Music is song.
Music is life.
Music is escape.
Lately my escape has been twenty one pilots' new album Blurryface. One of the beauties of this band is that they are intentionally vague, in a way that leaves much of their lyrics up to interpretation. The band members are Christian, but they don't label their music as Christian, and they don't write music in an overtly Christian or religious way.
Different lines of that album speak to me at different times, depending on my context in life at the moment.
"They say stay in your lane, boy, lane, boy. But we go where we want to."
I've always felt a bit of pressure in the States to "stay in my lane". To fulfill the American Dream- go to college, get a job, marry, have 2.5 kids and a house in the 'burbs. But I think I deviated decidedly from the lane that society would've seen me in when I applied to YAGM. And what a crazy decision and what a life changing experience that's been already.
"I'm a goner, somebody catch my breath. I wanna be known by you."
I don't tend to feel very much emotion, as a general rule. But the Wednesday my fellow YAGMs and I left for O'Hare, I had so many feelings it felt like I couldn't breathe. The weight of my decision finally hit me, and for a few terrifying minutes I felt like a goner- that I was in for more than I could handle and that I wasn't going to make it. But as the van pulled away from that curb outside UChicago, I looked outside and saw the alumni team clustered there, waving and brushing away tears as they held each other. All of a sudden I was struck with the sudden realization that they were there for me, that they were family I never knew I had. And I looked around the van at my country-mates and knew they were also family and that this great network of families would be there to catch me when I fell, to breath for me when I couldn't.
And then there's my host community at Tanjombato, Antananarivo, a community I still don't know. But I do know that I want to be known by them, and to know them in return.
"But I'm not good with directions and I hide behind my mouth. I'm a pro at imperfections and I'm best friends with my doubt."
Something I struggle with is following God's direction in my life... I'm still figuring out this whole Christianity thing and sometimes I use that as an excuse to hide behind questions. Doubts about a lot of things run rampant in my mind, least of all my own capabilities to be successful in Mada. I'm acutely aware of my own imperfections, of the imperfections in the system and in our world.
"Don't trust a perfect person and don't trust a song that's flawless."
I'm reminded of an article my pastor once shared with me- in it, the author basically says that the beauty of Christianity is that we are never expected to be perfect. In fact, we are fully accepted as inherently flawed and broken people. There is no way we can ever be perfect, but we are never expected to be.
On our first Sunday in Lovasoa,Antsirabe our country coordinator (Pr. Kirsten) arranged for us to meet with some professional Malagasy musicians. We were to collaborate some Malagasy-American songs to perform for Bishop Eaton of the ELCA when she visited later that week. We could barely communicate, but we put together three songs: a Malagasy lullaby, an arrangement of 'I'll Fly Away', and The Lion Sleeps Tonight. And our songs were not perfect, and they were not flawless, not by anyone's standards. But it was beautiful. And it was enough.
"I know my soul's freezing; hell's hot for good reason, so please take me."
Maybe freezing isn't the perfect term, but my heart has been hardened to others- maybe by society, maybe by my own doing, who knows...but I am not very in tune to those outside of myself and my small circle of friends and family. And that's a big part of why I'm here. I don't mean to say that Madagascar is hell (far from it). Instead, this line means to me something along the lines of the refiner's fire, as well as the process of going through that fire in order to come out of it more finished than we were before. And Mada has plenty of "fire" in terms of difficult topics and complicated situations to chew on and think over while we're living in the middle of it all.
Please take me-- In my mind this is a prayer, a plea to God to take me where I need to go, to give me the words when my Malagasy fails me, to direct my eyes to where I need to see, to open my ears when I need to listen, to soften my heart where it has been hardened.
"Though I'm weak and beaten down, I'll slip away into the sound."
We're only a week into orientation here in Madagascar, and we've only begun to dissect some of the bigger issues. There's poverty, colonialism, the pervasiveness of western values/language/ideals/etcetera, environmental justice, cultural differences, the list goes on. Though we've only scratched the surface, at times I've been left feeling beaten down and weak with the massiveness of these questions we've started to wrestle with.
I'll slip away into the sound: my escape is music. That's always held true but it has become even more so here. When I'm lost and feeling horribly out of place in Malagasy church services, I can always sing the hymns and join my voice in with the beautiful harmonies the congregation creates. When the YAGMs were putting together a few songs with the Malagasy musicians for Bishop Eaton, we couldn't communicate at all-- but it wasn't necessary. The music was enough.
And finally, sometimes I escape into the comforts of listening to my American music. There are times when I can't bring myself to read the Bible or to pray, and in those times music has become my scripture and my prayer.
"The ghost of you is close to me."
Sometimes I forget this. I need an occasional reminder that we have been given the Holy Spirit to stay close to us. To guide us with a gentle hand on our backs, to breathe life into us when we are weary and beaten down. To open our ears to the music that bears us up, our hearts to the love that surrounds us, our eyes to the beauty that is around us, and our minds to the things that challenge us.
Tools for worship in Madagascar: Bible, Malagasy hymnal, English translation, & individual communion cup
View of the countryside from the hill we hiked just outside of the city of Antsirabe...
The view of our home from across the rice fields, right before sunset.
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