theology kungfu

new blog location - sensei jfk @ wordpress

2009-06-19T09:17:00.000-07:00

some folks have asked if Theology Kung Fu is shut down - not so! I migrated the blog over to wordpress.com a while ago - http://senseijfk.wordpress.com/ - and invite you over there to continue the conversation.

See you at http://senseijfk.wordpress.com/

The Comedy of U2's 'No Line on the Horizon': a theological reading of U2's new CD

2009-03-03T18:47:00.000-08:00

Well... the wait is over and now the critics have been released from their respective silences and casting their lasers of this latest outing from Bono and Co. Just to throw my hat into the ring, I will say that after a few listens, the new CD - No Line on the Horizon (NLOTH)- is a very "good" album with some great songs both sonically and lyrically. Yes, I am making the distinction between "good" to "great" in the manner of Jim Collins' best seller which argues that "good" is the enemy of greatness in our time - whether be in relation to social systems or measuring rock albums. I tend to agree with his summation on this point in respect to NLOTH - in short, NLOTH is a darn good album in respect to current releases and within the U2 canon. That said, taken with the entirety of the U2 canon to this point - I will say that NLOTH hits the mark spot on as U2 continues to flesh out its overture. I have ceased to look at bands with the history of U2 (think: REM, Bruce Springsteen, etc) as isolated moments anymore, but rather as plot points on a long graph. To wit: the three decades that currently frame U2's career plots like a flatteded version of Gustav Freytag's Die Technik des Dramas where dramatic movement can be broken into five movements: exposition; rising action; climax, or turning point; falling action; and resolves in a 'denouement' or a catastrophe depending on whether we are talking about a comedy or tragedy. For Freytag, how the protagonist (those we are called to identify in the song) ends up tells us whether we have been watching a comedy or tragedy - a comedy is a drama in which the protagonist, or main character, is better off at the end of the story than he or she was at the beginning; a tragedy is the opposite. Ultimately, as with life, we don't know whether we are in a comedy or tragedy until the story is completed and the curtin falls (you can think of the checklist Will Ferrell's character Harold Crick was keeping in the Marc Forster film Stranger than Fiction to get a sense of this).

Using Freytag's typology, I see U2’s newest album, No Line on the Horizon, as part movement of drama where Boy and October represent exposition; Unforgettable Fire and War are the rising action that moves into the climax of Joshua Tree, with the Rattle and Hum film as the visual extension and in some respects falling action of Joshua Tree. And then the falling action of U2, which is not a fall in the sense of failure but in the sense of an unmistakable movement that pushes us into resolution, can be seen in their embrace of experimental new forms in Achtung Baby, Zooropa, and Pop.But what kind of resolution is suggested by All The You Can't Leave Behind, How To Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, and now No Line on the Horizon? Is this denouement or catastrophe? Comedy or tragedy?

Freytag explains that comedies are characterized by protagonists who are better off at the end of the story (or song) than they were at the beginning, whereas tragedies are characterized by protagonists who are worse off at the end of the story. So using Freytag’s rubric for reading the conclusion, what is the end game for the protagonists that make up the drama of U2’s canon—are we better off at the end or are we worst off?

Now, we haven’t reached the end of U2, especially given their announcement that another album is in the works for 2009, but I argue that No Line’s thematic position on faith, beauty, and love suggests that we are headed toward a comedy.

The first way in which the album (and yes, in the era of digital singles, U2 is one of the few bands still working on a large canvas, telling an albumesque story) appears to reflect a movement toward comedy is its message that liberty is found in faith in God rather than in a certainty about God. From Bono’s call to “get over certainty” in “Stand Up Comedy” to the acknowledgment in “Moment of Surrender” that we are “too smart to be / In the realm of certainty,” the role that faith should play is clearly contrasted to the modernist (and ultimately failing) search after certainty. In this reminder, which frames much of the album, the fact that we find our fulfillment as human beings in a relationship of faith rather than intractable certainty means that we find our hope not in our limited selves, but in the God who created us.The logical place to begin arguing this point in No Line is track six, “Stand Up Comedy,” which with track seven, “FEZ—Being Born,” could be said to represent the climax of the dramatic movement for the album itself. In “Stand Up Comedy,” we are thrust out of “Get on Your Boots” with its pounding refrain, where Bono is seeking mystical union with sound, purgation from this life and union with the ineffable (“Let me in the sound, let me in the sound, let me in the sound”), into a Beatlesque riff drawn from “Helter Skelter” that is a call to get “out from under your beds / C’mon ye people / Stand up for your love.” U2 first covered “Helter Skelter” as the lead in to the film Rattle and Hum, with Bono throwing his arms Christologically wide to the audience. And with the sonic return to the “Helter Skelter” riff in “Stand Up Comedy,” the Edge takes the core of “Helter Skelter” from its cynical minor chords, its tragedy about life’s dead end, to a major resolve as it is reimagined in “Stand Up Comedy.” In the introduction to “Helter Skelter” in Rattle and Hum, U2 declared that “Charles Manson stole this song; we are stealing it back,” and here in “Stand Up Comedy,” they have transformed this riff and the song that surrounds it from tragedy to comedy.

Another pointer that lyrically acknowledges that we are called to a “comedy of life” is that for U2, life is not meant to be lived purely on an imminent sphere. In “Stand Up Comedy,” Bono notes that while winning the “DNA lottery may have left [us] smart,” it doesn’t necessarily affirm our ultimate purpose. This lyrical riff on the “DNA lottery” is a fun spin on the current New Atheism and so-called intelligent-design debates. Bono undercuts all this rhetoric with an acknowledgment that even though we have “won” the planet’s “DNA lottery,” whether by chance or by design, that doesn’t get us to the heart of the matter; Bono sings that we “can stand up for hope, faith and love” as the grand Christian virtues, but perhaps there is more to life than this. As Bono continues the verse, he decries choosing knowledge and will power over faith when he sings, “While I’m getting over certainty / Stop helping God across the road like a little old lady.” This double challenge—(1) dropping the search for certainty in favor of faith amid the intelligent design debates and (2) allowing God to, well, be God—becomes the liberating truth for the protagonist of the song. True, we can objectively affirm “hope, faith and love,” but until we actually “stand up” and do something about it—faith in action—we fall back to a “helter skelter” life.

No Line’s focus on beauty and truth represents another sign that U2 is calling us to comedy. In “Get on Your Boots,” U2 indicates that humanity needs to realize our beauty (“You don’t know how beautiful / You don’t know how beautiful you are / You don’t know, and you don’t get it, do you? / You don’t know how beautiful you are”), and in “Stand Up Comedy,” we hear that beauty is the true “dictator of the heart.” Here Bono is echoing a John Keats sentiment from his 1820 “Ode to a Grecian Urn,” which proclaims “‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty,’—that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” In true beauty, we are led to the truth of things, and in many respects, we are led to the divine. As a people made “beautiful” (“You don’t know how beautiful you are”), we are also called back to true/truth nature as made in the Imago Dei, the “dictator of the heart.” This is a liminal beauty, something that is not merely of the earth nor fixed in a way that will decay with time. Bono draws this point home by linking this beauty not to an earthen vessel (the grecian urn of Keat’s lament), but to an artistic medium better suited for the comedy that is the human condition: music. In short, Bono calls the listener throughout No Line to see, as in the lyrics from the penultimate track, “Breathe,” that:

We are people borne of sound

The songs are in our eyes

Gonna wear them like a crown

Walk out, into the sunburst street

Sing your heart out, sing my heart out

I’ve found grace inside a sound

I found grace, it’s all that I found

And I can breathe

Breathe now

By framing the human condition musically (“We are people borne of sound”) rather than imminently (winners of “the DNA lottery”), and by embodying hope, faith, and love rather than purveying some objective doctrine that merely affirms those traits, U2 is calling humanity to a comedic revolution par excellence. As music, we embrace a kenotic release from the fixation of self and are freed from isolation and estrangement. As song, we see ourselves as imminent and transcendent, neither bound to this world nor the world that is yet to come. The protagonist in “Get on Your Boots” kicks at the door of the music (“Let me in the sound”), and this refrain is repeated as a sample in the musical prelude for “FEZ—Being Born,” but as the album begins to close, “Breathe” reminds us that this “sound,” this liminal mystical union with that which never fades and is sustained on the voices of generations, is what we are to the very core. We are beautiful, we are sound, and ultimately, we are loved.

This third truth that underscores the comedy of No Line—that love is the key, both as a musical key and as the turnkey to unlock deep meaning in our lives—is nothing new, nor is it surprising in the context of the U2 canon. And the fact that at one moment Bono sings of the eroticism of lovers and at another moment yearns for the divine agape love that is both ubiquitous and eternal is not to diminish its potency and challenge. For a generation of fans brought up on irony and cynicism, such a claim and profession smacks of a rock star who just doesn’t understand the pain and suffering of the world. That criticism would strike the bull’s-eye if it weren’t aimed at the man who has given a voice and face (with sunglasses, mind you) to poverty in a way that has not been paralleled in recent history. In short, if Bono thinks that love can change the world, who are we to argue? Rather, like his rock-star doppelgänger for social change, John Lennon, Bono is an admirable agent for giving “peace a chance” and remembering that “love is all you need.” To this end, “FEZ—Being Born” and “Breathe” articulate that we must die and be reborn in order to be transformed, in order to love:

Every day I die again, and again I’m reborn

Every day I have to find the courage

To walk out into the street

With arms out

Got a love you can’t defeat

Neither down nor out

There’s nothing you have that I need

I can breathe

Breathe now

This freedom to love requires daily death and rebirth, and it requires a willingness to walk into the world with arms “out” and announce “a love you can’t defeat.” If we are released from the tragedy of the self and embrace the knowledge kenotically with God, we are a song worth singing and a chorus that others can join, and in this key of love, life moves from tragedy to comedy.

As we close the first decade of the twenty-first century, we live in a time of economic uncertainty, interminable war, unstable governments, and a faith that has been shattered by a trust in science and institutions above flesh-and-blood relationships. No Line continues the drama that U2 has been singing about for the last three decades; the album is an elucidation of the prophetic call to life as a comedy that bends back to the days of Boy and War, broke forth into the deserts and stadiums of Joshua Tree, took music into the very heart of technology and consumerism through Achtung Baby, Zooropa, and Pop, and is now pointing us to a life that is found in faith in God rather than certainty about God, telling us that we are beautiful in a way that speaks of a Truth that transcends our current situation, and telling us that we are formed for a “love you can’t defeat.”This life is truly a divine comedy, my friends, and as the lyrics of “Get on your boots” declare:

Here’s where we gotta be

Love and community

Laughter is eternity

If joy is real

The Legacy of Bruce Larson - some reflections

2009-01-14T10:21:00.000-08:00

In the fall of 1987 I started work in the youth department of University Presbyterian Church in Seattle. It was an interesting time in America with the advent of Ronald Reagan's "Morning in America" calling forth a new level of conservatism not only in politics, but in religious life. This was the era of the birth of the 'megachurch' - the neo-cathedral movement where Willow Creek and Saddleback moved from church plants in movie theaters to massive, swirling corporations with parking lots bigger than Idaho. University Presbyterian Church (UPC) experienced a similar jump in the 1980's, but remained a "church" in the fullest sense of the word in large part to its pastor - Rev. Bruce Larson. Under Bruce’s leadership UPC’s membership nearly tripled to 4,400, and the church moved into its new building that includes a large multipurpose wing that was dedicated "Larson Hall" in his memory. But it is not the legacy of growth that Bruce left behind in his decade as senior pastor of University Presbyterian Church from 1980-1990. For those of us who worshipped and work alongside Bruce in those halcyon days of power ties, Preppy Handbooks, and Amy Grant moving to mainstream radio play, Bruce provided a legacy of flesh and blood faith amidst the artifice of church growth where it was depth, not size, that was the measure of ministry. After he 'retired' from UPC in 1990 (he made a commitment that someone should not be the pastor of a church longer than a decade and he stuck to it) and then served for five years as the co-pastor of the Crystal Cathedral in California - a decision some saw initially as a 'sell out' for the mega-church of mega-churches. Rather than celebrate the grandeur of the Garden Grove mega-structure, Bruce came to the Crystal Cathedral to try and draw the church back to being about people - a bold move and certainly counter to the trend of the time. This was the embodiment of Bruce's focus on 'relational theology' - what he termed in his book No Longer Strangers as “a rediscovery of the worth and importance of the individual as over against content, methods, techniques, theories of personality, or ‘the group.’” This was not a focus on individualism and consumerism that was viral in the 1980's, but the gift of grace each and every person offers to the world by virtue of being created in the image of God. He returned to the Pacific Northwest in 1995 where he loved the land where the mountains meet the sea (he was an avid sailor) and continued to write and reflect on not only what it means to be a faithful Christian, but what it means to be a deep and compassionate human being. Of his 23 books and pastoral commentaries, it is worth noting that Bruce coined the term "The Emerging Church" as the title of one of his books long before the current trend made it into a brand rather than a theology. Bruce passed away on December 15, 2008 at the age of 83 having battled Parkinson’s disease in his latter years.

It would be a crime to delimit his vast legacy to one phrase, but for many folks who had the gift of Bruce's legacy and ministry as part of their Christian journey, the notion that "Every member a minister" continues to shape what it means to be in ministry. That it is not the unilateral power of investiture from minister to laity that is the task of the clergy - as if what it means to be ordained is to be a divine Pez dispenser . Rather, the church is a collective of gifted, talents, equipped ministers who should be encouraged and released to ministry for and with the world around us. The Pastor as 'reminder' of personhood and holiness already present in each and every person forged in the Imago Dei, is the task of ministry over and against programming, marketing, building buildings and counting the numbers of downloads of our sermon.

I still have a tattered copy of No Longer Strangers on my desk at the University, sitting alongside other books that have shaped me over the years. Even as I look at it now with its very dated 1971 'mod' book jacket, I am challenged to think about what it means to the church these days as clergy chase after the latest and greatest programs and technologies to 'win' people to their respective pews. Just this year, Bruce's predecessor Earl Palmer stepped down after over a decade of ministry at UPC. For many, UPC is framed around Earl Palmer's dynamic teaching from the pulpit with clear and engaging homiletics weaving Greek word study with CS Lewis' Narnia. To be sure, Earl Palmer's ministry in the 1990's engaged people's minds in powerful ways. But as someone who has watched with great church over two decades both from within and from outside its walls - one could safely say that while Earl reminded UPC of how much smarter and intellectually robust the Gospel is than some people think, Bruce reminded those us who were sitting in that larger sanctuary and walking the hallways of UPC in the crazy days of the 1980's just how loved we were by an amazing God who cared for us as "unique unrepeatable miracles."

Quite a legacy that I hope is celebrated in the ministries of those who remember that we are truly "no longer strangers."

Top 8 list for 2008 - new to me, maybe not to you

2009-01-11T15:27:00.000-08:00

Yeah... I decided to cull together a top 8 list (eight years into the 21st century gives you 8 tracks, dear reader) of this year of Dongles (digital downloads) that make my iTouch wiggle with delight. These are 8 dongles that I downloaded (or uploaded if I actually bought the CD rather than iTunes purchase) plus an extra mention at the end. Here they are in no particular order:

- Fleet Foxes, Fleet Foxes (Sub Pop) I will admit that I am late to the party with these guys, but what a great mellow return of the Byrds/CSNY/Simon and Garfunkel harmonies in a post-grunge era. This is a CD/dongle to chill to in the long wet winters of the Pacific Northwest, which probably explains why KEXP (90.3 FM in Seattle or http://www.kexp.org/ for the planet) choose it to top their 2008 list.

- Company of Thieves, Ordinary Riches I believe this CD was released first in 2007 but resurfaced in 2008. I first heard their single "Oscar Wilde" and loved it on first listen with its chorus "I am my own devil/ and I make this world a Hell" - a chorus refrain that I think both Augustine and John Calvin would applaud. One reviewer compared them to a mash up of Neil Young and Fiona Apple... not a bad mix, eh?

- She and Him, Vol. 1 If there is a selection on this list that I expect to garner abuse about, it is probably this one. Granted, the idea of Zooey Deschanel (of Will Farrell's "Elf" and SciFi channel's "Tin Man" fame) and M. Ward joining together for a CD smites of the sad, sad run of actresses trying to become singers. Heck... it works this time. Paste Magazine was willing to go with this retro vibe project as their top CD of 2008 and it is a winner.

- Dustin Kensrue, Please Come Home (Equal Vision)- this is another one that came out in 2007 but only got to my iTouch in 2008. I never thought Kensrue's band Thrice was anything special, but his two solo projects - Please Come Home and his Christmas Cd released this year - have taken a page directly out of Ryan Adams' Heartbreaker CD and run with it (I wouldn't be surprised if Kensrue had Heartbreaker playing in the sound room during the mixing...). Nice stripped down alt.country vibe complete with Cormac McCarthy raw lyrics yet spiced with hope in the midst of blood and death.

- Flobots, Fight with Tools (Universal) - what do you do when you are a Denver-based hip-hop act that incorporates radical elements into your music - string sections, banjos, and optimism? You come out with a kickin' CD in 2008 that really punches a hole in both your earbuds and your mind. Hard-driving from the opening track, the Flobots challenge the status quo of hip hop that sees social change as only possible through violence and fueled by anger. Here is a message (prophetic at that) of world revolution bought through critical reflection, challenging the status quo, giving up consumerism, and learning to listen to our brothers and sisters again. This is a challenging, powerful band worth paying attention to.

- The Hold Steady, Stay Positive (Vagrant) - I became a big, BIG fan of the Hold Steady a couple of years back with the release of Boys and Girls in America. One reviewer notes that their classic bar-room aesthetic is the mash up of Springsteen's lyrics with Thin Lizzy's driving big open chords. Craig Finn, the lead singer, is not afraid to peel back the facade of suburban America ("Constructive Summer"; "One for the Cutters") and show the dark side writ large. And yet, amidst all the punch and roll of the muscular guitar riffs there is a heart and hope for redemption that bleeds through. And as they sing on the opening track - 'their songs are sing-along songs'. True that!

- Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Dig, Lazarus Dig!!! (Anti -) - The fact that Nick Cave and Tom Waits now share a record label (Anti- records) is to know the address of the coming apocalypse. If the bomb drops, you want to be at Anti - since these guys are the ones chosen by God to sing the songs as the world burns to the ground. Nick Cave has both a disfigured beauty and simple-minded lament that few singer/songwriters have today. Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! is not his best album, but by industry standards he could drop a water glass into a garbage compactor and still make my top 10. Like Boatman's Call and Murder Ballads, this CD centers around themes of sinning beyond the reach of redemption and living in the reality of death and destruction with a heart that hopes for love. It is the pain of longing yet the reality of living that strains the protagonist Southern preacher in the title track as well as "We Call Upon the Author" and "Today's Lesson." The man is dark like an espresso shot that refuses cream... biting and burning in all the right ways...

- The Pogues, The Very Best of the Pogues - Fair enough... putting a "best of" collection on a top 8 list is pretty lame, especially since the CD was first released in 2001, so sue me! Basically, the "very best" collection was an import for US buyers till this year when they re-released it in early 2008 as a dongle on iTunes and amazon.com. Lead singer Shane MacGowan sings like he has been in too many bar fights (which may be true) but is still one of the best examples of Celt rock. Fans of HBO's series "The Wire" will of course recognize "The Body of an American" which played at the wake of every fallen police officer. The collection is strong and it is great to have these gems of an oft-forgotten band ready for download stateside.

Lastly, one honorable mention to round off 2008...

High School Musical 3: Graduation Year (Disney) - try as hard as you might to get all emo and high brow, but the HSM trinity could very well be the best thing to happen to Disney since Goofy and the Tea Cups ride. If we all just 'got our head in the game' and realized that 'we are all in this together', perhaps... yes, perhaps... we could admit that we too are 'breakin' free'...

-

the end of emergent as a movement and the beginning of a brand

2008-11-22T10:21:00.000-08:00

I got the news that many of you have been following for a few weeks - chances at Emergent Village beginning with the stepping down of Tony Jones as National Coordinator. For those who get the Emergent podcasts, the latest posting was a retrospective conference call between Tony, Brian McLaren and a few other 'founders' of the movement speaking of the early days ten years ago (has Emergent really been around that long?) and what has brought them to this point. Needless to say, one of the parts of the dialogue I found most enlightening is just how difficult it is for these now-leaders and former-outsiders to even dialogue given the temptation to admit that they have indeed become the very things they critiqued and challenged - the big "B"... a "brand."

As the Emergent 'brand' has evolved through numerous publishing contracts with Youth Specialities, Zondervan, Baker and Abingdon (Tony and Brian muse on the podcast about these publishing relationships and the impact it has had in making the movement what it is) there was no mention (and I assume deep resistance to this assertion) that rather than the fear of becoming an institution (something the speakers go to great lengths to state was never their intention and ultimately the reason for the changes in Emergent Village) the one thing no one addressed was what has really happened - emergent is a 'brand' par excellence. In a time when Christian publishing and its various channel marketing venues such as National Youth Workers Convention needed a shot in the arm, "emergent" provided the right mix - edgey yet dependent on the past (think: long tail marketing) yet retrofited for the future - cool book covers, old classics (read: public domain properties that are free to publish like Creeds) with new intros.

So - what comes next? Time will tell i suppose and I am sure that the various publishing houses are scrambling to find out.

Don't worry though... the viral marketing will find you before you find it...

the culminative effect - sometimes 'tipping points' are not enough

2008-11-02T08:55:00.000-08:00

In 2000, the election of George W Bush arrived in tandem with another momentous introduction to the 21st century American lexicon: the phrase "the tipping point." Malcolm Gladwell's little book - The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference - was published in 2000 and the title phrase took off as a cultural meme.

In Gladwell’s wee book, he notes that change in social systems (which he calls ‘social epidemics’) occurs vis-à-vis the nexus of three agents of change – what he terms “the law of the few”; “the stickiness factor”; and “the power of context”:

1. The Law of the Few: "The success of any kind of social epidemic is heavily dependent on the involvement of people with a particular and rare set of social skills." Gladwell describes these people in the following ways: (1) Connectors are the people who "link us up with the world ... people with a special gift for bringing the world together." Gladwell cites the midnight ride of Paul Revere and the "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" trivia game as examples of 'connectors'. (2) Mavens are "information specialists", or "people we rely upon to connect us with new information." They accumulate knowledge, especially about the marketplace, and know how to share it with others. (3) Persuaders, who are essentially salespeople or charismatic people with powerful negotiation skills that influence others.

2. The Stickiness Factor: the specific content of a message that makes it memorable and have impact. Examples include the Nike "Just Do It" campaign, Philip Yancey's use of "What's So Amazing..." as the suffix to his numerous books, and Rick Warren's phrase "Purpose Driven Life."

3. The Power of Context: Human behavior is sensitive to and strongly influenced by its environment. As Gladwell says, "Epidemics are sensitive to the conditions and circumstances of the times and places in which they occur." He looks at the evangelist John Wesley as an example of being in the right place at the right time.

While I certainly take Gladwell's thesis and see it is appeal, I think it ultimately strips away the possibility that other forces are also at work in the world, that not everything comes about simply because we have willed it into being or that following his three step model will get us from point A to point B. Life is more often than not framed by what I call "the cumulative effect." The cumulative effect is the nexus point of human agency both individual and communal (past, present and future) coupled with divine providence whereby life happens not necessarily because of our effort, but because God and the communion of saints (Hebrews 11 and 12) have some skin in the game as well. This is a hard pill to swallow at times and makes the humanist project a bit more difficult to swallow if taken as an enlightenment project - the individual vs. the world mentality. However, life is rarely the culmination of just our labors be they good or ill. Sometimes... well... stuff happens.

