She's so Relatable — Tim Jones

The following is adapted from my inaugural email newsletter. Sign up for future posts through the form on my home page.

Anybody out there heard of Taylor Swift?

Kidding! Who hasn’t?

Swift’s Eras stadium tour crashed Ticketmaster’s site when fans overwhelmed the Internet. One of her concerts in Seattle measured on a seismograph; fans’ cheering, dancing, and singing combined with her massive sound system to generate seismic activity of 2.3.

How do you know you’ve made it as a pop star? When your performance causes an earthquake.

Now, Swift is talented. Her lyrics are clever. She has mastered the catchy melody. But I think it’s all about more than her being a gifted performer, more than decent pop tunes. I think that something more is how she’s learned to connect. There’s a deeply human quality to what she sings.

The lyrics capture frustration and worry and her wondering why her romances haven’t exactly led to fairy tales. She tells stories of her own insecurities. She’s honest about her sense of loss. Her self-doubt.

“Women often feel a strong emotional connection,” journalist and trend expert Rina Raphael writes. So even though she’s inching toward billionaire status, even though she is a megastar on par with The Beatles,” Swifties (as her fans are called) say “they feel like they could grab a drink and commiserate with Swift. As if she’s already a friend they could confide in.”

They say, “She’s so relatable.”

I’m drawn to that word relatable. To that picture of a companionable friend. Someone who is huge and beyond mere mortal status who nevertheless we can relate to.

We long for this more than ever. For aren’t we sometimes starved for relational warmth? For emotionally satisfying contact? Daniel Migliore, one of my professors at Princeton when I was a student years ago, has written recently, “Many people in modern technological society feel lonely and ignored.” And we may make things worse by our habits. We sometimes see ourselves as a universe unto ourselves. Build the Life You Want is the title of the latest Oprah book. But is life mostly about my own self-determination?

I think I see more than ever how we are not ourselves by ourselves, but only with relating to others. We are not solitary, singular beings, but persons made to flourish through the affection and presence of others. “We are born into relationships,” as David Brooks put it. “We precedes me.”

I believe that the Christian faith, despite some seeing it as off-putting or judgmental, at its best captures this deep longing we have for connection—with others, to be sure, and with the divine, as well.

So in the reading and writing I’m doing as a Visiting Scholar at Princeton Seminary, I’m interested in tying practices like prayer and worship to our more everyday moments of joy and heartache, belief and desolate doubt, yearning and brokenness. Doesn’t faith have much to say about our longing to know we are noticed, cared for, understood, cherished?

I want to mine the delights and scary parts of everyday life and aspiring religious faith. “From the Trinity,” writes Clark Pinnock, “we learn that the Creator is not static or stand-offish … that creation is grounded in God’s love and that grace underlies the gift of life itself.” We see the possibilities for a lively and loving relationship. That seems to offer help for what we crave.

I’m hoping to capture insights from my study these months I’m in Princeton, and jot down snippets from what I’m reading and struck by. Some of what I include here and in my email newsletter will have to do with culture sightings. Some from reading ancient tomes. Most all of it will have to do with a growing faith and deepening life with God—close to home and in our daily lives.