Anyone who's listened to Paul McCartney's post-Beatles work--pleasant as some of it is--can tell you that John Lennon was the fire in the belly of the Beatles.
I remember being at work in my college bookstore in... when was it? '79?... when the single from Lennon's "comeback" album began to play... the song in which he's "watchin' the wheels go round and round" or something like that. My heart lifted because it sounded to me like the old John, an echo of the Beatles with an overtone of maturity, perhaps of growing peace of mind. In that year, it seemed as though, after the long, cheesy reign of disco, real rock-n-roll was making a comeback, and here was one more sign of the change. I felt happy as I rarely did in that year, and hummed along with a song I barely knew.
Not long after, Lennon was dead.
I didn't attend any rallies, but I was saddened, truly so. It's not often the passing of a stranger brings on a palpable emotion for me... Lennon's did.
I still miss this strange man and the music he might have made. I'm sad for his widow, his son, his family, his friends, and for the man who gunned him down. It's this sadness that make me disagree with Lennon's song, "Imagine." "Imagine there's no heaven"? I think not. Tragedies like this one are all the more reason to hope for a heaven, to hope that there's more "above" us than only sky. If we hope in ourselves alone we'll always be disappointed.
There's another John (or maybe it was Luke, Mark, or Matthew), who writes something like "the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it." Especially at this time of year, with Hannukah (the
Festival of Lights) and Christmas just before us and the darkness of Pearl Harbor and Lennon's murder just behind us, I hold on to my belief in the light that is not overcome, that the light is in hands much larger and more capable than our own.
Somewhere, in some heaven, whatever that may be, I hope Lennon is singing. Singing in the light.