My Friend Mary
a song about safety, resilience, and recovery
empowered by the tender embrace of a friend
God as a Field of Tenderness Presented through Mary's Friendship
In the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, the "consequent nature of God" is the Deep Tenderness. It is like a dark and starlit sky, on a January night, in which everyone is lovingly included: all the feelings that people and other creatures suffer or enjoy, all the stories. This side of God is infinitely tender. It is God as the Eternal Companion of life. It is a field of Tenderness.
The empathy of this field not reduce people to generalities. It is particularized, made concrete, by people's lives and creature's lives. This is a good thing. People are so much more than their names, than the stereotypes through which others see them and, sometimes, they see themselves.
Often the Tenderness finds its way into our hearts, not when we gaze into the embrace of a starlit sky, but when we gaze into the eyes of a very good friend: a friend who loves us unconditionally. She becomes the grace through which the deep Tenderness is felt. Adrianne Lenker, who sings "Mary" with her band, Big Thief, puts it this way: "There's really nothing like meeting a real friend on this earth who holds a space for you to be yourself." In this space where you can be yourself, the Holy is found. There's no need to name the Tenderness. It's like a field full of stars that you carry all the time,, while you're marching up whatever mountains come your way. (Jay McDaniel)
The empathy of this field not reduce people to generalities. It is particularized, made concrete, by people's lives and creature's lives. This is a good thing. People are so much more than their names, than the stereotypes through which others see them and, sometimes, they see themselves.
Often the Tenderness finds its way into our hearts, not when we gaze into the embrace of a starlit sky, but when we gaze into the eyes of a very good friend: a friend who loves us unconditionally. She becomes the grace through which the deep Tenderness is felt. Adrianne Lenker, who sings "Mary" with her band, Big Thief, puts it this way: "There's really nothing like meeting a real friend on this earth who holds a space for you to be yourself." In this space where you can be yourself, the Holy is found. There's no need to name the Tenderness. It's like a field full of stars that you carry all the time,, while you're marching up whatever mountains come your way. (Jay McDaniel)
Resilience and Recovery
"We had a fireplace there," she remembers. "And every winter — we spent every single winter there. I have memories of sledding down in the backyard; there was a hill that went down a path through this patch of woods. And we would just slide down the hill for hours. And then go inside and my grandma would make incredible hot chocolate with whipped cream and cinnamon — she was a heavy cinnamon user — and my grandpa would put a fire on, and we would be there. And my grandma painted. And she'd bring out all these crafts and we'd sit and work on paintings and making things ... My grandparents — and my grandma, in particular — defined homey coziness in my life when I really needed it. Just that feeling of being completely cradled. That was my safe space. It just had this particular smell — like potpourri and cloves and cinnamon. And it always smelled that way."
-- Benjamin Naddaff-Haffrey (May 31, 2017, NPR)
LyricsBurn up with the water 
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Safety"At its core, "Mary" is a song about safety. Not necessarily physical safety — though that's part of it — but the offer of psychological, maybe even spiritual safety. It's the kind that is rooted in wholehearted empathy and gives refuge from the anxiety and fear and ego-killers the outside world so often afflicts us with; the kind afforded by childhood reveries and very particular, very special people. A song extremely deft with subtlety, its instrumentation is simple, mainly built on piano and songwriter Adrianne Lenker's honeyed voice. When writing, Lenker chooses words for their sound and meaning simultaneously, and here, she sings them with a delicate touch. In the song's chorus, her voice flutters between notes almost imperceptibly as she lists images from childhood memories, alliterative and filled with internal rhyme ("What did you tell me Mary / When you were there, so sweet and very / Full of field and stars / You carried all of time"). The song takes its time; it never breaks its steady tenderness. It is incessantly beautiful. 
Big Thief, from left: Buck Meek (guitar), Adrianne Lenker (guitar, vocals), James Krivchenia (drums), and Max Oleartchik (bass).
About Adrianne LenkerLenker, now 26 (nearly the same age her mother was at that frightening moment when she was 5), is soft-spoken and thoughtful, with a singing voice that quivers and shakes with quiet intensity. When I call her for an interview, she answers in Texas from a touring van—“her name is Bonnie”—where she has been staying in between tours. “I don’t currently have an apartment or anything. All my stuff is in storage.... I’ve been staying in Bonnie for the last while. She’s become a clubhouse for our friends.” 
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