The Good that Still Abides

I’m inspired and troubled by the stories I have heard.
In the blue light of evening all boundaries get blurred.
And I believe in something better, and that love’s the final word,
And that there’s still something whole and sacred in the world.
               —“Help in Hard Times,” by Carrie Newcomer

CARRIE NEWCOMER IS a Quaker singer-songwriter whose music is inspired by hope and the great human potential for peaceful coexistence. The Beautiful Not Yet is the title of both her newest album (Available Light Records) and an accompanying book of poems, essays, and lyrics. She is also working on a spoken word and music collaboration with Parker J. Palmer (author of Let Your Life Speak and Healing the Heart of Democracy) called “What We Need Is Here: Hope, Hard Times, and Human Possibility,” which is scheduled to premiere in spring 2017.

Newcomer lives in southern Indiana when she’s not traveling the world singing her folk and gospel-infused tunes and engaging social and environmental justice issues.

She was interviewed for Sojourners by John Malkin, a musician, journalist, and radio host in Santa Cruz, Calif., whose books include Sounds of Freedom: Musicians on Spirituality and Social Change and The Only Alternative: Christian Nonviolent Peacemakers in America.

John Malkin: When did you start making music?

Carrie Newcomer: I picked up a guitar when I was in my early teens and learned my first three chords and started writing songs. I’ve always loved the combination of language and music.

In the liner notes of The Beautiful Not Yet, you mention that many of these songs were written on trains and planes. How has travel been a part of your life and music?

I wouldn’t have been able to live this life of a traveling songwriter for so many years without having a bit of a wanderlust inside. At the same time, I really enjoy when I have time at home. I live out in the middle of the woods in southern Indiana, and I love the feeling of being grounded to a particular community and very familiar natural surroundings. It’s always been a balance for me to find time at home to feel grounded, to write about the daily and small changes around my home and at the same time to enjoy this love of people and places.

I love seeing that all cultures are rich and deep and unique—how we’re different. At the same time, I love the thread that pulls between us. When you sing a song about love or family or a little kindness and hope—particularly hope—it’s immediately recognizable anywhere you go.

A few songs on this new album speak of interacting with the world and addressing suffering. “Three Feet or So” refers to the possibility of affecting change in the community that directly surrounds us: “I can’t change the whole world / But I can change the world I know / What’s within three feet or so.” Your poems and songs are clearly rooted in a spiritual presence. Tell me about your practice as a Quaker.

I’m a practicing unprogrammed Quaker. There is a thread of that which always runs through my work. There’s a spiritual part in my work because there’s a spiritual part in my life. If it weren’t part of my songs, I would be censoring something very important about how I walk in the world and how I experience my life. But I do try very hard and very intentionally to write in a fashion that is inclusive. The fastest growing spiritual group is “spiritual but not religious,” and I think so many people are longing for authentic, real conversations. We are all longing to know what connects us.

Songs like “Three Feet or So,” and ha lf of the songs on this album, were written for a spoken word and music collaboration with Parker J. Palmer, another Quaker author and one of my favorite people on the planet. The particular collaboration is called “What We Need Is Here: Hope, Hard Times, and Human Possibility,” and it’s addressing the idea that comes in “Three Feet or So.”

What is your take on how media and technology are affecting us now? While it’s easier to find information, many people feel overwhelmed and less informed.

We’re getting information from all directions now, and for better or for worse, the bulk of our media is commercial, and we get a lot of what they believe will sell. Conflict, crisis, and fear sell, and tragedy becomes a commodity. We’re getting an unbalanced view of the world, I believe. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed and think, “What can one person do? Is there anything still whole and sacred in the world?”

I say it in the song “Help in Hard Times” that the things that have saved us, the things that have always saved us—as individuals and communities—are still here! Compassion, kindness, hospitality, generosity, and good parenting didn’t go away because we’re in a particular civil-political season right now. These are completely accessible within us and between us. That’s the other news story.

The song “Sanctuary” came out of a conversation with Parker Palmer. I wrote him a letter and asked, “What does a person do when they are personally and politically heartbroken? And how did the folks in the civil rights movement do it? How did they keep going when there were so many setbacks? And tragedy. There was movement forward, too, but how did they keep going?” Parker wrote back almost immediately, “Sometimes you just have to take sanctuary.”

That moved and touched me, that idea that sometimes we have to gather with trusted folks—individuals and community—and gather your hope and gather your courage and remember what it is we love beyond words and measure. Then go out and keep trying.

“Lean in Toward the Light” is much more a song of action: If we just keep leaning into something of light and something fine in the world, there is possibility and hope. It’s not positive thinking or wishful thinking. The hope that I talk about on this album is pretty gritty stuff. Where you get up in the morning and you try again in your own way to make the world just a little kinder place, and then the next morning you do it again, and the next morning you get up and you’ve been disappointed and you get up and you do it again. It’s about hope that is faithful. And it’s risky. Because if you hope like that, eventually your heart will be broken and you will need to take sanctuary. And then you get up and you do it again. It’s a horizon line we may never get to, but the walk is so fine.

I’ve always been curious about the balance between action and letting things be as they are, between speaking and silence, obstructing injustice and constructing community. Both serve and need to happen at different times.

It’s not an either/or. It’s really both/and. Part of the collaboration I’m working on with Parker, and many of the songs on this album, are working with the liminal space—it’s both/and. It’s within us/between us. It is shadow and it is light. In the song “Help in Hard Times,” the question is not always “Why?” The question is “What shall we do with this and how shall we walk with this together?”

There’s another song called “You Can Do This Hard Thing.” How many times has someone told me, “Carrie, you can do this hard thing”? The beauty is that it completely acknowledges that what you’re doing is difficult; you may not feel comfortable or confident—this may be a new thing—and at the same time it acknowledges and affirms that everything previous has brought you here. And you have everything you need to take the next step forward and have support for it. Yes, you can do this hard thing.