I will track on this them later but would love some feedback on this - do you see or experience life more as a series of 'tipping points' or the result of the 'cumulative effect'?

Nine questions to have answered on Nov. 4th - a TheologyKungFu election primer!

2008-10-28T08:46:00.000-07:00

Last weekend I had the opportunity to listen to Ron Sider, president of Evangelicals for Social Action (ESA) and professor at Eastern University, speak on the role social justice should play in our upcoming election. For those who have heard Ron speak, he is a disarming public figure in the classic rumpled tweed look one expects from our Ivy League public intellectuals akin to the typology of the tenured professorial version of Peter Falk (the perfect trinity of Columbo, the Grandfather in The Princess Bride and the fallen angel in Wim Wender's Wings of Desire.) Two of his recent books that riff on Mark Nolls' 'Scandal of the Evangelical Mind' title- 'The Scandal of Evangelical Politics' and 'The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience' - both raise important issues that once November 5th comes around, we will all need to be aware of and willing to roll up our sleeves and get to work. Another great piece worth diving into is the thoughtful and provocative ESA magazine PRISM. Great reflective pieces that get at current issues.

In the most recent issue of PRISM, Ron Sider in an article entitled "McCain or Obama?" lays out nine issues that he sees as crucial questions to consider as one approaches the voting booth on Nov. 4th (the hyperlink for the article is for a pdf file you can download - share it with friends this week!).

These nine issues are:

1. Environment

2. Family

3. Healthcare

4. Human rights

5. International affairs/peacemaking

6. Poverty/economic justice

7. Racial justice

8. Religious freedom

9. Sanctity of Life

In the article, Sider reminds us that "if we ask what the Bible says God cares about, the implications for our political agenda become obvious: We must be pro-life and pro-poor, pro-family and pro-creation care, pro-racial justice and pro-peacemaking." He goes on to assert that "if you agree that a "biblically balanced agenda" is important, then you will not allow one issue to trump all others. That is not to deny that in some years, certain issues are in play in ways that others are not. But it is surely good news that more and more evangelicals seek to let the full range of God's concern shape their politics."

As we all go into this important act of citizenship in the next week, it is my prayer that we heed Sider's words and address each of these issues well and go into the voting booth with a sense of a 'completely pro-life' agenda - not merely a view of life that begins at conception and ends at birth.

BTW - we have added a new widget to TheologyKungFu that links you to some tunes to listen to during your reading and commenting on TheologyKungFu postings. This week's song - as an anthem for your voting discernment - is track 3 from Ten Years After's album 'A Space in Time' - "I'd Love to Change the World". This is a great anthem to get you into the mode of revolution in the voting booth!!!

You can play to song for free here on TheologyKungFu - just press 'play' on the widget and enjoy!

old sermons as cyber vampires: thoughts on the 'long tail' and cybertrash recycling on iTunes

2008-10-24T16:32:00.000-07:00

One of the realities of the cyberage is the fact that what we write online stains cyberspace forever and, in the words of those great sages of AAA format FM in the 1970's, Chicago, on track 2 of 'Chicago 18' entitled 'Forever' - "forever is a long, long time." Their is a collective myth among the cyberfiends of this age that, akin to Las Vegas, what is deleted on the web, stays deleted on the web. Not true. Storehouses of cybertrash populate the servers across this land with electronic signatures that can be awakened with a mere flick of the switch. This is not only in relation to blogs such as this one, but sound files such as Mp3's and video feeds long though of as going the way of the dinosaur find themselves alive again on the web in the strangest places.

Case in point: from 1992 to 1998 I worked in Campus Ministries and had occasion to teach and preach for different functions at the university that I worked for. These events were often taped on cassette tapes in the event that students would need to listen to them as part of either their chapel requirements or for a class. I left the university to go on to do my graduate school in Scotland and was gone for 6 years. Upon returning to the University in a faculty position, I had come to discover that these archive recordings, something I assumed had turned to dust in a cardboard box, had been made into digital recordings and now available for anyone to download via iTunes! Imagine my shock to hear students had not only downloaded these very old sermons and lectures, but had passed them on to others.

Chris Anderson, in an article in Wired Magazine that later become a book, coined the phrase "the long tail" which asserts that the web has kept alive a lot of content that would have died ages ago - these staggering cyber zombies of old sermons and lectures from a cassette tape era are given a new life as digital vampires waiting to populate an iPod near you! it is a strange thing to listen to a long dead version of yourself speak with passion about ideas and references that no longer energize nor concern my current faith orbit. Additionally, hearing rather confessional declarations born in a time of pain that is made current with digital clarity reminds me that I can no longer assume distance from my past selves nor the questions they have asked me. Augustine in Confessions states rather clearly in Book X that our lives are only memory in the end - a constant retrieval of the past in order to order the future. Perhaps I just need to get over it and welcome the companionship of the ancient selves who have visit me online from time to time. Hmmm... perhaps I am beginning to understand something of Scrooge's dread in Dicken's A Christmas Carol... Maybe Tiny Tim was listening to his iPod there in the corner by the fire...

Some musings on Dr Seuss - why we need the Cat in the Hat to come back

2008-09-22T09:50:00.000-07:00

Last night I read the girls Dr. Seuss’ “The Lorax” and was once again astounded at how good (and timely) a tale it is. One of the books I keep threatening to write is “The Gospel According to Dr. Seuss” – something of a pet project I have toyed around with for a couple of years. Don’t know when I would take it on, but I think it is a winner if done right. Theodore Geisel (aka Dr. Seuss) began his career as a political cartoonist and captured much of the WWII paranoia both playfully and artfully. As the story goes, Life magazine published a report on children’s illiteracy in its May 1954 issue, which concluded that children were not learning to read because their books were boring. Geisel's publisher at the time was taken by this report and made up a list of 348 words he felt were important and asked Geisel to cut the list to 250 words and write a book using only those words. Nine months later, Geisel, using 236 of the words given to him, completed The Cat in the Hat. This book was a tour de force—the drawing style, verse rhythms, and all the imaginative power of Geisel's earlier works, but because of its simplified vocabulary could be read by beginning readers. These books achieved significant international success and remain very popular and many argued ended the world of Dick and Jane and announced the reign of the Cat.

The number of children whose political and moral foundations have been influenced by Geisel’s books such as the Lorax(the environmentalist’s mantra in Technicolor); The Sneetches on Beaches (a fantastic treatise on the relationship of prejudice and commerce found in “The Sneetches and other Stories”); The Cat in the Hat (which raises the all important ethical question ‘what would you do if your Mother asked you?’), The Cat in the Hat Came Back (a blatant node toward McCarthyism with its fear of the “pink stain” overtaking the world); and Horton Hears a Who (which is one of the most Christocentric – and dare I say kenotic - nods in children’s literature) is staggering. Two things I am always reminded by in the Dr. Seuss canon: (1) language always gives way to meaning, and (2) surrealism is the place of deep meaning and belief more than realism. On the account of language giving way to meaning, any reader of Dr. Seuss will celebrate the use of seemingly non-words that convey meaning. Geisel wrote most of his books in a poetic form called anapestic tetrameter, which is a poetic meter employed by many poets of the English literary canon. One example is this line from Yertle the Turtle: “And today the Great Yertle, that marvelous he/ is King of the Mud. That is all he can see.” Anapestic tetrameter consists of four rhythmic units, anapests, each composed of two weak beats followed by one strong beat; often, the first weak syllable is omitted, or an additional weak syllable is added at the end. This use of meter with its sing song cadence – with the employment of weak syllables pulling on strong beats - pulls the reader along and anticipates the sound of the word coming down the pike but is often realized in a word that is both strange and yet contextually meaningful. What occurs for the reader in this cadence is a willingness to accept the strange and odd as the fulfillment of the rhyme and creates for beauty as something suprizing.

Needless to say, we need more Seuss these days in the political arena - a creation of a world that is fantastic and compelling, filled with soft syllables pushed by strong beats and open the space for the new, the strange and the faithful to enter anew.

Big in Japan - on Heidegger, Tea Cups, and Zen Gardens in the morning rain

2008-09-18T18:55:00.000-07:00

I just rounded off ten days in Japan and am now writing whilst looking out on the garden from my room in the Ryokan we are staying at in Kyoto. Sitting on the tatami mat, I am taken yet again with the careful attention – mindfulness if you will – of each rock, bush, tree, and walking stone. Nestled against the wall is a small stone shrine covered with small bits of moss and dripping wet from the rain. It is quiet here even with the morning traffic building on the street down the block. As with most cross-cultural journeys, it is the little things you remember – the smell of the taxi, the rain on the face of Buddha, the taste of Macha tea in the morning, the clash of Kimonos and neo-Punk fashions crossing a street together, the din of voices speaking a language you don’t understand yet somehow learn to trust, the small acts of hospitality that make each day more like a collection of miracles than mere site-seeing. Yes, there are the pictures of the sites we visited, but the memories of the people and the experience of what it means to be “other” that will be bubbling underneath as we return to the States.

One of my disappointments on this trip was finding a tea cup. I had been looking in a number of stores for a tea cup to bring back to the office at SPU and never found the right one. Part of the Chado ceremony (the way of tea) is to find the right cup for your guests – picking the right one that speaks to who that person is. I had thought that finding “the right cup” would be a nice spiritual exercise during my time here. I looked in a number of shops – large department stores and small country pottery shops in the mountains and nothing jumped out at me. This morning as I walked to the bakery to pick up some macha scones (my new favorite) I passed a small rack of items on the curb for sale – each items for 100 yen (about one US dollar). The assortment of a hodge podge of Japan in miniature – old 45 singles of pop singers long past their sell-by date, beat up bric-a-brac of horses and warriors in Samurai attire, wooden spoons and mismatched chopsticks. Tucked in the back was a set of tea cups – a mismatched set of five in a small wooden box. These five tea cups are not shining examples of artistic design – I certainly saw some stunning pieces of work during our time here. But they were ‘real’ in all the ways the Velveteen Rabbit was real – a bit rough around the edges, dusty and rained on, and basically still present in the world despite the neglect of others. Needless to say, these were the tea cups I was looking for but only now ‘saw’ with my own eyes. I knocked on the door to pay the shop owner for the tea cups. He smiled at me as I handed him the 100 yen and I swear there was a twinkle in his eye as if to say “it is about time you came for these – they have been waiting for you.” Heidegger wrote in the “Origin of a Work of Art” in a reflection on a pair of old shoes painted by Vincent Van Gogh that the viewer's responsibility is to consider a variety of questions about the shoes, asking not only about form and matter—what are the shoes made of?—but bestowing the piece with life by asking of purpose—what are the shoes for? Next, Heidegger writes of art’s ability to set up an active struggle between "earth-ing" and "world-ing" the objects that we behold. "World-ing," is a notion that means "being," is a passive entity. "Earth-ing" means "realized existence," and is an active repose to reality. The world simply occurs while the earth actively exists. Both are necessary components for an artwork to function, each serving unique purposes. As I beheld these mundane teacups, they were both world-ing and earth-ing and trying to surmount its counterpart: the earth is unable to be fully revealed or explained and attempts to draw the world into itself; the world, more open and unhidden, tries to overcome the secreted earth. The existence of truth is a product of this struggle--the process of art (or in my case finding the tea cups finding me)--taking place within the artwork as it struggles to world and earth itself.

Perhaps this was the twinkle in the shop keepers eye this morning – knowing that these tea cups, as they are emptied and filled in the years to come, will be changing my world in ways I have yet to consider. Perhaps he was glad to just get rid of the tea cups. None the less, the journey to the tea cup is often more than we realize…

5 books that have mattered... and still do

2008-08-29T09:15:00.001-07:00

Relevant Magazine recently posted a 'desert island classics' top-10 list ala Nick Hornby's High Fidelity. Talk about a tiresome task - trying to delimit those books that are both essential culturally (they are part of the fabric of the context that frames you) and have continued power to influence your direct into the future (they still speak to you as a conversation partner in matters of fiath and action). I have had a 'book shrine' of sorts on my desk ever since I worked in Campus Ministries in the 1990's - a rack of texts that were more iconic than transactional in that they served as a beacon to remind be from whence I came from and to where I should be going. When I was in pastoral ministry it was a reminder to be looking toward critical reflection beyond the 'forrest gump-ing' of popular Christian publishing, and as an academic it is a reminder both of my commitment to interdisciplinarity and to those books that will always be transcendently lowbrow in all the right ways - books that 'keep it real'. For what its worth, here are the books in my book shrine:

- Augustine's Confessions. This one made the Revelent list linked above and should be read by every Christian in the 21st century. More and more I come back to this seminal journey of the self that Augustine of Hippo penned late in his vocational journey and am always struck by two things: (1) Augustine frames the narrative as a prayer, not as an objective statement nor disengaged reflection. Augustine knows who his ultimate audience is and writes his 'life' for that audience - something I am challenged to do daily. (2) the culmination of the hagiography of his young life in Book X as a depository of memory - that in the end our lives are a collection of memories framed and reframed by the experiences that swirl around us. We never cease being relfective nor should we. I re-read Confessions every year and never get tired of it.

- George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss. For those who know my journey a bit, this will not come as a suprize. My PhD focus at Glasgow was on Victorian Literature with particular emphasis on George Eliot. As a theologian, I have always been uncomfortable with theology as a genre and especially uncomfortable with the ways in which fiction is often mistrusted as a platform for truth claims. In this way I yearn for the mindset of the Victorians who didn't segment the world into genre based on intent, rather whether something succeeded in the proclaimation of truth regardless of whether it was a novella or a monograph. Eliot's prolific output is the work of such genius. While Middlemarch is rightly considered (perhaps) the greatest English novel thus far, I side with her earlier works and especially the bildungsroman that is Mill on the Floss. I look forward to the day my daughters can embrace the spirit of Maggie Tulliver. Hers is a story to challenge any father of daughters.

- Cormac McCarthy's The Crossing. The song goes "Momma, don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys..." Why not? Cowboys are about as cool as it goes - way, way cooler than the boring superhero genre. McCarthy is probably my favorite American author of the modern period and this is my favorite (a close race with The Road and Blood Meridian in a photo finish). The story of The Crossing is so heartbreaking as to defy category. There are so many holy moments in the book that I can't read it without stopping to pray (yes... I'm serious). The messianic role of the wolf 's journey alone in the story is enough to cause you to pause during Holy Week.

- Wendell Berry: The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays. Berry could arguably be one of the most grounded, sane writers in America... bar none. In his Sabbath poems, he muses about the place of rest in our hurried lives akin to a Sabbath death:

The mind that comes to rest is tended
In ways that it cannot intend:
Is borne, perserved, and comprehended
By what it cannot comprehend.

Your Sabbath, Lord, thus keeps us by
Your will, not ours. And it is fit
Our only choice should be to die
Into that rest, or out of it.

He speaks of the gift of the earth, of living with great attention to our surroundings and making each moment into an offering of thanks. His novels and poems are indeed a gift, but his essays are manifestos.

- F. Scott Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise To say that the question of what it means to "come of age" is a question that drives much of what I do in ministry and academe is spot on. The journey that brought me to teaching in many ways took its current course due to the random event of sitting in a cafe in Antigua and picking up a copy of This Side of Paradise in a pile of used books. It is a weather-beaten paperback that has seen better days, but I was at a place in my spiritual journey where the questions of 'growing up' where coming to a head and sitting in a country far away from the things of America gave me clarity. I read the book in one sitting and was so taken with its tale of a young man - Amory Blaine - who goes off to college and loses his way that I began applying for graduate school the next fall. I wanted to teach and be in the lives of these young people. The book sits on my desk as a reminder of the job I have before me and the stories that fill my classroom.

So... what books should I be adding to this shelf?

Love Shack: Why are evangelicals so crazy for The Shack?

2008-08-21T08:09:00.000-07:00

"What do you think of 'The Shack'?" I have been asked this question at least a dozen times, maybe more. No, this is not in reference to a seven foot tall, 325 lbs NBA player nor is it a retro question from someone who just discovered the B-52s. No, it is a literary question of the first degree. One of the occupational 'opportunities' you have as an academic is to be the 'go-to person' for questions germane to your field of study. When your field of study happens to be Theology and Cultural Theory, you get into some interesting dialogues through casual questions: "Have you read 'This Present Darkness' and do you believe in angels and demons?" "What do you think about the Left Behind series - do you think their is going to be an end times?" "What do you think of the Purpose Driven Life - does it work?" Lately, everyone seems to be buzzing about William P. Young's The Shack and they want to talk about it.

Now I realize that the books I referenced above - while all 'best sellers' - have a particular buzz factor primarily within the Evangelical bandwidth. So if you are not tuned to this frequency, you may have missed all the buzz about William P. Young's massive self-published book that is flying off of Costco pallets near you. As a synopsis, Young's publisher Windblown Media put out the following couple of teaser lines: "Mackenzie Allen Philips’ youngest daughter, Missy, has been abducted during a family vacation and evidence that she may have been brutally murdered is found in an abandoned shack deep int he Oregon wilderness. Four years later in the midst of his Great Sadness, Mack receives a suspicious note, ostensibly from God, inviting him back to that shack for a weekend. Against his better judgment he arrives at the shack on a wintry afternoon and walks back into his darkest nightmare. What he finds there will change Mack's world forever and quite possibly your own." Suffice it to say, the book has touched a deep cord in people to the point that Eugene Peterson, author of The Message, has given a glowing endorsement likening Young to CS Lewis! I will be among a choir of people to say that Peterson is creating an analogous relationship that is pretty strained and with regard to writing style, theological reflection, and depth of insight - I would have chosen to make a point akin to the Lloyd Benson in his now infamous 1988 Vice Presidential debate with Dan Quayle - to riff on Lloyd Benson - The Shack ain't no Narnia.

Let me breakdown my brief reflections on The Shack into Tillich's categories of form, content and meaning. With regard to form, The Shack operates like a standard 20th century morality tale ala Dicken's Christmas Carol: the protagonist Mac leads a rather mundane spiritual life after a horrible event strips him of the extremes of human emotion - no highs and no lows, just existence. He is moved through the narrative akin to Scrooge in Dicken's Christmas Carol - repeatedly visited by various spirits incarnate (the first portion are various manifestations of the Trinity and then later Young seems to embrace a Greco-Roman motif and evokes the persona of Wisdom/Sophia as well as something seemingly separate from the Trinity) to teach him what it means to be truly alive. He "awakens" from this journey in a hospital bed, solves the mystery of his daughter's death, and the "great sadness" is lifted. Roll the credits. As far as content, the tale draws more on cultural tropes than biblical or theological ones. Clearly this is what has raised the eyebrows of some - notably Mars Hill Church's Mark Driscoll. It is the frabrication (albeit fictional) of the Trinity in a multi-racial anthropomorphic collective which Driscoll deems an act of 'creating craven images of God' counter to the Decalog (please note: if you click through the link above to watch Pastor Driscoll rabid critique of The Shack, be sure to note the 'graven image' of the Trinity artfully displayed behind his head - I guess you can create graven images if you are the pastor but not anyone else). Additionally, Young's free-flowing use of various emotional tropes over and against solid biblical exegesis and deep theological reflection are pretty off putting - i.e. he ends a number of sentences with exclaimation marks to ensure you don't miss the "Ah Ha!" moments of Mac coming to grips with what the Trinity is engaging him in. At this point I am fairly open minded given that it is a work of fiction afterall and as such you have the freedom to, well, be free. In short, many have used the book as a justification for an overly theraputic gloss that most American evangelicals have of the Christian faith - i.e. in the end the Gospel is about feeling better after tragic events and that God speaks to us as a Grandma would - all comfort and statically available to us if we make the effort to go and find her. This personification of the Gospel is tragic in itself and a trend that is all-too-familiar ground for many American christians today. This point is not missed by John Crace in his "disgested read" of The Shack that boils the book down to five minutes and holds the essential story as an American romance novel celebrating the fact that ultimately God is a cosy quilt waiting to embrace the worried well of the middle class if they would just 'buck up' and head to the Love Shack.

In his reflections on the book found on his website, Young puts his intention this way: "For me, everything is about Jesus and Father and the Holy Spirit, and relationships, and life is an adventure of faith lived one day at a time. Any aspirations, visions and dreams died a long time ago and I have absolutely no interest in resurrecting them (they would stink by now anyway). I have finally figured out that I have nothing to lose by living a life of faith. I know more joy every minute of every day than seems appropriate, but I love the wastefulness of my Papa’s grace and presence. For me, everything in my life that matters, is perfect!" (note the exclaimation point!)

To be fair, The Shack has touched a lot of people and does raise an important question in regard to the nominal faith mired in malaise many Christians sitting in pews experience today - something Young terms 'the great sadness'. This is something worth noting and I think the biggest subtext many folks connect with in the book. Life ain't great and life doesn't suck too bad... but is that life? For the 'worried well' of suburban American, that in itself is a great question worth exploring and if this provokes people to look for a deeper engagement with their lives, then The Shack is certainly worth a visit... but not a place to move to.

The Hold Steady: the next great christian band you won't hear on Christian radio

2008-07-24T06:33:00.000-07:00

Well... one of best kept secrets in rock-n-roll is about to blow up into the big time. As I was driving in to work this morning I heard a snippet of The Hold Steady's first single off their latest CD "Stay Positive" - "Sequestered in Memphis" - and thought I was listening to KEXP. When I looked at the tuner in my car, I saw... to my horror... that the song was playing on (gulp) NPR's "All Things Considered"! As the song moved from the refrain of the song, Morning Edition's Steve Inskeep continued his interview with Craig Finn (lead singer for the band) which can be found here.

Granted, I am happy for Craig Finn and company to get the exposure they rightly deserve as one of the best bands in America at present and I hope the sales of "Stay Positive" rocket through the roof. However, as with most things we hold dear in life, the more people discover a secret, the less powerful it is. Think of that favorite cafe you go to when you need some space to think (yes... I have mine... and it is on First Hill somewhere...) Think of that shoebox you kept under bed as a kid filled with the treasures (notes from camp, green army men you melted with a magnifying glass at a best friend’s house, baseball cards, a crumpled picture of Kristy McNichol from some forgotten ABC Afterschool Special, etc) you never wanted your siblings or parents to find. There are some bands that hold that place as well. U2 was like that in the early 80's for me. When Christian kids "got serious" about their faith in those days, they abandoned all music expect that sanctioned by the CCM machine (burn the Beatle's albums, buy the Amy Grant). However, I got more out of U2's "War" - and still do - than I ever did from Petra or Whiteheart.

I think The Hold Steady will 'hold' such a place for another generation. Perhaps they won't move on to fill stadiums and re-brand African poverty like Bono and the boys have done, but Craig Finn’s lyrics and the band’s bar-busting songcraft has certainly added a much needed element to Christian engagement with the world that is sorely missing from a majority of CCM pabulum in three big ways: namely honesty, humanity and that God is found for many people in the everyday more often than in the transcendent.

As Craig Finn states in relation to the band’ 2005 album Separation Sunday, much of their music is about real people finding real redemption. "I guess a prodigal-daughter story," Finn states in his interview on NPR’s “All Thing’s Considered” “It [Separation Sunday] is about a girl who grew up in a religious background and goes off to try to find something bigger, better, or something she's missing. And [she] has a lot of experiences and ends up coming back, not only to her family and to her town, but to her church."

