How did I get here?

(And Then I Wrote…) In order to let my backlog of “Across the Universe” columns build up a bit, I am republishing a selection of other articles that I have written and published in various places… 

Floor of the Fordham chapel; photo by Judith Britt

In 2008, the magazine US Catholic invited a number of writers to submit their choices for modern “spiritual classics”. Here was my choice…

Spiritual classics are inspirational works, tested by time, designed to bring one closer to God. Chesterton and Newman come to mind. I have works on my shelf from modern religious writers, from Peter Kreeft to Anne Lamott, who manage to inspire me — when I am not furiously disagreeing with them. But my soul’s deepest stirring comes from a source neither literary nor overtly religious…

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Music inspired humans before we could speak, I suspect. Movies are a more recent medium. Combining the two gives a doubly powerful route into our souls.

The Talking Heads were not a band of my youth. I was well into my thirties when their concert film Stop Making Sense, directed by Jonathan Demme, came out. It combines music you can dance to, with lyrics that recapitulate the Boomer experience of rebellion, idealism, and subsequent cynicism… all leading to that mysterious moment when you find yourself suddenly an adult, with a vocation and responsibilities, asking, “how did I get here?” (The lyric is from “Once in a Lifetime,” the film’s climactic moment.) By the end of the film they’re covering the Al Green/Teenie Hodges standard “Take Me to the River;” the typical love song’s comparison of first love to a religious experience has been transformed into a religious experience as powerful as first love.

More than twenty years later, I find the music is both chillingly prophetic (“Life During Wartime”) and filled with religious imagery that once went right past me. It forces me to remember where I have been, and to question: where am I? And how did I get here?

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IsSpAOD6K8[/embedyt]