Issue #20: God, country music and a Jewish Agnostic walk into a bar

On listening to music of faith, when you don't have much

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By Marissa

I was doing a thing I do, which is listening to country music and thinking about God. This may not seem so strange to you, as I am under the impression that God happens to come up a lot in the lives of most people, and that God and the faith that comes with him/her/them is a pretty popular topic in county music. But it’s strange to me, because I do not generally believe in God. Which, living in the Bible Belt, is not something I tend to say out loud on a regular basis. I probably should not admit it here, but it’s too late now. Oh well.

I’m sure you know by now I grew up Jewish. For whatever reason, I never developed a spiritual practice (despite very strong cultural ties to my religion), or a belief in any sort of higher power. I consider myself agnostic for the most part – it seems just as arrogant to insist something doesn’t exist as it is to insist it does. I don’t have anyone to pray to, but I leave the door open for that to change. I wish I did. In a way I consider it one of my greatest character flaws: I repeatedly do not understand why I am not able to believe. Am I broken? I am delighted by the beauty of the world and the cruelty it can carry on a daily basis, but it’s like a box of trinkets scattered on the ground randomly; just there, existing in that beauty and cruelty for no reason other than the wind.

That doesn’t mean I haven’t prayed, but I’d call it hoping more than praying. Hoping when someone is sick or in trouble that things would turn around, feeling the distinct despair of powerlessness because those hopes weren’t directed anywhere, just bow and arrows shooting off a cliff. I’d be lucky if they landed in the dirt, but more often than not it feels like they just disappear off the horizon.

The idea for this essay scared me shitless - a generally agnostic Jewish girl talking about faith, Christianity and country music. And don’t get me wrong: there are topics in this category that scare me even more, and I’m not ready to write about, that deal in the antisemitism here in Nashville and the way that Christianity and the church is the backbeat to so much of what happens here, even if unspoken, as a way to close doors to certain people and to open them to others, something that sits at the bottom of so many decisions. Maybe I’ll get there, but I won’t just yet. I know, for the most part, I am existing in their world and their faith; an outsider and a spectator, and nothing I say will convince anyone otherwise.

Instead, I want to talk about how I find a love for music rooted in a faith that isn’t mine, or a faith at all. Because I do love it.

I realized very early in my relationship to country music that God was going to be a part of the equation. At first, I didn’t know what to do when I stumbled upon a mention of God or prayer or Jesus in a song that otherwise resonated with me – for a time time, I felt like I had to be resistant to it. I hopped around the lyrics like a runner over hurdles: “Down to the River To Pray,” “I’ll Fly Away,” “Ten Thousand Angels Cried,” “Godspeed (Sweet Dreams).” “Down to the River To Pray,” in particular, was seminal - the cover of the traditional from the O Brother soundtrack by Emmylou Harris, Alison Krauss, and Gillian Welch featured three artists who became personal favorites, and played during my wedding ceremony as my closest friends and family walked down the aisle.

Sometimes, I pulled back more – especially when I saw certain artists sing frequently about faith and then advocate using their religion as a vehicle of hate and discrimination.  To be honest, those artists never came back into my rotation. We all have our limits, and those are mine. I am not sorry to cement that line.

For others, though, I found a way to listen to a message of faith and God and prayer in a way that is open. It does not change who I am and what I think, or at least it hasn’t yet. But I have found a way to listen to those words and see them head on; to leave open the door that one day maybe I might feel different, or to see the beauty in the prayer and practice of others, even if it will never be my own.

As I told you at the beginning of this whole thing, I was listening to country music and thinking about God. I was doing it in particular because I was listening to Charlie Worsham, and his song “How I Learned To Pray,” featuring Luke Combs. I first heard the track on Charlie’s debut LP, Rubberband, and I adored him then and do now – we have few better players, writers and generally good people in this town than we find in Charlie, and I wish he were a massive superstar. But because it’s about prayer and God, it wasn’t one that stayed in my rotation.

The song came up again as an early release from his EP, out October 13^th, called Compadres. I listen now with much more death and sickness under my belt, with natural disasters and political crises and human rights assaults and pandemics under all of our belts. I have two children now. Their journey of faith is not mine, and I hope they rest on what feels right for them, and grows with them, if it’s too late for me. Now, the mentions of God are not hurdles to leap over, but chances to slow down.

I haven’t learned how to pray.

But I have learned how to listen.