Johnny Cash “Hurt”
I wanted to include a Johnny Cash song in the blog and this one of his best. Cash is a man of many contradictions and a product of his time. I love this Nine Inch Nails song and Johnny makes it all the more visceral. He recorded this song just before he died and you can feel the pain. He was also a religious person and listening to the song brought back a long forgotten memory of the day when religious zealots tried to recruit me.
I was brought up in the West-End of Newcastle as, what my Father would have described as “A good Catholic boy”. Religion was drummed into us with a bible and a strap. For as long as I can remember, we were taught to accept and not to question. In the concrete shelters of our local park we were learning a different reality. Here we fought over playground access rights with the Protestant kids, kissed girls and smoke cigarettes
One winter’s evening a group of recruiters from the Bethshan Mission came into the park hoping to save the bad Catholic boys and girls from the clutches of Satan. They told us they were starting a youth club and invited us along. Cold winter nights in a warm church hall seemed more appealing than a concrete shelter in a park.
There were games and orange juice and biscuits and then hymn singing. I only remember the one and that was called “When the roll is called up yonder” It intrigued me,and I asked what it was all about and they told me that only the righteous would go to Heaven and the Catholics would all go to Hell because they hadn’t been saved. It was another small step in my realisation that religion was divisive and hypocritical
When The Roll is called up Yonder
Here come the Priests and the skinny Nuns
Telling me what to think and what to feel
Of how to dress and how to pray
What is fantasy and what is real
With their own version of the truth
The people who have all the answers
They want us to be better through fear
To become our spiritual planners
They feed us a deceit of their own making
There is no Roll there is no Yonder
There is no Almighty God
There is no afterlife to ponder
What we have is what is here
The now, not the ever after
Make the best of what you’ve got
Enjoy love, life and laughter
© Jeff Price September 2017