The Big Invitation

Lying out there like a killer in the sun
Hey I know it's late, we can make it if we run...

I took the invitation—Bruce invited us to an earthly life. He wanted us to go out to the edge of town with the ones we love and have fun, have great and better sex, to come along for the ride, to get in the car and drive, to live.

I knew it.

I knew that was the message of that song... in my soul.

It is the one that makes sense.

That graduation gown in rags at their feet....

Like a physical weight that bears down on me
Like a press that marks me
Like standing alone in the gloom before dawn...

You have to rise up and get out of town and drive.

I don't want to die. I know now that I will.

Some of the people I love most are dead, and I've never met them. (Laura Ingalls Wilder, E. M. Forster, Dietrich Bonhoeffer)

Some of the people I've loved are dead to me, though very much alive.

And some people can't take the invitation—life is survival; it's the best they can do.

The Moroccan whose car I crashed into commented on the war in Iraq. Iraqis are angry he said. "Its hurt." (sic) He said that democracy costs and the Iraqis are paying a heavy price and "Its hurt."

Their hurt equals death for over 100,000 civilians. Death means the invitation to life can't be answered.

I think of Bono's lyric:
They're lives are bigger than any big idea.

Have we forgotten?

I feel small, tired, unwilling to die and in awe of life.

Bruce Springsteen is on Storytellers on VH1 tonight and will reair over the next couple of days. Brilliant.