Worlds Apart

I can’t remember the first time I heard the song Worlds Apart by band Jars of Clay, but I can remember one of the times I heard that song. Over twenty years ago, I was deep in the desert in Baja California Sur in Mexico, at a migrant farmworkers’ camp. I had made the fourteen hour trip from my Southern California home with friends to help a Mexican Christian pastor for a week in his ministry. I was spending some time in contemplation out in the chilly breeze of the desert night, listening to the CDs I had brought along for the trip when that particular song came on. And because of the days’ events, the mood I was in, and my surroundings of peace and quiet in the middle of nowhere in a desert in Mexico, the lyrics seemed to resonate with me. And they continued to resonate with me, sticking with me through trips, travels, trials, moves, tribulations…. and a deconstruction and then reconstruction of my faith that has lead me to where I am today. The song is written in my Bible in its entirety, has been played often enough via whatever music medium I have had at my disposal, and sung on hikes and in places of contemplation (though my apologies, Dan Haseltine, I don’t have your range!).

Here’s the original version of it (though they’ve done a few other remakes of it over the years I have listened to as well):

“I am the only one to blame for this / Somehow it all ends up the same / Soaring on the wings of selfish pride, flew too high / And like Icarus, I collide / With a world I try so hard to leave behind / To rid myself of all but love / To give and die..”

I think this song has become my favorite song because no matter how many times I hear it, I discover something new about the lyrics…. and the lyrics gain another layer of meaning for me. It also reminds me that while where I am today is a far cry from where I was even a year ago, I should continue to strive for the magic that is there, even if it seems beyond my grasp.

“All said and done, I stand alone / Amongst remains of a life I should not own / Takes all I am to believe / In the mercy that covers me…”

It’s easy for some of us to declare to be better in the quiet of the night, in the darkness where there are stars about and no one to really pay attention to us since the world is asleep. It’s easy to feel like a new person when you’re standing on a mountaintop, enjoying all of creation in the valley below. It’s easy to make the resolution in contemplation to be more magical, embracing love and peace, magic, hope and joy… that same hope, peace, love and joy that is promised to all of us if we only reach out to find it.

“What I need and what I believe / Are worlds apart…”

It’s a great deal harder to keep that mountaintop feeling when the world is watching you, when the mundanity of day to day life grinds away at patience and hope, love and joy, magic and faith, peace and light you hold on to so dear. It’s harder when the world mocks you and pulls you in different directions, with one camp lashing out at you because of your faith and another lashing out because you aren’t “faithful” enough.

“And serve the ones that I despise / Speak the words I can’t deny / Watch the world I used to love / Fall to dust and blow away…”

But yet, the magic is still there. The love is shining. Joy is singing out loud. Hope is ever present. Peace comes with the new contemplation and calms the noise. And faith… it’s there too, in whatever form we decide to reach for it. And that there is magic.

And while I sit here, in the darkness, at my tiny abode in my little swath of the Midwest in contemplation once more, the song playing softly on the computer speakers as I write this, there are new layers. Because what I still need and what I still believe still seem worlds apart.

Stay magical.

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