(editor’s note: This piece is
dedicated to the owners and patrons of Kuma’s Corner, Purveyors of fine BOVINE
GENOCIDE, Chicago, Illinois, in honor of their November “Sleep” burger with turkey
and cranberry jelly. Yum)
“As for man, his days
are like grass; he flourishes like a flower of the field; for the wind passes
over it, and it is gone ...But the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to
everlasting upon those who fear him. (Psalm 103)
by Susan Fox
American rock musician
Matthew Pike has found a mysterious part of himself – something that was
missing during the years he was blacked out from alcohol and dope.
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| Doom Metal Guitarist Matt Pike |
“I’m starting to find out who
I really am, what I’m worth and the value of my being,” said the 41-year-old
Denver native in a 2012 interview with Vincent Duke for Pelecanus.net. “That’s
an important thing for a person to realize.”
And surprisingly, it appears
that the guitarist for the doom metal band, Sleep, is finding out that being
human and being alive is actually something wonderful.
“I’ve been writing in this
journal… some of it is very Hunter S. Thompson. It’s realism. It has comedy,
and it’s kind of depressing, too, because of the way my life has been,” said Pike,
who admits he is still struggling with alcohol addiction. “It kinda makes me
sad that I blacked myself out for half of it.”
“I just feel like I’m
starting to get grounded where I was lost for a really long time.” His face
beaming with happiness, Pike added, “I asked my girl to marry me in Rome. She
said, ‘Yes.’ So it will be the first
time I’ve ever been married. ”
His partner on this pilgrimage
to the heart of his humanity is a mysterious worm, the subject of his latest
song creation, De Vermis Mysteriis.
“That’s what that record is – it’s the Book of the Worm or the mysteries of the
worm. It’s about digging under the earth or underneath the groundation of your
soul and finding something. It’s not about how rock star I am. Being human is
finding what you really are.”
I wonder if he would be
surprised to know that a number of other people have courageously ridden the
worm into their own soul and found something beautiful there.
Harking back to Psalm 103
where man is compared to the flower of the field, which lasts only so long as
the wind passes over it, St. Theresa -- known as The Little Flower -- said, “If
a little flower could speak, it would say, simply, what the good God has done
for her.” Indeed the French saint lived only 24 years in an obscure Carmelite
convent in Lisieux in the late 1800s. Yet she is known and loved worldwide.
Her life inspired a
Vietnamese Redemptorist brother, Marcel Van, to follow the same vocation of
hidden love. He died at the age of 31 in a North Vietnamese re-education camp
after he voluntarily returned to the dangerous Communist Zone in 1954. If anyone asked why he wanted to return to
North Viet Nam, he answered, “I am going so that there is someone who loves God
in the middle of the Communists.”
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| Brother Marcel Van |
He described his life using
the same imagery Theresa did, saying that if the flower could speak, “she would
frankly admit that she is a fragile creature, quick to fade but she would also
be proud of her beauty, of the crispness of her colors, of her delicate scent
and of all the other qualities that nature has adorned her with.”
Isn’t Pike’s mysterious worm
showing him this same reality? Under the soil of his heart, is he not finding
something truly beautiful?
Van continued, “I tell myself
that my soul is also like one of God’s flowers. It is God himself who has
preordained all that I possess and all the events of my life. I can also
therefore recount all the graces with which the good God has embellished my
soul, so that together … we can sing a canticle of praise to the infinite mercy
of God.”
Pike added, “I can’t summon
angels or demons. I can’t do a lot of these things that you think you can when
you are in that state. I found a (different)
part of myself. I want to be able to express myself through my instrument. And
I’m going to strap that guitar on every day and I’m going to work hard to make
a life for my children and my wife.”
“I’m going to make a lot of
people, who are sad, feel something. I’m going to make a lot of people, who are
angry, feel something. I’m going to make a lot of people, who are happy, feel
something,” he concluded.
Is that a strange ambition
for a guitarist for a group called “Sleep?”
Sleep after all is part of the doom metal scene where the smog of pot fills
the room. Its lyrics speak repeatedly
about escape. “Drop out of life with bong in hand. Follow the smoke to-uh the
riff-filled land.” (Refrain for Sleep’s Dopesmoker lyrics)
No, even sleep is full of
emotion. Doom metal enthusiasts are
seeking to experience the same emotions every human being longs for. That’s why
they go to concerts.
“Life is always a good. This is an instinctive perception and a fact
of experience, and man is called to grasp the profound reason why this is so,”
said Pope John Paul II in the Gospel of Life published in 1995. He also lived
through great tribulation, the Nazi and Communist occupation of Poland, the
death of his parents, and the Nazi Holocaust which robbed him of personal
friends.
“The life which God gives man
is quite different from the life of all other living creatures, inasmuch as
man, although formed from the dust of the earth, is a manifestation of God in
the world, a sign of his presence, a trace of his glory,” the pope said, adding
the famous quote from St. Irenaeus of Lyons, “Man, living man, is the glory of
God… in man there shines forth a reflection of God himself.”
Addressing God, the author of
Psalm 8 says, “When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon
and the stars which you have established; (I think) What is man that you are
mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? Yet you have made him
little less than the angels, and you have crowned him with glory and honor.”
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| The Good Shepherd |
How does God regard the human
flower? Jesus Himself answered this
question in the parable of the lost sheep. If a man has 100 sheep, and one goes
astray, does he care? Jesus said, “Yes, he leaves the 99 and goes to look for
the one that was lost.” And if he finds it, he rejoices over it more than the
99 who never went astray.
But that is God’s thinking,
not ours. If a man is a modern commercial sheepherder, he will be indifferent
to one sheep out of 100. He would probably use a mathematical formula to figure
out that his profit only went down marginally. Then he’d forget about the sheep
and go to bed. That’s how modern man thinks. But not the Good Shepherd. He would go out and
search.
"You don't have the right to despise yourself. You don't have the right," said Fr. Felicien Mbala at Mass today in Denver. He referred to the fact that God Himself has paid the price for us in His own Blood. "For God so loved the world He gave His only Son. And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us."
"You don't have the right to despise yourself. You don't have the right," said Fr. Felicien Mbala at Mass today in Denver. He referred to the fact that God Himself has paid the price for us in His own Blood. "For God so loved the world He gave His only Son. And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us."
“Long live traveler
Winds now die
Dark place creature
Destined night.”
(Matt Pike in De Vermis
Mysteriis)
Another source for similar thoughts:
God Searches for the Lost With a Special Love, Pope Francis says
Another source for similar thoughts:
God Searches for the Lost With a Special Love, Pope Francis says
