I’ve faithfully flown Southwest Airlines since the beginning of my career.  Among the initial set of reasons for choosing SWA was that they were the only airline who allowed me to walk on with my guitar.  I mean, God love the folks on the ground who schlep luggage for hours everyday but… Well,.. Let’s just leave it at “God love ‘em.”  Add to that the bestest rewards program in the business and what else could I do but fall in ‘LUV’ with SWA.

“All that is great” the detractors would say.. “but you don’t get a meal.. just peanuts.  Other airlines provide a meal on flights.”   Which is something akin to saying  “Your dog is nice and all but mine came with all these fleas for just $150 more.” I’ll take the peanuts, thanks.

“Funny comparison there, Frodo.” the detractors might say, referencing my height as they always do.. “but you still don’t get an assigned seat.”

This is true.  With SWA, each person is left to choose a seat for his or her own self.  Now, I’m  far more interested in a system that celebrates the freedom of each person to choose their own seat than one in which the Man chooses a seat for me.  I mean, if you want to go the way of the Soviets, you can but I choose Freedom; I fly SWA.  Not to mention the joyous adventure of sitting next to you-don’t-know-who for a few hours.  Just this past year, I sat next to David Spade on a flight.  We had a very nice conversation that went something like this:

Me:  Hey, man…
Spade: …hey…

It was great.

A far better encounter with a fellow SWA passenger took place on a flight home from Chicago.  I was returning after a good-but-tiring run of shows in the Midwest (located a few clicks north of Texas) and was looking forward to shutting down for a bit.   You see, even though I’m a “people person” I have found that I do eventually hit a ceiling, at which point I look to hide for a while.   In this case, the ‘hiding’ started once I got on board that flight for home.  Having been among the first few to board, I chose a window seat on the right side of the plane, put my headphones in my ears, cranked up the “Album Leaf” and leaned against the window to at least pretend that I was asleep.

That’s when Joe sat next to me.  Now, I don’t make a practice out of knowing the names of people who sit next to me ( or at least, I did not before this ).  So, how did I know that this young man’s name was “Joe?” It was because he told me.  You see, only a few short moments after Joe took the middle seat next to me, he broke one of the unspoken rules of commuter travel:

“Thou shalt not strike up conversation until decent”

The beauty of this rule is that it ensures that any conversation you strike up is sure to end in about 20 minutes when the plane lands; protecting both parties from having to pretend for any serious period of time to be interested in one-another’s lives.  Perhaps Joe had not traveled much, but for whatever reason, he was entirely unfamiliar and un-committed to the keeping of this rule.  In fact, Joe was not simply talking to me, he was leaning across both his seat and mine and from a firing range of only a few inches, riddling me with a barrage of words that shook me from the meditative state my music had lulled me to…

“Excuse me, excuse me, excuse me, sorry, pardon me, hey there, excuse me, sir, um, hi, sorry, excuse me, buddy, pardon me, excuse me, excuse me, sorry, pardon me, um, hey there, excuse me, sir, um, hi, sorry, excuse me, pardon me, excuse me, excuse me, sorry, pardon me, hey there, excuse me, sir, um, hi, sorry, excuse me, pardon me, um.. Hi.”

I stirred, pulled by headphones out of my ears and mashed-up a few words to greet him with the now irreplaceable man-speak ‘heymanwassup?”  Joe smiled and perked up as if he had suspected I was dead at first.  “What’s your name?” he asked.

“My name is Justin” I replied
“Hi, Justin. My name is Joe.  Can you help me with my seatbelt?”

Just as he said it I was noting that he held both ends of his seat-belt in his hands and was stretching them as far as they would go towards me.  He had been sitting in that seat for probably 3 minutes wrestling with the belt and clip.  As it turns out (in conversation with Joe and his parents who were sitting elsewhere on the plane) Joe is autistic.  Because he’d never used this kind of belt before, he was confused as to where to begin.  I showed him how to clip the belt and tighten it.  At which, he undid the belt and repeated the steps I’d shown him several times, each with increasing interest and a larger smile.

Just as I began to lean back against the window (having done my christian duty for the day), Joe energetically turned to me and asked…

“Who’s your favorite baseball team?”
“Um.. Well, I’m an Oakland A’s fan.” I told him.

He booed.

And not just that comical “just kidding” boo.  It was the kind of boo that says “your team has traded away more good talent in the last seven years than it could wisely afford to lose, has blown 2-game playoff leads to both the Red Sox and Yankees in recent years and will probably never get out of the first round of the playoffs.”  er… maybe that’s just the way I heard it.

“I take it you don’t like the A’s, huh?” I asked him
“No, I like the Cubs.”  (we can all appreciate the irony of Cubs fans booing anyone.. I mean, really?)

