Our first double date with our besties, Matt and Dawn Wible, was 24 years ago and was, well, unimpressive. We had moved into the Dean Highland neighborhood and attended the neighborhood church together. We were one of just a few young couples at the church after a great divide left a rag-tag remnant and The Wibles were among them.
Sidenote, I seem to be drawn to people who understand rupture and repair.
Anyway, Dawn and I decided, like women do, that we needed to know each other and our husbands needed to be besties. Women — always scheming for friendship and community.
I was pregnant with our oldest when we picked up Matt and Dawn for our double date at the old school JD’s Cafe on Austin Avenue (now off Hwy 84). Dawn and I yapped, gabbed, connected a thousand ideas together about life, God, music and pets.
Brett and Matt stared at one another.
“Need anything else?” Brett asked as he got up for a third cup of tea.
“Nope.” Matt replied, sticking to his water (free, of course).
After a couple of hours, we dropped the Wibles back off at their house. When they got out of their car Brett pouted, “Well that guy was boring, we’re never doing that again.”
Twenty-four years later and a lot of doing that and more again and again, we found ourselves celebrating Matt and Dawn’s birthdays at Red Rocks Park & Amphitheatre to witness Stephen Wilson Jr. and Brandi Carlile rip open our souls. Sitting on benches between divided red rocks our eyes took in the stage and beyond that of the whole South Platte River Valley. There are too many unbelievable songs, sounds, moments, lyrics and goodness to recount but one was baked like hard clay on my soul.
As Stephen Wilson Jr. closed with his rendition of “Stand By Me,” Brandi walked out to join him. The 1961 song, originally by Ben E. King, Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller, has roots in Psalm 46 and a spiritual by Sam Cooke. It’s been covered through the decades. I don’t always love a classic that boasts a new melody, but Stephen’s version is sung with a conviction and angst that has lived through our historic (or histrionic) times and rather than offering optimism, demands hope.
He sings it like a declaration:
“When the night has come, and the land is dark, and the moon is the only light we’ll see.
No I won’t be afraid, No I won’t shed a tear; just as long as, just as long as, you stand by me.”
Here we were with a couple we now consider family. We have stood by each other. This sacred, sometimes boring friendship means more to me at this point in life than I ever dreamed would. We have faced ruptures and still found ourselves making ordinary magic by working toward repair.
That night, celebrating the Wibles’ birthdays, I couldn’t help but also see the invitation to lift my eyes beyond the stage over into the valley and wonder what our little friendship, and this song, needed to declare amidst our very divided world. What if the way we live our ordinary lives impacts the way we solve complex problems? What do our basic ways of being together through meals, connection and activities show us about generating more hope in the world?
When life is hard and the world is spinning, when people and politics and religion wear you out; when you find your heart on the ground and your parents are buried, your kids are bullied, addicted or in jail; when the diagnosis hits and you’re bearing what you never thought possible…you still have to cook dinner, clean the floor and wash your clothes. Your heart will feel divided between complexities and basic survival.
The way through the bind is to “stand by me.” Show up to your one boring friend, connect, repair, be human. Make the ordinary music of life. It’s the tune of grace, the space for love.
