One of the benefits of this time of seclusion and separation has been an opportunity to rediscover some of the simpler joys in my life. One of those is music. I am sure I am not alone in saying that music has the ability to mystically transport us to places of the spirit. For each person, the music that transports them there likely differs. How easily we can be moved to tears by a song…. sometimes by the words, sometimes by the melody, and sometimes by the memories that the song rekindles.
Blackbird singing in the dead of night…Take these broken wings and learn to fly… All your life … You were only waiting for this moment to arise.
Blackbird singing in the dead of night … Take these sunken eyes and learn to see … All your life. … You were only waiting for this moment to be free.
For me, it is one of my favourite songs to play on the guitar – although as my fingers get older, the music becomes more difficult to play. The song brings three things to mind.
The first was the civil rights marches and demonstrations of the late 60’s and early 70’s. (Paul McCartney originally wrote the lyrics in homage to the struggle for civil rights going on In the late 60’s in North America). It was a powerful time to have been a teenager – the world was changing in ways we would only comprehend many decades later. In hearing the song, I am taken back to the marches and demonstrations I attended, as well as remembering the hope that the spirit of those days engendered in us young people.
The second memory is of the funeral of a teenage boy some 30 years later. He had died from a drug overdose – and his high school friends had sung Blackbird at his funeral as an homage to his love of playing music, and his wings broken by the struggles with drugs. By then, my youngest was entering teenage years and his four siblings had left or were leaving the teenage years. In that memory, I re-enter the worries I, and all parents, have for the safety of their children as they traverse their ‘coming of age’.
The final memory is more rooted in the present, especially as we enter this time between the Ascension and Pentecost.
For I think all of us who have been around enough time have wings that are bruised, broken. And eyes tired and sunken from the pressures of life that steal our energy.
And just as certainly, living through this time of pandemic adds significantly to those damaged wings and diminished energies.
Yet, the words of the song remind me of what God can do with bruised wings and tired eyes. And the message in the lyrics resonates with the psalms, those songs from over 2000 years ago, that musically and joyously proclaimed the very same message.
The feasts of Ascension and Pentecost mark a transformation from when God was present in both place and time, to the reality of God being with us beyond space and time.
The ability of music to move us beyond space and time, and connect us to an experience of that realm, is its greatest gift to us. And it’s ability to inspire us as we struggle through this time of pandemic is a reminder once again of how God makes Godself present to us in our needs.