Then take me disappearin' through the smoke rings of my mind,
Down the foggy ruins of time, far past the frozen leaves,
The haunted, frightened trees, out to the windy beach,
Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow.
Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free,
Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands,
With all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves,
Let me forget about today until tomorrow.
B. Dylan
"Praise be to the name of God for ever and ever;
wisdom and power are His.
He changes times and seasons;
He sets up kings and deposes them.
He gives wisdom to the wise
and knowledge to the discerning.
He reveals deep and hidden things;
He knows what lies in darkness,
and light dwells with Him.
4 comments:
Hi BB,
Did you see this?
http://www.starpulse.com/news/index.php/2007/09/26/bob_dylan_marks_yom_kippur_in_atlanta_/
gms+
I know he's been doing telethons for Chabad-Lubavitch for years so it makes sense that he would attend a service at the Atlanta branch of that organization. Here's what he's said about his faith in 1997 (and repeated for Rolling Stone along the same lines recently):
Here's the thing with me and the religious thing. This is the flat-out truth: I find the religiosity and philosophy in the music. I don't find it anywhere else. Songs like "Let Me Rest on a Peaceful Mountain" or "I Saw the Light" – that's my religion. I don't adhere to rabbis, preachers, evangelists, all of that. I've learned more from the songs than I've learned from any of this kind of entity. The songs are my lexicon. I believe the songs."
And he hasn't disavowed his Christian songs, he still sings them (and authorized their release in a new CD and DVD last year by Gospel singers). It's one of the big mysteries.
My guess is that he is privately a Messianic Believer, but it is a mystery. I'm not sure how he'll feel about his visit in Atlanta being made public, though.
And by the way, I don't disagree at all with what Dylan says in the quote. Any visitor to our cafe will see that I feel very much the same way, including this particular post. Sometimes the songs are the only place to go to. Thanks, Bob.
bb
Yep, I agree. And he has continue to use powerful images and ideas in his music that certainly sound like a belief in God, like this from Thunder on the Mountain:
"Thunder on the mountain rolling to the ground
Gonna get up in the morning walk the hard road down
Some sweet day I'll stand beside my king
I wouldn't betray your love or any other thing"
I love that "Some sweet day I'll stand beside my king..."
I realize that I'm really pushing it, but the last line "For the love of God, you ought to take pity on yourself," reminds me of Gerard Manley Hopkins' prayer: "My own heart let me more pity have on."
Anyway, I grateful of the music of Bob Dylan!
gms+
It is interesting, these contemporary non-religous songs. I've long contended that Jim Croce's "Time in a Bottle" is a love song to Jesus.
There never seems to be enough time to do the things that you want to do once you find them. I've looked around enough to know that you're the one that I want to go through time with.
If I had a box just for wishes and dreams that had never come true, the box would be empty except for the memory of how they were answered by you.
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