So, I'm trying to discover just why I'm so moved by and attracted to Darrell Scott's song that I decided it should be the title of this blog. The song is really his ruminations about the bittersweet mystery of finding and losing love as the soulful force that draws us on and keeps us moving down the long, wide open road of life. I'm thinking we all know what that feels like. Certainly, I do. But, I'm wondering why as someone who at long last has found the love I longed for all my life, I'm still so moved by the melancholy of this song. (Other than the amazing artistry and voice of Darrell Scott, of course.) For Darrell Scott I think this journey through finding and losing love is closely tied to a twin journey for him, that being his driving passion to create and express himself as an artist through the poetry of his music. That offers a clue to me...that love in its many forms, whether the love of two people, or the love that is one's passion or vocation are all subsets of the Love that is life itself, the God "in whom we live and move and have our being," as scripture says. Could it be that the mystery of finding and losing love as a force that draws us on and sends us out again down life's road is itself the mystery of our relationship with life, with Love, with God? If this is true, then for Christians Jesus is a kind of compass pointing to the heart of this God, showing us that where this long, wide open road leads is found in ever turning love outward...being part of a kind of fierce and profound Love as rushing river pouring out toward all of life. I think of these lines from Robinson Jeffers' poem
"The Beauty of Things"
To feel and speak the astonishing beauty of things--earth, stone and water,
Beast, man and woman, sun, moon and stars--
The blood-shot beauty of human nature, its thoughts, frenzies and passions,
And unhuman nature its towering reality--
For man's half dream; man, you might say, is nature dreaming, but rock
And water and sky are constant--to feel
Greatly, and understand greatly, and express greatly, the natural
Beauty, is the sole business of poetry.
The rest's diversion: those holy or noble sentiments, the intricate ideas,
The love, lust, longing: reasons, but not the reason.
Reasons, but not
the reason...so loves but not
the Love. Maybe why I'm so moved by Darrell's song, so as to name my blog after it, is that it just seems to express the heart-breaking beauty of Life/God.
