Pacing the Cage

Bruce Cockburn has written many brilliant songs, but the one that is on my mind tonight is “Pacing the Cage” (1996, The Charity of the Night). He captures humanity’s angst well. Who can’t relate to this song in some way? We long for something more than this cage in which we find ourselves; we’ve lived too long and want to escape. I could extemporize for a while about this song, but Cockburn's poetry is best read without comment. Meditate upon these words and see what they say to you.

Pacing the Cage

(Listen to the rhythms of the song here.)

Sunset is an angel weeping
Holding out a bloody sword
No matter how I squint I cannot
Make out what it's pointing toward
Sometimes you feel like you've lived too long
Days drip slowly on the page
You catch yourself
Pacing the cage

I've proven who I am so many times
The magnetic strip's worn thin
And each time I was someone else
And every one was taken in
Hours chatter in high places
Stir up eddies in the dust of rage
Set me to pacing the cage

I never knew what you all wanted
So I gave you everything
All that I could pillage
All the spells that I could sing
It's as if the thing were written
In the constitution of the age
Sooner or later you'll wind up
Pacing the cage

Sometimes the best map will not guide you
You can't see what's round the bend
Sometimes the road leads through dark places
Sometimes the darkness is your friend
Today these eyes scan bleached-out land
For the coming of the outbound stage
Pacing the cage
Pacing the cage

Songwriter: Bruce Cockburn

Published by © Warner/Chappell Music, Inc.

Chained to the Rhythm

I have a confession: I like one of Katy Perry’s songs. “Chained to the Rhythm” is her latest single and she debuted the song on the Grammy Awards Show. Why do I like this song? The message of the song is aimed at the average person in North American culture, and the message is that we should no longer be content with the things that previously made us happy. The white picket fence, enough drinks to keep us comfortably numb, and our favourite songs to keep us dancing and distracted should not be the way to the good life. Simply putting on “rose colored glasses” and pretending that all will be well is not going to solve the problems of the world. It reminds me of another song, from another time, from another artist: “It will all get back to normal if we put our nation first. But the trouble with normal is it always gets worse.” (Bruce Cockburn, “The Trouble with Normal”)

The bridge of the song features Skip Marley and suggests that it is time to “Break down the walls to connect, inspire.” Yes, I can concur with those sentiments. He then begins to speak about rioting. Is that the solution? Surely in every culture, riots should be a last resort and they must always be peaceful. Martin Luther King, Jr. led what might be called riots; but it was always his desire that they remain peaceful. These protests have long stood as some of the most effective in history.

“Chained to the Rhythm” is designed to be a “wake-up call” for all of us. The artists of our culture have often provided a prophetic role. The solutions remain for other prophets to proclaim.

Chained To The Rhythm
(Written by Katy Perry, Max Martin, Sia Furler, Ali Payami, Skip Marley)

(Listen to the song while you read the lyrics.)

Are we crazy?
Living our lives through a lens
Trapped in our white picket fence
Like ornaments
So comfortable, we're living in a bubble, bubble
So comfortable, we cannot see the trouble, trouble
Aren't you lonely?
Up there in utopia
Where nothing will ever be enough
Happily numb
So comfortable, we're living in a bubble, bubble
So comfortable, we cannot see the trouble, trouble

(Aha)
So put your rose-colored glasses on
And party on

Turn it up, it's your favorite song
Dance, dance, dance to the distortion

Turn it up, keep it on repeat
Stumbling around like a wasted zombie, yeah
We think we're free (Aha)
Drink, this one's on me
We're all chained to the rhythm
To the rhythm
To the rhythm
Turn it up, it's your favorite song
Dance, dance, dance to the distortion
Turn it up, keep it on repeat
Stumbling around like a wasted zombie, yeah
We think we're free (Aha)
Drink, this one's on me
We're all chained to the rhythm
To the rhythm
To the rhythm

Are we tone deaf?
Keep sweeping it under the mat
Thought we could do better than that
I hope we can
So comfortable, we're living in a bubble, bubble
So comfortable, we cannot see the trouble, trouble

(Aha)
So put your rose-colored glasses on
And party on

Turn it up, it's your favorite song
Dance, dance, dance to the distortion
Turn it up, keep it on repeat
Stumbling around like a wasted zombie, yeah
We think we're free (Aha)
Drink, this one's on me
We're all chained to the rhythm
To the rhythm
To the rhythm

Turn it up, it's your favorite song
Dance, dance, dance to the distortion
Turn it up, keep it on repeat
Stumbling around like a wasted zombie, yeah
We think we're free (Aha)
Drink, this one's on me
We're all chained to the rhythm
To the rhythm
To the rhythm

It is my desire
Break down the walls to connect, inspire, ay
Up in your high place, liars
Time is ticking for the empire
The truth they feed is feeble
As so many times before
They greed over the people
They stumbling and fumbling
And we about to riot
They woke up, they woke up the lions
(Woo!)

Turn it up, it's your favorite song
Dance, dance, dance to the distortion
Turn it up (turn it up, turn it up), keep it on repeat
Stumbling around like a wasted zombie (like a wasted zombie), yeah
We think we're free (Aha)
Drink, this one's on me
We're all chained to the rhythm
To the rhythm
To the rhythm

It goes on and on and on
It goes on and on and on
It goes on and on and on
'Cause we're all chained to the rhythm

Songbird

- by Lance Odegard

She’d been flitting at the back and along the sides of the congregation for weeks—
her calculated late arrivals working like camouflage.

