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I'll Fly Away

A while back I wrote about how different the bible sounds when read inside a prison. I'm also coming to see how songs sound different as well.

A month or so ago our teaching team at the prison bible study was reduced from three to two. The study is about two hours long. So with one less teacher we have some time to fill.

So we've started to sing a lot more. About halfway through the study, when we transition from Herb to me, we stop, pull out the songbooks, and I take song requests.

I've really enjoyed these times. Our church has pretty much gone over to the modern praise team/band songbook found in many churches. But the songs we are singing in the prison are the songs I grew up with. Amazing Grace. Leaning on the Everlasting Arms. There's a Fountain Free. When the Roll is Called Up Yonder. I'll Fly Away.

Sometimes the song requests can be pretty weird. Last week one of the guys called for The Battle Hymn of the Republic. Good Lord, I thought. But not wanting to be judgmental, I led it. I don't think I'd ever sung all the verses before. But there I was, singing away...

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:
His truth is marching on.

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

I felt like a Civil War solider camped out at Gettysburg or something.

But back to the old school hymns.

I don't blame my church for moving on from the hymns of my childhood. But I do miss them. Some of them are pretty bad as far as music goes, but some songs, when set to country, folk or blue grass music, just bowl me over with nostalgia. Get me some Alison Krauss or Gillian Welch on one of these old church songs and I'm a happy man.

But these songs aren't just dinged on the basis of musical quality. Over the years I've heard preachers and theologians completely throw songs like I'll Fly Away under the bus. Why? Because it's escapist!

Some glad morning when this life is o'er,
I'll fly away.

To a home on God's celestial shore,
I'll fly away.

I'll fly away, oh glory, I'll fly away;
when I die, hallelujah, by and by,
I'll fly away.

I understand the criticism. Where is the whole "may your will be done on earth as it is in heaven"? Where is the vision of the New Jerusalem coming down from heaven to earth in Revelation 21-22? It does seem like I'll Fly Away is pointing us away from this world in anticipation of the next. The song suggests that the whole goal and aim of the Christian life is to "fly away" from this world to the next.

But here's what I found in the prison. I'll Fly Away is one of their favorite songs. We sing it every week. And it's not hard to see why. Particularly if you recall the second verse:

When the shadows of this life have grown,
I'll fly away.

Like a bird from prison bars has flown,
I'll fly away.

And the third verse speaks to the bleakness of prison life as well: "Just a few more weary days and then, I'll fly away."

The point is, while I get the theological criticism of I'll Fly Away the song sounds completely different in prison. Just like the bible.

Because here's the deal, does I'll Fly Away make any sense when it's sung by rich people of power and privilege? I mean, what the heck are you flying away from? Life in suburbia? The Caramel Macchiatos at Starbucks? The vacations at the beach? The fact that you have clean water, indoor plumbing, central heating/air, and two cars?

But when I'll Fly Away is sung by people who are, quite literally, imprisoned or oppressed then the song is less about flying off to the Pearly Gates than a commentary about the world around us. I'll Fly Away can be an indictment and lament about the status quo. There is a prophetic aspect to I'll Fly Away that privileged people generally miss. Having never suffered slavery, oppression or imprisonment we can't hear the lament in I'll Fly Away. So of course when the privileged sing the song it sounds theologically shallow. The privleged shouldn't be trying to fly away. They should be worrying about the injustices at the gate.

In sum, I'm back to the realization that Christianity sounds different--theology, hymnody, and the bible itself--when heard from the margins of society. What doesn't make sense at the centers of power, prosperity and privilege often makes a whole lot of sense on the periphery.

Meditations on the Little Way: Epilogue, The Dark Night of Faith and Love

Thérèse of Lisieux often gets a bad rap for being one of the most sentimental and girlish of saints. And the syrupy sweetness of much of the Catholic devotion for "the Little Flower" no doubt contributes to this impression. However, as I've tried to show in this series there is a toughness to Thérèse's spirituality. The Little Way is no easy or sentimental journey. It'll turn your life upside down if you let it. It's messing with mine for sure.

But beyond the Little Way, Thérèse is also of interest to us for another reason, something that also pushes against the stereotype that she is an overly sentimental saint. We are speaking here of Thérèse's dark night of the soul.

You'll recall that Thérèse was asked to write Manuscripts B and C of Story of a Soul--the spiritual heart of her memoir--because she was dying.

In 1896 on the evening before Good Friday, and this timing seems apt given what was to follow, Thérèse awoke in the night to find her mouth filled with fluid. It was too dark to know what it was, but the morning light confirmed her suspicions that it was blood. She had contracted tuberculosis. Thus began her slow, protracted, and painful walk toward death.

During this time Thérèse experienced a profound spiritual darkness that, as best we can tell, never resolved itself. Some of this darkness finds its way into Story of a Soul and some of it was captured in things she shared with sisters and novices at Carmel.

The root of it was this. Now facing death Thérèse began to doubt that there was a heaven. What once seemed so certain to her had evaporated in the aftermath of her Good Friday awakening:

[God] permitted my soul to be invaded by the thickest darkness, and that the thought of heaven, up until then so sweet to me, be no longer but the cause of struggle and torment. The trial was to last not a few days or a few weeks, it was not to be extinguished until the hour set by God Himself and this hour has not yet come. I would like to be able to express what I feel, but alas! I believe this is impossible. One would have to travel through this dark tunnel to understand its darkness.

Thérèse says that she was plunged into a darkness "far from all suns." Looking for heaven she says, a "fog surrounds me and becomes more dense; it penetrates my soul and envelops it in such a way that it is impossible to discover within it the sweet image of my Fatherland; everything has disappeared!"

