Yesterday afternoon XM radio played the Eagles' Desperado on The Bridge, Channel 32. Although the story the song conjures up happened at Christmas, this in not a Christmas story. It's a story about my life. And that my life is good.
My senior year at Samford University in 1974, my choir recorded an album at the end of the fall semester. Because of my five year degree I actually had two senior years. This was the first one. This recording process involved staying at school a day after school was out for Christmas. The dorms were already closed for the holidays, but for reasons I don't remember, I was able to stay in the dorm that extra night. That night when I walked into Crawford Johnson Hall and walked up the two flights of stairs to my hall, I could hear music as soon as I entered the stairwell. As I approached my hall, Dennis' stereo was playing Desperado. To say there was a magical quality about the music is an under statement. The music echoing through the empty halls and rooms sounded like music in a cathedral or a cavern. I know for a fact that Dennis and I were the only two people on the hall and I'm fairly sure we were the only two people in the dorm.
To that point in my life, I had never been desperate. I'd been very upset; I'd been lost physically and emotionally. I'd been hungry, but not starving. I had approached despair, but I had never been desperate. And yet as I walked toward his room and listened to the rest of the song, I identified with every word. But it wasn't the just the words that were affecting me, it was the words being beautifully sung by Don Henley. And that simple yet powerful accompaniment. There was no sense of loneliness, but a powerful sense of being alone.
"Desperado why don't you come to your senses?
Come down from your fences.
Open the gate. It may be rainin'
But there's a rainbow above you
You better let somebody love you before it's too late."
Although the definition of "desperado" is a desperate or reckless person, the western cowboy seems much more reckless to me than desperate. And maybe that's what I was feeling that night, not the desperation of a lost soul, but the wide open spaces of the wild, wild west. Is this Alabama or is it Montana?
As I walked down the hall to my room, I could still hear the music loud and clear. And I could still feel its effect. But I was feeling much more than reverberating music , I was feeling something else. In that moment everything about my life converged at the dorm room in CJ at Samford University. Ending another semester of college made perfectly good sense. Making the recording with my choir made perfectly good sense. Staying over a night in an empty dormitory made perfectly good sense. My pending trip to Jasper to complete my Christmas music responsibilities and then to Enterprise, Alabama for a break made perfectly good sense. Everything in the universe made perfectly good sense. If Scotty had beamed me up, I would not have been entirely surprised. I had reached a point of existential arrival. I could not have been more content.
Yesterday afternoon as I listened to the song, there was no "profound":existential experience. It was just a nice song on a beautiful day. But I remembered that night forty three years ago and I remembered that sublime and solitary experience. I also recollected that in 1974, I "let somebody love me", a girl from Jasper, Alabama. We've been married forty one years.
After Jacob's profound dream of the angels ascending and descending a ladder, he erected a stone, the stone that had been his pillow, and called the place Beth-El, the House of God. About twenty years ago Samford University gutted Crawford Johnson Hall an erected the school's religion building. Nearly ten years ago I was wandering around campus alone when a young man approached me. He introduced himself as from the Alumni Affairs office He asked me if there was something I wanted to see. I said, "As a matter of fact I would like to try to find my dorm room in the religion building." I explained to him where it was and that it had a view of Wright Performing Hall. We made our way across campus, entered the rotunda of the School of Religion and walked up two flights of mahogany stairs. We walked down the hall and I found the door to my room. We entered the room to find that it had become a small classroom. Board, desks, the whole thing. It had been glorified! But it had not become the House of God when the new building was built. It had become the House of God in December of 1974. All it took was a song playing on a record player, a friend and an empty dorm. Sometimes only vacancy can be filled with wonder. "Life is difficult" M. Scott Peck said. But life is good. I've known that for a long time, but seldom like I knew it that night in CJ Hall. I have a son and a granddaughter. I have certainly known much wonder since then But it was that night at Christmas 1974 that for the first time in my life, I knew the wonder of it all.
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