Everything I own

SONG & LYRICS BELOW

Everything I Own - A reflection on the song by Bread (David Gates), by Brian Moodie

(Matthew 13:44-46, Mark 9:2-8, Psalm 91:1-2)

Today we come to explore another well know song from the past, called “Everything I own”.  The Song was first released in 1972 by Bread.  It very quickly climbed to the top of the charts in the US and other parts of the world, but only reached number 32 in the UK.  It was however redone in 1974 by the Jamaican Reggae artist Ken Boothe and very quickly reached number 1 in the UK charts as a result. 

The Song has been covered by numerous artists since then including UK artists Rod Stewart and Boy George.  

The song is mostly interpreted to be about romance and a broken relationship. It appears straightforward: boy loses the love of his life, expresses deep regret, longs for her return. But, there is a lot more to the song than that. 

The intention of David Gates was in fact much more specific when he first wrote it.  In an interview after the song became a hit, he revealed that in fact the song was written in memory of his father who had died in 1963 before David Gates had achieved success in his musical career with the band Bread.  

According to the book 1000 UK No. 1 Hits by Jon Kutner and Spencer Leigh, at his father's funeral, a friend took David Gates aside and said, "Your dad was so proud of what you were doing." David agreed saying, "My success would have been so special to him as he was my greatest influence.”

And so it was that the song 'Everything I Own' came to be written and recorded in honour of his father.  The songs lyrics take on a whole new meaning when read or listened to in light of this: 

You sheltered me from harm
Kept me warm, kept me warm
You gave my life to me
Set me free, set me free

[Pre-Chorus]
The finest years I ever knew
Were all the years I had with you

[Chorus]
And I would give anything I own
Would give up my life, my heart, my home
I would give everything I own
Just to have you back again

[Verse 2]
You taught me how to love
What it's of, what it's of
You never said too much
But still you showed the way
And I knew from watching you

[Pre-Chorus]
Nobody else could ever know
The part of me that can't let go

[Chorus]
And I would give anything I own
Would give up my life, my heart, my home
I would give everything I own
Just to have you back again

[Bridge]
Is there someone you know
You're loving them so
But taking them all for granted?
You may lose them one day
Someone takes them away
And they don't hear the words
You long to say

[Chorus]
I would give anything I own
Would give up my life, my heart, my home
I would give everything I own
Just to have you back again

[Post-Chorus]
Just to touch you once again

As for the title of the song, this also had a very specific reference, this time to his Mother.  David Gates shared that before his father died and before David had any real musical success, when he was still struggling financially, he had sent an orchid to his mother for her birthday at a time when he could barely afford it.  Writing back to David, his father told him just how much his mother appreciated the gift and that she had said that he could have “anything she owned” in return for his gift to her.  

And so despite the fact that the song is often interpreted as a romantic love song about loved found and lost the song is in fact a very personal expression of David Gate’s love and affection for both his Father and his Mother. 

It is a song that has some beautiful and moving themes: 

It is a song of gratitude – gratitude for the memories of his father (and clearly also of his mother).  Gratitude for what his father had taught him about love, even though his father was clearly a man of few words. 

It is a song that expresses people’s experiences of grief, battling to let go, experiences of regret wishing he had spoken words to his father that he didn’t get to say.  

It expresses the deep longing to be with his father again and to touch him once again.  The feeling like he would be willing to give up everything he owned in order to see his father again. Suddenly in the light of death, what is truly valuable can be clearly seen. 

These are universal experiences of love, grief and loss that apply to all manner of relationships.  

There are other themes that go beyond just the experience of grief:

The first is the experience of finding a place of solace and shelter in life.  “You sheltered me from harm… kept me warm, kept me warm”.  This reminds us of all thing things, people and places where we find a safe space, a place of belonging, a place of peace, a place of refuge where we feel safe, warm, held, a place where we can let our guard down and just be ourselves without worry or concern for being judged. 

The second experience in this song that goes beyond simply the realm of grief and loss, is the idea that there are things in this life that are worth more than the things we own.   “...And I would give anything I own, Would give up my life, my heart, my home...”

And in a way this was an essential part of the message of Jesus, that there are treasures in life that are greater than anything you can own, greater than your life or your home. 

