The .Plan

One of my favorite prayers is the Magnificat.

What has always appealed to me about this passage is that it is a beautiful expression of Mary’s long memory of God’s lovingkindness. I can appreciate the the politics of a minority bastard child born, to a father descended not just from David but also from Rahab and Ahaz, in a tiny corner of the Roman Empire, whose arrival frightened a ruler of awesome geopolitical talent who built his regime through repression and persecution (and who assassinated Caesar and his royal father and 45 Sadducees en route to consolidation of his power). He was not executed as a political criminal for being nice and telling other people to be nice.

Occasionally the Magnificat is referred to by its Latin name, the Fiat mihi, “let it be to me according to thy will”. That is a pretty remarkable gut response to a divine interruption. When we think about interruptions, they always seem to be far off into the future, and our willingness to respond to them is conditioned on our plans: I will be willing to do Z if and when X or Y happens. X or Y might include completion of a training program or graduate degree, or a promotion to a position of seniority; Z might include standing firm on prescribing emergent mifepristone/misoprostol, or taking a detour on pursuing a particular career path. Of course, we tend to overestimate our willingness to entertain these deviations from our controlled, linear trajectories.

But what about the smaller interruptions? Call nights tend to be full of these.

Come, ye weary, heavy-laden,
Lost and ruined by the fall;
If you tarry till you’re better,
You will never come at all.

As I think about the Christian life I often find myself convinced that many of us will be sent up out of the trenches only to get mowed down by the expectant machine guns on the other side. That is, maybe — well, I have to believe, very likely, as a Christian — we will win, but not on this side of the eschaton. It is a tragic view of the Christian life, but a realistic one that I don’t expect many to share with me. Recently I rediscovered how J.R.R. Tolkien wrote and spoke much more eloquently about this sentiment: how, as a Christian, he believed that the history of man would be nothing but a ‘long defeat’ even as it offers glimpses of a final victory.

Paul Farmer also picked up on this phrase:

“I have fought the long defeat and brought other people on to fight the long defeat, and I’m not going to stop because we keep losing. Now I actually think sometimes we may win. I don’t dislike victory… You know, people from our background — like you, like most PIH-ers, like me — we’re used to being on a victory team, and actually what we’re really trying to do in PIH is to make common cause with the losers. Those are two very different things. We want to be on the winning team, but at the risk of turning our backs on the losers, no, it’s not worth it. So you fight the long defeat.”
–Tracy Kidder, Mountains Beyond Mountains

This is also a recurring theme in the movies I love the most.

I guess that’s why I found Nate Anderson’s recently published profile of songwriter Bill Mallonee simultaneously heartbreaking and encouraging. Ever since discovering Mallonee’s music in 2003, I’ve tried to attend as many of his gigs as I could. Maybe he could pick my face out of a crowd, no, probably not. On one wintry and desolate night in Cleveland, he spent an hour after a show talking with me and several friends about art and Christian worship, the difficulties of the touring life, and the joys and pains of his stuttering music career. As haggard as he looked then, he seemed to be satisfied in continuing to fight the long defeat.

With its pressed tin roof, scuffed wood floor, and the sort of chairs that make you glad the lights are dim, Cincinnati’s Northside Tavern looks an unlikely spot to see the world’s 65th-greatest living songwriter. It’s two hours past the posted showtime, and Mallonee sits on a chair near the door and tunes a duct-taped guitar as the sun falls behind the scruffy mix of vegan restaurants, Somali groceries, and Buddhist centers outside.

“Are you here to see Bill?” I ask the only woman who appears to be waiting for the music.

She looks toward the bay window that serves as a stage, a mirror ball dangling improbably overhead.

“Who’s Bill?” she replies.

In June 2006, Paste magazine ranked the hundred finest living songwriters and put Mallonee at 65th place—ahead of Pink Floyd, Fleetwood Mac, and Michael Jackson. Mallonee gained some prominence in the 1990s as the lead writer and singer for Vigilantes of Love, but these days the brutal economics of the road have stripped him of a backing band; the entire tour operation now consists of Mallonee, his wife, and their black Scion.

At the Cincinnati bar, only a handful of patrons pay attention to the music. But Mallonee sings in signature style anyway, eyes closed and throat shaking out the words as though each syllable must first be wrested from the bone.
–Nate Anderson, “Loving Where it Hurts the Most”, Christianity Today, November 21, 2008