Two Weeks

The band known as The East Pointers just released an album called What We Leave Behind. On that album is a song to which many will be able to relate. It is called “Two Weeks” and deals with the emotions of leaving home to work at a job in a far-off province for “two weeks on” and “two weeks off.”

To most of us, the idea of working for a mere two weeks and having two weeks off from work sounds appealing. But, as the song-writers say, “Nobody warned me, nobody told me I’d leave there so broken, come back so lonely.” The reality of leaving a wife and family behind to find employment in another place is a necessity for many in Canada and particularly for those who live in economically depressed areas such as Newfoundland and the Maritimes (YYG is the Charlottetown airport code). The song goes on to speak of the losses felt from being away for two weeks. Marriages and relationships with children suffer in this situation, and depression and reliance on alcohol or drugs may also contribute to the loss of money, friends, and a future. The song is one person’s haunting account of a life lived in fragments - two weeks at a time.

The East Pointers is an up-and-coming band from whom we can expect to hear a lot more. The majority of their music is East-Coast Traditional Celtic fare that appeals to those with twitchy feet, who can’t wait to get up and dance. Their ballads are filled with a sense of mournfulness that will tug at the heart-strings of all. Watch for one of their shows at a venue near you. 

Two Weeks
(Words and music by T. Chaisson, K. Chaisson, J. Charron, G. Sampson)
(From the album, What We Leave Behind, http://eastpointers.ca) 

Monday morning minus 18
Another West Jet YYG to Calgary
I always knew she’d get used to me leaving someday

A lot less words now her tears have run dry
I can tell by the way she doesn’t hold me as tight
That she’s thinking maybe she’s better off alone

Nobody warned me
Nobody told me
I’d leave there so broken and come back so lonely
I’m killing my soul for the life that I’m leaving behind
Two weeks on
Two weeks off
My blood is wearing thin and my stomach’s in knots
Too much thinking about the time you’ve lost
When it’s two weeks on and two weeks off

I punch in hide the whiskey on my breathe
By the time the night comes I take whatever I can get
Blowing black gold money I shoulda sent home

Two more days and I’m east coast bound
I’ll be praying she’s there when the wheels touch down
Maybe there’s a job home that’ll keep me this time

Nobody warned me

Nobody told me

I’d leave there so broken and come back so lonely

I’m killing my soul for the life that I’m leaving behind

Two weeks on

Two weeks off

My blood is wearing thin and my stomach’s in knots

Too much thinking about the time you’ve lost

When it’s two weeks on and two weeks off 

Nobody warned me

Nobody told me

I’d leave there so broken and come back so lonely

I’m killing my soul for the life that I’m leaving behind

Two weeks on

Two weeks off

My blood is wearing thin and my stomach’s in knots

Too much thinking about the time you’ve lost

When it’s two weeks on and two weeks off 

Monday morning minus eighteen, another West Jet YYG to Calgary

(I am sending out a special thanks to CBC Music and to my daughter, Twila, for introducing me to this amazing band.)

  

Fortress Around Your Heart

Gordon Matthew Thomas Sumner is an English singer songwriter who has written hundreds of songs and has 16 Grammy awards. Most of us know him by the name, Sting. One of my favourite songs written by Sumner is this one, “Fortress Around Your Heart.” (Listen as you read these lyrics.)

Fortress Around Your Heart

Under the ruins of a walled city
Crumbling towers in beams of yellow light
No flags of truce, no cries of pity
The siege guns had been pounding through the night

It took a day to build the city
We walked through it's streets in the afternoon
As I returned across the fields I'd known
I recognised the walls that I once made

I had to stop in my tracks for fear
Of walking on the mines I'd laid

And if I've built this fortress around your heart
Encircled you in trenches and barbed wire
Then let me build a bridge
For I cannot fill the chasm
And let me set the battlements on fire

Then I went off to fight some battle
That I'd invented inside my head
Away so long for years and years
You probably thought, or even wished that I was dead

While the armies all are sleeping
Beneath the tattered flag we'd made
I had to stop in my tracks for fear
Of walking on the mines I'd laid

And if I've built this fortress around your heart
Encircled you in trenches and barbed wire
Then let me build a bridge
For I cannot fill the chasm
And let me set the battlements on fire

This prison has now become your home
A sentence you seem prepared to pay
It took a day to build the city
We walked through it's streets in the afternoon

As I returned across the lands I'd known
I recognised the fields where I'd once played

I had to stop in my tracks for fear
Of walking on the mines I'd laid

And if I've built this fortress around your heart
Encircled you in trenches and barbed wire
Then let me build a bridge
For I cannot fill the chasm
And let me set the battlements on fire

Words and Music by Gordon Matthew Sumner; Published by Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC

The song tells the story of a love relationship that flourished and was built to withstand the temptations and destructive forces of the world. It uses the metaphor of building castle walls, barbed wire, and land mines around the loved one to protect them and keep the world from harming them. But the song is now sung from the perspective of some time after the relationship has failed. Now, the battlements still stand and obstruct the lover from getting close to the woman he loved. There is a longing to once again approach her and pain in not being able to draw next to her. He must withdraw for fear of the danger of getting too close. Yet, there is still hope. The singer believes he will be able to build a bridge and once again draw near. He will set fire to the battlements that keep him away. Enjoy the rich poetry of this song as you listen to its melodic tone.

