All That You Can’t Leave Behind | U2
release date: 2000 record label: Island
track listing: 1) Beautiful Day
2) Stuck In a Moment You Can’t Get Out Of
3) Elevation
4) Walk On
5) Kite
6) In a Little While
7) Wild Honey
8) Peace on Earth
9) When I Look at the World
10) New York
11) Grace
“the only baggage you can bring
is all that you can’t leave behind…”
The worst part about growing up is the point when you realize they were right – the people who told you things would get hard, friends would grow apart, and loved ones would leave. You almost hated them for suggesting such a bleak future while you looked ahead to the prime of your life. You reasoned these prophets of doom were speaking out of bitterness or resentment; years down the line, they would be forced to eat their words. Certainly your life would be different.
Time passed, and you eventually found yourself carefully stepping around the broken shards of your rose-colored glasses. Every deplorable outcome they predicted has become part of your story. Life got difficult. Friends disappeared. Loved ones are now further apart than ever. Of course, its not their fault – the people who warned us that such a time would come – but still, a piece of you wants to hold them responsible, to pin the blame on someone else. Unfortunately, it doesn’t stick very well.
In a story, the most important part is the end. Everything, from the opening scene onward, moves steadily toward the conclusion. In that ending, we hope to find an answer for the conflict that the main character has gone through – the guy finally getting the girl, a lost family member reunited, or the forces of evil defeated by an unlikely hero. But an ending doesn’t have to be “happy” in order for it to be satisfying or memorable. Who can forget the empty funeral of the title character in The Great Gatsby, the moment Edward Norton turns to his girlfriend and tells her that she met him at a strange time in his life as buildings slowly begin to collapse around them, or when you finally realize that Bruce Willis was dead the whole time? Without an ending, a story is pointless.
While we love a good ending in literature or film, few of us have learned to embrace the conclusions that life throws at us. Its one thing to finish a book; its quite another to live an ending. But as much as we want to avoid it, we can’t escape that fact that we will all have to face the end of a relationship, a project, or a dream. In my twenty-six years, I could count on one hand the endings that I have handled in a healthy way. The past year has been difficult for just that reason.
In June of 2010, I made the decision to step away from a promising career as a high school science teacher. It was a bittersweet ending – in some regards, I welcomed it, but in others, I grieved the loss. I left teaching in order to care for my aging grandparents – one an invalid, the other suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. While I treasure the time we continue to spend together, each day brings with it an ending, as independence and health slowly slip away from the both of them.
Providing round-the-clock care obviously takes away from the opportunity for social interaction. During that year, I saw many friendships suffer under the weight of the responsibility I was shouldering. Single, in my mid-twenties, these should have been the freest years of my life; instead, I spent most of my time, including weekends, at my grandparents’ house. A handful of close relationships withered to nothing. At the same time, the small group that I had been leading for almost three years began to disintegrate. At one time, over twenty of us would meet weekly for Bible study and fellowship. By the end of my tenure, we were down to five. On top of all that, I also found myself approaching the end of my time with an intentional Christian community that I had helped form. I had been living there before moving in with my grandparents, but the time required caring for them made it impossible to continue, in any meaningful way, in the work and the relationships within that community.
The switch to providing in-home care was a shock to my daily routine. As a teacher, I rarely saw free time, washed away in a flood of lesson plans and papers to grade. And then, almost over night, I entered the much slower-paced world of my grandparents. We ate all three meals together, watched every newscast, and continually napped throughout the day. As these endings began to incessantly bump up against my life, I found myself with more than enough time to brood over each of them. This led me to one conclusion: I was a failure. Obviously some things were out of my control (namely the health of my grandparents), but in regards to my dying friendships, the end of my once-successful Bible study and the conclusion of my time with the Christian community, I placed the blame squarely on my own shoulders. Needless to say, this was not a healthy response.
I struggled because I believed that endings, at least in our personal lives, were a bad thing. Instead of embraced and welcomed, they were something to be avoided and shunned – a sign of failure. I spent over a year believing that some deficit within me was to blame for the losses I was experiencing. And then, near the end of August 2011, I got a shock to my system.
