I, like many humans on planet Earth, spent much of last Friday, March 29 listening to and reveling in Cowboy Carter, Beyoncé’s latest marvel of an album.
Knowing that this was likely an album with Things to Say, I settled in with my phone in hand to read the lyrics as they scrolled up my screen. “It’s a lotta chatter in here, but let me make myself clear,” Beyoncé sings as Ameriican Requiem takes flight. “Can you hear me? Or do you fear me? Now is the time to face the wind.”
Side note: I love these days on the internet and in text threads with friends — everyone is experiencing and thinking about the same thing. We get to collectively loooooose our minds, react, share and spill our thoughts and feelings because OMG, are you hearing this? ARE YOU HEARING THIS?
So much of the cultural conversation leading up to the album’s release was about how “country” the album would be and how Beyoncé’s experience at the Country Music Awards may have influenced what she created. The bottom line, as she herself shared before the album released was that she was forced to “propel past the limitations that were put on me. act ii [Cowboy Carter] is a result of challenging myself, and taking my time to bend and blend genres together to create this body of work.”
I am aware that I’m not Beyoncé’s primary audience, but she is an artist for the ages and I have a deep, unyielding interest in people who have something to say. I also have a deep respect for people who refuse to sit and stay just because someone tells them to.
As the album soared into the bright blue skies of music history, one thing was clear to me: You do not put Beyoncé in a box.
She won’t be corralled.
She won’t be cajoled.
She will expand like Jack’s beanstalk, shooting high as the heavens.
“Genres are a funny little concept, aren’t they? Yes they are,” Linda Martell tells us in Spaghettii’s intro. “In theory, they have a simple definition that’s easy to understand. But in practice, well, some may feel confined.”
Cowboy Carter rejects the idea that people must stay in a box — whether it’s one they chose themselves or one assigned to them by others. For listeners with ears to hear, the album is also extending an invitation to continue your own expansion, no matter what others say or think.
At this point I could ask, “Who likes boxes, anyways?” Obvious answers may include people who enjoy being in charge of said boxes; those who think they know better; and Alex, give me “those who are uncomfortable with change they can’t control” for 500. But to be frank, boxes can also be nice and cozy. They can give helpful boundaries and covering. They can protect from the elements swirling around us. They can be a place to sit and rest a while.
So how can you tell the difference? As someone who, in her recent past, climbed out of a few boxes she loved, I think a box can be different things at different times and you, the person in the box, are the only one who knows when it’s time to climb out. The danger, I would say, is when we forget the box we’re in isn’t, actually, the entire world.
The danger, I would say, is when we forget the box we’re in isn’t, actually, the entire world.
To be clear, I really do feel for those uncomfortable with change and leaving boxes … and for the record, I am only that person several times every day.
However, stay in one box forever? I could not and I will not.
We all have had places, circumstances, even relationships where the quarters just got too tight. Or maybe we just got curious about what was going on outside our four walls. After all, like any other living thing, we’re designed for growth and expansion.
In thinking about boxes and the call to expand this week, my mind has been stuck on a story in the book of Exodus. God has given the Israelites, who have escaped Egypt and generations of enslavement, directions for a structure they will put up and take down as they move through the desert. In the final chapter of Exodus, the structure is complete, God’s glory fills it and a cloud covers it. “So the cloud of the Lord was over the tabernacle by day,” the writer records, “and fire was in the cloud by night, in the sight of all the houses of Israel during all their travels” (Exodus 40: 38).
When I think about Jesus, I marvel how the One who made everything and holds everything together funneled Himself an embryo. “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us,” John writes (John 1:14). Fires in bushes, whispers of wind, rainbows, words on a page — from the beginning, God has been bending and blending Himself into morsels and glimpses that we can handle.
One of my favorite moments in the New Testament comes, though, when Paul tells a crowd in Athens that, “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands” (Acts 17:24).
Creator God does not dwell in boxes, but how interesting that He came and dwelled in one for us. “God is like …” we say, because we’re trying to pin down the Beginning and the End into Tupperware we’ll see through and understand.
No tabernacle or temple or modern day church can hold God. No group gets to put Them, Father, Son and Spirit, in a box and keep Them to themselves. Sure, God will join us in enclosed spaces, but I think He’s eager to get us outside. I think He’s eager to run past us and say, “Come on! You’ve gotta see this.” I think He’s the wind whipping past us and pushing us on.
As I mentioned above, in the last few years, I’ve climbed out of some boxes that I really loved. They were places and positions and trajectories where I felt safe and comfortable … until I didn’t. What I’ve found in this expansive season is that the air is fresh out here. The sun is on my skin. I’m enjoying the sky overhead and the grass underfoot.
I may find another shelter to call my own down the road, but it will certainly be different. It will be the right shape to hold this different, expanded version of myself.
Sure, we climb into boxes to feel safe.
We climb into boxes because others invite us in.
We climb into boxes because we want to belong and have a place to call our own.
But eventually, Life calls us to get out and explore. To trek on. Do something new. Become something new.
So we climb out and go with God. We bend and we blend what we’ve learned so far and we expand.
Again and again.
Amen.
Love it.