We haven't seen everything

Low hanging clouds and almost-fog give way to overcast skies as I drive in this morning. It's Wednesday, that most malleable day of the week, and I woke this morning at 4:00 AM. I wasn't woken by anything in particular (at least, not that I am concisely aware), I was simply awake. I know better than to fight that circumstance in the early morning, because once I'm awake, I stay that way. So up I got, very early, and early out the door.

The iPhone is set to an all Bruce Cockburn mix this morning which, with more than twenty albums to draw from, covers a lot of possible songs.


Lovers in a Dangerous Time kicks off the playlist as I point the Miata toward the college. This song could be the anthem for the supporters of marriage equality, and particularly during the current Supreme Court DOMA case:

When you're lovers in a dangerous time
Sometimes you're made to feel as if your love's a crime --
But nothing worth having comes without some kind of fight --
Got to kick at the darkness 'til it bleeds daylight
When you're lovers in a dangerous time

As I listen to the song, I am reminded that I recently had a long-time friend show a homophobic facet of their world view, quite unexpectedly. Questions popped out of my initial hurt: Don't they know we have a gay son? Do they really mean this of/toward our children, whom they have known for a lifetime? Is this a true representation of how they really feel?

Somehow, they didn't know this about our son, as it turns out. They hadn't thought through all of the nuances in their comment, and were quick to retract it when my wife reached out with some of the questions raised above. Years of friendship are stronger than one painful incident, after all.

But what if we didn't have a gay son, couldn't put a known face to this struggle? Would I have been as quick to question the comment, or would I have let it sadly pass? Would they, in turn, have been as quick to acknowledge the unintended ramifications of their statement?

Hatred of others is so easy to fall into, as long as the others don't have specific faces and names. The history of propaganda has clearly taught us that. Let us be clear on this point: to say you can hate the "sin" (the word usually used in this phrase) but love the person is to hate the person. You can add a thousand words of justification to that idea, but it doesn't change the fact that you have directed your hatred toward an aspect of someone else. You have made that one aspect of a complicated human being into a defining and unreconcilable state of being "other," and separated. How else can the recipient of the remark possibly take it?

My commute ends to the final notes of You've Never Seen Everything. This song has one of the most beautiful chorus melodies wrapped into one of the most difficult songs to listen to. Difficult not just because its verses are all spoken poetry, but because of the song's subject matter. The premise of which is that no matter how much you think you've seen, someplace else something totally outside of your imagination or experience is taking place. That and the idea that we sometimes let all the bad news in the world block out the sunlight:

Nobody's making me say this
I'm talking to you
Been traveling 17 hours
Irradiated by signals, by images
of viruses, of virtues
like everyone
Like exiled angels we swing out of the clouds
Above night city-
Fields of light broken by the curve of dark waterways

On the other side of the world
an unhappy teenage girl sets fire
to herself, her house, her neighbourhood and some that dwell therein
Sorry simulacrum of sad dawn

You've never seen everything

and the chorus:

Bad pressure coming down
Tears - what we really traffic in
ride the ribbon of shadow
Never feel the light falling all around

The song never gets any more cheerful, but the poetry and imagery in it is worth a read or, even better, a listen.

Bruce is right, if rather darkly so. We haven't seen everything. That is sufficient reason for moving forward gently and speaking with care. We all have much yet to learn from those around us, as well those who live far away. From everyone we are tempted to cast as "other." From those we do not know yet, with their faces and names.

Today's full commute playlist:
- Lovers in a Dangerous Time
- World Of Wonders from Bruce Cockburn Live
- If A Tree Falls from Big Circumstance
- You've Never Seen Everything from the album of the same name

- Posted via Hermes.