Faith & the Arts

Sing Me Something for the Dark Dark Dark: Stepping into Fall with Gregory Alan Isakov

/ Bo / 2 Comments

The first true cold front of the season has rolled in from the Midwest, putting a welcome chill to our skin after months of swelter and sweat. It’s the time of woodsmoke and raining leaves. We can see our own breaths in white wisps, and just like every autumn, I hear the plinking, twanging conversation between guitar and banjo. The time has come, once again to say…

“Alexa, shuffle songs by Gregory Alan Isakov.”

Liturgical Christians – at least the ones I know – are people of tradition. We find encouragement, strength, comfort, and inspiration in repetition. In my church, the Venite, the Collect, and the Order for Holy Communion are each repeated weekly not so that they become routine words and rote movements, but because each one is skeletal – giving form to our souls in the same way my spine and pelvis and femur give form and shape to my body – or, to switch from an anatomical metaphor to an architectural one, because each one is load bearing – holding up the otherwise crushing weight of time itself, how it matures us while simultaneously pushing down upon us, gradually hunching our shoulders and shriveling our skin, pressing us toward ground and grave. 

This, of course, is the reality of time, that our passage within it is ephemeral. And yet, this need not be a dark thought. The seasons themselves can, even in their constant passing, train us to embrace both the joys and the griefs of time. 

We may track the slow march of time by counting minutes and hours, by numbering calendars and adding candles to the yearly birthday cake. We redeem time, however, not by counting, but by embracing the value of tradition. 

The Christian year is perhaps the best example. To tell the old, old story of redemption anew each year, we recurrently erect Ebenezers of hope within the temporal turning of the seasons. Advent’s candles, Epiphany’s feast, Lent’s ashes, Holy Week’s sepulcher – each one calls pilgrims to contemplate anew their relationship with the Savior and recalibrate their focus on the movements of His Spirit.  

Sometimes we eat a pig, too.

But there are also secular liturgies that can assist us in the hallowing of earthly time. For instance, summer officially begins for my family with a road trip through the Appalachians to visit family in Shenandoah, and then from those grand, green hills we move on to the sea-sprayed coasts of Maine. For us, the warmth and brightness of summer, with all its blazing possibilities, is typified in an early June sun shimmering upon the vast blue Atlantic water. 

Then there is Advent and Christmastide. The atmosphere has finally turned – and stayed – colder, and, personally, I don’t believe this time is fully honored without the syrupy strains of Burl Ives and Bing Crosby, nor the powdery grit of baking flour crusting my fingertips.

And yet, there is perhaps no segment of the year I anticipate and enjoy more than the start of fall. Leaves cracking underfoot, checkmarks and symmetrical Vs crossing the blue sky, pumpkins and absurdly macabre ornamentations erected on front lawns. As the foliage ages from verdant green to yellow to coral to brown, it’s as if the season is asking us to reflect again on the impermanence of life, while nonetheless observing the beauty inherent in one’s latter days. There is a kind of dignified melancholy that hangs in the mild air, that weaves itself into the fabric of autumn’s early sunsets and chilly dusks. This is a remarkably short-lived season, always arriving long after you’re ready for it, yet departing well before you’re done savoring it.

Slow down!

Time, she says,
“There’s no turning back,
Keep your eyes on the tracks.”
Through the fields, somewhere there’s blue
Oh, time will tell, she’ll see us through. 

This is why I officially mark the start of fall with the music of Gregory Alan Isakov. More than any I have found, in his echoey acoustic strains as much as his naturalistic lyrics, I believe his music captures the unique feeling of autumn – its beauty and its wistful melancholy. A South African immigrant from the Apartheid era, Isakov originally sought a degree in horticulture, but found unexpected success with his guitar and his brief, delicate songs about lost loves, complicated relationships, quiet rage, and lonely, moonlit highways. Each one of his songs sounds as if it was composed while walking in an autumn-colored wood, with lyrics that strike as efficiently and elegantly as a Wendell Berry poem, or an Edward Hopper painting. 

It’s like you say all the time
World has lost its mind
Between you and I, I know
That I’ve lost mine

As he sings these words on “Appaloosa Bones,” the title track of his most recent album, the listener feels the incurious hopelessness that visits so many of us in these colder months. But then the simple, affectionate wonder of the chorus follows:

Was I that gone?
Man, I hope not
Glad you found me
When you did

I mark the start of fall with all sorts of little traditions, whether it’s regularly lamenting the perpetual mediocrity of Baylor football, meticulously cleaning out our little sitting room fireplace, or dipping into the spooky short stories of Edgar Allen Poe, M.R. James, or Ray Bradbury. But of all these annual, load-bearing tentpoles that hold up the heaviness of time and grant me the space to look and listen and breathe deeply, there is no tradition I love more than listening to Gregory Alan Isakov’s quiet consternation at the two-sidedness of this life – the beauty and the sorrow – and his admirable willingness to take both their hands, join them together, and celebrate their inseparable bond.

