Last Dance with Mary Jane...

I came across this old song by Tom Petty, "Last Dance With Mary Jane" and I remember watching the video in high school and thinking, "that is a weird video" and watching it again, I still think it's a weird video but I think it's also a metaphor for something deeper.

Obviously the term "Mary Jane" is another name for marijuana and although the Tom Petty's band denies the correlation, the video and the lyrics of the song remind me of the pattern of addiction, whatever addiction we may have.

It struck me in the lyrics that Tom sings about a girl who comes to town and blows everyone away, and then later on he talks about how tired he is with the town he is on, how summer is coming around and the desire to take a "last dance with Mary Jane, one more time to kill the pain"

"Mary Jane" is very beautiful, and you can see how Tom relishes in her beauty- even though she is dead. That's how addiction can look to the addict- although the addiction is deadly and leads to death, it can look so beautiful as a way to numb the pain of reality.

How many addicts, leaving the addiction for dead (another symbol in the video), return to it, "just one more time" and they promise to leave the addiction when finished-- symbolized by Tom casting Mary Jane in the sea, only to have her open her eyes at the end, showing she is indeed, not dead.

That's so the pattern of addiction-- that if we don't continually journey in healing and honesty and fellowship, we will see our addictions open their eyes when we thought them long dead. How interesting.

I don't recommend this video for kids, and you may not like it yourself, that's cool too, I just found the symbols to be very true and want to encourage all those out there with addictions to "keep on keeping on", one day at a time...freedom is possible.



(you may have to watch an advertisement first before the video)

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Fr. Santan Pinto, SOLT 1948-2011