The Answer is Blowin’ in the Wind
Would You Like a Lime with That Week Thirteen – The End
“Hey man, c’mon, c’mon we are going downtown, there is a huge protest going on. There is going to be thousands of people in the streets.”
“Thousands of people? You mean to tell me I can’t sit next to you at a bar and have a cocktail, but I can stand next to you in a protest and throw a Molotov Cocktail?”
“Yeah man, c’mon lets go.”
“Wait, wait, wait, what about all that anxiety and social distancing and the economic disaster we just created due to the virus? What was that all about?”
“C’mon really? Are you still talking about the virus? That’s so last month.”
“No, people with businesses lost their whole life’s work and incomes and some are just now beginning to open up again, isn’t that important?”
“Look, we don’t have to wait for them to open, we can just go in and take whatever we want. It’s that easy! It’s a riot!”
“I don’t get it. We can’t assemble twenty five people to worship in church but thousands can protest in the street? There is something not right about that.”
“Dude… church? There is no church anymore. You don’t have to go to church any more, you watch it from your kitchen. Your kitchen is your church. And besides, there is no God in all of this anyway.”
“Wait, wait, yes there is… I think there is…God has to be in all of this…where is God?…I want my God back…”
Bob Dylan released Blowin’ in the Wind way back in 1963. I would have been seven years old. By the end of the decade much would change for this country. The 60’s had proven to be one controversy after another with protests in the streets common. Though there were definite similarities to some of the causes, like civil rights, and it’s hard to believe we are still talking about it all these years later, the hypothetical conversation above still can only be unique to this time.
Though I read that Dylan denies that Blowin’ in the Wind was written as a protest song, it certainly fills that need perfectly, and has been described as the anthem of the civil rights movement.
“How many roads must a man walk down
Before you call him a man?…
how many years can some people exist
Before they’re allowed to be free?…
… how many times can a man turn his head
And pretend that he just doesn’t see?
The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind
The answer is blowin’ in the wind”
Some think that this theme of “blowing in the wind” may have been taken from a passage in Bound for Glory, Woody Guthrie’s autobiography, where Guthrie compared his political sensibility to newspapers blowing in the winds of New York City streets and alleys.
To me sadly, we just experienced this generation’s 9/11 in Mr. Floyd’s death.
We just had the incident. The moment when the whole country came together in a crisis, the one where everyone agreed, and the one that presented the perfect opportunity to build on.
But, like boo boos and never letting a good crisis go to waste, this opportunity seems to have been hijacked for other purposes, at least initially.
Mr. Floyd’s death can’t be in vain, there has to be some result. And just like the 60’s, peaceful protest will prevail and changes will be made to tighten up some of those wrongs that still plague our society.
But laws and protests aren’t going to solve this problem, we can’t force people to change.
And there are always going to be bad people out there. We can’t erase whatever the genes are that cause some people to be abusers, murderers, racists, and whatever else is bad in people of all colors in this world. We need to acknowledge those people exist, and exist disguised and wearing many coats, and some uniforms, and deal with them appropriately.
But the rest of us, the majority of us, those of us who came together for a brief moment on Memorial Day or in the days after, need to not waste another fifty years and just remember to trust each other and to treat each other with love.
We have to look at ourselves and decide what we can do to help make this problem go away one by one.
We need God back because we need God’s help.
God has to be in all of this.
Because God is love.
And God is in the wind.
