9/19/2019 - Rich Mullins

Rich Mullins is dead. He died on this day–September 19–in 1997.

I put it bluntly because Rich accepted death. Everyone fears death at some point in their lives, but you get the sense from his lyricism that he faced death with less fear than many of us do. From the mere acceptance in “Be With You:”

Everybody each and all

We’re gonna die eventually

It’s no more or less our faults

Than it is our destiny

to a kind of embrace of death as a motivator in “Elijah:”

When I leave I want to go out like Elijah

With a whirlwind to fuel my chariot of fire

Rich’s attitude towards death is something worth salvaging, something worth emulating. It does no good to fear death; it happens to us all, and we can’t (currently) avoid it. Because we will die, it makes sense to accept it. Because we will die, we ought to live a life that is meaningful and significant. Rich did that. And I want to too, in part because he gave me a good example.

That Rich’s lyricism speak to death is something of an anomaly in CCM–and maybe in popular music in general. A healthy attitude towards death is not really a common theme for pop culture. Death is a taboo. When you investigate it, explore it, pick up your guitar and sing about it, you’re doing something brave: you’re trying to understand the human condition. Today, as I relistened to Rich’s discography, I think that was my main take-away. Rich’s music is timeless because it is, like all the classics, an exploration of the range of human experience that speaks to something universal.

That Rich was a Christian and that his lyricism is steeped in Christian beliefs and allusion does little to dissuade me of the power of the lyrics in “Hard to Get:”

Is if You who live in eternity

Hear the prayers of those of us who live in time

We can’t see what’s ahead

And we can not get free of what we’ve left behind

I’m reeling from these voices that keep screaming in my ears

All the words of shame and doubt blame and regret

I can’t see how You’re leading me unless You’ve led me here

Where I’m lost enough to let myself be led

And so You’ve been here all along I guess

It’s just Your ways and You are just plain hard to get

The first stanza here speaks to my own experience so much. As someone who has struggled with mental illness–and who is on the road to recovery–these lines, as plain as they are, are a visceral reminder of my darkest moments. And while I don’t turn to God, I did have to recognize at one point that I was not going to get out of this mental spiral without help. Rich found that help in God; I found it in therapy and Stoicism. And like Rich, I find my help “hard to get” at times; my twisted mind struggles to unlearn its distortions.

But my experience is immaterial; anyone can see themselves in Rich’s lyrics. There is neither Christian nor Pagan, but all are one in Rich’s music, as with all the classics. And it’s not just the type of person you are, but also the type of experience you’re going through. Rich’s work explores the full range of human experience–the joys, the sadness, the boredom, the awe–all of it, somewhere in that body of prose and poetry, it’s there.

As I was commuting this morning, I looked out on the Charles River for a few seconds as I cross it on the subway. And I saw boats on the water. And with Rich in my ear, I remembered to look at the sky:

And I was trying to think of how I could encourage you - of what I could say to spur you on, just trying to come up with something. And then I was overcome. 

And you might say, “but it’s just a sky” - but you could say that only if you’d never seen it. And you might say, “Oh, the sky is just a metaphor and he’s really overcome by something spiritual, like, say, the love of God.” But if the sky is only a metaphor, it is God’s metaphor, and if you’d look up - if you’d just look up…well, I haven’t the words, but… 

There are those skies - skies stretched so tight you just know they’re about to pop…

I think I might listen to him again tomorrow too. Because sometimes I need to be reminded of what it means to be human.