Fr Don’s Blog: I Could Be Someone
| In their famous 1988 song, Fairytale of New York, the Pogues tell the story of a young Irish man and woman who fall in love with each other while dreaming of fame in America. After exchanging romantic expressions of infatuation and fantasy, things go south and they hurl vicious and condemning insults back and forth before he says, “I could have been someone,” to which she replies, “Well, so could anyone.” Then she adds, “You took my dreams from me,” and he says, “No, I kept them with me, babe, and built my dreams around yours—we couldn’t do it alone.” Like other great love stories, this one demands that they each surrender to the other. It starts with falling in love, the easy part, continues with learning to love, the hard part, and builds to living in love, the best part. |
| That same year, young Tracy Chapman released her hit, Fast Car, in which she sings of a young girl, living in poverty, whose mother abandoned her family. The girl is forced to quit school and work at a convenience store to take care of her alcoholic father but realizes that she doesn’t want to live or die the way that those in poverty are destined to. Rather, she dreams of escaping in her friend’s fast car, a place that gives her a feeling that she can be someone. |
| The twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew’s Gospel reflects upon that kind of poverty: hunger, prison, sickness, helplessness, feeling lost, ostracized, even discarded by society and all its structures. Jesus instructs His followers that the poor will always be with us; yet, in many parables, He suggests that our greatest sin occurs when we ignore them, pretend that they don’t exist, turn away from them, or act in ways that diminish their humanity. |
| A year before the other two songs were recorded, Pink Floyd released On the Turning Away. Its haunting lyrics summarize well the message of Jesus in contemporary verbiage. They speak of the pale and downtrodden, the weak and weary, crying out: “Don’t accept that what’s happening is just the case of others’ suffering or you’ll (eventually) realize that you’re (unintentionally) joining in the turning away.” The words go on to admit that it’s easy to get caught in “the dreams of the proud that separate us from reality and cast a shroud of shadow over the light that is meant to shine through us. Too often we just stand and stare in a cold, speechless silence that grows.” No doubt, our hopeful response to suffering is far more difficult than the ever-present problem. But band members Gilmour and Moore, who wrote the lyrics, express the sentiment of Jesus and His followers to look into the eyes of the downtrodden and see someone, to recognize humanity, to join efforts—no matter how small—to offer help: donate food, contribute to groups that provide clean water in places that have none, clean out closets and cabinets to distribute clothing or furnishings to those who have little, remember the imprisoned and those sentenced to poor health that slowly kills them. |
| Jesus’ lessons imply that there are many types of love (romantic love, brotherly love, charitable love, sacrificial love…) and that each has an easy part, a hard part, and a best part. Everyone has a dream to be someone, to be seen, acknowledged, heard, recognized, respected, and given dignity. Some have a dream simply to be known as part of the human family. It’s a daunting challenge to make much of a difference, but the more we can turn toward one another, see the face of the other, lean in to offer help, and work together as brothers and sisters, the more we will recognize a kind of love that turns dreams into reality. |
