All Of Me A Wound

Hymns of a hopeless generation

Album cover, “Good Riddance,” Gracie Abrams

Bishop Erik Varden delivered a lecture at Notre Dame on April 2 of this year called “Living With Wounds: The Passion in Theology and in Our Lives.” I haven’t stopped thinking about it since I watched the video recording on Good Friday.

Varden opens the lecture by playing a YouTube video of Gracie Abrams performing her song, ”Camden,” a video captured by a concert-goer. His commentary on the song and the performance itself is deeply stirring. I wanted to share a short excerpt with you this evening:

What you just saw there, and heard, was a recording made on the 8th of February this year in Madrid when this young singer, whom I'm sure some of you will know, perhaps many of you will know, called Gracie Abrams, gave a concert there in Madrid. She is a young woman, apparently with everything going for her, beautiful, prosperous, wildly successful. In Madrid, as you could see, she wore with great and unselfconscious elegance a white silk dress that …