Sitting near the fire along the Missouri River that summer night in 1970, the girl I found so fetching explained why she liked the music of Chicago so much better than my favored Crosby, Stills and Nash.
“They make you think too much,” she said of CS&N. “I just want to listen to the music.”
Understand, I had nothing at all against Chicago, particularly when Transit Authority was still attached to the end of their name. And, well, CS&N — or CSN&Y, when Neil Young was in a condition to be engaged — did indeed have a way of making you think, especially as they found their protest voice during the Vietnam era.
But as I argued that night, they were pretty good with a tune, too. And it’s possible to listen to the music and still find meaning in the lyrics, all at the same time. I’ve never been a multitasker, but I could handle that.
The girl I found so fetching remained skeptical. So she and I decided to disagree on music, and a few other things. And under those starry central South Dakota skies, with a driftwood fire blazing and the Big Dipper putting on a show, it became clear that our friendly infatuation would never develop into something more.
That was probably just as well, especially for her. She was a good person in the normal teenage process of separating the adult from the child within her. And I was a bit of a hard case, sanctimonious in my presumed maturity, often judgmental beyond reason, in a hurtful way.
But sometimes I was within reason, too, which is where I thought I was on the music discussion. It mattered to me, that discussion, and the idea that music should have life-altering meaning, not just toe-tapping energy.
I was an incipient prophet seeker in those days, doing most of my seeking outside the doors of St. James Catholic Church.
During those days, and nights, I was drifting through a period of religious disengagement, having stepped away for a few years from the sometimes-harsh, doctrine-driving Catholicism I’d known, and mostly loved, from the time I was old enough to know and love.
Ignoring the Bible (something the most active of Catholic laity has been known to do anyway), I found my prophets elsewhere. Usually, they had long hair and guitars.
And they made you think. Oh man, did they make you think, if you were willing to listen.
Fast forward 50 years, to St. Isaac Jogues Catholic Church in North Rapid City yesterday, and the regular 12:10 daily Mass. There, Father Ed Witt discussed in his homily the first reading of the day, by the prophet Amos, who presumably had a beard if not a Gretsch or Martin or Fender.
Amos is considered a minor prophet, I guess. But he seems pretty major these days, with all that’s going on. Father Ed pointed that out in his homily, referring to God’s call, through the prophet, to “hate evil and love good, and let justice prevail at the gate.”
A preacher like father Ed — you know those Jesuits; they’ll make you think — can do a lot with a little prophecy like that. And Ed did a lot, applying the ancient to the current and calling upon us to consider how much we have done and are doing, or how little, to hate evil, love good and work to help justice prevail.
We’ve come a fair distance on justice since this nation was founded. But as the death of George Floyd and others so clearly and tragically show, the journey is long and much of the difficult road still lies ahead.
Search our hearts, Father Ed asks, for prejudice. Attack it and find our better angels. Urge others to do the same. And in considering the lingering and, perhaps, revived racism in this nation, he reminds us of what should be the central calling -- loving God, seeking goodness, seeking justice -- of the church and its people.
Or, for those who think God is a fantasy and churches are a waste of time, just consider it a central calling to the people. All people. Any people. Because even the good-hearted non-believers among us, many of whom are my friends, might like some of what the prophet Amos says here in calling for much more than commitment to ritual and adherence to doctrine:
"I hate, I spurn your feasts, says the Lord,
I take no pleasure in your solemnities;
Your cereal offerings I will not accept,
nor consider your stall-fed peace offerings.
Away with your noisy songs!
I will not listen to the melodies of your harps.
But if you would offer me burnt offerings,
then let justice surge like water,
and goodness like an unfailing stream."
Even if you’re not an Amos fan, you might recognize some of those words. The justice-surging-like-water simile was a favorite of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. He used it effectively in his speeches and in his writing.
Writing for The Nation in March of 1965, King spoke of the struggle for civil rights, for meaningful change, and the inevitability of powerful protests and civil disobedience in that process:
“The issues which must be decided are momentous. The contest is not tranquil and relaxed. The search for a consensus will tend to become a quest for the least common denominator of change. In an atmosphere devoid of urgency, the American people can easily be stupefied into accepting slow reform, which in practice would be inadequate reform. ‘Let Justice roll down like waters in a mighty stream,’ said the Prophet Amos. He was seeking not consensus but the cleansing action of revolutionary change. America has made progress toward freedom, but measured against the goal, the road ahead is still long and hard. This could be the worst possible moment for slowing down.”
King would, perhaps, be brokenhearted to see that we have slowed down, after the essential period of civil-rights acceleration he inspired, the one to which he eventually gave his life. And he likely would issue those challenging words again today.
Which would not be a call to violence or rioting, to smashed vehicles and burned-out businesses, or to sniper assaults on police officers. That was not King’s way. But his way was revolutionary, a call to action that might include powerful, controversial tools of civil disobedience that make some, maybe many, uncomfortable.
It’s clear from our history that justice does not roll like water on its own. It needs a reservoir of commitment, and a rainstorm of courage to take shape, to find volume and to be released.
We are seeing those storms now. We are seeing that reservoir grow and begin to be released. It makes some of us — including me — uncomfortable. Harsh rhetoric and calls for revolutionary change do that, to the comfortable, just as they tend to bring hope to the afflicted.
It’s a familiar song. Familiar as the words of an Old Testament prophet; familiar as the calling to action by a Civil Rights icon; and familiar as the melodious messaging of a folk-rock band with tunes that make you dance but also make you stop and think.
Thinking can lead to action. And action can lead to change. And change can lead to justice.
Rolling down like waters in a mighty stream.
