An excerpt from my dear friend Alan Youngblood in response to a post on the Uganda Blog (http://www.elizabeth-justlove.blogspot.com/) called "Dear American Christianity"...
"...the most profound experiences of God are often the times we feel furthest from him. I've listened to Jeff Buckley's Hallelujah a lot lately...I think he says it well"
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Funny you should mention Jeff Buckley, Alan, because I've always been intrigued with that song..
"I heard there was a secret chord
That david played and it pleased the Lord
But you don't really care for music you do?
Well it goes like this
The fourth, the fifth
The minor fall and the major lift
The baffled king composing Hallelujah"
As quoted above, I have been most fascinated by this first verse. A secret chord that pleased the Lord?
Let's talk about David. There's an interesting character. He weasels his way into power at the cost of betraying his best friend, steals another man's wife and commits adultery with her (most sources say that this occurred without consent from Bathsheba), forever tarnishes Bathsheba's honor and gets her pregnant, then tries to cover it up by various measures but eventually just makes sure that her husband is sent to the front lines of battle...in other words he has him murdered. Not to mention the fact that he's just a pompous ass for a good part of the scripture devoted to him.
To be honest, I really was not a big fan of David for a long time, until I heard this song and then I realized...we are all just like David. Selfish, pompous, manipulative, lustful...each one of us. We live this way until the weight of our own shame brings us to our knees and presses us prostrate at the feet of God. Forcefully humbled. Maybe that secret chord is the combination of notes strung together from a spirit of humility and gratefulness to a loving God in light of our own darkness.
The fourth chord is known as the "almost perfect" interval...it remains unresolved until the perfect 5th interval is played. the fourth, the fifth...could these be musical metaphors for the steps taken towards perfection of faith?
the minor fall, the major lift...another juxtaposition, but this time one of dissonance and one of harmony. I love this metaphor that musically illustrates first the notes played when our will falls out of tune with that of God's and then the glorious resolution of major chord lifting us back into communion with His will.
As a musician, I hear the world differently. To me, there is music in everything, but the most apparent music is in my journey tracing the footsteps of Christ. I can hear the major keys with each triumph and the minor or even diminished chords with each stumble. And thus my faith is a song, and sometimes I do feel like that baffled king composing my own hallelujah, but the beauty of music is that it is perfected in its technique and style over time as one devotes time to its practice.
I'll think I'll just keep banging on chords until they finally form a requiem.
1 comment:
I remember in my younger, more naive days being a kid up at the Lake singing "Brokenness, brokenness, is what I long for. Brokenness is what I need." and wondering what the heck those lyrics were about. It seems I knew that song before I felt its true meaning.
I think those are some great ideas you brought up about Jeff Buckley's song. Other parts of the song really speak to me: "Love is not a victory march, it's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah." To pull in another pop-culture reference, I've been pondering a line from the film Donnie Darko. The title character wants to eliminate the darkness in people's lives and replace it with something better but his teacher has a great question for him. "Have you ever thought that darkness might be essential to development?"
This is not to dwell on darkness, despair, brokenness, anymore than I have to, but at least validate the experience. It's part of the human condition. I think we as humans should embrace our darkness, or fears, our short comings. Again, not to say give in to the madness, but accept ourselves for exactly every bit of who we are. After all that's what God does, right?
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