We went on talking for most of the flight about baseball, comics and a smattering of other topics.  At one point the SWA flight attendant handed out those beloved peanuts.  I tore a pair of bags open with my patented McRoberts Double-Peanut-Bag Tearing Method.  Joe, on the other hand couldn’t quite get the bag open.  Without asking, he handed both bags of peanuts to me and waited for me to open them.  Now, in many instances this might be considered inappropriate or even rude.  But Joe doesn’t see the world the way most folks do.  In fact, Joe sees the world a bit more clearly than most folks do.

To Joe, our proximity comes along with responsibility/opportunity.  In fact, that proximity (the simple fact that I was sitting next him) meant to Joe that when he ran into trouble of any kind (seatbelt use, snack access etc..) I was responsible for providing him help.  To Joe, we weren’t just in the same city together (Chicago), we were at the same airport (Chicago-Midway), in the same terminal (B) at the same gate (14) and on the same plane headed to the same destination (Oakland)… In Joe’s mind, these things don’t just happen.  These things are not just chance.  In Joe’s mind, these things at least add up to responsibility if not opportunity.

Now, you may not buy this whole “we’re all connected” stuff; but then again, you may not buy soap.  In my own journey, the more I learn about the “root causes” of tragedies like extreme poverty, human trafficking or the abortion epidemic the more I see that these things are not so much the product of evil deeds by evil men as they are products of the absence of action/love.  Certainly, there are bad people doing bad things in dark corners of the world, but they don’t actively keep clean water out of the reach of the 1 billion who live without access to it.

As evidenced by my self-characterization in this story, I generally live under the impression that I can ‘do good’ when I choose to (and likewise, evil) but until that point I’m just living.  I’m beginning to learn that’s not the case.  What I do and what I don’t do have repercussions far beyond my control and intention.  What is more… the folks I cross paths with as I go about my life are not just scenery.. they’re not just ‘there’; often they are the woman who can’t stop bleeding and needs the healing of intentional proximity; often they are in possession of the healing I need myself and just as likely both things are true at the same time.

Last time we saw our hero, there was cat crap strewn about his life by the devious (though apparently not fiber deficient) “BK” or “Big Kitty.”  BK had redirected his fecal assault towards the doorway of the bathroom Our Hero and His Roommate used upstairs… Interestingly, this bathroom was located in the landlord’s living room; essentially meaning that the Dastardly Villain was so committed to Our Hero’s devastation that he was now devastating living room rug.  Our Hero had taken the high road to this point, but would he keep his cool?  Let’s find out…

Stavros (my roommate) and I eventually stopped picking up the poop from the living room carpet.  We figured the rent we paid might cover things like this.  Apparently not.  Over the course of a few months and the normal process of petrification, the doodie became something more like furniture.. some of it useful for things like doorstops or magazine racks.   All this to say, we learned to live with things the way they were for a while.  Eventually we both moved on from there and have since married incredible women… I thought the cat battle was over… I thought that I had moved on…

.. I could not have been more wrong.

In 2001 I purchased and moved into my first home; a 2 bedroom condominium.  Our condo shares walls on either side and shares a drive with 5 other units.  My wife and I were so excited to be homeowners that we were blind to the trap we had fallen prey to; all five of our neighbors… owned at least one cat.. we were surrounded…

And then, one random day, it happened… poop on the doorstep. Felinus Fecalus.  There was no warning.  It just started happening; as if cats from the old neighborhood had networked with BK and cats from the new neighborhood and passed along the standing directive: if it belongs to McRoberts, poop on it.

A few years into our stay in enemy territory, I returned from a bike ride to find that I’d not only left the front door unlocked, I’d left it open. Fool of a Took.  I grabbed a bat from the garage and slowly headed downstairs with it raised above my head, expecting to come across some prowler or hopped-up crackhead going through my fridge in search of leftover Chinese.  As I headed through the doorway, I caught a glimpse of something out of the corner of my eye ducking down the hall towards the bedroom.  I shot like lightening (except nowhere near as fast) down the hall in pursuit, bravely asking God to ensure that the guy wasn’t very big, only to find , sitting on my bed…

..Two..
..Fluffy..
..Cats..

I froze. They froze. I screamed in rage and full horror.  They hissed in response.  I cursed them with the ancient cries of Mothra and Godzilla as I chased them out of the room, back up the hallway and out the front door.  While in pursuit, I all but forgot that I was holding the bat.  Of course, this detail was not lost on my neighbor, who had come outside to see what on earth all the commotion was and saw me chase her two cats out of my doorway holding a bat and hurling curses in Swiss/Tahitian…

What does one say at that point?  All I can tell you is what I said; which was “They were on my bed.. I,.. I don’t know what they were doing.. I wasn’t going to hurt them.”  She said nothing in return.

Fast forward to roughly one month later when that same neighbor showed up at my doorstep in tears.

