"Let My Love Open the Door...
to your heart"
Dr. Jones, circa 2000
Friends…when you’re down…when you are hurting… lonely or in despair for any reason… do two things. First: read the Psalms, any of Davids. Keep reading them until you find one that speaks to your pain. Then read it aloud. Let it be your lament. Cry it. Christ did just this in his moments of deepest pain.
During my second stint at University, I had a professor of Western Civilization who was pretty old in 1999. He must’ve been in his mid 70’s and as is common, at the start of our first class he told us a little about himself, but the depths and sincerity of his sharing were totally uncommon, and totally endearing. As a Marine, he’d fought in the devastating battles of the Korean war and he went on to discuss how that as a young man, war had imparted to him the knowledge of good and evil and that he’d come away from it with the additional knowledge that all was vanity, so, as he put it, he “chose to live as a vagabond” for a time. Remembering him now, he reminds me of a character right out of a Kurt Vonnegut novel. Over the course of that semester he would often pause to emphasize the toll “civilization” had taken on humanity in terms of lives lost, lives enslaved, lives wasted… In his own life he had undoubtedly witnessed brutality and indifference and greed. Dared to hope and had hopes dashed… He had dared to carry on and achieved a title which most would categorize as prestigious but which he seemed to take as seriously as his automobile, an old VW Bug. It was a beat up yellow beetle with a giant band aid magnet slapped on the driver’s side door, and coupled with its reluctantly collared driver, you knew it was a middle finger to the expectations of “the bourgeoisie”. His old bluejeans and yellowed white sneakers were another way by which he signaled to his fellow academics that he did not entirely comply. He was a little man with a deep southern American drawl and occasionally, without warning, mid-lecture, his blue eyes would glaze over into that thousand yard stare you hear about. Sometimes he would return to form and sometimes… not. Generally, he had a quick wit and a working vocabulary which undoubtedly dwarfed the collective word-bank of the entire English department of that particular state university. Two times a week I would enter his class, slide into a chair in the back row and listen as he lectured on Carthage and Rome and Arnold J Toynbee, and Protagoras and the measure of all things: “Man!” He was fond of saying that. “Man is the measure of all things!” At the time, had I been a more keen student, I might have resented this philosophical assertion but I honestly did not track with him on that level. I was mostly busy scribbling down dates, underlining paragraphs in a text book I would never read, and trying to stay awake. It was, however, clear to me that my professor believed what he was professing here: “Man is the measure of all things!”, and more than just belief, he clearly felt deeply the pain of what he was saying… and it was true anyway. “Man is the measure of all things!”
Somehow I was able to glean from this and other assertions that my History professor was a man who had been embittered by all the hardships and cruelty he had witnessed. Somehow I understood that he believed absolutely (so absolutely that he felt he “knew”) that there was no God. All the tells of this observation are more than I can recall but I remember knowing myself, that Dr. Jones was a devout atheist, if not a disappointed one. He had done the work of study and found God utterly absent from the scenes of Western Civilization. Hell, he had lived much of it, and yes, hell was just the right word if such a place existed which it absolutely did not. I remember observing in myself this strange feeling of oppression in the wake of his nihilistic outbursts. But I also remember feeling endeared to him. He was a normal man in that he was a mixed bundle of experiences and coping mechanisms. He was remarkable in that his bundle was much larger than mine and his coping mechanisms much more finely tuned. Thinking back on the stupidity which has encumbered me for much of my life, I now see that ignorance and yes, stupid willful indifference has at times served me as a protective force field. That the Lord saw fit to allow me to bumble around nearly two decades of my life, weighted down by a devastatingly heavy suit of stainless stupid has undoubtedly saved me from the deluding intellectual pursuits which many a smart lad has found himself well equipped to undertake. Had I cared enough to want to share in Dr. Jones’ begrudgingly held empowerment, I might have tried and succeeded in finding myself to be “the measure of all things!” Instead I just half listened and occasionally enjoyed hearing history recounted by a brilliant story teller. Dr. Jones had nearly all of the key ingredients to be the best sort of story teller. I say nearly because there is one element which cannot be lacking from any top tier raconteur: love for the listener. Don’t agree? Run down a quick list of the people you regularly have to listen to (friends, family, teachers, preachers…) and I think you’ll find that knowledge of their love for you is a common theme among your absolute favorite speakers. Now recall the bedtime stories of your childhood... Would these memories be nearly as special lacking the love which brought them to your bedside? Additionally, selfless love is not just personal, it’s thematic and built in to the sort of myth and fable which lasts the centuries. The many ways in which love and truth are inexorably intertwined I will relegate to a discussion for another time except to point out that my armor of stupidity could have been easily pierced by love, thereby allowing any attached truth to be shared. I’m suddenly reminded of these words often spoken by an old preacher I know: “They don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care…”
