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Theological Implications of Henry John Deutschendorf's Lyrics

Lecture notes from a talk given the morning of 7/5/07 to my cats and dog:

Today I'd like to talk about H. J. Deutschendorf's view of God. What are we to make of it? To the extent can we can discern it in the lyrics to his popular songs? Was he a Deist, a nature worshipper, a pantheist or some combination of the above? [Crowd stirs; cat meows, dog lays down.]

I can see the audience is restless. Let me begin by saying that you, Lazarus, are a strikingly beautiful cat. Is not your coat a splendid array of color and is it not soft as the dawn? That is what the subject of today's talk might've said of you.

I would argue that Deutschendorf, known to many under the stage name "John Denver", is of the school that includes another Henry - Thoreau - and whose ex-wife Annie reminds us of another Annie, Annie Dillard, the nature novelist whose book current is on the NY Times bestseller list. This school is related by virtue of their uncommon attention to the Creator's details. They are often dismissed as more interested in nature than people. It has the ring of truth.

Since you, Alex, are thought of as part of "nature", you are exempt from their lack of attention although as a house pet their interest is far smaller than if you were a wild buffalo. (You keep eating like that and you just might look like one!)

I don't know if you read the paper yesterday, since you were sitting on it while I was trying to read it, but they reviewed Dillard's latest novel saying, "This story might be enough to prop up a short novel if Dillard showed the slightest shred of interest in her characters as people, but she doesn't. She uses them as paper dolls, moving them about the scenery that is her real interest." Dillard may give us clues into the writings of Deutschendorf, and vice-versa, so we must look at both Henrys & Annies in order to detect the heresies of what we'll call "naturists" even though I believe that term is already used by people who walk around nude. I know you guys already do that and it's no big deal to you, butt it is to humans.

It seems the naturist tends to see the long view, the very long view, which has implications on the present. They tend to see their journey in geologic terms. It's not that they don't believe God can act, but that He prefers natural means and has great patience. This can cause a leaning towards Deism. Marilynne Robinson, author of Gilead, a book that only those with the patience of Job could finish, reviews Annie Dilliard's latest novel:

In the fullness of time she realizes that the world has been her meditation, that simplicity and stillness and the sea have somehow made her sufficient to her life. This is both a modest claim -- "The Maytrees performed no heroic deeds, neither Toby nor Lou, and both acted within any decent heart's scope" -- and a deep tribute to any decent heart. The novel proposes that there is an involuntary, even unconscious shaping of character, individual and social, that comes with weathering, and that, in yielding to a wisdom no one could earn or choose and for which they have no language, people conform themselves in ways something like the accommodations landscape makes to wear and time.

This "weathering" seems to deprecate human free will; while it is true nothing can be done apart from God is our cooperation "involuntary" and even "unconscious"? Sometimes, but always? This is, however, in keeping with the naturist view. [Dog closes his eyes.] I know you, Obi, think little of a human's free will since I cave so easily to your begging for table scraps. And indeed free will is a mystery. I am sympathetic to this weathering view, sounding as it is as a synonym of sorts for Purgatory, yet am uneasy about its tendency towards quietism or stoicism. It is doctrinally unsound first in its Calvinistic overtones but also in its denial of the personal. God sounds no different than, well, the impersonal sea which ceaselessly beats the sand that it might be smoother. A purely mechanical god, no sense of a caring god. There is also no apparent trust that the action of grace can cause leaps, not just tiny increments, of improvement. In other words, a denial of miracles.

But I promised you a lecture on Deutschendorf! I have digressed. Let us first examine a song he wrote called Windsong. Wind seems to be, in this song, a metaphor for God. JHD writes:

The wind is the whisper of our mother the earth
The wind is the hand of our father the sky
The wind watches over our struggles and pleasures
The wind is the goddess who first learned to fly

The wind is the bearer of bad and good tidings
The weaver of darkness, bringer of dawn
The wind gives the rain, builds us a rainbow
The wind is the singer who sang the first song.

The wind is a twister of anger and warning,
The wind brings the fragrance of freshly mown hay
The wind is a racer and a wild stallion running
and the sweet taste of love on a slow summer's day...

The first two verses set the tone for song. The remaining lines will emphasize the traditionally "feminine" characteristic of home and hearth, "of freshly mown hay" and "the sweet taste of love on a slow summer's day." The traditionally masculine side is the "twister of anger and warning", the "racer and wild stallion running." Deutschendorf does not see God as Father or as Mother but as both. Bue he does, like so many naturists, sees the omnipotence of God. He writes, "The wind is the taker and giver of mornings." Being close to nature implies a recognition of God's power because one sees the helplessness of man in that environment clearly, but that also lends itself towards a denial of free will or the need for cooperation with God.

JHD finishes the song curiously with: "So welcome the wind and the wisdom she offers...Follow her summons when she calls again." The "wisdom" of the wind was not made clear in the song; there was no sense that the gifts this wind brings (i.e. fragrances and twisters) are not randomly offered, sans reason or meaning. And to say "follow her summons" seems to assume a free will that was tacitly denied in the previous lyrics. One assumes that following the summons of a tornado is to get the heck out of the way and to follow the summons of a sweet fragrance is to sniff it. This seems rather at odds with Christianity in which prudence means sometimes acting imprudentally. But I could be missing something, my dear animals. Maybe you could help me out?