EfM Disease

I took down a post and moved it to drafts last night late because it struck me as a little too salty description of things here in Plano as Dad rounds third on his walk to the rainbow bridge and yet at the same time seems to have a robust appetite and a sick attachment to Fox News.

Instead, I meditate very briefly on the aftermath of EfM, the Education for Ministry program at Sewanee. We're all left after that program viewing life through a theological lens, and that combined with some time spent with the Jesuits leaves me constantly seeing signs and hearing a voice beyond my own in the world around me. There's so much I don't understand, and neither do you, even if you're a Baptist.

This morning on my pre-dawn run Spotify dialed up Chris Smither's "Hold On", a great meditation on this long run through life and what happens to us along the way as we sort of give up. I reprint the whole poem here:

Let it fly and lonely cry, everybody's free

I will decide how I'll be tied, but freedom, be there for me

We'll build walls around our brain

Leave these prisons in our chains

And hold on

And I thought I had control, I tried

But now I would be satisfied

To hold on

Tell me what to do, and I'll tell you what I'll say

My freedom will be measured by the length to which I'll disobey

Tell me where to go

And I'll freely tell you no

And I will hold on

But leave me on my own

And I'll lock these shackles to my bones

And I'll hold on

Freedom for the soul is what we want, but when it fades

We'll treat it like a burden, till the devil feels he's underpaid

We'll drag that spirit door to door

Till finally it can't move no more

It just holds on

Now the only thing that's truly free

Is this little voice that's telling me

To hold on

Brilliant. The best line of all, to this descendant of a Yalobusha County wildman:

My freedom will be measured by the length to which I'll disobey.

Something you'd sing as you're dodging the law running down the side of the interstate in the middle of the night, another story for another time.

It's all theology, if this is an examined life for you. The only meaning in life is trying to figure out the meaning of life, whether through John's Gospel or quantum physics. They all have something to say. and you're mistaken to judge one against the other.

Back when I was in high school my theology, such as it was, came flowing out in Rush's "Freewill", which has worn so well over so long maybe there's some truth in all of it, even if the feel oozes of teenaged male overcertitude at times:

There are those who think that life has nothing left to chance

A host of holy horrors to direct our aimless dance

A planet of playthings, we dance on the strings of powers we cannot perceive

The stars aren't aligned or the Gods are malign, blame is better to give than receive

You can choose a ready guide in some celestial voice

If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice

You can choose from phantom fears and kindness that can kill

I will choose a path that's clear, I will choose Freewill

There are those who think that they were dealt a losing hand

The cards were stacked against them they weren't born in Lotus Land

All preordained, a prisoner in chains, a victim of venomous fate

Kicked in the face, you can pray for a place, in heaven's unearthly estate

You can choose a ready guide in some celestial voice

If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice

You can choose from phantom fears and kindness that can kill

I will choose a path that's clear, I will choose Freewill

Each of us, a cell of awareness, imperfect and incomplete

Genetic blends with uncertain ends on a fortune hunt that's far too fleet

You can choose a ready guide in some celestial voice

If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice

You can choose from phantom fears and kindness that can kill

I will choose a path that's clear, I will choose Freewill

The soundtrack to my sixteenth year. No wonder I ended up in seminary. Calvin's squatting there in plain view.

Time for bed. I go home to Florida tomorrow. So ready for this time apart from P to end. Another old Rush lyric comes to mind, poignant now although I loved it when I was young without being able to feel it like I do now. I'll close with that:

My heart will lie beside you

While my wandering body grieves

Yeah, I was sort of a mopey kid.