Here's the sermon on Exodus 3.1-15 that I shared at St Andrew’s Wickford this morning:
"A man named Moses is tending his sheep in the land of Midian when he comes across a burning bush. He moves closer to see more and hears the voice of God, speaking to him about his people and their need to be delivered from the land of Egypt. God tells Moses to take off his sandals, for the ground he is standing on is holy.” (R. Bell, Velvet Elvis, Zondervan, 2005)
Holy Ground is an art installation by Paul Hobbs which includes a collection of shoes and stories from Christians all around the world. The stories are short statements about what it means for each person to believe in Christ in their particular situation. Among those represented are: a thief, a refugee, the despised, the rejected – people who Jesus specially sought out – as well as those who have known great opportunity, wealth and success. There are those who are beautiful, those who are disabled, those struggling to make a living and raise a family, those who have known great loss and tragedy, and those asking the deep questions of life. All have encountered the living God, arriving at a place of holy ground; where they must, metaphorically at least, remove their shoes in acknowledgement of God’s holiness.
For some the idea of giving up their shoes for this project seemed amusing and culturally odd. For others it was costly to give their only pair of shoes in exchange for another. For some it was an honour to be featured in this way, to have their story told to represent others from their situation. For many, it was an expression of thankfulness to be able to share their stories with others.
At the burning bush, God said to Moses, “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground” (Exodus 3/2-5). Similarly, acknowledging God’s holiness is the beginning of life as a Christian. What, I wonder, would your story be of metaphorically taking off your sandals in acknowledgement of God’s holiness?
Here is a very different figure; this time a sculpture by the Canadian artist David Robinson. “Dressed in his finest uniform (suit, tie, pants perfectly pressed) the bronze figure would blend in well with the teeming businessmen of the city. He is tidy. His hair is groomed. Not too young, not too old, he is in his prime, at the top of his game. One expects his head to be held high and it is. Is he, like everyone else, focused on the horizon of his ambition?
Thousands might note in passing that this is no hero, no grand general and no great statesman; in fact the crowds of the morning rush might not find him notable at all. Yet, though in business there is never a minute to spare, allowing him even a moment’s notice would pay off a hundredfold. Would some turn aside and see that he is not rushing as they are? Would anyone take time to look at his hands, to look at his feet?
Bare feet. What has caused this perfectly dressed businessman to humbly remove his shoes? In the stillness of the erect figure, face looking upward, we do not see what he sees but we can perceive a heavenly and personal encounter. Perhaps it is a gesture of repentance that he holds his shoes so lightly?”
These details should bring to mind that “man of another era who similarly, while busy at his workday job, had an encounter which changed his life forever.” As we have heard, “while minding his father-in-law’s sheep in the desert, this man came upon a contradiction: a green bush aflame but not consumed. He could have hastened on his way but for some reason did not.”
“As the story goes, when the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, he called to him from out of the bush by name, saying, “Do not come near; take your sandals off your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” David Robinson’s sculpture says that, under the bare feet of this everyday man, there is holy ground.
Reflecting on this sculpture Irena Tippett concludes, “So here is the truth: There is no time or place immune to the intrusion (if you will) of the living God. Even in a city strident with buying and selling, God is able to reveal himself to people.”
American Pastor Rob Bell makes a similar point: "Moses has been tending his sheep in this region for forty years. How many times has he passed by this spot? How many times has he stood in this exact place? And now God tells him the ground is holy?
Has the ground been holy the whole time and Moses is just becoming aware of it for the first time?
Do you and I walk on holy ground all the time, but we are moving so fast and returning so many calls and writing so many emails and having such long lists to get done that we miss it?" (R. Bell, Velvet Elvis, Zondervan, 2005)
So, in the words of Woody Guthrie:
“Take off, take off your shoes
This place you’re standing, it’s holy ground
Take off, take off your shoes
The spot you’re standing, its holy ground
Amen
Showing posts with label guthrie. Show all posts
Showing posts with label guthrie. Show all posts
Wednesday, 16 July 2025
Sunday, 3 September 2023
The ground we are standing on is holy
Here's the sermon I shared at St Mary's Runwell this morning:
"A man named Moses is tending his sheep in the land of Midian when he comes across a burning bush. He moves closer to see more and hears the voice of God, speaking to him about his people and their need to be delivered from the land of Egypt. God tells Moses to take off his sandals, for the ground he is standing on is holy.” (R. Bell, Velvet Elvis, Zondervan, 2005)
Holy Ground is an art installation by Paul Hobbs which includes a collection of shoes and stories from Christians all around the world. The stories are short statements about what it means for each person to believe in Christ in their particular situation. Among those represented are: a thief, a refugee, the despised, the rejected – people who Jesus specially sought out – as well as those who have known great opportunity, wealth and success. There are those who are beautiful, those who are disabled, those struggling to make a living and raise a family, those who have known great loss and tragedy, and those asking the deep questions of life. All have encountered the living God, arriving at a place of holy ground; where they must, metaphorically at least, remove their shoes in acknowledgement of God’s holiness.
Some contributors are persecuted and despised for their faith, yet retain confidence in the living God. Several people need to be anonymous due to the lack of religious freedom in their lands. For others, anonymity allows them to speak more easily. Jesus said, “Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matt 5/10).
For some the idea of giving up their shoes for this project seemed amusing and culturally odd. For others it was costly to give their only pair of shoes in exchange for another. For some it was an honour to be featured in this way, to have their story told to represent others from their situation. For many, it was an expression of thankfulness to be able to share their stories with others.
At the burning bush, God said to Moses, “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground” (Exodus 3/2-5). Similarly, acknowledging God’s holiness is the beginning of life as a Christian.
What would your story be of metaphorically taking off your sandals in acknowledgement of God’s holiness?
Hobbs goes on to say that “as a believer follows Jesus Christ, he or she finds that this holy God is also a servant king, humbly and lovingly attending to one’s needs, just as when he washed his disciples feet (John 13/3-5).
As testified in many of the stories, Christians are encouraged to bring this gospel to others with “feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace” (Ephesians 6/14-15) and thus they realise the prophecy of Isaiah, “How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation” (Isaiah 52/7).”
So he “trusts that this collection of shoes and stories will show the rich variety of believers across the world, their strength of faith despite hardship, and their joy in knowing Christ. The collection also demonstrates God’s love to all types of people, and is a testimony of how the gospel has spread - often at great cost - throughout the world over the last two thousand years, and how it is reaching every part of the globe.
Please pray for people like these – many of whom make great sacrifices and take great risks to follow Christ where they live.” In this way he reminds us of those, such as Christians in North Iraq at present, who need our prayers, our giving and our action on their behalf. He says, “I am struck, in looking at these shoes, by Jesus’ words, “Many who are first will be last, and the last first” (Mark 10/31).”
Here is a very different figure; this time a sculpture by the Canadian artist David Robinson. Irena Tippett writes: “Dressed in his finest uniform (suit, tie, pants perfectly pressed) the bronze figure would blend in well with the teeming businessmen of the city. He is tidy. His hair is groomed. Not too young, not too old, he is in his prime, at the top of his game. One expects his head to be held high and it is. Is he, like everyone else, focused on the horizon of his ambition?
Thousands might note in passing that this is no hero, no grand general and no great statesman; in fact the crowds of the morning rush might not find him notable at all. Yet, though in business there is never a minute to spare, allowing him even a moment’s notice would pay off a hundredfold. Would some turn aside and see that he is not rushing as they are? Would anyone take time to look at his hands, to look at his feet?
Bare feet. What has caused this perfectly dressed businessman to humbly remove his shoes? In the stillness of the erect figure, face looking upward, we do not see what he sees but we can perceive a heavenly and personal encounter. Perhaps it is a gesture of repentance that he holds his shoes so lightly?”
These details should bring to mind that “man of another era who similarly, while busy at his workday job, had an encounter which changed his life forever.” As we have heard, “while minding his father-in-law’s sheep in the desert, this man came upon a contradiction: a green bush aflame but not consumed. He could have hastened on his way but for some reason did not.”
“As the story goes, when the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, he called to him from out of the bush by name, saying, “Do not come near; take your sandals off your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.”
It is by no means certain that everyone would catch the allusion to Moses’ powerful call in the wilderness or know how in that place he met the living God face to face. Nevertheless, David Robinson’s sculpture speaks clearly. Today, under the bare feet of his everyday man, there is holy ground.
Like Barbra Streisand in her song ‘On Holy Ground’ we’re much more comfortable with the concept of God’s being limited to churches or other sacred spaces. Yet the universal message of the sculpture is clear: the whole world is potentially holy ground. Look how the globe extends beneath those shoeless feet.”
