More Indigo Girls

I’m still musing about my experiences last night, and why the music event was so powerful. I think that part of it is that music is able to give voice to a variety of feelings and beliefs, commitments and actions, that may on the face of them seem opposed or paradoxical, but the harmonies weave them together into a whole that has integrity and authority for me. The Indigo Girls have a lovely song that is embedded as a “hidden” song on their album COME ON NOW SOCIAL. You listen to the song “Faye Tucker” and then wait through a couple minutes of silence, and then at about 9:20 (at least by my clock) you begin to hear this haunting, but still cheerful melody of a song they call “Philosophy of loss.” There’s a small wav file excerpt of it (which opens immediately ) at their website, along with the lyrics. I think their music names more authentically for me where I am spiritually, even though neither of the Indigo Girls would claim Christianity as their home. But it gvies me room to be at home in Catholicism. I don’t know why! But it does. Maybe simply as a way of acknowledging resistance? As a way of naming one way of being church — which is also the way I refuse and resist! — and so giving me room to claim a different one? Again, I don’t know. But yesterday evening, sitting there moving to the music, letting myself be overtaken by it, and yet at the same time being with a roomful of scholarly colleagues who also care about faith communities, it worked for me.