All the lonely people

Some years ago, when I was feeling dissatisfied with happy-clappy, "everything's great" Christian music, I found myself drawn often to the music of Jars of Clay, and the relationship has continued. Their later albums did not really live up to the promise of their early efforts, and their music has always erred more on the side of the mainstream than I'm necessarily happy with, but it's their lyrics more than anything that have been of great encouragement to me - the sort of lyrics that capture perfectly the Christian tension of suffering yet rejoicing. Their double disc release from a few years ago, "Furthermore: From the Studio/From the Stage", captured that tension particularly well, with much of the studio disc perfectly encapsulating the hope of those whose experience of suffering has left them broken but acutely aware of grace, something that allows them to continue hoping in the face of renewed suffering: "You have calmed greater waters/And higher mountains have come down."

So imagine my annoyance when, on 2003's album, "Who We Are Instead", they released something as vapid and trite as the track "Lonely People". It's always been a bit of a frustration that the song is one of the album's catchier numbers, with a cool bluesy groove to it that gets me every time. But then there's the lyrics: "This is for all the lonely people/Thinkin' that life has passed them by/Don't give up until you drink from the silver cup/Ride that highway in the sky". Now, in fairness the song is working within a genre and does so quite successfully, but it's a perfect pastiche: empty of its own meaning. Whatever else Jars of Clay were, they were always sensitive. They understood what it meant to hurt, to be broken. Sadly, it seems, they just don't know how it feels to be alone. No-one who's known true loneliness would attempt to encourage anyone with such cliched images. How anyone is expected to fight loneliness by "drinking from the silver cup" is anyone's guess. Give me Wilco's "How to Fight Loneliness". At least that song shows empathy.

So why am I writing about this today? Am I feeling particularly lonely? No, not really. I'm too busy to be lonely right now. Besides, whatever else 2009 may hold for me, it certainly isn't seeing me being bereft of friends when I need them. Though loneliness is something I've battled a lot throughout my life, now is not one of those times, thank God.

No, what prompted this post was in fact listening to that song yesterday afternoon and finding myself feeling those old, familiar feelings: that feeling, more than anything else, of being patronised by someone who didn't know what loneliness was but somehow thought they could encourage me about it. And then I found myself thinking about how I was no longer lonely, but didn't for a moment regret that I had been. Loneliness, when I've felt it, has taught me independence and a kind of self-sufficiency that's invaluable in life. But, more than that, it's taught me to rely on God in a way that I would never have done if I'd had a more bountiful supply of people to rely on.

So I found myself skipping the track, simply because I didn't need that kind of hackneyed encouragement, and saw no need to endure it any more. It also made me thankful that I've known loneliness so that, if I'm ever in a position where I am called upon to support someone else, I'll know enough how they feel not to insult them with platitudes. And I'll hopefully be able to tell them of the true comfort - one that Jars of Clay a little clumsily pointed to, but could have done so perhaps more tactfully had they just used these words:

"Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted."

I'm very grateful to know what those words mean.