Reflecting on this sculpture Irena Tippett concludes, “So here is the truth: There is no time or place immune to the intrusion (if you will) of the living God. Even in a city strident with buying and selling, God is able to reveal himself to people. And a corollary is this: There is no one immune to an encounter with him. Through Jesus Christ God’s great mercy extends to all who hear his voice.”
American Pastor Rob Bell makes a similar point: "Moses has been tending his sheep in this region for forty years. How many times has he passed by this spot? How many times has he stood in this exact place? And now God tells him the ground is holy?
Has the ground been holy the whole time and Moses is just becoming aware of it for the first time?
Do you and I walk on holy ground all the time, but we are moving so fast and returning so many calls and writing so many emails and having such long lists to get done that we miss it?" (R. Bell, Velvet Elvis, Zondervan, 2005)
One of my favourite quote comes from David Adam. You will no doubt have heard me use it before, but it bears repeating: “If our God is to be found only in our churches and our private prayers, we are denuding the world of His reality and our faith of credibility. We need to reveal that our God is in all the world and waits to be discovered there – or, to be more exact, the world is in Him, all is in the heart of God. Our work, our travels, our joys and our sorrows are enfolded in His loving care. We cannot for a moment fall out of the hands of God. Typing pool and workshop, office and factory are all as sacred as the church. The presence of God pervades the work place as much as He does a church sanctuary.” (Power Lines: Celtic Prayers about Work, SPCK, 1992)
So, in the words of Woody Guthrie:
“Take off, take off your shoes
This place you’re standing, it’s holy ground
Take off, take off your shoes
The spot you’re standing, its holy ground
These words I heard in my burning bush
This place you’re standing, it’s holy ground
I heard my fiery voice speak to me
This spot you’re standing, it’s holy ground
That spot is holy holy ground
That place you stand it’s holy ground
This place you tread, it’s holy ground
God made this place his holy ground
Take off your shoes and pray
The ground you walk it’s holy ground
Take off your shoes and pray
The ground you walk it’s holy ground
Every spot on earth I trapse around
Every spot I walk it’s holy ground
Every spot on earth I trapse around
Every spot I walk it’s holy ground
Every spot it’s holy ground
Every little inch it’s holy ground
Every grain of dirt it’s holy ground
Every spot I walk it’s holy ground”
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Klezmatics - Holy Ground.
"A man named Moses is tending his sheep in the land of Midian when he comes across a burning bush. He moves closer to see more and hears the voice of God, speaking to him about his people and their need to be delivered from the land of Egypt. God tells Moses to take off his sandals, for the ground he is standing on is holy.” (R. Bell, Velvet Elvis, Zondervan, 2005)
Holy Ground is an art installation by Paul Hobbs which includes a collection of shoes and stories from Christians all around the world. The stories are short statements about what it means for each person to believe in Christ in their particular situation. Among those represented are: a thief, a refugee, the despised, the rejected – people who Jesus specially sought out – as well as those who have known great opportunity, wealth and success. There are those who are beautiful, those who are disabled, those struggling to make a living and raise a family, those who have known great loss and tragedy, and those asking the deep questions of life. All have encountered the living God, arriving at a place of holy ground; where they must, metaphorically at least, remove their shoes in acknowledgement of God’s holiness.
Some contributors are persecuted and despised for their faith, yet retain confidence in the living God. Several people need to be anonymous due to the lack of religious freedom in their lands. For others, anonymity allows them to speak more easily. Jesus said, “Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matt 5/10).
For some the idea of giving up their shoes for this project seemed amusing and culturally odd. For others it was costly to give their only pair of shoes in exchange for another. For some it was an honour to be featured in this way, to have their story told to represent others from their situation. For many, it was an expression of thankfulness to be able to share their stories with others.
At the burning bush, God said to Moses, “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground” (Exodus 3/2-5). Similarly, acknowledging God’s holiness is the beginning of life as a Christian.
What would your story be of metaphorically taking off your sandals in acknowledgement of God’s holiness?
Hobbs goes on to say that “as a believer follows Jesus Christ, he or she finds that this holy God is also a servant king, humbly and lovingly attending to one’s needs, just as when he washed his disciples feet (John 13/3-5).
As testified in many of the stories, Christians are encouraged to bring this gospel to others with “feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace” (Ephesians 6/14-15) and thus they realise the prophecy of Isaiah, “How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation” (Isaiah 52/7).”
So he “trusts that this collection of shoes and stories will show the rich variety of believers across the world, their strength of faith despite hardship, and their joy in knowing Christ. The collection also demonstrates God’s love to all types of people, and is a testimony of how the gospel has spread - often at great cost - throughout the world over the last two thousand years, and how it is reaching every part of the globe.
Please pray for people like these – many of whom make great sacrifices and take great risks to follow Christ where they live.” In this way he reminds us of those, such as Christians in North Iraq at present, who need our prayers, our giving and our action on their behalf. He says, “I am struck, in looking at these shoes, by Jesus’ words, “Many who are first will be last, and the last first” (Mark 10/31).”
Here is a very different figure; this time a sculpture by the Canadian artist David Robinson. Irena Tippett writes: “Dressed in his finest uniform (suit, tie, pants perfectly pressed) the bronze figure would blend in well with the teeming businessmen of the city. He is tidy. His hair is groomed. Not too young, not too old, he is in his prime, at the top of his game. One expects his head to be held high and it is. Is he, like everyone else, focused on the horizon of his ambition?
Thousands might note in passing that this is no hero, no grand general and no great statesman; in fact the crowds of the morning rush might not find him notable at all. Yet, though in business there is never a minute to spare, allowing him even a moment’s notice would pay off a hundredfold. Would some turn aside and see that he is not rushing as they are? Would anyone take time to look at his hands, to look at his feet?
Bare feet. What has caused this perfectly dressed businessman to humbly remove his shoes? In the stillness of the erect figure, face looking upward, we do not see what he sees but we can perceive a heavenly and personal encounter. Perhaps it is a gesture of repentance that he holds his shoes so lightly?”
These details should bring to mind that “man of another era who similarly, while busy at his workday job, had an encounter which changed his life forever.” As we have heard, “while minding his father-in-law’s sheep in the desert, this man came upon a contradiction: a green bush aflame but not consumed. He could have hastened on his way but for some reason did not.”
“As the story goes, when the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, he called to him from out of the bush by name, saying, “Do not come near; take your sandals off your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.”
It is by no means certain that everyone would catch the allusion to Moses’ powerful call in the wilderness or know how in that place he met the living God face to face. Nevertheless, David Robinson’s sculpture speaks clearly. Today, under the bare feet of his everyday man, there is holy ground.
Like Barbra Streisand in her song ‘On Holy Ground’ we’re much more comfortable with the concept of God’s being limited to churches or other sacred spaces. Yet the universal message of the sculpture is clear: the whole world is potentially holy ground. Look how the globe extends beneath those shoeless feet.”
Reflecting on this sculpture Irena Tippett concludes, “So here is the truth: There is no time or place immune to the intrusion (if you will) of the living God. Even in a city strident with buying and selling, God is able to reveal himself to people. And a corollary is this: There is no one immune to an encounter with him. Through Jesus Christ God’s great mercy extends to all who hear his voice.”
American Pastor Rob Bell makes a similar point: "Moses has been tending his sheep in this region for forty years. How many times has he passed by this spot? How many times has he stood in this exact place? And now God tells him the ground is holy?
Has the ground been holy the whole time and Moses is just becoming aware of it for the first time?
Do you and I walk on holy ground all the time, but we are moving so fast and returning so many calls and writing so many emails and having such long lists to get done that we miss it?" (R. Bell, Velvet Elvis, Zondervan, 2005)
One of my favourite quote comes from David Adam. You will no doubt have heard me use it before, but it bears repeating: “If our God is to be found only in our churches and our private prayers, we are denuding the world of His reality and our faith of credibility. We need to reveal that our God is in all the world and waits to be discovered there – or, to be more exact, the world is in Him, all is in the heart of God. Our work, our travels, our joys and our sorrows are enfolded in His loving care. We cannot for a moment fall out of the hands of God. Typing pool and workshop, office and factory are all as sacred as the church. The presence of God pervades the work place as much as He does a church sanctuary.” (Power Lines: Celtic Prayers about Work, SPCK, 1992)
So, in the words of Woody Guthrie:
“Take off, take off your shoes
This place you’re standing, it’s holy ground
Take off, take off your shoes
The spot you’re standing, its holy ground
These words I heard in my burning bush
This place you’re standing, it’s holy ground
I heard my fiery voice speak to me
This spot you’re standing, it’s holy ground
That spot is holy holy ground
That place you stand it’s holy ground
This place you tread, it’s holy ground
God made this place his holy ground
Take off your shoes and pray
The ground you walk it’s holy ground
Take off your shoes and pray
The ground you walk it’s holy ground
Every spot on earth I trapse around
Every spot I walk it’s holy ground
Every spot on earth I trapse around
Every spot I walk it’s holy ground
Every spot it’s holy ground
Every little inch it’s holy ground
Every grain of dirt it’s holy ground
Every spot I walk it’s holy ground”
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Klezmatics - Holy Ground.