This “coming back” story that weaves its way through the CD is a gritty account of a girl named Holly (“Her parents named her Hallelujah/the kids all called her Holly”) who lives the life of disappointment and heartbreak many people in middle class America live out every day but rarely admit to – drugs on the sidetable at bedtime, drinking to get slightly drunk and forget the disappointments of their life, relationships that are merely encounters through sex without love. What makes Finn’s Holly such an important voice for the church today is that she can actually teach us something if the church would listen. For many CCM artists, redemption results in the ability to conform within our consumer culture rather than transform it – to be redeemed is in the mode of redeeming a coupon clipped from the newspaper – give up something only to buy something else. For Finn, it is not the type of coupon clipping painted out in the connect-the-dots redemption stories oft heard in CCM songs by the third verse. In the closing song of Separation Sunday, the aptly titled “How a Resurrection Really Feels”, Finn’s prodigal-daughter stumbles into an on-going church service:

If she scared you then she's sorry.
she's been stranded at these parties.
these parties they start lovely
but they get druggy and they get ugly
and they get bloody.The priest just kinda laughed. The deacon caught a draft.
She crashed into the Easter Mass with her hair done up in broken glass.
She was limping left on broken heels.
When she said “Father, can I tell your congregation how a Resurrection really feels?

Where most CCM is only understood and therefore purchased by devoted Christians, Finn’s real life redemption strips away the abstractions and makes redemption something real people want and can experience and still remain real people. On their new album “Stay Positive”, the band pens one of the more horrific songs of students away at college I have ever heard – “One for the Cutters.” For a generation that saw the 1979 indie film Breaking Away, the image of University of Indiana and the town of Bloomington is still alive with a town divided between “cutters” (the ‘townies’ whose families cut the limestone from the surrounding quarries) and the college kids who view them from a life apart amidst their frat houses and golden futures. Finn reimagines this clash of cultures in Bloomington with a young college student who gets involved with a “cutter” and with one bad move changes her life forever. The question posed by Finn at the end of this tale will cause cell phones to ring at midnight in dorms across the country:

Mom, do you know where your girl is? Sophomore accomplice in a turtleneck sweater... Dad, do you know where your kids are? Sniffing on crystal in cute little cars.. It’s a cute little town, boutiques and cafes.
Her friends all seemed nice, she was getting good grades,
but when she came home for Christmas, she just seemed distant and different.

That “distant and different” is ignored by many in hopes that we can just “move on.” Moving on isn’t something The Hold Steady offers. As real people, we all live with the scars of our past. Where much of CCM is more concerned with getting past the brokenness and into the light, Finn does the Gospel thing instead by shining a light on the brokenness and sits there for a while with us. It is the unblinking and steady realism that has brought The Hold Steady comparisons to Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan – a willingness to say it like it is, not merely how we wish it were. In this way, The Hold Steady live into their name – a band that ‘holds the gaze’ as both Maurice Blanchot and Jacques Lacan only describe and the listener is held to the power and the glory of our real lives that is still in need of real redemption.

All this ruminating on redemption amidst beer parties and murder scenes can lead one to think that the band is destined to be the religious torchbearers of the alt rock scene. While that might come to pass, I doubt it. This is no Icarus band seeking to take flight and escape the world on waxen wings by soaring into the abstract. This is a truly incarnate band through and through. As Finn himself stated when NPR’s Steve Inskeep asked him if thought all his reflection on spiritual matters might result in becoming like Cat Stevens (moving away from music and into the mystic), "I think I'm more religious than spiritual. I don't know if I'm that spiritual a person; I just like going to church. I wonder if I might [be] the opposite of Cat Stevens and then be too normal and end up watching too many baseball games and eating too many hot wings."

If Finn's lyrics are anything like his conversations, I would sit down with a bucket of hot wings at the ballgame after church with him anytime.

joyeux anniversaire - remembering Jacques Derrida and de-centered center on his B-Day

2008-07-17T17:04:00.000-07:00

Like many graduate students in the humanities since the 1980's, our lives have been thoroughly deconstructed thanks to Jacques Derrida. His birthday was on July 15th and it seems fitting to honor him at Theology KungFu with a brief reflection on the notion of 'center as power' from the paper that launched him into superstardom in America - "Structure, Sign and Paly in the Human Sciences" which was published in 1978 in the collection Writing and Difference. I will admit that I was certainly overwhemled in the early days with reading Derrida in relation to religion. Frankly, many theologians in the 80s and 90s wrote off Derrida as a threat yet never actually bothered to read his work - how typical... fear first, ask questions later. Two great pieces to start with if you are interested in the way Derrida reflected on the challenge of religious discourse: The Gift of Death (University of Chicago press, 1995) and Monolingualism of the Other or The Prosthesis of Origin (Stanford University Press, 1997). The need to break through religious discuourse and find new ways of emboding belief has never been more important. In his 1990 lecture published in Granta entitled “Is Nothing Sacred?” Salman Rushdie discusses the irony whereby traditionally ‘religious’ writing seems to be anything but religious, whilst those who dwell in the space of fiction seem to find openings where the possibility of the sacred is seen. As he compares the genres of ‘religion’ and ‘literature’ he notes that "Between religion and literature … there is a linguistically based dispute. But it is not a dispute of simple opposites. Because whereas religion seeks to privilege one language above all others, one set of values above all others, one text above all others, the novel has always been about the way in which different languages, values and narratives quarrel, and about the shifting relations between them, which are relations of power. The novel does not seek to establish a privileged language, but it insists upon the freedom to portray and analyse the struggle between the different contestants for such privileges."

Much of Rushdie's discussion rests on the aftermath of Derrida's grand moment of deconstructing the 'center' in his paper "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Human Sciences" given at John Hopkins in the 1970's and later published in Writing and Difference in 1978. While Rushdie is not acknowledging this heritage, it is evident in Derrida's notion of deconstructing the 'center'.

For Derrida's definitions of "the center" constitute abstracted definitions of a political center: "The center, which is by definition unique, constituted that very thing within a structure which while governing that structure escapes structurality". The center "governs" and is "constituted" and the implications of Derrida's terms here are very important. We are all familiar with how centers manage to escape structurality: when pressed, the center says that power was always elsewhere. In this sense, then, "the center is not the center". Or, as Derrida also says, "the center is, paradoxically, within the structure and outside it" . Like a governmental center, the "center of a structure permits the freeplay of its elements inside the total form", even as it also "closes off the freeplay it opens up and makes possible". Some possibilities cannot be considered even by the freest of centers.

According to "Structure, Sign, and Play," this comparative narrowness of possibilities is the result of centering: "The structurality of structure... has always been neutralized or reduced, and this by a process of giving it a center or referring it to a point of presence, a fixed origin". The center thus controls, in the sense of "containing," the structurality of the structure, reducing it; the extremes are neutralized by the center. For many people (although "Structure, Sign, and Play" might say, for "the structure"), this containment is a good thing: "the concept of centered structure is in fact the concept of play based on a fundamental ground, a play constituted on the basis of a fundamental immobility and a reassuring certitude". Limiting freeplay is reassuring, "and on the basis of this certitude anxiety can be mastered". The center, which governs, allows certain freedoms, and even if allowing these closes off others, it is considered preferable to the absence of centering because with it a reassuring certitude, through which anxiety can be reduced, is implied.

As Derrida emphasizes in "Structure, Sign, and Play" the center is "not a fixed locus but a function". In one sense, then, power as function need not be put in one place; the function can be distributed throughout the structure. This is another way of understanding that the center is not the center; the center of power need not be at the central place. Even decentralized power functions as power. Moreover, if the center is a function, not a place, then it is highly variable; not only can the function be fulfilled from different places, but different centers can fulfill the same function. "If this is so," according to "Structure, Sign, and Play," "the entire history of the concept of structure, before the rupture of which we are speaking, must be thought of as a series of substitutions of center for center". Whether we speak in governmental or religious terms, whatever fulfills the function of the center is itself just a substitute for a (previous) center; the function remains the same even if the center has moved, i.e., is not a fixed locus.

In what ways have we sought after a 'center' in our life and been merely seeking power? control? Perhaps Jesus was right to acknowledge that that which we truly seek after is found on the margins and rarely at the center....

I think Derrida would have loved the sermon on the mount... I hope he gets a chance to meet the author of it...

RIP Jacques... and joyeux anniversaire, mon professeur

memory, nostalgia and things that make a great birthday

2008-07-02T08:55:00.000-07:00

OK - nothing big about turning 43 years old today. Birthdays certainly provoke the memories of things past in all that Proustian glory. For memory to be brought into awareness, memory must be formulated and awakened and is therefore perpetually engaged and therefore ‘lost’. It is this in memoriam – memory as loss – that is core to Augustine's Book X of Confessions as well as Tennyson's grand poem that constitutes the notion of nostalgia as the latent memory of the subject as a self overlaid by false images, or ‘false memory’ that distract the self from itself. Nostalgia comes from the Greek roots νόστος nostos “returning home” and άλγος algos “pain”, to refer to the pain a subject feels because he wishes to return to his native land, and fears never to see it again. Our culture in America is framed by the perpetual state of nostaglia – triggering instant occasions for longing and loss without sufficient means to satiate this longing. For example, fandom culture surrounding everything from sports teams to geekfest conventions (i.e. Star Trek, Comic Con, the American Academy of Religion to name a few) consist of attempts to reconstruct false memories as present realities through communal collusion. Shared clothing, shared chants and songs, shared material artefacts that ground these memories are key and yet never fulfilling, hence the need to endless repeat the activities – another year, another convention or opportunity to see the team we support play the same game with the same rules. To dissipate distorted memory, the subject is to draw upon the implicit knowledge within which also comes from above. This comes about in verbum (in a word) that the subject formulates through inwardness upon itself. This is what Augustine terms intelligentia. But to understand (intelligentia) oneself as subject, the intelligentia of awakened true memory must be enacted. This enactment of intelligentia is et voluntas – the will freed to love. In the willing forth of intelligentia, the subject ultimately finds self- awareness and, in turn, love, which is the nexus point where deep and abiding meaning is found. This notion of self-love in the face the other reminds the subject that this notion of love is not unique to self, but rather from ‘other than oneself’. The subject then reflects back through memory, intelligence, and will, via love, as well as mind and knowledge, which draws the subject into the awareness of the one whose image they share – the Imago Dei.

So my memories that I keep losing so that I might find myself on this day of my birth?

- Camp Parsons sunrises on Hood Canal when the water is glass and the gulls floated on thermals
- The smell of our family tent on the third day of summer vacation when it was aired out enough to be tolerated and yet still recalled the campfire of summer past
- Coffee at the Winding Stair Cafe overlooking the Liffey River and Ha'Penny Bridge in Dublin
- The sound of my feet on the stones of the ever-turning staircase in the English faculty at University of Glasgow with a copy of Mrs. Humphrey Ward's Robert Elsmere in my hand
- The first time I heard U2's War album in 1983
- the sight of Diana on our wedding day
- seeing each of my daughters at the moment of their birth

and many, many more...

ode to an iPod... so long old friend

2008-06-25T07:49:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was a day of technological loss and deep sorrow. To cut to the chase - my iPod died. Better said, my iPod 'fried'. How interesting that on the day Barak Obama opens his iPod playlist to the world, mine goes up in flames. I am currently teaching a class at Fuller entitled "Postmodern Theology and Contemporary Culture" and have been using music and film in the course. Wouldn't you know it, but in the class I need technology in is the class that is killing off technology in the Keuss household. On Monday, my laptop froze and it now kaput, then yesterday while driving in to teach my class (listening to my podcast of "Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me..." which is in the top 5 best things about a commute mind you...) my iPod screen just went blank and revealed a small grey frowny face icon that is a hold out from the Macintosh 128K days of the 1980's. I went to an Apple store (have you been in these places?! My word... this is the techy fantasia par excellence) and was told after waiting for an appointment at the 'Genius Bar' - where the average age of the genius was 17 years old (I worked at summer camp on Hood canal when I was in high school... now kids service computer problems for the summer... I wonder if they get to sing songs and roast hotdogs over burning PCs in the stock room though...) and was swiftly told to let the mourning begin... my companion over many miles of I-5 was toast.

So hear is my swan song to my iPod who served me so well these past few years, set to that great death song of summer of 1961 - 'Le moribond' (Seasons in the Sun) by french singer Jacques Brel and later made a US hit in 1974 by Terry Jacks:

Goodbye, My iPod, my little one,
You gave me love and helped me find the sun,
And every time that I was down
You would always come around
And get my feet back on the ground;
Goodbye, My iPod, it's hard to die
When all the birds are singing in the sky,
Now that the spring is in the air,
Whiff of flowers ev'rywhere,
I wish that we could both be there!

*sniff*... *sniff*... sorry, I need some time alone, dear reader... may you find appreciation in your Mp3 player today as I sit in silence...

into the wild - what it takes to leave

2008-06-10T18:02:00.000-07:00

Finally got around to watching Into The Wild - Sean Penn's adaptation of the John Krakauer novel. I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would. So much of the hype surrounding the movie was drawn either from the Eddie Vedder soundtrack (which was great mind you...) or just the notion of absolute disregard for society and the celebration of freedom. It is this last notion - the unbridled quest for release from society and the pressures of materialism found in just going 'into the wild' - that has taken my undergraduates' imagination. Penn's directing has always been engaging to say the least (check out The Pledge, The Crossing Guard, and The Indian Runner at some point - evocative of Terence Malik's work in The Thin Red Line which Penn starred in). Perhaps that is the problem - Into The Wild is just too engaging and inviting. Granted, the call of the wild comes at a great price in the film, but it is still not that great when placed against the "F#$% you world" ethic of Christopher McCandless abandons his possessions, gives his entire $24,000 savings account to Oxfam and hitchhikes to Alaska to live in the wilderness. I honestly think Penn wants to drive a generation of young adults into the wilderness and hopes that we will all just realize that relationships will let us down and, in the end, we have no one to trust but ourselves. It is a dark prospect. Hal Holbrook's character Ron Franz allows a single tear to roll down his cheek as McCandless departs from his offer of adoption into his family... that tear stands for a lot these days...

The King is dead... Long live the King - another academic year comes to a close

2008-06-06T08:30:00.000-07:00

The academic life this time of year is akin to the transition of monarchs. Where one dynasty leaves a legacy and another generation strives to make its mark in the shadow of that legacy, ultimately it is the Monarchy itself (in this case the place of education) that is maintained despite the transition of the 'placeholders' - be they the legacy or the innovators - during various historical epochs. The phrase (now brought to mind thanks to a lyric in Coldplay's lead single from their latest CD) is Le Roi est mort. Vive le Roi! or The King is Dead/Long Live the King! Today at the university we celebrate such a transitional moment - students don the black gowns of the ancient academy - the color of self-denial which ironically draws attention to one's statement of self-denial these days (I am reminded of the Shawn Colvin song 'Polaroids' from her Fat City CD: "Back in our home New York/Walking these streets forlorn/We all in our uniforms/Black and black/Doing that slouch and jive/The artist must survive/We've got all we need we cried/And we don't look back/Thinking we had it made...") The students process through this weekend wide eyed with wonder and the possibilities must be daunting yet now is their time, their season, their vision. It couldn't be more exciting....

Steve Winwood, F Scott Fitzgerald, The Boss and the holy silence of faux chapels

2008-06-02T08:25:00.000-07:00

I just went for a jog along the canal and through the Princeton campus amidst their graduation ceremony. Quite the Ivy League show - topsiders and Izods from the 1980's held over from my generation now adorn the parents of new grads. Opposite the maddening crowd of hungover undergrads was the Firestone chapel - a nice faux neo-gothic build in the early 1900's with echoes of Fitzgerald's Amory Blaine screaming at the sky for his lost generation that had seen all gods die and all wars fought for mere self awareness. I walked through the empty chapel, the clean concrete pressing up into the choir loft and toward the replication of a reformation pulpit. The silence of the pews and cool of the nave was a stark contrast to the strains of (yes... this is fact, not fiction) a Steve Winwood recording of "Higher Love" off of Back in the High Life (hey, at least that was released in 1990... some progress...) blaring out in the square while the parents in Ray Bans waved their programs.

I was taken by the contrast - the storm of holiness in this fake chapel which was trying so hard to gain the authority of the grand European churches is sought to emulate contrasted to the strange carnivale of snythetic graduation gowns, retro fashion, and hyper manicured lawns outside.

I said my prayers, walked into the sunshine, and ran back to my hotel along the canal while New Jersey's truest son sang

Now those memories come back to haunt me
they haunt me like a curse
Is a dream a lie if it don't come true
Or is it something worse
that sends me down to the river
though I know the river is dry
That sends me down to the river tonight
Down to the river
my baby and I
Oh down to the river we ride...

Surviving the New Jersey turnpike, Billy Joel, and religion in the airport

2008-06-02T05:34:00.000-07:00

I am currently at a Center for Youth Ministry Training consultation at Princeton Theological Seminary funded by the Lilly Foundation. The next 48 hours will be something akin to a reality show premise where they put 8 academics and 8 youth pastors into a closed room and see who makes it out alive (btw - if you are placing bets, don't 'double down' on the academics...) Getting to Princeton, New Jersey is (to be quite frank) a royal pain. It has been almost 20 years since I was last in this neck of the woods and now I can understand why. After flying into DC, my connecting flight was delayed for 2 hours into Newark. At midnight, no trains were available, so I had to take a taxi. Another 2 hours later (the cab driver was lost - not fun at 2am - but very entertaining given that he was singing along to the greatest hits of Billy Joel and fist pumping the ceiling as he drove the NJ Turnpike...)

While I frankly hate getting in and out of airports these days (have you noticed that the TSA has conditioned frequent air travelers into practically wearing pajamas and bedroom slippers in order to get through security?!) I am always intrigued by what pops up in airport bookshops. For example, two artifacts I have from my travels thus far and commend to your reading: the latest Harper's (June 2008) has the cover story "Turning Away From Jesus" by Garret Keizer. Keizer is a lay Episcopal priest and the author of "The Dresser of Sycamore Trees: The Finding of a Ministry", a book I have used in classes both at Fuller and SPU. It is a wonderful book and a warm, earthy reflection of day-to-day life in the small Vermont town of Island Pond. In the Harper's article, Keizer wrestles with storm brewing in many mainline churches surrounding the question of what is happening to the presupposing of our denominations as seen through the test case of gay rights. As he notes on page 39 of the article "in other words, what might strike you as an irrelevant story about a religious dispute is in some ways your story, whether you are religious or not, and whether you like it or not. The story invites us to ask if what is happening to the institutions we love is not at least partly the result of our having loved them less attentively than we supposed." Wonderfully put.

Another artifact from the airport is an article from this morning's USA Today (yes - I am cheap and reading the free newspaper blithely tossed upon my hotel room stoop...) In an article by Tom Krattenmaker entitled "The evangelicals you don't know", the author heads to Xenia, Ohio to interview the ministry Athletes in Action. He notes his presupposition that this is probably yet another "intolerant, pushy, close-minded" enclave of "cultural warriors", but is proved wrong. As he notes in the article, the easily dismissive definition of what constitutes evangelicalism in America is shifting and those who self identify with evangelicalism are seeking more robust conversations and conversation partners than ever before.

More to come...

Listening to Cat Stevens - the sorrow of hope

2008-05-23T12:06:00.000-07:00

End of the quarter breeds a high level of malaise – that feeling of wandering in a cloud and being damp with sadness. Is this merely due to reading too much Sarte, Camus and Heidegger ? Aucun je ne pense pas ainsi… that is, no, I don’t think so.

That said, the mood of ending the term, the drama of grades and the fear of seniors not knowing what comes next certainly adds to this mood. I was listening to Cat Steven’s Teaser and the Firecat on my way to work today – long before The Shins and Kings of Convenience there was Cat Stevens (nee Yusaf Islam). Teaser and the Firecat has one of the most malaise ridden songs I have ever heard – How Can I Tell You? It is a love song so filled with longing and loss that is pours out of your speakers. In some ways the song is so intimate that it can’t be listened to with earbuds – too closed and intimate – and has to breathe a bit. The song begins in silence and you sit for 4 painful seconds waiting for something, anything to fill the silence. Then the first strum of the guitar and the fingerpicking that is seeking for form of the narrative. Steven’s voice only stumbles into the song after 21 seconds – which for a 3 minute, 18 second song can feel like an eternity. He hums and tries to awaken his language around his longing and then begins with his question – “how can I tell you that I love you?” From there the song falls in and out of metaphors – seeing the face of his beloved in every face he tries to love, the liminality of the sea moving in and out of the shoreline, each one trying to give some grounding to this longing that is slowing drawing him into the distance. After 3 minutes a quiet wailing fills the background of the song and his voice falls off into the silence once again. It is jarring to listen to the song all the way into the next track – Tuesday’s Dead – which, while a great track, is abruptly upbeat in tone. I wonder why the many “greatest hits” collections never include this song (“Tuesday’s Dead” makes in on the A & M collection) but perhaps the reason is obvious – how can this level of raw transparency be something that folks want to return to?

On days like today… it is the only song…

consumption vs. authenticity (or, which death choice do you desire?)

2008-05-12T08:07:00.001-07:00

I was reflecting on the nature of "choice" last night during the Gathering. Sometimes the nature of choice has some pretty dire consequences as seen in the student video of Acts 5 - well worth the 3 minutes to see what you can do at 3am with a Sharpie and some gansta rap! Choice is key to our understanding of what is being asked of us in this life. As consumers, we are told that are ability to choose is the definition of power. French cultural theorist (also philosophical brains behind the Matrix trilogy) Jean Baudrillard put is well in his La Société de consommation: ses mythes, ses structures when he stated that "The whole discourse on consumption, whether learned or lay, is articulated on the mythological sequence of the fable: a man, 'endowed' with needs which 'direct' him towards objects that 'give' him satisfaction," (CS 35). This mythos ignores the nature of consumer society in which "the manufacturers control behavior, as well as direct and model social attitudes and needs ... this is a total dictatorship by the sector of production," (CS 38). For many Americans and western Europeans, Christianity's form is a consumptive one - the more choices I have, the more power I have, the more I draw into myself, the closer I am to God. Counter this with the Pauline call to relinquish everything in Galatians 2:20 and the kenotic outpouring of self denoted by Christ in Phillipians 2: 5-11. Phillipians 2:5 calls the faithful to be of the same "mind and attitude" as that of Christ and then proceeds to describe what this attitude is. The sad thing is that most people then read the Carmen Christi of Phillipians 2 as Christ merely emptying himself of the divine attributes but forgets that we are called to be "of the same mind and attitude" which begs the question - what can we kenotic empty or relinquish that is "of the same mind and attitude"? One word: choice. The kenotic outpouring of Christ is a relinquishment of choice - no longer to be swayed by the whims of consumer drives, no longer to weigh other alternatives for possible futures akin to The Last Temptation of Christ (here I am thinking of the novel by Nikos Kazantzakis - title in the Greek The Last Temptation : Ο Τελευταίος Πειρασμός, O Teleftaíos Peirasmós - not the 1988 film directed by Martin Scorsese) where Jesus fully considers an alternative life than the one he is called to. The relinquishment of choice is an abhorrent to many - considered almost "anti-american" and somehow totalitarian in nature. But the call of christological kenosis is even deeper that mere choice - it is living unto death where we exhaust all options and engraph ourselves to the one and only Vine (John 15) come hell or high water. Is this preachy? Perhaps.

apathy - something we may need more of

2008-04-28T07:43:00.000-07:00

Maybe it is just this time of the quarter, but students (and some staff I suppose) have become concerned that there is a state of apathy on campus in regard to spirituality. Granted, the use of 'apathy' as an phenomenological descriptor is etymologically derived from the Greek απάθεια (apatheia), a term used originally in Stoic philosophy to signify 'indifference' for what one is not responsible for namely things objective to the self (according to Stoic philosophy, given the divide between the material and immaterial world - a person is only responsible for their representations and judgments, not the material realm). This 'indifference' is rooted in 'pathos' (Greek: πάθος) which is tied to emotions or feelings - in short, apathy is a lack of feeling or emotional tie to an issue, person or event. In Aristotle's understanding of rhetoric, pathos is one of the three modes of persuasion in rhetoric (along with ethos and logos) and often considered the most powerful since appealing to the audience's emotions. Granted, there is a place for feeling and emotion in the human condition - especially in line with what Jonathan Edwards and John Wesley termed 'affections.' As noted in an article by Gregory Clapper, the notion of 'affections' for Edwards and Wesley were to be firmly grounded and framed by a mindfulness and attentiveness born out of reasonable reflection, not merely impluse. The "affections of the mind" according to Edwards are "the more vigorous and sensible exercises of the will." In drawing this out, Edwards goes on to say that God has imbued the soul with two faculties: the understanding which is capable of perception and speculation, and the inclination or will which either is pleased or displeased, approving or rejecting the things perceived. The mind with regard to the exercises of the will is called the heart. The crucial point here is that the affections are not exercised apart from the understanding. While pathos attempts to circumvent the mind and will in order to 'cut to the heart' (one can think of the scene in Pulp Fiction where Vincent Vega (John Travolta) gives Mia Wallace (Uma Thurman) an adrenaline shot to the heart in the midst of panic and confusion) regardless of the means or the enduring ramifications), true affections are framed and deepened by the mind and will and discerned in community.

