At Religion Dispatches Jim Burklo offers his meditation on the theology of the Grateful Dead's classic song "Ripple":
“Ripple,” penned by the band’s chief lyricist and official fifth member, Robert Hunter, is the Grateful Dead’s Psalm 23—its spiritual manifesto, its Doctrine and Covenants, its Lotus Sutra, its Bhagavad Gita.
“Ripple” is the band’s confession that its music transcends itself, that the pilgrimage of a Deadhead leads to a concert destination beyond his or her ken, that Deadheadliness is next to a mysterious kind of Godliness.
“Ripple” is the catechism of indeterminacy.
As the Grateful Dead offer up their last show, it's worth appreciating their uniquely American spirituality, even as that spirituality has been embraced by people around the world, as the video above shows.
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