John Prine and Forgiveness: A Holy Week Meditation
Like a lot of folks, I was devastated when I heard the news of musician John Prine’s death in 2020, in the early weeks of COVID-19. Heartbreaking in its own right, it was also an early intimation of the many tragic losses to come, as we all sat powerless and fearful in our homes in lockdown. I immediately listened to the last track from what turned out to be his last album, a song called “When I Get to Heaven.” It’s not necessarily my favorite of his, but it seemed like a fitting choice. And it got me thinking about an important theme that runs throughout his work.
It’s typical Prine, mixing the whimsical and the profound so thoroughly you can’t finally tell them apart. The song begins on a note of gratitude:
When I get to heaven, I’m gonna shake God’s hand
Thank him for more blessings than one man can stand
It’s a folksy but solid start for a song about the afterlife. But Prine’s vision of the next world soon sounds a lot like this word redux — complete with a “rock’n’roll band,” “that pretty girl on the tilt-a-whirl,” and “a cigarette that’s nine miles long.” (He isn’t the first ex-smoker I’ve heard fantasize about the length of the cigarette they’d smoke if it wouldn’t kill them. It’s weird, but apparently it’s a thing.) It’s clear that he counts these simple, even indulgent pleasures among the undeserved blessings his life has been full of. He sounds a lot like the ancient sage Qoheleth, who saw food and wine and sex as gifts from an otherwise inscrutable God in a transitory world (see Ecclesiastes 9:7–9). Unlike his biblical predecessor, though, Prine can’t accept that such gifts are meant for this life only.
His afterlife plans take more shape in the second verse:
I’m gonna open up a nightclub called “The Tree of Forgiveness”
And forgive everybody ever done me any harm
Well, I might even invite a few choice critics, those syphilitic parasitics
Buy ’em a pint of Smithwick’s and smother ’em with my charm
No doubt heaven could use a few more nightclubs. But at the Tree of Forgiveness — the emphasis is on the first syllable in forgiveness in Prine’s performance — there’s more than Smithwick’s Irish Ale on tap. (“Critics,” “syphilitic,” “parasitics,” and “Smithwick’s” [the w is silent] is a nice bit of rhyming, by the way.) Prine plans to serve up healthy pours of forgiveness along with the beer at his heavenly bar. The scope of the intended pardon is sweeping, encompassing “everybody ever done me any harm.”
Prine’s vision of heaven may be unconventional, but on this point, at least, it’s a deeply Christian one.
By imagining he’ll do this in heaven, Prine implies he was never able to do it on earth. Not only will his body be so transformed that it can withstand the ill effects of nine miles’ worth of tobacco (or maybe it’s the cigarettes that are different in heaven?), he’ll also enjoy renewed moral capabilities. In theological terms, one might say he’s been set free from bondage to sin. And he’ll use his newfound freedom of moral will to be as generous with grace to others as God has been to him. Knowing he’s received “more blessings than one man can stand” motivates him to “forgive everybody ever done me any harm.” Prine’s vision of heaven may be unconventional, but on this point, at least, it’s a deeply Christian one.
Sadly, we now know Prine was closer to the next world than anyone realized when he wrote “When I Get to Heaven” in 2017. But it’s not the first time he’d thought about forgiveness or the afterlife.
Forty years earlier, he wrote “Fish and Whistle” when his producer demanded one more track for an album Prine thought was finished. The song wears its absurdity on its sleeve, including the gem of a chorus:
Father forgive us for what we must do
You forgive us, we’ll forgive you
We’ll forgive each other till we both turn blue
Then we’ll whistle and go fishing in heaven
The first line is conventional enough, although the verb “must” gives pause. Is there a hint here of human depravity, a theological anthropology in which we can’t not sin? Then the boldness of the quid-pro-quo with God takes the listener by complete surprise. We might expect a more traditionally pious “You forgive us, we’ll forgive others,” a variation on the Lord’s Prayer’s “forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Instead we get “You forgive us, we’ll forgive you.”
But maybe God also has to answer for this broken world.
I think there’s more than the rhyme scheme behind the unexpected turn. Prine grasped as well as anybody how screwed-up our world is. His songs are full of wounded people, chewed up and spit out by life. Sometimes their pain comes from intentional acts of evil, but more often they’re just victims of a system that’s bigger than any of us. The drug-addled Vietnam vet. The unfulfilled housewife. The lonely old man. The child with two first names but no father. The inmate in prison on Christmas Day.
“Father forgive us” indeed, but maybe God also has to answer for this broken world. Otherwise, as Prine famously put it — in a line Johnny Cash refused to sing — “Jesus Christ died for nothin’, I suppose.” So in the spirit of generosity that suffuses his work, Prine offers to forgive God, too.
Throughout his career, John Prine gave voice to a world’s worth of hurt, with a lot that needs forgiving. Fortunately, in his moral vision, there’s enough mercy to go around. “We’ll forgive each other till we both turn blue.” It’s a delightfully playful take on Jesus’s “seventy times seven” (Matthew 18:22). And because Prine can’t seem to imagine forgiveness without heaven, or vice versa, the next line promises an Elysian fishing trip: “we’ll whistle and go fishing in heaven.”
I don’t know if he intended this, but “whistle and go fishing” calls to my mind the opening credits of “The Andy Griffith Show.” When I was a kid, my dad and I must’ve watched Andy and Opie walk down to the creek hundreds of times, their fishing poles on their shoulders, the sound of that infectiously whistled tune coming through the TV. I can think of worse ways to spend eternity.
Like most people with an inkling of a belief in an afterlife, I sometimes indulge in speculation about things I’ll do and people I’ll see if I make it to heaven. This week, I’ve added a new item to the list. I’m going to grab a bunch of old friends and wander down the streets of gold until I find The Tree of Forgiveness. I’m pretty sure there’ll be an endless supply of beer, laughs, and music there, with plenty of grace to spare.