My question then: is apathy really such a bad thing after all? Perhaps getting whipped up into a frenzy under the guise of passions that circumvent the mind and will need to be discussed. Perhaps a little more apathy would be a good thing from time to time... just a thought, dear reader... just a thought.

The Quiet - reflections on stillness amidst the storm

2008-04-17T11:34:00.000-07:00

During the summer of 1985, I was working at Mercer Island Presbyterian with High School and College students. It was a pretty formative season - I turned 21, had my first car (a '73 Dodge Dart that I had to hit the starter motor each morning with a hammer to loosen the brushes - but it had a sweet Radio Shack cassette deck), and all my college friends were off doing other things - so basically I was 24/7 ministry and making sure my car didn't break down on the 520 floating bridge. The summer was spent with a lot of introspection and soul searching: this was my 'attempt' at full-time ministry and was never really sure whether this was a calling for me. The students I was working with were...well... rich. I went to Garfield High School in Seattle's Central District and and growing up in a family of school teachers didn't really prep me for the fact that there were kids for whom the big question wasn't if they could go water skiing on the weekend, it was which friend had the better boat. I clearly wasn't from this tribe so to speak.

At any rate, the summer ended with a big retreat (yes... a water ski camp) east of the mountains with a number of other churches on Mercer Island. One of the churches we partnered with was a Catholic parish called St. Monica's. The youth pastor at St. Monica's was named Dan and he was what you would typically call a product of post-Vatican II libertarianism - loved to play guitar, was culturally savvy, and a real joy to be with. In short, he was pretty cool. One morning I was tuning my guitar to help lead in the morning worship service and he was listening to a cassette tape on his boom box (yes - the 80's - think Lloyd Dobbler in his trench coat hoisting Peter Gabriel over his head to win back Diane Court in Say Anything... THAT boom box). It was strange, but in the early morning heat and looking out on the browned sage bushes while listening to that tape, I felt what Wordsworth seemed to describe in "Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, on Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour. July 13, 1798":

And I have felt
A Presence that disturbs me with the Joy
Of Elevated Thoughts; A sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man,
A motion and a spirit that impels
All thinking, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things.

"Dan" I said, "what is that we are listening to?" "The Quiet" he replied. "What?" "John Michael Talbot - have you heard of him? It is an album he recorded called "The Quiet" The music draws you into the quiet places God wishes to speak, not cover them up."

I just sat there and listened to the Quiet some more. I thought about how hard that summer had actually been, how lonely at times and yet so full of purpose in what I was doing with those youth. I thought about my family - not always easy - and I thought about the fact that I was going to be graduating from college soon and had to make some hard decisions about my life.
I realised that I rarely listened to and with real quiet. Only in the quiet was I able to see and hear just how big the storm in my soul had become... and how little I wanted to deal with it.

Click.

I turned and saw Dan and turned off the tape and took it out of the boom box. "Here," he said, "you need this I think." I took the tape and then realised that I didnt know what to say. Dan probably knew this because he just stood up and walked away - leaving me in the Quiet.

Knowing Wright from wrong - the Jeremiah Wright debates

2008-04-10T09:00:00.000-07:00

While the controversy has settled down around the Jeremiah Wright sound bites that have gotten repeated play on Fox News Network, the question remains a valid one for any member of a church: when do you stay and when do you leave in the face of inflammatory statements made by the leadership? To what extent to you allow latitude and context and to what extent do you say "that's crossed a line I can't cross"? As Hillary Clinton was quick to point out, any inflammatory statement that would call into question the United States from a pulpit was see her exiting the church. Is this the essential question for allegiance to a congrgation and to a pastor - the issue of national pride at all cost? Recently, Tony Robinson (a local author and pastor in Seattle) wrote a great column in the Seattle PI on this question that is certainly worth reading. Additionally, Debra Mumford (a professor at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary) wrote a nice article on http://www.thethoughtfulchristian.com/ entitled "Jeremiah Wright and Black Prophetic Preaching" that rightly draws out the tradition of African American prophetic preaching as framed around different rhetorical methods and traditions of discourse than most white churches. Worth a download to be sure.

That said, sometimes it is best to just listen again to Obama's March 18th "A More Perfect Union" speech in Philadelphia. No matter how you slice it, one of the best speeches on race delivered by a public official bar none. This is 37 minutes well spent watching it again - and a lifetime worth of work ahead in the deep and abiding work of real racial reconcilation in America.

10 seconds of Zizek - On Freedom and what St. Paul and Lenin have in common

2008-04-06T14:54:00.000-07:00

"Was not Paul, like Lenin, the great "institutionalizer," and, as such, reviled by the partisans of "original" Marxism-Christianity? Does not the Pauline temporality "already, but not yet" also designate Lenin's situation in between the two revolutions, between February and October 1917? Revolution is already behind us, the old regime is out, freedom is here--but the hard work still lies ahead"
- The Puppet & the Dwarf

"We 'feel free' because we lack the very langauge to articulate our unfreedom."
- Welcome to the Desert of the Real!: Five Essays on September 11th, p. 2

Not Everything Must Change

2008-03-28T16:58:00.000-07:00

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.
Amen.

Indicators that things are off balance and the 3-step cure

2008-03-26T16:33:00.000-07:00

Akin to WB Yeat's beast, I too am slouching towards Bethlehem to be born... or better yet, I am slouching toward that Gadamarian fused horizon, that post-easter glow upon the waters that hangs out there in the distance. Yes, it is "ordinary time" once again - life after the lament of lent, the disquiet of holy week, and the apocalypse of Easter. I haven't really adjusted to the ordinary time yet - I want to return to lent for some reason. Perhaps I miss the building expectation amidst the sorrow, perhaps it is merely the weariness of being in "ordinary time". i just can't put my finger on it. I can feel the disquiet soul-deep with all the usual indictators:

(1) looking for a novel in the bookstore to read but everything looks like Chuck Palahniuk - all image and no depth.
(2) Trying to get work done and finding myself wandering AWOL across campus and mysteriously uttering the words "Americano, light room" to yet another barista-cum-confessor. (3) indicator #2 once again, only this time getting a muffin... how Charlie Kaufman is that!

Things that help get my head back in the game in 60 minutes:

(1) Turn on Tom Wait's Bone Machine and listen stem to stern
(2) Read selected sections of Cormac McCarthy's The Crossing while Tom Wait's world clatters, sputters and cracks ("Here was a God to study... a God with a fathomless capacity to bend all to an inscrutable purpose. Not chaos itself lay outside of that matrix. And somewhere in that tapestry that was the world in its making and in its unmaking was a thread that was he and he woke weeping...")
(3) Psalm 73 - Asaph understands things better than I do...

Obama 101 - a snapshot of things that are worth investing in

2008-02-23T18:38:00.001-08:00

I got an email this week from a long-time friend and McCain supporter. We have been friends for over 20 years, but the distance between us has grown politically in the past decade but only with this election come to a proverbial head. In short, he thinks I am being swept up in the fad of Obama - 'a victim of hype' as it were. *Sigh*

Here is the deal - Obama is the real thing. So, here is a snap shot of legislation:

- Promote Responsible Fatherhood: Obama will sign into law his Responsible Fatherhood and Healthy Families Act to remove some of the government penalties on married families, crack down on men avoiding child support payments, and ensure that payments go to families instead of state bureaucracies.

- Support Parents with Young Children: Obama will expand the highly-successful Nurse-Family Partnership to all 570,000 low-income, first-time mothers each year. The Nurse-Family Partnership provides home visits by trained registered nurses to low-income expectant mothers and their families.

- Expand Paid Sick Days: Today, three-out-of-four low-wage workers have no paid sick days. Obama supports guaranteeing workers seven paid sick days per year.

- Establish 20 Promise Neighborhoods: Obama will create 20 Promise Neighborhoods in areas that have high levels of poverty and crime and low levels of student academic achievement in cities across the nation. The Promise Neighborhoods will be modeled after the Harlem Children's Zone, which provides a full network of services, including early childhood education, youth violence prevention efforts and after-school activities, to an entire neighborhood from birth to college.

- Ensure Community-Based Investment Resources in Every Urban Community: Obama will work with community and business leaders to identify and address the unique economic development barriers of every major metropolitan area. Obama will provide additional resources to the federal Community Development Financial Institution Fund, the Small Business Administration and other federal agencies, especially to their local branch offices, to address community needs.

- Invest in Rural Areas: Obama will invest in rural small businesses and fight to expand high-speed Internet access. He will improve rural schools and attract more doctors to rural areas.

These are things Sen. Obama has been committed to since his day in the Illinois senate. He created the Illinois Earned Income Tax Credit for low-income working families in 2000 and successfully sponsored a measure to make the credit permanent in 2003. The law offered about $105 million in tax relief over three years. He has also championed multiple pieces of legislation to help low-income families find adequate affordable housing.

Needless to say, from time to time over the next few months, TheologyKungFu is going to work on highlighting some of these distinctives as the Convention season starts to move into high gear.

In short, if you have an option - at least get out there and voice it - if you need to test ride your views...voice it on the blog. If you are silent - you made just regret it in the months to come. The time for silence is over - we need to act. The time is now.

The Ache after the Glory - U2 in Lent, feeling spiritual jetlag before Ash Wednesday

2008-02-01T16:20:00.000-08:00

Go ahead - color me Emo... I dig Lent. This year Lent begins pretty early this year - the earliest in quite a few years... which is OK by me. I have serious spiritual jetlag these days - I find myself looking up at the sky and wondering if I missed the Rapture or something. This weekend in the church calendar has Matthew 17: 1 - 9 as the appointed reading in the lectionary - the Transfiguration of Jesus. I can relate to Peter's wish to build a mobile home park (vs. 4) and just hangout in all the holy afterglow of being in the midst of wonder. That said, we are called to leave the wonder and glory (Gk: 'doxo') behind for a season and now head down the mountain. This is the lenten time... the residue of glory in our hearts and minds as we walk the valley in need of healing. In order to do this we need to let go, get lean, and walk in faith. Now is the dim-lighted time. Now is the winter of our re-contentment if you will (sorry Billy Shakesphere...). I think I am ready for the wilderness thank you very much. I have too much crowding my heart that needs to be cut away...

I was just writing a student asking about where to start in the U2 catalog - what a difficult question. For me, the 'Wesleyan Quadrilateral' in the U2 canon in CDs (singles are another matter) comes down to (1) 1983 War - most realized album as a whole and has the raw unpolished energy of youth... they dont know how good they are yet; (2) 1987 The Joshua Tree - truly an amazing album start to finish... certainly shines under Daniel Lanois' production soft touch - more of a commentary on America in late 80's Reganomics than a self contained concept album; and (3) Achtung Baby - In 1991 U2 goes to Berlin and embraces electronica and darkness for the sake of light... scared U2 fans but the vision paid off; and (4) Pop - For a release in 1997, it is certainly an album dismissed in its time, but it still sounds fresh today after 10 years and is arguably one of the most spiritual albums they have made. Since Lent is coming up, bring this Quadrilateral full circle for the church calendar - listen to "40" from 'War' and "Wake Up Dead Man" from Pop back-to-back...

See you in the wilderness my friends...

The truth of sacred loneliness - thoughts on "Once" and "Year of the Dog"

2008-01-14T11:00:00.000-08:00

2007 seemed to be a year where being lonely became a holy thing. Think about two of the critically acclaimed indie films from last year - Once and Year of the Dog. Both films centered around characters for whom loneliness was not merely a problem to be overcome, but rather a place where something sacred could be found. Molly Shannon's character Peggy in Year of the Dog leads a seemingly painful isolated life that caves in after her dog dies. What emerges after this death of the one living thing she connected with was that her love for animals was larger than the life she had constructed - the humor of her trying to maintain 15 dogs in her house is a classic example of how people try to squeeze that which they love into their existing, small lives rather than take their lives into that which they love. In Once, Marketa Irglova and Glen Hansard play two quietly desparate musicians in Dublin seeking escape from their day-to-day lives. Hensard's Guy lives in the memory of love lost - the women who haunts his memories and his songs - and only talks of risking a leap into his love for music. Irglova plays the shy piano player from Prague who resides in Dublin but knows that she is needing to make peace and reconcilation with her past if her present is going to mean anything. Both admit to being trapped in their isolation - from their dreams, their hopes, and ultimately from love that is deep and trustworthy (the scene where Irglova buys batteries for her CD player late at night and sings aloud the song she has written to Guy's music is a perfect scene in this regard). As they move into the songs they sing, there is the discovery amidst the loneliness that neither was willing to admit, let alone deal with - a deep vocation "calling them" admist the loneliness they wouldn't have found otherwise.

There is a discovery in this loneliness that is not all darkness - the need to connect, the desire we have to live into that which we truly love, the wonder of those fleeting moments of ectasy when we glimpse what moving out of our loneliness and allowing love to be our home looks and feels like.

If this is the path to live worth living, perhaps we need loneliness to midwife us into this journey...

So this is the New Year... and I dont feel any different - looking for Magi in all the wrong places

2008-01-07T11:14:00.000-08:00

Ah yes - a new year and a new quarter. You can smell the freshly sharpened No. 2 pencils populating the messenger bags of many-a-student on campus. I am truly looking forward to 2008. This week is Epiphany in the church calendar - the time we reflect upon the journey of the Magi under the star of Bethleham which leads to the presense of Emmanuel, God-with-us.

In looking at the Matthew 2 text, the references we have point to some astronomical phenomena (translated as a "star" in most accounts) that connects us to what is going on here on Earth. In short, there is a great overturning of things and a touching of the divine with the secular. (I am reminded of Celtic "canticle of the turning" where the seasons are 'thin places' where the natural and supernatural blend together) Here in Matthew, the Star seems to point back to the prophecy in the Book of Numbers (24:17 - I behold him, but not nigh: There shall come forth a star out of Jacob, And a sceptre shall rise out of Israel, And shall smite through the corners of Moab, And break down all the sons of tumult) regarding the shining of the star over god's chosen - the Star of Jacob. Origen, one of the most influential early Christian theologians, discussed the connection between this prophecy and the Star of Bethlehem:

“ If, then, at the commencement of new dynasties, or on the occasion of other important events, there arises a comet so called, or any similar celestial body, why should it be matter of wonder that at the birth of Him who was to introduce a new doctrine to the human race, and to make known His teaching not only to Jews, but also to Greeks, and to many of the barbarous nations besides, a star should have arisen? Now I would say, that with respect to comets there is no prophecy in circulation to the effect that such and such a comet was to arise in connection with a particular kingdom or a particular time; but with respect to the appearance of a star at the birth of Jesus there is a prophecy of Balaam recorded by Moses to this effect: There shall arise a star out of Jacob, and a man shall rise up out of Israel. ” (Origen, Contra Celsum, Chapter LIX.)

According to Origen, if the magi knew of Jewish prophecy they could have "conjectured that the man whose appearance had been foretold along with that of the star, had actually come into the world." While Origen argued for a naturalistic explanation, John Chrysostom viewed the star as purely miraculous: "How then, tell me, did the star point out a spot so confined, just the space of a manger and shed, unless it left that height and came down, and stood over the very head of the young child? And at this the evangelist was hinting when he said, Lo, the star went before them, till it came and stood over where the young Child was."

What I am challenged by in this time of Epiphany is whether I am willing to follow folks like Magi who might lead me to the truth. Magi were not part of Israel per se, they were not part of the inner circle - they were "outsiders" and yet they got to the heart of things. Secondly, the Magi go home "by another way." They are changed by their encounter with Emmanuel, so much so that they much change their path of life entirely. I have been reading Douglas Coupland's latest novel, The Gum Thief, this weekend and have been struck by Coupland's insight into the fact that people generally hit a certain age internally and cease to grow. His primary protagonist, Roger Thorpe, begins a series of letters reflecting on his sad life as a relational wash-out and Staples employee with these words: "A few years ago it dawned on me that everyone past a certain age - regardless of how they look on the outside - pretty much constantly dream of being able to escape from their lives. They don't want to be who they are any more. They want out... I used the phrase "a certain age." What I mean by this is the age people are in their heads. It's usually thirty to thirty-four. Nobody is forty in their head. When it comes to your internal age, chin wattles and relentless liver spots mean nothing." As Roger goes through the book, his great lament is that he will always remain the same, unchanged by the seismic changes in his life - deaths, disaapointment, loss, joy, etc. Perhaps this is the notion of hell - to be unchanged in a world constantly changing and unable to move with the movement of God. This is TS Eliot's lament in the Journey of the Magi where the journey to Emmanuel leaves a taste in the mouth that no journey through time can erase:

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death?
There was a Birth, certainly,We had evidence and no doubt.
I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

I suppose I too should be glad of another death such as this...

The Nicene Creed and Melvyn Bragg's In Our Time podcast - a must for 2008

2007-12-28T10:33:00.000-08:00

If you are looking for podcasts worth listening to, one of my favs is Melvyn Bragg - he is a BBC 4 commentator and has for years done a weekly show called "In Our Time" which gathers together a panel of academics around a key issue that has shaped Western Culture. He covers everything - genetic mutation, the Reformation, Wordsworth's Prelude, etc. When I would drop Clara off at her preschool in Glasgow, I would sit and listen to In Our Time - often not getting home in time because I would just sit in the driveway till the program finished! Thank goodness for podcasting. This week he is looking at the Nicene Creed - a good one to dig into. He also sends a short email previewing the upcoming podcast. Here is the email previewing the Nicene Creed podcast:

Hello

Given the season of the year and given the extraordinary importance to
Christianity of the Nicene Creed, I thought you might like to have in front of
you the final (ish) version of the Creed, which was based on the creed of the
First Council of Nicaea in 325 but very much developed at the First Council of
Constantinople in 381:

We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of
all things visible and invisible.

And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the
Father before all worlds, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not
made, being of one substance with the Father; by whom all things were made; who
for us men, and for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate by
the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and was made man; he was crucified for us
under Pontius Pilate, and suffered, and was buried, and the third day he rose
again, according to the Scriptures, and ascended into heaven, and sitteth on
the right hand of the Father; from thence he shall come again, with glory, to
judge the quick and the dead; whose kingdom shall have no end.

And in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of life, who proceedeth from the
Father, who with the Father and the Son together is worshiped and glorified,
who spake by the prophets. In one holy catholic and apostolic Church; we
acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins; we look for the resurrection
of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.

What is most intriguing about the development of this Creed is the mixture
between high thinking and brutal politics. The words used to try to define and
re-define the relationship between God and Christ and the Holy Spirit was so
particular and abstract, so Greek and philosophical, and yet what was also on
the table was an extremely blunt soldierly attack on this powerful force in
order to put its dynamism at the service of the state.

You could say that Christianity has never recovered from the double blow. One
to put this great faith under the control of the state or to allow the state to
take it over – little choice there. Another to attempt to describe and
rationalise what in terms of faith is beyond rationalisation – which is what
drives some of the scientists crazy of course.

Nevertheless, along the way, with words like consubstantial and co-eternal and
whether the Holy Spirit was feminine and whether the Son of God was ever “not”,
areas of interest which I think apply to physics as much as religion were
raised and disputed for centuries and they were somehow the hinge in the
development and placing of Christianity in the history, often the bloody and
murderous history, of Europe.

Best wishes

Melvyn Bragg

Christmas Eve - The Noir of George Bailey

2007-12-24T07:51:00.000-08:00

As with most years, my wife and I sat in front of the fireplace while wrapping christmas gifts and watched "It's A Wonderful Life." Perhaps it is because my family name is Bailey that I connect with George's bildungsroman so well. I have to admit that I am a bit of a weeper when it comes to such things, and after years of watching the film every christmas, its the same story and the same result: George Bailey, the everyman of America's early 20th century - survivor rather than thriver of the American dream - feels his life is worthless and decides to kill himself. Given the chance to see what life would be like for everyone else if he had never been born, he finds that life is indeed the greatest gift of all. In its now iconic ending that Frank Capra sets up so well, all the townsfolk show up at George's house to bring gifts of money, but most importantly friendship that has endured for decades. George's now-famous brother, Harry - a war hero and all-star football player - comes center stage and raises a glass in toast to "my big brother George, the richest man in town." Everyone joins in the chorus of "Angels we have heard on high" and the bells of all christendom chime to announce not only that Clarence, the angel second class, has now got his wings - but that the world is not forgotten if we remember it and each other. Needless to say - I love this stuff and it only gets better as the years press forward. Every stage of life draws a different emphasis in the film - I longed for a relationship like George and Mary's courtship in my late 20's, I saw the pain of George struggling with his dreams in relation to his occupation - a job he never wanted but was destined to fulfill. In my 40's I watch George the family man - the guy who for all the good he is doing in the world comes home and creates chaos for his wife and kids. Here is a guy I can relate to all-too-well - the darkness of anxiety and fear that you bring home with you and find leaks out into your relationships with those most dear to you. The looks on his children's faces when he explodes in the living room should be required viewing for every father - it doesnt get more real than this guys...

That said, as I face Christmas Eve with my children this season - I will be raising a glass to George Bailey amidst the darkness of the day as well as the light. Here is to taking another step into the world with faith rather than fear...here is to not having all the answers...here is to the courage to say "I am so sorry" when we explode like monsters in the presense of our kids and wife and see our dark humanity all-too-well... and here is to friends and the community of saints that surround us that remind us that despite all this we can live another day to kick at the darkness till it bleeds daylight.

Here's lookin at you, George Bailey... Merry Christmas...

U2charist and Christmas CDs

2007-12-14T08:58:00.000-08:00

Just posted an article on The Other Journal entitled "Finding a Church that I Can Receive In: Responsing to the U2charist debate". If you haven't noticed amidst all your holiday planning, there has been a bit of a rumble in liturgically minded circles surrounding a phenomena called "U2charist" which is a service of Eucharist that utilizes themes and musics drawn from the corpus of U2. While some have denounced the services as evidence that we are only further degrading the Lord's Supper, I argue that at least these attempts at "singing a new song" is a move in the right direction in spirit if not also in truth. I worry about this vague Emergent semi-traditionalism that desires all the mystical darkness of a by-gone era yet rejects the authority and heritage which gave it life. All the votive candles and powerpoint Icons in the world does not a more Holy supper make... If I have to choose between a neo-goth service that only parodies the heritage it blithely seeks to (re)present and a U2charist... give me the latter.