“Won’t you sing me something for the dark, dark, dark?”

Isakov repeats these words again and again in one of his most popular songs. It may read on the page as a gloomy line, but when introducing the song in concert, he says with a smile, “This is probably the happiest song I’ve written.”

Indeed, Gregory. And thank you for being such an important part of my fall traditions – for helping me love the browning leaf as much as the budding rose. The Lord God made them both, and called it good.

“Build Your Library…”

/ Bo / 1 Comment

For Ralph

A little over a year ago, I took a job teaching literature at a private school just outside Atlanta. I moved my family into a wise old house in a half-horse town about twenty minutes from the school, and we have spent the past year slowly settling in. Last fall, I hired a guy to drywall and circuit part of the house’s ample, unfinished basement, a space I had determined would make a decent office. From a stack of 10′ x 10″ lumber I’ve fastidiously sanded, stained, and sealed, I’m currently outfitting the walls with book ledges. On these, I’ll be able to store the contents of about thirty banker’s boxes full of books, commentary sets, and teaching files from my years of pastoral ministry. It’s as amateurish a work in progress as ever there was, but it’s coming along.

Fittingly enough, I’m doing this because of something a teacher said to me.

Back in seminary, some seventeen years ago, an intimidatingly bright man named Ralph Wood taught my capstone course, which was called Gospel & Imagination. This appropriately vague moniker allowed Dr. Wood, a Tolkien, Chesterton, and O’Connor scholar who primarily teaches literature courses, to compel us Master of Divinity students to read everyone from George Herbert, to Walker Percy, Graham Greene, and his dear Flannery, to Wendell Berry, Stanley Hauerwas, and Cardinal Ratzinger. Dr. Wood was, and I assume still is, a highly opinionated professor. I’ll never forget the way he structured his class: each session would begin with a student providing in-depth analysis of a pre-selected Herbert poem, followed by said student reading a prayer specifically composed for that class session. The prayer was supposed to ask the Lord to bless the group with a productive discussion while simultaneously reminding each of us of the ministerial applicability of Herbert’s theme. Dr. Wood was infamous in the seminary, not simply for having the gall to actually grade these prayers, but for grading them so meticulously that it sometimes seemed even St. Augustine or Thomas Cranmer would struggle to eke out a B-.

The prayer-leader would lose points if he or she paused too long, or didn’t pause enough. The professor lowered scores each time filler words such as “like” or “just” were used, if the prayer was not in third-person plural, or if it dared use the word “share” inaccurately. (Dr. Wood was adamant the actual meaning of “share” is fundamentally misunderstood by multitudes of Christians.) And if the prayer did not open with proper apostrophe to the Lord, he would stop it before it even got started. “God isn’t your buddy!” he lectured us on more than one occasion. “Our words should always ascribe to Him as much of the due power and glory one has the capacity to express.”

This persnickety approach to teaching put off many a student. In the years immediately prior to mine, the roster dwindled significantly. By the time I sat in Dr. Wood’s class, there were only five other students braving the course with me. As a result, this set-in-his-ways professor simply quadrupled the expectations: each student was now tasked with parsing a Herbert poem and leading the class invocation four separate times! Despite the extra work, though, the intimate size of the class allowed us to get to know Dr. Wood in a way I fear most of his students never did. As challenging as his course was, in time the half-dozen of us came to appreciate our eccentric professor’s startlingly profound wisdom. There were innumerable moments throughout the semester in which his unique viewpoint on the Church, academia, or the world at-large would cause our own mental lightbulbs to flicker on. I’m aggrieved that I did not write down more of these thoughts, as I’m certain I could revisit them with as much appreciation as when one picks up an old work of Frederick Buechner’s, or when you come across a lesser-known but no less profound quote by Thomas Merton.

There was one piece of advice, however, that I vividly remember to this day. On the afternoon it was offered, a few of us had walked across campus to hand-deliver a paper assignment. The office Dr. Wood kept was in the old Tidwell building of Baylor University (which I hear was only recently renovated). It’s a location that always reminded me of the clock tower courthouse from Back to the Future. Yet inside the bowels of the building, the place held an austere, almost crypt-like solemnity, and Dr. Wood’s top-floor office remains the largest professor’s office I’ve ever seen. It was like something out of Dead Poets Society, the kind of place from which one imagines an uppity, pipe-puffing, tweed-clad academician might compose bitchily erudite essays for prestigious literary journals no one’s ever heard of.

