"Take a ticket to my house" --- to commiserate over tea and sympathy. Misery loves company. :-)

I'm vividly reminded of another song from Sarah McLachlan's _Fumbling Towards Ecstasy_, "Good Enough." The two songs seem to be mostly on the same page --- Nerissa: "Haven't I Been Good?" Sarah: "Good Enough?"

It is hard to escape the conclusion though that these two "good enough" songs come to different endings. Sarah confirms that the abused, the neglected, and the forlorn *are* "good enough" in some way, whereas ISTM Nerissa does not necessarily make this affirmation.

Nerissa looks into the darkness and sees not just some facile and superficial light of assurance shining there, but rather only more darkness in store. IMO Nerissa's is the deeper song of the two, the more profound, and if you'll excuse the pun, the more "probing." :-)

Nerissa's answer to the question of "good enough" is that the grace of the Universe speaks to her through the voice of either the sun (a representative of the Universe) or the voice of St. Jude (patron saint of difficult cases), telling her "Everything you live through is allowed."

I've heard voices like this too. They've only come to me in the darkest hour, when hope was at an all-time low. These voices cannot be manufactured by us, but seem to come from "somewhere else," or to well up like a still small voice speaking from the inmost depths of our own being. They are real, and they are only born out of the shadows of the depths of deepest despair. This is what the song "Haven't I Been Good" is about ISTM.

Nerissa sets the tone in the very first line --- "It was raining on the day of our reunion." Sarah McLachlan in an interview has confessed to setting out the gist of songs she's written in the very first line too. Examples: in the SM song "Wait" where the opening words are "Under a blackened sky," or in the Sarah song "Good Enough" where she writes, "Hey your glass is empty, it's a hell of a long way home." Nerissa IMO achieves this same effect with the line, "It was raining on the day of our reunion." This signals from the outset that this is a song of sadness and regret.

"I called my sister and said, 'I feel adrift with no man,' and she said, 'Oh honey, learn to love the sea.' " --- I understand this ITO Nerissa being the "Closed For Good" mess of goo in the caterpillar's cocoon, and her sister (Katryna) being the strong one, the one who understands, the consoling comforter, the trusted counselor and friend.

The reference "Learn to love the sea" I understand ITO the line from the song "Love and China" --- "Pieces of love and pieces of china all along the shore of the jealous sea." --- IOW, Accept what is and "go with the flow" of tide and time. "Learn to love the sea" is a strange answer to feeling adrift with no man, and strikes me as maybe a reflection of the Buddhism influences that come through in a lot of what Nerissa says and writes.

What's to love about feeling adrift? That is the kind of question that everyone must answer for themself. No one can answer a question like this for you. "You've got to walk that lonesome valley... You've got to go there by yourself... There ain't nobody else gonna go there for you... You've got to go there by yourself..."

We sang this morning at my church,

"Some through the waters,
Some through the flood,
Some through the fire,
But all through the blood."

The praying to Saint Jude and the reference to beads (rosary beads, or something else?) echoes a continuing fascination within Nields Music with religious themes and with Roman Catholicism.

"I can't tell you how to get your light to shine" recalls the line from "Check It Out," "But then who'd be around to polish it when I finally get my light to shine?"

Nerissa was searching for light in 1997 when she wrote "Check It Out," and she's still searching today. NN's Long Day's Journey into the Light.

"I got up from the dirt where you had left me..." --- This is one of the most frank and brutal depictions of abandonment in all of Nields Music. TTIW is the followup album to L&C, and maybe picks up right where L&C left off. Sister albums from the sisters? Maybe.

"The sun was grieving, pushing through the clouds..." --- Personification? Visionary state? Imaginative experience? Poetry, at any rate --- where such things are "allowed." :-)

"He put his hand on my shoulder and began to comfort me, he said, 'Everything you live through is allowed.' "

This sounds like a lesson that Nerissa had to learn for herself, the hard way. There are no easy answers to being Easy People. Grace doesn't come cheaply. It's costly grace, it comes with a price.

This is a wonderful lesson that Nerissa is sharing with us. Sometimes we just plain need someone to love us with unconditional love, no strings attached. "Everything you live through is allowed." This is a message of grace. It's OK to be you, even if in some situations, or in many situations, you don't measure up --- even if within these situations you are *not* "good enough."

You don't _have_ to be "good enough" to be loved. This is the message of grace, which is unconditional love. Grace and unconditional love aren't _about_ being "good enough." It's OK to screw up --- we all do sometimes.

You only come to this point of understanding grace and unconditional love when conditional love totally breaks down and is revealed for the broken mess that it really is. "Pieces of love and pieces of china..."

"Everything you live through is allowed" is a major spiritual advance over the lines from ISBIMF on Home --- "What doesn't kill you will make you stronger, I'm not dead yet so I must be stronger."

As wacky Doctor Smith used to say in the 60's sci-fi TV show "Lost in Space" --- "Oh, the pain, the pain!" :-(

"Haven't I Been Good" is a great gift of the muse to Nerissa, and a great gift from Nerissa and Katryna to all of us.

Bruce

© 2004