#11 - The Inexplicable

by James Baker

A friend recently sent me a link to a YouTube video of a group of musicians that were playing for a relatively small gathering.  The group included Elvis Costello, Sheryl Crow, Neko Case, and some guy named Jesse Winchester.  In the video, Jesse sings a solo folk-ish love tune called ‘Sham-a-ling-dong-ding’ with nothing but his acoustic while the other artists look on.  I have watched this video at least a dozen times, even though the music doesn’t particularly capture me.  What captures me is the reaction.  It is fascinating to watch the other musicians, as well as the panning crowd shots.  Some are slightly swaying, but for the most part, everyone is stone-still.  You can see it in their eyes; they are taken to another place.  There is some sort of worship going on, but not of Jesse.  It is through Jesse.  Near the end of the song, Neko Case (another indie artist) has a tear running down her face.  When Jesse finishes, the place erupts…not so much a raucous applause, but more like an exhale.  I find the whole thing to be absolutely beautiful.  Even though the music doesn’t speak to me, the experience does.  I know that feeling.  I just can’t explain it.

For one friend of mine it is geese.  Not the snarky domestic ones you find in city parks, but real ones.  The kind that fly.  This crazy mix of awkward and grace.  These bulbous creatures that look to have all the fluidity of cold oatmeal, yet pound the sky with force and rhythm; honks that are both ridiculous and stirring.  For another friend it is a U2 concert.  Another it is tangling with a redfish.  My wife can be absolutely consumed with fear, but when she takes in the chocolate murk of Galveston surf lapping the shore, her soul finds rest.

For me, it’s different things.  Sometimes it’s watching my kids laugh.  Or sleep.  It can be a well-told story like Shawshank, or even the mindless brilliance of The Office’s Creed Bratton.  Sometimes – and I know this is weird – it can be an abandoned, run-down barn, or burned-out warehouse. Or like the time I was swimming with my boys in Barton Springs in Austin, a natural spring that rarely gets above 70 degrees.  I dove in, opened my eyes, and the deep blue-green that lay beneath that surface haunts me still.  It is how I picture eternity, as impossible as that is.  Sometimes it is merely sadness, which I find holds a beauty all its own.  Whatever it is, it is fleeting – gone before I can fully appreciate it – and almost never reproducible. It is a shadow.

A shadow.  That is what these sublime treasures are.  They are a glimpse into something richer, yet elusive and without construct.  Perhaps a more talented writer could paint the picture, but whatever words I can muster all fall painfully short of describing these times that pierce my soul.  It is these times – more than doctrine or theology – when I know that God is real.  Real, and wholly inexplicable.  Because if I could explain them, they wouldn’t be worth writing about.