Sunday, 31 August 2014
The whole world is holy ground
"A man named Moses is tending his sheep in the land of Midian when he comes across a burning bush. He moves closer to see more and hears the voice of God, speaking to him about his people and their need to be delivered from the land of Egypt. God tells Moses to take off his sandals, for the ground he is standing on is holy.” (R. Bell, Velvet Elvis, Zondervan, 2005)
Holy Ground is an art installation by Paul Hobbs which includes a collection of shoes and stories from Christians all around the world. The stories are short statements about what it means for each person to believe in Christ in their particular situation. Among those represented are: a thief, a refugee, the despised, the rejected – people who Jesus specially sought out – as well as those who have known great opportunity, wealth and success. There are those who are beautiful, those who are disabled, those struggling to make a living and raise a family, those who have known great loss and tragedy, and those asking the deep questions of life. All have encountered the living God, arriving at a place of holy ground; where they must, metaphorically at least, remove their shoes in acknowledgement of God’s holiness.
Some contributors are persecuted and despised for their faith, yet retain confidence in the living God. Several people need to be anonymous due to the lack of religious freedom in their lands. For others, anonymity allows them to speak more easily. Jesus said, “Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matt 5/10).
For some the idea of giving up their shoes for this project seemed amusing and culturally odd. For others it was costly to give their only pair of shoes in exchange for another. For some it was an honour to be featured in this way, to have their story told to represent others from their situation. For many, it was an expression of thankfulness to be able to share their stories with others.
At the burning bush, God said to Moses, “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground” (Exodus 3/2-5). Similarly, acknowledging God’s holiness is the beginning of life as a Christian.
What would your story be of metaphorically taking off your sandals in acknowledgement of God’s holiness?
Hobbs goes on to say that “as a believer follows Jesus Christ, he or she finds that this holy God is also a servant king, humbly and lovingly attending to one’s needs, just as when he washed his disciples feet (John 13/3-5).
As testified in many of the stories, Christians are encouraged to bring this gospel to others with “feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace” (Ephesians 6/14-15) and thus they realise the prophecy of Isaiah, “How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation” (Isaiah 52/7).”
So he “trusts that this collection of shoes and stories will show the rich variety of believers across the world, their strength of faith despite hardship, and their joy in knowing Christ. The collection also demonstrates God’s love to all types of people, and is a testimony of how the gospel has spread - often at great cost - throughout the world over the last two thousand years, and how it is reaching every part of the globe.
Please pray for people like these – many of whom make great sacrifices and take great risks to follow Christ where they live.” In this way he reminds us of those, such as Christians in North Iraq at present, who need our prayers, our giving and our action on their behalf. He says, “I am struck, in looking at these shoes, by Jesus’ words, “Many who are first will be last, and the last first” (Mark 10/31).”
Here is a very different figure; this time a sculpture by the Canadian artist David Robinson. Irena Tippett writes: “Dressed in his finest uniform (suit, tie, pants perfectly pressed) the bronze figure would blend in well with the teeming businessmen of the city. He is tidy. His hair is groomed. Not too young, not too old, he is in his prime, at the top of his game. One expects his head to be held high and it is. Is he, like everyone else, focused on the horizon of his ambition?
Thousands might note in passing that this is no hero, no grand general and no great statesman; in fact the crowds of the morning rush might not find him notable at all. Yet, though in business there is never a minute to spare, allowing him even a moment’s notice would pay off a hundredfold. Would some turn aside and see that he is not rushing as they are? Would anyone take time to look at his hands, to look at his feet?
Bare feet. What has caused this perfectly dressed businessman to humbly remove his shoes? In the stillness of the erect figure, face looking upward, we do not see what he sees but we can perceive a heavenly and personal encounter. Perhaps it is a gesture of repentance that he holds his shoes so lightly?”
These details should bring to mind that “man of another era who similarly, while busy at his workday job, had an encounter which changed his life forever.” As we have heard, “while minding his father-in-law’s sheep in the desert, this man came upon a contradiction: a green bush aflame but not consumed. He could have hastened on his way but for some reason did not.”
“As the story goes, when the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, he called to him from out of the bush by name, saying, “Do not come near; take your sandals off your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.”
It is by no means certain that everyone would catch the allusion to Moses’ powerful call in the wilderness or know how in that place he met the living God face to face. Nevertheless, David Robinson’s sculpture speaks clearly. Today, under the bare feet of his everyday man, there is holy ground.
Like Barbra Streisand in her song ‘On Holy Ground’ we’re much more comfortable with the concept of God’s being limited to churches or other sacred spaces. Yet the universal message of the sculpture is clear: the whole world is potentially holy ground. Look how the globe extends beneath those shoeless feet.”
Reflecting on this sculpture Irena Tippett concludes, “So here is the truth: There is no time or place immune to the intrusion (if you will) of the living God. Even in a city strident with buying and selling, God is able to reveal himself to people. And a corollary is this: There is no one immune to an encounter with him. Through Jesus Christ God’s great mercy extends to all who hear his voice.”
American Pastor Rob Bell makes a similar point: "Moses has been tending his sheep in this region for forty years. How many times has he passed by this spot? How many times has he stood in this exact place? And now God tells him the ground is holy?
Has the ground been holy the whole time and Moses is just becoming aware of it for the first time?
Do you and I walk on holy ground all the time, but we are moving so fast and returning so many calls and writing so many emails and having such long lists to get done that we miss it?" (R. Bell, Velvet Elvis, Zondervan, 2005)
One of my favourite quote comes from David Adam. You will no doubt have heard me use it before, but it bears repeating: “If our God is to be found only in our churches and our private prayers, we are denuding the world of His reality and our faith of credibility. We need to reveal that our God is in all the world and waits to be discovered there – or, to be more exact, the world is in Him, all is in the heart of God. Our work, our travels, our joys and our sorrows are enfolded in His loving care. We cannot for a moment fall out of the hands of God. Typing pool and workshop, office and factory are all as sacred as the church. The presence of God pervades the work place as much as He does a church sanctuary.” (Power Lines: Celtic Prayers about Work, SPCK, 1992)
So, in the words of Woody Guthrie:
“Take off, take off your shoes
This place you’re standing, it’s holy ground
Take off, take off your shoes
The spot you’re standing, its holy ground
These words I heard in my burning bush
This place you’re standing, it’s holy ground
I heard my fiery voice speak to me
This spot you’re standing, it’s holy ground
That spot is holy holy ground
That place you stand it’s holy ground
This place you tread, it’s holy ground
God made this place his holy ground
Take off your shoes and pray
The ground you walk it’s holy ground
Take off your shoes and pray
The ground you walk it’s holy ground
Every spot on earth I trapse around
Every spot I walk it’s holy ground
Every spot on earth I trapse around
Every spot I walk it’s holy ground
Every spot it’s holy ground
Every little inch it’s holy ground
Every grain of dirt it’s holy ground
Every spot I walk it’s holy ground”
The Klezmatics - Holy Ground.
Holy Ground is an art installation by Paul Hobbs which includes a collection of shoes and stories from Christians all around the world. The stories are short statements about what it means for each person to believe in Christ in their particular situation. Among those represented are: a thief, a refugee, the despised, the rejected – people who Jesus specially sought out – as well as those who have known great opportunity, wealth and success. There are those who are beautiful, those who are disabled, those struggling to make a living and raise a family, those who have known great loss and tragedy, and those asking the deep questions of life. All have encountered the living God, arriving at a place of holy ground; where they must, metaphorically at least, remove their shoes in acknowledgement of God’s holiness.
Some contributors are persecuted and despised for their faith, yet retain confidence in the living God. Several people need to be anonymous due to the lack of religious freedom in their lands. For others, anonymity allows them to speak more easily. Jesus said, “Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matt 5/10).
