I am from a family that likes to sing. I started as a young boy in the mid-60’s singing along with my mom and aunts and my brother. Lots of religious music infuses my way of looking at the world.
I am most attracted to the kind of gospel songs one finds in pentecostal churches. The kind of music that makes you just get so freaking happy and other times just tugs your heart out to the point of tears.
I can listen to a Mahalia Jackson or a Happy Goodmans or a Dolly Parton gospel song like twenty times in a row when it is where my mind is at. Only the Blues comes close to keeping my attention like that on just one song. And it is no accident that singers who do R&B or the Blues or some kinds of Country R-n-R started off singing in churches. Their music reinspires me the closer it is to songs that imprinted on my soul when I would dance around the middle of my family as they sang songs together.
While many songs in this genre are about how much the singer cannot wait to get to heaven, so many more are about becoming more open to the Will of the Sacred.
Now, being a heretic, I hear in this the notion that we must become more open to the possibilities of the All-Embracing Love, the Encompassing Good, the ONE BEING.
When I hear Dolly Parton’s song “The Seeker” (see lyrics below), I don’t concentrate on the ways that she describes herself as being unworthy. I take that for granted, dearest friends: to be a sinner is literally to-be-off-track. No one of us, not a single one, is substantially evil. We are all off-course, lost on the beaten tracks trod by so many, many others and terrified to go where few have gone.
I am unworthy of All-Embracing-Love when as I act by denying that my being is a beautiful, singular expression of the One-Being. I am unworthy when I speak as some silly individual who shall overcome my utter dependence on those around me.
Piffle, dearest Nietzsche: I do not desire to become the Overman. I seek-after emptying out such willfulness, to open up to All-Embracing-Love.
I am these ones–these brothers and sisters–with whom I find myself. I am this one that is the Encompassing Good.
If I would be “shown the way” I must turn toward that which embraces ALL. I must open up and turn over my mind–must be RE-minded–that I am not where the answer lies. Even more importantly… that there is no certain solution that is the “final” answer. There is turning back to the Way, there is letting-go… detachment (L. SOLVARE=to detach) from delusions.
Delusions work by making darkness & shadows out of false-play (DELUDERE). Literally, delusion is the fracturing of good will. If we would be en-lightened and not de-luded, we must find the strength to turn toward BEING PLAYFUL IN GOOD FAITH… we must throw light on how the possibility of openness shows us the way to Freedom. This is our transcendence.
Seek transcendental awareness… climb up, go beyond.
If we go beyond, it is only beyond our own opinions.
If we go beyond, it is only beyond our own presuppositions.
If we go beyond, it is only beyond our own misconceptions.
If we go beyond, it is only going yonder-to-Being.
In freedom–in transcendence–there is the discovery of interconnectedness: we are not separate from All-Embracing-Love and this union is FULLY LIVING rather than merely existing.
Amen.
Lyrics to Ms. Parton’s “The Seeker”
Chorus:
I am a seeker
A poor sinful creature
There is no weaker than I am
I am a seeker
You are a teacher
You are a reacher
So reach down
Won’t you reach out and lead me
Guide me and keep me
In the shelter of your care each day
‘Cause I am a seeker
You are a keeper
You are the leader
Won’t you show me the way
I am a vessel that’s empty and useless
I am a bad seed that fell by the way
I am a loser that wants to be a winner
And you are my last hope
Don’t turn me away
Chorus:
I am a seeker
A poor sinful creature
There is no weaker than I am
I am a seeker
You are a teacher
You are a reacher
So reach down
Won’t you reach out and lead me
Guide me and keep me, Lord
In the shelter of your care each day
‘Cause I am a seeker
You are a keeper
You are the leader
Won’t you show me the way
Oh, I know you are a mountain
From which there flows a fountain
So let it’s water wash my sins away
‘Cause I am a seeker
You are a keeper
You are the leader
Won’t you show me the way
CALL ME MAGGIE 