Jon Foreman on the Fires in His Hometown

This really moved me…

Found this via a longer post from To Write Love On Her Arms on their MySpace. I encourage you to read good words, and you can read some of theirs here. The blog of Switchfoot’s Jon Foreman can be read here.

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J. D. Salinger and St. Paul and dark black smoke
by jon foreman

So I’m listnin’ to the jason molina box set. reminds me a bit of sun kill moon in a really good way. with some atmospheric “spirit of eden” things every now and then.

it’s grey out. it was grey out yesterday. but it’s not raining. it was raining yesterday.

still trying to get any news about home. rough. feels like a world away. fires.

So I find it strangely appropriate that we’re touring to support habitat for humanity, an ironic twist in the plot, with the homes burning back on the west coast. It’s so strangely fitting that I wrote a song with Thieson for this tour on a bus that burned down a few hours later. But you see, this plot, this divine comedy strays awfully close to tragedy.

It’s a strange book and I’m inside it. So I’m trying to pin down the details about the the plot in this book. The one where I’m the protagonist in a plot much larger than I am. A book that I can’t simply put down when I’m frustrated. With no bookmark, no remote control. The pages write themselves with very little effort of my own. And yet I’m in there. I’m written into the book.

I was wondering today whether the houses that we help build with Habitat in SD are still standing. I don’t know how this ends.

Ruth has gone on downstairs, the bass frequencies are vibrating everything in the room… and a world away houses are burning down in my hometown. What can you do?

The good guys get gunned down. The bad guys do fine. That can’t be the end of the story… But the fires are still burning back home… and this thought kept running through my mind all day, “Oh God, have mercy on me a sinner.” I think that’s the prayer in Franny and Zoey… But St. Paul says the same thing

Pray that God is merciful,

jon

~ by Jonathan on October 25, 2007.