faithasawayoflife

My last blog post (#512)

I can't believe I've written on this blog since 2004--512 posts including this one. While I'll leave it up for posterity and in case I get around to writing the Faith as a Way of Life sequel (this one about daily discipleship rather than pastoral leadership), I'm going to be mainly blogging at my new site which pulls together the various areas of writing, teaching, speaking, blogging, etc.   Check it out sometime. I've already got a few posts up, commenting on the Guthrie/Penumbra Theatre production of Ma Rainey's Black Bottom and the Luther Seminary sponsored Lutheran Songs Today Live concert held this past Friday evening. 
+peace,

Chris 

Allan Tibbles embodied the meaning of Jesus' coming

I haven't blogged since June 2010, I don't think. I'm building a new site to move to in 2011, but I think I'll blog a bit here as a way to end the year. Here's my pre-Christmas post: If you want to know something of what the birth, life and death of Jesus means (that is, if you want a taste of the real impact of Christmas) go now and read this New York Times tribute to the life of Allan Tibbles.

Carbon Blues: Bill McKibben on the Gulf oil spill

Passionate and convicting article by Bill McKibben in the recent Christian Century on the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.  Read it now.  I am supposed to fly to NYC in a couple weeks for a day of interviews with recent Orthodox seminarians at St. Vladimir's Seminary.  Then a flight to Amsterdam for a conference on theology.  Then driving to Holden Village for their annual board meeting.  Then a flight to Norway and Sweden with family for vacation.  All good things.  All related to good work, to family fun.  But I wonder if I should simply give up going places outside of my upper-midwest home.  Isn't this summer itinerary exactly the assumed lifestyle of travel and ease rich countries (and people) are unwilling to give up and so the drilling, refining and burning of dirty sources of energy continue?  Continue till . . .?

McKibben: You think maybe, just maybe, that the needle BP stuck into the bottom of the sea flows straight into our veins?  If you want to understand the stakes, here's what you need to do: Stop looking at the oil-soaked birds for a little while. Stop studying the newspaper pictures of the spread of the sheen. In this case, your eyes are fooling you.  Yes, the plume of black oil is nasty and dangerous and damaging. But it's merely the visible face of dirty energy, in many ways less damaging than the underlying daily damage.

He makes the case for activism, and focuses on 10/10/10 as a key day to work towards to show political will to change our polluting ways. He goes so far as to call our polluting ways "blaspheming."  I think he's right. I'm getting with it.

Anon and +peace,

Chris

Hank Jones, Jazz pianist who wowed me in NYC, has died

I owe a debt of gratitude to Hank Jones, the great jazz pianist who died Sunday at the age of 91.  I learned something important about life by my brush with his greatness and humility.  I heard him when I took the Yale Faith as a Way of Life group to New York City on the trail of the intersection of faith and the arts.  We went together to Dizzy's Club at Lincoln Center--my first and undoubtedly most magical trip to that fantastic jazz club.  Here is an excerpt of what I wrote recalling that night in chapter seven of FWL:

           “As we headed across mid-town Manhattan packed in our taxi, I tried to imagine what Dizzy’s club would be like.  Broadway Avenue, New York, New York.  Jazz at the Lincoln Center.  The Time Warner building.  This was the big time in the Big Apple and I could hardly wait.  As we hopped out of our taxi and paid the driver a handsome amount for the few blocks we’d traveled from our hotel near Grand Central Station, I looked at the busy street, the lights shining through the large glass doors and the huge atrium beyond.  We were swept in, following people up the elevators to a velvet-roped line outside the fifth-floor room.  Posters of jazz luminaries and the hushed tones of those already in line gave the atmosphere a sort of reverence.  With a group of colleagues from the Faith as a Way of Life project, I was going to hear a sax player named Joe Lavano.  While he seemed to be a big name, I didn’t know his work.  It didn’t matter—that he was playing this show at Dizzy’s was enough for me.

