A Still, Small Voice Comes Blazing
One of my sneaky favorite Bible passages comes from 1 Kings. In Chapter 19, YHWH tells Elijah to go to a place on the holy mountain where the Lord will pass by him. A strong wind, a powerful earthquake, and a flash of fire pass by, but YHWH is not in any of those: “after the fire, [there came] a light silent sound. When he heard this, Elijah hid his face in his cloak and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. A voice said to him, Why are you here, Elijah?” (vv. 9-13)
The refrain of Josh Ritter’s “Monster Ballads” (song | lyrics | from the album “The Animal Years”) sings of the ongoing, droning search for something:
Out on the desert now and feeling lostIn the way that his folk style can, Josh’s dexterous guitar-playing paired with steady, light percussion pushes straight on from this refrain, with its reference to the Passion, right into the bridge. There, the speaker considers the distracting hubbub of technology that we use to fill our emptiness alongside this voice that ultimately reaches Elijah:
The bonnet wears a wire albatross
Monster ballads and the stations of the cross
Sighing just a little bit
The ones and the zeroes bleeding mesa noiseJosh Ritter is a dynamic folk artist, singer/songwriter, and wildly talented guitarist, who couples colorful, evocative tales of curious characters in enthralling landscapes with regular nods to the spiritual, the religious, and even the biblical to deliver music thickly layered with meaning.
And when you're empty there's so much space for them
You turn it off but then a still small voice
Comes in blazing from some vast horizon
Here, Josh identifies that thing that shakes you from malaise as this “blazing” voice of God that seeks you in the silence. In “Girl in the War” (song | lyrics | from the album “The Animal Years”), Josh uses the odd couple of Sts. Peter and Paul to discuss love and faith, as “Paul said to Peter / you gotta rock yourself a little harder” (a delicious pun) and exhorts him to “pretend the dove from above is a dragon / and your feet are on fire,” an unusual yet potent way to characterize the inspiration from the Spirit. In “Rainslicker” (song | lyrics | from the album “Hello Starling”), Josh describes the placid gaze of a lover with “eyes so patient and calm / as green as the grass that might grow on the 23rd Psalm.” Throughout his music, Josh utilizes motif, metaphor, story, and pithy lines that pack a punch fueled by these references.
Motif: The Tree
Deeper than that fun little ditty, Josh also makes two big lyrical visits to the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. “Lighthouse Fire” (song | lyrics) opens with this same verse twice:
Gonna build you a cathedral out of nothing but the raftersHere, it feels like a stark departure from the ancestral narratives and children of Abraham in Genesis; rather than a tree that was rightly restricted by God, here is a love that is fueled by eating of this tree’s knowledge, a knowledge that shows who we are at the core and builds a church that eschews stained glass and statues. Yet, in “Homecoming” (song | lyrics) -- the kind of rich, emotionally weighty ballad that Josh’s folk music so organically creates -- the Tree is not so much a source of rebellious love as a mark of the goodness of home.
'Tween the stars, 'tween the stars, 'tween the stars, 'tween the stars
From the tree of good and evil bring you fruit of the knowledge
Of your heart, of your heart, of your heart, of your heart
As the idea of a true love is intertwined with the town where one grew up, “Homecoming” means returning to the place “where the tree of good and evil still resides,” even hearkening back with longing undertones to “that time before the fall.” Josh sings how this place called home makes a claim on you: “It has my heart / It has my heart / They stole my heart / My heart will stay / My heart will stay.” As the song turns to the joy of that impending homecoming, the verses build to a revelation that seems to spring from the joy of this impending return home: “When the oracle spoke to me she was like a roadside song / Do unto others as you would have them do / Even if in turn they do you wrong.” So here, the tree becomes a mark of what one learns growing up, how it is challenged and changed in leaving, and how the purity and goodness of that truth can be rediscovered in that enduring reality of home.
