How can we sing a new song?

I went to see the movie, "A Complete Unknown", about the rise of Bob Dylan from Greenwich Village folk singer/ songwriter to rock music icon.  It covers about a 6 year period in Dylan's early career.  From his first album to his sixth, from 1961 to 1965.  He wrote "Blowin' in the wind", "The times they are a'changin'," "A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall," "With God on our SIde" "My Back Pages", "It Ain't me, babe", and "Like a Rolling Stone." Any of of these songs reveals an inspired poet speaking to a time and a generation having serious moment.  

In a ten year period Dylan released eleven LPs, including the double album, "Blonde on Blonde".  He was about as prolific as the Beatles in the same time period.  

Dylan is a poet and a revolutionary.  His musical style and lyrical sensibilities evolved quickly, faster than his fan base.  He didn't care.  He wrote for himself mostly and sometimes his words and music connected deeply with American youth in the 1960s.  He seems to have a way with the American zeit geist, he read the times like a prophet.  

I confess that I was not a Bob Dylan fan.   I knew Dylan's music, because I'm an American and a music lover. I'm a Gen Xer.   I grew up in the late 70s and 80s.  My parents listened to pop music, country and rock.  I became a fan of the Beatles.  They were my musical inspirations. I was not interested in their early pop tunes.  I was captivated by two albums:  "Rubber Soul" and "Revolver".  That the same band could produce such vastly different music in the matter of a few months astounded me. Their evolution from "Plesase Please me" to "Strawbery Feilds Forever" was the thing that hooked me.  The psychedelic and eastern sounds, the rhythm, harmonies, and lyrics.  And "Here Comes the Sun" is my favorite song and will be played at my funeral. 

The 1960s was characterized by its music. Dylan, the Beatles, CSNY, Joni Mitchell, Joan Biaz, Otis Redding, Motown. They elevated folk music and gospel music to become popular music.  They sang protest songs and freedom songs and love songs and resistance songs and laments. Their music spoke to and for a generation struggling with global existential crises and threats--nuclear bombs and rising imperialist miliarism in the wake of WW2; Vietnam; assassinations; race and civil rights; feminism; sex, drugs, and rock and roll.  It was a creative and violent decade, that went through a lot of change in a brief period of time. Change that brings greater equality, possibility, and peace is welcome change.  Change requires unrest, resistance, and persistent action.  Change demands unity and sacrifice.  Good change involves an awakening and a grounding in the limits of humanity as well as a vision, a dream, a horizon worthy of our greatest efforts. Change inspires protest marches and civil disobedience and speeches and bold, risky moves.  The first revolution is internal; the first revolution is of the mind.  The great philosophers say it.  Its what the old bible word 'repent' actually means. It means to change your mind.  Father Richard Rohr says, "Jesus didn't;'t come to change God's mind about us, but to change our minds about God." Why?  Because when our god is wealth or success or power or personal achievement at any cost, we are lost. It is only when God becomes human, joining us in life's journey, that we can see that God is actually love, compassion, mercy, peace.  

Now is a time of change, revolution, adaptation.  Now is the time to sing a new song!             

I have pretty eclectic musical tastes.  I want to hear songs that say something, that mean something,that tell the truth about things that matter.  Since seeing the movie, I have been listening to Bob Dylan.  The prescience of a song like "The Times Theyare a changin'" is worth hearing, given our present situation.           

Come gather 'round people

Wherever you roam

And admit that the waters

Around you have grown

And accept it that soon

You'll be drenched to the bone

If your time to you is worth savin'

And you better start swimmin'

Or you'll sink like a stone

For the times they are a-changin'

Come writers and critics

Who prophesize with your pen

And keep your eyes wide

The chance won't come again

And don't speak too soon

For the wheel's still in spin

And there's no tellin' who

That it's namin'

For the loser now

Will be later to win

For the times they are a-changin'

Come senators, congressmen

Please heed the call

Don't stand in the doorway

Don't block up the hall

For he that gets hurt

Will be he who has stalled

The battle outside ragin'

Will soon shake your windows

And rattle your walls

For the times they are a-changin'

Come mothers and fathers

Throughout the land

And don't criticize

What you can't understand

Your sons and your daughters

Are beyond your command

Your old road is rapidly agin'

Please get out of the new one

If you can't lend your hand

For the times they are a-changin'

The line it is drawn

The curse it is cast

The slow one now

Will later be fast

As the present now

Will later be past

The order is rapidly fadin'

And the first one now

Will later be last

                                                                                    For the times they are a-changin'  

At present, the global, existential threat of climate change is concretely realized in the wildfires taking place in southern California.  The violence of nature is experienced in drought, flood, storm, fires, and dehabitation.  Climate displacement and climate refugees are found on almost every continent. As  result of these changing environmental conditions, humans are reacting in dangerous ways.  We are experiencing trememndous wealth accumulation among a very few people.  There are 835 US billionaires.  Globally, the richest 1% own almost 48% of the world's wealth, while people who earned less than $10,000 per year account for more than 40% of the global population and in total have less than 1% of the world's wealth. The world's 26 richest billionaires have more wealth than the GDP of maby countries including, Italy, Canada, Brazil, Russia, Mexico, Australia, and Spain.  Those 26 people are worth $2.872 trillion!  

