I grew up on grunge. The raw emotion, rough vocals, evasive lyrics, and diversity of sounds fascinated me. I suppose in my emo adolescence, it soundtracked the drama of my life.

I don’t listen to grunge much anymore, but I was recently reintroduced to Nirvana’s “Something in the Way” through Stephen Wilson Jr’s cover of it. I hadn’t heard the song in decades. It’s sad and spooky. Oddly enough, it became a kind of anthem for my Lenten journey. I spent a lot of time praying with the song and mulling over the lyrics throughout Lent. Admittedly, they are weird lyrics: 

Underneath the bridge, tarp has sprung a leak

And the animals I’ve trapped have all become my pets

And I’m living off of grass, and the drippings from my ceiling

It’s okay to eat fish ’cause they don’t have any feelings

Something in the way, hmm-mmm

Something in the way, yeah, hmm-mmm

Something in the way, hmm-mmm

Something in the way, yeah, hmm-mmm

Something in the way, hmm-mmm

Something in the way, yeah, hmm-mmm

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking you need to get on YouTube and take a listen. Go for it. Check out the MTV Unplugged version. But, fair warning, the song’s going to get stuck in your head. 

Now, let’s take a closer look at the meaning.  

On the surface, the song is clearly about a poor man living in a tarp under a bridge. His only friends are animals he’s trapped. He eats grass. Wet and cold and hungry, he copes by justifying eating fish because they can’t feel. This is an obvious lie he tells himself as he does anything for a bite. Then the haunting line: something in the way. All the imagery in the song is down, and when he manages to look up, he sees something in the way. He can see the possibility of a new life, but something blocks the path — something inside. So he’s stuck. 

Rumor had it that Kurt Cobain wrote the song as a reflection on his own experience of homelessness. The Internet debates the truth of this claim. Regardless, the deeper themes have been etched deep into my mind over the last six weeks. The sense of angst. Abandonment. Living on the fringe as an outcast. The way in which things seem to go wrong. Fail. Self-inflicted wounds. What we scrounge to try to fill the God-sized hole in our hearts. The ways we justify things and lie to ourselves. The sense of being stuck. Seeing a new way of life but finding ourselves practically paralyzed, like St. Paul wondering why he does the things he doesn’t want to do, and doesn’t do the things he ought to do (see Rom 7:13–25). There’s a better life, but something’s in the way — sins, vices, wounds, lies. 

Aren’t these the problems of humanity in our fallen state? It’s your story. It’s my story. All the discord, disharmony, discontent, disunity, disorder. All of it leaves us stuck and alone and fearful. Homeless. Made for a heavenly home that we can begin to live in right here, yet we settle for life underneath the bridge. Something’s in the way. Sin is in the way. Death is in the way. 

But today, Easter Sunday, we hear that great news: that Jesus Christ has broken the prison bars of death. He breaks the bondage caused by sin. He smashes the something that was in the way and opens up the way. It’s a narrow way one enters through the Cross before the path widens our minds and hearts to embrace divine love.  In the face of what always seems hopeless, Jesus’ Resurrection gives us hope and shows us that a new way of living life is not only possible, it is here. The Easter liturgy tells us that now, if anything’s in the way, it’s Jesus Christ, the truth, life, and way to the Father (cf. Jn 14:6).