Remember me, Jesus

‘Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” Awkward to read, but by Christ, you should hear it being sung. I have it on CD, loaded into the car. The same phrase sung over and over again; a drone, a mantra, a call to prayer. It goes on for nine minutes; a Dublin choir, on and on and on. No accompaniment, just the voices. The same sentence, singing me out of the vehicle and into the street; singing me into me own heart; travelling me into the hearts of everyone one I see as I’m driving.

It is the essential plea of every human being of every age; believer or not, Christian or not. ‘Tis bigger than any church; ‘tis faith in the flesh — and by that I mean it’s an experience, not an idea. The awareness it rises in you that every man, woman and child in the world is in need of the reassurance that the loneliness we carry inside of us will be attended to, and that we will be conscious of our healing.

Whether that feeling accurately describes a law of life is beyond anyone to say. No man sees the face of God and lives, so all we can do is guess. And we can testify to experiences that we’ve had. And tell the truth of loneliness and doubt.

And this song ties me not to some celestial, not to some belief — it ties me to other human beings. My kids have this in their heart, I know they do. You have it, I know you do. And there is something in the slave chant of it that unmasks the charade of competency in us. It dissolves the armoury of ego. We are reduced and humbled by the naked need of it. Hang up your aul’ brilliancies; take off the jacket of your trying. It’s over, we lost, we can’t make it on our own. Time to hear the plea of our orphan hearts.

It makes no logical, rational sense, but, sure, what does? Nothing rational about nothing in this world. A blue ball full of water spinning in weightless space: logic that, for me. Logic, eyesight and butterflies.

Wino and president sing it. Maiden and whore. Corrupter and the corrupted it is the natural anthem of humanity. It unites the beggar and the businessman; it puts them on an equal footing.

The minature victories that you measure in money change nothing. You are a pauper in spirit; you are unclothed. You are dressed in distractions, but I see your nakedness. It’s exactly like mine.

It ought be played in public. Shopping centres and schools. Parliaments and public houses. We’d be righted by it. Rearranged. The weight’d be taken off our shoulders. The striving done. The relief of defeat. We thought we could make it on our own, but we can’t. I want my Daddy...

Such weakness! What a cry-baby! Grow up dude, you’re making a show of yourself.

I dunno, maybe they’re right. Turn it off, listen to something else instead. Some other mood manipulation. Listen to Bob Dylan, get meself all self-righteous and wordy. Listen to Leonard Cohen, bring out the heart. A lot of the time, though, those bits of music make me wish that I was those people. It’s an inferiority that bites. I’m too in need of the attention myself to be eternally comfortable giving it to others.

The Dublin Taize Choir hypnotise me into something that feels good. A good with goodness in it. They address my sense of exile. It is all, of course, pure imagination. But to lament that would be like a fish lamenting swimming. As sure as he manoeuvres through the sea, we dream ourselves through life. We are dream creatures.

You couldn’t say for sure that the Christian story is literally true; perhaps it comes from a time when things were remembered mythically. When poetry and recall went hand in hand; when the truth of a thing was in its metaphor.

So, I surrender and let the fairy tale work its magic on me. I move my mind into the house of hope. I give it shelter, for a while. The human condition is that of the vagabond, a spiritual refugee. No home on this Earth is ever permanent for us; these boots were made for walking.

Oh, but the sweet peace of coming across a bothan in your tramp across the mountain. And you know that tomorrow you’ll be moving on again, but for now, this moment, rest easy.

“Such weakness! What a cry-baby! Grow up dude, you’re making a show of yourself ”