Land of the Living: The Long Way Home
Four years ago today, I heard Matthew Perryman Jones’ stunning masterpiece Land of the Living for the first time.
Before we go any further, go get it!
I'll wait ...
Ok. Now that you've picked it up and it's playing in the background, we can continue.
I had met Matthew about three months before the day I heard this masterpiece, when his performance of an Emmylou Harris song in church broke my heart completely open. I was going to see him play a show in a few days, and figured it would only be polite to have actually heard his music before I saw him again! So, on a beautiful spring day much like today, I went for a drive for that specific purpose.
I had no idea that my entire life was about to change.
First of all, the moment this record began, I felt like I had fallen into an oil painting. As it played, it was as if was being carried along in a vibrantly rich river of sound.
It took my breath away.
What follows was the first of my rambling posts that have now been my daily work for four years.
The first of my endless words of healing and discovery that have not only completely changed my life - the sole purpose of their existence - but have apparently spoken to hearts far and wide.
What stuns me most about the words I wrote that day is that I knew the power of that moment when I was in it.
I knew that a string of 13 words in a song I didn’t even understand had permanently altered my life ... And I was absolutely right.
My heart knows the truth of things.
Those words permanently changed my understanding and experience of myself in the world, and truly did shift my entire life into a new key.
I also took that dare those words speak of, and walk in its direction to this day.
Years after the day that string of words began my journey, I was stunned to discover another string of words in the same song.
The title of my blog, in fact - The Long Way Home - named for another song from this same soul. A song that came years later, the truest I've ever encountered. Its resonance was so deep that it was in its lines of melody and lyric that I was first able to glimpse the truth of what lives and breathes inside me. That moment of seeing the inside of myself was so life-altering - and what I saw was so beautiful - that I doubted that it could possibly be real.
Then I remembered that he'd written me one of his extremely rare emails just a couple of weeks before, and he'd happened to say "Sometimes songs are simply mirrors."
Oh my goodness.
I could not believe those words were there all along ... In the very song that showed me the way home.
March 15, 2014
"I dare you to convince me that your love's a work of art."
These words struck me like lightning today. I'm not even sure what they mean in the context of the song they're in, but they struck a chord in me that instantly shifted my life into a new key.
Various parts of my story have left me with a deeply wounded sense of the value that my love has to other people. I've held a belief that not only would others not love me, a fear I think most of us harbor to some degree, but an even more painful belief, that they would not want me to love them.
A belief that my love was not only worthless to others, but was in fact repulsive.
That's a pretty hurtful place to live, particularly when you believe to the bottom of your soul that it's the truth and that it's where you'll spend your life. I've lived there for a very long time, and while the past several years have brought glimmers of light and healing to this place, hearing those words today felt like the string that can unravel the whole illusion.
They gave me a language and a beautiful picture and a challenge and a direction to walk to go about healing what's probably my heart's deepest wound. Such an incredible gift.
Thank you, Matthew, your check for this week's therapy will be in the mail!
This day of driving, contemplating, and singing was well-spent.