And now for something completely different

"I take this to be holy — If futile, uncertain and dire: Our union of fracture, our dread everlasting, This beautiful, desperate desire. The cloud darkens to harrow, It crosses your heart like hand, but it’s cool like the shadow of all that we've seen by the Light that we can't understand."

Some of the lyrics from Grave Angels by singer/song writer Joe Henry (new to me), with whom Krista Tippett had a wonderful interview with  this week. "The Mystery and Adventure of Life and Songwriting". I hope you'll have time to listen to it, or to read the transcript. Here are a few of my favorite moments.

Joe Henry: John Cage said “The past doesn't influence me, I influence it.” I know I'm constantly reimagining my past and assigning different significance to it. It's completely in play all the time.

“It wasn't peace I wanted, so it wasn't peace I found. I wouldn't stand for reason, and it never would sit down.” [From his song, Sparrow,, for which I couldn't find a decent video. It's on the album Invisible Hour.]

KT: I used to hear people talk about — older people talk about being older and I — it disturbed me. I felt like, why are they focusing on that? Like they were highlighting what was wrong. And now I realize that the process of growing older is so fascinating. I mean, you talk about it because it's really interesting.

JH: And there's a liberation that comes with getting to a point where you think, "I'm not waiting for that next great shoe to drop." Both the shoes may be [lying] here. And this might be what there is. And there's terrific liberation in acknowledging what is. That idea of actually seeing in real time, this. And our culture does not know how to encourage that kind of thinking.

KT: here's a great line from “Slide”: “I'm learning more than I intended, try not to though I might.

Here's an extended concert with him on an NPR show called "Tiny Desk."