At the back, on the tables, she tends her many plastic bags (the smaller bags inside the larger bags, each tied with strong, tidy knots)—the evidence of a quiet resolve, the gathering of a mobile nest.

She lives in layers, under multiple coats. She takes up less space than her body accounts for. Pressed flat, she has been thinned into near invisibility—turn her sideways and she might disappear.

We talk after the service, usually about my kids, sometimes about her week. She says most nights she sleeps in the library’s indoor lobby, sitting upright, perched in a chair. She whispers her words, not intending them to travel. They must be held like the small feathers my kids find at the park; one careless puff and they’re gone.

Months ago, I asked for her name but she wouldn’t give it. She says she never tells anyone her name. Who or what had turned it against her, I wondered—
and what is a person without a name?

Today, I had a name for her.
Songbird. 
Her quiet eyes blinked and she asked, why did you give me that name? 
Because I think you like music and you remind me of a bird.

It was a clumsy answer, and it didn’t tell the whole truth. But she perceives the smallest of intentions. Shifting her feet, she said, You can call me by that name.


Lance Odegard (MCS, Regent College 2011) is a pastor with Artisan Church in Vancouver, BC. Lance has particular interest in the intersections of faith and art, pastoral ministry and poetry, and neighbourhoods and neighbours. Lance and his wife Aimee live in the Strathcona neighbourhood with their four children.
http://world.regent-college.edu/arts-theology/songbird

Pacing The Cage

(Bruce Cockburn - 24 June 1995. Philadelphia.) (Watch him perform this song here.)

Sunset is an angel weeping
Holding out a bloody sword
No matter how I squint I cannot
Make out what it's pointing toward
Sometimes you feel like you live too long
Days drip slowly on the page
You catch yourself
Pacing the cage

I've proven who I am so many times
The magnetic strip's worn thin
And each time I was someone else
And every one was taken in
Powers chatter in high places
Stir up eddies in the dust of rage
Set me to pacing the cage

I never knew what you all wanted
So I gave you everything
All that I could pillage
All the spells that I could sing
It's as if the thing were written
In the constitution of the age
Sooner or later you'll wind up
Pacing the cage

Sometimes the best map will not guide you
You can't see what's round the bend
Sometimes the road leads through dark places
Sometimes the darkness is your friend
Today these eyes scan bleached-out land
For the coming of the outbound stage
Pacing the cage
Pacing the cage

The longer I live the more I can relate to this song by Bruce Cockburn. In this world of ever changing careers, values, and practises, I sometimes feel like "I've proven who I am so many times, the magnetic strip's worn thin." We can never rest on yesterday's successes. That holds true for folk-singers, scientists, authors, bloggers, pastors, and church planters. "Sometimes the best map will not guide you; you can't see what's round the bend. Sometimes the road leads through dark places; sometimes the darkness is your friend." All too often I catch myself pacing the cage.

Jeremiah knew these emotions as he wrote Lamentations 3:1-8,

I am the man who has seen affliction
Because of the rod of His wrath.
He has driven me and made me walk
In darkness and not in light.
Surely against me He has turned His hand
Repeatedly all the day.
He has caused my flesh and my skin to waste away,
He has broken my bones.
He has besieged and encompassed me with bitterness and hardship.
In dark places He has made me dwell,
Like those who have long been dead.
He has walled me in so that I cannot go out;
He has made my chain heavy.
Even when I cry out and call for help,
He shuts out my prayer.

It is unclear whether Jeremiah had truly been shut out by God. More likely, Jeremiah is expressing how he feels God has treated him and is prophetically speaking of how God will one day abandon his Son, Jesus, on the cross. Later, Jeremiah seems to realize that God is more gracious and loving and attentive than Jeremiah had made him out to be. In 3:21-26 he says,

Yet this I call to mind
and therefore I have hope:
Because of the LORD’s great love we are not consumed,
for his compassions never fail.
They are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
I say to myself, “The LORD is my portion;
therefore I will wait for him.”
The LORD is good to those whose hope is in him,
to the one who seeks him;
it is good to wait quietly
for the salvation of the LORD.

So, just as we cannot rest on yesterday's successes, we must use the best map we have even if it is insufficient to the task of guiding us, and we must strike out to where the road leads even if it is through dark places. As we go, we can take a fresh measure of God's great love and his compassions; for they are new every morning and made fresh each day for every one of us. "The Lord is my portion; therefore I will wait for him. The Lord is good to those whose hope is in him, to the one who seeks him; it is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord."

Appreciation

Notes of appreciation to the Vancouver Police from the people of Vancouver.

Click on the picture for a larger image.

My Beat

Past the derelict mattress
and the overgrown pavement
over the tracks
and through the hole in the fence
Past graffiti-bright buildings
and the junkyard alarm bell
and the screaming police cars
and it's all present tense
It's my beat
In my new town
Past the drunk woman reeling
with her bag of provisions
Down through the tunnel
with the stink-fuming bus
On to the bike path
where it's something like freedom
and the wind in my earring whispers
Trust what you must
It's my beat
In my new town
Ancient and always
The wheel's ever whirling
Today I'm riding
Tomorrow I walk
Step through forever
into this very moment
The heart is pumping
and the heart rocks
It's my beat
In my new town

Bruce Cockburn: For the most part it’s pretty literal. I moved to Montreal last March and it’s about me riding around Montreal on my bike. On another level it’s about being in the moment, appreciating the here and now. - from "Ready For "Anything" From Bruce Cockburn", Gavin, 11 December 2001.

Written about a town 5000 km away it still feels like "my beat" in Vancouver. I think I will go out and check my beat.