Taylor Swift has a new album out. It's called 1989, and I may or may not hear it. I've always assumed that her music was the sort of commercial pop that doesn't interest me, although I know of two people with excellent taste in music who think highly of her work. (Well, maybe I should say one and a half people, as one of them does like some stuff that I regard as pretty questionable.)
I have heard a couple of her songs, and though they aren't especially my cup of tea, they're very well-crafted and tuneful. Unlike many pop stars, she's a gifted songwriter, and if she weren't singing her songs other people would be. She has a good voice and is apparently a good performer. She's very beautiful, which is almost a requirement for success as a female pop star. She's twenty-four years old and has been a star for eight of those years–one third of her life–and has made millions of dollars.
And I find myself asking: why? Not "Why is she popular?"–to the extent that this sort of popularity can be merited, she merits it. But "Why did she receive so many gifts?" We Christians often speculate about the mystery of suffering; this is the other side of that question, the mystery of good fortune.
We all know people who seem to have been dealt a terribly unfair hand in life. I can think of some I've known: not very smart, not very personable, not very attractive, not gifted with any distinctive ability for anything in particular, some having a physical or mental affliction that makes ordinary life difficult, perhaps born into difficult circumstances, going through life with few friends and few accomplishments. They are the ones for whom the cruel term losers is more or less literally accurate; they have lost the game of worldly success, and they were pretty far along toward losing it from the moment they were born.
You don't have to tell me that God sees things very differently, that he loves such people if anything more than he loves those whom the world also loves. You don't have to tell me "Blessed are the poor in spirit; blessed are they that mourn." I understand that. But still I wonder: why did God give Taylor Swift such an enormous abundance of earthly gifts? The child's complaint always returns: It's not fair! And it isn't. And if it's a blessing to be poor and to mourn, is it a curse to be Taylor Swift? People who are afflicted in some way often ask "Why me?" Sometimes people who have everything do, too. For her sake, I hope Taylor Swift does; I hope she doesn't think she somehow deserved her gifts.
For the rest of us, who are among neither the most afflicted nor the most gifted, she and others who occupy similar heights of combined talent and achievement offer two lessons: first, against envy of those who have more, and second, against pride toward those who have less. Our native gifts, great or small, are what they are, as are the circumstances into which we were born, and none of us can take either credit or blame for them.
I wrote a draft of this post more than a week ago, then was too busy to finish it up. I didn't know that Sunday's gospel would be the parable of the talents. It isn't what you're given that counts, but what you do with it, which is both comforting and disturbing, though more the latter than the former to me.
Light On Dark Water 
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