Saturday, May 26, 2007

Everybody hurts sometimes, or . . .
'writing straight with crooked lines'

Been listening to a lot of Marianne Faithfull since the last installment of the Revolution 21 podcast, and it's set me to thinking.

I know, a dangerous proposition, but bear with me. And bear with this week's installment of the Revolution 21 podcast, please, because I was "thinking" when I put it together, too.

Anyway. . . .

An interesting story, Marianne's. In the early '60s, she was big pop-folk stuff in the U.K. -- to steal from a Johnny Cash classic, she was a regular "Teenage Queen, prettiest thing you've ever seen" -- and not too slouchy here, either, in Year 1 of the British Invasion.

Mick Jagger and Rolling Stones' bandmate Keith Richards wrote her first big hit, "As Tears Go By" in late 1964. It made it up to No. 22 on this side of the Atlantic Ocean and -- pensive ballad be damned -- the Stones would record it themselves in '66 and take it all the way to No. 9 on the U.S. charts.

But you knew a "But then . . . " was coming, didn't you?

Her teen-age marriage to artist John Dunbar, in 1965, had produced a son and then had fallen apart -- but not ended -- by the time she took up with Jagger in '66. In '67, police raided Keith Richards' place looking for dope and also found Jagger and Faithfull.

Richards was playing Dylan on the phonograph. Faithfull was wearing a fur rug . . . and nothing else. Couldn't tell you about Jagger.

In '68, she miscarried her and Jagger's daughter. According to published accounts, he buried himself in work; she disappeared deep into drugs. In '69, after writing "Sister Morphine," Marianne Faithfull OD'd on pills. Her words to Jagger upon awaking six days later?

"Wild horses couldn't drag me away." There's a song in that somewhere.

FROM THERE, a downward spiral. Lost her career, pretty much. Lost Jagger. Lost custody of her son. Ended up on the streets,

Still had the drugs, though.

Fast forward to 1979. Marianne Faithfull -- a world-weary, husky-throated, hard-edged, new-but-older Marianne Faithfull -- re-emerged with a successful album, Broken English. An album with some real heft, utterly unlike her earlier career -- save her released, but quickly recalled, "Sister Morphine" -- of airy folk and pop.

She was beginning to dig herself out, a process that would culminate in rehab six years later.

The "new" Marianne Faithfull that somehow survived the abyss of the late '60s and 1970s was what, today, we'd call "damaged goods." On the other hand, the "damaged" woman had become a stronger artist -- her tangibly degraded voice lending itself to the material she recorded, and lending whole new levels of depth to old material she revisited in later years.

You could say that the broken things had been made strong by their weakness. Indomitable in their vulnerability.

NOW, IF WE TURNED THIS into a talk about the Christian life, about how we're screwed-up, suffering sinners who keep trying and falling short of the saintliness we're called to . . . what can we learn? About turning our brokenness into strength? About being powerful in our weakness?

Really, who the hell would have given Marianne Faithfull much of a chance once she slipped into that druggy abyss? Certainly not the record industry.

And who would give any of us much of a chance whenever we slide into any of the various black holes of our own making? As is usually the case, chief among the naysayers would be . . . ourselves.

Is there any blacker darkness than that moment of despair we confront once we've screwed up but good? When we're convinced that, surely, there's no way out of the latest fine mess we've gotten ourselves into? That life assuredly will be utter crap from this day forward, amen?

We hope and pray those moments are few, far between and fleeting. For some folks, they aren't.

But for others -- through the unexplainable and unmerited grace of the Almighty -- there is, for lack of a better cliche, a light at the end of the tunnel. We find, if we cooperate with God's grace, that in the broken places lie our strength. In our vulnerability, power.

Or should I say Power, because it's not our own?

IF WE WORK ON IT, perhaps out of our trials, failures and fallenness can emerge new reservoirs of compassion and empathy. And maybe -- though we bear the scars, and the bruises, and though we deal with the harsh realities of "Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa" -- our cracked voice will sing out sweeter than ever.

Amen.

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