For some the idea of giving up their shoes for this project seemed amusing and culturally odd. For others it was costly to give their only pair of shoes in exchange for another. For some it was an honour to be featured in this way, to have their story told to represent others from their situation. For many, it was an expression of thankfulness to be able to share their stories with others.
At the burning bush, God said to Moses, “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground” (Exodus 3/2-5). Similarly, acknowledging God’s holiness is the beginning of life as a Christian.
What would your story be of metaphorically taking off your sandals in acknowledgement of God’s holiness?
Hobbs goes on to say that “as a believer follows Jesus Christ, he or she finds that this holy God is also a servant king, humbly and lovingly attending to one’s needs, just as when he washed his disciples feet (John 13/3-5).
As testified in many of the stories, Christians are encouraged to bring this gospel to others with “feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace” (Ephesians 6/14-15) and thus they realise the prophecy of Isaiah, “How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation” (Isaiah 52/7).”
So he “trusts that this collection of shoes and stories will show the rich variety of believers across the world, their strength of faith despite hardship, and their joy in knowing Christ. The collection also demonstrates God’s love to all types of people, and is a testimony of how the gospel has spread - often at great cost - throughout the world over the last two thousand years, and how it is reaching every part of the globe.
Please pray for people like these – many of whom make great sacrifices and take great risks to follow Christ where they live.” In this way he reminds us of those, such as Christians in North Iraq at present, who need our prayers, our giving and our action on their behalf. He says, “I am struck, in looking at these shoes, by Jesus’ words, “Many who are first will be last, and the last first” (Mark 10/31).”
Here is a very different figure; this time a sculpture by the Canadian artist David Robinson. Irena Tippett writes: “Dressed in his finest uniform (suit, tie, pants perfectly pressed) the bronze figure would blend in well with the teeming businessmen of the city. He is tidy. His hair is groomed. Not too young, not too old, he is in his prime, at the top of his game. One expects his head to be held high and it is. Is he, like everyone else, focused on the horizon of his ambition?
Thousands might note in passing that this is no hero, no grand general and no great statesman; in fact the crowds of the morning rush might not find him notable at all. Yet, though in business there is never a minute to spare, allowing him even a moment’s notice would pay off a hundredfold. Would some turn aside and see that he is not rushing as they are? Would anyone take time to look at his hands, to look at his feet?
Bare feet. What has caused this perfectly dressed businessman to humbly remove his shoes? In the stillness of the erect figure, face looking upward, we do not see what he sees but we can perceive a heavenly and personal encounter. Perhaps it is a gesture of repentance that he holds his shoes so lightly?”
These details should bring to mind that “man of another era who similarly, while busy at his workday job, had an encounter which changed his life forever.” As we have heard, “while minding his father-in-law’s sheep in the desert, this man came upon a contradiction: a green bush aflame but not consumed. He could have hastened on his way but for some reason did not.”
“As the story goes, when the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, he called to him from out of the bush by name, saying, “Do not come near; take your sandals off your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.”
It is by no means certain that everyone would catch the allusion to Moses’ powerful call in the wilderness or know how in that place he met the living God face to face. Nevertheless, David Robinson’s sculpture speaks clearly. Today, under the bare feet of his everyday man, there is holy ground.
Like Barbra Streisand in her song ‘On Holy Ground’ we’re much more comfortable with the concept of God’s being limited to churches or other sacred spaces. Yet the universal message of the sculpture is clear: the whole world is potentially holy ground. Look how the globe extends beneath those shoeless feet.”
Reflecting on this sculpture Irena Tippett concludes, “So here is the truth: There is no time or place immune to the intrusion (if you will) of the living God. Even in a city strident with buying and selling, God is able to reveal himself to people. And a corollary is this: There is no one immune to an encounter with him. Through Jesus Christ God’s great mercy extends to all who hear his voice.”
American Pastor Rob Bell makes a similar point: "Moses has been tending his sheep in this region for forty years. How many times has he passed by this spot? How many times has he stood in this exact place? And now God tells him the ground is holy?
Has the ground been holy the whole time and Moses is just becoming aware of it for the first time?
Do you and I walk on holy ground all the time, but we are moving so fast and returning so many calls and writing so many emails and having such long lists to get done that we miss it?" (R. Bell, Velvet Elvis, Zondervan, 2005)
One of my favourite quote comes from David Adam. You will no doubt have heard me use it before, but it bears repeating: “If our God is to be found only in our churches and our private prayers, we are denuding the world of His reality and our faith of credibility. We need to reveal that our God is in all the world and waits to be discovered there – or, to be more exact, the world is in Him, all is in the heart of God. Our work, our travels, our joys and our sorrows are enfolded in His loving care. We cannot for a moment fall out of the hands of God. Typing pool and workshop, office and factory are all as sacred as the church. The presence of God pervades the work place as much as He does a church sanctuary.” (Power Lines: Celtic Prayers about Work, SPCK, 1992)
So, in the words of Woody Guthrie:
“Take off, take off your shoes
This place you’re standing, it’s holy ground
Take off, take off your shoes
The spot you’re standing, its holy ground
These words I heard in my burning bush
This place you’re standing, it’s holy ground
I heard my fiery voice speak to me
This spot you’re standing, it’s holy ground
That spot is holy holy ground
That place you stand it’s holy ground
This place you tread, it’s holy ground
God made this place his holy ground
Take off your shoes and pray
The ground you walk it’s holy ground
Take off your shoes and pray
The ground you walk it’s holy ground
Every spot on earth I trapse around
Every spot I walk it’s holy ground
Every spot on earth I trapse around
Every spot I walk it’s holy ground
Every spot it’s holy ground
Every little inch it’s holy ground
Every grain of dirt it’s holy ground
Every spot I walk it’s holy ground”
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Thursday, 14 February 2013
Touched: A place for poetry, music and art
Via Christopher Clack I've been introduced to Touched, a place for poetry, music and
even the odd bit of art, which is the online home of The Children, John Gibbens and
Armorel Weston.
Among much that is of interest are:
Bob Dylan - Jokerman.
Among much that is of interest are:
- The Memory Of Grace is a volume of unconventional spiritual songs dedicated to the Most High; a poetry and music rooted in English lyrical ballads; in Bob Dylan, and the sons and daughters of Bob; in Ezekiel, Matthew and the Psalms; in cultural reggae and the gospel blues.
- The Nightingale's Code is Gibbens' poetic study of Bob Dylan. Kirkus UK wrote of the book: “As a poet and rock musician, John Gibbens has the background to give us a fresh perspective on Bob Dylan's substantial body of work. He has also read all the major critical studies and biographies and tracked down Dylan's literary and musical sources, from Blake and the Bible to Howlin' Wolf and Woody Guthrie. As a result, this book is literate, personal, refreshing and shows a deep affection for the artist he calls 'our first old rock star'."
Bob Dylan - Jokerman.
Tuesday, 24 May 2011
Bob Dylan: Pilgrim, Dante and Rimbaud
How many roads must a man walk down/Before you call him a man?" was the first of the questions that Bob Dylan posed in 'Blowin' in the Wind'. He didn't know the answer then - it was blowin' in the wind - and he still doesn't - because, for example, in the opening track of Time Out Of Mind, his end of millennium offering, he's still walkin':
"I'm walkin', through streets that are dead
Walkin', walkin' with you in my head
My feet are so tired,
My brain is so wired
And the clouds are weeping." ('Love Sick').
Dylan comes from the tradition of hobo singers (Woody Guthrie) and beat poets (Jack Kerouac) for whom the journey and the documenting of their experience is life itself. When we first meet him singing in his original voice, on Bob Dylan, he's "ramblin' outa the wild West,/Leavin' the towns I love the best ... ''Til I come into New York town" ('Talkin' New York'). At this stage the ramblin', gamblin' hobo is a conscious image worn in homage to Woody Guthrie:
"I'm out here a thousand miles from my home,
Walkin' a road other men have gone down.
I'm seeing your world of people and things,
Your paupers and peasants and princes and kings.
Hey, hey, Woody Guthrie, I wrote you a song ...". ('Song to Woody')
Though he starts out on his journey in imitation of others what he sees on his journey is original, surreal and unjust:
"I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it,
I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it,
I saw a black branch with blood that kept drippin',
I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin' ..." ('A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall')
Ahead of him he sees a gathering apocalyptic storm and he resolves to go back out and walk in the shadow of the storm:
"... 'fore the rain starts a-fallin',
I'll walk to the depths of the deepest dark forest,
Where the people are many and their hands are all empty,
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters,
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison,
Where the executioner's face is always well hidden,
Where hunger is ugly, where the souls are forgotten,
Where black is the colour, where none is the number.
