If I were forced to pick only one artist to accompany me on my Lenten pilgrimage, I would pick Emmylou Harris. Nobody has yet forced that choice on me. Should it happen, I pick Emmylou. This year, drawing ever closer to Lent, Emmylou’s been on my mind.
The other morning, her voice came to mind as I was going about my morning routine. Later that day, finding a brief moment, I found my headphones and dug out 1995’s Wrecking Ball. Produced by Canadian Daniel Lanois, this album marked a significant shift in Harris’ signature sound. All of a sudden, the clarion call of her country soprano sits atop a more-than-healthy dose of heady reverb and throbbing synth.
And still, her shimmering voice cuts through the noise.
We live in a cold and restless age, an age predicated on and dependent upon noise. If not the twenty-four hour news cycle, it’s the fifteen-second attention span. We blame others for the state of the world, all the while drinking from some version of the same dopamine-addicted firehose. We’re pulled in many directions. We’re battling our own demons. In cycles of distraction and addiction, we struggle to work together as communities attending to ourselves and our neighbours, all of whom bear the image of the invisible God.
After four bars of swelling guitar and marching drums, Harris breaks across the distance:
The streets are cracked
And there’s glass everywhere
And a baby stares out
With motherless eyes
Above mists of reverb and rock steady beats, we’re drawn out of our slumber, toward the cries of a world in pain: cracked streets, broken glass, a baby’s motherless eyes. There’s the noise that surrounds us, invades us, but we need not turn away. In fact, we dare not turn away from the world God calls us to love. We dare not, and yet we are frozen, trapped, drowning in nostalgia, overcome by a sea of noise:
Under long gone beauty
On fields of war
Trapped in lament
To the poet’s core
We look at the reality of the world around us, and are overwhelmed by the immensity of the pain. There are so many seeking liberation. Whether we accept it or not, we are amongst them. We too are trapped in the prosaic prisons of the past, all the while yearning for the prophetic imagination of what might be, if only God would step into this story and set us free. In this moment, in the face of this motherless stare, who are we, and how might we respond to the world as it is?
What I love about this song (and so many in Harris’ catalogue) is about more than the cadence and the phrasing. It’s about more than the way her voice shimmers, cutting through so much existential noise. It’s about all of these things and more. In this, and in so many of her other songs, Emmylou Harris embodies a profound bravery.
What makes her catalogue so rich, and what makes so much of it ripe for my Lenten playlist is her brave willingness to tackle themes of love and loss, faith and doubt – the very themes we consider throughout the season, and that help form a robust and realistic discipleship in the way of Jesus. What I love about Harris’ catalogue is her fearless wandering, her commitment to walking the road of life with all its attendant dangers and surprises.
As she bravely explores the vast countryside of human being, human emotion, human experience, she reports back on the journey. At times, we bask in wonder. At times, we bump into breathtaking beauty. At times our bodies are bent and broken. And yet, we travel this road together. And this Lent, I am excited to be taking this journey with Emmylou Harris. It seems to me, at least, that she will be an excellent companion along the road.
As Lenten guide, Emmylou Harris takes us from “river” to “rim,” and “through the teeth of the reaper’s grin.” Through it all, the constant refrain:
Oh where, oh where will I be?
Oh where, oh when that trumpet sounds?
