Stephen Foster, Job, the Canaanite woman—what do they have in common, and what can we learn from them? Pastor and storyteller Alex Joyner takes us deep into the lives of these three people, exploring anger, audacity, hope, and joy. Through it all, he poses the question: Why do we suffer? Hard Times Come Again No More is a six-week study that affirms the goodness of God, the reality of evil, and the wonder and tragedy of living in hard times.Alex Joyner is the author of Restless Hearts: Where Do I Go Now, God? and writes for the popular FaithLink adult studies and the online magazine Catapult. A published poet and photographer, he has served as campus minister at the University of Virginia and is now pastor of Franktown United Methodist Church on Virginia’s Eastern Shore.

Hard Times Come Again No More

Suffering and HopeBy Alex Joyner

Abingdon Press

Copyright © 2010 The United Methodist Publishing House
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4267-0370-6

Chapter One

Spirit (or Learning from Hard Times)

And my lament Is cries countless, cries like dead letters sent To dearest him that lives alas! away. —Gerard Manley Hopkins

In the dark years of the American Civil War, the most popular composer of the day was living in poverty and relative obscurity in New York City. By 1862 he was alone in spare quarters, separated from his wife, who had left with their daughter to try and make it on her own as a telegraph operator in New Jersey. Years removed from his latest hit song, he began to drink heavily and to fall into despair.

Even though his songs continued to sell well and were part of the general culture, Stephen Foster did not see much revenue from them. Poor deals with publishers meant that he received royalties far below what he should have gotten, and to make ends meet he sold off future rights to his songs. Had he been living in the contemporary era, he would have made millions from his music. As it was, he was reduced to begging help from his brother, Morrison, to pay for laundry bills.

The words of songs such as "O Susannah," "Camptown Races," "My Old Kentucky Home," "Nelly Bly," and the wistful "Old Folks at Home" tripped easily from the lips of those he passed in the streets. The words spoke to a generation that hoped that somewhere in this constantly moving American society, with all its change and upheaval, was a place to call home. One song in particular seemed to take on special meaning as the war dragged on and soldiers left to fight, some never returning home. Written almost a decade before the war, Foster's "Hard Times Come Again No More" found new life among soldier and civilian alike.

The song features a "pale, drooping maiden" weighed down by the evils that had come her way and that lingered "around my cabin door." With gentle defiance, the singer commands, "Hard Times, come again no more." By the fourth verse the command becomes a universal cry for every suffering person, wafting over the waves, heard upon the shore, and uttered at the side of the grave. The Civil War left many graves beside which mourners could sing about hard times.

While his songs and his name were well-known, Foster himself was not. He spent his days playing music in dingy bars. He was still writing songs, mostly in collaboration with George Cooper, another struggling musician. Cooper handled most of the lyrics, but both words and music fell far below the quality of Foster's early work. Some were simply drinking songs delighting in the momentary amnesia that drunkenness can bring:

Darkling sorrows take their flight In the wine's rich ruby light, And the hours are winged with pleasures While the bowl goes round.

There was even an ode to moustaches. Foster's mental state began to deteriorate to the point that he had trouble remembering the words to all his songs save one: "Hard Times."

So it might seem unusual that in the midst of this period of wandering through a struggle with alcohol, Foster turned up one night at a temperance reception in the Bowery. John Mahon, an Irish journalist living in the city, befriended Foster and invited him to come to the gathering. During the night the group began to sing, and Mahon asked Foster to take a turn. Mahon tells the story as this broken man sang out the words to the one song he clung to:

[H]e threw such pathos into his voice, especially when he came to the word: "There's a poor little maiden who weeps her life away," that there wasn't a dry eye in the room. Every voice was hushed. All crowded round him; and as he came to the chorus: "'Tis the song, 'tis the sigh of the weary / Hard times! hard times come again no more; / Many days you have lingered around my cabin-door — / Oh, hard times come again no more" there arose such a burst of melody from the untutored (musically, I mean) male and female voices present as I never heard before or since.

It was only after the singer sat down that the host finally introduced him as Stephen C. Foster, "the author and composer not only of that, but of some of the finest songs ever written." The gathering erupted in cheers with handkerchiefs waving in what Mahon referred to as a "perfect ovation." It was one of the few moments of public recognition for Foster and for the power of that song.

It may seem strange to begin a book about suffering and hope with such a bittersweet tale. Perhaps it's even stranger because Stephen Foster was no paragon of virtue or pious model of noble suffering. He was just one more fellow wanderer who found his way into hard times through the usual combination of personal failings, social ills, sins of omission and commission, and what we sometimes call bad luck. For Foster there would be no happy ending. Before the war ended or his circumstances changed, he died following a fall in his small room.

What Foster left, however, was a song—testimony to an enduring spirit within humanity that refuses to let hard times have the last word over our lives. In its stark images and haunting melody, "Hard Times Come Again No More" lets us feel the reality of suffering in this world, the poignancy of loss, and the longing for a new day, and then it emits a cry that pushes back against the darkness. It is no anthem of faith. It is a window on the wounded soul. And because we all know that wound to some degree, the song has the capacity to move us, like that Bowery audience, to tears and to sing its chorus at full throat. From those gathered in a Civil War–era reception to modern recordings by the likes of Bob Dylan and Emmylou Harris, "Hard Times" endures as a heart cry.

The Value of Hard Times

Hard times used to be good for us. At least, that's how our popular culture often presented them. In the nineteenth century, Stephen Foster invited the comfortably placed audience that purchased his music to "pause in life's pleasures and count its many tears" because it was an edifying exercise. There was a certain nobility in struggle. Literature gives us many examples. Would we have seen Oliver Twist's character without the bleakness of the orphanage? Would Atticus Finch of To Kill a Mockingbird have stood so tall in the courtroom if he hadn't been a Depression-era widower with two small children? How could we know Celie from The Color Purple except through her empowering journey through racism and sexism?

When twenty-first-century Bruce Wayne (aka Batman) experiences hard times, it doesn't look the same. Wayne, one of the spate of superheroes flooding our movie screens these days, doesn't have to struggle with economic deprivation. He broods over what to do with his powers from the comfort of a mansion while advised by his wise butler. It is not what he lacks that defines him but what he is going to do with his abundance.

Maybe it's time to listen to "Hard Times" again. When the stock market tanked in the fall of 2008, it seemed to usher in a new post-abundance era. Lingering wars in Iraq and Afghanistan showed us the limits of military might to bring anything resembling peace. The ongoing horrors of genocidal conflicts in central Africa reveal the persistence of sexual violence and other acts of inhumanity. When we look into our own hearts, we know the dark...