Resolution

Today I was looking at RJ's fascinating blog When love comes to town and found a link to a similar blog, songs for the journey, by a guy in London named Nick Coke. Both explore the meaning of popular music and relate it to a progressive, experiential, non-dogmatic form of Christianity. Nick had embedded this YouTube video of Dylan singing "Pressing On" from his album Saved. There are no specifics about where and when it was filmed, but it seems to have been somewhere in the U.S. sometime in the 1980's.

The cinematography isn't great, but the performance is. I love the way he starts out alone, and then soon the backup singers join him, but the band doesn't kick in until three minutes into the song. This may have been the last song in the set--not only because the audience is thoroughly worked up, but also  because for the last minute or more he walks away looking tired and lets the singers and band wrap it up. The way they end it is one of the many meanings of the word "resolution." They finish with "the progression of a voice part or of the harmony as a whole from a dissonance to a consonance."

The fuzziness of this video is an example of another kind of "resolution," which is "the fineness of detail (or in this case the lack of detail) that can be distinguished in an image, as on a video display terminal."

Still another kind of resolution is the meaning you may have been expecting in the context of today's date, "a resolve or determination: to make a firm resolution to do something...the act of resolving or determining upon an action or course of action." This post will eventually get around to making that kind of resolution.

The song "Pressing On" is about another meaning of this versatile word, "the mental state or quality of being resolved or resolute; firmness of purpose." As Bob sings, "Shake the dust off of your feet, don't look back/Nothing now can hold you down, nothing that you lack/Well I'm pressing on/To the higher calling of my Lord." That is the kind of resolution I need, and I think the progressive movement needs, in the lee of the great wind that swept Barack Obama into the presidency two months ago.

The temptation now--I feel it myself--is to kick back, relax, and recuperate after months of strenuous campaigning. Lots of people worked really hard to get Obama, Biden and their local candidates elected. I worked harder than most, although not by a long shot as hard as some folks I know. To lay off for too long, though, would be a huge mistake. As I found out late in 2004 and early in 2005, taking a bit of a break can feel so good you just keep on doing it. Now, 2008 is obviously different from 2004. Winning is not as dispiriting as losing, but on the other hand losing does not lead to complacency and to an attitude of, "OK, now we can let the guy we elected to take care of things take care of things." Barack has said often though that what we built last year was not really about him. It was a movement, and as long as that movement's goals are unachieved, it has to keep moving forward.

That is my New Year's resolution, then--to keep working for change. In the liturgical calendar, today is the Second Sunday after Christmas Day, and the Psalm appointed for today was Psalm 84. One verse of it goes, "Happy are the people whose strength is in you! whose hearts are set on the pilgrim way." My heart is set on its pilgrim way. It always has been, and with God's help it always will be. I stumble, I get diverted, I lose faith, I get way off track, but I somehow keep finding my way back onto it. Let me recommend it to you. That is, let me recommend your way to you. Your pilgrimage need not and probably will not be the same as mine. In fact, maybe each person's way is as unique as her or his DNA. Just keep moving on it. As Dylan said in another song, "May you build a ladder to the stars and climb on every rung."