Singing the Blues
Craig Anderson
John 19: 23-27 October 19, 2003
One of my favorite advertisements is for a cell phone company. It portrays the blues singer, B.B. King preparing for a performance:
“11:45:02: About to take the stage, B.B. feels too happy.
“11:45:04: Directs connects his woman, who says she totaled the car, the dog up and died and the tax man’s at the door.
11:45:07: (B.B., with a long face), ready to perform!
I know this risks mocking a serious subject, but when singing the blues, humor helps. Several times recently I’ve come across stories of suffering and sorrow, which nevertheless have been inspiring. These blues stories, in their own ways echo the themes of this morning’ reading from John, in which Mary, the mother of Jesus is portrayed as a Rose Kennedy kind of tragic figure, present at the crucifixion of her son Jesus. Right from the time of his birth, when Mary entertains angels and shepherds, and ponders their words in her heart, we know the story of this son’s life is going to break his mother’s heart. But as bystanders we are powerless. Unable to spare her the inevitable suffering, we turn the pages of the story one after the next to this searing scene on Golgotha.
And yet there is a quiet dignity in this portrait of Mary. She stands out across the centuries as a model of suffering, enduring love, and we marvel at her strength. Likewise I was taken recently by a photo of another mother holding her infant child. The mother’s back is horribly scarred, and yet her face is radiant as she embraces the child. The photo is all the more compelling when one reads that nearly thirty years ago, when she was 9, this woman’s image came to signify the horrors of the Viet Nam war. That picture, of a girl “burned by napalm, running screaming and naked” is forever etched in memory; but now all these years later, there she is embracing her son, mindless of the scars on her back.
In the opening pages of the book some of us will be discussing on Tuesday, Elaine Pagels describes stumbling into a church in lower Manhattan the day after being told that her son, who had already undergone open-heart surgery, had now been diagnosed with a fatal lung disease. She writes, “I returned often to that church, not looking for faith but because, in the presence of that worship and the people gathered there, my defenses fell away, exposing storms of grief and hope. In that church I gathered new energy, and resolved, over and over, to face whatever awaited us as constructively as possible for Mark and the rest of us.”
I don’t know him, but it is clear that Peter Dinklage is also a special person. I guess one can’t really say that a dwarf grew up just down Main Street here in Brookside, but Peter certainly seems to have accepted and transcended his physical limitations and is currently critically acclaimed for his role in “The Station Master.”
From the outside looking in, we wonder how these people have not only survived, but in a real sense thrived despite the difficult and tragic circumstances of their lives. These models of quiet dignity inspire us. They are also endlessly fascinating because we recognize that our day too will most likely come, when we will be greatly challenged, as indeed some of us already have been. What enables some people to cope, while so many others are broken by tragedy? Will we be equal to the challenges before us? How could Mary trudge up Golgotha to witness the crucifixion? Where did the Viet Namese woman, Kim Phuc find the resilience to bear her own children, and to take on the task of raising money for children injured in war? Might not Peter Dinklage have concluded that life signifies nothing, and retreated to the shadows instead of going before the lights on stage where all the world can see him?
Anne Lamott, with her delightfully out-of-kilter, honestly neurotic take on the world, tells an amazing story of seeing David Roche on stage. She prefaces the story by writing that recently a friend of hers said mournfully that he’d lived his life like the professor on “Gilligan’s Island.” While the professor found time to fashion generators out of palm fronds, vaccines out of algae, he never got down to fixing that huge hole in the boat so he could go home.”
“How many people actually do?” asks Lamott. “Sometimes, if you are lucky and brave, you can watch someone who’s met with serious illness or loss do this kind of restoration, this work that you may suspect we are here on earth to do.” Then she introduces David Roche, who was born “with an extensive tumor on the bottom of his face, which surgeons removed when he was very young, taking with it his lower lip, and then they gave him such extensive radiation that the lower part of his face stopped growing; radiation which also covered him with plum-colored burns.”
