My daughter Katie just loves musical theatre.
For her 18th birthday I took her to New York City and we saw Les Miserables, which was one of the highlights of her life.
And she recently went back to NYC with friends to see Phantom.
But what she’s really obsessed with right now is the musical Hamilton.
For those of you who don’t know, Hamilton is the first of its kind–it’s a hip hop rap musical that tells the story of Alexander Hamilton, the least well-known Founding Father, who never was able to become president since he lost his life in a duel.
My son-in-law Connor loves it, too, and for the last few months, whenever we make the 3 hour drive between Ottawa, where the kids live, and Belleville, where Keith and I live, we play the musical from start to finish in the car.
Of course the best known song is King George’s “You’ll Be Back“, which the King of England sings to America as if it were a love song. It’s really quite hilarious. Here’s the three kids going at it on one recent drive (just hit play on the audio player! 🙂
But while that song is funny, much of the musical is very touching.
And I totally bawl.
It is beyond beautiful, it is beyond amazing, and I just don’t have words to describe what I want to talk about today. So I’m going to try to do it justice, and I’m going to share some of the recordings from YouTube so that you can feel what I feel.
Seriously, I don’t know if it’s just PMS or perimenopause or what, but I’m just so emotional this week! Maybe it was the 25th anniversary party, maybe it was my kids being home for a week and then leaving again–I don’t know. But I cry at anything. And so I haven’t stopped crying since we listened to this again a few days ago, and I really want to try to convey some of what I’m feeling.
Alexander Hamilton was impulsive, brash, and reckless. He was also brilliant, passionate, and yet at times very pragmatic. But his pragmatism made him blind to others’ faults, assuming that they, like he, would do the wise thing rather than the emotional thing. And it ended up costing him his son’s life and then later his own life. His is a tragic yet amazing story.
He rose from nothing; an orphan who by his own wits and brains got himself to America, put himself through university, won the notice of those in power, and became Washington’s aide during the revolutionary war. He later married Eliza, a debutante, and went on to draft the Constitution. He wrote the majority of the Federalist Papers. He took on cabinet positions under Washington and Adams.
But in those days he also had an affair, and when his political opponents found out about it, he ended up going public with that affair to prevent them being able to blackmail him.
You can imagine what that did to Eliza, but I’ll let her explain. I can’t listen to this without weeping.
Wow. That’s so raw. And I’m thinking of so many that I know who have experienced this kind of betrayal, and how it does rip your heart out, and it does burn.
She lived through that betrayal, but that wasn’t the end of their story.
Just a little while later their only son would attempt to defend Hamilton’s honour in a duel. And while Philip fired in the air, like a man, as his father instructed, his opponent did not waste his shot, and ended up killing him.
As they were grieving their son, Alexander and Eliza found their way back to each other.
But just a scant few years later, Alexander repeated his son’s folly with his political foe Aaron Burr, who ends up shooting Hamilton, ending his life far too early.
The musical does so much to bring the beginning days of the American experiment to life, and does so brilliantly. But what I am left haunted with, thinking about, mulling over every time I get out of the car after that draining, emotional three hour drive when we listen to the whole thing, is: could I have been Eliza?
Listen to her final song, which caps off the play:
While a person’s life has many defining moments, they are so much more complex than just those moments.
Alexander Hamilton was brilliant, and he was foundational to the nation. Yet he was such a flawed human being. He allowed passion to blind him to his true love, which was his wife, and to his moral compass.
He allowed his own hunger for power and for significance to let him wound his wife in the worst way possible.
And yet. And yet…he was also tender. He was also profoundly sorry. He was also haunted by regrets. And what consumed him, at every moment, was doing the right thing for the country.
He wrote the Federalist Papers because he wanted the country to do the right thing. He set up the banking system because he wanted the country to get off on the right foot. He fought for what he believed in.
But he failed so badly, too.
And somehow, after his death, Eliza was able to reconcile both sides of him.
And she was able to rise up from tremendous grief, after losing both her husband and her son, and was able to dedicate time and energy to making sure the country remembered Alexander through organizing his writings. But she also became political, and fought for an end to slavery and for justice for orphans.
She lived out the ideals that he wanted America to stand for. She didn’t let that betrayal colour their marriage to such an extent that she could not also see the good.
And then she made sure that she carried on what she would say was his legacy (and what I would say was really hers, or at least theirs), and she founded that orphanage. And she did tremendous good in his name.
I don’t know what lesson I’m trying to say today, and I don’t really know how to sum this all up.
I guess it’s just to say that life is so full of pain–so very, very full of deep hurts–that we must find a way to both accept and embrace the pain and still bring some good out of it.
In the Bible, King David was such a flawed king. He used his power to take advantage of Bathsheba, and that ended with getting her husband killed. He was a polygamist and a horrible father. And yet he did so much for the nation, and God still called him a man “after his own heart.”
We can totally mess up, but God sees the whole picture.
Are we able to see that? Are we able to make sure that our lives count for something; that we don’t let those few moments of profound weakness define everything? That we manage to rise above that and keep striving for what is good and for what our purpose is?
I was speaking with a friend recently who is haunted by how much she yelled at her kids when they were younger. Will that define their memories of her, she wonders? And yet, even as she’s talking about this, she seems to be forgetting all of the laughter and all of the excursions to the zoo and all of the water fights in the summer.
Don’t we do that?
And so I wonder: “What will be my story?” What will be the story that my children tell of my life? What will be the legacy that I leave them? Can I make sure that the few moments of profound weakness, whatever they may be, don’t define everything? That I keep moving towards what I feel called to do, even when it’s hard?
