People say we monkee around

One of the mysteries about words and music is that you can listen to a song for 58 years and, one day, hear something you hadn’t heard before.

Wandering around the house one morning, I inexplicably began singing “Theme from ‘The Monkees’” to myself — you know, “Here we come, walking down the street, we get the funniest looks from everyone we meet …”

That song has been around since the fall of 1966, but this time a line in the chorus gave me a nudge, sinking in with a smile:

“We’re too busy singing to put anybody down.”

Isn’t that just the way it is with music? You can be mad as hell and ready to blow if you see one more political ad for that crazy person, but put on some music, and you’re too busy singing to put anybody down.

Music is a unifying force. Every so often you’ll hear an irate musician demand that someone stop playing his or her songs at their political rallies, missing the obvious — that the songs reached across the aisle and made a connection. Instead of cutting that connection, there’s an opportunity for understanding — “Tell me what a person like you, who stands for stuff that I can’t, heard in that song, and maybe we can find a way to coexist in something more like peace.”

It’s a cliche to make fun of the cliche of people sitting around the campfire singing “Kumbaya,” but it’s a basic fact that when you’re singing “Kumbaya” or any other song, you’re too busy singing to put anybody down.

And hey, hey, that’s a good thing.

All the Law and Prophets

“Love your neighbor as yourself.”

And who is my neighbor? Everyone I see. This little blue dot in the universe is my neighborhood, and everyone who lives on it is my neighbor.

“Love your neighbor as yourself.” Well, some days I don’t love myself very much, so it’s easy to “love” my neighbor in the same way I “love” myself — that screwup? that fool? Oh yeah, I’m surrounded by screwups and fools almost as bad as me. And those monsters who want to run my life and blow up their enemies? Oh yeah, I “love” them to pieces.

I guess that’s the reason for “the first and greatest commandment.” On the days when “Love your neighbor as yourself” means feeling the same about others as I do about the fool in the mirror, I can lean on the law that says “love God, the God of love,” and if I can’t muster the energy to love those humans, at least I can ask God to shine His infinite love through this broken vessel.

Some days I look around in frustration and think, “What the heck am I doing?” If I’m thinking straight (which can be a 50/50 proposition), I hit the reset and reboot button on my attitude, turn to the next person I meet, and say, “Hello, neighbor.”

I know the Author

My friend Dan commented about yesterday’s blog post about nothing: “When any of us don’t have much to say, it probably means it is time to listen.”

Listen. What a great thought.

What do you hear when you stop and listen? I’ll tell you what I hear.

I find myself back in the moment, 15 months ago, when my life changed and my life with my love ended — that morning when I had been reading out loud to her, as she had asked me to do in the final moments — when, stunned and confused and having trouble processing the moment, my eyes rested on what I had been reading to her:

Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

It finally sank in then, and ever since, when I find myself at a loss for words, and if I remember (as Dan did) that it’s probably time to listen, those are always among the first words I hear.

I don’t know why I walked into Hobby Lobby a few days later, wondering what to do with my life now that it was all different. When I saw the little plaque that said, “I trust the next chapter because I know the author,” it took me a minute to see the point, but when I did, I got out my wallet because it had to go on my wall.

That’s where my mind goes when I stop to listen. “Tell the story again,” is what I hear. “Someone who needs to hear it may not have heard it before.”

And in telling the story again, I find I needed to hear it again, too.