And I'll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it,
And reflect from the mountain so that all souls can see it ...".
He travels the paths of political protest, urban surrealism, country contentment, gospel conversion and world weary blues. On his journey he: sees "seven breezes a-blowin'" all around the cabin door where victims despair ('Ballad of Hollis Brown'); sees lightning flashing "For the countless confused, accused, misused, strung-out ones an' worse" ('Chimes of Freedom'); surveys 'Desolation Road'; talks truth with a thief as the wind begins to howl ('All Along the Watchtower'); takes shelter from a woman "With silver bracelets on her wrists and flowers in her hair" ('Shelter from the Storm'); feels the Idiot Wind blowing through the buttons on his coat, recognises himself as an idiot and feels so sorry ('Idiot Wind'); finds a pathway to the stars and can't believe he's survived and is still alive ('Where Are You Tonight? Journey Through Deep Heat'); rides the slow train up around the bend ('Slow Train'); is driven out of town into the driving rain because of belief ('I Believe in You'); hears the ancient footsteps join him on his path ('Every Grain of Sand'); feels the Caribbean Winds, fanning desire, bringing him nearer to the fire ('Caribbean Wind'); betrays his commitment, feels the breath of the storm and goes searching for his first love ('Tight Connection to My Heart'); then at the final moment, it's not quite dark yet but:
"The air is getting hotter, there's a rumbling in the skies
I've been wading through the high muddy water
With the heat rising in my eyes.
Everyday your memory grows dimmer.
It don't haunt me, like it did before.
I been walking through the middle of nowhere
Tryin' to get to heaven before they close the door." ('Tryin' To Get To Heaven').
Modern Times is an album that is also drenched in the imagery of journeying: "Gonna get up in the morning walk the hard road down/Some sweet day I'll stand beside my king". Dylan as journeyman, as traveller, is the key insight of the liner notes for Tell Tale Signs where Larry Sloman signs off with a paragraph quoting a myriad of Dylan's lyrics:
"He ain't talking, but he's still walking, heart burning, still yearning. He's trampling through the mud, through the blistering sun, getting damp from the misty rain. He's got his top hat on, ambling along with his cane, stopping to watch all the young men and young women in their bright-coloured clothes cavorting in the park. Despite all the grief and devastation he's seen on his odyssey, his heart isn't weary, it's light and free, bursting all over with affection for all those who sailed with him. Deep down he knows that his loyal and much-loved companions approve of him and share his code. And it's dawn now, the sun beginning to shine down on him and his heart is still in the Highlands, over those hills, far away. But there's a way to get there and if anyone can, he'll figure it out. And in the meantime, he's already there in his mind. That mind decidedly out of time. And we're all that much richer for his journey."
In many ways, this stream of inspiration has involved reworking and rearticulating the classic Dylan song, 'Blind Willie McTell', that was left off Infidels. Predominantly blues-based and extending the blues/folk metaphor of the drifter, Together Through Life finds Dylan's characters rambling through apocalyptic landscapes, experiencing life's hardness, grasping and eulogising love with a wry and sardonic irony wherever they can find it before the change that death will bring.
Dylan has said that:
"Those old songs are my lexicon and my prayer book. You can find all my philosophy in those old songs. Hank Williams singing 'I Saw The Light' or all the Luke The Drifter songs. That would be pretty close to my religion. The rabbis, priests, and ministers all do very well. But my belief system is more rugged and comes more from out of the old spiritual songs than from any of the established religious attempts at overcoming the devil."
This is also the picture of traditional American music conjured up by Bob Dylan in 1966: "Traditional music is based on hexagrams. It comes from legends, bibles, plagues, and it revolves around vegetables and death. ... All these songs about roses growing out of people's brains and lovers who are really geese and swans that turn into angels - they're not going to die. .... I mean, you'd think that the traditional music people could gather from their songs that mystery is a fact, a traditional fact ... In that music is the only true, valid death you can feel today off a record player. ... It has to do with a purity thing. I think its meaninglessness is holy."
Greil Marcus has pointed out that this 'traditional music' - the ancient ballads of mountain music, songs like Buell Kazee's 'East Virginia', Clarence Ashley's 'Coo Coo Bird' or Dock Boggs' 'Country Blues' - are what Dylan and the Band tapped into when recording The Basement Tapes, John Wesley Harding and The Band, music which Marcus describes as a "kaleidoscope of American music". "The "acceptance of death" that Dylan found in "traditional music"", says Marcus, "is simply a singer's insistence on mystery as inseparable from any honest understanding of what life is all about; it is the quiet terror of a man seeking salvation who stares into a void that stares back."
Biblical imagery and apocalyptic frameworks have been a constant within Dylan's work as throughout his career he has written songs that depict the apathy of humanity in the face of the coming apocalypse. What we have in the best of Dylan is a contemporary Pilgrim, Dante or Rimbaud on a compassionate journey, undertaken in the eye of the Apocalypse, to stand with the damned at the heart of the darkness that is twentieth century culture.
From Slow Train Coming onwards he equated the apocalypse with the imminent return of Christ. The return of Christ in judgement is the slow train that is "comin' up around the bend" and in the face of this apocalypse he calls on human beings to wake up and strengthen the things that remain. Similarly, in 'The Groom's Still Waiting at the Altar', he sees the apocalypse coming ("Curtain risin' on a new age") but not yet here while the Groom (Christ who awaits his bride, the Church) is still waiting at the altar. In the time that remains he again calls on human beings to arise from our slumber: "Dead man, dead man / When will you arise? / Cobwebs in your mind / Dust upon your eyes" ('Dead Man, Dead Man').
In the light of this thread in Dylan's songs throughout this period, it seems to me to be consistent to read 'Jokerman', from Infidels as another song in this vein; as a song depicting the apathy of humanity in the face of the apocalypse and one which is shot through with apocalyptic imagery drawn from the Book of Revelation. We are the jokermen who laugh, dance and fly but only in the dark of the night (equated with sin and judgement) afraid to come into the revealing light of the Sun/Son.
Jokerman, though, is a greater song that any of those mentioned previously because its depiction of humanity is more nuanced. There is much that is negative: we are born with a snake in both our fists; we rush in where angels fear to tread; our future is full of dread; we are doing no more that keeping one step ahead of the persecutor within; we are going to Sodom and Gomorrah only knowing the law of the jungle (the law of revenge from the Book of Leviticus and Deuteronomy - 'an eye for an eye'). But these negatives are not the whole story as we also experience freedom, dance to the nightingale tune, fly high, walk on the clouds, and are a friend to the martyr. We have an inherent dignity and beauty to which only the greatest of artists such as Michelangelo can do justice. In Jokerman Dylan captures well the Biblical portrait of humanity as made in the image of God but marred by our rejection of God with our potential for beauty and compassion perverted into a selfish search for self-aggrandisement.
The final verse comes straight from the Book of Revelation and describes the birth of the AntiChrist who will deceive humanity into following him rather than Christ. The accusation and challenge that Dylan puts to us in the final lines of this final verse is that we know exactly what is happening (after all, it has all been prophesied in the Book of Revelation) but we make no response; we are apathetic in the face of the apocalypse. Our lack of response is what is fatal to us because it is only through repentance and turning to Christ that we will be saved from the coming judgement. These final lines are both an accusation and a challenge because, in line with the prophecy of Revelation, Dylan clearly believes that humanity as a whole will be apathetic and non-responsive but they must also be a challenge because, if there is no possibility that any of us will respond, why write the song at all!
In 'Sweetheart Like You', also from Infidels, we see the possibility of response through a wonderfully contemporary depiction of Christ's incarnation. The song is written from the perspective of a misogynist male employee in an all-male workplace that is literally a hell of a place in which to work. To be in here requires the doing of some evil deed, having your own harem, playing till your lips bleed. There's only one step down from here and that's the ironically named "land of permanent bliss."
Into this perverted and prejudiced environment comes a woman, the sweetheart of the song's title. She is a Christ figure; a sinless figure entering into a world of sin and experiencing abuse and betrayal (is "that first kiss" a Judas kiss?) from those she encounters and to whom she holds out the possibility of a different kind of existence. Dylan makes his equation of the woman with Christ explicit by quoting directly from Jesus: "They say in your father's house, there's many mansions" (John 14: 2).