And can I push through the emotion and the tears and the sadness, without denying them?
Like the Princess Bride says,
Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.
Life is pain. But it is not only pain. And in the midst of pain, I hope and pray that we all can remember that.
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Good thoughts here…
One question: why do you stink that King David was a horrible father? I am honestly interested on some more thoughts… Because I’ve been thinking of David as a father figure a bit and I have my ideas of interpretation.
1. I believe he received at least part of his revelation about the suffering Messiah (like Psalm 22) when he fasted and prayed 3 days for the child he had with Bathseba. God did not punish him for his adultery and murder according to the law, because that would have meant that David would be dead at this point. But he received grace, yet an innocent child had to die (see the analogy with the Messiah…) This also explains his reaction of getting up and not grieving after the child die after 3 days. I think something really profound happened in those 3 days between David and his relationship with God the father.
2. I believe – and this I really want to make sure is read as my personal interpretation, I would not teach this like doctrine 🙂 – that when Amnon raped his half sister Tamar David did not act as expected and punish Amnon because he knew from his own past that the punishment wouldn’t fix a thing. According to law Amnon could either own up and marry Tamar which he didn’t or would have to die. Yet to kill him would only add to grief of David as a father and it would not heal or restore what was lost for Tamar either. I think David simply did not know what do that would not make his heart as a father grief. He after all was not God who could bring healing and reconciliation. We don’t know what conversations he had with his daughter. But we know that he grieved. And he grieved more when Absalom took matters in his hands and made justice. I believe in all the imperfection we see here in how David handled this situation, we can see a glimpse of the father’s heart! Sometimes I think God waits and seems to do nothing to the offender and we could say that this is horrible and unjust, but maybe God has a purpose that goes beyond justice… And his waiting is a season to enable grace and restoration to happen, before ultimately justice will be done.
Hi Lydia,
That’s a really interesting perspective on Amnon!
I guess I’d say that I think he was a bad father simply because of the polygamy. There is no way to be a good father in all of that dysfunction, I don’t think. And I see no evidence that David did anything to comfort Tamar or restore her. She lived in seclusion for the rest of her life. That may have been her choice; but there’s nothing there to say that David tried to coax her out or tried to make her life better.
Then there’s that gem from 1 Kings 1:5-6, when talking about David’s son Adonijah:
So it just doesn’t seem like David really acted like a father. He didn’t see what Amnon was doing and try to stop him (which a good father should have). He didn’t discipline Adonijah. He didn’t restore Tamar. He didn’t attempt to make things right for Absalom. So it just seems like a big mess.
I think David likely just didn’t know what to do, and likely wanted to do the right thing, but had no way of knowing what that was (plus his family was just too large!). But I do also like your thought that David wanted to show grace. I think, though, that he erred too much on the side of grace as a father, and it ended up costing many of his children their lives (perhaps as Hamilton also cost his own son his life!)
Thanks for your answer. Yes, there is definitely evidence of dysfunction in David’s family… he is actual quite a complicated character. there are short comings in his way of leading his family for sure, I just don’t see that he was neglecting his role out of a bad motive, somehow to me he seems that soft hearted guy who knew too well of his own sinfulness and need for grace that he maybe felt he could not actually take on himself to bring judgement or rebuke his children – which for sure he should have done the latter. We’ll not know for sure, it’s not written. we also don’t know how these kids were actually raised when they were little or how their mothers related to each other and so on… Some of them grew up when David was still running from Saul and they were living with the group of soldiers that went around from place to place with David. Some were kidnapped with their mothers and then recaptured. Who knows how their childhood looked like? We know some of the things they did when they were young adults and we know some of what David did or did not in response to that. But they were not minors when those things happened, which might be relevant in David’s choice of what seems like passivity. It’s not an obvious “oh he should have done that”…
That’s so true about growing up when he was running away, and growing up when kidnapped! I’d never thought of that. Really interesting, isn’t it?
Fascinating.
Like Julia Roberts said in “Pretty Woman”, it’s easier to believe the bad stuff. And some of us are more predisposed to remember only the failings and shortcomings of ourselves.
I’ve been reading about founding fathers as we near election of a new president…. and even back then, politicians were politicians… and fairly selfish and most definitely not necessarily Christian. Alexander Hamilton… who was an aide to George Washington… who wrote the majority of the federalist papers… was a total piece of work… he seems to have used/attended church only when it was convenient/necessary, cheated on his wife, was an unabashed elitist who liked big banks, mistrusted the masses, and at one point called for a monarchal presidency and a senate that served for life. The play more depicts what we would have liked for him to be… as aside from catchy music, is likely the smashing hit that it is for its multiracial cast of the founding fathers. And while I was excited to have new music to listen to when I learned of “Hamilton”, it sounds like the language used in it is vulgar and suggestive, and not something we’d be able to listen to. And I agree with your take on King David… if not for the Psalms, I’d really wonder HOW he could be a man at the God’s own heart… and even with the Psalms… well…. I don’t think I would have liked him for his murdering, womanizing ways. But then perhaps I’m just mad at men in general as my 55+ dad just divorced my mom this year and has already found someone else to be his (likely temporary) happily-ever-after.
I love Hamilton! Did you see the PBS documentary? Really good, and my husband and father in law (who know NOTHING about the musical) both watched it with me TWICE on vacation last week. So many good themes in this show, and I too thought about it in context with our sad US election choices this year.
Looks like you can see the documentary here til Nov 18:
http://www.pbs.org/video/2365870668/