Alanis Morissette Wrote A Worship Song

So I’m writing this book — it’s a memoir. It’s a remembrance of a brief time in my past, but this time has tendrils that snake into my present — in wispy memories, in paper letters, maybe even in some slight form of relational PTSD. The book takes place in the late 1990’s, flashes forward into a brief interlude in the early 2000’s and culminates here, in the today.

Crazy things are happening to help me write this book. Crazy things like speaking to the New Zealand international attache to China; crazy things like people who tell me they bring messages from the dead, and those messages are insanely accurate; crazy things like the fact that, though she may not have meant to, Alanis Morissette wrote a worship song.

And the craziest of all is that Jesus is here, in the middle of all of it. Just here. 

The book is about my friend whose life was a tragic adventure tale, which took her to four continents, prison, an asylum, and finally her grave. The book is also about how my boring suburban life could be so very different and yet, so very much like, her crazy life. Our friendship was brief but deep, and centered on Jesus, which I am only rediscovering as I re-read all her letters to me. We spoke through music so much — especially Indigo Girls. Indigo Girls took our insides, turned them out and wrote them into beautiful, masterpiece songs that make my human condition almost bearable.

God gave us music for that reason, I think. To turn out our insides, so we can recognize each other — not get sidetracked by stupid shit like the color of our skin, the construct of our sex, our BMI or the brand of our jeans.

It’s a hard story to write, this adventure tale my friend went on. It’s not like blog posts like this one, which I often just write on my daily run, then come back and do due diligence by typing them up. Hers is a story I have to ease back into, stay there for a few luscious, painful hours, then re-emerge,and the act of laying down her story is a gentle reburial each and every time.

And as a way to get there, I am re-immersing myself in the music of that time, and mostly the music of women. Indigo Girls, of course, but they never left me. They are old friends — kindred who are worlds apart and different and yet — recognized on the insides. But also rediscovering old favorites, the ones who went on long rides with me, who went from cassette to CD and now finally back with me on my iPhone: Jewel. Lisa Loeb. And of course, Alanis.

And I was listening to her song, Everything just now, after I dropped the kids who didn’t exist back then off at school, and did my suburban mom trip to Whole Foods to buy greek yogurt and organic peanut butter, and I searched my memory for the words which I know I had memorized way back when. But the song wanted to be new to me, and it unfolded itself for me slowly, stretched itself languidly out of my car speakers. It was almost over when I realized that it could be — and for me, is — a worship song. It’s a love song for Jesus.

Of course, I can’t really imagine Bart, the worship director at my church, starting a set with asshole in the first line of the first song, especially since it was his cuss jar I single-handedly filled when I surprised the world and myself and ended up on the church staff for a brief, oh, five-year interlude.

But this song — man. It’s Jesus. Check out this chorus:

You see everything, you see every part

You see all my light and you love my dark

You dig everything of which I’m ashamed

There’s not anything to which you can’t relate

And you’re still here

The song is about duplicitous human nature and all the emotions that go with it. It’s about how at once I can feel ugly and beautiful, powerful and weak, funny and dull in the same nano-second. I do quantum physics proud. I give Heisenberg all the uncertainty he needs for his principles, what with all my bi-polar emotional particles.

But Jesus is still here.

He sees everything light about me — His own self reflected back.  But I think maybe he digs my dark more, because he knows its the dark — when I finally realize I’m standing in the thick of it — that makes me run to him. Dark is where Jesus shines brightest.

Everything that makes me feel ashamed, that accuses me, that makes feel less than I should be is the very thing that lets him step up and be my hero. And yes, my fiercely independent streak even now wants to yell I DON’T NEED A HERO! I’LL BE MY OWN HERO!

And still, Jesus is just here. Standing in the wake of my raging, in the tidal waves, the comings and goings of my adoration and rebellion, he’s just there.

What I resist, persists, and speaks louder than I know

What I resist, you love, no matter how low or high I go

Tell me that lyric doesn’t scream Jesus. Except Jesus doesn’t scream, really. He whispers and loves, he calls, beckons, soothes, and sometimes he scolds. But there is no creepy misogyny in his Hero-ness, and there no is wanting except for my heart. And his scolding is that of a mother missing her child, wanting to keep her safe. His scolding is filled with love, a big brother looking out, a best friend’s protectiveness.

We may not say asshole in church, but that doesn’t make me less of one, regardless of where I am. And I think it’s from our asshole-y-ness that Jesus makes us holy, almost because without one, we don’t appreciate the other.

Take that, Heisenberg. And Alanis, thanks for the worship song that I can turn my insides out to. I’m so glad to be rediscovering you.