Wilco on a Sunday

This morning is a cup of coffee and the new Wilco. I like Wilco. It's smart stuff, both musically and lyrically. The new cd, Wilco, the Album, is perhaps more modest than their previous cd's. It doesn't have some of the jagged, experimental edges of their earlier work. But that makes it more immediately inviting to me. And so, coffee and Wilco this morning is a pleasurable thing.

Wilco refuses the happy face, the easy ending. Jeff Tweedy sings often with tongue planted firmly in cheek, rolling around in the irony of it all. The title track to the cd offers comfort to world weary listeners. Wilco cares, Tweedy sings, and will offer you a sonic shoulder to cry on--in my case comfort from an itunes download.

Wilco touches for me that feeling related to the complexity of life. Whatever it is we think we're up to gets lost too easily in the thick and bewildering nature of things. Even the offering of one's life for another, dying "alone like Jesus," gets lost in the sweep of generations and the numbing pursuits of daily life. We forget. The grand gesture is lost.

Still, there is somthing about bringing all this brokenness together in one place--this refusal of the easy happy. The fact that all of us are one wing short of being able to fly throws us all together under the same aching need. And there is hope there, in the commonness of our ache and pain.

I've been reading Jurgen Moltmann this week, preparing for my comprehensive exams which are coming up sooner than I need them to be. Moltmann sees the world as the history of God's suffering. He is following the minority theological tradition that begins not with a catlogue of God's attributes, but with the passion of God, his willingness to suffer and his openness to creation. Sorrow is the mark of God's evelasting love, the only place we can accurately attribute to God all power.

So, the paths of my reflection crossed over coffee in the Wilco song, Everlasting, Everything. In all the irony, Wilco still sings of hope.

Everything alive must die
Every building built to the sky will fall
Don't try to tell me my
Everlasting love is a lie

Everlasting, everything
Oh, nothing could mean anything at all

Every wave that hits the shore
Every book that I adore
Gone like a circus, gone like a troubadour
Everlasting love forever more

Everlasting, everything
Oh, nothing could mean anything at all

Oh, I know this might sound sad
But everything goes both good and the bad
It all adds up and you should be glad
Everlasting love is all you have

Everlasting, everything
Oh, nothing could mean anything at all
Everlasting, everything
Oh, nothing could mean anything at all