            Soon enough we were led into a dark room, already buzzing with activity.  We were seated at two long tables just to the left of the stage, but the intimacy of the room seemed to make every seat good.  Before long, to raucous applause, the slightly chubby Joe Lavano walked out with his elderly piano accompanist.  I didn’t know this pianist’s name, but he seemed frail and nearly fell as he ascended the steps to the stage.  Upon recovery, he smiled and waved, gingerly, before taking his seat.  While this beginning worried me, as he began to play his age melted away and the nimble magic of his fingers leapt into action.

            We watched over the next hour as our imagined luminary, Joe Lovano, sought ways to step back and highlight this stoop-shouldered pianist whose subtle tones and energetic playing had captured the room.  The real luminary, it seemed, was the one unknown to me, and the crowd rallied to the moment.  Sure we were seeing something special, we later found out that this venerable man was Hank Jones, a true jazz legend who was 89 when we saw him play.  During one particularly stunning moment, Joe Lovano simply stopped playing and walked to the back of the stage, giving over the music to this joyful and soulful man.  As the song wound to its end, a man two tables to the right of us shot up, shouting, clapping, as if his life depended on the tribute he was offering."

How I now wish I had joined that man.  How I wish I had know what a gift I was receiving in the moment.  Too often, though, we don't see what is right before our eyes.  The New York Times has a wonderful and moving obituary of Mr. Jones, including this choice quote: "Reaching for superlatives, critics often wrote that Mr. Jones had an exceptional touch. He himself was not so sure.  'I never tried consciously to develop a ‘touch,’ ' he told The Detroit Free Press in 1997. 'What I tried to do was make whatever lines I played flow evenly and fully and as smoothly as possible.  'I think the way you practice has a lot to do with it,' he explained. 'If you practice scales religiously and practice each note firmly with equal strength, certainly you’ll develop a certain smoothness. I used to practice a lot. I still do when I’m at home.'  That perspective, I think, tells us volumes about what we ought to do to grow in ministry, as well.  Hmm.  Thanks for all the music, Mr. Jones.  Rest in peace, toe tapping.

Anon, and +peace,

Chris

P.S.

A couple favorite albums, both totally amazing.

Recent:

Steal Away: Spirituals, Hymns and Folk Songs, with bassist Charlie Haden

Long ago:

Somthin' Else (BlueNote 1955, with Cannonball Adderley, Miles Davis, Sam Jones and Art Blakey)

U2 breaks open audience participation for 360 tour--with Alt Worship possibilities?

U2.com has announced a new scheme by show designer Willie Williams to involve the audience.  I meditate on how this might work with some alternative worship, and what the categories might be.  Here's what they are up to:

U2's 360° Tour opens up again next month and the production team are looking to get you involved. Willie Williams, Show Director, is working with band and production team on a series of new visual ideas for on-screen content. For starters Willie is looking to fans to submit three simple questions which could end up in a new piece of screen content for the show. The questions are simple - one U2 question, one personal question, one philosophical question. They can be serious or trivial, quite ridiculous... or quite important.Is Larry left-handed? Will you always be called 'U2'? Can I see your tattoo? Do you do your own laundry? What would your last words be? When did you fall in love with me? What is beautiful to you Is this all there is? What is the speed of dark? How far east can you go before you're heading west? Which is stronger - anger or love?

Well, here are my three questions:

U2: When does sleep look like the enemy?

Personal: How long does the cry last before the breath comes flooding in?

Philosophical: What is surrender--imprisonment or freedom?

It will be cool to see what they  do with this.  They asked what show I'd attend, and I said Minneapolis 6/27, so we'll see if they use any of them during the show this summer.

