Bob Dylan’s Remedy for the Holiday Blues

A couple of days ago, I happened upon a short Christmas message from Bob Dylan, on the subject of the Christmas blues. In his characteristic punctilious drawl, Bob notes that the holiday season, which should be full of joy, can, for some, be a time of loneliness and sadness. Family times like Christmas are often reminders of lost loved ones, and for those alone, the sense of isolation can become acute.

Bob’s remedy for the holiday blues? “You don’t need Dr Phil…you don’t need me. Just go out and help someone more unfortunate than you.” Bob suggests going to a soup kitchen, or a retirement home, maybe even a prison” to find someone to be with and to bring some cheer to. “No matter how bad you have it, somebody got it worse.”

Bob’s spot on with this bit of advice – it’s amazing how just taking your eyes and attention of yourself and your own problems, and starting to focus on the difficulties someone else has, suddenly makes your own situation look, well, not so bad after all.

The trouble is, we’re completely saturated with messages from the advertising, entertainment and media industries that tell us we need this or that product or experience or upgrade to be really beautiful / successful / happy / fulfilled. It can be hard to resist. We get sucked in to thinking about all those things we don’t have, but maybe could have – and, aside from not enjoying the things we have, we end up anxious, unsettled, our lives dominated by what we consume.

Go ahead. Just buy it.

Bob’s got the answer for the blues that arise from all of that. As Jesus famously said – “If you love your life, you’ll lose it.” It’s those who “care nothing for their lives” that have the best reward (John 12.25). My experience has been that the people who seem to be able to do this best are those who have very little – I recall my great discomfort sitting in a little slum hut in India, being served food that I knew the family could barely afford. But their neighbourliness, their care for the stranger, their hospitality was, for them, the most important thing.

The most important things for us sadly, are precisely that – things – stuff we can do without. Bob reminds us this Christmas that the short-lived pleasure of getting more stuff, often followed by the desire to acquire yet more stuff has a simple remedy – “instead of adding to the sadness in the world, why not lend a hand, help somebody out. And not just at Christmas, why don’t you give it a try all year round.”

The world waits for the hope-tellers among us

You might well be forgiven for asking what the blues have got to do with Christmas. For many of us, Christmas is about having a good time, partying, too much to eat and drink. We’re not sure what we’re celebrating, but hey, it’s the middle of winter and we could do with a few parties! For those of us who see Christmas as all about the coming of God to us in the form of a baby, it’s a time of great joy and celebration. The world turned decisively on that day in Bethlehem in the first century, and the possibility of a new way of being human and a hope for a better and just world was born. That’s not the blues – that’s joy, laughter, hope and love.

But the blues are a continual reminder of the sorrow, pain and injustice of the world. B. B. King said “The blues is an expression of anger against shame and humiliation”. One of his songs is That’s why I sing the blues which reminds us of the roots of the blues in the injustice suffered by African Americans from the seventeenth century onwards in America – from slave ships to life in the ghetto, to the unfairness of the criminal justice system to a myriad of “troubles”.

In his recent album, The Candy Store  Kid, Ian Siegal sings Lightni’ Malcom’s song: “So much trouble in the world today, so much trouble”. It reminds me, too, of Dylan’s 1993 song, World Gone Wrong.

The blues are a window into the experience of all manner of injustice and suffering in the world. As if we needed any reminder – we remember the unspeakable anguish which visited the community of Newtown, Connecticut, just a year ago. It’s hard to comprehend the depth of evil that has assailed these families and the extent of their suffering. In the year since, around 33,000 people in the United States have died as a result of gun violence.

Further from our doorsteps, Syrian women, children and men are living rough, cold and hungry in camps on either side of the Turkish border and in the Lebanon as a result of the civil war engulfing that nation. Scores of small children in Pakistan have been killed over the past few years by US drone bombing – we note with horror the statement by Time’s Joe Klein, as he tried to defend this, “the bottom line in the end is whose four-year old gets killed.” As is always the case in armed conflicts, it’s the innocent who suffer the most. Around 60 armed conflicts between nations in the world this year, including many throughout the continent of Africa and in the Middle East, have left thousands dead and many, many more in the direst of straits.

The word of the angels to the shepherds in Bethlehem was “Do not fear”. The word of gun-toting violence is “Be very afraid” – be afraid for your life, your food, your home, your future. Walter Bruggemann says, “The world waits for hope-filled truth…while we wait in the abyss, newness does not seem possible. But hope breaks fate. Hope for newness cracks open what seemed to be true in perpetuity. The world waits for the hope-tellers among us.”

That hope is possible because of the Christmas story – into the lives of the poor, ragged shepherds, huddled on a Palestinian hillside, broke a dazzling heavenly choir, singing about a new day of peace coming to the earth, somehow all bound up within the swaddling cloths of a new born baby in the local town. Into the bleakness breaks hope, and because of that hope, joy breaks forth. Things are changing, we find out, as we read the Christmas story – the arrogant are going to be routed, despots thrown down, the hungry filled with good things and the rich sent away empty handed. In the birth of this baby lie the seeds for changing the world, for bringing peace and setting things right.

