Hamilton, again. Except Burr.

You may think I am cheating because I've already blogged about Hamilton kind of but it's not cheating because I have been listening to the musical non-stop since then and so it's basically the only thing I have engaged--theologically or otherwise--in a week. It's playing in the background right now as I'm writing. And probably will be playing in the background (of my life) whenever you're reading this. Okay maybe not forever but at least the first time.

There's so much to be said about how much Hamilton has made me feel. (Like that time when there was a lyrical reference to The Last Five Years and you BETCHA I gasped and then cried.)

But! What I want to grab at this week is the profound sense of loss expressed by Aaron Burr. I know, I know, he's like the bad guy or whatever. But! In the first act, Burr (played beautifully by Leslie Odom, Jr.) sings "Wait For It." The first verse is about the married woman he has a relationship with. He can't really have her, because her husband is a British soldier. Whoops.

[Pro tip: go on Spotify and play this song. It'll help you to get where I'm coming from if you can hear the resignation in his voice, and then the rising to meet the anguish of the ensemble.]

He sings:

"Love doesn't discriminate
between the sinners and the saints
it takes and it takes and it takes
and we keep loving anyway.
We laugh and we cry
and we break
and we make our mistakes.
And if there's a reason I'm by her side
when so many have tried
then I'm willing to wait for it
wait for it wait for it."

The next verse is about the deaths of his parents, and so the chorus is altered slightly--and this is where the theologizing of his experience just leaps out of my speakers:

"Death doesn't discriminate
between the sinners and the saints
it takes and it takes and it takes
and we keep living anyway.
We rise and we fall
and we break
and we make our mistakes.
And if there's a reason I'm still alive
when everyone who loves me has died
then I'm willing to wait for it,
wait for it, wait for it."

This is what's hard about not ascribing to an "everything happens for a reason" kind of understanding of God, because we can't say "this death all around you is the direct work of God" and be satisfied with that explanation. Lutherans like myself are so easily able to say that God doesn't discriminate between the sinners and the saints because we know ourselves to be simultaneously sinner and saint! That's the mess of it. "We keep living, anyway. We rise, and we fall, and we break, and we make our mistakes." And God rises and falls with us.

And I cannot ignore the pronouns. We keep living anyway. We rise and we fall and we break and we make our mistakes. There's a recognition of the communal nature of this type of suffering, but then there's a deep loneliness in the return to the singular pronouns of "I'm still alive when everyone who loves me has died."

And I don't know how long he waits. Is that one of those "all questions answered at the pearly gates" kind of things? Because we all know I'm not there with that.

I wonder: is he waiting for a time when he can live a life not marked by loss? Living alongside his beloved partner and child(ren), not in secret, not in fear. Living into a new generation, less pre-occupied with the death of his own parents. After the war, after the revolution, not surrounded by fallen soldiers, all so young. I think Burr just wants to live a whole, whole life. And who among us can't identify with that?!

"Faithful Heights," Night Beds

This is a 14-minute set from NPR, that includes the song I want you to hear. Listen to the whole thing, if you've got 14 minutes to spare, of course. And then look up Night Beds on your music source of choice and listen to all of the songs that aren't in these 14 minutes. And, I hope, love them as I do.

I know you get lost sometimes, man.

Whenever you get lost, hold my hands.

Carry me through, Lord. Carry me through.

Lately, a few of us have been wondering to ourselves and out loud just what exactly it is that we're doing here. What is it to be a pastor? Why is it that we're on this grand four-year adventure to become pastors? We all have different answers to these questions and most of them are just more questions, frankly.

One of our internship goals is supposed to be to develop our pastoral identity. I was trying to explain to my mom what that even means, and struggled. Clearly I'm not checking off many boxes in this category at the moment.

And though many of us are interns right now, what that looks like is so varied. We fall in different places along many spectra -- between overwork and boredom, between excitement and fear, between assurance and doubt. 

We communicate with one another constantly, trying to figure out if what we're experiencing is "normal" or if it's unreasonable, or if it's just us that's the problem. This one of  the only ways we're surviving, I think--each other.

And that's when it hits me.

Someone has to be around to carry our deepest, most complicated stuff with us. Pastors do so many things, (that's something we're all learning on this internship adventure) and a lot of them are unremarkable -- leading meetings, copyediting bulletins, updating the Facebook page, etc. But a pastor can sit beside you and listen to that which you can never tell another living thing, and carry it in their heart in a way you cannot carry it on your own. 

And certainly ordination doesn't make that possible. We are reminded that ordination does not give us "magic fingers" for the eucharist, and so it most likely does not give us magic listening ears or carrying hearts. But we who are here on this journey to discover what it is to be "pastor" are developing such things. Many of us who are on this journey are already those who carry the sufferings of others on our own hearts in a way that feels abnormal. 

In the wake of the ineffably tragic massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School last week, many Americans -- not just pastors -- are finding themselves deeply, gut-wrenchingly, abnormally troubled. 

Are you? Do you well up with tears every time you see or hear anything related to the deaths of these children? I have found myself grieving in a way that I didn't even know I was capable of. I had to pull over my car when NPR reported on Monday the first funerals -- two little boys, one of whom has a twin sister who survived the tragedy. Tears are forming in my eyes now, just to type this. 

Why is this? What is it that has connected us to these people -- people we would not otherwise have ever known -- so deeply that we are weeping with them across the nation? 

And all weekend I thought about the pastors in and around Newtown who are caring for their congregations, their own families, their own selves -- where do they find those words, that strength? I wrote a letter to the Monsignor in Newtown -- ten of the children killed were from his parish -- and to the ELCA pastors closest to Newtown. It was the only thing I could think of that I could do, from here, to let those incredible humans know that the work they are doing is invaluable, and that we are all carrying them as best we can. 

There aren't words for these feelings -- all evidence to the contrary, in that I've just written a bunch of words. But these words are just words about how there aren't words. And where words fail, somehow there is something else that finds a way to communicate. There is holy, human spirit at work here. Making space for that spirit is, I suppose, why we do what we do.

There's a mountain here before me

And I'm gonna climb it with strength not my own

[God's] gonna meet me where the mountain beats me

And carry me through