Anon and +peace,

Chris

Reviving Zombie Institutions--Talking with Andy Root about Despair and Promise

Last week I did my first 'blogtalk radio' gig with Andy Root discussing his new book The Promise of Despair. I'm not much in love with radio as a format, and 15 minutes is short, but perhaps that's the frame people will listen to.  Anymore, I'm pretty sure that there are not single channels of communication that are sufficient and one needs to maximize multiple channels to spark conversations and get ideas out there.  Anyway, I didn't say anything great, but I pushed Andy on his hyperbolic contention that life is risky and scary now, more than every before, and that institutions are so broken they can be compared to the living dead, moving but barely alive, barely effective.  Part of the value of the volume is it sparks conversation, and intends to.  It is an an unusual volume, especially because it is both quite sophisticated in its social theoretical and theological depth as well as being very readable. We joked about how we are trying to unlearn how academic theology programs taught us to write so that we can reach broader audiences with the work that we're doing. This book is a model of that. I'll have more to say overall in a review to come, but for now, here's the 15 minutes of blogtalk.

anon and +peace,

Chris

Reviving Zombie Institutions on Blogtalk Radio with Andy Root

The Promise of Despair, Post 8, Chapter3.

Adam Clayton's Money Quote

Adam Clayton, one of my favorite bass players (I admit it--partly I love U2 and partly the guy is just not a virtuoso so I can actually play his lines) said it this way: "I just keep the bottom moving."  I love it. If more people had the humility and dignity to do that key work rather than trying to all be Bonos the world'd be a better place. Not that Bono doesn't make the world a better place. But I mean, without the bottom holding steady, we'd be in a world of trouble.

Anon and peace,

Chris

Look at the grass roots for the great soul of the Catholic Church

Nicholas Kristof of the NYT has written the obvious piece waiting to be written about the 'two' Catholic churches--the controlling and out of touch hierarchy and the saintly priests and nuns and brothers who work tirelessly alongside the people.  I do think often about Jesus as a model for being church, and what he'd have done in terms of the finery and pomp and expensive buildings (either of classical or contemporary style).  So much of Christianity as a religion seems at an uncomfortable angle from its Lord.  Here's Kristof:

Maybe the Catholic Church should be turned upside down.

Jesus wasn’t known for pontificating from palaces, covering up scandals, or issuing Paleolithic edicts on social issues. Does anyone think he would have protected clergymen who raped children? Yet if the top of the church has strayed from its roots, much of its base is still deeply inspiring. I came here to impoverished southern Sudan to write about Sudanese problems, not the Catholic Church’s.

Yet once again, I am awed that so many of the selfless people serving the world’s neediest are lowly nuns and priests — notable not for the grandeur of their vestments but for the grandness of their compassion.

As I’ve noted before, there seem to be two Catholic Churches, the old boys’ club of the Vatican and the grass-roots network of humble priests, nuns and laity in places like Sudan. The Vatican certainly supports many charitable efforts, and some bishops and cardinals are exemplary, but overwhelmingly it’s at the grass roots that I find the great soul of the Catholic Church.

Read more.

Anon and +peace,

Chris

Finishing Wittgenstein's Biography

Last night I finally turned the last page on Ray Monk's monumental biography of Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius. It was touted as a book that finally could hold together his strange and compelling life along with this difficult philosophical work.  That Monk does with brilliance.   Yet the great surprise to me was the way the book read as a spiritual biography, almost a biography of a very troubled saint.  Not of course in any traditional sense of sainthood, but in the sense that, as Monk writes, "in a way that is centrally important but difficult to define, he had lived a devoutly religious life" (580).   As one way to see the sense in which this was true, an anacdote from near the end of his life is telling.  He was in these last months living with his friend and student Elizabeth Anscombe's house in Oxford.  Gravely ill, he asked Anscombe, who was Catholic, if she could find him a priest to speak with--a 'non-philosophical priest' as he put it.  He did not want to discuss the finer points of Catholic doctrine, but rather to be introduced to someone to whose life religious belief had made a practical difference.  Fr. Conrad, a Dominican, came by twice to talk.

Highly recommended book.

Anon, and peace,

Chris