Secular Music and Theology Part 3: “The Mary Ellen Carter”
We all know the story of the Resurrection of Jesus. He was crucified by those with power, died a painful and shameful death, was buried, and rose again from the grave three days later. When Christians talk about the Resurrection, we are pointing to either that or the ultimate resurrection of all at the end of the age. However, we intuitively know that though these are very unique moments in history, we experience things in our life which resonate with the feeling of the resurrection. During the spring, trees that were once bare put forth little green buds, birds that had disappeared for the winter return, and the sun itself seems to return to its former strength. The whole world seems rested and refreshed. On a more personal note, we have experiences of rising again against adversity in our own lives. We recover from loss of loved ones, injury or illness, or transitions between jobs or housing situations. When people think we are essentially dead, having nothing else to contribute, we come back and show we have a little life left in us. When people want to write us off as lost, no longer willing to give any help for fear any effort on us would be wasted, we pick up the pieces and find a new lane to live in. We adapt. We overcome.
We often talk about resurrection as simple triumphs, good news all around, but in the complicated mazes of human relationships, sometimes people look disfavorably upon the success of others. Resurrection for one is bad news for those who opposed them. The high priests certainly didn’t like the news that the guards lost the body of Jesus. And when people have given up on us, our coming back from the brink of the grave makes them look bad. That may seem like a small thing, but it becomes bigger when the story of the underdog rising again intersects with the realities of power and powerlessness in our world. It’s nothing more than an exciting story when the underdog team comes back to win in a football game, but when the marginalized and oppressed poor find their strength and stand up to the rich who would keep them down, the powerful learn to be afraid. Rising again isn’t always a purely happy story. Sometimes there is anger in it, passion, sadness, fear, and struggle.
Stan Rogers was a Canadian folk musician who died tragically in an airplane fire when he was only 33. During his regrettably short life, he wrote a number of memorable songs, many about the experiences of the working class in Canada, especially sailors. “The Mary Ellen Carter” tells the story of a fictional ship that sank near the Newfoundland coast. While her owners write her off, claiming the insurance money and running away with it, the sailors who had worked on the ship cannot just abandon her “to crumble into scale.” They vow to salvage the sunken ship. They will make her “rise again.”
The song details the work they do and the danger they undertake to raise her. They spend their free time performing dives to prepare her to rise: sealing holes, closing hatches, and putting cables around the ship. They care about her. It is a very personal matter to them. Their care is set in sharp contrast to the owners and others who dismissed the efforts as futile. The narrator is defiant. “The laughing, drunken rats who left her to a sorry grave, they won’t be laughing in another day.” The act of raising the Mary Ellen Carter from the seafloor is an act of defiance. We aren’t doing this just for the joy of it. We are doing it because it is right, and because it will silence those voices that mocked the very idea. Against the odds, against adversity, against nature itself, we will work to restore what is lost, defiantly proving that it can be done.
The final verse hammers this point home, laying out in no uncertain terms the moral of the story. I cannot write it in better words than Stan Rogers, so I will quote it here in full:
“And you, to whom adversity has dealt the final blow
With smiling bastards lying to ya everywhere you go
Turn to, and put out all your strength of arm and heart and brain
And, like the Mary Ellen Carter, rise again”
The wording is harsh, intentionally so. Despite its inspirational theme, this song carries an undercurrent of anger against those who have the power to fix things and don’t raise a finger to help, preferring to enjoy an insurance payout and watch the toil of others. We experience such things in our lives. People reject and dismiss us. People lie to us and others, saying that there is no hope for us. The powerful retain their power by convincing the world to believe the lie that this is the only way it can be. Some people must be on top, while many suffer to put them there. The refusal to give up and the passion to join together to overcome shakes the lies to pieces.
In Psalm 42, the psalmist is experiencing rejection from people and from God. Though the psalmist remains faithful, trusting God will help, the prospects look bleak. Twice in this short psalm, the psalmist is confronted with people taunting. “Where is your God?” They mock the psalmist for remaining faithful when God seems to have abandoned them. If God doesn’t care about you, why not just give up? Let go. Die. But like the Mary Ellen Carter, the psalmist rises again, encouraging the downcast soul and reaffirming faith in God.
Our lives are full of struggle and adversity. Sometimes we buckle under the weight of it all, giving up and falling into despair. But even then, it isn’t over. From the depths of the sea of hopelessness, with a little help from the benevolence of friends and by the grace of God, we can rise again. We can stand defiant against the stream, trusting God’s salvation for us in this life and the next. We don’t need to give in to death and despair. Against the odds, we can find new life even when it seems all has come to an end.
On February 13, 1983, just a few months before Stan Rogers tragically died, the Marine Electric was carrying coal to a power station in Somerset, Massachusetts. It was struck by a terrible storm causing it to sink early in the morning. Chief mate, Robert Cusick, was trapped inside. He managed to escape and get to a partially deflated lifeboat alone. As the freezing water washed over him, nearly drowning and freezing him every time the water struck him, he considered giving up. However, he started to sing “The Mary Ellen Carter,” defiantly shouting “Rise again,” against the frigid waters. He survived like that until the Coast Guard rescued him. He credited the song with saving his life and wrote a letter to Stan Rogers, who invited him to attend what would become the second-to-last concert he ever performed. Cusick went on to be active in maritime safety reforms, so who no can tell just how many lives this song has saved? Perhaps with this in mind, in the face of utter despair, the nerve to resist will shake us until we too rise again in defiance of a world who would forget us.
