'The years are not coming the way I thought they would
I'm hoping and waiting for something to sing
Like the angels in heaven, the bones on the street,
Hoping for love to find a new voice,
The song that needs singing has already been sung before
- Delta Spirit, "People Turn Around"
I love it when the lyrics of a song surprise me. Sometimes I listen just enough to think I know what a song is about, but just like realizing as a teenager that Salt n' Pepa's "shoop" was not a dance move, there are songs that aren't as obvious as they seem.
People Turn Around by Delta Spirit
I have been sure for years that this Delta Spirit song was a call to repentance. 'People turn around' sure sounds like Biblical-style repentance to me, but that's only part of the story. Certainly there's brokenness, desperation, drug-use and violence in this song, but there's also suffering and loss, terrible surprise and loneliness.
'The bones on the street' is the line that catches me off-guard. The speaker is 'hoping and waiting for something to sing' and looks to angels and bones for the cue. It makes me wonder: There is terrible violence that occurs in our streets every day; if the bones of the victims were left in their place, would they begin to "speak?" To sing? What if hymns of truth-telling or praise began to pour from the bones in mass graves now hidden beneath layers of time and our determination to forget?
The call to "turn around" in this song isn't just a call to repentance, it's also a call to listen.
It makes me think, too, of our own bones, their aches and longings: we are all 'hoping for love to find a new voice.' In this time of Advent, we remember and await the Love that definitively came in Jesus, but it can be hard to hear that love in our daily lives.
"Then [God] said to me: "Son of man, these bones are the people of Israel. They say, 'Our bones are dried up and our hope is gone; we are cut off.' ... This is what the Sovereign LORD says: My people, I am going to open your graves and bring you up from them; I will bring you back to the land of Israel... I will put my Spirit in you and you will live..." - Ezekiel 37:11-13
We rightly search for ways in which Love continues to find a new voice among us. Maybe it will be the bones of the dead, the silenced and the forgotten, who first teach the words. Maybe it will be the broken stones in the street, the moss in the shadows and the abused, abandoned lands that carry the harmony. And maybe we will be surprised by the humming of our own bones in response.
Hey, People, turn around: did you hear that? What's gonna' sing now?
May our ears be sharp and our feet be drawn toward the voices that are singing us back from the precipice of loss and violence -- the voices that are singing us home.
- Anna
For as long as I can remember, I've longed for connection--to other people, to God, creation, history. We are part of one another, but never in control, and when we forget that we wind up drifting and confused, wrapped up in so much violence and pain.
ReplyDeleteThinking about the bones on the street reminded me of something I was reading yesterday in Mayra Rivera's The Touch of Transcendence. Talking about the idea of haunting, being haunted by people already dead or not yet born, reminded of their existence, responsible to their voices, she writes:
"The living victims of totalitarianism [in its many diverse forms] have for a long time sought to speak of, to, and with ghosts--of, to, and with those who are no longer--in an effort to welcome a different porvenir. . . . Haunting calls our attention to elements of undecidability, fear, desire, and love, of which ethics is never devoid and on which transformation hinges."
to hear "the voices that are singing us home." Yes, that names my longing this day.
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