Smoke and Redemption

This Ben Folds Five song gets to me. I guess people could say it’s a song that tells us that none of this ‘stuff’ matters. It’s all meaningless. There are no reasons to be found for tragedy, despair, pain, suffering, and so on... I mean, after all, didn’t even Solomon say that he found nothing new under the Sun, and in the end, life was all meaningless? Should I stop trying to find meaning in the fact that I miscarried my baby? Should I just move on and get over it and keep living? Do we just push away the pain? Think of something better? Wait for the next child? Be glad I have Eli at least?

I guess that’s where one finds different worldviews. Some worldviews would say, yes, just press forward. Deal with being sad, and then get up and go, and just do it. It’s hard. You hate it. But you just do it. That’s what you do. It’s meaningless, but try to have some fun in there. This is it. This is all there is. And you never know how long you have. Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die. Be thankful to God for what you have, but know there is no real hope. It can all go at a moment’s notice. Nothing matters. I suppose THAT is one world view.

Another worldview would ruminate on what an individual did to cause this? “What could I have done differently? Is God teaching me something? What can I learn? What can I learn so that in the future I can perform differently, better, and the outcomes of my future endeavors can be more pleasant than the outcome of the endeavor I am meeting right now? I shall flagellate myself until I am disciplined and prepared to do better in the future. Eventually, I shall become right, through the help of God, and what He’s saying, or by my own might.” I think a lot of Christians fall into this group. I can say that because 1. I’m a Christian, and 2. I’ve fallen into this group before… a lot.  

So this BFF song seems to say that we have to admit that the past is the past, we can never re-do it and make it undone. What’s done cannot be undone. To an extent, I agree with that. In this world, what is done, cannot be undone. And I don’t want to live in the second worldview where I ruminate on the past, obsess over it, and whip myself into better shape all the time. But for some reason, when I listen to Ben Folds Five sing this song, I feel like they still sound hopeless. Letting go of the past doesn’t free them for anything. It feels tragic. Maybe the fact that everything is SMOKE is NOT hopeless. I feel like these lyrics are chillingly accurate. The reason for the pain IS all smoke… but I think smoke MATTERS.

I think the pain, any type of regret, anything one learns, all wisdom gleaned, all fond memories, all troubling memories, everything, actually becomes the fuel in the furnace; it turns into smoke... not suffocating smoke that kills a person… that’s not the right metaphor. In the metaphor I’m making, one thinks about the fact that the THINGS that WERE do not CEASE to be… rather, they exist in a DIFFERENT FORM. Their new form is SMOKE, and we have a choice of what we want to DO with that smoke. The smoke MATTERS. It is important. It creates. It does not kill. The smoke has ridiculous amounts of potential!

Probably many people waste the smoke. I’m pretty sure I’ve wasted a lot of ‘’smoke’’ in my life. But what if I were to use the smoke as fuel for the rest of my life? What if I were to use everything that is left over as an aroma that influences and inspires the future. What if that aroma is actually a force that builds a future that is quite different from whatever I’d build if I just literally forgot everything from the past and just tried to start over from point A again.

I think the metaphor I’m sensing in my mind is that of redemption actually. What was will not be in the same way again, but it will be in a new way, and it will give life. But we have to use it. We have to use the smoke, and not everyone wants to use smoke because it’s hard. It’s hard to use the feelings and the lessons and the past and hold them in a perspective that drives the future without placing undue guilt upon a person or overwhelming regret in which a person lingers. It is hard to grasp the transformed past and utilize it because it is an explosive element. It is dangerous. Do I linger too long in missing a lost loved one? Can the love that was and is no more fuel me without crushing me? Can the idea that things could have been so different fuel me since I can see it now? Will I let that galvanize me? Or will I let it hold me down? I suppose, I have a choice. I suppose, we all have choices.

For me though, it doesn’t FEEL like a choice. I have to feel. I want to feel. I don’t enjoy it all the time. But I don’t want to forget or to stop feeling or to numb my feelings or to just start over. I want to take EVERYTHING I’ve experienced in ALL of the life that God has given me and let it be transformed into EACH SECOND OF MY FUTURE. I think that is what a life lived for God is. We allow Him to mold and transform our lives and our past however. We keep that hard, ridiculously hard, faith through it all. We feel. We endure. We don’t have answers sometimes. We stare off into the distance and just sit in pain sometimes. We cry sometimes. We don’t show up well-kept and ready to go… and all of that is okay. It is part of being. It is part of having the smoke become the fuel that floods our future world and accomplishes that which we have no say in, no idea about… that which just is… as God does…

And we are okay with that, or at least I am, because I’ve had this experience with this God… I know Him. I believe Him. I trust Him. And I just want to follow Him at all costs, come what may. He has ravished every portion of me, and I am entirely His…

 Smoke: Ben Folds Five

Leaf by Leaf, page by page

Throw this book away

All the sadness all the rage

Throw this book away

Rip out the binding, tear the glue

All of the grief we never ever knew

We had it all along

Now it's smoke

Never really happened

All of the people come and gone

Never really lived

All of the people have come have gone

No one to forgive smoke

We will never write a new one

There will not be a new one

Another one, another one

Throw it on the fire

Here's the time I took the blame

Throw it on the fire

Here's the time we didn't speak

It seemed for years and years

Here's a secret

No one will ever know the

Reasons for the tears

They are smoke

They travel in the air

You can smell them when they burn

They travel

Stop and smell the smoke

You keep on saying the past is not dead

Come on and smell the smoke

You keep saying the past is not even past

You keep saying

We are, smoke

The things we've written in it

Here's an evening dark with shame

Where do all the secrets live

Those who say the past is not dead

Because if I make smoke, it will be pink.