The Priest Just Kind of Laughed, The Deacon Caught A Draft

I try not to recommend music. It's always so subjective and it stresses me out to make recommendations without being certain that they'll land. It's like watching your favorite movie with someone and you just keep looking over at them to see if they're enjoying it. 

But I do like music (I feel like this is a pretty revelatory disclosure). 

I was listening to a band named The Hold Steady the other day while doing some yardwork. The Hold Steady are a Minnesota based rock band with a lead singer who talks as much as he sings, often about matters of drugs, misspent youth, faith, and redemption. Don't hear this as a recommendation. I'm not making one of those. If you start listening to them and you hate them, that's your fault not mine.

Their album Separation Sunday ends with a song entitled How A Resurrection Really Feels and as I was listening yesterday I was struck by this line, about a woman named Holly (short for Hallelujah) a recovering addict bursting into a church service:

I think this gets Church more right than most churches.

The album tells Holly's story. The story of a woman who went through the depths. A woman who disappeared, and came back changed. Who crashes church on Easter broken and wounded to talk about how she found life.

This has been a difficult week in the life of our country and it needs time to be processed. From the expansion of weapons in public spaces, to the erosion of the right to bodily autonomy, to the further dissolution of the separation of church and state, to the revelations of abject criminality that took place in the halls of power in January of 2021, there are a lot of things to process. 

I don't know how a resurrection really feels. But I know that our Gospel is one that speaks of brokenness coming back together, new life emerging from the ashes, the cruelty and evil of the world crashing against the abundance of love. 

This is not about mumbled pieties and holier than thou attitudes. This is about letting the world crash in with her hair done up in broken glass. It's about stopping to listen to what the world is saying. It's about finding the beauty in brokenness and recognizing that the holy is walking among us if we put ourselves aside and listen for the Spirit.

I'm going to keep processing. I'm not sure where I'll end up. But things need to be different. Things will be different. We are limping to a resurrection still.

In hope,

Jeff Fox-Kline

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