Metaphor: The Tracks and Train
Reaching back deeper into Josh’s discography, “Harrisburg” (song | lyrics | off the album “Golden Age of Radio”) is a thorough story-driven metaphorization of sin and evil. Here, Josh tells the story of a man named Romero, freshly married at “Our Lady of Immaculate Dawn,” and while “he coulda got married in the revival man’s tent / there ain’t no reviving what’s gone.” Romero quickly slips away from his family -- he “dropped the kids at the mission with a rose for the Virgin / she knew he was gone for good.”2
Woven in through Romero’s flight, presumably off to Harrisburg, is a haunting chorus about the path many of us take, or at least are tempted to choose, toward grass that seems greener that present hardships:
It's a long way to Heaven, it's closer to HarrisburgHis story is one of following these long-laid tracks and allowing space and opportunity for evil and temptation to draw him away from his faith and family. The final verse shares that “he didn’t make heaven and he didn’t make Harrisburg / he got lost in a hole in between,” and Josh then builds to the song’s end with a biting observation on God, the problem of evil, and our own complicity in perpetuating sin:
And that's still a long way from the place where we are
And if evil exists it’s a pair of train tracks
And the devil is a railroad car
Some say that man is the root of all evilStories: Angels, Home, and Smalltown Faith
Others say God’s a drunkard for pain
As for me I believe that the garden of Eden
Was burned to make way for a train (for a train)
In an earlier folk tale “Wings” (song | lyrics | from the album “Hello Starling”), the speaker and companions follow a “Blackrobe” to a mission church “where the saints and all the martyrs look down on dying converts” who are struggling on this reservation. The story follows them on a search for some kind of salvation, down rivers, through markets, and to the mountains, with a dreaming refrain woven in between: “It's my home -- last night I dreamt that I grew wings / I found a place where they could hear me when I sing.” Their winding journey ends in the lowlands at the foot of the mountains with “rain that was descending like railroad spikes and hammers.” Finally, the angels -- and the salvation he dreams of -- appear in the final lines of the song: “they were headed for the border -- walking and then running / and then they were gone into the fog but Anne said underneath their jackets she saw wings.” It seems the hope of deliverance he sought remains out of reach, and the angels that symbolized weren’t even seen for certain.3
Along similar lines as “Homecoming,” “Lawrence, KS” (song | lyrics | from the album “Golden Age of Radio”) discusses the claim that one’s hometown and way of life, with its “dirt roads and dry land farming,” make on you. The speaker calls home “a fenced-in piece of nothing where I hear voices on my knees” and then hits the repeated line “but I can’t leave this world behind,” connecting the faith and prayer of childhood with the nature of home. He observes that “some prophecies are self-fulfilling / But I've had to work for all of mine,” hoping that God soon wills something providential for him. Yet turning finally to the words of the local pastor, he concludes:
Preacher says when the Master calls usIt’s mournful of the fate that seems decided by where one is born but also acknowledges that one’s home and upbringing can be, and often are, part of the way of that salvation.
He's gonna give us wings to fly
But my wings are made of hay and corn husks
So I can't leave this world behind
In the darkest song and most powerful story on “Sermon on the Rocks,” Josh describes the dreary landscape of “Henrietta, Indiana” (song | lyrics),4 starting with how the speaker’s father and brother were among hundreds of layoffs when the local factory closed in this dry town. The speaker calmly describes where his father and brother turn amid the frustration of unemployment:
Daddy got a taste for the hard stuff
Henrietta, Indiana was dry
We'd ride out to Putney, he'd tell me he loved me
The drive home was always so quiet
This leads right into the simple and downright eerie refrain:
He had a devil in his eye, eye
Like a thorn in the paw
Disregard for the law
Disappointment to the Lord on high
Alcoholism sets in -- as a devil in their eyes -- and fuels the men’s turn to crime, where, perhaps in a move of some kind of vengeance, they commit a triple murder and flee the town. The speaker describes how his brother studied the Sermon on the Mount and “practiced preaching in the basement” until he decided the words there couldn’t be true; instead, the brother substitutes his own dark pronouncement that the reward would come only in escaping this town as he heads off to commit his crime:
Blessed be the poor, he said
Your treasure is on high
All of Henrietta, Indiana heard my Hallelujah
When I finally saw the devil in his eyes
The bleak portrait closes with the speaker constructing a vigil at home to his now-gone brother (and father), where it’s just him now, and the feelings of despair and loneliness have only heightened until he reaches the same tipping point:
At night I leave a bottle on the table
The Bible open to the Sermon on the Mount
Blessed be the poor of Henrietta, Indiana
But happy are those that get out
I think I'll drive over to Putney
The store'll be open 'til twelve
The empty parking lot, the lights, the lonely kid, the register
I see it all clear as a bell
I got a devil in my eye, eye
“Henrietta, Indiana” juxtaposes the frustrations and trials of life with a faith that doesn’t find the answers it seeks. Such an apparent dead end, both in life and in faith, leads to a search for some kind of answer in booze and crime. It’s a challenging and chilling narrative of the emotions felt in tough times. To me it highlights the need for community and friendship (namely, the Church), which help life run deeper than a job and its income and help us understand the messages of the Bible better than when sought in a vacuum entirely on one’s own.5
Conclusion: Light in my Lantern
A lot of the power of these songs, their messages, and their biblical and religious allusions comes from exploring dark, heavy places in the human story. Not all of Josh’s music has this heaviness, and a lot of his best songs are thoroughly joyful. In “Lantern” (song | lyrics | from the album “So Runs the World Away”), the refrain repeatedly hopes, “I'll need light for my lantern, light for my lantern tonight / Be the light in my lantern, light in my lantern tonight.”
