3.3.24

And ain’t it funny what people say

And ain’t it funny what people write

And ain’t it funny how it hits you so hard

In the middle of the night

I spent a majority of my teenage years as a born-again Christian, attending an evangelical church and subscribing to a perspective that now dominates the social and political landscape.

But things change.

Standing at age 50’s doorstep, I can simply say that I believe in something that’s bigger than any one of us, while also being small enough to be contained within us. Whatever it is isn’t exclusionary, and it prefers to remain mysterious. Also, there’s no point in naming it or trying to put it in a box. The second we do that, we are denying this force the opportunity to be whatever it truly is.

I’m bringing up this big stuff because there’s been a song showing up in bits and pieces as I’ve gone about my days. It’s a song from my late-teens that has stayed with me even as my spiritual journey has taken me down paths both strange and familiar.

But first, a little about Rich Mullins.

Mullins is widely known among church folk for writing the modern praise and worship classic, Awesome God. As far as P&W songs go, it’s a banger. But Mullins was also a person who took the message of the Gospels to heart in a way that made some uncomfortable.

He once said, “Jesus said whatever you do to the least of these my brothers you’ve done it to me. And this is what I’ve come to think. That if I want to identify fully with Jesus Christ, who I claim to be my Savior and Lord, the best way that I can do that is to identify with the poor. This I know will go against the teachings of all the popular evangelical preachers. But they’re just wrong.”

That didn’t go over so well with those for whom it shouldn’t have gone over so well with.

A few years before that, my own feathers had been ruffled enough by a variety of things that I’d left the faith, looking for a different path.

But some things stick with a guy. What Susan Said is one of them.

The song is from Mullins’ incredible The World as Best as I Can Remember It, Vol. II, the second of two stripped down albums. They are packed with earnest, heartfelt music that did wild things like humanize Jesus and provide solace instead of hellfire and brimstone.

What Susan Said is one of those songs that I’d hear people complain about because “there isn’t enough Jesus in it.” I don’t know what song they were listening to because this song is loaded with all the stuff Jesus was supposed to be about: friendship, grace, growth, things like that.

I have cried hard to this song on more than one occasion. Even in my post-born again years. There is a depth of humanity and yearning in the song that absolutely hits me.

Mullins was killed in a car crash in his beloved Wichita, KS, in 1997. With where I was at that time in my life, I tried hard to ignore it and pretend it wasn’t a big deal. I’d moved on. Except I hadn’t. One night I got in the car with both volumes of The World as Best as I Can Remember It, drove around listening to it, bawling like a baby.

Mullins was that kind of musician. That kind of creator. I mean, the guy wrote The Canticle of the Plains, a musical western based on the life of St. Francis of Assisi.

He was so creative.

Anyway, I dunno. This turned into way more than a piece about a song. I hope it wasn’t too much.