Amazing Grace (Give It Back)

Every year I seem to hit my lowest point -- physically, mentally, spiritually -- right around Holy Week. I don't think that's entirely a coincidence. I've recently been reading through Christopher Cocca's blog Orthoproxy, which is kind of a memoir of belief and skepticism, and one theme he returns to is that maybe God deigns to show up in manmade structures and rituals like religion, but God doesn't necessarily prescribe those things so much as tolerate them.

What's funny to me is that I feel like I'm on a journey in the opposite direction -- moving from the "spiritual, not religious" (or "relationship, not religion") dictates of my evangelical faith to a place where I'm drawn specifically to rituals. I sneak off to midday masses and search the web for nearby Anglican services. These days I feel "religious, not spiritual," and I'm wondering if that could possibly be a more robust and restful place for my faith, at least for now, for me. The anxieties of belief -- that my salvation depends on what I believe about God -- are sometimes too much; the ache and hunger for an anchor doesn't go away, though, no matter if you're singing praise choruses with hands raised or kneeling at a rail for a wafer. The idea of participating in the life of an ancient church seems rather comforting to me.

Anyway --aside from being their first song with a swear in it (The wonderful and cutting couplet "You're everywhere in every time/ and yet You're so damn hard to find"), "Amazing Grace," to me, is a portrait of steadfast longing-- almost petulant in its demands. Its persistent, mid-tempo beat underscores the committed persistence. I want this song to build to a crescendo during the instrumental break --the entire final half of the song -- but it continues to be subtle, steadfast, transformed only by a gently falling piano riff -- maybe because God is, as we heard on "Melody of You," "a simple tune" we "only write variations to." The fadeout here feels tentative. I keep expecting the song to come plodding back after the fadeout.

To come plodding back -- I guess that's what I expect from my own faith, too. Slow and steady, I am waiting for somebody to show up amid the ritual and longing.

My Dear Machine

If you give up a lot, you get to come back a lot, too, and every comeback, even if you know things are never going to turn out the way you want them to, is a blessing and a promise. From the first few dirty notes on that Rhodes piano to the horns (must be John Painter on those, no?), Sixpence announces its intent to kick ass. Sixpence is not a band that does a lot of ass-kicking, as a rule, but they can when they want to, though not so much with distortion and anger as with melody and arrangement. The fist-pumping energy of "My Dear Machine" doesn't come from shouted self-righteousness -- not even from an encouraging declaration like, say "Moving On" with its "I will not let them ruin me" refrain. It's the energy of the earth and the spirit, the shoots ascending for the rebirth, the careful husbanding of a craft left to rust.

It was LL Cool J, Google tells me, who said "Don't call it a comeback." But I say, always call it a comeback. Always come back.