On another note - Christmas is coming and the proverbial goose is getting rather anti-Atkins. Sooo... let's talk Christmas CDs! Here is a short list of Christmas discs spinning through my iPod this season - I would love to hear from you as to your sonic holiday cheer:

Over The Rhine - "The Darkest Night of the Year" and "Snow Angels" (the former for dark night of the Christmas soul, the latter for Christmas cheer with your favorite special someone)
Bruce Cockburn - "Christmas" (this is the high watermark of socially responsible cool christmas - too bad it is out-of-print)
Sufjan Stevens - "Hark! Songs for Christmas" (banjos and christmas..it was meant to be - this is a 5 CD set for under $20... what a deal)
"Lifted: Songs of the Spirit" - (Ok, OK, this is a Hear Music/Starbucks release... so shoot me! it is a *really* good collection!)
Vince Guaraldi Trio - "A Charlie Brown Christmas" (need I say more - the original Emo boy brings it at yuletime...everytime...)
The Basics - "Canticle of the Turning" (man... I just get sad to think these guys aren't a band anymore... if you can find a copy on eBay, snap it up...)
Emmylou Harris - Light in the Stable (she knows her bluegrass and brings a humble repose to the traditional)

Supplement - CCM songs I am not embrassed to play in public:

Randy Stonehill - "Christmas at Denny's" off the Return to Paradise CD (it is really a heartbreaking gem... I pray for the Denny's customers every season now... you can download the track from iTunes via the "Stories" CD)

John Michael Talbot - the Birth of Jesus (a wonderful album with all the Thomistic pomp this monk can muster...)

Happy Christmas collections from Tooth and Nail - some great covers and punchy vibe

OK - that's enough for now - let me know your thoughts...

Blessings and peace in this season of Emmanuel

Page France - Hello, Dear Wind and the neo-preschool genre

2007-11-28T09:45:00.000-08:00

Like most genres - be it music, film, literature, or other cultural products - there comes a time to redress and reassess said genre and (to put it bluntly) call a spade a spade. Arising out of the mire and smoldering wreckage of grunge in the late 1990's like well-coifed zombies were those sad clowns, forgotten on the school yard after everyone is picked for kickball troubadours known as ‘Emo’. Taking a page from the Smiths but leaving the eyeliner in the glovebox, the Emo genre came to mopey prominence in the visage of Dashboard Confessional for the mallrat and Subway sandwich set and Elliott Smith (him of Good Will Hunting soundtrack glory and self-compunction at a breakfast table) for the Denis Johnson reading, votive candle burning, nicotine and coffee set. However, we could only be sad and forlorn in the coffee shop so long. As the dawn arose in the proverbial sky and we crawled out into the open (some from the Mall, others from the café) rubbing our caffeinated eyes blinking at the new day , we who were so sad and clad in black and black found that perhaps life was worth living for yet another day after all. Elliott’s chemically managed sadness took us to the dark… but what would bring us to the light? The answer came in Sufjan Stevens, and Page France, and The Polyphonic Spree (them of wacky choir robes). Left behind and the minor chords of woe and the solemn darkness found rocking back and forth in the corner and enter the “duck, duck, GOOSE!” criss-cross applesauce sing-a-longs with simple melodies of what I call the "neo-preschool genre."

Take a listen to Page France's "Hello, dear Wind" sometime and remember the days of your youth...

Christ the King sunday - ending one year and beginning another

2007-11-26T08:20:00.000-08:00

I had a great time worshipping at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Anacortes this past Sunday. Needless to say, I love engaging with the liturgical calendar and having a service dedicated to remembering the Kingship of Christ was a gift. Christ the King Sunday is to be celebrated as the closing of the year for Christians, which is the last Sunday in Ordinary time before Advent and was declared a feast day for the church by Pope Pius XI in 1925. The intention is to celebrate and remember Christ's kingship over all creation, as well as remind us that all mankind must submit to Christ's rule. Given our bent toward democratic views of rule in the modern age, it can be a rather controversial day among some Christians because they consider the language of kingship outdated or oppressive. Some Protestant worship book revisions, during the Eucharist service, even say, "blessed be God's realm" instead of "blessed be God's kingdom" which shows a lack of critical theological reflection on Christ's Kingship. Unfortunately, the root of this mistake is the curse of modernism: culture transforms Christianity instead of the other way around.

For many, the images of kings and kingdoms conjure up thoughts of tyrants. Of course, few living Americans have ever lived under a king and even those are all immigrants. I would guess just as many people simply picture a character from a fairy tale or a movie, which could be positive, negative, or neutral. Regardless, the concepts people bring to the table should not dictate Church language. Rather, the unchanging Christ proclaimed by the Church should transform all secular notions.

In order to embrace the notion of Christ as King one must return to how Jesus, as King, acts. Jesus' earthly ministry was not one of military might or oppressiveness. Rather, it was one of peace, liberation, and above all, service. Jesus turned the whole concept of lordship and primacy on its head - hear these words from Mark 10:42-45:

"You know that those who are recognized as rulers over the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones make their authority over them felt. But it shall not be so among you. Rather, whoever wishes to become great among you will be your servant; whoever wishes to be first among you will be the slave of all. For the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many."

Thus, Jesus knew the popular images of kings and lords and he specifically redefined them, but did not reject them. In the new age, in order to be a ruler of all, a person must be a servant of all. Jesus demonstrated this servanthood in his life and miracles. Even the Incarnation is an example of this: God the Son, King of all creation, humbled himself to become human, even sharing the ultimate fate of his captive subjects: death.

Perhaps this is a good reminder amidst the challenging task we as Americans have before us when we discuss what government should look like in the coming elections...

A prayer for Thanksgiving - St. Augustine

2007-11-22T13:48:00.000-08:00

Breathe in me, O Holy Spirit, that my thoughts may all be holy.

Act in me, O Holy Spirit, that my work, too, may be holy.

Draw my heart, O Holy Spirit, that I love but what is holy.

Strengthen me, O Holy Spirit, to defend all that is holy.

Guard me, then, O Holy Spirit, that I always may be holy.

Amen.

- St. Augustine Spiraculum Vitae

from http://breadofashes.wordpress.com/2007/07/11/spiraculum-vitae/

thanksgiving and the 'true family'

2007-11-22T09:54:00.001-08:00

Needless to say, thanksgiving is a holiday in America that is truly mixed with deep passions: the desire to celebrate family, a deep sense of revisionism regarding how the country was founded, the primacy of God's favor upon our country in reference to others, and the consumerism (eat till you burst, watch TV till you go blind, etc.) that frames everything in the neo-pagan era. For the record, I love Thanksgiving as a celebration of 'giving thanks' and will go into today's gluttony with such a spirit. That said, the razors edge between celebration and disgust at our gluttony still haunts me a bit.

I have been thinking a lot these days about the nature of family in the NT. Jesus continually refers to 'blessing' (GK: markarios = blessed; blessing) as located where the poor, the hungry, the widow and orphan reside. The so-called 'nuclear family' of modernity is not even figured into this picture. To be 'blessed' is NOT to ape nor fetishize the status of the poor and marginalized (I can hear John Cleese's refrain as Robin Hood in Time Bandits in all its absurdity: "The poor are going to be absolutely thrilled. Have you met them at all? Oh you must meet them. I'm sure you'll like them. Of course they haven't got two pennies to rub together but that's because they're poor") - rather, we are to go TO the poor and marginalized and dwell there, for that is the address of blessing... not us.

Does Thanksgiving promote self-congradulations (ain't it great to be us today?!) or do we sit in silence at our full to overflowing tables and reflect on the fact that for many of us, we are not sitting at the right table nor with the right people if God's blessing is something we hunger and thirst for more than turkey?

Gobble, gobble...

It's the end of AAR as we know it... and I feel fine

2007-11-21T15:49:00.000-08:00

Well... another year of the American Academy of Religion conference has come and gone. This time in San Diego. As I have said, if a remake of Freaks and Geeks was put on PBS where all the kids went to grad school in Critical Theory and Media Studies, you would have an AAR conference. This year's event went well - some good papers and some no-so-much.

Highlights? As to be expected, some of the key moments took place outside the panel discussions - connecting with folks I haven't seen since University of Glasgow days, getting time with publishers (I have just finished a MS on critical theory and cultural identity and another on youth ministry), and relaxing with Diana. Additionally, hearing Charles Taylor reflecting on his latest tome - A Secular Age - as well some other luminaries is always a gift.

Downside? Well, I am just weary of the way religion (in my case Theology) is continually a content item for consumers rather than a transformative agent of our culture. The annual trip through the bookhall is testimony to this. I think someone needs to write a version of Jorges Louis Borges' "The Nothingness of Personality" (from 1922) that replaces his playful overturning of the self with the cipher of the theologian : "[the theologian], as I write this, [is] only a certainty that seeks out the words that are most apt to compel your attention. That proposition and a few muscular sensations, and the sight of the limpid branches that the trees place outside my window, constitute my current [CV]." OK... that is a bit cynical and brash... but there you go.

Darkness at the Edge of Town - Bruce Springsteen as Sonic Mystic

2007-11-10T10:53:00.000-08:00

When Jurgen Moltmann was on campus a couple of weeks ago, he spoke on the theme of Hope as a forgotten virtue in theological reflection. Part of this day was dedicated to seminars lead by faculty considering various ways Hope is articulated in our culture today. I lead a seminar on Bruce Springsteen and how is music articulates a 'sonic mysticism' which moves us through the classic movements of purgation, illumination and unity. It is now available on iTunes. Enjoy!

The grand mystery that is High School Musical

2007-11-07T09:19:00.000-08:00

OK... so my daughters have watched High School Muscial about 6 times and I have to admit that there is a viral quality there. Hard to get the songs out of my brain - I am trying strong doses of Springsteen, Shins, even the Kings of the Hook - the Beatles... but the virus remains...

Is this the 21st century Fame... Grease...? Will it stand the test of time?

"We're breakin' free...."

The Chosen - Gen 12:1-3

2007-11-04T12:02:00.000-08:00

Had a great weekend at our church this weekend with Dr. Frank Spina, one of my colleagues at SPU. Frank spoke on the notion of "The Faith of the Outsider" - a designation seen throughout the Biblical canon and the ways in which God continues to draw attention to the coming Kingdom of God vis a vis unlikely sources such as Rahab, Tamar, and others. This morning he spoke on Genesis 12: 1-3 and God's covenant with Abram. Is the call of God ultimately an exclusionary message - a line in the sand dividing who is "in" and who is "out"? For Frank, the call of God's covenant community is a calling to "chose" those outside the understanding of God's grace and draw them into the "inclusion" of God's saving embrace. Certainly a welcome message for a Presbyterian congregation to hear...

saturday morning...mourning...

2007-11-03T09:42:00.000-07:00

My Fuller class is off doing their reflection exercises and I am in the class trying to get my head around teaching today. Is it my imagination or has the desire on the part of ministrial students gotten so focused on "getting done" that they don't even consider "getting deep"? Perhaps it is just my "glass half full" side coming out on a saturday with lukewarm coffee in my travel mug...

Perhaps I need to listen to my own sermons on mornings/mournings like this...

It is good to be blogging again

spring is in the air...

2007-03-29T14:18:00.000-07:00

ah spring... yes, it has finally arrived here in Seattle. Flowers budding, grass getting greener, and the Sun is more than a memory. Students are back from their breaks and trying to will their minds into returning as well. I am looking forward to this quarter - I certainly think this will be a more reflective time than Winter and will hopefully provide a turning point for a number of things - intellectually, spiritually, and in our family.

watch this space :-)

cultured madmen and the depford trilogy

2007-03-22T15:09:00.000-07:00

ah... spring break. What a glorious release from the chilling grasp of Winter quarter. As always, it takes about 3 days just to unwind. I committed to reading a novel again this break - getting away for course prep and back to the heartbeat of life. I have been a fan of Robertson Davies for quite some time - his Cornish Trilogy is certainly a must read for theologians in the academy. For some reason I never picked up the Depford Trilogy - Fifth Business, The Manicore, and World of Wonders - but have been eating it up these past couple of days. I am particularly loving Fifth Business which is part classic bildungsroman, part F. Scott Fitzgerald, and part theatrical realism. The latter sub genre seems quite in vogue at present with films such as The Illusionist and The Prestige bring out late Victorian magical theatre to a 21st century audience.

A quote I love at present from Fifth Business:

On teaching at an All-Boys School:

"I liked the company of most of my colleagues, who were equally divided among good men who were good teachers, awful men who were awful teachers, and the grotesques and misfits who drift into teaching and are so often the most educative influences a boy meets in school. If a boy can't have a good teacher, give him a psychological cripple or an exotic failure to cope with; don't just give him a bad, dull teacher. This is where the private schools score over the state-run schools; they can accommodate a few cultured madmen on the staff without having to offer explanations." (p. 129)

ahh... Christmastide is upon us at last... get the Sufjan Steven's Christmas EPs now!

2006-11-25T14:07:00.000-08:00

Well... time to break out the Christmas CDs and spike the 'Nog. Advent is right around the corner and I am more than ready to get into the Christmas groove. I broke out Sufjan Stevens' Christmas trinity of EPs today and just can't say enough good things about that Midwesterner Mystic and his banjo. The title was originally "Hark! Songs for Christmas" but has been shortened by his label Asthmatic Kitty to "Songs for Christmas." At any rate, the collection is a worthy addition to your iPod - just the right mix of emo and celebration for the Advent season.

On another note, I am sooo glad to be coming to the end of this quarter. My student load was pretty high and I am cresting the assessment burn-out phase at present. Soon and very soon... this too shall pass.

BTW - if anyone has top Christmas CDs we need to have on constant rotation... lets hear it!

made it through week 1... a (re)new(ed) focus for TFK

2006-10-01T15:30:00.000-07:00

well, the first week of the quarter has come and gone and I can live to tell the tale. My voice is shot to heck though, but that is typical for me. One class I am especially intrigued by in a class on Minor Prophets I teach on Wednesdays - should be good fun.

Needless to say, blogging took a back seat to other pressing matters of the summer - but I shall strive, dear Readers, to be more on top of things in the weeks to come. Part of the challenge to determine a new focus for our discussions on Theology Kung Fu and get some energy going again. If folks would like to chime in feel free.

On the culture front, I am really enjoying Cormac McCarthy's latest - The Road. No suprize to those who know me, but this latest outing by McCarthy only confirms my belief that he is the literary doppleganger of Tom Waits and Nick Cave. I will chime in on this more in another posting.

2006-09-08T21:38:00.000-07:00

The end of summer with the Boys of Summer - took this with my friend Stephen from Glasgow. Good game - the M's actually won!

Long Time, No See - Check It Out

2006-09-08T09:02:00.000-07:00

2006-09-01T16:18:00.000-07:00

2006-09-01T16:14:00.000-07:00

quote for the weekend... "be" the luminous darkness

2006-05-12T16:17:00.000-07:00

"The act of being [(esse)] St. Thomas contemplates derives neither from metaphysics nor from ontology nor even from the [Heideggerian] 'question of being', but from the divine names and the 'luminous darkness'."

Jean-Luc Marion, "Saint Thomas d'Aquin et l'onto-théologie," Revue Thomiste 95 (1995): 66.

adventures in irony: horizontal climbing wall

2006-05-08T17:32:00.000-07:00

Today at SPU, a student group brought a climbing wall onto the Loop (aka the SPU commons) and raised up to encourage people to lead active lifestyles. After a time the wall was taken down - just lowered so that the "climbing wall" was horizontal with the ground. In short, walking and climbing got you no further - all was the same. Needless to say, I was observing not just the absurdity of a horizontal climbing wall, but the way the church operates in Western culture. What it means to "climb higher" is no different in effort nor perspective than just strolling alongside. When will the message of the church be something more than an absurd oddity in a pastoral setting?

Sigh... I better get climbing/walking/strolling back to the office...

Can you have Emergent worship in the daylight?

2006-05-08T06:55:00.000-07:00

So I was posed this question the other day - can you have emergent worship in the daylight? - and I have to admit the question is intriguing. Like a moth to the flame, I have been circling the Emergent bonfires and (in a rather 'emergent' repose of watching from the fringe) very hesitant to get too close to the thing. It is an interesting notion - that there is something inherently shadowy in the newer church models: the high value of anonymity, always valuing the fringe over and against the center, the so-called high virtue of personal freedom vs. corporate freedom (the latter seems more in keeping with the Christian tradition - we are 'free' in authentic relationship... not 'free' from them), and the fetishing of tradition rather than the dialogue and humility found in the understanding that this "great cloud of witnesses" that surround us may indeed have something to say that is worth listening to.

All the candles and powerpoint slides just seem to fail once the Sun rises...

after the fall - Steven and Mark's annual slainte' va

2006-04-29T20:44:00.000-07:00

This story shall the good man teach his son;

And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,

From this day to the ending of the world,

But we in it shall be remember'd;

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;

For he to-day that sheds his blood [drains his dram] with me

Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,

This day shall gentle his condition:

And gentlemen in England [and throughout Seattle] now a-bed

Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,

And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks

That fought [and drank] with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

Henry V (4.3)

Creatio ex Fury - listening to Whiskeytown on the Sabbath...

2006-04-23T08:58:00.000-07:00

"He [Jesus] never shed his peace on this land/ so I started this damn Country band..." - Ryan Adams/Whiskeytown - "Faithless Street"

I wonder (along with Ryan Adams) how much contemporary music is started where faith ends - amidst the disappointment and discouragement found in the wake of God's seeming silence. The more I listen to the neo-cynics (writers, singer-songwriters, bloggers, etc) I find such a longing for God just to punch back. As if the vitriol waged is not for humanity, but the post code is actually the divine abyss - a message in a whiskey bottle thrown in fury and tears into the canyon-shaped darkness of our over-worn echoes crying out for love and acknowledgement.

If we hear the whiskey bottle explode upon impact - at least we will know something is at the bottom of all things. Maybe our tears will find a resting place amidst the broken shards of frustration as well.

I think this is what Elliott Smith was after with "Bottle Up and Explode" and everything afterword including the third self-inflicted thrust of the knife into his own heart - if I can't figure out why this heart should keep beating, then maybe stopping it will be something...

twilight revisited - mornings before sound

2006-04-20T06:32:00.000-07:00

One of those nights - one of girls had a high fever and couldn't sleep and another was coughing so keeping our oldest awake. In short, we all saw aspects of the night pass by in minute long sections. Wednesday is my busiest teaching day and I get home after 9pm, so this lack of rest becomes all the more pronounced.

As such, I am up now and facing the dawn beside our garden. I am in the silence of this morning.

It is amazing how quiet it is when I dont disturb the twilight.

At night I fall asleep in the spring to a riot of frogs barking in the pond near our home - a chorus so chaotic yet rythmically unified that John Cage probably wishes that he had thought of it first. Yet with the dawn these prehistoric chantors retreat to their muddy abodes and the silence remains. Birds - we have an assortment of junkos frequent our yard - are only now waking up.

Finding these pockets of silence is not easy and takes work. One of the desert fathers of the 5th cenutry - Abba Felix - wrote that the spiritual pilgrim needs to "create a space where obedience to truth is practiced." Creating a space for silence is a bit counter-intuitive it seems (isnt silence itself merely space?) but the more jacked-in our culture becomes - cell phones ringing, texting one another, IM flashing in pop-ups on our screen, email flooding in and purging out, TIVO'd television shows crowding our senses at all hours of the day, podcasts fighting for attention with the ever-blaring radio - the more such a discipline will save us from ourselves.

Sometimes such a holy space is right before us - in the liminality of our just having been asleep in the dawning light and the moment prior to all our senses being assaulted by our modern life.

I heard a creak on the floor boards upstairs... looks like it is time to click my heels together 3 times and head back to Kansas.

we see through an egg darkly... then we shall see face to face - Easter reimagined

2006-04-16T11:03:00.000-07:00

It is difficult to recast the Easter story, so I do extend grace to all those in the pulpit today attempting to make the message fresh and invigorating. Amidst the empty tomb and 'cinema verite' of the Passion events, there is still the glare of glossy eggs, bunny rabbits, and wicker baskets... let alone lack of preparation for the unexpected.

My daughter made a window design in an egg shape from bits of paper - fragments of something formerly whole. I like this as the lens through which we see Easter in western culture - through an egg darkly yet straining to see face to face with God. We squint through the fragments and torn pieces of meaning in our lives, striving to encounter something - Someone - more durable, more deep, more broad than what seems to surround us.

Easter is about breaking through these fragments and seeing beyond and yet being seen...

He is risen... He has risen indeed...

Holy Saturday - making a path with a guide

2006-04-15T10:10:00.000-07:00

There is something haunting about today - Holy Saturday - which is the true 'time between times'. Absolute negation, aporetic irony... all the usual stuff.

Maybe it is the left-over fragments of everything that proceeds this existential abyss - akin to the broken pieces of stone after a wall falls down, we either re-purpose these fragments or discard them. Such is the stewardship of regrets, loss and pain - either we doing something with it or we become it.

Henri Nouwen put it this way in his reflections upon Holy Saturday:

"Once we have begun to completely offer our wounded selves to God, all our wounds become signs of hope, as the wounds of Jesus were for the doubting Thomas. Once God has touched us in the midst of our struggles and has created in us the burning desire to be forever united with him, we will find the courage and confidence to prepare his way and to invite all who share our life to wait with us during this short time for the day of complete joy."

We hunger for a map... but we really need a guide...

feel the back on my palm! - toddler missiology cont.

2006-04-09T09:18:00.000-07:00

Kids are just so dang authentic. On Palm Sunday we armed an army of munchkins with palm branches and then proceeded to ask these kids just to "stand still and start waving the palms after we read the scripture regarding Jesus' entry into Jerusalem." Well... that lasted about 10 seconds... The kids were standing in close proximity to one another and started to WHACK each other with the palm branches. Giggles broke out among the faithfully gathered as - WHACK! - another kid felt the backside of a palm branch. It was rather comical but a great display of how I pictured things happening. People pushing and shoving for a better view, not really caring about the reason for the gathering but making the most of the palm branches around them.

I can see why it would have been - WHACK! - difficult to see - WHACK! - as well as - WHACK! - hear what was going on that day....

Ode to Deacon - the ministry of loss

2006-03-30T16:01:00.000-08:00

On March 25th, a shooter went into a rave house on Seattle's Capitol Hill district - he shot and killed 7 people including himself. The violence was only made more pronounced by the seemingly random nature of the event. One of the victims was a young man named "Deacon" because he was an ordained deacon at a local Presbyterian church. My friend Hallack is the pastor at his church and invited me to assist in the funeral service. Not an easy time to be sure.

What I was most impressed by during the service was the number of members of the rave community who came and participated - mourning, weeping, being angry, and creating pieces of art to lay at the alter.

Why does it take a funeral to draw communities together?

finding the lost sheep - toddler missiology

2006-03-26T09:48:00.000-08:00

I really think I need to spend more time with 2 year olds. This past Sunday I 'did my time' in the Toddler Room helping with their Sunday School class. Granted, I view this as my payment of sorts to the Children's program so that I walk with a good and clean mind when I drop my daughter off on Sundays. However, I was struck with the missiological boldness of these kids! The story of the day was the parable of the lost sheep and one exercise they did was to follow a little maze (see above picture) and find the right 'path' for the shepard to travel upon in order to 'find' the lost sheep. 2 year olds are just amazing in this regard - they dont see the world broken up into categories and sub-sets and certainly dont have a few that 'one path' is better than another path. Theirs is a global perspective. In short, EVERY child just colored all over the place - lines were things to break down and the notion of play would have Gadamer come back from the grave and join Riverdance. The question was not one of 'lost' and 'found' - the question was one of celebration. I ask my daughter Eilidh if she wanted me to help her trace the path leading to the sheep and her reply was, well, brilliant: "huh? I can see the sheep... so doesnt God already know where the sheep is?"

My Bling Bling and other discoveries cast in plastic

2006-03-23T10:56:00.000-08:00

Sometimes things make sense when you spend time amidst plastic... especially larger than life Toys-R-Us stores with more plastic formed into shadowy forms of true joy than you could find anywhere...

