If you be my bodyguard, I can be your long-lost pal.
I was alone, wrapping up strings of Christmas lights out on the plaza. It wasn’t so cold, and as the daylight was fading, lots of people were passing by on the sidewalk on their way home, or to meet with friends, heading for a restaurant or the grocery store. I was at once a little sad that Christmas was over, and also relieved. It gets a little crazy around here in the weeks before and after Christmas, and then we get back to ordinary time and the relief of the routine returns. The parties, the gift-shopping, the traveling is over. Life becomes more predictable, regular.
I saw a young man and woman go by on the sidewalk. They were laughing/cuddling, oblivious to everyone else around them, clearly in love with one another at the moment. It reminded me of a conversation I had with someone on Sunday after the 7:30 Mass. She asked me to explain my homily. I thought it had been clear, about how God spoke to Jesus at his baptism at the River Jordan...”You are my beloved”. I told her that God is always showing us that we are beloved. She started to tear up. “Why doesn’t he show that to me?”, the real question that was on her heart. I gave her a hug—how can you not when someone’s beautiful child is crying in front of you---and tried to communicate as best as I could that He was showing his love to her at that very minute.
I reached for another string of lights and remembered my brandy new Christmas earphones in my pocket. I slipped them into my ears, dialed up Spotify, and the first song off my playlist was Paul Simon’s You Can Call Me Al. You know the song, right? The horns begin, da dum dum da, the drums and the bass guitar join in, Simon’s confusing narrative begins. If you be my bodyguard, I can be your long lost pal. I’ve read that the lyrics contrast the egocentrism of a depressed man, sunk-in-himself and exhausted, with the possible transcendence of turning outward, letting go of his self-centered preoccupations, engaging with the world. Well, whatever, the music was contagious, and it got me engaged with my world. I don’t know if any of you were passing by at the time, but I kind of hope you weren’t because I couldn’t help myself dancing to the song, as I wrapped the lights. I went through one pass of the song, and then I put it on endless repeat, and I guess I was out there for almost a good hour listening to that song over and over and over again, pulling one string after another off those trees, wrapping, dancing, wrapping, dancing, dancing, wrapping. Da dum dum da, Da dum dum da. I imagined myself on a big stage somewhere, surrounded by a whole troupe of dancers, executing a perfect dance routine to the music.
How can I tell you how happy I felt? I was ecstatic, euphoric, elated, exultant. Everything came together for me at that moment. The strings of lights, the trees, the light fading fast over the city, the sound of sirens in the neighborhood, dogs barking, people laughing on their travels past the sidewalk, the music, my feet twisting and turning, the air moving in and out of my lungs. I felt like it was all connected, you know, everything was tuned to the same, universal wave. I’ve had this sensation before. It’s happened in the shower, in my room in front of my computer, walking down Broadway at 4 in the morning. And I’m not the only one. I saw it in Murphy’s face at the dog park down the street last night, he mouth open in a wide smile, his spontaneous barking at me as we both ran around untethered. It’s joy. Not just happiness, but joy, you know. Happiness is a fleeting emotion in which we experience feelings like contentment and satisfaction. But joy is much deeper. It goes to your soul. It makes you soar. There is a selflessness to joy, that even enables sacrifice of the self. You are wrong if you think joy emanates only or principally from human relationships. God has placed it all around us. It is in everything and anything we might experience. We just have to have the courage to risk opening our hearts to it. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, one of my heroes, said that Joy is the infallible sign of the presence of God.
I was trying to explain this to a friend and former student. His eyes lit up. Yes, he said, that’s the experience I’ve had when I microdose on LSD. No, I said, it’s not the same thing. It’s not a hallucinogenic experience, it’s not mind-bending or body twisting. It’s about your soul, connecting to the very essence of your spiritual identity. It’s the extraordinary that lives within the ordinary, don’t you see. You have to be prepared to see it, like John did with Jesus.
A long time ago, I was maybe 6 or 7 years old, I was with my mama and we had just left the dentist on 36th street. We were trying to go cross town but the street was blocked off and we had to wait. My mother asked what all the fuss was about, and someone told her that the President was coming, and she looked at me and said, "You're going to see the President, isn't this exciting?", and it was, even though I wasn't into politics at the time. My mother pushed us closer to the curb so we could get a better look and we were right there in the front. I peered down the street and saw a whole bunch of police cars and black cars and motorcycles approaching, and it was pretty exciting, the President of the United States was coming, and I was going to see him, and my mother said to me, "this is something you'll always remember," which was true.
Then just a moment or two before the cars and the motorcycles arrived, I noticed an old man next to me, and he was in the act of doing something that was so amazing I couldn't believe my eyes. He was standing there in the crowd, with his fingers up to his mouth, and he was taking his teeth out of his mouth. I had never seen anyone take their teeth out of their mouth like that before, in all my six years on the earth I never knew you could take your teeth out of your mouth, yet there was a man doing just that right before my eyes, and it was as if I was watching someone taking their nose off their face or an eye out of its socket, and his mouth was suddenly all caved in with the teeth out and in his hand, and the man was looking at his teeth with this shriveled up mouth, his teeth I could see, there in his hand. This was the most amazing thing I had ever seen, and as I was watching him and his teeth I heard someone say, "Look, there he is", and the man looked up and smiled this funny shriveled up smile and I suddenly remembered about the President, and I turned to look at the street, and the President's limousine was already past, it was down the street already, all I could see was the taillights and other cars that followed it and policemen on motorcycles. My mother looked down at me and said, "Wasn't that exciting?" and I said yes even though I missed the whole thing.
Without You Can Call Me Al singing in his earbuds, John saw Jesus coming down the road and something immediately clicked in his heart. No microdose of locusts and honey could give him the effect he felt. He was ecstatic, euphoric, elated, exultant. Everything came together for him at that moment. He was like Murphy out in the dog park, like me on the plaza, like any of you when real joy comes crashing into your ordinary world because you are ready for it. As Teilhard said, joy is the infallible sign of the presence of God. ““Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.”
As it is with John, so it is with us. Every day, Jesus passes by without a motorcade or even a shout, no sirens blaring, no wild man in camel's hair to point him out, he passes by us in disguise looking very much like us, though often poorer and meeker and hungrier and thirstier and sadder and more persecuted than most of us. He passes us by and we don't notice, or we pass him by in pursuit of something we think is much more exciting, like a new iPhone or an important job or a fancy meal or a hot date. Jesus passes by and he doesn't just throw a wave or a kiss but an invitation to walk or run beside him which on the outside doesn't look so appealing because there is nothing flashy or rich or influential about the whole thing, but which on the inside, if you look at the invitation with John's vision from the heart, it is the most exciting, ecstatic, euphoric, elated, exultant thing that could ever happen to you, even more exciting than seeing someone take their teeth out of their mouth. Every day during ordinary time he passes by...you, and me because we really are beloved, and most of the time we don't even notice.
May we be like John, heart and mind expectant, open for the joy that He wants to share with us, each and every one. Who knows, maybe he singing it to you: If you be my bodyguard, I can be your long lost pal.
