My Gospel Music: Van Morrison

       A few years ago, I tagged along with a friend on a trip to the grocery store. She needed to buy ingredients to make smoothies. Somewhere in the frozen fruit aisle, I noticed that the Van Morrison song "Real, Real Gone" was playing over the store's music system.

        "You know," I said, turning to my friend. "Van Morrison's music does the job of Gospel music for me."

       "Hmmm," said my friend, humoring me while examining the nutritional label on a bag of frozen peach slices.

       "His music has a timeless quality," I explained. "It speaks of timeless mysteries. It speaks of love to my soul. It's like the Catholic church."

       This got her attention. Suddenly, I found myself being lectured by somebody who really hated the Catholic church. Her beef wasn't with the clergy sexual abuse scandal. Instead, she had a list of those weird fundamentalist conspiracy theories that far right-wing people like to throw around.

       Ouch! Up until that point she'd seemed like such a nice girl!

       I recall this incident from time to time because right before I was lectured about how I "worshiped statues," I'd made a profound statement. I mean, it was profound in that it revealed a truth as far as I was concerned. Yes indeed, Van Morrison's music stirred within me spiritual feelings of joy and happiness.

       My first serious brush with Van Morrison's music was in 1986. Of course, up until then I at least knew the song "Brown Eyed Girl." (My Dad believed that rock and roll reached a state of perfection in 1967, and so I grew up listening to oldies radio stations. I think it's a law that "Brown Eyed Girl" has to be played once every two hours.) And though I liked "Brown Eyed Girl," I was, even as late as 1986, unable to discern the genius behind that catchy pop song.

       Throughout the seventies, while I was graduating from pop radio to rock albums, Van Morrison matured into a respected rock and roll artist. He occasionally cranked out a hit, but the music, rather than being produced through a music industry hit-machine, was made on his schedule and according to his own poetic genius. Featuring various quantities of blues, soul, jazz, country, Celtic and rock, Van's music was at times frustrating and then just as equally beautiful.

        Somehow, in the summer of 1986, I came across the album "No Guru, No Method, No Teacher," and my mind was awakened by spiritually charged lyrics like "Listen, no guru, no method, no teacher, Just you and I and nature, And the Father and the Son, And the Holy Ghost in the garden wet with rain." Up until then, I'd found most Contemporary Christian music to be a bit cheesy and overproduced, but here was a man singing about experiencing the all-encompassing love of our Lord in a way that spoke to my heart.

      His next album, "Poetic Champions Compose," became, much to the chagrin of the two country-and-western fans with whom I shared a barracks room at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center, the most-played disc in my CD player. It made me happy to hear songs like "Give Me My Rapture," with lyrics that came across like the release of sweet hallelujahs! "Let me purify my thoughts and words and deeds, That I may be a vehicle for thee, Let me hold to the truth in the darkest hour, Let me sing to the glory of the Lord, Give me my rapture today."

       On "Avalon Sunset," Van Morrison delivered another gorgeous collection of songs that spoke of love and spirituality. "Whenever God Shines His Light On Me," his duet with Cliff Richards, became an instant classic. And just as powerful, to my mind, was his version of "Have I Told You Lately?" Whenever I hear it, I think not only of the love between my wife and I, but of my love of God, my neighbors, and nature. It's a powerful song, but Van's voice and musical arrangement are vital, because I don't get that same feeling from the Rod Stewart version. (I get the impression from the Rod Stewart version that's he's singing to a German lingerie model.)

       My musical tastes famously shifted over the years and in the early nineties I found myself listening to more Beat Farmers than Van Morrison. Still, I managed to buy the album "Enlightenment," and it was as satisfying to my soul as anything he'd previously released. The album starts out with the rousing "Real, Real Gone,"---Remember? From the grocery store?---and then hits heavy territory with "Enlightenment." The topics are not all necessarily Christian, but even so, it's not hard to hear at least a spiritual influence. A great example of this is the song "So Quiet in Here," with the lyric: "This must be what paradise is like, so quiet in here, so peaceful in here." I can relate to a line like that.

       To this day, Van Morrison occupies a privileged level of play time on my stereo. His music has warmed my soul with the mysteries and glories of the Almighty and I'm a better man for it.

       Peace!