I love music. I love music for many reasons, not the least of which is music tells of the human experience from hundreds of different lenses.
See, music inspires me. All kinds of music! Mainstream, instrumental, Christian, meditative, classical…70’s (who doesn’t love some James Taylor?) I enjoy almost any genre of music. It’s truly an emotional and spiritual experience for me. Music has transcendent properties that are at times indescribable. I remember when playing trumpet in concert band in high school, feeling moved to tears IN REHEARSAL while practicing a classical piece. Music has always moved me in powerful ways.
Sometimes when I listen to a song and after hearing it, reading the lyrics and imagining the various meanings, I’m left with this one thought: Yeah…me too. Side note: remember vinyls and CD’s with lyric sheets? Awesomeness. Now I have to Google lyrics because of course, all my music is stored in iTunes or Spotify.
This post is a result of a song that inspires me; a song called The Fall by Imagine Dragons.
Here are some of the lyrics I’ll refer to:
Maybe I’m breaking up with myself
Maybe I’m thinking I should just keep to the things that I’ve been told
Wait for the colors to turn to gold
Do you know?
Do you know?
You’re all I know
You’re all I know
When everything
Comes crashing down
You’re all I know
You’re all I know
I’m ready for the fall
I’m ready for everything that I believed in to drift away
Ready for the leaves
Ready for the colors to burn to gold and crumble away
Yeah…me too.
Maybe it’s the place I’m in at this point in my life, but this song resonates with me on many different levels, but especially the thought about breaking up with myself. I don’t know what the author of these lyrics intended but a good song can mean many things to different people.
This song reminds me of the seemingly dichotomous relationship between what I’ve always known/believed and my simultaneous willingness to let it go to make way for something new. Like leaves in the fall.
But the new thing isn’t completely foreign because the new thing still retains properties of the old thing. New leaves are in fact new. But every maple tree with fading and crumbling old maple tree leaves, will bear maple tree leaves once again that look like last year’s maple tree leaves. And yet they are not last year’s maple tree leaves. The maple tree really has no choice in the matter. It will respond to the environment, shed its leaves and in the spring, bear new leaves.
This is not the case with us humans.
This may seem very elementary and obvious, but allow me to explain further…
Faith has always been a part of my life. I cannot remember a time in my life that I did not have faith in God.
But I’m not referring to a polished, publication-ready faith. I’m not talking about unwavering faith, perfectly executed faith, theologically sound faith – no. Just faith. An observer can look at my life and judge my faith by what’s on the outside if they want. But it will never be a true representation of my faith. Because like everyone else, I choose what I show the world.
Faith is truly the bass note in my life. My faith in God has always been this voice calling me to something else, to more. And it comes from a deep, abiding place. It comes from the parts of me not able to be measured or evaluated and when I die you won’t find these places in my coffin. They are located in the unseen of Shannon.
And even though my faith has been what I would describe as constant, it has also all together changed over and over again. Parts of my faith have withered away and some of those have experienced regrowth but never an exact replica of the former faith. This regrowth is similar, containing elements of the former way of believing, the former way of faith and yet very different. Expanded maybe? But yes, different. Not good. Not bad. Different.
These moments of change usually happened (and continue to occur) when my current place of faith no longer works and makes sense. This is when “the things I’ve been told” have the opportunity to fade away and make room for something new. Something familiar yet completely fresh. It’s the strangest thing.
These are the moments I break up with me. It’s not my faith that I abandon in these moments, it’s me! I let go of the limitations of my own understanding, prejudices and misconceptions about faith and when I do this very thing, my faith expands again.
Letting go of dogma. Letting go of beliefs that really aren’t “Good News” at all have done nothing but strengthen my faith. Never once has my faith been diminished by letting go of long-held beliefs that no longer serve me or those around me. When I held strong to destructive beliefs, God was so small in my world.
So when the song ends with:
You were the one
Who helped me see
You were the one
Oh you gave it all to me
I truly go back to my faith in God and realize it was God who helped me see in this new way and it is God who has been in it all along…the bass note…through every phase, every season, every change in my faith. It’s still all God, all spirit.
So yeah. I’m breaking up with me once again. I’m ready for the fall, ready for the leaves, ready for the colors to burn to gold and crumble away.
