What's going on?

Marvin Gaye and Thomas Merton

Marvin Gaye’s 1971 song has come unbidden (but most welcome), playing over and over in my head. It’s resonance for me today is powerful.

The song feels beautifully soulful and reflective. It’s gentle and tender, but also pleading.

Mother, mother, / There’s too many of you crying / 
Brother, brother, brother / There’s too many of you dying

The song is full of mourning, but it will have nothing to do with accusation or retaliation.

Father, father, / We don’t need to escalate /
You see, war is not the answer /
For only love can conquer hate /
You know we've got to find a way /
To bring some lovin' here today

And far from reactionary, “What’s going on?” is sweetly mellow, in a way that slows everything down and makes space for hope, conversation, and even love.

Picket lines and picket signs /
Don’t punish me with brutality /
Talk to me, so you can see /
What’s going on

Thomas Merton’s classic work of Christian spirituality, New Seeds of Contemplation, has a lot to say about “What’s going on,” on a deeper level, beneath appearances. And just last night, after I had read about death of Nurul Amin Shah Alam in Buffalo, NY, I woke in the early morning hours with specific lines from the last chapter of Merton’s book sounding in my mind:

“He took on the weakness and ordinariness of man, and He hid Himself, becoming an anonymous and unimportant man in a very unimportant place.”

Mr. Shah Alam was a 56-year-old Rohingya Muslim from Myanmar who had escaped persecution and found blessed refuge in the United States. He had made his home in Buffalo and was hopeful about finding a new life there. Unfortunately, he got caught up in the current mass detention and deportation efforts in this country.

Although nearly blind and unable to speak English, Mr. Shah Alam was picked up by Border Patrol agents. But since Mr. Shah Alam was in the country as a legal refugee, he was released. Agents drove the nearly sightless man, at night, to a coffee shop that was closed, five miles from his home.

No one contacted Mr. Shah Alam’s family to let them know of his release, so the man apparently wandered aimlessly in freezing temperatures. Five days later, just last Tuesday, he was found dead on the street. “Health complications,” according to officials.

What’s going on?

I find the last chapter of Merton’s book, New Seeds of Contemplation, tells the story of what’s going on at the deepest level, and Merton’s invitation is to adopt the kind of soulful and reverent disposition that will allow us to be changed by this deeper reality, this deeper truth about God and human beings. The entire chapter is short and beautiful. This is just a taste:

“So God became man. He took on the weakness and ordinariness of man, and He hid Himself, becoming an anonymous and unimportant man in a very unimportant place. And He refused at any time to Lord it over men, or to be a King, or to be a Leader, or to be a Reformer, or to be in any way Superior to His own creatures. He would be nothing else but their brother. …

“The presence of God in His world as Man depends, in some measure, upon men. Not that we can do anything to change the mystery of the Incarnation in itself: but we are able to decide whether we ourselves, and that portion of the world which is ours, shall become aware of His presence, consecrated by it, and transfigured in its light.”

Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, Chapter 39 “The General Dance”

Now war has broken out, and we have a new sense of urgency about asking, “What’s going on?” not only in the arena of politics and war, but in the hidden depths of our everyday life and world.

And maybe we can ask in the spirit of Marvin Gaye: soulful and reflective; gentle, tender, and pleading. Mournful, but without accusation or calls for retribution. Maybe, like Marvin Gaye, we can slow everything down a bit, and make space for hope, conversation, and even love. The Incarnation is nothing if it is not a call for reverence in how we treat each other. To realize that it is a privilege we get to care so tenderly for each other in this short life we have together.

Speaking of the Incarnation … Interestingly, Mr. Shah Alam arrived in the United States on Christmas Eve, 2024

He had no form or majesty that we should look at him,
    nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
He was despised and rejected by others;
    a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity,
and as one from whom others hide their faces
    he was despised, and we held him of no account.

Isaiah 53:2-3

You probably have this song already playing in your head, but if you’d like to hear the real thing, here’s a link to Marvin Gaye’s “What’s going on?”