The space was quite narrow, but also quite long, like the nave of a church. The ceiling was almost as high as the room was long. Wooden catwalks lined both walls, their two-and-a-half-foot platforms accessible by ladders. The whole office bore the feel and scent of a dusty cathedral. You half expected to see ropes dangling from a lofty belfry and a pallet of straw and blankets where Quasimodo slept. And yet, the most extraordinary part was that, lining the walls all around from door to far window to soaring roof, were shelves upon more shelves upon even more shelves of books. Novels, poetry, plays, anthologies, biographies, essays, histories, criticisms, compendiums, commentaries… Books of every shape, size, and age lined every available space. They were stuffed, spines facing out, from one end of a shelf to the other, while smaller paperbacks were crammed in the remaining free spaces between the spines and the shelves above.

If you guessed that Ralph Wood had every one of these books scrupulously organized, categorized, and alphabetized, you are, of course, spot on. You could tell he liked it when students had to visit his office. It was not the intimidation in their expressions that he looked for. No, it was the dumbstruck wonder that spread over the entirety of our bodies as we slowly turned circles in that narrow space, necks craned to sky, pondering in astonishment if such a place could really exist outside of a Victorian-era novel. We knew the guy was a literature professor, but we never expected… this.

PICTURED: Not Dr. Wood’s library, but not far off. Just imagine this multiplied by, oh, let’s say, a factor of 20.

We students took all this in, the light of an autumn afternoon spilling through the tall window behind the professor’s desk. Our pathetic, six-page papers were clutched in our sweaty palms, completely forgotten. Dr. Wood stood up from his desk. Behind his thick glasses his eyes were bright, and he was wearing a toothy, self-satisfied grin. He swept an arm in the direction of one wall, and then he spoke three words that we had heard him speak multiple times in class but never really heeded. Usually he said it when we were finishing one novel and preparing to start the next. He would urge us not to be so hasty to sell off our textbooks at the end of the semester, no matter how much they might’ve cost us. And there, in his office, he repeated the phrase we had heard before, only this time it landed with greater weight, as our extraordinary surroundings seemed to amplify his words like a symphony hall.

“Build your library,” he told us. “Build your library.”

Now, as I sweep my stud-finder over the drywall of my new basement room, marking the spot where I will drill pilot holes and affix sturdy brackets to hold my homemade book ledges, Dr. Wood’s encouragement comes to mind. As I lug banker’s box after banker’s box into the room, I consider the wisdom of those words. Certainly, with the endless digital conveniences of our technologically-dependent age, owning a roomful of physical books can seem these days like an unnecessary chore – a waste of space and, with each new purchase, a waste of funds. The device on which I write this post could, in seconds, provide me with probably 90% of the words that I find in these works, which now litter the cement floor of this office-to-be, awaiting their assigned ledge. Why would I spend so much time, energy, and money constructing shelves for thousands (I haven’t counted, but I would estimate in the thousands, or close to it) of volumes, most of which will simply sit there catching dust for months, even years, before I ever consider pulling them down and flipping through their pages again?

These thoughts notwithstanding, I am struck by a deeper quandary as well, because the vast majority of these books concern subjects I am no longer tasked with explaining. Because I am no longer a pastor. I teach literature and composition to high-school students. Today, the commentary sets, Bible dictionaries, and tomes of Church history stare back at me blankly, as if wondering, “Why are we still here? Do you even need us anymore?”

When I was forced to resign from my pastorate two years ago, I had boxed these books up in the belief that somewhere soon, in another office on another generous set of bookshelves, I would unbox them. Somewhere in this post-Christian nation of ours was a community of faith who would trust me to lead them. And this library I had carefully curated, in obedience to my wise professor’s advice, would indeed come in handy in that work. Now, here they sit, these wonderful, wonderful books, full of insights and truth that just can’t be included in the brief, rudimentary lectures I now deliver to classrooms of half-asleep fifteen-year-olds, some of whom can’t be bothered even to bring their copy of Much Ado About Nothing to class (let alone preserve it for their own fledgling library).

“Build your library,” Ralph Wood told me, and I have done just that. And where has it gotten me?