The singularity of welcome

2006-03-19T12:21:00.000-08:00

I was in a church the other day and saw this picture of the congregation circa 1923. In the upper right hand corner, the church reader board listed out the service schedule (my phone didnt capture the photo well - mea culpa!) and I was struck by the large word at the bottom - "WELCOME" I drive by numerous churches here in the Pacific Northwest, and I rarely see the word "WELCOME" just hanging out there without qualification. The people clustered together in this 1923 photo truly seemed to be welcomed - they sat next to each other in a way that seemed authentic and not forced. I stood there in the Narthex just looking at these faces alongside this strange word from the past and found myself longing for its simplicity.

What is we were people of welcome and not war? welcome and nor weariness? welcome and nor wealth? welcome and nor always wandering?

I would like to go there...

the true silence and the moment is gone - teaching into being

2006-02-16T17:58:00.000-08:00

One of my classes meets at a coffee shop in the Queen Anne area of Seattle. It is a senior capstone course for Theology majors. Each week we gather together to discuss, in seminar fashion, both the 'looking back' and 'glimpsing forward' of their pilgrimage as theologians. I find the discussion engaging, frustrating, joyous, humbling, and just plain ackward all at once. There is something in the process of teaching students - that moment when you have moved beyond info-dumping and critical semi-objective discourse to that liminal moment of 'being' in the discipline. It is that moment I have often with graduate students who suddenly realise that here, in this room with these people and in the mix of faith and so-called certainty we discover the true silence of 'being' - both with each other and before the eyes of God. I wish I could sit in that space more often - it seems fleeting.

This moment where I snapped this pic is such a moment - students just chatting while getting coffee drinks five minutes before the seminar starts... but the conversation has meat on it - things being said are hyperlinked to the stuff of eternity. I guess I just tried to catch the moment for you... but like showing you a starfield on a cloudless night or hearing the laughter of a 3 year old... no technology could capture such divinity. In short, ya just had to be there...

As Nietzsche has taught us, so we pray...

2006-02-08T14:01:00.000-08:00

On Works and Faith – Protestant teachers continue to propagate the fundamental error that all that matters is faith, and that out of faith works must necessarily proceed. This is simply not true: but it has so seductive a sound it has certainly confused other intelligences than Luther's (namely those of Socrates and Plato): even though the evidence of every experience of every day speaks against it. The most confident knowledge or faith cannot provide the strength or ability needed for a deed, it cannot replace the employment of that subtle, many-faceted mechanism which must first be set in motion if anything at all of an idea is to translate itself into action. Works, first and foremost! That is to say, doing, doing, doing! The 'faith' that goes with it will soon put in an appearance - you can be sure of that.

(from Daybreak, Book I, § 22)

Re-considering Radical Orthodoxy

2006-02-04T16:01:00.000-08:00

I might have to soften my usual criticism of anything touting itself as "radical orthodoxy" after having just read Frederick Christian Bauerschmidt's essay 'Aesthetics: The Theological Sublime' in the original Radical Orthodoxy: A New Theology reader. In it, he writes:

"[O]ur experience of the world is an experience of godlessness. But in the cross we are presented with a God who is present even in godlessness, and in the resurrection we are promised that godlessness shall not have the last word. This provides a ground of critique by which we might distinguish false representations of God from true or, perhaps more precisely, by which we might distinguish 'idols' (our representations of the divine) from 'icons' (God's self-presentation in revelation) [here Bauerschmidt is using Marion's formulation of idol and icon, as put forth in his God Without Being - B.H.]. The 'cruciform' life of Jesus - and his life is cruciform in that it is lived in its entirety 'toward' the cross - serves as the norm of holiness, and all other claims to righteousness must fall under its critique. The cross and resurrection, in their very negativity and obscurity, become the icon by which God presents to us God's own unpresentable trinitarian life, and we are called not to irony, but to adoration and participation." (pg. 211)

Why I hadn't already read this essay, I'm not quite sure. But better late than never. Not unrelatedly, I'm considering the possibility of making Marion a major player in my dissertation. The more I read of and about him and his work, the more I dig it.

silence amidst the waterlogged

2006-01-23T19:25:00.000-08:00

Needless to say, I have been a bit absent from the ol' dojo the past fortnight. Things, as they say, have gotten a tab bit OOC (out of control).

One of the questions raised by students in class today has left me feeling a bit put out and unsettled was framed in deafening silence - little to no interest in engaging questions surrounding christians and 'just war'.

How do you stoke a fire under wet wood?

For the beauty of the bite - a theology of food

2006-01-02T17:40:00.000-08:00

Have we lost the beauty of food? Not in our house...

A Song For The New Year

2006-01-01T10:10:00.000-08:00

(Adapted for TKF by BMH - apologies to all, especially Robert Burns)

Should auld blog dojos be forgot
And slowly fizzle out?
Should auld blog dojos be forgot
Where we wrestle faith and doubt?

For auld Sensei [1], my dear,
For Sensei JFK,
We'll try our best in new year blest
To blog on TKF.

And here's a post, my trusty friend,
And gie's [2] a post o' yours.
We'll try our best in new year blest
To blog, and do our chores.

For auld Sensei, my dear,
For Sensei JFK,
We'll try our best in new year blest
To blog on TKF.

[1] Auld (“old”) here in no way implies that Sensei JFK is old in the chronological sense. It might help the reader to think of this use of auld as being more consistent with the theme-song to the television series The Dukes of Hazzard, wherein Merle Haggard sings: “Just some good ol’ [i.e. auld/old] boys / Never meanin’ no harm...” Clearly, Bo and Luke Duke are young men, not old; the modifier is employed rather affectionately, as something like a term of endearment.

[2] gie’s = “give us”

Where pigs meet dinosaurs - Advent in the church creche

2005-12-18T10:11:00.000-08:00

By far, the best place to experience Advent during a church service is NOT in the sanctuary. If you really want to embrace the 'uproar in bethleham' - do some time in the nursery/creche. This is a shot taken whilst I was working in the 2 year old room last Sunday. Granted, the sanctuary was illuminated with candlelight, lovely evergreens adorning the pews, ect. It compels one toward lofty thoughts and inward stillness. But let's get serious - how truly 'contemplative' was that uproar in Bethleham 2,000 years ago? I am sure screams and confusion was more authentic than handheld candles with cardboard drip protection guards whilst humming "Silent Night". In the creche/nursery one find chaos, confusion, and the ever-present smell of poo and pee. Children feel lost, misunderstood, and comforted all within a 60 second time span. It is life on the floor - seeing kids at their level - that recalls that "beastial floor" Yeats overly romanticised.

Come to the creche all you who are heavy laden... there you will find chaos and peace dwelling as one as the pigs and dinosaurs...

Christmas

The apophatic life of a commuter...

2005-12-14T16:18:00.000-08:00

There is something distinctly apophatic about the evening commute on an American highway. This is a picture taken as I was heading home last night - cars all moving fairly well at 60 mph after bottlenecking and slowing to a standstill so everyone could be a voyeur at a fender-bender. It is not what happens, but what doesnt happen that consumes the mind (and fuel) of a commuter - the radio station isnt playing what I need right now, I am not at home, I didnt get done at work what I had hoped, this car isnt as cool as the ones passing me, I am not in the freakin' diamond lane, etc. This negative space, as noted by Sting in "Syncronicity II", of "lemmings trapped in shiny metal boxes" is a odd place to be sure.

dang... I wish I was home...

The Advent of Marking...

2005-12-13T08:58:00.000-08:00

The work has begun as the students have fled the campus - stacks of blue books, essays, and journal reports are now what remains of ten weeks together as teacher and students. Strange the way things become reduced to mere words and bullet points on Power Point slides...
TS Eliot measured life with coffee spoons - if I don't get cracking on this marking, I will measuring my life by other means...

Eilidh being...well...very Eilidh-like...

2005-11-27T18:56:00.000-08:00

My daughter running at me full speed - nothing like Joy unbridled and completely without fear to put things right in the world...

Thanksgiving - the eucharist of life new and old

2005-11-23T14:56:00.000-08:00

I saw this 'alpha and omega' moment Thansgiving weekend as I was coming back from the Grad Library at the UW. One of those crisp fall days in Seattle when the light bends just right as Cat Stevens' "Silent Sunlight" came up through my iPod. The tree stump on the left had squirrels fighting over a nut whilst the wee tree to the right just silently grew.

Heck... I better re-read Shel Silversteins' "The Giving Tree" again - I think there is a lot more going on than a guy building a boat...

Religion for Sale - life after the American Academy of Religion 2005 conference in Philadelphia

2005-11-19T09:31:00.000-08:00

I had a good week at the AAR in Philly. Diana was able to join me this round and it made all the difference. The conference is, by and large, a parody of satire (is such a thing possible?!) regarding the state of Religion in mass produced academia today. In short, the so-called "in jokes" formed in cheeky paper titles is really a joke (or a 'pox') upon us all as theologians - the only people who get the so-called 'jokes' are not those we think the joke is aimed at (those low church folk we giggle about in hallways) but ourselves... and that is truly a dark thing altogether: sad and lonely religious scholars half-drunk and lost in their own obscure world.

In the food court I spotted this Buddha "priced to move" - seemed to sum things up quite well...

U2 Theology talk - stream the joy!

2005-11-08T14:29:00.000-08:00

Just got down with the Generous Orthodoxy conference. Had some great discussions with Brian McLaren during the D. Min. course I taught for Bakke Graduate School and presented a workshop on 'U2 Theology' that was fun. Always nice to get some support for my view of Bono as a 21st century '(opti)Mystic' vis a vis the Apophatic move of 'With or Without You'. Some folks at this blog recorded the session if you want to listen in. Also, a nice review of the session from Beth Maynard at Get Up Off Your Knees here.

Friday Morning Download - "Brother Love's Traveling Salvation Show" by Neil Diamond

2005-10-14T19:31:00.000-07:00

There is a certain cycle to life - a movement that can begin with crisis, result in deep set shame and anger, and then move through healing, reconcilation, and yes, peace and contentment.

This pretty much sums up my relationship with Neil Diamond...

Let me go back to the 1970's - those golden halcyon days of youth where I was beginning to understand that being 10 years old included establishing myself as "cool." This entailed a certain level of image management: grape ripple Goodie comb sticking out of the back of the Sears Toughskins, pooka shells around the neck and whatnot.... you get the picture. My cooler than cool friends introduced me to the wonder of Disco and all those 'conjunction' bands - Kool AND the Gang; KC AND the Sunshine Band; Earth, Wind AND Fire. However, stepping into my families '72 Red VW Campervan was a story in geek fear writ large. Of the 4 or 5
8-Tracks we owned, the majority of playtime was the Jazz Singer himself... Neil Diamond. I just tuned him out as much as I could and hoped that my folks didnt put any music on when it was our turn to drive kids home from swim team practice. Friends of mine would talk about their parents going to cool concerts - the only concerts I remember my folks ever attending were Neil Diamond. In a sense, it was almost liturgical. Neil Diamond would bring his big floor show to Seattle every fall and sell out the Arena for a week stay - it was my pre-Advent nightmare. The 33 1/3 albums would plop onto the turntable and Neil would start singing about "butterscotch sticking to all his senses." To a 10 year old - it just sounded...well... gross.

Fast forward a few decades...

I don't know if it is a sonic narcotic or what... but now I see the light: Neil Diamond is the original Emo boy. Before Bright Eyes, before Elliott Smith, before Death Cab, before The Arcade Fire, before Iron and Wine... there was "I Am I Said... to no one there..." He also was very interested in the performativity of religion - that faith is emotive and vibrant. One of the songs I consider a guilty pleasure is "Brother Love's Traveling Salvation Show" - a great tribute to the tent revival preaching of the southlands. The song builds from the lyric that would become the title of his platinum selling live album (and one of the most suggestive album covers to boot...) "Hot August Night":

Hot August night
And the leaves hanging down
And the grass on the ground smelling sweet
Move up the road
To the outside of town
And the sound of that good gospel beat

As the gospel choir preps the song, building in volume, Diamond struts in - no longer Yussel Rabinowitz, a talented cantor from "The Jazz Singer" - but a revivalist preacher ready to 'turn and burn' a room:

Room gets suddenly still
And when you'd almost bet
You could hear yourself sweat,
he walks in
Eyes black as coal
And when he lifts his face
Every ear in the place is on him
Starting soft and slow
Like a small earthquake
And when he lets go
Half the valley shakes

Whether evoking images from "Night of the Hunter" or "The Apostle", Diamond does a great job of making revival a sing along. It is just a great reminder that although Diamond's career has certainly taken the all-too-painful turn toward self-parody (but it is a lucrative parody - Diamond's 2005 box-office haul thus far is more than $42.4 million from 43 shows, 36 of them sell-outs) he still can write a great song.

However, this parody is going to change in November when Rick Rubin - the wunderkind producer noted for restoring Johnny Cash's glory through the American Recordings series - is producing and releasing a spare, raw album by Diamond entitled simply "12 songs". I am certainly looking forward to it. Granted, in the currency of music, Diamond is no Cash… but who knows? Maybe under Rubin’s heat… there might be some coal under that Diamond after all…

Friday Morning Download - "ABC (remixed)" by The Jackson 5

2005-10-07T13:30:00.000-07:00

My freshman students this year were BORN in 1985... just let that fact sink in for sec...

This is a generation for whom the notion of "cut and paste" has never entailed picking up a pair of scissors. Wired magazine recently trumpeted the "cut and paste" cultural revolution in its July 2005 issue with the likes of cyberpunk godfather William Gibson stating that modern cultural history from the Beat poets through to the the JarJar-less "Phantom Edit" is nothing novel, but a mash-up of influences remixed for easy consumption and instant access.

The latest celebration of remixing on my iPod is "Motown Remixed" which is the respinning and mashing up of Motown artists by DJs, Hip Hop, and Trip Hop artists. As I have mentioned in previous Friday Morning Downloads, the art of the cover song is truly a sacramental engagement. Does the artist attempt to honor the original artist by merely mimicing every aspect of the song as it was first recorded... or is honoring the original artist by taking the direction set by the song and adding a new signature? Much of this comes to how we understand the sacraments in themselves I suppose...

Take the remixed version of the Jackson 5's classic "ABC". When the DJ remixed the song, he didn't crush the song under the weight of additional techno funk. Rather, to discover the song, he opened it up - separating each track from each other then systematically relaying the tracks with time delay of macroseconds to give 'space'. The bass and drum loops give room and don't crowd. What I heard anew in this remix was the amazing innocence in Michael Jackson's voice. However, what is also telling is the minor key Indian bhangra-enhanced chimes that give the all-too-knowing sound that this young boy is doomed to live a minor key. Indeed, given what has happened, it is at times painful and at times illuminating to let this young voice be young once again. Sometimes we need to remix the past to truly appreciate how far we have come... or how far we have fallen...

[If want to sample the remixed samples on "Motown Remixed" you can stream Oliver Wang's review of the CD from NPR's Morning Edition here. ]

Friday Morning Download - "Gotta Serve Somebody" as sung by Shirley Ceasar

2005-09-29T19:22:00.000-07:00

Like quite a few of you here in the US , I was watching Martin Scorsese's 'rockumentary' this week on Bob Dylan - No Direction Home. The film on PBS was incredibility focused - a very human look at the singer-songwriter's life and music from 1961-66 which chronicles those years when Bob Dylan moved from being merely another folk singer to a true American icon. What I was most taken with was the raw, vunerable interviews with Dylan of 2005 reflecting on his life and art. More than once he mused that "Hibbing (his hometown) was nowhere - I came from nowhere - my family didn't influence me. I left Hibbing and made myself." There was a stark amorality to his reflections - beholden to no one, meaning was something found only in the "Now". Most telling in this regard was the interviews with those who were 'closest' during these years. Listening to Joan Baez, it was as if Dylan honestly didn't realize that the world around him was in turmoil. As she put it, people think that his songs denoted a level of commitment to certainly political views - taking a stance against Vietnam, against Racial injustice, etc. What made his songs powerful, she said (as did Mavis Staples), was the transcending quality of life that he sang about - and the power came when the songs, along with the growing mythos of 'Bob Dylan', was taken on by other artists. Even though the 'artist known as Bob' never did sit-ins in protest... the spirit was breathed into the millions that did sing his songs amidst THEIR actions of protest and gave the songs flesh... and the songs became (along with Dylan) protest songs.

In a similar way, the Columbia records compilation from a few years back entitled "Gotta Serve Somebody: The Gospel Songs of Bob Dylan" takes the flesh of Dylan's more 'faith-centric' tunes and gives them Holy Spirit power in and through the voices of true Gospel artists. Dylan's dance with Christianity -including the famed harmonica backing for Keith Green - is the stuff of legend. The late John Bauldie heard from Tony Wright, the artist who Dylan hired to paint the original cover to the Saved album that "when he was doing the previous album, Slow Train Coming, in Muscle Shoals, he'd had this vision of Jesus, of the hand coming down and these hands reaching up. And he said at the same time he had this vision, he saw the whole album too--all the songs, everything, the whole thing was there. And he said, 'What you've drawn here was exactly what I saw'."

In a similar vein, the gospel artists on "Gotta Serve Somebody" 'sing' what they see as the event horizon of Dylan's songs, many that are often dismissed by Dylan fans from his "Saved" and "Shot of Love" era and deserve the proper context to be heard.

The first track has Gospel great Shirley Caesar starting off with a call to worship pre-song rap which includes these words--"I wanna share Bob Dylan's song with you". As one reviewer noted "[I]t may well be the case that she's done to "Gotta Serve Somebody" what Jimi Hendrix did to "All Along the Watchtower." Like Hendrix, she wasted no time in making it her own (she recorded the song in 1980); Dylan even said, way back in 1985, that he liked her version better than his." Caesar, in this take, makes heartfelt and emotional declarations that seem anything but weak, alludes to the Hebrew scriptures at the beginning of the song (Joshua) and at the end (Chronicles) while her backup singers--with their occasional "Serve my Jesus."

The lost boy from Hibbing, Minnesota has certainly written some great tunes - many that speak of a home in ways it seems that his "the never ending tour" only begins to touch on.

If you get a chance, pick up a copy of "Gotta Serve Somebody" - even if you can't stand Bob Dylan's voice... these artists will get you out of your seat and dancing in the aisle...

Friday Morning Download - "Yesterday" by The Beatles

2005-09-22T17:15:00.000-07:00

Songs don't make memories - but certain songs certainly bookmark them for us.

To be human is to have memories which are often engraphed to our deepest longings - our childhood wonder of catching a snowflake on our tongue for the first time, the angst-ridden shame of wanting to fit into a conversation at school and being tuned out, the awe of falling in love and the humility of the small things that keep love alive. Along the way music provides both a canvas upon which our memories gain their shape and hue and an earthy bed into which memories develop deep and abiding roots. We nurture our glad memories growth by tending this garden of the past - pruning and shaping the good and killing off the bad. Yet beyond our ability to tend the garden of our past only goes so far when an unannounced pop song comes on the radio in a crowded party or fills the sonic space of a coffee shop. In an instant we are 13, 22, 35, 41 all over again. Memories long dormant are double-clicked like a hyperlink to the soul. Memories awaken and with them the all-too-real emotions flood us in a torrent.

I think this is the irony of the Beatle's classic "Yesterday" - the memories continue to circle the central character like a hawk, pulling him back to his past which is his true present:

Yesterday,
All my troubles seemed so far away,
Now it looks as though they're here to stay,
Oh, I believe in yesterday.

Suddenly,
I'm not half the man I used to be,
There's a shadow hanging over me,
Oh, yesterday came suddenly.

This ironic turn - the present is only found in the past ("yesterday came suddenly") - is a core facet of the Christian faith. The Eucharist itself teaches us how very present the past truly is. We remember our present even more than we live it - or we live our past best by remembering it anew. The fact that the Eucharist is the Lord's Supper only in the ACT of remembering should 'remind' us that just because Lot's wife wasn't supposed to look back doesn't give us license to ignore that which was.

Or maybe just listening to the Beatles from time to time is a good thing...

Friday Morning Download - "Jerusalem" by Steve Earle

2005-09-18T20:41:00.000-07:00

What does it mean to be "American"?

I admit asking myself that question at the odds times these days - driving down the freeway past the 14th Walmart I've seen in 10 miles, watching Sean Penn rush to help Hurricane victims with his PR agent in tow to photograph his humanitian efforts for the fans, or just the simplicity of watching America's great pasttime played on a September evening by a group of kids on a sandlot that looks like a Norman Rockwell painting in 3D.

Writing songs and albums that are attempts at capturing what it means to be "american" is as old as Cole Porter. Whether unbridled patriotism or protesting Uncle Sam with righteous indignation - pop music has been a medium to define and ultimately promote a particular slant on the U.S. of A. Perhaps the battle to define what it means to be 'american' in the 3 1/2 minute pop song stems from the fact that no artistic form in recent memory captures the 'shape' of the American soul - immediately accessable and easy to sing along to even if the melody is forgotten.

My vote? Probably one of the most 'patriotic' albums in recent years has been Steve Earle's "Jerusalem".

If you haven't gotten into Steve Earle - he is a national treasure... or traitor depending on your views. Earle has been, for the past two decades, one of the more compellingly engaged figures on the American cultural landscape. He is the author of best-selling works of fiction (“Doghouse Roses”) and a playwright. Best known as a alt.country musician par excellence, his contribution to the merging of progressive country to the wider rock audience remains huge. Indeed, there is every reason to believe that the entire genre of “alt. country” would not exist without Earle’s ground-breaking extension of what used to be called “folk-rock.” His recorded work, from the classic 1986 Guitartown onward through such excitingly heartfelt/redemptive works as Copperhead Road, I Feel Alright, El Corazon, Transcendental Blues, to the current The Revolution Starts…Now, represents an extraordinary catalogue of deeply personal music which compares favorably with such esteemed heroes as Neil Young, Bruce Springsteen, or even Bob Dylan.

In describing, Jerusalem, Steve Earle's sixth album in six years, Earle says, "This is a political record because there seems no other proper response to the place we're at now. But I'm not trying to get myself deported or something. In a big way this is the most pro-American record I've ever made. In fact, I feel URGENTLY American. I understand why none of those congressmen voted against The Patriot Act, out of respect for the Trade Center victims' families. I've sat in the death house with victims' families, seen them suffer. But this is an incredibly dangerous piece of legislation. Freedoms, American freedoms, things voted into law as American freedoms, everything that came out of the 1960's, are disappearing, and as any patriot can see, that has to be opposed."

One of the most controversial songs in recent memory is the song "John Walker's Blues", which deals with John Walker Lindh, the Marin County teenager and admitted Taliban fighter. Opening with the lines, "just an American boy, raised on MTV…I seen all the boys in the soda pop bands and none of them looked like me" and finishing with a recitation of Sura 47, Verse 19 of the Qur'an, Earle wrote the song as the newspapers clamored for Walker to strung up for treason.

"Would I be upset if [my son] suddenly turned up fighting for the Islamic Jihad? Sure, absolutely. Fundamentalism, as practiced by the Taliban, is the enemy of real thought, and religion too. But there are circumstances. Walker [John Walker Lindh] was from a very bohemian household, from Marin County. His father had just come out of the closet. It's hard to say how that played out in Walker's mind. He went to Yemen because that's where they teach the purest kind of Arabic. He didn't just sit on the couch and watch the box, get depressed and complain. He was a smart kid, he graduated from high school early, the culture here didn't impress him, so he went out looking for something to believe in."

The album is tight and the questions it raises are simply electric. Earle says Jerusalem is his "most Old Testament record," noting that "I've only got one chick song on it, the one I sing with Emmy [Emmylou Harris]. His critique of fear based paranoia ("Conspiracy Theory") seems to be more true today than ever.