If we let it, we can ourselves be caught up in this story – becoming hope-tellers and hope-bringers as we pursue the way of peace. That way is costly, however. The announcement to the shepherds was “peace on earth” and the coming of Jesus was meant to “guide our way into the way of peace” (Luke 1.79). This theme of peace is at the heart of the New Testament, actually – God is the “God of peace.”

It’s a big ask, though, particularly for people like us who comfortably inhabit the story of “a global market economy supported by an undisciplined militarism in the service of a limitless consumer entitlement” (Brueggemann). But the peace and the hope the world craves for will only come through those who, in the name of the Prince of Peace, are prepared to break with the gospel of greed and practice love, generosity, hospitality and forgiveness. And who will be those who seek to broker peace, to pursue peace, to bring peace.

Eric Bibb – We’ve Got to Do Better

In appreciation of: The Blind Boys of Alabama

The Blind Boys of Alabama, five-time Grammy Award winning gospel group, first sang together in 1944. They came together, aged around nine, in the glee club in 1944 at the Alabama Institute for the Blind in Talladega, Alabama. They recorded their first single in 1948, I Can See Everybody’s Mother But Mine, and went on to release a slew of albums over the next few decades.

In 2001, the Blind Boys released their most critically acclaimed and commercially successful album to date, Spirit of the Century, which won the 2001 Grammy award for Best Traditional Soul Gospel Album. Over the past twelve years since that, they’ve given us a number of excellent albums, including a wonderful collaboration with Ben Harper in 2004, the superb There Will Be A Light.

Atom Bomb (2005), which fused gospel with pop, rap, and the blues, the country-gospel album, Take the High Road in 2011 and then this year’s release, I’ll Find a Way, produced by Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon. Along the way, they’ve collaborated with a large number of top-flight artists from the world of the blues, pop, soul, rap and country.

In a recent interview, Jimmy Carter, a founding member of The Blind Boys of Alabama, and the only one of the original group still touring regularly, spoke about how all the members of the band were raised on gospel music and loved it, and although they had plenty of opportunities along the way to cross over to soul or rock and roll, they stuck with what they started out with. Carter said simply, “The Lord had been good to us and we love to do this, we promised God that we would never deviate from singing gospel music.”

Carter spoke of the tough times, as the Blind Boys made their way in the Jim Crow south, living in run-down hotels or rooming houses, and not able to find a decent place to eat, as they toured around. Add to the problems of being an African American in that environment, the additional problems of being blind. Yet Carter remains incredibly upbeat. He said, “I don’t mind being blind, it doesn’t bother me at all. I’m happy. I can do just about anything anybody else can do except see.” Carter came to see that his singing was a calling, a job given to him by God. Once he realized that, he says, he never complained again! “I guess it [a calling to sing] just came from up above, from him. After he told me that, you he just gave me peace, man. I just felt peace. That’s all I can say.”

This incredible positive approach to life, this defiant faith, despite life’s difficulties and trials, is something which comes across strongly in both the Blind Boys’ live performances and albums. Take the recently released I’ll Find a Way. The vibe all the way through, both lyrically and musically, is very positive. It’s based on a solid trust in God, who, for the Blind Boys, is always there, is always the rock no matter what life may throw at you.

Rainbow in the Cloud is a good example: “When it looked like the sun wouldn’t shine any more, God put a rainbow in the cloud.” That being the case, “I’ll find a way to carry it on,” they sing on I’ll find a Way. All this based on a solid faith in the underpinning goodness of God, which the album unashamedly and joyfully proclaims:

“Since I found you my whole life has changed
Since I found you, Lord, my life ain’t the same.” (I’ve Been Searching).

The Blind Boys’ approach to life is expressed simply in Take Your Burden to the Lord: “If you trust and never doubt, he will surely bring you out.” What we might need to be “brought out” of is exemplified in this verse of the song:

“If your mother dead and gone,And you’re sitting here all alone
And your burden seems so hard for you to bear
But if you be true
God will surely bring you through
Take your burdens to the Lord and leave them there.”

This dogged faith in God in the midst of trials get further expression in the excellent cover of Dylan’s Every Grain of Sand: “In the fury of the moment I can see the Master’s hand.” In the rich traditional harmonies and Vernon’s fine production, grace moves throughout. The Blind Boys, who have faced more hardship than most of us, remind us of the value of thankfulness and simple trust in the face of adversity. As one of the current line-up Ricky McKinnie recently said, “Our disability doesn’t have to be a handicap. It’s not about what you can’t do. It’s about what you do. And what we do is sing good gospel music.” That’s an attitude to life worth cultivating.