Take Me Down to Cancún

I have come to believe that one of the greatest failures of organized religion is its willingness to place conditions upon love that I cannot imagine God Himself imposing. We are told that God is all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-loving, that He created each of us, and that His creation is good. Yet some who profess these beliefs seem remarkably comfortable declaring that certain people, simply because of whom they love, are somehow mistakes in that creation. I cannot reconcile those positions. I do not believe God makes mistakes when He creates human beings. We are different from one another, sometimes in ways that challenge traditions, expectations, and interpretations of Scripture handed down for generations. But difference is not a defect, and love is not made less sacred because it does not resemble someone else’s understanding of marriage. In the First Letter of John, we are told that love comes from God and that everyone who loves is born of God and knows God (1 John 4:7–8). Later, the writer asks how someone can claim to love God, whom they have not seen, while failing to love another person standing before them (1 John 4:20). I find that question impossible to escape. How many people have been denied a place at a table, in a congregation, or in the ordinary life of a community by someone convinced that exclusion is an act of religious faithfulness? How often have we used the Bible to defend a judgment while overlooking the human being wounded by it? I wonder whether, in our determination to defend God, we sometimes forget the very people He created. I cannot claim to know everything about God’s intentions. I have spent too many years questioning and learning to pretend otherwise. But I struggle to understand how a God whose very nature is love could be honored by cruelty, rejection, or the withholding of compassion. I wrote “Take Me Down to Cancún” as a love letter to the person with whom I have shared my life, my ordinary mornings, my fears, my laughter, and the years that have passed far more quickly than I ever imagined they would. It is about a marriage, about two people who found one another, built a life together, faced difficulties, and discovered that the greatest gift they could offer was their continuing love. I know that one day one of us will have to say goodbye, and I wanted to leave behind something that would make that goodbye a little less frightening. I also wanted this final song on The Ordinary and the Sacred to speak to everyone whose love has been questioned, diminished, or rejected because it did not conform to someone else’s expectations. I do not believe anyone should have to apologize for being the person God created, or that a loving relationship becomes less worthy of dignity because others refuse to recognize it. We are all imperfect in our conduct, and I am certainly no exception. But I do not believe our differences are mistakes God needs us to correct. I am still learning to follow Christ, still learning to forgive, and still learning how to love. I do not always succeed. These songs grew from my desire to ask what God’s love really means and to examine how I live in light of it. Does loving God give us permission to reject another human being? Does defending Scripture excuse us from practicing compassion? Can we claim to follow Jesus while denying someone else a place at the table? And if we believe God created every one of us, who are we to declare that some of His children are less deserving of love? I do not know what heaven looks like or what eternity holds. I do not know whether I will ever fully understand the mysteries of faith. But I hope that when my life is over, I will have spent more time learning to love than learning to judge. And I hope those who hear this song will ask themselves the same question I continue to ask: if God loves the people we have chosen to exclude, shouldn’t we be willing to love them too? “Take Me Down to Cancún” From The Ordinary and the Sacred Lyrics by Rick Novak