Graceland

Graceland
by Paul Simon

I have reason to believe we all will be received in Graceland

Today’s song is both the name of an album and the name of a song on the album by Paul Simon. Of course, it also refers to Elvis Presley’s mansion in Memphis, but I think the song is pointing us toward something even deeper and more important. The whole concept of grace is – well, it’s amazing, or course, and it is a sine qua non of Christian – especially reformed Christian – theology. At least four times in the New Testament we learn that “it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God (Ephesians 2:8, and also Acts 15:11, Ephesians 2:5 and 2 Timothy 1:9).”

Mr Simon shares the sometimes unknowable sense of our wanting to get close to something as he travels to one of popular music’s shrines:

The Mississippi Delta was shining
Like a National guitar
I am following the river
Down the highway
Through the cradle of the civil war

The album Graceland was considered as breaking new musical ground in 1986 because Mr Simon used African tribal rhythms and melodies in ten of the twelve songs (the other two songs utilized Cajun Zydeco and Mexican rock). This weaving of African musical themes into popular music is not new. Back in 1939, African singer Solomon Linda recorded a song called Mbube (the Zulu word for “lion”). It became a hit throughout South Africa in the 1940s and eventually came to the attention of Pete Seeger. When his group, the Weavers, recorded the song in 1952, they mispronounced the song’s original chorus of Uyimbube (meaning “you’re a lion”) as Wimoweh (that answers a question I’ve always had) and The Lion Sleeps Tonight thus began to find its way into the American (and hence the world’s) consciousness – through Jimmy Dorsey, the Kingston Trio, the Tokens’ number-one hit in 1961, Robert John, Brian Eno, NSYNC, countless renditions in movies and sitcoms, and on to Timon and Pumbaa in The Lion King.

I also remember listening to a record in college where a composer had recorded African tribal chants and then constructed a Mass around them. One of my all-time favorite works, French composer Maurice Duruflé’s Requiem, mixes Gregorian chant with impressionism. The Paul Winter Group incorporated the sounds of an eagle, a whale and a wolf throughout their pop-tinged jazz (or maybe it was jazz-tinged pop) album Common Ground, but even as early as 1924, a recording of Ottorino Respighi’s The Pines of Rome included the recording of a nightingale singing. And the musique concretè of Karlheinz Stockhausen and other composers influenced the Beatles in Revolution Number 9, paving the way for the sampled and digitized sounds that permeate much of rap, rock and techno today.

I'm going to Graceland
Graceland
In Memphis Tennessee
I'm going to Graceland
Poorboys and Pilgrims with families
And we are going to Graceland

I spent the better part of the summer of 1973 in Memphis and have seen these pilgrims and their families first-hand. It was amazing to me that you could drive by the Graceland estate any time, day or night, and there would be lines of people at the gate. Women would stick bouquets of flowers in the wrought iron. People would write notes on the stone of the fence. And this was four years before Elvis “died” (if you believe that sort of thing). I wonder what on earth the scene looks like today.

My traveling companion is nine years old
He is the child of my first marriage
But I've reason to believe
We both will be received
In Graceland

There is great expectation and it makes us want to get up and go. The shepherds on that first Christmas Night wanted to do the same thing. So did the Wise Men. And when the disciples left their fishing nets to join Jesus, it was in response to an intriguing invitation. Then, there was the woman with the issue of blood that thought, “if I can just touch the hem of His garment, I will be made well (Matthew 9:21 and Mark 5:28 and see also Luke 8:44).”

Sometimes, like the woman, our desire to arise and go is because of tragedy or a lack of wholeness:

And I see losing love
Is like a window in your heart
Everybody sees you're blown apart
Everybody sees the wind blow

Poets focus on this condition a lot. William Butler Yeats, in his poem, The Second Coming, reflects on this relational entropy: “things fall apart: the center cannot hold.” Yeats’ poem, at only 22 lines, nevertheless introduced the culture to many new phrases, including “the falcon cannot hear the falconer” and the famous last line describing the beast that “slouches towards Bethlehem”.

This final imagery struck a chord with a lot of people. Joan Didion titled her collection of essays Slouching Towards Bethlehem. Judge Robert Bork’s book is Slouching Towards Gomorrah. The Loud Family rock group named their 1993 album Slouching Towards Liverpool as a nod to another four-man rock band. There is also a video game titled Slouching Towards Bedlam, which takes place, in part, inside Bethlehem (Bedlam) Hospital. Now, here’s an interesting thought: I wonder if a college’s English department has ever made T-shirts with the phrase Slouching Towards Bedlam to show their antipathy about football games against their state rivals? But I digress. Paul Simon is much more upbeat about his pilgrimage:

Sometimes when I'm falling, flying
Or tumbling in turmoil I say
Oh, so this is what she means
She means we're bouncing into Graceland

And then Mr Simon admits that this pilgrimage is larger than his understanding:

For reasons I cannot explain
There's some part of me wants to see
Graceland

I know how he feels. I like Elvis Presley’s early stuff a lot, but never could understand the whole overblown sequined jumpsuit era. For some reason, though, I would like to see Graceland. A couple of years ago, my friend’s daughter announced she was going to get married at the Graceland Chapel on the grounds (I love capitalism, I really do). I know it might sound horrifying, but I was actually disappointed when she changed her mind: I wanted an excuse to go there. In a larger sense, though, we sometimes know we need to be somewhere even when our minds don’t know why. Turin, Fatima, Lourdes, St Peter’s Basilica, Westminster Abbey, the Holy Land – they all call their pilgrims. When our pilgrimage is only out of thinking that there might be a “magic bullet” or a talisman, that’s probably not healthy. But, when we go in response to a deep and unfathomable longing to be close to the Master – when we yield to the Holy Spirit as the wind that blows us where it will – then we are in the land of grace indeed.

And I may be obliged to defend
Every love, every ending
Or maybe there's no obligations now
Maybe I've a reason to believe
We all will be received
In Graceland

And the Master invites us in Matthew 11:28: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”