“Are you alright?” I asked. She didn’t answer the question.
She starred back at me and asked “Do you have a shovel?”
“Wow,” I thought to myself, “she must have really loved that shovel she lost.”
“I think we’ve got a small gardening spade,” I told her “will that work?”
“No,..  it wont.  I need to bury my cat… Someone ran her over.”

Once again… what does one say at that point?  If I come right out and say “I did not kill your cat” it is bound to come off as incriminating.  Equally incriminating would be “Wow, who would do that?” or “I’m sure whoever killed her didn’t intent to” or “Well, it’s about time.”

Dear reader. Hear me and hear me clearly: I did not, nor would I have run over and killed her cat.  I promise.. You must believe me… I do not hate people who have cats.  I hate their cats.  (This is what is called a “moral workaround.”)  On the other hand, I strive to love my neighbor as myself but believe that part of doing so is helping them see that they would be far better off without the cat.

If you knew what would happen and made us just the same,
You, My Lord, can take the blame.

So the evening began in song with David Bazan; the same way that my engagement with his work has always been.  His challenge to the “assumed goodness” of God pushing me to search my own heart for similar untested assumptions, contradictory premises, doubts, frustrations… his courage in doing so freeing me to find the darker corners of my own mind with less fear and, in that way, greater faith.

Bazan was in Grand Rapids (as was I) to participate in the Festival of Faith and Music (of which I will write a bit more in the near future).  Along with playing a set on Thursday night, Bazan talked with NPR’s Jessica Hopper about… well… faith and music.  He reflected on his own history as a songwriter as well as the music he’s listened to over the years.  He continued to point at moments in songs or albums that unsettled him in relationship to christianity.

Between times and during late nights, I had the pleasure of finally talking with him quite a bit about his new record, house shows, his Pedro days, christian bumper stickers and festivals we’d never play again.  Those conversations only made the songs from his next release “Curse Your Branches” (August 09) more intriguing to me. He is calling “Branches” his first truly autobiographical piece.  It’s an autobiography I’ve been hoping to hear for a while as it is specifically focused on his distancing from christianity.

The title track is highlighted by this masterful chorus…

..falling leaves should curse their branches
For not letting them decide where they should fall
And not letting them refuse to fall at all

While he has always been comfortable in a critical posture towards christianity for it’s … well.. being all “christian” and stuff, Bazan, in song and in conversation, does not seem at all settled on the distance between himself and God.  He directs his discontent back toward the space God previously occupied, singing:

In my throat, there swells a darkness
It fills my mouth, and coats my lips
And even as the threat of Hell is disappearing,
The threat of losing you is blowing up..

For those of us who have been listeners of Bazan’s since early Pedro the Lion, this tension he creates by directing his frustration and confusion at a God whose character is awfully confusing, a God he is not sure exists and is the root of his frustrations to begin with is exactly why we love his music; because for many of us, this has been at least part of our experience of faith.  For many of us, christian art, whose songs of doubt are generally tamed with an overly obvious and predictable happy ending of unwavering assurance or whose stories of tragedy are most often girded with the glaring undertone that “everything is going to be just fine in the end,” not only misrepresents our experience thus far, but leaves us with a sense that something is very wrong with our own weak faith.

Similar to writers like Frederick Buechner, David Bazan provides a place for skeptics, poets and the religiously frustrated to find some normality.  A place where doubt is not a disease or a phase that needs to be medicated, grown out of or explained away but actively wrestled with;  a place where frustration with God and confusion at who He is becomes part of the journey itself; where the decision to continue engaging, even if it’s only to shout into the dark space we thought God had been living all this time, is an act that is full of faith.

In William Faulkner’s “As I Lay Dying,” he uses one of his character’s voices to critique the religious compromise we make with doubt, writing

“…sin and love and fear are just sounds that people who never sinned nor loved nor feared have for what they never had and cannot have until they forgot the words.”

Bazan’s life and work have given shape to Sin and Love and Fear for many of us who could find few if any fleshly, mortal connections with these realities in the artistic expressions of faith offered by popular religious culture.  The art he’s produced in the throes of doubt, alcoholism and folly have served as the tragedy that some of us have lacked the vitality to suffer for ourselves; in the light of which art, our own process of redemption or restoration has fuller meaning rather than being the half-lived half-truth that is the result of the half-thinking compromise we strike with our often half-conceived idea of God.

The following night after Bazan’s show, Cornell West highlighted the role of death in christian life; particularly the death of ideas, prejudices and suppositions.  That same night in the middle of a conversation about the history of either losing or letting go of things he had previously thought necessary for life and faith, Bazan listed a few of the influences that had been his guides along the way; just about all of them being songwriters.  He paused for a moment and then said “I guess it is through songs that I was first undone.”