This summer, I started working at a church in Lexington as the Creative Arts Pastor for Student Ministries. A few months later, near the end of August, the entire staff went on retreat for three days. During this time, our senior pastor shared with us what God had been teaching him during the course of his summer study break; little did he know he would be speaking right to me.
He began by giving an overview of a book he had recently read, Necessary Endings by Henry Cloud, in which the author makes the case that endings “are not a tragedy to be feared and later regretted, but a necessary stage on the way to growth.” He explained that endings are an essential component of a healthy life, yet we so often do all we can to avoid them. If nothing in our lives ever comes to an end – be it a job, a relationship, or a goal – then we are allowing unhealthy baggage to accumulate. Our bodies expel waste as a way of survival – if this did not occur, toxins would build up in our system and very quickly kill us. Why should the same not be true in our lives as a whole?
But let me be clear: just because life hits a rough patch does not mean its time to go on an “ending spree.” There is certainly a time to fight for our relationships, dreams and goals. But its important to remember that there may also come a time in which, for our own spiritual, emotional and physical well being, an end must be embraced. As our pastor continued to teach, the work God had been doing started to come into focus; the endings He was bringing about were something to be celebrated, not feared. I realized that the relationships which had been deteriorating were the unhealthiest, ones in which I received little support and acceptance. The end of the Bible study that I led was not a failure on my part, but an opportunity to use my gifts and talents in a different area of ministry, as well as an opening for a new leader to step in, giving the group fresh vibrancy and life. And even now, I’m beginning to understand that the desires God has placed within me to be a part of an intentional Christian community are not ending, but rather being pruned to produce more fruit in the future. This was a totally new way of thinking for me; I needed time to let these thoughts marinate.
A week or so ago, I put on my iPod, clicked down to the next album and went for a walk on a fall afternoon. It was overcast, with a slight chill in the air, but it seemed as charming as any warm summer evening as Beautiful Day, the first track from U2’s 2000 release All That You Can’t Leave Behind, came roaring through my headphones. I meandered through a field beside my house, watching butterflies and moths take to flight as my feet shuffled through the tall grass. As the album continued, I came to a set of trees, one which I was able to climb into; I sat on a branch, ten feet off the ground, listening to the remainder of the album under the protection of its green leaves.
All That You Can’t Leave Behind is a great album; the first of many U2 discs I would purchase. Besides Beautiful Day, it contains Stuck In A Moment You Can’t Get Out Of, written for Bono’s friend Michael Hutchence, the former lead singer of INXS who committed suicide in 1997 and Peace on Earth, which pleads for an end to warfare. One of my favorite songs of all time, Grace, closes the album with some of the sweetest theology you’ll ever hear put to music: “grace, she takes the blame / covers the shame / removes the stain / grace makes beauty out of ugly things.” But that fall day, as I sat in a tree whose leaves were still green, the song that spoke to my very soul was Walk On, an anthem written in support of democratic Burmese freedom fighter Aung San Suu Kyi.
As the song began, everything I had been learning over the past year seemed to come full circle: “love, is not the easy thing / the only baggage you can bring / is all that you can’t leave behind.” As children – perhaps even as young adults – we believe that in this life we’ll never be forced to leave anything behind. Our lives are a grand adventure, one in which everyone and everything we desire will also be involved. But that is just not the case. Some things will, eventually, have to take precedence. The list of things that we can take with us throughout the entirety of our life is quite short – and only you can decide what makes the cut. For me, the list tops out at two: faith and family. The love of Christ and relationships with those who share my last name are two things that I can’t leave behind. And one of them, according to Christ, must take precedence over the other.
Walk On implores its listener to continue living their life, even as they have to leave pieces of it behind. The songs ends as Bono sings “leave it behind / you’ve got to leave it behind / all that you fashion, all that you make / all that you build, all that you break / all that you measure, all that you steal / all this you can leave behind.”