The song's narrator is confused and challenged by her appearance. He wants to dismiss her out of hand and back to his stereotypical role for her - "You know, a woman like you should be at home / That's where you belong / Watching out for someone who loves you true / Who would never do you wrong" - but he can't simply dismiss her as she is really there in front of him and so he begins to wonder, "What's a sweetheart like you doin' in a dump like this?" All the time he asks that question there is the possibility that he may respond to her presence without abuse or dismissal.
In 'I and I' Dylan gives an honest depiction of the difficulties of response (based no doubt on his own inability to keep the moral standards that he seems to have perceived God to have expected of him and which, no doubt, his church at the time expected of him). The central character in this song has taken the untrodden path where the swift don't win the race (Matthew 7: 13 & 14 - "Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it."). He has looked into justice's beautiful face and yet as we meet him we discover that he has just slept with a strange woman (i.e. he has had sex outside of marriage).
In creation, Dylan sings, we neither honour nor forgive. Instead we take; our nature is the survival of the fittest. When we encounter God, our sinful, selfish human nature encounters the demand for pure perfection - "no man sees my face and lives." 'I and I' is about the difficulty of living between these two poles; of having started out on the untrodden path but then having slipped back. The song is an evocation of the guilt that the protagonist feels; a guilt that forces him to leave the woman, to go out for a walk into the narrow lanes, pushing himself along the darkest part of the road to get himself back on track and then hearing the accepting, forgiving words of Christ in his heart, "I made shoes for everyone, even you, while I still go barefoot."
'I and I' is again set in the context of the apocalypse: "the world could come to an end tonight." The protagonist is responding in the face of the apocalypse. Even though he has sinned he is leaving that sin behind, pushing himself along the road and listening to Christ in his heart. Another song in which the protangonist becomes aware of the coming apocalypse while being in the wrong place is 'Tight Connection To My Heart' (originally recorded during the Infidels session as 'Someone's Got A Hold Of My Heart'). Here the protagonist grabs his coat because feels the breath of the storm that is the apocalypse. He is in the wrong place with the wrong person having valued the wrong things (lulled to sleep in a town without pity where the water runs deep, it's all been a charade, a big joke that he'll remember to forget) and now, when it may be too late, he is searching for his true love (his "first love" - see Revelation 2: 4). His issue has been that he could not commit: "Never could learn to drink that blood / And to call it wine / Never could learn to hold you, love / And to call you mine." Like the foolish virgins, he may be left outside in the cold when the bridegroom arrives because he was not faithful to his true love at the moment of the second coming (Matthew 25: 1 - 13).
It is not possible to understand these songs or Dylan's journey without understanding the biblical material on which they draw. Without this, as is the case in much contemporary cultural comment, the work of art is actively misunderstood. This was the case with reviews of Infidels at the time which used 'Sweetheart Like You' as an example of Dylan's supposed misogeny. So these reviewers were using a song that actually critiques and undercuts misogeny as an example of misogeny itself and this fundamental misunderstanding was the result of a failure to recognise and understand biblical references and imagery.
Happy Birthday, Bob. See also Peter Banks, Malcolm Guite and Philip Ritchie.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bob Dylan - Tight Connection To My Heart (Has Anybody Seen My Love?).
"I'm walkin', through streets that are dead
Walkin', walkin' with you in my head
My feet are so tired,
My brain is so wired
And the clouds are weeping." ('Love Sick').
Dylan comes from the tradition of hobo singers (Woody Guthrie) and beat poets (Jack Kerouac) for whom the journey and the documenting of their experience is life itself. When we first meet him singing in his original voice, on Bob Dylan, he's "ramblin' outa the wild West,/Leavin' the towns I love the best ... ''Til I come into New York town" ('Talkin' New York'). At this stage the ramblin', gamblin' hobo is a conscious image worn in homage to Woody Guthrie:
"I'm out here a thousand miles from my home,
Walkin' a road other men have gone down.
I'm seeing your world of people and things,
Your paupers and peasants and princes and kings.
Hey, hey, Woody Guthrie, I wrote you a song ...". ('Song to Woody')
Though he starts out on his journey in imitation of others what he sees on his journey is original, surreal and unjust:
"I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it,
I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it,
I saw a black branch with blood that kept drippin',
I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin' ..." ('A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall')
Ahead of him he sees a gathering apocalyptic storm and he resolves to go back out and walk in the shadow of the storm:
"... 'fore the rain starts a-fallin',
I'll walk to the depths of the deepest dark forest,
Where the people are many and their hands are all empty,
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters,
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison,
Where the executioner's face is always well hidden,
Where hunger is ugly, where the souls are forgotten,
Where black is the colour, where none is the number.
And I'll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it,
And reflect from the mountain so that all souls can see it ...".
He travels the paths of political protest, urban surrealism, country contentment, gospel conversion and world weary blues. On his journey he: sees "seven breezes a-blowin'" all around the cabin door where victims despair ('Ballad of Hollis Brown'); sees lightning flashing "For the countless confused, accused, misused, strung-out ones an' worse" ('Chimes of Freedom'); surveys 'Desolation Road'; talks truth with a thief as the wind begins to howl ('All Along the Watchtower'); takes shelter from a woman "With silver bracelets on her wrists and flowers in her hair" ('Shelter from the Storm'); feels the Idiot Wind blowing through the buttons on his coat, recognises himself as an idiot and feels so sorry ('Idiot Wind'); finds a pathway to the stars and can't believe he's survived and is still alive ('Where Are You Tonight? Journey Through Deep Heat'); rides the slow train up around the bend ('Slow Train'); is driven out of town into the driving rain because of belief ('I Believe in You'); hears the ancient footsteps join him on his path ('Every Grain of Sand'); feels the Caribbean Winds, fanning desire, bringing him nearer to the fire ('Caribbean Wind'); betrays his commitment, feels the breath of the storm and goes searching for his first love ('Tight Connection to My Heart'); then at the final moment, it's not quite dark yet but:
"The air is getting hotter, there's a rumbling in the skies
I've been wading through the high muddy water
With the heat rising in my eyes.
Everyday your memory grows dimmer.
It don't haunt me, like it did before.
I been walking through the middle of nowhere
Tryin' to get to heaven before they close the door." ('Tryin' To Get To Heaven').
Modern Times is an album that is also drenched in the imagery of journeying: "Gonna get up in the morning walk the hard road down/Some sweet day I'll stand beside my king". Dylan as journeyman, as traveller, is the key insight of the liner notes for Tell Tale Signs where Larry Sloman signs off with a paragraph quoting a myriad of Dylan's lyrics:
"He ain't talking, but he's still walking, heart burning, still yearning. He's trampling through the mud, through the blistering sun, getting damp from the misty rain. He's got his top hat on, ambling along with his cane, stopping to watch all the young men and young women in their bright-coloured clothes cavorting in the park. Despite all the grief and devastation he's seen on his odyssey, his heart isn't weary, it's light and free, bursting all over with affection for all those who sailed with him. Deep down he knows that his loyal and much-loved companions approve of him and share his code. And it's dawn now, the sun beginning to shine down on him and his heart is still in the Highlands, over those hills, far away. But there's a way to get there and if anyone can, he'll figure it out. And in the meantime, he's already there in his mind. That mind decidedly out of time. And we're all that much richer for his journey."
In many ways, this stream of inspiration has involved reworking and rearticulating the classic Dylan song, 'Blind Willie McTell', that was left off Infidels. Predominantly blues-based and extending the blues/folk metaphor of the drifter, Together Through Life finds Dylan's characters rambling through apocalyptic landscapes, experiencing life's hardness, grasping and eulogising love with a wry and sardonic irony wherever they can find it before the change that death will bring.
Dylan has said that:
"Those old songs are my lexicon and my prayer book. You can find all my philosophy in those old songs. Hank Williams singing 'I Saw The Light' or all the Luke The Drifter songs. That would be pretty close to my religion. The rabbis, priests, and ministers all do very well. But my belief system is more rugged and comes more from out of the old spiritual songs than from any of the established religious attempts at overcoming the devil."
This is also the picture of traditional American music conjured up by Bob Dylan in 1966: "Traditional music is based on hexagrams. It comes from legends, bibles, plagues, and it revolves around vegetables and death. ... All these songs about roses growing out of people's brains and lovers who are really geese and swans that turn into angels - they're not going to die. .... I mean, you'd think that the traditional music people could gather from their songs that mystery is a fact, a traditional fact ... In that music is the only true, valid death you can feel today off a record player. ... It has to do with a purity thing. I think its meaninglessness is holy."