Then again…

What my professor did not tell me, but what hundreds and even thousands of those books thronging the shelves in his medieval castle of an office might say if they could speak, is, Build your library not for what it will do for you, Bo, but for what it has already done. In your moments of triumph as well as tragedy, let this room remind you that no good story, no meaningful history, is without its own highs and lows, its own mountains and valleys. As you live your story, heed that which you’ve learned from all these others, the fiction and the non, the beautiful and the heart-wrenching. Here, Bo, here is the cloud of witnesses – the factual and the fantastical – surrounding you, teaching you, comforting you, correcting you, and drawing you deeper into mysteries that have no bottom. Pray with them. Alongside them. Pray with that depth of reverence your professor modeled for you. Build your library, Bo, not that it may prove you worthy of some measure of honor or respect, but rather that you may honor all those who poured pieces of themselves out for your edification.

Build your library, yes. Build it, that you may be reminded it is not about you at all.

All right, then. Build it, I shall. May each screw find purchase. May each bracket sit true. May each ledge bear the weight not merely of all the pages set atop it, but of all the life that surges and swells within those pages. For all the hardships and disappointments I have known in this life, including the ones that has led me to this wise old house and this still-unfinished basement, may these freshly painted walls, makeshift ledges, and wonderful library remind me I am not alone in this long, strange sojourn. I am surrounded by a multitude of voices, many of whom proclaim from their pages the greatest truth of all – that the Father of our faith, and the Author of all my prayers, surrounds me as well, each and every day.

Why It’s Okay for Christians to Watch Scary Movies (A Halloween Post)

/ Bo / Leave a comment

To the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost blind you draw large and startling figures. – Flannery O’Connor

The first scary movie I ever watched was Gremlins. I was five years old, and less than five minutes into the second half of the movie – after the furry mogwai balls become cackling, razor-toothed monsters – I wanted nothing more to do with scary movies for the rest of my life.

I know. Gremlins. 

I couldn’t even handle a horror-comedy produced by Steven Spielberg.

spielberg

Behold the face of unbridled terror!

Speaking of Spielberg, you know what else I couldn’t handle? E.T.

Something about that pug-faced, periscope-necked little alien freaked me out. All the moonlit backyard shots, and the foreboding sounds emanating from the family’s shed. Sure, the audience was granted a glimpse of these space creatures from the very beginning, but how was I to know that their flora-gathering interstellar expedition didn’t also include the consumption of human flesh. Maybe that’s why the government is after them in the first place.

The point is, no one had to warn me about scary movies when I was a child. I had gotten a taste of even the tamest examples, and couldn’t handle the emotional tumble that followed. So, while my older sister had slumber parties where she and her friends huddled in the dark watching movies like Poltergeist and A Nightmare on Elm Street, I avoided visual contact with every single brand of movie monster that appeared before my face. I shut my eyes in department stores whenever I saw Spike or Freddy Kruger’s visage emblazoned on a T-shirt. I ran screaming from the room when Lou Ferrigno transformed into the Hulk. Even at the age of ten, I turned down my friends invite to sleepover at his house when he excitedly told me his mom had rented Beetlejuice for everybody to watch.

I know. Beetlejuice. 

Now here I am, a month shy of thirty-eight, and I am no longer afraid of Gremlins or Freddy Krueger. A few weeks ago, I even sat down with my seven and five-year old daughters to watch E.T., and I was able to (I think) talk them through their initial misgivings when those same moonlit shots came on the screen, and the creepy scrabbling sounds started up in the shed. (Seriously, though, what kind of dunce is Eliot that he just grabs a flashlight and goes to investigate it alone?)

beetlejuice-2-beetlejuice-goes-hawaiian-photo-u2

Also, did you know at one time Warner Bros. was considering a sequel called Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian? Now, THAT’S scary.

However, thinking back on my childhood and the hair-trigger cowardice I sported, I’m not embarrassed. After all, shock and fear are instinctual components of the human psyche, and when you are a little kid the world can often seem much bigger, wilder, and more mysterious than adults let on. In time, we learn there are no such things as green monsters that multiply when they get wet, or a pedophiliac ghost who stalks your nightmares. But even as logic and rationalism sets in, we do not outgrow fear. Evil is not something you leave behind when you turn eighteen or twenty-one. No, these are very real elements present within human existence.

This is why I am not opposed to watching scary movies. Not as children, of course. I can assure you that for at least a few more years E.T. will probably be the most harrowing film my daughters will watch (with the exception of the villains in the first couple of Harry Potter films, or that part in Enchanted when Susan Sarandon turns into a freaking dragon). However, even as a devout Christian and a pastor, I retain a deep appreciation for scary movies. It’s not simply that horror movies provide us with unsettling and viscerally exciting experiences. It is also because a good horror movie, if we indulge it, can teach us something about the dangerous effects of fear and the unscrupulous nature of evil. (The operative word here is “good,” because there are a lot of bad horror movies out there.)

saw

A whole lot.

