Advent 2017 Meditation #4: The Jackson Browne Vespers Office, or How to Overflow with Genial Mirthfulness

The Jackson Browne Vespers Office, The Call to Prayer

Keep a fire burning in your eye
Pay attention to the open sky
You never know what will be coming down
I don't remember losing track of you
You were always dancing in and out of view
I must've always thought you'd be around
Always keeping things real by playing the clown
Now you're nowhere to be found

It's another midnight Advent meditation after another miserable game of Madden football. I read once that people need meditation the most precisely when they desire it the least. What I'd really like to do right now is fall asleep, but this is the stuff Advent's made of, fighting off tired eyes, keeping watch when you'd rather not, pushing through the angst, waiting, waiting for the oddly-real frustration of a make-believe video game to dissipate. If this all seems silly, consider: you're playing chess, and you've got a move planned, and you make it, you move your Queen across the board and suddenly, for no reason at all, she stops working and breaks and you lose her. That's what playing Madden football is like. I'm committed to the remainder of this season, but after that, I think I'll not play the game again. When life hands you an easy choice, make it and be grateful, pilgrim. There are hard ones coming down the pike.

Today is December 8th, 2017, and we here in Northeast Indiana received our first snow. Loose flakes swirling in frigid winds, but no accumulation. Tomorrow I'll go to my brother's for some welding. Right now I'm listening to Jackson Browne and thinking about time. Time is a funny thing. Time's been weighing on me heavy. I've lost some people this year. Older folks, but not that old.

Brian had cancer. He fought it for a while, a decade I think, but it finally took him this year. Killed him dead. He stored a Camaro here at the storage facility for years. He told me a couple times that building a garage addition was just too expensive, what with all the permits. His wife called me some weeks after the funeral and came and got it and I cleaned the space out for the next tenant. Unit #813, I think it was. Sometimes during the warm months he'd bring his golf club and practice his swing in the big yard to our east. He'd park his red Ford Ranger and hit wiffle balls. But not anymore.

Ralph died suddenly. Also cancer, I think. It was far along by the time they caught it and he went fast. Couldn't have been more than a month after the diagnosis. I ate breakfast with him quite a bit (and Brian, too) at a big round table with lots of other old, retired Republicans. Ralph was the GOP chair of our county and we disagreed on most things. Ron Paul, Israel-Palestine, police violence, etc. But I enjoyed drinking coffee and listening to the early morning banter. He had an infectious laugh that sort of wheezed and lifted as he smiled and his big body rocked back and forth. It's harder to hear in my mind now than it was a year ago.

The Jackson Browne Vespers Office, The Hymn

I don't know what happens when people die
Can't seem to grasp it as hard as I try
It's like a song playing right in my ear
That I can't sing
I can't help listening

Remember the last few minutes at the end of The Sandlot when the kids fade away from their old ball diamond and grow up and the narrator tells us what they went on to do? That's what it's like eating at the breakfast table with old men, only it's the exact opposite: they've already done what they came here to do (or perhaps missed their chance) and the fade-out isn't a child growing into an adult, it's an old man going to the grave, returning to the dust. Slowly, one by one, like the ball diamond in the movie, the table gets emptier.

Brian and Ralph are both gone, but I'm still here. When people die, I feel like I'm left waiting. Waiting on something. Waiting on them, maybe. Because if we're not waiting, then they're just gone, and I don't know if that makes sense. Maybe we're waiting on death to take us, too. Or maybe we're waiting on resurrection. I know don't. But we're waiting, and if there's a human being anywhere on this planet whose stuck in The Waiting, then Advent lives. "The waiting is the hardest part," wrote the recently departed Tom Petty. He knows.

The Jackson Browne Vespers Office, The Refrain

Keep a fire for the human race
And let your prayers go drifting into space
You never know will be coming down
Perhaps a better world is drawing near
And just as easily, it could all disappear
Along with whatever meaning you might have found
Don't let the uncertainty turn you around
(The world keeps turning around and around)
Go on and make a joyful sound

I said to a friend tonight that if you've had a painful life, with abuse and suffering and want and trauma, it's easy and natural to look back and mourn that these times ever happened. And if you've had a pleasant life, with friendships and family and celebrations and excitement, it's easy and natural to look back and mourn that these times are past. We've been dealt a losing hands, my friends. The best remedy I've ever found for this predicament is cliche, boring, and profoundly difficult: pay attention. To the subtle things, the nuances, the details. To the people you love, to the planet, to music. Lose yourself in it, when you can.

On October 26, 1853, age 36, Thoreau wrote in his journal, "When, after feeling dissatisfied with my life, I aspire to something better, am more scrupulous, more reserved and continent, as if expecting somewhat, suddenly I find myself full of life as a nut of meat - am overflowing with a quiet, genial mirthfulness." As if expecting somewhat. I heard once or twice or a thousand times someone preach that Advent had something to do with "expectant waiting." Something about "has already come, is coming, and will come again" (I never get that right). Time is a funny thing. So is Advent. So are Advent meditations. I don't have much of a conclusion for you. I'm just trying to make a joyful sound, trying to find some genial mirthfulness here in the middle of the night, with my cat on my lap, my candle burning, and Jackson Browne on the radio. Thanks for reading, pilgrims. I do deeply appreciate each and every one of you who share your limited time on this planet with me by reading these meditations.

The Jackson Browne Vespers Office, Closing

Into a dancer you have grown
From a seed somebody else has thrown
Go on ahead and throw some seeds of your own
And somewhere between the time you arrive and the time you go
May lie a reason you were alive but you'll never know