“Regardless!” as many a high school math teacher is fond of stating as they begin a new sentence, Dr. Jones did wield his knowledge and language with a smart, whimsical, devil may care charisma of the sort which implied a rare wisdom that only hardship and scores of years can bequeath, and which was far more engaging than any of the other lecturers I had to sit under that semester… and had I believed for one second that he loved me enough to tell me the unabashed truth… as i said before, I might just have listened, and taken his mantra to heart. Now, imagine my surprise when he did just that. I arrived late on the last day of class to take Dr. Jones’ final exam. I was a little late because after having dropped my No.2 pencil from above my ear while driving to campus, and bending over to pick it up, I barely tapped the bumper of a lady stopped in front of me at the light. A wealthy lady whose name and business I still know but will not utter. A lady who proceeded to call the police and who collected $500 from me based on a fraudulent insurance claim… and then never even bothered to have the “scratch” buffed out… I digress. Suffice it to say I missed my planned morning cram session and walked into class late and flustered. I remember walking into the room, nervous to be a bit late and relieved to find the exams had not been passed out yet. I sat down, probably exaggeratedly heavy in my chair. Dr. Jones stated that the exam would be starting shortly as he would pass them out after he’d solicited any questions. None came. He placed a stack of exams at the head of each row and instructed that they be passed back until we each had the copy. Once this was done he thanked us for being attentive and hoped we all enjoyed the break between semesters joking that the local pub owner was looking forward to putting a nice down payment on a new car for his third wife, and then, rather suddenly he diverted his casual farewell address with these words: “Hey class, I want you to listen up for a second…Listen to me class… Listen kids…” He shook his head defiantly as if to stifle the tears that were suddenly visible in his eyes. They came anyway as he scanned the room unashamed, making sure to look into as many of our gazes as dared look back into his. Standing there atop many years and many pains on legs that had made the Inchon landing in the Korean War and participated in probably the coldest campaign in American military history, Dr. Jones wept for another three long seconds before finally mustering enough command over his trembling voice to continue: “Class… If you’re ever in a dark place…” followed by five more seconds of suppressed sobs… “If you ever feel abandoned…” another long moment of composure... “Read the Psalms.”
… After a few more moments of silence, he began to recount some of his times of hardship in war and in travel, and he shared how he had somehow been supernaturally comforted by the words of those scriptures. “Take them and speak them as your own” he said. “It will help you.” He then turned from those words and went and sat at his desk. No one made a sound. We all just sat there in silence, reflecting on what had just happened. Slowly, incrementally, we remembered our exams and the sound of pencils filling in bubbles began in earnest, but I remember just sitting there… very near tears myself. Twenty years old and no stranger to abandonment, and loneliness, and darkness… I sat there and and looked at that man behind the desk, who, for all his professing to the contrary, let his love for us, open the door to his heart and ours for just long enough to tell us the truth that day… a truth which resonated in himself on a level more deeply and more profoundly than he could understand… yet he dared to call it truth anyway. Did I mention earlier that love is brave? To this day, his gesture, his last little story there on the last day of class, it is one of the most powerful and impactful that I have ever heard. Yes, Dr. Jones was a top tier Raconteur after all.
I’m remembering now that I began this piece by stating that there are two things which you can do to stave off despair. These two things should be done in the order I have discussed them so, to recap: first, you pray the Psalms, and secondly (drum-roll please), you sing. Now, addressing those of you who will be tempted to tell yourselves that you can’t sing… yes you can. You can and you should. You should look at yourself in the mirror and sing. Try not to smile at yourself as you sing the words to “Let my love open the door” by Pete Townsend. If you simply cannot force yourself to do this it is probably a failure of the imagination. Not to worry, I have more help in this regard… voilà! Tip 2a: watch other people sing with the caveat that it can’t be anyone remotely famous or known widely for singing. You must be watching real, un-famous, un-extraordinarily talented people sing. Regular people like yourself but who have discovered the healing power of the sung word. The author of all of my favorite psalms understood the benefits of singing. That’s why he wrote them as songs! “Oh but he was no regular guy” you say… Not so fast! The little harp toting shepherd David, puny and full of songs as he was, was so unremarkable among even his own family that he was not considered worthy of a showing when the prophet Samuel came around looking for Gods anointed one. David knew loneliness and abandonment and darkness… and he found comfort in the songs he sang. True, he did have to first write them because The Illuminati hadn’t yet begun their mass distribution of great songs like “Let my love open the door”. I’m only half joking of course and of course modern music is largely wicked but I feel safe in recommending this one song. And to demonstrate how beautiful, joyful, and healing singing actually is, I have attached a montage of regular folks doing just that. Press play on the video below and then go ahead and try not to feel lighter… hopeful even. Cheers!