There are plenty of things in life that I love – my job, close friends and dreams – but I realize that there may come a time when I must leave these behind in order to hold onto the two things that I can’t leave behind. Endings will continue to rear their ugly head throughout the rest of my life, but instead of something to be feared, perhaps they are to be embraced, for, as my pastor taught me that late summer day, “good cannot begin until bad ends.”
release date: 2000 record label: Island
track listing: 1) Beautiful Day
2) Stuck In a Moment You Can’t Get Out Of
3) Elevation
4) Walk On
5) Kite
6) In a Little While
7) Wild Honey
8) Peace on Earth
9) When I Look at the World
10) New York
11) Grace
“the only baggage you can bring
is all that you can’t leave behind…”
The worst part about growing up is the point when you realize they were right – the people who told you things would get hard, friends would grow apart, and loved ones would leave. You almost hated them for suggesting such a bleak future while you looked ahead to the prime of your life. You reasoned these prophets of doom were speaking out of bitterness or resentment; years down the line, they would be forced to eat their words. Certainly your life would be different.
Time passed, and you eventually found yourself carefully stepping around the broken shards of your rose-colored glasses. Every deplorable outcome they predicted has become part of your story. Life got difficult. Friends disappeared. Loved ones are now further apart than ever. Of course, its not their fault – the people who warned us that such a time would come – but still, a piece of you wants to hold them responsible, to pin the blame on someone else. Unfortunately, it doesn’t stick very well.
In a story, the most important part is the end. Everything, from the opening scene onward, moves steadily toward the conclusion. In that ending, we hope to find an answer for the conflict that the main character has gone through – the guy finally getting the girl, a lost family member reunited, or the forces of evil defeated by an unlikely hero. But an ending doesn’t have to be “happy” in order for it to be satisfying or memorable. Who can forget the empty funeral of the title character in The Great Gatsby, the moment Edward Norton turns to his girlfriend and tells her that she met him at a strange time in his life as buildings slowly begin to collapse around them, or when you finally realize that Bruce Willis was dead the whole time? Without an ending, a story is pointless.
While we love a good ending in literature or film, few of us have learned to embrace the conclusions that life throws at us. Its one thing to finish a book; its quite another to live an ending. But as much as we want to avoid it, we can’t escape that fact that we will all have to face the end of a relationship, a project, or a dream. In my twenty-six years, I could count on one hand the endings that I have handled in a healthy way. The past year has been difficult for just that reason.
In June of 2010, I made the decision to step away from a promising career as a high school science teacher. It was a bittersweet ending – in some regards, I welcomed it, but in others, I grieved the loss. I left teaching in order to care for my aging grandparents – one an invalid, the other suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. While I treasure the time we continue to spend together, each day brings with it an ending, as independence and health slowly slip away from the both of them.
Providing round-the-clock care obviously takes away from the opportunity for social interaction. During that year, I saw many friendships suffer under the weight of the responsibility I was shouldering. Single, in my mid-twenties, these should have been the freest years of my life; instead, I spent most of my time, including weekends, at my grandparents’ house. A handful of close relationships withered to nothing. At the same time, the small group that I had been leading for almost three years began to disintegrate. At one time, over twenty of us would meet weekly for Bible study and fellowship. By the end of my tenure, we were down to five. On top of all that, I also found myself approaching the end of my time with an intentional Christian community that I had helped form. I had been living there before moving in with my grandparents, but the time required caring for them made it impossible to continue, in any meaningful way, in the work and the relationships within that community.
The switch to providing in-home care was a shock to my daily routine. As a teacher, I rarely saw free time, washed away in a flood of lesson plans and papers to grade. And then, almost over night, I entered the much slower-paced world of my grandparents. We ate all three meals together, watched every newscast, and continually napped throughout the day. As these endings began to incessantly bump up against my life, I found myself with more than enough time to brood over each of them. This led me to one conclusion: I was a failure. Obviously some things were out of my control (namely the health of my grandparents), but in regards to my dying friendships, the end of my once-successful Bible study and the conclusion of my time with the Christian community, I placed the blame squarely on my own shoulders. Needless to say, this was not a healthy response.
I struggled because I believed that endings, at least in our personal lives, were a bad thing. Instead of embraced and welcomed, they were something to be avoided and shunned – a sign of failure. I spent over a year believing that some deficit within me was to blame for the losses I was experiencing. And then, near the end of August 2011, I got a shock to my system.
