Willie Nelson
Country music legend Willie Nelson and his faithful Martin guitar, "Trigger." (Photo courtesy of Willie Nelson.com)
A few weeks ago, after participating in the "Big Joy" project associated with the Global Joy Summit, I realized that through the stresses of COVID-19 and United Methodist politics, I've been neglecting one of the great joys of my life – music.
I've played several instruments in my life, starting with an E-flat alto saxophone when I was a pre-teen. I've progressed through keyboards and failed attempts at guitar to my beloved Irish bodhran and other hand drums, along with an African djembe I bought in a Cape Town, South Africa, marketplace (I brought that goatskin drum safely home by stuffing it with my dirty laundry and hauling it in my checked luggage). About 18 months ago in the midst of the pandemic, I finally learned to play the Native American flute, a joy I plan to resume over the holiday break.
Now I'm doing more writing and editing to a melodious background thanks to Apple Music on my MacBook. What do I play? Religious chant? Hymns and Christmas carols for Advent? No, this is my guilty secret: I listen to country music. I'm partial to the music of my childhood and youth, from Hank Williams to Johnny Cash to Texas icon Willie Nelson and his late sister Bobbie, piano player extraordinaire who died last March. To me, Dolly Parton is a living saint.
Yes, I still listen to the rock of my young adulthood – Beatles and Bruce Springsteen rule! And the (formerly Dixie) Chicks are my drumbeat of women's liberation and power (Lord, I'd almost sell my soul to sing like Natalie Maines!). I'm no walking compendium of the field, yet country music strikes chords in me that few other musical genres can match. Tax-floutin', Fourth-of-July-picnic-hostin', weed-smokin' Willie, who grew up in the Methodist Church, can melt my knees with his reedy tenor and utterly astounding guitar. Don't believe me, try albums "Teatro," "Pancho and Lefty," "Live at Budokan" or "Stardust."
Country music shaped my childhood and youth with its clearly defined virtues and vices. The lyrics provided the kind of framework a chubby, bookish, socially inept girl needed, like the supports given a sapling until it can withstand wind and rain on its own.
Country music shaped my childhood and youth with its clearly defined virtues and vices. The music and lyrics provided the kind of framework a chubby, bookish, socially inept girl needed, like the supports given a sapling until it can withstand wind and rain on its own. I remember being so proud the Christmas I earned enough money to buy my daddy an LP of Hank Williams' greatest hits. Nearly every workday we'd turn the TV to a local morning show, where the host Ernie Lee played and sang old-timey songs to the accompaniment of a steel guitar. (Ernie being one of my dad's Masonic lodge brothers was an added benefit).
Reconnecting with my joy has set me to pondering – not for the first time – why we don't incorporate more "secular" songs into Christian worship. As my good friend Tex Sample has written in more than one of his books, music termed "country" touches some of the deepest emotions and events of life: heart-breaking romances, grinding poverty, soul-sucking menial jobs, the long good-bye of losing family and friends. Country music tells stories, and we humans are a species that needs stories to make sense of our living. The way I read the gospels, those are the same things that Jesus talked about with the people that polite society considered outcast.
It's a good thing, as we do in my congregation, to preach and teach and pray and march for social justice, especially for things like economic equality, healthy food distribution and affordable housing. Yet I feel like we're missing a big opportunity when we don't sing more than we shout when we march. Even the worst singers among us (and some days my ragged contralto qualifies) can join in a group sing with energizing results. We need to connect faith to life; John and Charles Wesley knew that music was a prime way to make that "connexion."
Here's a blast from my past: when I was a young adult, my friends and I drove 90 minutes south from St. Petersburg to Sarasota, Florida, for a Harry Chapin concert. After a wonderful night of poignancy ("Cat's in the Cradle") and fun ("Forty Thousand Pounds of Bananas"), Harry did something astonishing: he had the house lights turned on and invited us to sing "All My Life's a Circle" with him a capella (that's a musical term meaning "the piano player went to the bathroom"). The sound of an auditorium full of human voices raised in song thrilled me in a way that mediated music rarely can match. That's what I missed most during the pandemic: communal singing in worship.
Mother always referred to us as "singing Methodists." For all of Charles Wesley's beloved thousands of hymns, I long for more of our Wesleyan musicians to tell today's stories of faith in song and for us to learn them by memory the way we sing "O For a Thousand Tongues." I know we have various hymnal supplements, but somehow they're not as well used as they might be. Perhaps as we travel through the turmoil we're enduring now, our stories will get set to music.
Meanwhile, for me there's always Willie & Friends.
Cynthia B. Astle serves as Editor of United Methodist Insight, which she founded in 2011. This content may be reproduced elsewhere with credit to Insight.