Greil Marcus has pointed out that this 'traditional music' - the ancient ballads of mountain music, songs like Buell Kazee's 'East Virginia', Clarence Ashley's 'Coo Coo Bird' or Dock Boggs' 'Country Blues' - are what Dylan and the Band tapped into when recording The Basement Tapes, John Wesley Harding and The Band, music which Marcus describes as a "kaleidoscope of American music". "The "acceptance of death" that Dylan found in "traditional music"", says Marcus, "is simply a singer's insistence on mystery as inseparable from any honest understanding of what life is all about; it is the quiet terror of a man seeking salvation who stares into a void that stares back."
Biblical imagery and apocalyptic frameworks have been a constant within Dylan's work as throughout his career he has written songs that depict the apathy of humanity in the face of the coming apocalypse. What we have in the best of Dylan is a contemporary Pilgrim, Dante or Rimbaud on a compassionate journey, undertaken in the eye of the Apocalypse, to stand with the damned at the heart of the darkness that is twentieth century culture.
From Slow Train Coming onwards he equated the apocalypse with the imminent return of Christ. The return of Christ in judgement is the slow train that is "comin' up around the bend" and in the face of this apocalypse he calls on human beings to wake up and strengthen the things that remain. Similarly, in 'The Groom's Still Waiting at the Altar', he sees the apocalypse coming ("Curtain risin' on a new age") but not yet here while the Groom (Christ who awaits his bride, the Church) is still waiting at the altar. In the time that remains he again calls on human beings to arise from our slumber: "Dead man, dead man / When will you arise? / Cobwebs in your mind / Dust upon your eyes" ('Dead Man, Dead Man').
In the light of this thread in Dylan's songs throughout this period, it seems to me to be consistent to read 'Jokerman', from Infidels as another song in this vein; as a song depicting the apathy of humanity in the face of the apocalypse and one which is shot through with apocalyptic imagery drawn from the Book of Revelation. We are the jokermen who laugh, dance and fly but only in the dark of the night (equated with sin and judgement) afraid to come into the revealing light of the Sun/Son.
Jokerman, though, is a greater song that any of those mentioned previously because its depiction of humanity is more nuanced. There is much that is negative: we are born with a snake in both our fists; we rush in where angels fear to tread; our future is full of dread; we are doing no more that keeping one step ahead of the persecutor within; we are going to Sodom and Gomorrah only knowing the law of the jungle (the law of revenge from the Book of Leviticus and Deuteronomy - 'an eye for an eye'). But these negatives are not the whole story as we also experience freedom, dance to the nightingale tune, fly high, walk on the clouds, and are a friend to the martyr. We have an inherent dignity and beauty to which only the greatest of artists such as Michelangelo can do justice. In Jokerman Dylan captures well the Biblical portrait of humanity as made in the image of God but marred by our rejection of God with our potential for beauty and compassion perverted into a selfish search for self-aggrandisement.
The final verse comes straight from the Book of Revelation and describes the birth of the AntiChrist who will deceive humanity into following him rather than Christ. The accusation and challenge that Dylan puts to us in the final lines of this final verse is that we know exactly what is happening (after all, it has all been prophesied in the Book of Revelation) but we make no response; we are apathetic in the face of the apocalypse. Our lack of response is what is fatal to us because it is only through repentance and turning to Christ that we will be saved from the coming judgement. These final lines are both an accusation and a challenge because, in line with the prophecy of Revelation, Dylan clearly believes that humanity as a whole will be apathetic and non-responsive but they must also be a challenge because, if there is no possibility that any of us will respond, why write the song at all!
In 'Sweetheart Like You', also from Infidels, we see the possibility of response through a wonderfully contemporary depiction of Christ's incarnation. The song is written from the perspective of a misogynist male employee in an all-male workplace that is literally a hell of a place in which to work. To be in here requires the doing of some evil deed, having your own harem, playing till your lips bleed. There's only one step down from here and that's the ironically named "land of permanent bliss."
Into this perverted and prejudiced environment comes a woman, the sweetheart of the song's title. She is a Christ figure; a sinless figure entering into a world of sin and experiencing abuse and betrayal (is "that first kiss" a Judas kiss?) from those she encounters and to whom she holds out the possibility of a different kind of existence. Dylan makes his equation of the woman with Christ explicit by quoting directly from Jesus: "They say in your father's house, there's many mansions" (John 14: 2).
The song's narrator is confused and challenged by her appearance. He wants to dismiss her out of hand and back to his stereotypical role for her - "You know, a woman like you should be at home / That's where you belong / Watching out for someone who loves you true / Who would never do you wrong" - but he can't simply dismiss her as she is really there in front of him and so he begins to wonder, "What's a sweetheart like you doin' in a dump like this?" All the time he asks that question there is the possibility that he may respond to her presence without abuse or dismissal.
In 'I and I' Dylan gives an honest depiction of the difficulties of response (based no doubt on his own inability to keep the moral standards that he seems to have perceived God to have expected of him and which, no doubt, his church at the time expected of him). The central character in this song has taken the untrodden path where the swift don't win the race (Matthew 7: 13 & 14 - "Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it."). He has looked into justice's beautiful face and yet as we meet him we discover that he has just slept with a strange woman (i.e. he has had sex outside of marriage).
In creation, Dylan sings, we neither honour nor forgive. Instead we take; our nature is the survival of the fittest. When we encounter God, our sinful, selfish human nature encounters the demand for pure perfection - "no man sees my face and lives." 'I and I' is about the difficulty of living between these two poles; of having started out on the untrodden path but then having slipped back. The song is an evocation of the guilt that the protagonist feels; a guilt that forces him to leave the woman, to go out for a walk into the narrow lanes, pushing himself along the darkest part of the road to get himself back on track and then hearing the accepting, forgiving words of Christ in his heart, "I made shoes for everyone, even you, while I still go barefoot."
'I and I' is again set in the context of the apocalypse: "the world could come to an end tonight." The protagonist is responding in the face of the apocalypse. Even though he has sinned he is leaving that sin behind, pushing himself along the road and listening to Christ in his heart. Another song in which the protangonist becomes aware of the coming apocalypse while being in the wrong place is 'Tight Connection To My Heart' (originally recorded during the Infidels session as 'Someone's Got A Hold Of My Heart'). Here the protagonist grabs his coat because feels the breath of the storm that is the apocalypse. He is in the wrong place with the wrong person having valued the wrong things (lulled to sleep in a town without pity where the water runs deep, it's all been a charade, a big joke that he'll remember to forget) and now, when it may be too late, he is searching for his true love (his "first love" - see Revelation 2: 4). His issue has been that he could not commit: "Never could learn to drink that blood / And to call it wine / Never could learn to hold you, love / And to call you mine." Like the foolish virgins, he may be left outside in the cold when the bridegroom arrives because he was not faithful to his true love at the moment of the second coming (Matthew 25: 1 - 13).
It is not possible to understand these songs or Dylan's journey without understanding the biblical material on which they draw. Without this, as is the case in much contemporary cultural comment, the work of art is actively misunderstood. This was the case with reviews of Infidels at the time which used 'Sweetheart Like You' as an example of Dylan's supposed misogeny. So these reviewers were using a song that actually critiques and undercuts misogeny as an example of misogeny itself and this fundamental misunderstanding was the result of a failure to recognise and understand biblical references and imagery.
Happy Birthday, Bob. See also Peter Banks, Malcolm Guite and Philip Ritchie.
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Bob Dylan - Tight Connection To My Heart (Has Anybody Seen My Love?).
Tuesday, 14 October 2008
Tell Tale Signs
I'm loving listening to Bob Dylan's Tell Tale Signs, which is Volume 8 of the wonderful Bootleg Series. One effect has been to send me back to Dylan's Modern Times, an album that is drenched in the imagery of journeying: "Gonna get up in the morning walk the hard road down/Some sweet day I'll stand beside my king".
Dylan as journeyman, as traveller, is the key insight of the liner notes for Tell Tale Signs where Larry Sloman signs off with a paragraph quoting a myriad of Dylan's lyrics:
"He ain't talking, but he's still walking, heart burning, still yearning. He's trampling through the mud, through the blistering sun, getting damp from the misty rain. He's got his top hat on, ambling along with his cane, stopping to watch all the young men and young women in their bright-coloured clothes cavorting in the park. Despite all the grief and devastation he's seen on his odyssey, his heart isn't weary, it's light and free, bursting all over with affection for all those who sailed with him. Deep down he knows that his loyal and much-loved companions approve of him and share his code. And it's dawn now, the sun beginning to shine down on him and his heart is still in the Highlands, over those hills, far away. But there's a way to get there and if anyone can, he'll figure it out. And in the meantime, he's already there in his mind. That mind decidedly out of time. And we're all that much richer for his journey."