I won’t deny that drawing theological and social insights from horror movies is a bit out of the box. Certainly it is not a practice every believer should indulge. However, sometimes looking outside the box is what enhances our understanding of a particular spiritual concept.

Several years ago, my friend, Myles, who is a seminary professor specializing in Christian Ethics, found a way to force outside-the-box thinking in his students. The seminary hosted a theology-in-film night; each month a different professor would show a film they felt was theologically significant, and then they would facilitate some dissection of the transcendent themes. Myles was set to host in October, and, in the spirit of the spookiest month of the year, chose The Exorcist. (Hear him tell the story HERE.) The way he describes it, the night of the event, the teaching theater was packed with students. Most of them had never seen the movie before, and were exceedingly curious how their professor was ever going to find an edifying spiritual insight in such a notoriously horrific film.

And yet, those who have seen The Exorcist know that while there are indeed some graphic scenes that are difficult to watch, the film also raises profound questions on the nature of evil, its multi-faceted influences on a family, and the mysteries that abound between spirituality and psychology. Some Christians may still insist there are more sterilized ways to address these issues, but what a film as shocking and frightening as The Exorcist does that a dull drama or innocuous suspense film cannot is elevate the conversation to a more serious level. It gives such issues a greater sense of urgency, because viewers have just witnessed just how unexpectedly and deeply these issues can affect our regular, mundane existence.

The renowned Southern writer and devout Christian, Flannery O’Connor, was incredibly adept at utilizing unsettling, infuriating, and terrifying images to further the impact of her short stories. Whether it is a dull, bickering vacationing family suddenly encountering a gun-toting serial killer (“A Good Man is Hard to Find”), or a militantly-atheistic young woman being grifted and subsequently assaulted by a duplicitous Bible salesman (“Good Country People”), O’Connor sought creative ways to elevate her readers’ contemplation of the deceitfulness of evil in society, and how free will allows us to either choose or reject grace. For O’Connor, telling a story was an opportunity to share an eternal and devout perspective on human nature with people who would never give their time to such messages or existential questions. She therefore felt it was her responsibility, in every story she wrote, to point her readers’ attentions to the extraordinary influences of both good and evil in our lives.

St. Cyril of Jerusalem, in instructing catechumens, wrote: “The dragon sits by the side of the road, watching those who pass. Beware lest he devour you. We go to the Father of Souls, but it is necessary to pass by the dragon.” No matter what form the dragon may take, it is of this mysterious passage past him, or into his jaws, that stories of any depth will always be concerned to tell, and this being the case, it requires considerable courage at any time, in any country, not to turn away from the storyteller. – Flannery O’Connor

finger watching

Okay, I won’t turn away, but can I at least peak through my fingers?

A person who has developed disciplined viewing habits of movies (as well as those who have trained themselves to read novels and short stories, or listen to music, with analytical and introspective eyes/ears) have the ability to consider questions and concepts many people never truly take the opportunity to think about. There are some horror and suspense films that, if we will sit with them for a while and really contemplate their deeper meaning, can truly enhance or transform our understanding of important societal issues and conventions. Recent films like Take Shelter, Get Out, It Follows, and The Babadook make incredibly profound comments on present-day concerns, but so do some ground-breaking classics like The Night of the Hunter, Night of the Living Dead, Halloween, and The Thing.

I realize that most people go to horror movies for the thrill ride – for the requisite jump scares or the gross-outs. I also realize that your average scary movie consumer is not interest in doing a lot of personal reflection afterward. But, as my friend Myles says, what makes watching a horror movie unique is the story on-screen shocks and frightens us in a way that makes us realize we are not equipped to handle the situation. The anxiety we feel for the protagonists is because we are projecting our own selves onto their characters, and we don’t know what to do with this fear except to sit with it and be unsettled by it. Indeed, this is similar to a lot of our experiences in life – when we feel trapped with nowhere to run, or powerless to eradicate the dangers we face. As such, learning how to accept the presence of fear and powerlessness can grant us greater perspective.

So, this Halloween, may you not be afraid to be afraid. If you aren’t a fan of scary movies, that’s fine, but may you at least consider the deeper questions being presented in stories of all kinds. May you not shy away from the unsettling aspects of this world, but rather may you find the courage to meet them head-on.

And, if you’re a parent, may you also help your children understand that while there are indeed things to fear in this big, mysterious world, there is also a very good and loving God who helps us face whatever comes and endure to the end.

For more on this subject, check out my podcast, particularly Mini-Episode 4: The Theology of Scary Movies which features a short conversation with my friend Myles about how to watch good horror movies. (iTunes link HERE.)