Jesus spoke of a realm in which God could be known and encountered, that could become for us a true shelter, a true place of inner security, a place within the human heart that can’t be touched by impermanence of this fragile world in which we live where moth and rust eat away and where there is always the danger of thieves breaking in and stealing. There is a realm that is more steadfast and trust-worthy than the  outward world of form. It is the realm of the spirit, the formless in which we discover what the Buddha called the deathless, that dimension of life that is immortal never born and never dying, eternal, serene, enduring, tranquil, always at peace:  the realm of the Divine… that is also our true nature.  In English we translate this Realm of the Divine, that Jesus spoke of as the Kingdom of God, or the Kingdom of heaven.

The apostle Paul for all his faults and ragged edges had also touched this realm of the Kingdom of God, or rather, it had touched him. Of this realm of the Spirit he said:  For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking (in other words, not about outward pleasures in the world of form), but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit, in other words about living in alignment with the Divine (that which is ultimately true and real) that brings peace and joy. 

Jesus said that to find this realm of God this Kingdom of Heaven that resides within, is to find the greatest treasure of all.  When we have found it we will be willing to give up everything else we have for it. 

He describes it like a treasure in a field Matthew 13:44-46. The field in the parable is the field of the heart. When we find this treasure within us we find we have discovered something that is even more valuable than life itself, more valuable than all the outward things in the world of form. This treasure is our true nature the spark of the Divine, or the Spirit of God within. Most of us are unaware of this hidden treasure is within us. At other times we have an intuition that it is there, but we haven’t dug deep enough yet to discover it fully or to experience this treasure in its fullness. 

And so this song, which speaks of the very human emotions and experiences we all have, especially around grief and loss, is also a song that invites us to discover that which transcends, and goes beyond our normal human experiences.  It invites us to find that deeper love at the heart of the Universe that is our true shelter.  It invites us to discover the hidden spiritual treasure that resides within each of us that is worth more than anything we own in this fragile world of change and impermanence. 

Getting back to the theme of grief in this song. 

For the last two hundred years or more, as westerners we have been schooled more and more in what can be referred to a scientific materialism based primarily on Newtonian Physics.  Science would tell us that the only things that are real are things that can be measured and weighed.  Because the world of the spirit, the inner life cannot be measured and weighed, even though many of us still come to church, we live with this horrible sense that we are actually just a body.  The body is the only thing that is truly real from this perspective. And so when we are faced with death it feels like death is the annihilation of life. We feel that the death of our loved ones is the end of their existence which magnifies our grief a hundred or thousand fold.  

But what if the perspective of popular scientific materialism, because it focuses on a very limited dimension of our existence has in fact become a lie, a lie, not because science is untrue, but because it hasn’t told us the whole truth of our existence.  In fact Quantum Physics is beginning to open new fields of dialogue between science and spirituality as it discovers more and more that what we think of as our physical bodies is in fact just energy vibrating at a very low frequency.  The more you dive into the world of physical matter with a microscope, the less and less physical it is. 

What if we and our loved ones are far more than just our bodies.  What if we are not physical beings trying to have a spiritual experience, what if we are in fact spiritual beings who for a short time have chosen to have a physical experience, and that when we die we are simply taking off a costume, an outer garment and that beneath it we will discover that all of us are in fact beings of light and love who have simply forgotten who we and our loved ones really are.  That actually, we are all immortal that our loved ones who have passed away are not really gone at all, but simply live in another dimension that we cannot see with our physical sight and that there is in fact no question that we will see them again in that more subtle realm of light, love and peace. 

What if the story of the transfiguration of Jesus (Matthew 17:1-9,, Luke 9:28-36) for example was not meant to show Jesus as someone different and superior to us? What if the story of the transfiguration is actually meant to help to reveal to us our true nature, that we are not first and foremost human beings, that in fact we are first and foremost spiritual beings, beings of light and love who are temporarily experiencing the wonder and gift and challenges of living life in the flesh. 

But in the meantime, we are here on earth having our human experiences that enable us to discover and experience life in a different way. And in while this world of physicality, this world of form we continue to see as though through a glass darkly, then, when the veil is removed, we will see each other face to face. For we will have come home to our true home and discovered our true shelter under the shadow of the Wings of the Divine (Psalm 91:1-2). Amen.