Look who just walked in to Mary McDonough’s Mardi Gras party, inspired by the last line of her post:

The Cars!

“Let them leave you up in the air…”

Tom Beaudoin

New York City

When I was getting my master’s degree in theology I took a class on the book of Psalms. The professor, a Benedictine monk originally from South Vietnam, had a deep passion for the subject. The Psalms were not simply a bunch of words to this man. He actually credited them with saving his life. As a teenager he had been one of the “boat people”— the many Vietnamese refugees who fled the country after the fall of Saigon in small, overcrowded crudely built boats not made for navigating the open sea. Thousands of these refugees succumbed to thirst, hunger and drowning while many others were kidnapped by pirates.

This gentle, soft-spoken monk recalled his long, treacherous journey with a marked calmness. It was only through praying the Psalms, he told us, that he was able to survive the boat trip. These cherished poems and hymns brought him immense comfort, peace and strength.

In his book The Psalms Through Three Thousand Years, William Holladay argues that, when compared with other scripture, the Psalms are unique. While much of the Bible is made up of stories told by other people the Psalms are personal. When we pray a psalm, we address God directly, in the first person. Holladay calls this action performative because we create a new, individualized interaction with God.

Walter Brueggemann, another Old Testament expert and author of The Message of the Psalms, organizes the Psalms into 3 general themes. Psalms of orientation articulate the delight found in God’s creation, Her reliability and presence in our world. Psalms of disorientation reflect anger, resentment and dismay at the injustices, suffering and alienation around us. Psalms of new orientation speak of awe, thanksgiving and praise for the grace of God that intervenes in our lives when we are amidst the depths of disorientation.

It occurred to me that perhaps rock music could be categorized similarly, without the intertwined theology of course. But that topic is for future research and writing. Today, I want to focus on the notion of new orientation. These psalms bear witness to grace, to joy, to praise. My favorite is 118:24: “This is the day which the Lord made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.” I try to repeat this prayer at least once a day to remind myself that, no matter how bad things might seem, I am truly blessed.

The words rejoice and glad remind me of a speech the actor Tom Hanks made in 2008 to induct The Dave Clark Five into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He spoke about the joy their music brought to a country mourning the death of President Kennedy:

Why do you need this music? Because on a specific day, a definitive moment in the history of the world, in November of 1963, a terrible storm pounded your classroom in your town and your country, and for weeks and for months, for the longest time, your heart and your world have been wrapped in black, and the head of every single person you look up to is still bowed in mourning. It was the bleakest winter of your discontent. But then mourning became morning, as the sun rose in the East, coming out of England… the Dave Clark Five….

… The true product was joy, unparalleled, unstoppable, undeniable joy…. In fact, next time your New Year’s Eve shebang ain’t banging, well, put on the Dave Clark Five string of hits on “shuffle mode” and I guarantee you that everyone in that room will get up and dance. Everyone will get up and sing, because everyone knows all the words. And how is that? Because over and over and over again, the Dave Clark Five made a joyful sound.

Hearing Tom Hanks’s speech made me think of all the songs that make me feel “glad all over.” You know the ones. Those silly, catchy, upbeat songs that always put a smile on your face. You play one of these songs and no matter how bad things are, your dog may have just died, your boyfriend might have run off with your best friend, it doesn’t matter. For those 3 or 4 minutes you can’t help but feel better. Your head begins to bob to the bass. Pretty soon your foot starts tapping to the drums. Then, even if you hate dancing, you feel compelled to get up and move around. Pretty soon a smile creeps across your face and you start to feel “glad all over.” Sometimes you even try to sing along until you realize you don’t exactly know the lyrics. You thought you did but you don’t because several of these songs don’t make much sense. Some have lyrics that aren’t even real words. Just what does Manfred Mann mean when he says “do wah diddy diddy dum diddy do?” Others have real words in them whose meanings aren’t exactly clear. I still don’t know what a Blitzkrieg Bop is. But that’s okay because whether or not I know or understand the lyrics these songs just make me feel good.

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