Seeing Beyond the Familiar to Glimpse the Miraculous Every Day
By Noah Love
John Mark McMillan’s latest album, Deep Magic, is both a musical celebration of God’s nearness to us and an open-hearted meditation on the confusion we experience when God feels inaccessible. It lends language to the joy of a full heart, and extends comfort for times of spiritual dryness. Through all, McMillan, a Charlotte, NC-based musician whose discography ranges from songs you might hear on Sunday morning to alternative folk jams dappled with pagan motifs, reveals a world of enchantment and beauty, ours to enjoy in the mundane, everyday, and ordinary.
In the opening track, “Has It Been You,” McMillan sings of Earth as illumined by Heaven. In this Heaven-brightened world, the seasons, tides, even the arcs of human history, all herald a “resurrection baked into the fabric of the plan.” Here, eternity presses into time and the barrier between man and the divine is thin. God is close, often felt, yet seldom named. In the central refrain (“All this time, has it been you?”), McMillan looks upon his own life with a kind of sanctified memory, following mysterious streams of joy to their source: a God, “begging to be seen,” in the miraculous mundane.
It is typical of McMillan to establish the central theme of an album in the opening track, and Deep Magic is no exception. As the record progresses McMillan’s vision of the miraculous mundane unfolds, a warm core, radiating mirth into his lyrics and melodies. In “Roaring Thunder,” for instance, McMillan’s soaring chorus embodies the “sound of consummate joy,” which, upon its happy intrusion into his life, painted past, present, and future with “all the colors of a revelation.”
Of course, the mundane does not always feel miraculous. Sometimes, we hear without understanding and see without perceiving (Matt. 13:14, NIV). At such times we come face to face with what McMillan calls the “tyranny of the familiar,” named so in “Love with a Crown.” When we are tyrannized by the familiar, ordinary glory passes us by, unnoticed and unnamed.
The conflict between the tyrannical familiar and the miraculous mundane is the central story of Deep Magic.
Nearly every song touches on this struggle in one way or another. It is what makes Deep Magic instructional and comforting in both the highs and the lows of our journeys with the Lord.
Caught in the tyranny of the familiar, it is all too easy to forget God’s nearness, or even His existence. In the title track, McMillan offers a glimpse into his own battle against the tyrannical familiar: “I lose my faith every morning / but in the evening I find Jesus / in the reaches every night.” McMillan’s vulnerability is admirable, especially as a person who has at times felt great pressure to present himself as a model Christian. His daily sojourns into atheism aren’t cause for panic. Sure, he loses his faith every morning, but every such day begets another opportunity to seek Jesus in the night.
Deep Magic depicts the journey of faith as one through the here-but-not-yet. The miraculous is all around us. Sometimes we recognize it and are gladdened, sometimes the world seems stale and empty no matter where we look.
However we feel and whatever we see, we need not despair. In “Awake in the Dream,” McMillan reminds us that “there’s time to get it right.” Come what may, the “ancient lights of Heaven” shine above and among us.
Deep Magic helps us see the glorious journey within every ordinary life. As McMillan sings his way through the highs and lows of his romance with God, he invites us to remember God’s ordinary love, hidden in each and revealed through all.
Noah Love is a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania, where he studies sleep, rest, and happiness. Noah is a proud graduate of Biola University and the Torrey Honors College, and enjoys rock-climbing and reading good books. He and his wife live in Philadelphia.
A NOTE TO READERS:
Why read about music? Why not just listen to it? While nothing can suffice but to experience a work of art (like a piece of music), we can orient ourselves to be ready to engage art. So, in this little corner of Anselm, we occasionally will be presenting to you reviews of a featured musician and his or her work. The ultimate goal, of course, is to enjoy what they bring to the renaissance of the Christian Imagination.