Sometime ago I had a go at setting my sense of how we're all that much richer for his journey. It goes like this. 2, 3, 4 ...
"How many roads must a man walk down/Before you call him a man?" was the first of the questions that Dylan posed in Blowin' in the Wind. He didn't know the answer then - it was blowin' in the wind - and he doesn't now - because in the opening track of Time Out Of Mind, his end of millennium offering, he's still walkin':
"I'm walkin', through streets that are dead
Walkin', walkin' with you in my head
My feet are so tired,
My brain is so wired
And the clouds are weeping." (Love Sick).
Dylan comes from the tradition of hobo singers (Woody Guthrie) and beat poets (Jack Kerouac) for whom the journey and the documenting of their experience is life itself. When we first meet him singing in his original voice, on Bob Dylan, he's "ramblin' outa the wild West,/Leavin' the towns I love the best ... ''Til I come into New York town" (Talkin' New York). At this stage the ramblin', gamblin' hobo is a conscious image worn in homage to Woody Guthrie:
"I'm out here a thousand miles from my home,
Walkin' a road other men have gone down.
I'm seeing your world of people and things,
Your paupers and peasants and princes and kings.
Hey, hey, Woody Guthrie, I wrote you a song ...". (Song to Woody)
Though he starts out on his journey in imitation of others what he sees on his journey is original, surreal and unjust:
"I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it,
I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it,
I saw a black branch with blood that kept drippin',
I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin' ..."
(A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall)
Ahead of him he sees a gathering apocalyptic storm and he resolves to go back out and walk in the shadow of the storm:
"... 'fore the rain starts a-fallin',
I'll walk to the depths of the deepest dark forest,
Where the people are many and their hands are all empty,
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters,
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison,
Where the executioner's face is always well hidden,
Where hunger is ugly, where the souls are forgotten,
Where black is the colour, where none is the number.
And I'll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it,
And reflect from the mountain so that all souls can see it ...".
He travels the paths of political protest, urban surrealism, country contentment, gospel conversion and world weary blues. On his journey he: sees "seven breezes a-blowin'" all around the cabin door where victims despair (Ballad of Hollis Brown); sees lightning flashing "For the countless confused, accused, misused, strung-out ones an' worse" (Chimes of Freedom); surveys Desolation Road; talks truth with a thief as the wind begins to howl (All Along the Watchtower); takes shelter from a woman "With silver bracelets on her wrists and flowers in her hair" (Shelter from the Storm); feels the Idiot Wind blowing through the buttons on his coat, recognises himself as an idiot and feels so sorry (Idiot Wind); finds a pathway to the stars and can't believe he's survived and is still alive (Where Are You Tonight? Journey Through Deep Heat); rides the slow train up around the bend (Slow Train); is driven out of town into the driving rain because of belief (I Believe in You); hears the ancient footsteps join him on his path (Every Grain of Sand); feels the Caribbean Winds, fanning desire, bringing him nearer to the fire (Caribbean Wind); betrays his commitment, feels the breath of the storm and goes searching for his first love (Tight Connection to My Heart); then at the final moment, it's not quite dark yet but:
"The air is getting hotter, there's a rumbling in the skies
I've been wading through the high muddy water
With the heat rising in my eyes.
Everyday your memory grows dimmer.
It don't haunt me, like it did before.
I been walking through the middle of nowhere
Tryin' to get to heaven before they close the door." (Tryin' To Get To Heaven).
What we have in the best of Dylan is a contemporary Pilgrim, Dante or Rimbaud on a compassionate journey, undertaken in the eye of the Apocalypse, to stand with the damned at the heart of the darkness that is twentieth century culture. Oh, and the answer to that question, however many roads he has travelled in the songs he has become a man, an Everyman.
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Bob Dylan - Where Are You Tonight? (Journey Through Deep Heat).
Dylan as journeyman, as traveller, is the key insight of the liner notes for Tell Tale Signs where Larry Sloman signs off with a paragraph quoting a myriad of Dylan's lyrics:
"He ain't talking, but he's still walking, heart burning, still yearning. He's trampling through the mud, through the blistering sun, getting damp from the misty rain. He's got his top hat on, ambling along with his cane, stopping to watch all the young men and young women in their bright-coloured clothes cavorting in the park. Despite all the grief and devastation he's seen on his odyssey, his heart isn't weary, it's light and free, bursting all over with affection for all those who sailed with him. Deep down he knows that his loyal and much-loved companions approve of him and share his code. And it's dawn now, the sun beginning to shine down on him and his heart is still in the Highlands, over those hills, far away. But there's a way to get there and if anyone can, he'll figure it out. And in the meantime, he's already there in his mind. That mind decidedly out of time. And we're all that much richer for his journey."
Sometime ago I had a go at setting my sense of how we're all that much richer for his journey. It goes like this. 2, 3, 4 ...
"How many roads must a man walk down/Before you call him a man?" was the first of the questions that Dylan posed in Blowin' in the Wind. He didn't know the answer then - it was blowin' in the wind - and he doesn't now - because in the opening track of Time Out Of Mind, his end of millennium offering, he's still walkin':
"I'm walkin', through streets that are dead
Walkin', walkin' with you in my head
My feet are so tired,
My brain is so wired
And the clouds are weeping." (Love Sick).
Dylan comes from the tradition of hobo singers (Woody Guthrie) and beat poets (Jack Kerouac) for whom the journey and the documenting of their experience is life itself. When we first meet him singing in his original voice, on Bob Dylan, he's "ramblin' outa the wild West,/Leavin' the towns I love the best ... ''Til I come into New York town" (Talkin' New York). At this stage the ramblin', gamblin' hobo is a conscious image worn in homage to Woody Guthrie:
"I'm out here a thousand miles from my home,
Walkin' a road other men have gone down.
I'm seeing your world of people and things,
Your paupers and peasants and princes and kings.
Hey, hey, Woody Guthrie, I wrote you a song ...". (Song to Woody)
Though he starts out on his journey in imitation of others what he sees on his journey is original, surreal and unjust:
"I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it,
I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it,
I saw a black branch with blood that kept drippin',
I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin' ..."
(A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall)
Ahead of him he sees a gathering apocalyptic storm and he resolves to go back out and walk in the shadow of the storm:
"... 'fore the rain starts a-fallin',
I'll walk to the depths of the deepest dark forest,
Where the people are many and their hands are all empty,
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters,
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison,
Where the executioner's face is always well hidden,
Where hunger is ugly, where the souls are forgotten,
Where black is the colour, where none is the number.
And I'll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it,
And reflect from the mountain so that all souls can see it ...".
He travels the paths of political protest, urban surrealism, country contentment, gospel conversion and world weary blues. On his journey he: sees "seven breezes a-blowin'" all around the cabin door where victims despair (Ballad of Hollis Brown); sees lightning flashing "For the countless confused, accused, misused, strung-out ones an' worse" (Chimes of Freedom); surveys Desolation Road; talks truth with a thief as the wind begins to howl (All Along the Watchtower); takes shelter from a woman "With silver bracelets on her wrists and flowers in her hair" (Shelter from the Storm); feels the Idiot Wind blowing through the buttons on his coat, recognises himself as an idiot and feels so sorry (Idiot Wind); finds a pathway to the stars and can't believe he's survived and is still alive (Where Are You Tonight? Journey Through Deep Heat); rides the slow train up around the bend (Slow Train); is driven out of town into the driving rain because of belief (I Believe in You); hears the ancient footsteps join him on his path (Every Grain of Sand); feels the Caribbean Winds, fanning desire, bringing him nearer to the fire (Caribbean Wind); betrays his commitment, feels the breath of the storm and goes searching for his first love (Tight Connection to My Heart); then at the final moment, it's not quite dark yet but:
"The air is getting hotter, there's a rumbling in the skies
I've been wading through the high muddy water
With the heat rising in my eyes.
Everyday your memory grows dimmer.
It don't haunt me, like it did before.
I been walking through the middle of nowhere
Tryin' to get to heaven before they close the door." (Tryin' To Get To Heaven).
What we have in the best of Dylan is a contemporary Pilgrim, Dante or Rimbaud on a compassionate journey, undertaken in the eye of the Apocalypse, to stand with the damned at the heart of the darkness that is twentieth century culture. Oh, and the answer to that question, however many roads he has travelled in the songs he has become a man, an Everyman.
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Bob Dylan - Where Are You Tonight? (Journey Through Deep Heat).
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