This summer, I started working at a church in Lexington as the Creative Arts Pastor for Student Ministries. A few months later, near the end of August, the entire staff went on retreat for three days. During this time, our senior pastor shared with us what God had been teaching him during the course of his summer study break; little did he know he would be speaking right to me.
He began by giving an overview of a book he had recently read, Necessary Endings by Henry Cloud, in which the author makes the case that endings “are not a tragedy to be feared and later regretted, but a necessary stage on the way to growth.” He explained that endings are an essential component of a healthy life, yet we so often do all we can to avoid them. If nothing in our lives ever comes to an end – be it a job, a relationship, or a goal – then we are allowing unhealthy baggage to accumulate. Our bodies expel waste as a way of survival – if this did not occur, toxins would build up in our system and very quickly kill us. Why should the same not be true in our lives as a whole?
But let me be clear: just because life hits a rough patch does not mean its time to go on an “ending spree.” There is certainly a time to fight for our relationships, dreams and goals. But its important to remember that there may also come a time in which, for our own spiritual, emotional and physical well being, an end must be embraced. As our pastor continued to teach, the work God had been doing started to come into focus; the endings He was bringing about were something to be celebrated, not feared. I realized that the relationships which had been deteriorating were the unhealthiest, ones in which I received little support and acceptance. The end of the Bible study that I led was not a failure on my part, but an opportunity to use my gifts and talents in a different area of ministry, as well as an opening for a new leader to step in, giving the group fresh vibrancy and life. And even now, I’m beginning to understand that the desires God has placed within me to be a part of an intentional Christian community are not ending, but rather being pruned to produce more fruit in the future. This was a totally new way of thinking for me; I needed time to let these thoughts marinate.
A week or so ago, I put on my iPod, clicked down to the next album and went for a walk on a fall afternoon. It was overcast, with a slight chill in the air, but it seemed as charming as any warm summer evening as Beautiful Day, the first track from U2’s 2000 release All That You Can’t Leave Behind, came roaring through my headphones. I meandered through a field beside my house, watching butterflies and moths take to flight as my feet shuffled through the tall grass. As the album continued, I came to a set of trees, one which I was able to climb into; I sat on a branch, ten feet off the ground, listening to the remainder of the album under the protection of its green leaves.
All That You Can’t Leave Behind is a great album; the first of many U2 discs I would purchase. Besides Beautiful Day, it contains Stuck In A Moment You Can’t Get Out Of, written for Bono’s friend Michael Hutchence, the former lead singer of INXS who committed suicide in 1997 and Peace on Earth, which pleads for an end to warfare. One of my favorite songs of all time, Grace, closes the album with some of the sweetest theology you’ll ever hear put to music: “grace, she takes the blame / covers the shame / removes the stain / grace makes beauty out of ugly things.” But that fall day, as I sat in a tree whose leaves were still green, the song that spoke to my very soul was Walk On, an anthem written in support of democratic Burmese freedom fighter Aung San Suu Kyi.
As the song began, everything I had been learning over the past year seemed to come full circle: “love, is not the easy thing / the only baggage you can bring / is all that you can’t leave behind.” As children – perhaps even as young adults – we believe that in this life we’ll never be forced to leave anything behind. Our lives are a grand adventure, one in which everyone and everything we desire will also be involved. But that is just not the case. Some things will, eventually, have to take precedence. The list of things that we can take with us throughout the entirety of our life is quite short – and only you can decide what makes the cut. For me, the list tops out at two: faith and family. The love of Christ and relationships with those who share my last name are two things that I can’t leave behind. And one of them, according to Christ, must take precedence over the other.
Walk On implores its listener to continue living their life, even as they have to leave pieces of it behind. The songs ends as Bono sings “leave it behind / you’ve got to leave it behind / all that you fashion, all that you make / all that you build, all that you break / all that you measure, all that you steal / all this you can leave behind.”
There are plenty of things in life that I love – my job, close friends and dreams – but I realize that there may come a time when I must leave these behind in order to hold onto the two things that I can’t leave behind. Endings will continue to rear their ugly head throughout the rest of my life, but instead of something to be feared, perhaps they are to be embraced, for, as my pastor taught me that late summer day, “good cannot begin until bad ends.”
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