Saddle Up

May 3, 2026

There is a persistent motif in Christian mysticism we call “the rock that is higher”. Having watched rams and goats on mountainsides in the Holy Land, I’m with the people who say this is where we get the saying. Ram acrobatics are counterintuitive. When the ledge the ram is standing on gives way, she doesn’t fight and flail to stay put. She doesn’t look for the next ledge down – she leaps. She jumps up to the next ledge above. She chooses “the rock that is higher”.

I do not have the instincts of a ram.

My last post was in March 2025. I was preparing for cervical spine surgery in August. Removing the large bone spur compressing my trachea was going to solve a cluster of problems. I expected to be well and on my way after the surgery – writing from a new, stable ledge. Instead, I woke up from surgery in a free fall. The first words out of my mouth after waking up were “this is not the heart I went in with”.

The medical journey since last August has been weirdly complicated. The trek required 6 hospitalizations to get my cardiac function stabilized. A provocative cardiac catheterization in November showed I have severe endothelial damage. This is causing my coronary arteries to spasm when they are supposed to dilate. By mid-October, we had found a medication regimen that lets me function. Things were decently stable until I flipped an electric adult tricycle while sprinting one of our dogs. Then began the hospital visits for episodes of dysautonomia – very low blood pressure, high heart rate, and intense vasospastic angina. The diagnosis turns out to be Pure Autonomic Failure.

I branched out a bit during my numerous hospitalizations. I generally avoid Siri on my iPhone but used it repeatedly for one request in the hospital: “Play. Artist. Shuffle. Orville Peck”. Hospital staff tended to like the music playing in my room and often said so. Orville Peck was a break from the the news, shopping, and commercial-ridden cable channels playing in most patient rooms.

Two songs got stuck in my head in the days after surgery – Blush and Big Sky. It is an odd pairing. And, to be clear, my interpretations and connections might have nothing to do with the artist’s intent. I learned as a preacher, however, you can’t control what people hear. Sometimes the mishearing is providential. Usually it is not. I’d like to think whatever I’m hearing is providential.

Big Sky was a curious selection from my subconscious. It wasn’t on my Top Ten Orville list. It took a couple of months to realize – or at least decide – why it came to mind.

In the Psalms of the Old Testament, there is a particular form of Psalm called a Psalm of Lament. Psalms of Lament are easy to pick out. They almost always open by asking “why”, as in Psalm 22:

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
and are so far from my cry and from the words of my distress?

“Why” questions are usually angry.questions. Or maybe just terse, like an interrogation. In the language of diplomacy and in counseling, “why” is avoided. Questions are rephrased using interrogatives like“what” and “when”. “Help me understand” is a phrase of last resort to avoid the defensiveness triggered by “why”. Jane Austen would say “please explain yourself”.

The laments in the Psalms are not diplomatic. They are “why” questions. They are accusatory. And God stands as the accused.

Big Sky follows the pattern of a Lament Psalm with an important substitution. Whatever the divine may or may not be, Orville Peck addresses this divine as “big sky”. The “why” is not in the first line. It shows up in the refrain after the second stanza:

Big sky, big sky

 I don't know why

Oh, big sky

Like other Psalms of Lament, the stanzas of Big Sky are grievances. Each grievance describes a painful past relationship. The first relationship – the first stanza – ends with:

I like him best when he’s not around,

He gets me high, ooh, big sky.

The grievance is implied. Something about the relationship is intolerable. Absence is preferable to presence. All we are told is that “he gets me high”. This reminds me of addiction – memories of being drunk and memories of being stuck in bad relationships.

The relationship in the second stanza is darker. Violence is more than implied. “Stayed awake all year” and the “the only feeling that you know is fear” are the words of someone being abused. The angry “why” is explicit in the last line:

I don’t know why,
Oh, big sky

The words of us lesser poets would be along the lines of “you’re good for nothing if you let shit like this happen” and “why does this hurt so bad”? I have asked “why” on many occasions. I issued an ultimatum once. But I’ve never heard Big Sky reply directly. Direct answers to these sorts of questions are outside the bounds of space-time.

One of the ironies in Psalms of Lament is that they switch gears – the lament turns to praise near the end. In Psalm 22, this happens at verse 21:

I will declare your Name to my brethren;

in the midst of the congregation I will praise you.

The praise continues for 9 more verses. Even in Psalms of Lament, hope holds. Redemption is coming. What is broken will be restored. What is lost will be found.

Most of Orville Peck’s songs make a similar switch. Like the Psalms of Lament, they end with at least a nod towards redemption. In Big Sky, the switch happens in the third stanza. Here, we are part of a family: “her and me and the baby make three”. “Her” started out as a “jailer”, but this is temporary. Fort Quay becomes home base, a place we “visit once in a while”. We have found redemption:

She keeps me dry, 
oh, big sky.

Big sky, big sky

I don’t know why

Oh, big sky

I love what Peck does here. Even after redemption, he still asks “why”. For us theologian nerds, this is a profound insight. We don’t know why good stuff happens any more than we know why bad stuff happens. We like to think we’ve earned the happy stuff, that we deserve the bennies because we’ve been good. But that is a trap. If goodness comes because we are good, then badness must come because we are bad. But no one ever “deserves” a tsunami. No child ever “deserved” cancer.

The Divine of authentic and ancient Christianity does not keep score. Nothing is transactional. There is no heavenly spreadsheet where debits and credits reconcile.
We call this grace – sometimes Grace. It is mystery. It is terrifying.

Big Sky and Blush connect in my head. because they are both redemptive. Blush, admittedly, does not sound like a lament. The song makes my heart glad. It makes me want to dance. But a shadow, a pall, is cast near the end. We feel the chill when “red sky at night" takes over:

Still there's something 'bout men that I don't understand

They're always leaving wherever they've been
Brush it off with a shrug, I don't know much about love

Still I give it a try now and then

Here we get the the polite “help me understand” version of “why”. The grievance is that men are always moving on. Men get bored and want something new. Relationships with men are bound to end in pain. But in Blush, redemption – at least partial redemption – comes quickly: “still I give it a try now and then”. In the end, the song is the redemption.

I delayed this post for months waiting to set foot on higher ground. I’m trusting that I’m already there. And while I’m not sure what I’m standing on, I’ll do my best to keep looking up.

There is a Latin phrase I learned from a “theologian” at a retreat in the 1980s. It’s only 2 words: stercus accidit. It means “shit happens”. And indeed, shit does happen. And goodness happens. We don’t know why, but we persevere. We persist. We keep going. Because it’s always “time to saddle up and ride”.