She goes on to say that while she continues to obey Christ that obedience has lost its joy: "[Jesus] knows very well that while I do not have the joy of faith, I am trying to carry out its works at least." And when she sings of heaven it's more from hope than conviction:

I must appear to you as a soul filled with consolations and one for whom the veil of faith is almost torn aside; and yet it is no longer a veil for me, it is a wall which reaches right up to the heavens and covers the starry firmament. When I sing of the happiness of heaven and of the eternal possession of God I feel no joy in this, for I sing simply what I WANT TO BELIEVE. It is true that at times a very small ray of the sun comes to illumine my darkness, and then the trial ceases for an instant, but afterward the memory of this ray, instead of causing me joy, make my darkness even more dense.

What we find here is one of the most extreme dark nights of the soul from the lives of the saints. And it's a startling and unexpected discovery given the sweet sentimentality associated with "the Little Flower." But there is nothing sweet or sentimental about Thérèse's faith struggles in the face of death.

Again, as best biographers can tell, this dark night lasted to the very end. In fact, as discussed by Tomáš Halík in his book Patience with God, a recent biographer of Thérèse's, Thomas Nevin, argues that Thérèse died without faith.

That's a shocking conclusion. And, of course, we'll never really know. But the interesting thing I'd like to draw your attention to is how Thérèse transformed her dark night into love. Thérèse might have died struggling with doubts, but she was firm in her commitment to die in love. In the very last line of the section where Thérèse describes her dark night she concludes with this:

I no longer have any great desires except that of loving to the point of dying in love.

In other conversations and writings she echos this sentiment:

My will is to endure, by Love,
The Darkness of my exile here.
...
If you only knew what darkness I am plunged into...Everything has disappeared on me, and I am left with love alone.

I am left with love alone. One interesting example of this, one discussed by Halík, is how Thérèse's dark night brought her into loving communion with atheists and non-believers. Before her own trials Thérèse didn't really think it was possible to be an atheist. She felt that God was so present in every heart that, deep down, atheists really knew there was a God:

...I was unable to believe there were really impious people who had no faith. I believed they were actually speaking against their own inner convictions when they denied the existence of heaven...

But after her dark night Thérèse understood, intimately so, what non-believers were experiencing. She found herself in loving solidarity with these non-believers, forced through the grace of God to eat at the shared table of non-belief. And in this solidarity Thérèse sees herself as intercessor. In her doubting Thérèse becomes the priest of non-believers. More, in her doubt she offers herself as a loving sacrifice to purify and save her non-believing brothers:

Your child, however, O Lord, has understood Your divine light, and she begs pardon for her brothers. She is resigned to eat the bread of sorrow as long as You desire it; she does not wish to rise up from this table filled with bitterness at which poor sinners are eating until the day set by You. Can she not say in her name and in the name of her brothers, "Have pity on us, O Lord, for we are poor sinners!" Oh! Lord, send us away justified. May all those who were not enlightened by the bright flame of faith one day see it shine. O Jesus! if it is needful that the table soiled by them be purified by a soul who loves You, then I desire to eat this bread of trial at this table until it pleases You to bring me into Your bright Kingdom.

I'm not sure I can track, with my rationalistic mind, the mystical flight Thérèse is taking here in this passage. But the general idea is clear enough. Thérèse finds herself at the bitter table of unbelief in solidarity with non-believers. And there she intercedes for her brothers, calling out for their justification and salvation, and offers her own life of doubt as a ransom for theirs.

In all this we see Thérèse sacrificing faith for love. Her last act isn't faith. It's love. As she says, "I am left with love alone." Faith is irrelevant (or gone missing). All she wants to do is love "to the point of dying in love."

Here's how Halík summarizes the dark night of Thérèse and her comments about the relationship between faith and love:

At the gates of death, did Thérèse perhaps experience something of that final state of which St. Paul writes in his letter to the Corinthians--that ultimate state when everything will come to nothing? Perhaps his words also apply to faith and hope, for they will have "fulfilled their task" of accompanying us in the valley of shadow of this ambiguous world--but love will endure? Was the hell of Thérèse's suffering and inner darkness paradoxically the entrance to a "heaven" where just one of the three divine virtues survives?

...

Man does not fall into boundless darkness but returns home, into the full light of true: faith has already fulfilled its pilgrim task; only love reigns here and now. This will not cancel faith but fulfill it; if faith "dies," it does so only by being dissolved in love--but even this death may be experienced as a passage through the dark chasm of nothingness.

Christian faith--unlike "natural religiosity" and happy-go-lucky religiosity--is resurrected faith, faith that has to die on the cross, be buried, and rise again--in a new form. This faith is a process--and it is possible for people to find themselves at different phases of this process at different moments of their lives.

I have often heard the ironic statement that faith is simply "a crutch" to help those of us who are weak and lame, whereas the strong have no need of it. It is not "a crutch," but it might be compared to a pilgrim's staff that assists us on our journey through life. Maybe when someone is just about to cross the threshold of home, when the staff won't be needed anymore, it falls from his hands; it's not surprising if he loses his balance for a moment. "Seen from the other side"--from the viewpoint we can only experience here as an assurance, as hope--beyond that threshold, at the moment we lose all supports and certainties, there awaits us an embrace of love that will not let us fall into emptiness.

Faith is converted into love--sometimes not until the last gate, sometimes earlier, perhaps. Where faith dies, love continues to burn so darkness cannot have the final victory. Is it our love or His? It's a pointless question. There is only love.

Beyond faith and hope there is only love.

Thérèse, I think, would agree.