President Jimmy Carter, who died this week at the age of 100, once said that the most pressing problem that must be addressed in the world is economic inequality.  So much else is driven by these two realities:  Climate change and economic inequality. As Elon Musk takes over the American empire as a shadow leader  beside the president-elect, we will likely see increased poverty, violence, and environmental destruction.  We will also continue to see rising sea levels, global warming, and the effects of ecological disruption.  

It is a lot to take.  The news is hard to watch and hard to avoid.  The existential threats are burning down towns and flooding cities and turning farms into deserts. Meanwhile the 26 richest people are hoarding resources from billions of other people, who will die in poverty. It is hard to be hopeful, to not become cynical, jaded, and ambivalent.  It's hard to know where to put the anger, the rage, the grief, and the fear. In the past, when civilization was going through a time of darkness, a time of uncertainty, people created art and music.    

Now is a time of change, of revolution, of adaptation. Now is the time to sing a new song!    

I'm wondering today, how can we sing a new song?  Who will sing them? What language do we need to protest, to resist, to demand concrete material change? What songs will we sing to console, comfort, and connect us?  What songs will we sing to denounce the billionaires and their political friends?  I'm hoping for a new singer and a new song.  

Our religious traditions bring us many songs to sing; hymns, spirituals, psalms, and canticles.  The resistance song of Mary, the mother of Jesus: "He has cast down the mighty from their thrones and lifted up the lowly.  he has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty."  The spiritual, "Wade in the water, Wade in the water children, Wade in the water, God's gonna trouble the water." "When Moses was in Egypts land, let my people go.  Go down, Moses, way down to Egypt land;tell ol' Pharaoh, let my people go."  But fewer of us are religious and know the old songs.  We should keep singing them and we need new songs.  I'm looking and listening.  For a new song. A song like Dylan sang.  A song like Aretha sang. A song like Nina sang.  A song like the children of Israel sang.  A song like Jesus' people sang.  

Are you listening? Are you aching for a new song? Are you waiting for someone to come along?  

Maybe you or I need to write it...  

  

             

            

New Year: 2025

 Happy New Year.  I have not contributed to a blog in over 4 years.  It's not that I have run out of things to say or write about.  I guess I spent my time in other ways.  Did anyone read what I was writing before anyay? I think I wondered about audience, connection, and interests.  Did I have anything interesting to say?  Anything worth writing or reading?  Also, there are so many blogs, podcasts, videos, and general content out there in the democratized space of amateur journalism that exists in the social media context in which we live our lives, that I doubted I could get anyone's attention long enough.  Is that the point?  Getting people's attention?  Do I want people to pay attention to me? Do I need  people to pay attention?  To read or listen to what I say?  What I really want is for people to pay attention to their own lives and the lives of the people around them.  I want people to pay attention to the trees and the birds and the insects and the soil and the wildflowers in the restored meadow behind the Methodist church.  I want people to pay attention to their neighbors.  And people who pay attention to the divine, to the will of God, to the presence of the sacred.  We have got to pay better attention.  We have got to wake up and stay awake!  This is hard, painful work as it turns out.  

A lot of things have transpired nationally in the last 4 years.  Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump.  An attempted coup failed.  Just when we thought authoritarianism and fascism was defeated,  Trump defeated VP Harris in a presidential contest that surprised the world.  A global pandemic killed millions of people and climate change is accelerating in various ways, both visible and invisible. Israel and Palestine are at war.  Russia and Ukraine are at war. War persists in various other parts of the world.  Gun violence and the violence of poverty and addiction threaten American society.  Mass shootings have become common.  A deep cynicism, uncertainty, and mistrust pervades our society.  People want enemies to blame, and strong man leaders to promise easy fixes to hard problems.  Demagogues, dictatorships and various forms of religious nationalism are replacing democracies around the globe.  Christian nationalism has arisen in the US as a driving anti-demoractic force to restore patriarchy, heteronormativity, and a narrative of dominance and greatness that excludes certain out groups from equal status.  

