"Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable - if anything is excellent or praiseworthy - think about such things. Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me - put it in practice. And the God of peace will be with you." - Philippians 4: 8-9
The first time I heard Don't Want to Know, I wasn't sure I liked it. I heard the lines: 'I don't want to know about evil / Only want to know about love --' and thought: well, that's nice, but good luck to ya'. Then there were the verses which are half honest soul-searching and half praying for apocalypse... which all added up to an uncomfortable mix. But then it began to dawn on me: this is a song about living in-between. It's about waiting for destruction and hoping for reprieve, it's about knowing our falleness and seeking scraps of grace. It's about how we sometimes feel about things, rather than what we say about them.
So on the one hand, this is a sad, depressing song: caught between heaven and the grime of the world, we dream about purity, about knowing only of love. Amidst our longings and our fears, we pray for destruction to release us from the tension of living with our doubts. These are the things we think when the "good" church people aren't looking, when there's no one to check our obsessive dreams and our depressive thoughts.
On the other hand, this is a song about hope and defiance: Living in-between we may sometimes have nightmares of the future, but still we hold on to what we can do: which is work bit by bit to focus on what is beautiful, real and good; to transform ourselves from inside out; to hope that by re-forming ourselves we can come to know Love more fully. This is no abstract "pure" concept of love divorced from people and relationship, but a love that lives in the dirt and mess of things as-they-are, that loves God in the midst of questions as-they-stand, and believes in a grace that can snap us from the hypnosis of our depressive obsessions. This is a search for goodness that operates out of a confession of faith and trust in God ('Only want to know about love') but which recognizes that in earthly life our goodness stems not from purity but from acknowledging our brokenness and teaching ourselves the contours of love and grace that help us onward...
Don't Want to Know (John Martyn) feat. The Swell Season (lyrics HERE)
Sometimes it gets so hard for me to listen, / so hard for me to use my eyes...
- (John Martyn)
In these Advent days, how are we listening for this theme in our own lives? How are we re-forming our lives to make a space for a God who comes into the grime and confusion, the depression and the doubts and shows us that in the end Love knows us first? How are we reminding ourselves that being "good" isn't about being 100% perfectly tuned to love's key, but is about seeking the strain of its melody and remembering always that our goodness grows from the root of God's love, nurtured by our actions and hopes...
"...if I could have one wish it would be that we would reconsider how we conceptualize being a good person, and keep in mind that we are not good despite our imperfections. It is the connection we maintain with our imperfections that allows us to be good. Our connection with our personal and common imperfections, being mindful of those personal and common imperfections is what allows us to be good to each other and be good to ourselves."
- Jay Smooth of Ill Doctrine at TED(x) Hampshire College
May we keep hold of Love which is not a purity that burns us clean, but Love which comes gently to our doubt, our brokenness, our dreams of living better, in the form of a child.
