Glen Campbell: A Better Place

I wept away my morning under a broad, gray, godless sky - a world that doesn't care about anyone, or anything - all too aware that I'm powerless to help my friend, Stoner, in his battle against cancer. Then I stumbled upon this pathos-rich Glen Campbell video. [Note: Campbell, aged 76, is struggling with Alzheimer's disease.] The brief, autobiographical lyrics contend that "the world's been good" to him, but the results have been a mixed bag. He looks forward to "a better place" - Heaven, one presumes, as Campbell is Baptist and he directly addresses the Lord here - as his illness hobbles his ability to live fully and independently.

On most any other day I would likely enjoy this song's melody and lovely guitar and then quickly move along to something less spiritually cloying. Today, however, I'm seized by its poignancy. While every one of us will one day leave this world, Stoner's journey is imminent and, in all likelihood, ahead of mine. And as I contemplate a world in which I'll no longer enjoy his pithy wit, his scholarship in so many subjects, and his camaraderie, I can't help but wonder if Christianity would be a comfort to me today, as it has been to Stoner, Campbell, and others, had I taken that path. To see each other again, in a place away from pain and suffering, even if that means I'd be contending with Stoner's periodic yammering about baseball and jazz, sounds pretty good right now.* Merely entertaining that notion was the cognitive bootstrap I needed to lift myself off the sofa.

Thanks, Glen, for boosting me up a little on this dark day.



* I suppose, however, these topics would be forbidden in "a place away from pain and suffering".