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I've thought about it and thought about it and I don't think it was the dove award nominations or the #1 status of her first single or even the doting exposure from music publications that made Sarah Masen's debut album a success. I think it was simply that she gave people something genuine to respond to.
On the surface her re:think records debut was a fresh mix of slightly alternative pop, laced with folk, and ringed around by a playful artistic sensibility, but on the inside it was full of wonder, of mystery, of longing, of celebration. On the inside it was near to what life is in those precious moments when we actually wake up and live it. And being that, it was something else as well. It was an invitation to everyone who heard it to walk through the rest of the day with their eyes opened a little wider, with their hearts a little less strangled by fear, with their souls more firmly fixed on what is eternal.
We're learning to laugh at the world Sarah told me recently as we talked about her new record. We're learning that there is nothing in the world that we can hold to for security. Laughter is a reaction against the violence that this world can do. Your eyes keep getting bigger she said, you're always taking more of it in and as you do you find that there are more things to be afraid of but wherever there is something to be afraid of you find that there is something to learn to believe in too. The real struggle she said, the real struggle is making sure those fears become beliefs.
And I said Sarah that is your new album right there I think you have just summed it up in one eloquent motion in what you said. It is about the fear and the laughter and the belief and I said if you want to sum it up in three words I think you'll find them in the middle of the project in the middle of the song Fragrance of Pink when you sing Glory I'm Undone because it is the undoneness of our lives that turns us drives us draws us to the glory and so even our undoneness is glorious and a measure of the glory, and I think that is what you are saying. And Sarah pausing a moment said it stretches our faith in new ways to continue believing that everything will happen as it should and stay as it should and especially to understand that our lives will come apart in places that they need to come apart in so that they can come back together again in another place that we cannot see or understand but can only believe. Amen.
Carry Us Through, Sarah's latest re:think records release, was born somewhere in the creative tension between folk and pop with visible shimmerings of modern rock blues and gospel reflecting light here and there from the surfaces of the songs. Produced by Charlie Peacock, the project is layered, crafted, and accessible, and yet, unlike her first record, Carry Us Through has moments that seem unstructured melodically or rhythmically. If you pull back a step, though, you suddenly see how those brief moments of nonstructure fit perfectly into the overall structure. And that, Sarah says, is reflective of life, of our weakness, undoneness, and failed attempts woven back in to the larger unseen pattern of sanctification and redemption that God ordains for our lives and for His creation. And, as she says in the hauntingly worshipful song Wrap My Arms Around Your Name, it is not an on-again off-again thing, rather Salvation is forever taking place.
One gets a sense of greater maturity from Sarah on Carry Us Through, both in the subtlety and diversity of the music, and in the focus of the lyric. There is a profound awareness of the brevity and frailty of life balanced by a holy courage to live, to love, to believe, to feel, to worship, to drink deeply of each moment without trying to possess or control it.
It seems I said to Sarah that you have given up control, or recognized that you, that we, that no one ever really has any control-and yet, whereas most people come to that realization through some tragedy, you seem to have come to it from the opposite direction, from the devastation of love.
Yes, she replied, the more we open to love, the more we feel, and the more we see what we have to lose, but we must keep opening to love more and more despite the fear of pain and loss, for greater love is always the path that God leads us along.
In the rolling reflective opening cut on Carry Us Through (Seasons Always Change), Sarah writes
There's goodness and there's pain / and the heart goes round again I and for now it never ends I and so you take another day/because the tenderness it breaks us I and we learn to love that way and that too I think is a good summary of what this album is about.
But she says it most directly in the song Carry Us Through, and I suppose that's why, of the ten titles on the new project, she finally settled on this one as the umbrella to represent all the rest.
We grab existence by our defeats I And somehow laugh when we are weak I Were being made strong from underneath... I Don't be afraid to pray just like a child I Lord carry us through.
The more you love, Sarah says, the more you feel the frailty, but the more you love, she says as well, the more you feel the grace of God.
Even the songwriting process has mirrored for Sarah, in smaller form, the frailty and grace that she has come to recognize in and around her. I'm so afraid sometimes when I sit down to write, she says, that nothing will be there, that nothing will happen, that the well will be dry. It feels like stepping into a void. There's a mystery that happens in the creative process, but I don't know how to make that mystery happen. It always seems to happen when I'm not looking. It hits me when I'm not aware. Were all involved somehow in Jacob's wrestling with God, in looking for truth, in praying for it, in trying to figure out what all of this beauty is for. As I seek to pray my way through confusion and create my way through self-doubt, I've found that my efforts to do something-and this is true not just of songwriting but of all of life-I've found that my efforts to do something are always met by God, but almost never in the way that I thought. |