However, at its most apocalyptic with the likes of the opening track "Ashes to Ashes" which feels at home alongside Tom Waits' "Earth Died Screaming", Jerusalem is essentially a CD of hope. As Earle states: "I am really optimistic. That's the idea of "Jerusalem," the last cut on the disk you hear the bad news. You know it is not a lie. What happened on 9/11 was a horror, what happens every day in Israel and Palestine can be a horror. But you try to see past that. You have to believe this will be better. To some redemption, I'm someone who has always wanted to believe. I'm good at it."

Maybe being American is something more than America after all? Maybe the idea that formed that drive to find the New Jerusalem across the Atlantic over 200 years ago still animates and illumines the hearts and minds of artists willing to ask hard questions and sing difficult words in a hope beyond hope...and points us toward concerns outside our national interests and toward a humility of Kingdom centric love...

As Earle muses in the closing song "Jerusalem":

I woke up this mornin' and none of the news was good
And death machines were rumblin' 'cross the ground where Jesus stood
And the man on my TV told me that it had always been that way
And there was nothin' anyone could do or say
And I almost listened to him
Yeah, I almost lost my mind
Then I regained my senses again
And looked into my heart to find
That I believe that one fine day all the children of Abraham
Will lay down their swords forever in Jerusalem

Well maybe I'm only dreamin' and maybe I'm just a fool
But I don't remember learnin' how to hate in Sunday school
But somewhere along the way I strayed and I never looked back again
But I still find some comfort now and then
Then the storm comes rumblin' in
And I can't lay me down
And the drums are drummin' again
And I can't stand the sound
But I believe there'll come a day when the lion and the lamb
Will lie down in peace together in Jerusalem

And there'll be no barricades then
There'll be no wire or walls
And we can wash all this blood from our hands
And all this hatred from our souls
And I believe that on that day all the children of Abraham
Will lay down their swords forever in Jerusalem

[If you are interested in a free download of Steve Earle, you can sample "Guitar Town" off his recent Live from Austin, Tx. CD or pick up his rather timely duet with Jason Ringerberg entitled "Bible and a Gun".]

Friday Morning Download - "Forever for You" by John Doe

2005-09-08T14:33:00.000-07:00

One thing needs to be stated at the outset - I was never cool enough for punk.

As a theologian in my 40's, I doubt my 'street cred' in punk circles could ever be established, so I won't even try. Granted, I love(d) the Clash (especially "London Calling") and living in the UK gave me a deeper appreciation for "The Guns of Brixton" as art and much needed social commentary. What I appreciate the most about punk qua punk is the constant move against being categorized - to be labeled 'punk' per se is to be labeled 'not punk'. Where the church often errs is in the search for categories and labels which end up being the source of praise and argument rather than the content the labels and categories point toward.

Perhaps this is why in the punk family, John Doe and X makes sense to me - a band member and band that labeled essentially 'non-labeled'.

The LA band 'X' was formed in 1977 after songwriter and bassist John Doe (b. Feb. 24, 1956) met (and later married and is now his (e)x) Exene Cervenka (b. Feb. 1, 1956) at a Venice poetry workshop, with rockabilly veteran Billy Zoom (b. Feb. 20, 194?) on guitar and D.J. Bonebrake (b. Dec. 8, 1955) on drums, the band garnered an immediate following. "Discovered" by ex-Doors keyboardist Ray Manzarek, he took the band into the studio for the recording of Los Angeles in 1980. In theory, punkers and folkeys don't find a lot to talk about especially at this point in the late '70s when both camps were fighting a common enemy - namely DISCO! That said, X's merging with an ex-Door was not only tolerated, but earned them stature as California's preeminent punk band when the record earned across-the-board rave reviews.
1981 saw the release of the similarly punked-up Wild Gift, while their 1982 album, Under the Big Black Sun, began what would be a long career in merging hard rock, country and folk into their fiery mix. The band successfully began to mix in their populist politics with an eye toward matters of the heart.

Lead singer and songwriter "John Doe" was dreamed up in Los Angeles in January or February ’77 after an exhausting trip from Baltimore on Halloween, 1976. As Doe says in his bio - speaking in the 3rd person about his persona:

"[John Doe eventually] settles in Venice, CA (‘cause that’s where the Beats lived), goes to the Venice poetry workshop and meets Exene [John Doe's now (e)x yet X and Knitters bandmate]. X band starts, records a single, gets more popular (1979 there was a line around the block at the Whisky), signs to Slash Records and by 1981 the L.A. “punk-rock explosion” is all but over. X’s first two records have poetry and hard rock; it connects with the audience’s guts and brains and the critics really like it."

John Doe's latest solo album, "Forever Hasn't Happened Yet" (Yep Roc) is on constant iPod rotation during my commute. Where most people see punk rockers as screamers without a voice - John Doe has an authentic sound with tons to say. While this comparison will be seen by some as praise and others as blasphemy - John Doe treads much the same path as Bruce Springsteen, at times with equally striking results. Punk is like folk music in its need to tell stories of truth - the difference in genre is that folk will walk slowly through metaphor, punk is existentially Marxist in its direct, no-holds barred approach to "in your face." In this way, "Forever Hasn't Happened Yet" plays the 'via media' blending cracking punk and introspective folk with a casual intensity. What is stunning in the record is just how 'easy going' this effort seems - Doe just gives the impression that making razor-sharp music keen with insight is oh-so-easy to do. Listening to "Twin Brother," his heartbreaking duet with Grant-Lee Phillips, is about as good as this kind of music can get and reminds me what people seem to mean by 'americana' before it got corporate. There are hints of the Lizard King Jim Morrison on "The Losing Kind," and "Hwy. 5," a great duet with Neko Case that John Doe wrote with his ex-wife, X's Exene Cervenka, recalls his old band's later years - it has all the funk and swagger that made punk in the '70s something more than noise - it was the heartache of Beat poets amped up and storming the stage with truth in its teeth.

Showing that genre is something for A & R guys and record companies alone, the personnel of X just released a new album under the guise of the Knitters (an old alias (with Dave Alvin) which yielded one Slash album, Poor Little Critter in the Road, in 1985) for a new album 20 years later entitled "The Modern Sounds of the Knitters" (Rounder). Dave Alvin rejoins John Doe, Cervenka and others to celebrate the rough, rocking side of country music. The CD includes two X tunes and reinventions of Steppenwolf's "Born to Be Wild" and Ralph Stanley's "Rank Stranger" - showing that the 'old timey' nature of "O Brother Where Art Thou" may have been more punk than anyone realized...

For a free download of John Doe, you can get his duet with Go-Gos Jane Wiedlin - "Forever with You" off his 2002 "Dim Stars, Bright Sky" here - a nice tune for your weekend driving. In many ways, given the tragedies in America's Southland in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Doe's lyrics seem poignant - in the end of all things after systems (whether religious, government, or institutional) fade away amidst tragedy ("we're not united/but stand for each other/when the whole world let us down/no red, white and blue/no more 'underground'/standing up for you/I'm Forever for you...") - we are left with each other. Perhaps this is where we begin to understand what 'forever' is to look like as we finally see one another in the aftermath, shame, and grace that comes...

If this is what it means to be "punk" - maybe John Knox was more like Sid Vicious than I thought...

Labo(u)r Day reflections

2005-09-05T07:25:00.000-07:00

Read the following this morning as American awake to "labor day":

"This is the big lie the world tells us: that the universe is connected by trade agreements, electronic banking, computer networks, shipping lanes, and the seeking of profit—nothing else. Whereas this is the truth of God: all creation is one holy web of relationships, and gifts meant for all; that creation vibrates with the pain of all its parts, because its true destiny is joy."

Good to wake up to words like this since the world seems increasingly fixated on profit rather than the prophetic.

Friday Morning Download - "Kiss Him Goodbye" by Steam

2005-09-02T15:43:00.000-07:00

Is it me or do songs that degenerate into post-linguistic revelry provoke the uncontrollable drive to sing along? I have found this utterly ironic - once language moves beyond the framing of a linguistic system ('La La La') and into the pure utterance of sound qua sound - we feel some permission to draw closer and want to join in. Here is an example: think of the 1969 song "Kiss Him Goodbye" written by Gary DeCarlo, Dale Frashuer and Paul Leka. Surely one of the most covered songs in pop music given its popularity at sporting events as a trumpet blast to the competition from the soon-to-be winning fans that the game is about up. The lyrics as written are a mess - here is the chorus:

Na-na na-na-na na na na na na na, hey hey hey, goodbye Hey hey-hey, goodbye
Na na na na, na na na na, hey hey hey, goodbye
Na na na na, na na na na, hey hey hey, goodbye
Na na na na, na na na na, hey hey hey, goodbye [repeat many times and fade out]

However, even the most staunch and dour churchmen will open his wee gob and belt this out alongside the roaring masses. It is a strange thing to behold - the same devout and earnest churchmen will sit in utter stillness during a song with lyrics drawn straight from the Psalms but 'refrain' from joining in the refrain in order to protest the instrumentation of choice.

You can see the same thing in "The Night They Drove Ol' Dixie Down" by The Band ("The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down, and the bells were ringing, The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down, and the people were singin'. They went La, La, La, La, La, La, La, La, La, La, La, La, La, La") and many other tunes.

Part what drives this home for me is that this is where my daughter joins in as well. Recently we were singing along to Ernie and Bert's Sesame Street classic "La La La song" where Ernie and Bert try to think of words that begin with "L" (i.e. "La La La Laughter... La La La Lumps in my oatmeal..."") Both girls love this song and belt out their respective choices throughout the 3 minute ditty. My oldest told me the other day why she loves this song: "This is such a fun song, Daddy - I like songs that smile") .

I am not advocating for barking and howling through a service of worship by any means... but sometimes worship should provide the most guttural points of entry for anyone wishing to enter in. Yes, maybe even language itself moves aside to bid welcome and invite those who can make some noise - any at all - to the congregational gathering of song. I think of this during Christmas when during the candle light services with "Silent Night" some churches will advocate "humming the tune" amidst the wash of silent darkness broken by wee flickering of flame. It still moves me to hear the humming - maybe because there is something there that I can't put my finger - something I don't understand that beats deep below my understanding. Maybe we just need to hum along a bit more in church or offer some space for "La La La" every once and a while...and give people the space to join in...

Thoughts?

Friday Morning Download - "The Weight" by The Band

2005-08-26T13:21:00.000-07:00

The crossroads are a strange wilderness area in life. Things inhabit, grow, and often thrive at the point of corssroads that don't seem to exist anywhere else. Case in point - everyday I drive on Highway 527 from Mill Creek through the city of Bothell and I come to the end of the road where I must choose to go right or left. At this particular crossroads is the location of the Washington State Ferret Rescue and Shelter. Every morning I take that right hand turn and my peripheral vision catches the weather-beaten sign hanging half shackled to an abandoned apartment building identifying the locus of Ferret advocacy for the Pacific Northwest. Anywhere else this beaten up sign with its bizarre mission statement would seem out of sorts - but not at this place-between-places.

In short - strange things are made normal at the crossroads.

I had a similar experience last week when I watched Martin Scorsese's 1978 rockumentary "The Last Waltz." I had been meaning to watch "The Last Waltz" for quite a while and finally took the dive after seeing a $5 DVD of "The Last Waltz" in a bargin bin at Safeway. In so many ways, The Last Waltz lives up to the hype - it really is one of the best rock-n-roll films bar none. As many of you know, the film chronicles the last concert at the end of the last tour of The Band - Rick Danko, Levon Helm, Garth Hudson, Rickey Manuel, and Robbie Robertson - one of the best late 1970's acts to grace the stage. The film begins rather Tarantino-esque by starting with the end - an encore of a Marvin Gaye cover "(Baby) Don't Do It." From there the movie progresses through some standard "rocumentary" asides with members of The Band waxing lyrical about their careers, relationships and various luminaries from rock history - Eric Clapton, Bob Dylan, Dr. John, Emmylou Harris, Muddy Waters, and Emmylou Harris to name a few (watching Neil Diamond sporting shades that are now back in fashion is dead brilliant) - take the stage to send them off to pasture.

What is particularly great about the film is Scorsese's use of 35mm film and multiple camera angles to create a lush, deep feel to the visuals as well as 3 staged pieces that showcase 3 classic songs from The Band's catalogue. These set pieces feel like a larger-than-life operetta - something obscenely grand in scope and large in feel - imagine a rock video framed with the care of a 1940's MGM productions such as "Gone With The Wind". Scorsese shot these scenes on huge sound stages and fills the visuals with soft light gels and eerie dry ice effects so you are not sure where you are in time and space. Of the 3 set pieces, the visual and sonic production of The Band's classic "The Weight" is noteworthy. Scorsese invited The Staples Singers to join The Band for the song and the addition is magical. Mavis Staples continues to be one of the great voices in Blues and Gospel having sung with Bob Dylan and many others. There is just something distinctly "other" about this paring of a southern-flavored bar band and three Gospel singers finding a home around a song that speaks of putting burdens on and taking burdens off.

Robbie Robertson speaks of writing "The Weight"in this way:

"When I wrote ‘The Weight’, the first song for ‘Music From Big Pink’, it had a kind of American mythology I was reinventing using my connection to the universal language. The Nazareth in ‘The Weight’ was Nazareth, Pennsylvania. It was a little off-handed - ‘I pulled into Nazareth’. Well I don’t know if the Nazareth that Jesus came from is the kind of place you pull into, but I do know that you pull into Nazareth, Pennsylvania! I’m experimenting with North American mythology. I didn’t mean to take sacred, precious things and turn them into humour."

However, listening to "The Weight" backed by the Staples Sisters sounds like a strange crossroads convergence of worlds layered - American trucker mythos drawn into New Testament typology - there is "no room at the inn", but this Nazareth is set both in an American landscape and a backwater Middle Eastern village. The guy of the Manger past and Honky Tonk present is a-skinnin’ and a-grinnin’, but has zero to offer. The song offers a crossroad and overlapping of worlds with a repeating theme that transcends time and place - it might be that a rock musician pulls into Nazareth, Pennsylvania but if so, Nazareth warps itself into the biblical town then into a western town before his eyes.

I pulled into Nazareth
Was feelin’ about half past dead
I just need some place where I can lay my head
‘Hey, Mister can you tell me where a man might find a bed?’
He just grinned and shook my hand
And ‘no’ was all he said.

This "crossroads" of American myth and the Biblical landscapes is certainly a part of rock music and something that people instinctivelyconnect with. Why the church needs to be so overt at making connections to the faith tradition when people's imagination seems hardwired to make these connections remains a mystery to me. If rock musicians understand this - why can't the church?

We all seem to live at the convergence zone of our past, present and future lives akin to a Quantum Leap episode. This convergence offered by Scorsese shows that living at the crossroads is always more interesting than getting to where you are going. The crossroads of the Band's last hurrah brought a transcendent wrinkle to a familiar tune and carried it to another level.

Whether saving ferrets or getting the load off our brother's back, the crossroads continues to be an interesting place...

Good article on Brother Roger of Taize

2005-08-19T08:19:00.000-07:00

For those wishing to read some of the background of the Taize community and the effect they have had on ecumenical worship, this is a nice article - here.

Death of Brother Roger of Taize

2005-08-18T12:47:00.000-07:00

I just heard that Brother Roger - spiritual father to countless Christ-followers throughout the world and the Abbott of the Taizé Community - was killed during evening prayers yesterday, Tuesday August 16th, 2005 and he died immediately (read more).

This is certainly a tragic loss for the ecumenical movement and a moment of sorrow for this ministry.

Friday Morning Download - "Imagine" by John Lennon

2005-08-17T10:23:00.000-07:00

"Imagine there's no Beatles, imagine no iconic movies, no White Album, no poetry books, no drawings," wrote Linda Winer for Newsday after panning the recent debut of of the new Broadway musical - Ballad of John and Yoko - drawn from John Lennon's writings. "Then imagine there's no son before Sean, no mistress named May Pang, no deep depression, nothing really serious with drugs." As Linda Winer and others have pointed out in this most recent re-imagining of John Lennon's life through art, this production is very"Ono-centric." Passing quickly over Lennon's career in the Beatles, the production gives little time to his first marriage, or to the son he fathered before he met the Japanese artist. It also omits his affair that forced the couple apart for more than a year.

But when has the omission of so-called "facts" or the bending of time ever stopped people from embracing a hero of mythic stature? As much as folks try to "get real" with regard to our mythic icons, the myth and that which gave it to us will still prevail. John Lennon may have been a cheat and a jerk... but one fact that does go without disputing - he was John freakin' Lennon.

The Beatles and its component parts of John, Paul, George and (yes) Ringo continue to be one of the greatest cultural influences in Western culture hands down. Granted, John worked hard in latter years to separate himself from the Beatles in interviews, but essentially the parts and whole merged beyond separation - one of pop musics best exponents of Perichoresis.

Frankly, it is difficult to 'imagine' pop music as we know it without the ghostly presence of John Lennon lurking behind the scenes. Not just the shape of his art but the shape of his epic life - humble UK art student turned Hamburg indie musician turned megastar turned gunned-down hero of flower children around the world turning The Dakota Hotel and Mark Chapman into cultural icons in their own right. If there is a taproot from which our current understanding of pop music draws its strength, John Lennon would seem to be a good candidate.

In the area of Christian critics - John Lennon thought alot about Christianity and wasn't short on words in regard to where the state of the union is. Lennon's now classic statment in an airport in 1966 - "Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn't argue about that. I'm right and will be proved right. (The Beatles are) more popular than Jesus now; I don't know which will go first, rock 'n' roll or Christianity. Jesus was all right, but his disciples that were ordinary. It's them twisting it (the story of Jesus) that ruins it for me" is still something I hear pop up from friends who feel Lennon understood something the Church never has.

I do think Lennon is right to some extent. After the media backlash and bonfires at youth retreats fueled by copies of Rubber Soul, Lennon responded by stating "Look, I wasn't saying the Beatles are better than God or Jesus. I said 'Beatles' because it's easy for me to talk about Beatles. I could have said TV or the cinema, motor cars or anything popular and I would have gotten away with it."

Maybe the vector Lennon should have taken - rather than there are alot of things more 'popular' than Christianity - is what he would later frame in his signature post-Beatles song "Imagine". Namely, that the problem with religion today has more to do with a lack of imagination than with a drive for certainty:

Imagine there's no heaven, It's easy if you try,
No hell below us,Above us only sky,
Imagine all the people
living for today...
Imagine there's no countries,
It isnt hard to do,
Nothing to kill or die for,
No religion too,
Imagine all the people
living life in peace...

It is a moving song with a piano track that gets me everytime. I have never embraced Lennon's neo-Marxist utopianism - that humanity is infinitely perfectible, meaning is purely found on an imminate plane, and "love is all we need" seems down right glib coming from a guy who could afford to dwell upon his navel thanks to the royalty checks filling his bank account daily from "Love Me DO. Regardless, the song still gets me. I suppose it is my own lack of imagination that stirs under the weight of Lennon's tune - the fact that we live in an age of unbridled horrors against the poor and marginalised and nothing seems to change. Perhaps Lennon's honesty in the final verse - the prayer of unity - is what gets me in the same way the end of It's a Wonderful Life gets me every Christmas:

You may say I'm a dreamer,
but I'm not the only one,
I hope some day you'll join us,
And the world will live as one.

It is a drippy utopotian statment - akin to George Bailey in the big singalong of Burn's Auld Lang Syne- that we aren't the only one dreaming of a better today and hope for tomorrow... but there is something to that. And maybe that is where we begin.

Friday Morning Download, Guest Edition: "Viðrar Vel Til Loftárása" by Sigur Rós

2005-08-12T08:04:00.000-07:00

When you mention Icelandic music, most people’s associations don’t venture much beyond Björk. But in contrast to “Selma’s” dead-goose-draped, blip-bloop-ka-ting-ka-tang, “everything is music” kookiness, there’s another band in the land of endless night/day (depending on the season) every bit as innovative and quirky as the ice princess, but who prefers raw feedback to slick synths and linear mini-symphonies to catchy pop nuggets.

The band formed in 1994 on the birthday of singer Jón þor Birgisson’s (henceforth "Jonsi") sister; she was given the name Sigurrós (“victory rose”), and in her honor the band was named. Sigur Rós’s first album, Von (“hope” – 1997), is a difficult listen, even for a fan, fractured and halting, representative of a band trying to find “that sound” and a singer in search of a voice. That album’s worldwide release didn’t come until after the relative success of Ágætis Byrjun (something like “an alright start” – 1999), and after receiving the accolades of 3/5 of Radiohead in a 2000 SPIN magazine cover story, and after the lead-off track (well, technically track 2) featured in Vanilla Sky, Cameron Crowe’s 2001 “spot-the-pop-culture-reference” remake of Alejandro Amenábar’s already freaked-out Abre Los Ojos, this masterpiece was pretty much the world’s introduction to Sigur Rós.

Some melodies, even upon first listen, possess the uncanny ability to sound—to feel—familiar, and yet still manage to enthrall. There is no scientific formula to explain this. However, my own experience is that Sigur Rós have, at least more than most bands, figured this out. Their sweeping anthems hearken back to a time when musical compositions were not limited by radio-imposed three-and-a-half-minute maximums, while also looking hopefully ahead to a time when music unhindered by pithy lyrics, sing-song-y melodies or artist image but instead evoking spiritual passion and emotion might re-enter popular consciousness. Their grand yet gorgeously simple songs for the most part eschew verse-chorus-bridge-chorus patterns, opting instead for less limited and limiting, more expansive compositions.

Jonsi often sings in a language that he and the band have dubbed "Hopelandic," which draws on phonemes and phrases from their native Icelandic, yet is devoid of any grammatical coherence. According to their website, Hopelandic is "a form of gibberish vocals that fits to the music and acts as another instrument. Jonsi likens it with what singers sometimes do when they've decided on the melody but haven't written the lyrics yet." Rather than settle on particular lyrics which might convey a particular message or narrative, the songs are left open-ended, suspended just shy of completion. Sigur Rós are content to exist in this enigmatic space. Reminiscent of both religious tongue-speaking and jazz vocal scatting, Jonsi’s glossolalia befits the spiritual quality of their music.

At first glance, the quartet looks no different than any other guitar-keyboard-bass-drums modern rock band. However, assumptions fade when Jonsi begins to coax waves of breathtaking ambience from his electric guitar using a violin bow, and then vanish altogether when his inhuman falsetto cries suggest a language more akin to angels than men and contribute to the spiritual resonance of their epic soundscapes. His voice is beautiful and yet disconcerting at times, suspended somewhere between generations and genders (Jonsi is gay, incidentally), often altered electronically, moving suddenly from whisper to wail. This otherworldliness of Jonsi’s angelic voice, sometimes childish, sometimes feminine, in its very dissonance with the outward appearance of this masculine, guitar-playing rock singer, points to something else, something beyond the singer himself. In their mysterious, glossolaliac language, which explicitly means nothing at all, in the longing evoked by the falsetto voice and in the expansiveness of their compositions, Sigur Rós touch on the mystery of communion, the meeting of the human and the Divine.

In listening to their records as much as in a live setting, a sort of sacred, participatory space of liturgical performance opens up wherein a community gathers to celebrate and grasp after something that cannot quite be put into words. Unlike most hymns of the church, which are composed to convey specifically prescribed doctrinal "truth," Sigur Rós seek to connect with their audience on a more primal, organic level, allowing the spirit(ual) to emerge on its own terms, without manipulation, taking a more mystical, apophatic approach, attempting with sound to touch, however briefly, that which words fail to apprehend. The band took this ethos to almost absurd extremes on their 2002 album, enigmatically titled, or not-titled as the case may be, ( ) – yes, that’s just an open parenthesis and a closed parenthesis. The album’s eight songs, none of them titled, average 8-minutes in length. The liner notes were, well, empty – no photos, no words, no nothing except some strange, black-and-white earthy designs. It seems Sigur Rós decided that Keith Whitley and Alison Krauss were on to something – you do, in fact, say it best “when you say nothing at all.”