Climbing the Ladder

Calgary is a fast-paced city in which it is easy to do little more than work and sleep. Stephen Covey in his popular book, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, says,

It's incredibly easy to get caught up in an activity trap, in the busy-ness of life, to work harder and harder at climbing the ladder of success only to discover it's leaning against the wrong wall.1

I must constantly be looking to see if I am putting my energies in the correct places. I don't want to climb the ladder of success only to find that I have sacrificed my emotional health; my spiritual health; my family. Peter Scazzero speaks to this in his book Emotionally Healthy Spirituality. One of the things that he emphasises is "listening to the interruptions." When small or large interruptions happen, do we pay attention or hurry to get through them? Many times those interruptions may be just what God wants to use in our lives to get us out of our ladder-climbing routine long enough to grow emotionally and spiritually. Scazzero points out that sudden loss is one form of interruption. Losses remind us that we are not in control. Peter Scazzero says this about loss,

our culture does very poorly with loss, and especially church culture. The attitude is one of don't feel, don't talk about it. Or stuff it and numb it; medicate yourself in some way. And that's why we love our addictions; everything from shopping, to food, to drugs, to alcohol, you name it. But there is something about it because when we go through loss and grief, we lose control. And who wants to be out of control? We don't.2

What are the interruptions in my life right now? To what do I need to pay attention? What opportunities for growth are right in front of me? Will I pay attention or keep climbing the ladder?

Works cited:
Covey, Stephen R. Seven Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change. Simon and Schuster, 1989.
Scazzero, Peter. Emotionally Healthy Spirituality. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2006.

1 (Covey 1989, 89)
2 (Scazzero 2006) sermon series.

The Second Coming

In 1919 William Butler Yeats wrote a rather dark poem that matched the mood of the time subsequent to the end of World War I. Yes, there was celebration of the end of the war but there was also a sense that something had changed. A darkness had crept into the world.

The Second Coming
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?1

This poem continues to be quoted and referenced and still has great relevance today. In 1996 Rolling Stone reporter Will Dana stated, “We used to think the center couldn’t hold,” referring to Yeat’s poem, “All of a sudden, there doesn’t seem to be a center at all.” We live in a “centreless” world. Such is the cultural experience of living in a world stipulated without any reference to the transcendent.2

This is what Nietzsche anticipated in 1882, in his book, The Gay Science, when he wrote,

“Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon?” Nietzsche anticipated that with the decline of Christianity it will seem for a time as if all things had become weightless or without center. Nietzsche continues, “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we, the murderers of all murderers, console ourselves? That which was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet possessed has bled to death under our knives—who will wipe this blood off us? With what water could we purify ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we need to invent?”3

Must the prophetic words of Nietzche continue to unfold? Or, is there is a Way back to God? Let those who have ears and eyes, hear and see.

1 William Butler Yeats (1865-1939); written in 1919. http://www.potw.org/archive/potw351.html
2 As quoted in http://www.cardus.ca/blog/2013/05/cultural-ptsd ; "Cultural PTSD" in Comment Magazine,  May 31, 2013.
3 As quoted in http://www.cardus.ca/blog/2013/05/cultural-ptsd ; "Cultural PTSD" in Comment Magazine,  May 31, 2013.

Waiting In The Weeds

The last few days of August always make me think of the lyrics of this song. It is a beautiful masterpiece of lyric and melody on the Eagles Long Road Out of Eden album. It is a song of longing, loneliness and loss. Perhaps it is also an indictment of the music industry and culture in general with its references to crows and sparrows, peacocks, flavor of the week, and the darling of the chic.

Waiting In The Weeds
(written by Don Henley and Steuart Smith)

It's coming on the end of August.
Another summer's promise almost gone.
And though I heard some wise men say that every dog will have his day,
He never mentioned that these dog days get so long.

I don't know when I realized the dream was over.
Well, there was no particular hour, no given day.
You know it didn't go down in flames,
There was no final scene, no frozen frame,
I just watched it slowly fade away.

And I've been waiting in the weeds,
Waiting for my time to come around again.
And hope is floating on the breeze,
Carrying my soul high up above the ground.
And I've been keeping to myself,
Knowing that the seasons are slowly changing.
Even though you're with somebody else,
He'll never love you like I do.

I've been biding time with the crows and sparrows,
While peacocks prance and strut up on the stage.
If I knew love was just a dance, proximity and chance,
You will excuse me if I skip the masquerade.

And I've been waiting in the weeds,
Waiting for the dust to settle down.
Along the back roads, running through the fields,
Lying on the outskirts of this lonesome town.
And I imagine sunlight in your hair
You're at the county fair - you're holding hands and laughing,
And now the Ferris Wheel has stopped,
You're swinging on the top, suspended there with him,
And he's the darling of the chic - the flavor of the week is melting down your pretty summer dress
Baby what a mess you're making.

I've been stumbling though some dark places,
And I'm following the plow.
I know I've fallen out of your good graces
It's all right now.

And I've been waiting in the weeds,
Waiting for the summer rain to fall.
Upon the wild birds, scattering the seeds,
Answering the calling of the tide's eternal tune,
The phases of the moon, the chambers of the heart, the egg and dart.
A small gray spider spinning in the dark,
In spite of all the times the web is torn apart.

And I've been waiting in the weeds,
Waiting for my time to come around again.
And hope is floating on the breeze,
Carrying my soul high up above the ground.
And I've been keeping to myself,
Knowing that the seasons are slowly changing.
Even though you're with somebody else,
He'll never love you like I do.