What Brandi Carlile Teaches About Repentance, Forgiveness And Changing Your Mind
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(OPINION) It’s time I finally wrote about Brandi Carlile.
I’ve seen Brandi Carlile in concert more times than I count — including once in Connecticut when she was opening for Ray LaMontagne. Today, he’d probably be the one opening for her. I have all Carlile’s albums, a signed poster, T-shirts, a hoodie.
Her lyrics are what captivate me.
Like this one from “Cannonball”:
“Someone told me a lie / Someone looked me in the eye / And said time will ease your pain / But behold, when you fall / It’s that same old cannonball / Coming back for your heart again.”
As a religion reporter, I can’t help but focus on the spirituality in her music. I hear her religious trauma — the rejection she faced by her faith community as a teenager when she came out as gay. And I hear her radical forgiveness and what she described in Christianity Today as a complicated and non-traditional relationship with organized religion and Jesus.
For instance:
“That Wasn’t Me” is a message on forgiveness and second chances, “… I’m not asking you to move on or forget it / But these are better days / To be wrong all along and admit it / Is not amazing grace / But to be loved like a song you remember / Even when you’ve changed.”
Toward the end of the song is a line I think about every day, a line that guides me in how I interact with others, “Do I make myself a blessing to everyone I meet?”
“Looking Out” from her 2009 album has obvious religious undertones, and they resonate.
It opens with:
“I went out looking for the answers / And never left my town / I’m no good at understanding / But I’m good at standing ground / And when I asked a corner preacher / I couldn’t hear him for my youth / Some people get religion / Some people get the truth / I never get the truth.”
I’m thinking of her music today, after the midterms. Earlier this year she brought ICE protestors on stage at a concert in Minneapolis and together they sang the anthem for the Singing Resistance, a group of protest singers from Minnesota.
The song, “It’s OK to change your mind” says “… show us your courage / leave this behind / It’s OK to change your mind / and you can join us / join us here anytime.”
It’s interesting that the Greek word used in the New Testament for repentance is metanoia, and it literally means a change of mind, a turning.
That’s what Carlile has been singing about all these years. She was turned away from her church, and instead of slamming the door on faith, she kept wrestling with it. That struggle is all over her songs.
Last week’s midterms reminded me that people do change their minds. But it’s not easy. Maybe it starts by recognizing that changing your mind isn’t a weakness. It’s wisdom.
So I’ve been asking myself: What am I holding on to that I should be willing to let go of? Which of my opinions have I stopped examining? Who are the people I’ve written off because changing my mind about them would mean admitting I was wrong?
Those are hard questions. But Carlile’s music makes me want to keep asking them.
And, I have a confession: I’ve tried for years to interview Carlile about the spirituality in her music. It hasn’t happened yet, but I’m holding onto the dream.
Brandi, if you’re reading this, it’s OK to change your mind!
This article was originally published by FaVS News.
Tracy Simmons is an award-winning journalist specializing in religion reporting and digital entrepreneurship. In her approximate 20 years on the religion beat, Simmons has tucked a notepad in her pocket and found some of her favorite stories aboard cargo ships in New Jersey, on a police chase in Albuquerque, in dusty Texas church bell towers, on the streets of New York and in tent cities in Haiti. Simmons has worked as a multimedia journalist for newspapers across New Mexico, Texas, Connecticut and Washington. She is the executive director of FāVS.News, a digital journalism start-up covering religion news and commentary in Spokane, Washington. She also writes for The Spokesman-Review and national publications. She is a Scholarly Associate Professor of Journalism at Washington State University.