Don Henley's Cass County: A Review

I am not the biggest fan The Eagles ever had. There were a couple songs I wouldn't turn off, but mostly I could never forgive the horrible joke that ends "Take it to the Limit." As they're running through the final chorus, Randy Meisner bawls out "take iiiiiiit to the limit, one more time," and then the chorus repeats. And then it repeats again. And again. Until one more time turns into ten more times. That's the kind of joke that merits a lifetime of punishment and trip across the Styx!

But every once in a while, the Eagles would astound me, with a melody phrase or a guitar line that seemed like it was two hundred years old. And now that Don Henley's first solo album since I was a teenager has come out, I know why.

This 16-track
album (on the Deluxe edition) hearkens back to the time before being country before country was cool was cool. While Nashville's moneyed darlings are trying as hard as they can to turn country music into everything else, Henley has released an album complete with guitar waltzes like "Bramble Rose" and "Too Far Gone," whining pedal steel, and Mearl Haggard's woeful caterwaul. The piano solo on "Too Much Pride" is worth the price of admission all on its own!

The subject matter is right on the money for this kind of music. A high school friend decides you're the one who got away and tries to screw up both of your lives ("That Old Flame"). A woman trembles at the reality of a shrinking future as the "fine for now" job turns into her life story ("Waiting Tables"). Notable everywhere is the stoic resignation to disappointment that marked a whole musical era and which now exists in brilliant relics like Lindi Ortega and Robert Ellis, and practically nowhere else.

But Henley is not Ortega or Ellis. Cass County may be an album about his East Texas homeland, but it is still a Don Henley album. A small army of country's yesteryear elites can be heard on this album – Dolly Parton, Martina McBride, and Haggard – along with newcomer Miranda Lambert. But his guests haunt the shadows and set the scene, like stray moments where the radio signal in East Texas actually comes in. The voice of this album is Henley's, and it is the same smooth and raspy instrument that immortalized "Boys of Summer" and "End of the Innocence" in the Top 40 canon. And "Take a Picture of This," which will surely be the album's first single, would fit just as easily among those as it does on this album.

Henley tiptoes through these songs with the respect and caution of a grown child in the house of his sleeping parents, that strange mixture of familiar and guest.

It is the recognition that leaving home has costs, even when you had to do it, that makes this album not a 70's country album but a creation of 21st century mobility.

That's a suitcase. Yeah, that's a ticket from a plane. There's no one here to talk to; no reason to remain. 

         ("Take a Picture of This")

My mother's three children live in three different states. And going home will always be a time of reckoning with choices I am glad to have made even as I remain more aware than anyone of what it has cost me.

Henley achieves his highest synthesis of now and then with "Praying for Rain," which from its first note – a pedal steel descending arpeggio – recalls a venerable tradition of rural people talking about the weather, the kind of life or death matter that is the proper subject matter of pleasantries. But the old tradition is struggling to make sense of new realities:

Something's different, something's changed, and I don't know why.Even the old folks can't recall when it's ever been this hot and dry.Dust devils whirling on the first day of July. It's a hundred degrees at 10 am: not a cloud up in the sky.

The second verse begins with a line found in a hundred songs that sound just like this one, but by the second chorus, it is clear that Henley is doing something I am certain I've never heard before:

I ain't no wise man. But I ain't no fool.And I believe that Mother Nature is taking us to school.Maybe we just took too much and put too little back.It isn't knowledge, it's humility we lack.                

Is this the first song in music history with both a steel guitar and a meditation on climate change? Probably it is. Even if not, it is surely the first that did it without being a trite political shill. Henley holds in view the mystery that the world is and suggests that our ignorance might not be so dangerous if we remembered how little we know. On this planet, we are a strange mix of familiar and guest, and we could stand, perhpas, to tiptoe a little more.

There is a deep awareness on Cass County that sometimes home crushes us, and sometimes it heals us; and sometimes we have to leave it, and sometimes leaving it causes a regret we never get free of. The distorted-electric defiance of the album's last track notwithstanding ("I like where I am now,"), this album settles into pain and owns it. The genius of old country music is the ability to live in and suffer with paradoxes like this.

Cass County stamps a welcome update on that deep tradition with a clever and soft hand.

Hospitality and the Benedict Option

Perceived breakdowns in the relationship of Christian conviction to the civic spirit of the age have compelled a number of Christians to reconsider a more sectarian prerogative. In an edgy 2009 piece entitled "Becoming Barbarians," Rod Dreher invited Christian conservatives to consider a "Benedict Option":

"that is, pioneering forms of dropping out of a barbaric mainstream culture that has grown hostile to our fundamental values." 

In the wake of the Obergefell v. Hodges, Dreher's commendation has become a hot topic of discussion. There is simply a sense among many Christian conservatives that a world becoming increasingly inhospitable to their values might be best served by their withdrawal from the institutions that dole out political capital and the habitation of a truly countercultural way of life, one that will provide a joyful witness in the face of society's grim and growing anhedonia. 

