finding an old friend

On the way to work yesterday I found an old friend, thanks to Scott Simon on Weekend Edition Saturday.

Back in the mid-eighties, a couple of the guys in my youth group in Fort Worth showed up with Billy Bragg’s record, Talking With the Taxman About Poetry. Bragg is an English folk singer with punk roots who has been a prophetic and progressive voice for twenty-five years. We even got to see him one night at Poor David’s Pub in Dallas (where you can still hear some great music). One of the songs that stuck with me from that album was “Levi Stubbs’ Tears,” an amazingly sad song about the power of music to help us name our loneliness:

With the money from her accident
She bought herself a mobile home
So at least she could get some enjoyment
Out of being alone
No one could say that she was left up on the shelf
It’s you and me against the World kid she mumbled to herself

When the world falls apart some things stay in place
Levi Stubbs’ tears run down his face

The next record I bought was Back to Basics, which contained a tune called “The Milkman of Human Kindness.”

If you’re lonely, I will call –
If you’re poorly, I will send poetry

I love you
I am the milkman of human kindness
I will leave an extra pint

If you are falling, I’ll put out my hands
If you feel bitter, I will understand

I love you
I am the milkman of human kindness
I will leave an extra pint

In the interview, Simon referenced a song I didn’t know called “The Space Race is Over,” which Bragg wrote for his son whose first word besides “Mommy” and “Daddy” was “moon.” For Bragg, the space race was a metaphor for our decreasing ability to dream.

Now that the space race is over
It’s been and it’s gone and I’ll never get to the moon
Because the space race is over
And I can’t help but feel we’ve all grown up too soon

Now my dreams have all been shattered
And my wings are tattered too
And I can still fly but not half as high
As once I wanted to

I was twelve when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon. I can remember standing in my yard in Lusaka, Zambia and staring up at the sky on that July night, lost in wonder that people just like me were standing on the moon shining down at me. The possibilities seemed limitless. I never imagined that would be as far as we would go, or that “space travel” would reduce rockets to the equivalent of astronomic eighteen-wheelers. Somewhere we lost sight of the possibilities.

Billy Bragg has never given up being a dreamer and an activist; he still sings about what’s possible. Much of his music has a strong political edge. He makes no bones about coming from the Left, and he is determined to speak hopefully. When Scott Simon asked him to describe what it meant to him to be a songwriter, Bragg said:

You have to kind of discern issues that other people might not be talking about that you might have something to say about and write about those things . . . You have to learn to overcome your cynicism and believe in humanity and the ability of people working together to make the world a better place. Cynicism is the enemy of that – not capitalism, not conservativism, but cynicism — and to do this job you have to be able to overcome your own to help people overcome theirs.

Today at Church Council, one of the folks handed out a sheet from our State Conference office that did not do much for me other than this quote from the late columnist Sydney Harris:

A cynic is not merely one who reads bitter lessons from the past, but is one who is prematurely disappointed in the future.

We had some friends over for dinner tonight and the talk turned, at least for a while, to politics. The consensus around the table was our elected officials are directed by polls and lobbyists for the big corporations and not by their own integrity or the people they supposedly represent. When it comes to our national leaders, I am prematurely disappointed in the future. I want desperately to be able to trust someone we have elected to office and I’m not sure I think that is possible anymore.

I hate feeling that way.

The November election is drawing closer. As it does, our gubernatorial race is descending into the ditches. As much as I would like to see the Republicans lose control of Congress, the Democrats have offered little vision more than “we’re not them.” Dreams are not fueled by who we don’t want to be. Ginger preached this morning on Jesus’ encounter with one we’ve come to know as the Rich Young Ruler. Jesus offered him a chance at love, but the young man’s wealth-induced cynicism caused him to turn away.

In the late Nineties, Bragg collaborated with Wilco to record some of Woody Guthrie’s unrecorded lyrics on a project called Mermaid Avenue. One of the songs is called “Christ for President.”

Let’s have Christ for President.
Let us have him for our King.
Cast your vote for the Carpenter
that you call the Nazarene.

The only way we can ever beat
these crooked politician men
Is to run the money changers out of the temple
And put the Carpenter in

O It’s Jesus Christ for president
God above our king
With a job and a pension for young and old
We will make hallelujah ring

Every year we waste enough
to feed the ones who starve
We build our civilization up
and we shoot it down with wars

But with the Carpenter on the seat
away up in the capital town
The USA would be on the way
prosperity bound!

I don’t know much about the song, other than the lyric I found on Bragg’s web site. I know enough about Woody Guthrie to imagine at least some sense of irony in the words; I know he was not writing an anthem for Jerry Falwell and Ralph Reed by any stretch. What Woody saw in Jesus was someone who was not beholden to wealth and power and was determined to meet the needs of the poor and oppressed. He saw hope – a reason to move beyond cynicism. Billy Bragg is living in that legacy and doing it well.

I’m glad to find him again.

Peace,
Milton