1. Carrie & Lowell / Sufjan Stevens

Death be not proud, though some have called thee

Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;

For those whom thou think'st thou does overthrow

Die not, poor Death, nor yet cans't thou kill me.

-John Donne

Spirit of my silence I can hear you

But I'm afraid to be near you

And I don't know where to begin

And I don't know where to begin

-Sufjan Stevens

Carrie & Lowell is a masterpiece.  You can read my open letter to Sufjan here.

By now, most listeners know that Sufjan's mother left her family in Michigan when he was young. She suffered from depression, schizophrenia, and alcoholism throughout her life.  Carrie reconnected with her children for a short time period in the 80s after she remarried Lowell and the children spent a few summers together at his home in Oregon.  After the marriage dissolved, Lowell stayed close to the family and forged a lifelong relationship with Sufjan that culminated in Lowell running Sufjan's record label to this day.  Carrie, on the other hand, remained a shadow in Sufjan's life, eventually succumbing to cancer in 2012 with him at her side. 

Is it the best Christian album of the past 50 years?  Is it the finest meditation on the death of a loved one ever recorded?  Is it simultaneously the most beautiful and devastating folk album of all time?  Is it the purest depiction of grieving we have ever heard?  Yes.  The answer just might be yes to all of these questions, and that in and of itself is something to behold.

Carrie & Lowell walks through the valley of the shadow of death.  The record does not go around, over, or under the valley.  It goes through it.  As we all must do at the passing of our loved ones.  Which is why we should give others the grace to grieve as they do and as they must.  In their time and in their way.  When the shadow passes over us, we will be grateful for such reciprocal compassion.

Sometimes in our culture we want people to move beyond their trial, especially their wrestle with death.  We want them to grow from it, accept it, or move past it with resolve.  A worthy sentiment, no doubt, steeped in the necessary tutelage of pain and experience that eternal destiny demands, but it is often mistimed when the shadow still hangs over the weary who are walking.  Carrie & Lowell is the sound of allowing grief to run its course before the healing and the answers come.  It is that space between a broken heart and being bound up again.  It is the wrenching days, months, or years when agony persists and the balm fails to appear.  It is someone weeping, and allowing them to weep.

From the discipline of suffering, we are fit to be founders of the universe with God, as believed by the great abolitionist preacher Dr. Henry Beecher.  When Jesus received confirmation of the death of his friend, Lazarus, "whom he loved," the Lord tarried outside the town, rather than hurriedly moving to the grave or the home of Mary and Martha.  When Mary came out to meet Jesus, the Jews that had been comforting her in her home also followed.  Mary fell at the Lord's feet, weeping: "Lord, if thou hads't been here, my brother had not died."  When Jesus saw Mary weeping, and those that had followed her also weeping, "he groaned in the spirit, and was troubled."  Jesus said: "Where, have you laid him?  And they answered: "Lord, come and see."

Jesus wept.

Even knowing that He would raise Lazarus from the dead, He wept with Mary.  Even knowing that He held the bridge between death and life in His hands, He wept with those that sought to comfort Mary.  The resurrection and the life Himself nevertheless allowed those He loved to walk through the valley first. 

The miracle came shortly thereafter for Lazarus.  For others, it may take longer.  For Sufjan, he is still walking through or was when he recorded his beautiful record.  Grace by grace, we will let him and others grieve, and mourn with those that mourn.  Especially when it is this honest, this powerful, this heartbreaking.