Unplugged (Part 1)

Is it possible to physically feel the Holy Spirit? I mean to say a moment when your mind seems to uncover the mist of God's plan allowing you to the see the interlocking of God's destiny in your life which leaves no other option than for you to be physically affected. I think people talk about goosebumps or a deep warmth in the heart of your chest. Either way, I think it's entirely there. Today, I felt that while listening to some Lauryn Hill.

You see, I love music. I absolutely love it, but I could not tell you a formal thing about it. I could not explain the use of instruments, the movement of voices or any of the complicated organizational elements. The extent of my musical experience amounts to the six months I played trumpet in 5th grade. Yet despite my lack of any formal understanding, music talks to me in a way that nothing else in the world can. I could not imagine a world devoid of Radiohead's surrealist beats, De la Rocha's war poetry, Sigur Ros's ambient beauty, or Jeff Buckley's falsetto. Music stands as fundamental to my existence as the sun on my face or the air in my lungs.

That being understood, I spent my afternoon immersed in the dense spiritual outpouring of Lauryn Hill's MTV Unplugged album. Let's acclimate you all with some history first, just in case. Lauryn Hill is widely considered to be one the most influential voices in the neo-hip hop culture. She got her start with the legendary hip hop trio, The Fugees (who stood as a living tribute to the spirit of Bob Marley). After time with the Fugees, it became clear that her voice was just too big to be contained. She started forward on her solo career, releasing her debut album The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. It came out to the massive commercial and critical success. Miseducation was nominated for 10 grammys (winning album of the year) and sold over 18 million copies, both records for a female recording artist. She was on the top of her game. Cue the sound of shattering glass. After years of touring and promoting her landmark album, Lauryn stopped. She retreated into isolation, disavowing the music industry and their manipulative ways. She remained on "hiatus" for over 4 years, without recording as much as a second of music. Following the historic success of her debut album this came off as crazy. Everyone that had a pen said she had gone clinically insane. She emerged, 4 years later with a 100 minute live acoustic album composed entirely of rough, honest songs, never recorded, and clearly still under construction. The Unplugged album was more than a musician performing a series of songs. It became a view into the head of a person who had left behind a life of fame and fortune to desperately chase after God. What followed in MTV Unplugged No. 2.0 was a complete spiritual outpouring. In between Lauryn's revealing, dense songs, she spends time not only delving into her emotion state, but her spiritual motivations for all her actions. Say what you want about Lauryn Hill and the way she has gone about her life, but this piece of work comes across as nothing but one of the most spiritually encouraging albums ever produced.

Honestly, I could make dozens and dozens of posts about ways this album has affected my life, maybe I will but for now I think it's better just to expose everyone to it.

My favorite part of the album isn't even one of her songs. It's one of the interludes she takes, where she spends 12 minutes just musing. There is a lot in here, a lot. One of my favorite passages is this:

One time, it came to me, you know, I was just told very concretely. You know, it was like that voice, the right one, said to me, he said, Lauryn, You know the real you is more interesting than the fake somebody else. I just want you to know that. Because we always thought we could get, you know, we could get reality by just putting on the clothes and wearin’ the face and you know, lookin hard in the video. But, you know. Reality is..it’s like I’ve always told to my husband, it’s like, look, you know, we look at Bob Marley, you know, and we say Ok, let’s just grow locks and wear the clothes and have the band and we have no many idea how many years of struggle and pain and suffering that made that content. You see what I’m saying? You can’t get it from the outside in. Truth is from the inside out. You know, and the way we’ve been trying to heal and be healed is with these topical, surface, superficial, temporary solution. And I’m telling you, true healing is from the inside out. You know, we’ve been told to protect our outer man while our inner man is dying.

Very honestly, it was very convicting the first time I heard it. It made me realize that there were so many things that I was just doing that made me look Christian. I don't even mean to other people. I mean to myself. I was trying to look Christian to myself. Above all, it made me step back and realize that God made me to be me. He made me to love music, to want to run around and chase a plastic disc, to argue Dwayne Wade's MVP candicancy to the point of screaming. That's kind of a scary thing, because none of those things are inherently Christian. So we have a tendency to not value them, thinking that they are trivial, defaulting to a path and set of activities thats already been walked. But God made us all different, made us all beautiful. He gave us all our own paths. After hearing this, I got the confidence to start finding that path. You'd be amazed the way these seemingly trivial things have been used for the glory of God and it's all that much more effective because God has uniquely placed them in me. Believe me, it's a struggle to be yourself when no one else is like you. It's a struggle for me every single day. But it's how I see God most honestly and for that it's a struggle worth undertaking.

Here is the link to the entire Interlude 5
Part 1
Part 2
Lyrics

The entire album itself can be streamed on Youtube. More to come.