But the recent fallout from terrorist attacks in Paris compels me to reflect on the possibility that barbaric proposals are no respectors of persons, politically speaking. Both sides of the proverbial aisle can dehumanize.

On this note, I call attention to St. Benedict's Rule:

Let all guests who arrive be received like Christ, for he is going to say, "I came as a guest, and you received me." And to all let honor be shown, especially to the domestics of the faith and pilgrims (Ch. 53). 

All guests who visit the Abbey are to be received "with all charitable service." Benedict continues:

Let the Abbot give the guests water for their hands; and let both Abbot and community wash the feet of all guests. After the washing of the feet let them say this verse: "We have received Your mercy, O God, in the midst of Your temple."

Benedict commands the Abbot – not the monks but their leader who stands in the place of Christ – to focus especially on the guest. He is to make sure guests have water. He is even to go forego his fast, under most circumstances, in order not only to provide a feast for guests but to make sure they are not made to feel awkward by eating alone.

It must be admitted that Benedict clearly has in mind that most guests will be Christians, as is clear based on his command that the Abbot pray with them and adore Christ along with them. But his explicit intensification of the command to receive all guests like Christ ("especially to the domestics," as above) makes clear that others are in consideration and to be treated like Christ whoever they are.

Syrian Madonna and Child

In Benedict's world as in ours, it was not inconceivable that strange guests would pose real danger to the brothers. Any knock on the door could portend a threat. And yet it is just for that reason that Benedict commands this ethic of hospitality as a radical imitatio Christi. No threat releases a Monk from the obligation to answer the door.

According to Benedict, this is the face of Christ, this the distressed face of his Blessed Mother. What calculation of risk, based--it must be admitted--on a calculation of fear alone, would justify not answering the knock on our door.

Give us grace, oh Lord: that we would see your servant Benedict's words as more than an option!

Chasing: A Poem

Chasing
     *for Mom and Wally

Clipped from under the feet it did not merit,
the earth ceded its grip on all that was

Chino.  His was the tail whose wag would dare it
to become part of this motion's cause.  Because

a dog's a dog, one cannot be sure of earth
as more than another fetched thing, one more

spinning disc of which only he knew its worth.
And come to think of it, let him keep score!

    I dig it, Chino.  I feel the difference
    made when you counted for joy the spinning

    that threatens to fling us free of itself.  Once
    I flung over you earth, shoveled and spinning,

    no tail upturning its settle.  I dig it,
    Chino, but now it, not you, grips tight at my feet.

Liberal Arts as Admission of Need

Presaging the extended foray into the rationale of a Liberal Arts education for Christians, in Book II of Augustine's De Doctrina Christiana, the Bishop of Hippo prefaces his project with a defense against those who would reject the making of rules for the interpretation of Scripture. Augustine imagines basically three types of objections, the first two of which do not really trouble him. He answers both of them in a single paragraph while spending the rest of the prologue on the third objection, namely that his regulae are unnecessary since the Spirit can give us all we need to read Scripture well. Augustine contends that not only does sociality go to the heart of human being; the desire to evade it has its roots in a lack of charity, which (he will later say) is the precondition of interpreting Scripture well.

Those who raise this objection have received knowledge of the Scriptures from some kind of charismatic inspiration rather than a careful and orderly inquiry into the text. These objectors "will declare that these regulations are necessary to no one, but that everything which may laudably be revealed about the obscurities of those books can be revealed with divine assistance."  Augustine fears that those who boast in divine inspiration may also be tempting "Him in whom we have believed," expecting "to be 'caught up to the third heaven,' as the Apostle says, 'whether in the body or out of the body,' and there to hear 'secret words that man may not repeat'" (cf. 2 Cor. 12:2,4). They would rather, perhaps, hear the gospel only from Jesus "rather than from men."

Augustine responds in a two-fold way to this objection. First, he reminds such people that there is frankly no escaping dependence anyway. For one thing, "they have learned at least the alphabet from men." Additionally, "any one of us has learned his own language by hearing it spoken habitually from childhood, and any other language such as Greek or Hebrew or the like either by hearing it or by human instruction." That is, there is no escaping human dependence even if we wish to. The Spirit who inspires the St. Antony's of the world is the same Spirit who presided over creation and vivified human beings who were created male and female, i.e., as social creatures.

His second response to his (apparent) detractors takes the form of detailed reflection upon Paul's Corinthian correspondence and the book of Acts, each of which explore the relationship of charismata to catechism, of power to parish, of the Spirit to the body of Christ. Reflection upon these texts allows Augustine to concede the possibility of such a blessing while casting real doubt on its efficacy, given that the objectors show an ignorance of Paul's doctrine of charity and Luke's ecclesiology. Sure, Paul was drawn up into the third heaven, but this is the same Paul who insisted that the gathered community ("ya'll") is the Temple of the Spirit (cf. 1 Cor. 3:17). Paul may have heard the gospel directly from Jesus, but he "was nevertheless sent to a man that he might receive the sacraments and be joined to the church" (cf. Acts 9:3-18). Likewise, Cornelius experienced the advent of the Spirit upon the Gentiles, but still he received sacraments from Peter and was taught by the Apostle what should be believed, hoped, and loved (Acts 10, cf. 1 Cor. 13:13). "Charity itself, which holds men together in a knot of unity," is the most important virtue a Christian can have. And the development of that virtue necessitates that the ordinary way of Christian catechism take place between people.