As Lamott tells it, “he is 55 now, with silvery hair and bright blue eyes.” Recently “he stepped out onstage before a hundred grown-ups and a dozen children, and stood smiling while people got a good look. Then he suggested we ask him, “David, what happened to your face?” When we did, he explained about the tumor, the surgery and the burns.
He told us of wanting to form a gang of the coolest disfigured people in the world, like the Phantom, the Beast from “Beauty and the Beast,’ Freddie Krueger and Michael Jackson, and go places together, bowling perhaps, or to the make-over counter at Macy’s.
“We with facial deformities are children of the dark,” he said. “Our shadow is on the outside. And we can see in the dark: we can see you, see you turn away, but one day we finally understand that you turn away not from our faces but from your own fears. From those things inside you that you think mark you as someone unlovable to your family, and society, and even to God. All those years, I kept my bad stories in the dark, but not anymore. Now I am stepping out into the light. And this face has turned out to be an elaborately disguised gift from God.”
How do people like Mary, Kim, Elaine, and David do it, we wonder? Where do they find such strength and courage? Or take the story I told recently in the newsletter. In response to the tragic death of her son Michael, in a car accident in Chester three years ago, Robin Fried Steinberg has created the Peace Project at Mendham High. Trying to make meaning out of this senseless and tragic death, Robin honors the memory and legacy of her son, by teaching students communications and conflict resolution skills, encouraging them to re-examine the ways their language and behavior can be so hurtful to their peers. An amazing mother, who had a wonderful son, trying to sing her blues.
To juxtapose singing with the blues sort of puts things in a different light doesn’t it? The dog up and dies, the tax man is at the door, radiation disfigures a face, napalm sears the flesh, a pituitary gland fails, crashing steel, failing lungs, and driven spikes end three lives, and people are either traumatized into inaction and despair, or miraculously through time, are able to sing their blues, and in the very act of singing overcome the blues, or at least hold them at bay. The very act and fact of singing the blues, can change things. It is to give voice to sorrow and loss, rather than suffering in silence or solitude. To sing is share our burdens and pain, to break out of isolation into a place where communities and families can lend their aid and support.
Although there is little doubt that suffering doesn’t end for these people who inspire us, nonetheless they seem to find the strength to do what needs to be done. I can’t speak for them, but a few clues about the sources of their strength do emerge from their stories. A sense of humor helps. Can you imagine the scene at Macy’s make-over counter when David’s cool gang arrives? Robin Steinberg mimics the voices her son liked to mimic himself: cartoon characters, movie actors, as she laughs through her tears. Relationships matter. Kim Phuc embraces her child, and speaks every week to the photographer who took her picture and rushed her to a hospital. Affectionately, she calls him “Uncle.” Mary did not go to Golgotha alone, but in the company of those mostly female companions of Jesus who had not fled in fear. Elaine Pagels risked sharing “storms of grief and hope” with a small group in a church basement. There she resolved, “over and over, to face whatever awaited us as constructively as possible...” This resolve to be constructive also shows through in Robin Steinberg’s Peace Project. Having met Peter Dinklage’s mother Diane, I sense he was fortunate to have had parents who established the right balance between supportive compassion and high expectation. He also credits an English teacher who recognized and called forth his acting skills. David Roche reports, contrary to expectations that he grew up as a happy child, “loved and esteemed” by his parents. Strong families which don’t give up also make a difference.
10:15:07, ready to perform! How do they do it? Where does the strength and resolve come to fix the hole in the boat, to restore an existence damaged by the dangerous reefs of life? How does one come out of the dark, and step into the light? By singing the blues. By resolving over and over to be as constructive as possible. By embracing your infant, keeping in touch with your uncle and raising funds for the children of war. By risking participation in community. By embodying the ideal characteristics of the one you have lost. By going on stage without your lower lip, with your stumpy legs, and even if the dog has up and died: ready to perform.
Would you like to raise a question or make a comment (even a provocative one)? If so, e-mail Craig Anderson at craig@brooksidechurch.org