I finished my doctoral thesis in 2024.  That was a considerable piece of writing that nearly killed me last year.  I had to finish it by February or I would not be able to graduate. I started the doctoral journey in 2016-2017 and COVID interrupted me.  But I got to write about the Wittel Farm and how it has changed me, what it has taught me.  I'll share what I have learned here.  

 I took on a third position in my vocational life as a pastor and farmer.  In 2022 I joined the staff of POWER Interfaith, a faith-rooted community organizing movement for racial and economic justice on a liveable planet. (I like this tag line). The work is meaningful and has given me opportunity to connect and work ecumenically with faith leaders who are interested in justice as a theological response to the world's problems. It is interesting to think about the political and social implications of an increasingly post-Christian society.  I studied the works of Dietrich Bonhoeffer this year and taught a course on his life and teachings. I'm presently involved in the campaign for housing equity in Lancaster County.  I am working with some amazingly passionate people who want to solve a major crisis, by ensuring that our politcs and economics create conditions of well being for everyone, which includes safe, affordable, adequate, and accessible housing for every person who wants it.  We have learned about the politics of housing and why some people are left out of the housing market, are stuck in housing that doesn't meet their needs or exceeds affordability.  We have learned about the causes of homelessness and what it takes to move unhoused people onto a path toward permanent housing.  It takes money and time.  It takes responsible political action rooted in a community- based ethics that sees every person as a human being worthy of respect, safety, and equal treatment.  As an organizer, my role is to invite people, who are committed to finding solutions to their communities problems, to engage political actors and responsible leaders in a negotiation around an achievable goal.  For example, can we compel county leaders to commit an additional $10 million in county rainy day funds to address the deficit in affordable housing stock?  How many people will it take to compel political action?  Do we need to have enough people to threaten reelections?  How will we know?  As an organizer I get to find people and invite them to become responsible actors in public life.  I especially appreciate the role of the faith leader as a public actor, moving people of faith to act courageously to resist the status quo and become architects of a better world.  This is a major challenge because of the internalized powerlessness most Americans experience today.  We see billionaires and politicians aligned in their interess and against the interests of people and planet. What can we do?  We can organize.  Tune in for more writing about the power of organizing to create social change.      

I'm also committed to the writing of John Philip Newell and the Celtic spiritual tradition. It shapes my understanding of an enchanted world, full of wonder and danger and beauty and mystery.  The sacredness of the earth and our role as beloved caregivers defines and energizes the work I want to do, both with the farm and with people.  Can we move toward a restored ecological harmony?  What would it take to do so? How do we disentangle ourselves from the post-industrial worldview that continues to consume, waste, and destroy the earth with every choice we make?  What is permissable, what must we prohibit, and what is necessary?  Should we sell our cars and divest from fossil fuel consumption? If so, how do we live in this society?  I have been reading indigenous wisdom, alongside Newell's work, and I have been listening to the poetry of Mary Oliver.  There are agrarian writers like Wes Jackson, Norman Wirzba, and Wendell Berry that are informing my thoughts on our role in the natural world. Habitus, our habits and daily practices of living are shaped by our habitations, the places we dwell in and with.  And our habits also shape our habitats in good and bad ways.  I am not one for new years resolutions, but I'd like to commit to forming habits this year that will contribute to the greater good of the place to which I have become native.  I am committintg to planting 1,000 trees in Lancaster in 2025.      

Along with Newell, the writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 20th century German Lutheran theologian who resisted Hitler and the Nazis, a clearer way of talking about things that matter the most has emerged in my own thinking and speaking.  There are a few important matters that need to be discussed.  I want to broaden the discussions from the academy to the home.  For one, people of faith need to wrestle with the planet's destruction by human industrialization and fossil fuel consumption.  We need to think critically about a theology of creation and what it means to be responsible moral actors on earth. What are the scenarios that climate science anticipates given current global trajectories under the conditions of climate change?  Do we really only have sixty harvests left, given the depleted soil conditions?  What will warming mean for human populations, as habitation becomes more challenging in places currently inhabited?   What should we eat?

 I think 2025 is a year of necessary change.  Adapt or die.  So, what if this blog is a contribution to our adaptation?  We need to adopt new ways of being, living, acting, consuming, working, and resting.  We need to adopt a theology that frees us to live responsibly toward the neighbor, both human and non-human.  We need to experience and embrace humility before God and earth, in order to restore order, balance, and possibility of a future.  So, I will contribute a weekly post in 2025 of thoughts on ecology, theology, community, and adaptation.  What will you contribute?