And as his various descriptions of life’s trials turn to the hope of illuminating each other’s lanterns, he challenges:
So even while you’re tempted by the Trees of Knowledge, the train tracks, and the apparently out-of-reach salvation, be the light in others’ lanterns and seek the Light that God gives to you in love.6
Conclusion: Light in my Lantern
A lot of the power of these songs, their messages, and their biblical and religious allusions comes from exploring dark, heavy places in the human story. Not all of Josh’s music has this heaviness, and a lot of his best songs are thoroughly joyful. In “Lantern” (song | lyrics | from the album “So Runs the World Away”), the refrain repeatedly hopes, “I'll need light for my lantern, light for my lantern tonight / Be the light in my lantern, light in my lantern tonight.”
And as his various descriptions of life’s trials turn to the hope of illuminating each other’s lanterns, he challenges:
So throw away those lamentations; we both know them all too wellIt’s a passing reference to the Old Testament book of Lamentations that then wonders if there can and should be a book for Jubilations, too. Obviously, the Bible as a whole is a joyful story of God’s love, of His advocacy and opting for Israel and humanity, ultimately revealed in Jesus Christ; yet, here’s a fun thought of considering the love of relationship as the pen that authors our joys to God. We certainly cannot add to the Bible, but we can respond by loving one another jubilantly, even while there is seemingly constant cause for lamentation.
If there's a book of Jubilations, we'll have to write it for ourselves
So come and lie beside me darling, and let's write it while we still got time
So even while you’re tempted by the Trees of Knowledge, the train tracks, and the apparently out-of-reach salvation, be the light in others’ lanterns and seek the Light that God gives to you in love.6
1 No joke, among the many times Josh smiles while performing his music, the smirk he gets when delivering this silly yet brilliant line is delightful.↩
2 There’s something satirical yet incisively true about such an observation being put on the lips of Mary. We turn to her for regular intercession, yet here she seems to have more of an omniscient view. Somehow, it feels fitting that Mary would know that as he leaves the children at her feet, that he isn’t coming back for them.↩
3 Josh has a fascination with angels, divine intervention, and the like. He took a sidebar to songwriting to try his hand at writing a novel. Bright’s Passage is the story of a WWI soldier back home in West Virginia whose wife has passed and left him alone with a son. An angel has followed him back from Europe and follows him in his new post-war reality.↩
4 Of all the songs I profile here, this is the one that’s most potent to listen to as you read. It’s the quintessential Josh Ritter folk song in the way it creates a rich setting, relatable characters, and a simple but compelling plot that all draw you in as you follow the song.
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5 Maybe the phrase “to me” is unnecessary, but I feel that the meanings of songs are often intended in a certain way by the songwriter and/or performer but are certainly artfully open to interpretation by different listeners.↩
6 Props to my brothers and fellow Josh Ritter enthusiasts, Tim and Mike, for helping me compile these references. Both of them cited “Thin Blue Flame” (song | lyrics | from the album “The Animal Years”), an epic ten-minute song full of powerful references, too, too many to delve into here; about the line “Heaven is so big there ain’t no need to look up,” Mike said, “there’s a starry-eyed optimism that Heaven is all around us, not just up in the clouds but in grace, presence, and all encompassing joy found throughout Josh’s music.” Mike also pointed to “Hopeful” (song | lyrics | from the album “The Beast in its Tracks”), particularly when Josh sings, “She’s been through her own share of hard times as well / And she’s learned how to tear out the heaven from hell.” Mike said it’s one of his favorite lines ever because “even though things might suck pretty bad, this girl has been able to find that elusive silver lining and remain optimistic in a time of sadness or grief or whatever you might want to call it. Optimism can come with that certain sense of faith.”↩
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