I attended my first Sigur Rós concert (I’ve now been to three) in Louisville, Kentucky on 26 March 2003 (and courtesy of my friend Timbre, a breathtaking singer/songwriter/harpist in her own right, I am lucky to have a recording of this particular show). About an hour into their magisterial set, the band played “Viðrar Vel Til Loftárása” (“good weather for airstrikes” – huh?) from Ágætis Byrjun, a song well-known to fans. Halfway through this 10-minute composition, the band came to the end of a phrase and, for want of a better term, paused – leaving their last note suspended, lingering, hanging in the room. This pause was both musical and physical: the band stood motionless, Jonsi’s eyes closed, his violin bow poised in mid-air. The audience was deathly silent, the likes of which I have never experienced in any setting before or since. While the drop of a pin might have been masked by the whirring white-noise of fan-cooled amplifiers and lighting mechanisms, chairs forewent their creaking, feet their shuffling, lungs their breathing. This pause, this suspension of the conversation, this aching sigh, lasted an amazing 50 seconds (believe me, I’ve clocked it). Eventually, as the band flawlessly resumed, the song’s remainder became the much-needed response to the wearisome sigh of the song’s first half.

In an essay entitled “Conversation and Communion,” Regina Schwartz, Professor of English at Northwestern University, writes these words:

"The rhythm of conversation is marked by silence. It is in this silence…that response is located. This silence is waiting...full of expectation of an answer. It is also the silence of attention, of hearing, that precedes and occasions a response. Sometimes it can be the briefest of silences, barely noticeable for the overlapping of voices; sometimes an agonizingly long, even interminable silence."

Perhaps within this gathered community, diverse people of all religions and none interpreted this transcendent moment in diverse ways, according to varying criteria and experiences. In that moment, however – in that sacred space – we were all “people of faith,” believing, hoping, longing that the cry would be answered and the conversation would continue. We were transformed by a frail, silent prayer, one that began in cacophony and ended in ecstasy and between which we bore witness to the miracle of creation.

[For a legitimate free mp3 of “Viðrar Vel Til Loftárása,” right click the link and select “Save Target As...” – also, visit the download page on Sigur Rós’s website for many other free gems.]

Harry me softly with his song - Harry Potter, evangelist

2005-08-09T10:51:00.000-07:00

Harry Potter and the Hogwart's VBS - How one church embraces popular culture to accomplish its evangelism mission. An interview with Tosha Williams, Vanguard Church

After five record-breaking books and three successful movies, Harry Potter has secured his seat among the most beloved heroes of youth pop culture. But with the recent release of author J.K. Rowling's sixth book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, some in the church are still unsure what to make of the winsome wizard. Many church leaders, including Pope Benedict, have condemned Harry Potter, but at least one church, in a controversial move, embraced him. Their example raises a larger question: To what extent should the church embrace popular culture in order to reach lost people?

Kelly and Tosha Williams started Vanguard Church in Colorado Springs eight years ago with the goal of using popular culture to attract people to Christ. But when the church created a vacation Bible school based on the Harry Potter books in 2003, they attracted a lot of media attention and criticism. With the release of the newest Pottter book, their VBS story was told again on national television. So we spoke with Tosha Williams, creator of the "Potter Project" at Vanguard, about the issue of using popular culture to accomplish the church's mission.

Full article found here.

Harry me softly with his song... on Harry Potter as a Horcrux

2005-08-08T12:24:00.000-07:00

It came to me like a blot from the blue – in the last HP installment (year 7 – title yet to be named) we will follow Harry, Ron, and Herimone (aka the Wizarding Scooby Gang) through the past narrative topography of the last 6 books (Diagon alley, the Dursleys, Tom Riddle’s shack, etc) in a race against the clock to destroy the 4 Horcruxes in order to bring Voldemort to mortality and end him once and for all. They will find 3 but still need 1 more – and then we find that the scar on Harry’s forehead is more than a remnant of a past encounter – it is a piece of Voldemort’s soul emblazoned into the one person no one would suspect (“Your scar is legend. As of course, is the wizard who gave it to you” – Lucius Malfoy in Chamber of Secrets; “How is it that a baby with no extraordinary magical talent was able to defeat the greatest wizard of all time? How did you escape with nothing but a scar, while Lord Voldemort's powers were destroyed?” - Tom Riddle from Chamber of Secrets) . In a rather Christological turn (pre-figured in the Gandalf/Obi-Wan kenotic typologies of a mentor modeling what a pupil must do for himself – lose yourself to find yourself) Harry will die at the hands of Voldemort in order that Voldemort may be at last vanquished by…. Draco Malfoy!

You heard it here first....

The gift of silence - M. Basil Pennington

2005-08-05T08:17:00.000-07:00

"Unfortunately, in seeing ourselves as we truly are, not all that we see is beautiful and attractive. This is undoubtedly part of the reason we flee silence. We do not want to be confronted with our hypocrisy, our phoniness. We see how false and fragile is the false self we project. We have to go through this painful experience to come to our true self.
It is a harrowing journey, a death to self—the false self—and no one wants to die. But it is the only path to life, to freedom, to peace, to true love. And it begins with silence. We cannot give ourselves in love if we do not know and possess ourselves.

This is the great value of silence. It is the pathway to all we truly want."

Friday Morning Download - "Everybody's Got To Learn Sometime" by Beck

2005-08-04T13:40:00.000-07:00

This installment of FMD looks (actually 'winks') at the interplay of music and film in that wonderful post Vietnam era shift in cinema - the soundtrack. Movies have always looked to music to give the images depth, pathos, and at certain moments something of the Divine. This is often found in the musical score - an instrumental piece written to elicit the emotive overture of the filmic narrative. In contrast to the score, soundtracks draw from individual artists who provide iconic moments - short, dense tableaus that act as musical counterpoint and compliment to the film's storyline. It was the megablast of the soundtrack to "Saturday Night Fever" in 1977 that made soundtracks not merely emotional signposts for narrative, but a financial boon for the industry. Most soundtracks are pretty forgetable and down right awful. But occasionally, an artist embraces the directorial vision of a film and creates something so subtle and sublime that to hear the song not only transports us back to the visual narrative - but links our lives to the pathos and joy in a wonderous way.

As a medium we merely “view”, film becomes something we often “understand” without struggling to improve our understanding. For example, the photographic image stands in contrast to a text which, with a single word, can shift from representation to reflection. We look at a photo and recall its source - its very ‘stillness’ seems to allow and encourage us to make a reference – e.g. Who is this in the picture? When was it taken? Where was that building in the background? It is this which led cultural theorist Roland Barthes to call the photographic image pure contingency – that is, the photograph is always something that is representational and therefore contingent on something ‘other’ for meaning to arise. In contrast, more so than other arts, film offers an immediate and fully contextualised presence to the world - it is self-referential and makes its own reality. Ironically, it is precisely because, as James Monaco notes, films “so very clearly mimic reality that we apprehend them much more easily than we comprehend them." Add music to the mix and you have a full experience that allows the viewer/listener to apprehend a moment of meaning with all senses engaged - meaning without mediation. No wonder we love the movies, eh?

One new director/writer on the scene who uses music to whisper rather than shout the core message of his film is Charlie Kaufman. Writer of such films as Being John Malkovitch, Adaptation, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

"I like to live in the confusion," says the writer of his preference for chaos over concrete. "When you complicate things, that’s when things are more interesting." Always an avid reader, though loath to list influences lest his work be compared to theirs, among those whose work Charlie enjoys are authors ranging from Franz Kafka, Samuel Beckett, Stanislaw Lem, Philip K. Dick and Stephen Dixon to Shirley Jackson and Patricia Highsmith, who both specialise in "the queasy, really subtle sh*t that happens between characters; it can seem like nothing's happening, but it's horrible just the same." One of the things I love about Charlie Kaufman is his attempt to model his scripts and film projects on the work of Flannery O'Connor, who believed that Southern writers aptly render "the grotesque" because they can still recognize what it is. Reading O'Connor made Kaufman fear "that I wouldn't have a voice because I didn't seem to come from anywhere — I was jealous of other parts of America." Part of Kaufman's own development came from recognizing the "weirdness" within his purview. Some of his favourite films include What Happened Was... (Tom Noonan), Naked (Mike Leigh), Safe (Todd Haynes), Ladybird Ladybird (Ken Loach), Eraserhead (David Lynch) and "most of the Coen Brothers and David Lynch things."

It makes sense that someone as Non sequitur as Charlie Kaufman would find the ideal soundtrack partner in Beck. One of the most inventive and eclectic figures to emerge from the '90s alternative revolution, Beck is the epitome of postmodern chic in an era obsessed with junk culture. Drawing upon a kaleidoscope of influences -- pop, folk, psychedelia, hip-hop, country, blues, R&B, funk, indie rock, noise rock, experimental rock, jazz, lounge, Brazilian music -- Beck has created a body of work that was wildly unpredictable, vibrantly messy, and bursting with ideas. He is unquestionably a product of the media age - what market-driven folks call "Generation M" (M= [Me]dia) -- and a true "recombinantist" (see earlier post on "recombinant theology" on TheologyKungfu.com) whose concoctions were pasted together from bits of the past and present, in ways that could only occur to an overexposed pop-culture junkie. Beck may seem like a chaotic artist with "Loser" and "Where its at" being extreme mash-ups of random sources, but is his signature musical voice is forged in characters in this post-essentialist age that are rootless, sprawling in diversity, and find [akin to Neo] a self determination through the acknowledgement that the self has no boundaries or conventions due to its Imago Dei forged depth.

One song that seems to capture the simplicity of Beck's music is "Everybody's Got to Learn Sometime" that frames the musical signature of Kaufman's "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind."

"change your heart/look around you... change your heart/it will astound you... I need your lovin'/ like I need the sunshine/ Everybody's got to learn sometime..." is the lyric that repeats throughout the images that flash on the screen. As a movie that plays with the notion of how identity is formed due to how our memories function (can we love if we can't remember what we are...or for that matter whose we are?) The simplicity of this repeated lyric is contemplative and sacramental - drawing the viewer of the film to 'remember' this line, to repeat it is to bring it into truth. The repeated simplicity of the track coupled with the non-linear nature of Kaufman's (literal) stream of consciousness narrative brings a wonderful reminder, as Tolkien stated so well, that not all those who wander are lost.

The 'Theoblogian' Cometh... running with scissors and 'recombinant' theology

2005-08-02T15:10:00.000-07:00

William Gibson, author of Neuromancer and the grandpa of cyperpunk, recently wrote an article for Wired entitled "God's Little Toys" speaking specifically about the nature of remixing and mash-ups as musical form but I feel he draws some points worth reflecting upon for the so-called art of 'theology':

"Our culture no longer bothers to use words like appropriation or borrowing to describe those very activities. Today's audience isn't listening at all - it's participating. Indeed, audience is as antique a term as record, the one archaically passive, the other archaically physical. The record, not the remix, is the anomaly today. The remix is the very nature of the digital. Today, an endless, recombinant, and fundamentally social process generates countless hours of creative product (another antique term?). To say that this poses a threat to the record industry [or for that matter the christian church] is simply comic. The record industry, though it may not know it yet, has gone the way of the record. Instead, the recombinant (the bootleg, the remix, the mash-up) has become the characteristic pivot at the turn of our two centuries. We live at a peculiar juncture, one in which the record (an object) and the recombinant (a process) still, however briefly, coexist."

While the status of the church remains known through a careful tension between reference to the 'record' (think: scripture, doctrine, dogma) in order to live out the 'recombinant' (think: events, gatherings, mission, communion) - the shift is being felt where the reverse is true - the 'recombinant' is determining the shape and content of what is deemed 'record'. I suppose this has always been the case, but I feel the tremors under my feet as a theologian all the time these days. Rarely do students appeal to the "record" as a primary means of justifying their lives nor giving hope for their tomorrow - it is an appeal to the "recombinant" and radical communitas - the hybrid interplay of their experience in the world ("God is in this place"), their striving to have immediacy with God and fellow humans ("worship was so real today"), and growing divide between the lingua franca of so-called academically critical reflective theology and the vox humana of "everyday people" - i.e. Donald Miller's "Blue like Jazz" is referred to more and more as "theology". This form of writing - drawing on readily available cultural references and remixing with first-person themes and testimonials - is rushing over the western church. It makes sense to me given that I think this way. As I admit this however, I must also admit the following: Theology is no longer about the "record" - it is about the "recombinant". In this way, Carl Raschke's "The Next Reformation" should call us to our knees as he makes the necessary connections between the Reformer's (particularly Luther's) criticisms of Medieval Catholicism and Aristotlelian Philosophy and the criticisms of Modernity and foundationalism by postmodern thinkers. Luther argued stringently for a theology of the cross over against the hegemonic theologies of glory that emerged from the rationalism of Thomistic theology and Aristotlelian Philosophy which paved the way for the ontotheology that has been so ably criticized by Heidegger and Derrida. In short, to the extent that evangelicals embrace postmodernity, they are embodying the legacy of the Reformers. The essentialist, the overtly foundationalist, the fear mongering that comprises much of what is being passed off as 'orthodoxy' needs to be challenged at every turn if the ministry and mission of Christ truly remains the guiding light of our lives. As Raschke rightly states, Modernity and theological essentialism that has arisen with it was not merely a defunct rationalism or an idolatrous ontotheology, it was (and is) also a horrific political machine which has propagated and continues to propagate violence, terror, holocaust and all forms of oppression on the world in centuries since the Enlightenment.

A "recombinant" approach to theological method is one that begins with the many - the communitas - and seeks form through multiplicity rather than simplicity and singularity. Again, Gibson gives some helpful words to theologians today:

"We seldom legislate new technologies into being. They emerge, and we plunge with them into whatever vortices of change they generate. We legislate after the fact, in a perpetual game of catch-up, as best we can, while our new technologies redefine us - as surely and perhaps as terribly as we've been redefined by broadcast television. "Who owns the words?" asked a disembodied but very persistent voice throughout much of Burroughs' work. Who does own them now? Who owns the music and the rest of our culture? We do. All of us. Though not all of us know it - yet."

Friday Morning Download - "Casimir Pulaski Day" by Sufjan Stevens

2005-07-29T19:26:00.000-07:00

I always knew that Steve Martin was a prophet when I would listen to that scratched 'Let's Get Small' album. In this case I am thinking of his prophetic utterance in his stand-up routine entitled "Grandmother's Song" where he states - "you can't sing anything sad on a banjo."

There is something in the American ethos when a banjo kicks in that evokes either gothic dread (think "Dueling Banjos" in 'Deliverance') or some untouched innocence that speaks of a by-gone state of grace (One imagines Rousseau's noble savage pickin' and a-grin' and you get the picture...) Banjos continue to make their way into pop music even beyond the usual alt.country trend to see banjos as the natural grandparent to a Flying V guitar. One notable example found on the CD/DVD edition of U2's How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb and the version of "Vertigo" (Temple Bar Mix) that has Edge playing solo banjo. In short - banjos are just cool and the latest indie wunderkind to embrace the banjo is Sufjan Stevens on his album "Illinoise" (also called, in a nice touch of cheek nod to Quiet Riot, "Come on, feel the Illinoise" :-).

Sufjan is certainly the "what? you haven't heard HIM yet?" artist of the moment in indie circles and on the blogsphere (aka - he is a KEXP.org darling). Being a so-called 'literate listener' deems such artists (and awareness there of) arise from time to time - so consider yourself served notice prior to the emails that will come your way from friends streaming WiFi over steaming lattes at 3am in the [fill in name of boheme cafe in your locale]. His epic attempt to record albums based on all 50 states (he has recorded "Michigan"prior to "Illinoise") makes for good PR and a nice quirky hook for rock journalists ("will 'Delaware' be an EP?" "is there ANY music to describe "South Dakota" and if so, why bother?!")

However, the fact remains... he is just really good.

The Seattle Weekly recently described "Illinoise" "Like a kid's 50-state book, TBS's Portrait of America specials from the '80s, or Rick Smolan's 24/7 coffee-table book series, [Sufjan Stevens'] Illinoise is a grand, corny gesture toward painting the essence of a state with the broadest of strokes. Stevens respects both the megaopolis of Chicago and the wee village of Birds, ponders the Columbian Exposition of 1893, gets a visit from Carl Sandburg in a dream, and remembers Satchmo and Gacy and Douglas and Lincoln and Lincoln's wife. The references to stuff like the Chickenmobile and Octave Chanute might even leave Illinoisans feeling like strangers to their own state. "

While the subjects of Sufjan's consideration - particularly on Michigan and Illinoise - are ostensibly secular, the face of the Divine is truly alit and seeking our attention through the 'bars of his rhyme' (name the song riff paraphrase there and win a guest blog on FMD). To listen to 'Sufjan minialism' is the face our hopes and fears without clutter...and the fact that we are certainly not alone. It is hard to imagine someone as deeply devout as Sufjan Stevens dwelling on man and his works for very long without seeing God's presence in them. God is there as Stevens sings of the young friend he prays for as she dies from cancer, of the runners on the underground railroad who've "got a better life coming," of humble Decatur as "The Great I Am." He is there as several songs blur together the patriotic declarations of a state song and merge into Blakean vision: "Peoria! Destroyia! Infinity! Divinity!"

"Casimir Pulaski Day" off of "Illinoise" is an example of Sufjan's wrestling with the tension of belief coupled with doubt and discouragement - "Tuesday night at the bible study/ We lift our hands and pray over your body/ But nothing ever happens." The struggles of being in Bible study and after Bible study and hoping upon hope that God will heal and "nothing ever happens" is certainly part of the bumpy topography of every Christian sojourner's map of life. Rather than reconcile this issue through reasoned pronoucements or blithe appeal to dogma, Sufjan lets the paradox possible in music exist as is. Amidst the strain of the faithful praying in honest unison - the voice of the banjo plunks away in the background. Rather than sound like a bad parody of 'Hee Haw', Sufjan counterpoints the plunking banjo voice of the humans in prayer with brass - trumpets and trombone akin to a Salvation Army band giving hope to dampened urban dwellers rushing from one street corner to the next on Christmas Eve. For Sufjan, two of the most unlikely instruments - the mundane banjo and the angelic instrument of choice - the trumpet - exalt each other and draw in the voices of the gathered into worship ala the Polyphonic Spree:

"Oh the glory that the Lord has made/ And the complications when I see His face/ In the morning in the window/ Oh the glory when he took our place /But He took my shoulders and He shook my face/ And He takes and He takes and He takes "

No matter how mundane life may seem to be, Stevens sees the story of life as a love story between himself and Jesus, God born human, a man stung and mocked and wrestled with. We may see ourselves as the members of a state or a country. There may be a kind of equality in a state of sin. But we are brought to an even greater unity when we love Jesus, who brings us into the highest relationship with God.

Oh yeah... and banjo never sounded so good. That 'wild and crazy guy' did have a point - you really can't sing anything bad on a banjo.

Harry me softly with his song... on HP6

2005-07-25T11:05:00.000-07:00

We are 200 pages into JK Rowling's latest installment - Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. I have to agree with Stephen Waldmen's 2004 article on Slate.com that drew connections between HP and Tim LaHaye's Left Behind series on a number of points, particularly the base line of the 21st century - fear sells. Also, the current trend to reimagine the current security-obessive zeitgeist in fantasy (Battlestar Galactica for example) seems to have not just seeped, but flooded into JK Rowling's brain. Hogwarts is 'defcon 5 Red Alert' and "the Daily Prophet" sounds as if it has been added to Rupert Murdock's publishing empire. Hogwarts has been fitted with security devices at all entrances and Paranoia is in the air they breathe.

So much for fiction...

Can somebody please explain to me...

2005-07-25T05:57:00.000-07:00

...how it is that our supposedly "Christian nation" seems to be virtually ignoring this? Other than this blip on the NYTimes radar, it seems we just aren't interested in millions of dying Nigeriens...I mean, heck, forget aid efforts, we've got terror attacks to worry about.

I'm really sorry I don't have any more to say, anything profound or constructive, any suggestions as to what should be done, any grand theological statements to make sense of this. I just don't know.

I just keep thinking: shame on our God-damned McDonald's-scarfing, Nike-wearing, Gap-shopping, wasteful, prodigal, petty little lives. Shame on our avarice. Shame on us for participating in a system in which certain ones are necessarily impoverished so that we can be comfortable...

[UPDATE: I just discovered that people from Niger are called NigeriEns, whereas people from Nigeria are NigeriAns. I have revised this post to reflect the correct usage.]

Friday Morning Download - "Run" by Snow Patrol

2005-07-20T09:04:00.000-07:00

There is a long tradition in popular music of writing music based upon the experience of performance and life after that last encore is sung, the house lights go up, and the mix tape the roadies put together gets played as the audience fights their way to the parking lot. It seems to hit artists after their first big tour - this need to express the experience of being the rock stars they had dreamed of and the raw emotion of finding out that after the bright lights and big noise, they still need to connect and find intimacy. There is a sub-genre of these songs about the look and feel of what its like to be before the roaring crowds of the stadium ( Journey's "Faithfully" with its reference to "Circus lights"), the feeling of emptiness when the crowd has gone and the performer is left alone on the stage (Jackson Browne's album of the road "Running on Empty" with the classic post-concert tune "The Loadout"), or just the longing for connection that is hinted at but not consummated when a performer feels the crush of the monitor around his ankles, the light gels burning above the stage mix the hues of the audience's faces into a emo-wash montage akin to a Casper David Friedrich or a post-punk Pointillism found in a Georges-Pierre Seurat . The latest entry into this sub-genre is Snow Patrol's great single "Run" from their 3rd album Final Straw.

As reviewers have raved about Snow Patrol (particularly those of us who tune their radio to KEXP.org), the trio from Dundee's far-ranging influences as an "infectious pop punk racket with a distorted, amp-popping twist." According to lead singer Gary Lightbody, "Basically our favourite bands were poured into [Final Straw] and at the time we were under the influence of American rock - the Pixies, Dinosaur Jr, Soundgarden - but we were listening to My Bloody Valentine and the first Super Furry Animals album too."

"Run" is a song of departure and hope for a real tomorrow long after the buzz in your ears and the after-concert blur comes into real time focus. As the song opens, the singer is playing his last encore for a fan:

"I'll sing it one last time for you/Then we really have to go/You've been the only thing that's right/In all I've done"

As the singer and fan blend into the music, the euphoria of being "in" the song becomes the via media - the middle way - to lose the self and begin the 'afterlife':

"Louder louder/And we'll run for our lives/I can hardly speak I understand/Why you can't raise your voice to say"

Theology talks quite a bit about 'performativity' - the notion that what we 'believe' is only as real as what we 'do'. Songs like "Run" turn the mirror back on the performer and asks the question - after the lights come back on and the amps are unplugged, what now? Are we lost in the longing to return to that moment when the "louder, louder" cry bleeds out all the thoughts of our oh-so-mundane lives? Are we hoping that the fantasy constructed in the eyes of the adoring fan may actually be love in all its height, depth, and breadth? For Christians caught up in the 'shock and awe' of blasting guitars, Casio-lite keyboards and clanging drums while a row of 'praise singers' poised before the congregation rhymes "dove" with "love from above" - is the desire for "louder, louder" really a cry to retreat into the moment of noise rather than take hold of the benedictus of sending into a risky life in the flesh? Just a thought...

At any rate, "Run" is a great song and a great reminder for those of us who find ourselves on stages that life after the song is worth exploring if anything for the opportunity to see that what we may blithely mouth in song and proclamation may be more real than we had hoped for or even imagine...