Reflections of Songs that Impacted my Life: “Beautiful One” by Daniel Amos

As I continue going through the Christian music from the 1980’s that I listened to growing up, I feel compelled to share a song from the group Daniel Amos, a Christian New Wave group from the 1980s—at least I think they would be categorized as New Wave.

Daniel Amos vaulted to prominence among my circle of friends in high school in the early to mid-80s with their Alarma Chronicles albums (four of them in particular): Alarma, Doppleganger, Vox Humana, and Fearful Symmetry. At first, they were a bit too out there…and quite frankly weird…for me. I was used to basically what could be categorized as “easy listening” Christian music. And if I wasn’t listening to Amy Grant, Bob Bennett, Keith Green, or Ken Medema, there was always the family tapes of John Denver. If you are familiar with those artists, and take a trip on itunes, check out Daniel Amos, you’ll fully understand why my first reaction was, “What kind of crazy music is this?”

But what got me eventually hooked on Daniel Amos was their creativity, their conscious allusions to poets like TS Eliot and William Blake, and more than anything else their satire. In a darkly humorous and yet still prophetic way, those Alarma Chronicles albums were a running commentary on the shallowness and plastic faith of popular Christianity. In a way, I suppose you could compare what Daniel Amos did with the Alarma Chronicles to what U2 did with their three albums of the 1990s: Achtung Baby, Zooropa, and Pop. And the reason I was attracted to both projects was simple: cutting, prophetic biblical satire of a world that often cries “Lord! Lord!” but who is more interested in the idols of pop culture.

But despite all that cutting and creative satire (and trust, me at some point I’ll write a post or two on those songs), the very last song of their very last Alarma Chronicles installment struck me as a thoughtful, poignant, and beautifully poetic song that encapsulated how I felt as a senior in high school. It was a song called Beautiful One. Here is the youtube link to it, as well as the lyrics:

Leaves of sound are shed; they fall
on this murmuring mind where the lullabies call,
From these words I sink and fall to the Beautiful One,
Behold this dreamer in the arms of the Beautiful One.

Deep waters sound; who loves that deep?
I make my way up the toilsome steep,
In green meadows now I sleep in the Beautiful One,
Behold this dreamer in the arms of the Beautiful One.

And in the wind, a song and moonlight on the lawn,
Draw me on and on,
And through the day, a sigh for dreamers such as I,
who steal away to watch and pray.

The night above me whispers low and I have many miles to go,
I will not wake until I know the beautiful one,
Awake the dreamer in the arms of the Beautiful One.

Commentary

If I could sum up this song in two words it would be these: poetry and mystery. For me, the fact that it was the last song in a four-album project full of biting satire and humorous commentary resonated with me. For people who know me, know me as a very sarcastic and humorous person. I love mocking the absurd  that is passed off as “cutting edge,” or the glitzy crap that is praised by the world but is in reality uncreative plastic. In short, I love to mock the “emperors” of this world who are wearing no clothes. Sure, we should flee from the devil, but I certainly love exposing and mocking his minions.

But the thing is, the living faith of Christianity does not lie in songs like “It’s the 80s, so Where’s Our Rocketpacks?,” “Dance Stop,” “Mall All Over the World,” or “New Car” (find those Daniel Amos songs on itunes or youtube, and you’ll understand). However clever, satirical, humorous and prophetic they may be, the heart of the Christian faith does not like in mockery, even of the devil’s designs. It lies in the mystery of the night in the middle of a journey of faith. It lies in the quiet moments when you are alone, often weary and worn out from the pressures of this life. It is in those moments you find that you have a sense of quiet assurance and confidence that those dreams you find within your heart—dreams that you did not dream, but were rather dreamed into you—will be realized when you awaken in the arms of the Beautiful One.

C.S. Lewis, in Mere Christianity, talks about eternity’s relationship to time. Since we are limited to a linear timeline, we see things moment to moment. Seventeen year old Joel could only experience seventeen year old Joel, could only remember vaguely what 12 year old Joel was like, and pretty much had no clue what 45 year Joel would be like. But since God dwells in eternity, he is not bound to those linear limitations. He sees the complete package, the whole person of Joel from beginning to end. He knows who I am, whereas I only can remember bits of who I was, and can only speculate who I will become. But at the same time, I think sometimes eternity breaks into our limited world of time, and we catch glimpses, however brief, of who we are. And those mini-revelations comfort us as we make our journey of faith, and continue to become who we already are.

“Beautiful One” impacted me so much that I put the last three lines of the song next to my senior picture in the Wheaton Christian High School yearbook of 1987. The poetic imagery of the life of faith as a journey, and the mysterious assurance that our deepest dreams are echoes of the certain hope of a resurrected reality is a kind of poetry we can live and breathe. And although we will eventually experience it in full, we also experience in the here and now through the Holy Spirit who blows where he pleases…often over the turbulent waters of our hopes and dreams, and often revealing glimpses of that resurrected land of the future, yet mysteriously present, New Creation.