De Doctrina will proceed, in Book II, to make an extended defense of the liberal arts, of the value of learning biblical languages, history, and philosophy, on the grounds that the human arts enable us to learn the Scriptures. The willingness to undergo serious study, for the sake of knowing and loving God, can itself be an act of charity, by which we learn to love and hallow our neighbor. Augustine does not stake out a hard and fast position here; those who receive inspiration to know the Scriptures "do not rejoice in a mediocre gift." Equally, knowledge can puff up (cf. 1 Cor. 8:1), but charity can build up. Study can be an occasion for pride, but those who are enlightened by the Spirit may also fall victim to that great temptation. Charity alone edifies, and without it no one will see the Lord, either in Scripture or in the eschatological kingdom. In the prologue to De Doctrina, then, we see that not only is charity the rule for reading Scripture (Book II) but the one measure by which we may know whether apparent spiritual gladiators are inspired by God's Spirit or another. It is hard to imagine a more satisfying interpretation of the great 13th chapter of Paul's first letter to Corinth.

New Voices, Old Songs

The opening of Book IX of the Confessions finds Augustine engaged in a delicate exposition of Psalm 4, by which he exclaims upon the sweetness of his rediscovery of Scripture. At earlier points in his life, he had been famously contemptuous of the Scriptures, thinking them profane, immoral, and rhetorically unpolished. Book IX retains some of this legacy, for Augustine's meditation upon the newfound sweetness of Scripture comes directly on the heels of his retirement from the professorship of rhetoric. Indeed, the meditation on Scripture seems positioned precisely as the antidote to Augustine's defilement of language in his former life. Once a latrator amarus et caecus adversus litteras (IX.4), he now finds them honey-covered, an herb and medicine that heals him of the vain sophistry of the rhetoricians. With his own language purged and healed by God's own grammar, he cries out to God, who brings forth in Augustine a new voice from old songs.
"You delivered my tongue," Augustine confesses to the Lord, as he reflects upon the day he retired from his professorship, employing the verb used by Isaiah to speak of the Lord's saving his soul (Is. 38:17) and employed to describe God's deliverance of Israel from Egypt (Exod. 18:10). His reflection upon his life as a rhetor mirrors a common critique of sophists in ancient Rome: namely, that they peddled wordplay to the highest bidder without regard for the truth of what was said. Augustine's derisive formulation, nundinae loquacitatis, expresses his newfound disavowal of dishonest vanities (insanias mendaces). Originality and novelty were values, but beneath the florid cover of their belles lettres, both teachers and students suffered from incurable avarice and vice. The education industry found itself deeply corrupted. The "cedars of the schools," impressive as they might appear, are no remedy "against serpents."
Retiring from rhetoric, Augustine undergoes a profound internal transformation. Once a player in the marketplace, he submits to a "domestication" (perdomueris) that will prepare him to be a servant of the house of the Lord. Concurrent with that domestication is a revision of language, its uses and its beauty.
The first thing that changes is the value of originality. Instead of selling his own verbal prowess, Augustine finds himself wishing that the Manicheans could hear him recite the Psalms. That is, Augustine is learning to make his own the words of the Psalmist: "accendebar eos recitare." And yet, those words are sung in the whole world! They are not his; he can lay no claim of his own to them. Another change is the relation of his words to truth. His rehearsal of the Scripture begins to fill the words with the content of God's saving work in his own life. The Spirit, who had spoken in the Psalms, ait nobis. And when the psalmist questions humankind about their heaviness of heart and their love of vanity, Augustine senses himself in the dock. At the proclamation that God had raised his Holy One, audivi et contremui, quoniam talibus dicitur, qualem me fuisse reminiscebar. When the text summons humanity to be angry and sin not, Augustine is moved to anger, and as a result his own sinfulness becomes distasteful to him.

The rehearsal of the Scriptures serves to reorient Augustine's tastes, as God grows sweet (dulcescere) to him. This is a profound reversal; the recitation of the words of others, words which are sung in the entire world (here we see the incipient catholic impulse that will animate Augustine's critique of Donatism), has allowed those words to become true of him. He thus subverts the aims of the sophists on both counts: he speaks the words others wrote, and they become true as God changes Augustine into a man whose life is best described in those terms. Once the great professor, "neque enim dico recti aliquid hominibus, quod non a me tu prius audieris, aut etiam tu aliquid tale audis a me, quod non mihi tu prius dixeris."