Don’t flay the sheep.

Our hearts are restless…

Don’t you love when two completely unrelated topics converge in your head?

Here’s mine for the day: Billy Graham and Wilco. I kinda love them both. Billy Graham, admittedly not perfect, but who is? I think in many ways he is a model Christian. Devoted to Christ. Grew in his faith and in his actions through his life. Humble, even though he did great things. Also, he can preach.

Wilco: from Chicago. Some of the best road trip music ever written.

Now, the most obvious convergence: I’m SURE the members of Wilco hold Johnny Cash in high esteem and Johnny and June were dear dear friends with Billy and Ruth as they all settled into old age in the mountains together. (Oh, to be a fly on the wall for one of their evenings together!)

But two articles today have me connecting them in a different way: restless hearts.

(And, just to make it a little better, let’s add this quote so that e can make a three-way connection: Wilco, Billy, and Augustine:

et inquietum est cor nostrum donec requiescat in te

Our hearts are restless until they rest in you)

In this lovely review of the new Wilco album, John Thompson points out that Wilco’s indictment of religion is not a complete rejection…it may, in fact, be restlessness rather than rejection:

Tweedy is in rare form lyrically. His is a consistent meditation on the need for – and personal commitment to – lasting love that runs far deeper than mere sentiment. Even his ruminations on faith and his own lack of religiousness feel more like a rejection of hypocrisy than the middle finger so many rockers and cynics seem to feel the need to throw at God. When Tweedy talks about the God he doesn’t believe in, it is with sadness, not vitriol, and often sounds like a God I don’t believe in either. His thoughtful and brutally self-aware articulation of his frustration with his own nature, his need for the love of others and his fractured commitment to be there for the recipients of his love is moving. His seems to be a heart facing in the right direction. Here’s hoping he finds that heart’s true home, if he hasn’t already, before his journey ends.

Meanwhile, somewhere in Montreat, NC, Billy is waiting to die. And he’s written honestly about what it’s like to grow old, and what it’s like to wait for full union with God. This reinterprets that classic Augustine quote for me. Restlessness goes on and on, even after one has “found” God (or, should I say, after one has figured out that God never got lost or lost you). The restlessness continues throughout the Christian life, and the final restlessness is in the waiting for reunion.

So, here’s a hopeful prayer: in that reunion, may we someday see Johnny and June jamming with Wilco while Billy and Ruth and Augustine sit back, nodding they heads to the sound of the eternal choir.

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