“I don’t think I’d be too strict. I don’t know though, I wouldn’t want my daughter listening to something just…super sexual when she’s so young, you know? Maybe it’s unfair to think of it in gendered terms, but I feel like that’s appropriate.”
“Makes sense, but I wouldn’t want a butt-ton of violent lyrics, either.”
Blake and I were on the couch discussing lyric restrictions on hypothetical children after our daily ritual of watching all our news shows (you know—children you don’t have that you already know how to parent better than anyone else? Those). This was after he turned to me and asked who Cardi B is, and then we realized that we’re exceptionally old. No joke, we’re planning a trip to Perkins soon.
“I guess that rules out Slipknot, then,” he commented.
“Is Slipknot that violent?” I asked.
“Well it’s weird, that for sure.”
I looked at the floor, surprisingly disappointed. I was hoping these children that didn’t exist would be able to bond with their father over metal. Alas.
If you went back in time and told a very crispy Christian 15 year old Melinda that she was going to marry a metal-head who liked Limp Bizkit, she would have gasped. He listens to that for fun? Regularly? What’s a closet juggalo? OH NO. LAWD TAKE ME NOW.
I’m still a little crispy, and I still don’t really understand the hype of heavy metal. It strikes me as a different way of being dramatic with heavier strings. But then I saw this video.
Yep. Yea. I get it. Me, circa 2007, belting anything by MCR out the car window on a late summer’s evening, cranking the volume knob up and up. My life wasn’t really that difficult but dang it, I’m going to scream along passionately with the high riffs. YES. When I grow up I WILL be the savior of the broken, the beaten and the damned. I WILL lead the black parade. I WILLLLLLLLL.
I asked Blake today why he was so into heavy metal growing up. His answer and mine were the same—it’s cathartic. It involves swimming to depths of emotion and thoroughly keening through the latest breakup, or bad test score, or family dysfunction, or friend drama. It’s like an odd...exploration suffering. A funeral of all my good intentions. Music does that, youknow—helps us to sit in a certain kind of mourning.
I think a lot about the second day. Saturday. The one after Friday. The one before He came back. The day when the disciples scattered. A day saturated in loss.
Easter is supposed to be this bright thing. It’s full to the brim with pastels, springtime, eggs, and baby animals. We sing songs of life and new beginnings. Hymns make our hearts soar with hope to come. I think, often, we as Christians camp out in the area of joy and positive thinking. After all, if emotions are ruling over you, then Jesus isn’t. Things hurt now, but don’t worry! They will be better later. Hold on to that. Hold onto it with everything. But that isn’t how we start the season—no, not in the least. We start it all with a thorough ritual of deep lament.
“Remember O man, that you are dust, and unto dust you shall return.”
Ashes and oil are spread on waiting foreheads. Fasts begin. Penance is contemplated. Confessions are made. It is a liturgy that Protestants have neglected, and Jesus is walking me through the beauty of the time meant for lamentation. It’s important to cry out about all the things in this life that aren’t supposed to be. The joy of Easter is everything… but we miss out if we skip Saturday.
Saturday. The day when his followers grieved. When we all did. Saturday, when all was lost.
Grief, it seems, is a house sparse with candles. We light them for those we lose, and we carry them for those we’ve loved. Grief’s door is open to us, inviting us to stay as long as we need. Grief is full to the brim with the anguish of wanting. Trimmed in emptiness and uncertainties, the abode then has room for the hard questions. This is where we do the hard things. It’s where the hard times settle, in the eaves and doorways. We get by a lot better in this life when we realize that there is no way around Grief. The only way out is through. The back door is only opened when we come to terms with the agony our hearts have been hiding all this time—and even then we usually take a souvenir with us. It’s an odd little house, everyone’s own in different shapes and sizes. But it waits for us, an unusual homecoming. It encompasses a sacred kind of sorrow. We do holy work in this house.
We take, and we eat, and we drink in remembrance of Him. Communion with the Man of Sorrows. We ask why the world must be so broken, bewildered at the way it twists, resting in uncomfortable silence of answers that don’t make sense. We sit in Saturday, friends. We shake hands with mourning, we finally understand the intimacy of lament. Our souls exhale the whys and hows, and Jesus is with us in it.
You still won’t find me arguing the theological merits or drawbacks of heavy metal and dark culture (I don’t have the time or education for that, it probably doesn’t exist, and don’t really care about Metallica that much.) But you will find me remembering Friday. Sitting in Saturday...doing the hard things, and watching the skies.
After all, tomorrow is Sunday.
