“You can talk to God and listen to the casual reply,” John Denver sang in the song “Rocky Mountain High.” What did he mean by that?
Denver was an American singer and songwriter who died in a solo plane crash in 1997. His songs chronicle a spiritual journey, a journey not uncommon for people of my generation.
“Rocky Mountain High,” released in 1972, describes a spiritual awakening when Denver first came to the Colorado mountains, where he later established a home in the ski resort of Aspen. Describing his own experience in the third person, it begins: “He was born in the summer of his 27th year, coming home to a place he’d never been before. He left everything behind him, you might say he was born again, you might say he found the key for every door.” “Born again” is a Christian metaphor, describing what happens when a person becomes a Christian. But Denver meant something else by the term. The Colorado mountains were where he developed a strong love of nature, a love that became for him a type of religion.
The song contains other semi-religious imagery: “His life is full of wonder” and “Now he walks in quiet solitude the forests and the streams, seeking grace in every step he takes.” Grace, of course, is a blessing of God, but for Denver it is a blessing bestowed by nature.
Denver is thus a pantheist. He is in the line of 19th-century “Romantic” poets, who saw God in nature but not God behind nature. It is a line that also includes many modern environmentalists—it is notable that Denver also wrote “Calypso,” a tribute song to environmentalist Jacques-Yves Cousteau.
“Rocky Mountain High” also contains the lines: “And they say that he got crazy once and he tried to touch the sun, and he lost a friend, but kept the memory.” I am not sure at all what he meant by that. It might refer to a personal relationship that we know nothing about. However, for me, it is a good metaphor for Denver’s spiritual journey. Icarus was a figure in Greek mythology who flew too close to the sun (Arrogantly trying to rise too far? Trying to reach the realm of the gods?) and perished. It is clear that Denver had left behind whatever Christian faith there was in his background (most people in that era had some Christian influence in their family history). Although Jesus was no longer his friend, he “kept the memory”—that is, while not a Christian, Denver retained an interest in spirituality, an awareness of God, a conviction that there is a divine presence of some sort.
In “To the Wild Country,” Denver expressed his search: “There are times I fear I lose myself, I don’t know who I am.” He found the answer to his search and his salvation when the “spirit” of the wild country called to him: “To the mountains, I can rest there; to the rivers, I will be strong; to the forests, I’ll find peace there; to the wild country, where I belong.”
Perhaps the clearest expression of Denver’s pantheism came in the song “The Flower that Shattered the Stone.” That song begins, “Earth is our mother,” and goes on to talk of “Our father above us whose sigh is the wind.” Many animist and other religions speak of “Mother Earth.” Christians believe in “Our Father above us whose sigh is the wind,” wind and breath being biblical images of God’s Holy Spirit, but it is unlikely Denver had anything that specific in mind. The line “Like a bright star in Heaven that lights our way home” can be taken literally since mariners and other travellers have used stars as a guide, but it could also be understood by Christians (and some others, possibly including Denver) as referring to the guidance of God in heaven (see 2 Peter 1:19 and Revelation 22:16, for instance). Denver’s pantheism comes out in the line “In the infinite beauty we’re all joined in one.”
The most evocative lines in “The Flower that Shattered the Stone” are: “I reach out before me and look to the sky. Did I hear someone whisper? Did something pass by?” That is the crux of the matter, isn’t it, the key question? Is God a “something,” a vague life force (as celebrated in the Star Wars movies) that is present in everything, or is God a “Someone,” a personal God who created everything and gives everything purpose? Christians believe in the latter; Denver believed in the former.
There is no evidence Denver ever lost his faith in his religion. But after his marriage broke up, he was restless. Looking at his life from the outside, it would seem that he not only never found God, but he also struggled to find himself.
I liked John Denver and admire his songwriting and singing gifts, and I am sad for him.
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