have left unsaid. 
I've slept through the sunrise and I turned away every time it got bright.
I won't run when it looks like love. 

I recently turned up a poem i wrote about a year ago and forgot about. 

We Think we're mortified
Or that we're petrified
We know we're lost inside
But what's we got to find?

Something deep within missed
That some say never did exist
We're all accidents down here
Explaining pain. Causing fear. 

All that's left of fallen gods
Of some lost kingdom long forgotten

And when the beauty of the light 
Comes contrasting to turn our heads
We'll close our eyes, The cut's too deep
To risk infection by a dirty sheet
Drawing the life that's left of me
Hanging it for the world to see
What have I become?

We'll stick to our own gun turret
Here that always kept us safe
It's like four walls closing in
But I'll hold my own, this blood soaked place

If "Help me now" escape my lips
Then my religion is lost
The only way to keep me safe
Is keeping this room locked

If hope should be found in me
If I could believe that light
Could ever shine unto me
Then show me now
You're in my sights. 

I just really wanted to share some song and verse but i guess if there was a point to this it might be this: that nobody wants to hear you say that they're a bad person or that you're better than them. But if you believe you are worth loving then you should believe that others are worth loving. If you know that you need love then wake up and realize that everybody feels the same thing. Show a little love eh?