incline your ears to the words of my mouth.
I will open my mouth in a parable;
I will utter dark sayings from of old,
things that we have heard and known,
that our ancestors have told us.
We will not hide them from their children;
we will tell to the coming generation
the glorious deeds of the Lord, and the LORD's might,
and the wonders that God has done.
- Psalm 78:1-4
Anna: I love Bob Marley's Redemption Song, but what makes it an Advent song for me is the idea of carrying our histories that I hear in the line 'they're all I ever had...redemption songs.' It reminds me of the preciousness of redemptive stories, especially for displaced or struggling peoples. Bob Marley speaks from the experience of the African diaspora, and the prophets (and likely the psalmist of psalm 78) spoke for a scattered Jewish population. It is amazing to recognize that the promises of God have represented 'all some people have ever felt they had' to carry with them through their difficult journeys. As people who can frequently fool ourselves into forgetting our need and hunger for stories, how can we name the value of stories that name and claim us, that wrestle with us and change us, that bless us and set us free?
Lindsey: For me, there is something striking about the part of that same verse that says ‘Won't you help me sing / these songs of freedom?’ This request for joining voices in freedom songs speaks to me of a need for the community to sing the song together, to tell the story together. It reminds me that we are all keepers of those communal stories. We have a responsibility to remember the story of our community and to let it live through our voice as we pass it on. There is a collective ownership as we help each other to remember the songs and as each singer’s place in the song adds a new dimension to it. It's my experience, that when it comes to the stories of our communities, there's a way in which we hold the story and the story holds us…
Redemption Song (Bob Marley) sung by Lauryn Hill and Ziggy Marley
Anna: As you talk about everyone's contribution to the song, it sort of reminds me of a quilt, or the act of quilting. I actually don't have any idea how to quilt, but from what I understand, people often used pieces of their own lives - old discarded clothes worm for a special event, etc. - so the quilt became a pieced-together history of where they'd been. At times, the quilts would be worked on in groups, or would be heirlooms handed down to the next generation, so they were also communal. These gathered scraps of quilting cloth often became story-telling vehicles for a family, a community… How is this also true for our Bible, which is actually a beautiful patchwork of stories, histories, poems, prophecies and letters compiled over at least a thousand years of history and movement and change?
Lindsey: I think there is a way in which each of our stories inform and reform each other; shaped, combined, set apart, by the stories to which they are 'quilted.' This is true for the interplay of our own life stories and the stories of our ancestors - those handed down orally and those given in the Bible. The story gets handed down and then retold in different and creative ways. Connecting us to the stories, a place of identity and communal belonging, and connecting the story to us, singing wisdom or comfort or challenge into our lives: these redemption songs.
May we carry with us our redemption songs into these late Advent days; our hopes stitched, sung and scribed across cultures and times, trusting that they are answered by God's promises in Christ.
- Lindsey and Anna
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