Rural Free Delivery

Mary and I just completed an epic five-week trip that included a very successful research stopover in Memphis and a jaunt across upstate New York, Vermont (I think I’m in love!), and down the eastern seaboard, seeing old friends and making new ones.

Our stopover in far western New York included a couple of nights in the villages of Fredonia, Dunkirk and Lily Dale. Perhaps you saw the recent HBO documentary on Lily Dale. Or perhaps you’ve read Christine Wicker’s Lily Dale: The True Story of the Town That Talks to the Dead. If you haven’t, Lily Dale needs a little backstory.

This is home of the American Spiritualist movement. About 150 years ago, a movement sprang up composed of people who believed you could gain wisdom (and perhaps salvation) by speaking with the dead. Mediums. Seances. Ghostly rappings. That sort of thing. Today Lily Dale is a small village (you have to pay an admission fee to even enter the place during the summer) and virtually everybody there still believes. In fact, before you can practice (or put out a shingle), you have to be certified by the Lily Dale Assembly.

The village is all but untouched since the 1800s — it looks like a set from Meet Me in St. Louis. (Well, except for all of the fairies, dolphins, spirits, witches, sacred herbs, and crystals everywhere.) Everything is brightly painted, every garden is a delight, and every other person you meet is a medium. Throughout the summer, an array of guest speakers, famous mediums, ghost-hunters, and authors give talks, seminars and demonstrations. It is, of course, a trip.

Now, not everybody would probably enjoy spending an afternoon in Lily Dale. I know there are folks who believe all of this stuff is of Satan. There are others who dismiss it out of hand. But Mary and I enjoyed it anyway. I couldn’t put my finger on exactly why I got such a kick out of the place until I read this passage in Christine’s book. It’s her description of Shelley Takei, a psychologist who summers at Lily Dale and who founded the Lower Archy of the Pink Sisterhood of the Metafuzzies and the Blissninnies. The group’s motto is: “We don’t know jack ***, but we care.”

Their motto reminded me of the controversial church t-shirt I mentioned a couple of posts back. This clearly works for the folks in Lily Dale. Nobody hassled us. Nobody preached to us. Nobody told us were were going to hell if we didn’t vote for a certain political party who shall remain nameless. Everybody was very nice.

Does it work for me? No.

It did get me to thinking about what I do believe. My beliefs have changed over the decades. I used to be pretty sure I knew all of the answers. I was a little dogmatic. I was judgmental. Now, not so much. I don’t sweat the petty stuff anymore (nor do I pet the sweaty stuff), particularly as it pertains to other people.

Instead, I’m kind of like David Oliveria’s mom. At least how David depicts her in his poem “Why I’m Not a Vegetarian”:

As my mother would say,
“Live and let live—
Just keep the details to yourself,
And pass the ketchup, please.”

(David Oliveira, from A Little Travel Story. © Harbor Mountain Press, 2008.)

And yet …

And yet … there is something I do believe strongly. Perhaps you’ve heard the story of Gavin Bryars, a well-known jazz musician. The short version is, while living in England in the 1970s, he was employed as a sound technician for a documentary on the homeless. Somewhere around King’s Cross, he recorded a nameless hobo singing a little ditty, which he recorded — and promptly forgot about for many years.

Eventually, he re-discovered the audio tape and played it back. Something about the little tramp’s voice struck him, so Bryars made a loop of the little ditty — it works like a “round” (like “Row, Row, Row Your Boat”) — extending it to 90 minutes. When he returned from tea, a group of people were standing around his studio, listening and crying.

Bryars took the raw vocals and eventually over-lay dozens of string instruments, creating an ebb and flow of music behind the voice, culminating with Tom Waits singing a duet with the nameless man for the final minutes.

Jesus’ Love Failed Me Yet was an underground hit. Bryars then returned to U.K., but never found the little man again. This CD has spoken to me in ways that few sermons ever have and I’ve used it to calm the storms of my life on many occasions. I’ve also given away numerous copies. And this all the little tramp sings:

Jesus’ love never failed me yet/Never failed me yet/Jesus’ love never failed me yet/This one thing I know/That he loves me so/Jesus’ love never failed me yet

That’s it. That’s what I know. That’s about ALL I know.

Everything else peripheral.

Which means that I’ll tend to my bidness and be happy. And I’ll be happy that you’re happy while you’re tending to your bidness, be it in Waco or Lily Dale or elsewhere.

Or, as another great poet once wrote:

Whatever gets you through the night, ’s all right, ’s all right
It’s your money or your life, ’s all right, ’s all right
Don’t need a sword to cut through flowers, oh no, oh no

– John Lennon, “Whatever Gets You Through the Night”