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Song Story  | by Steve Bell

(written Spring 08)

The last song I wrote was Everything’s Lies – almost exactly four years ago after having wasted a night watching late-night TV. After a couple hours of infomercials, sensationalist newscasts (America was marching to Iraq) and Evangelists-Gone-Wild I lost the ability to distinguish between the different shows and now recall the evening as a haze- drenched, postmodern collage of shameless hucksters just tryin’ to make a dishonest livin’.

So I wrote: Everything’s lies / isn’t it swell / sex in a silver cup / serve it up with the televangel / no worries here/ trust the t.v. / there’s nothing of consequence / with God on a leash.

Shortly after that night I found myself in Palestine/Israel visiting several Palestinian Christian communities and organizations in the West Bank. There I witnessed first hand the malevolent raw power of a military occupation designed to slowly squeeze the life out of an entire people. The trauma of what I witnessed, along with the shame of belonging to a people group who have largely supported this brutality, shut me down. I really haven’t known what to say since. I’ve spent countless hours reading about the Middle-East; politics and history. I’ve read tons on Islam. Specifically I have read many accounts of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and recently took a course on the same topic.

But I can’t fix it. And so one grieves. One grieves one’s own limitations. One grieves the incomprehensibility of God. One grieves the particular moms and dads and children in other lands whose lives are ruptured by violence.

Last week I was reading the latest GEEZ magazine. Under the heading, The Luxury of Hope, editor Will Braun asks if our religion and spirituality are deep enough to “contemplate catastrophe.” It reminded me of when my daughter was six or seven years old. One night she couldn’t sleep because she was afraid a “bad man” might break in and hurt her. I reassured her that Jesus loved and her wouldn’t let anything bad happen. As she began to dry her tears she looked up at me and asked if, then, Jesus doesn’t love the children who do get hurt.

Shame on me.

Later (in the same, aforementioned GEEZ magazine) in a beautifully written piece called The Washing, Jessie Van Eerden recalls being interrupted while doing laundry, which she eloquently understands as redemptive work. A phone call from her father informs her that her cousin Billy has committed suicide:

It shakes me to the core, Billy’s quiet death.
There is good work to do.
There is good work to do.

Indeed.

The Lyrics…

In Billy’s Wake | lyric by Steve Bell and Jessie Van Eerden

We’re not alone
laundry awash in the mid-morning sun
you can see angels dance as they try blouses on
there is good work to do

We’re not alone
casting long shadows as the day wears on
Billy had troubles, now Billy is gone
there is good work to do

kissing eyelids closed like caskets
breaking bread and filling baskets
pressing dress and swabbing soiled floors

fast remains of feast and fanion
evidence of ghost companions
greeting some and showing some the door

we’re not alone
wordlessly stung by a sliver blue moon
closed casket wake in a cold living room
there is good work to do