This ‘Wayward Son’ reached me through song

I’m a fan of Kerry Livgren, an original member of the groundbreaking rock band, Kansas.

I’ve never met him, and I don’t suppose I ever will. But I recognize a kindred spirit when I see one. An indefatigable spiritual searcher, he wrote the classic Kansas hit, “Carry on Wayward Son.”

And wayward we both have been.

I’ve admired Livgren’s work for decades. He assisted me in my personal search for truth. We were near-thirtysomethings back then. It was a search that, frankly, changed my life.

Livgren and I have walked similar paths. Livgren brilliantly captured my spiritual frustration and aggravation. He did so with his spellbinding work, “Dust in the Wind.”

Remember “Dust in the Wind”? Layered. Intricate. Haunting. It’s a mesmerizing acoustic number that can prompt feelings of utter hopelessness and cynicism.

He described with artful precision what I was incapable of describing myself. I didn’t have the vocabulary to express the longings of my tortured spirit. Instead, I produced only groaning.

But Livgren nailed me with his lyrics:

“I close my eyes, only for a moment and the moment’s gone / All my dreams, pass before my eyes, a curiosity / Dust in the wind / All we are is dust in the wind.”

Are you kidding me? I was in awe as I listened to this stunner. He was thinking my thoughts … and expressing them far better than I could.

I first heard this song in 1977. Its spiritual feint staggered me. This was a secular rock band, singing deeply significant lyrics.

His lyrics marched forward:

“Same old song, just a drop of water in an endless sea / All we do, crumbles to the ground though we refuse to see / Dust in the wind …”

Livgren concluded with:

“Now, don’t hang on, nothing lasts forever but the earth and sky / It slips away, and all your money won’t another minute buy / Dust in the wind …”

I wept at his honesty and our shared despair. We both yearned for a solution.

Who is this Livgren guy, I pondered? And why is this rock band, Kansas, putting my innards in such a knot?

It was part of an ingenious stratagem employed by a being far greater than myself, leading to something truly magnificent. By coincidence — or not — Livgren and I both became professing Christians two years later, in 1979. “Dust in the Wind” — not usually a prime vehicle for Christian evangelization — became my personal anthem. It portrayed for me a restless, confused and dying generation.

Livgren wrote it as a non-Christian, inspired by an Old Testament book, Ecclesiastes. Its author, a Hebrew king, asked the same questions a thousand years prior to the birth of Christ that Livgren and I were asking.

Why all this emptiness?

I read volume after volume of thoughtful (and not so thoughtful!) prose praising, questioning and attacking Christianity. I read about Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was murdered by the Nazi machine under the most heinous conditions in the final days of World War II. Bonhoeffer didn’t disavow Christ at the end of his life. He bravely submitted to the gallows as the earth and sky crumbled about him.

His words became a riposte for “Dust in the Wind.”

Not an intentional reproach — after all, his words were written well before Livgren’s — Bonhoeffer offered a meditation from beyond.

“I believe that nothing that happens to me is meaningless,” he wrote. “As I see it, I’m here for some purpose, and I only hope I may fulfill it. In the light of the great purpose, all our privations and disappointments are trivial.”

God exists, and pain is for a season.

Bonhoeffer blasted Livgren’s hanging slider into the upper deck. It was enough to convince Livgren and me.

The German cleric needn’t have worried. He fulfilled his purpose. By musically begging the question, so did Livgren.

At best, I’m a work in progress. But God’s assured me I’m more than just dust on a breeze.

JIM CARNETT lives in Costa Mesa. His column runs Wednesdays.