faithasawayoflife

Ikon::Thrown Together

How cool would this be? Ikon says about themselves:

 "Inhabiting a space on the outer edges of religious life, we are a Belfast-based collective who offer anarchic experiments in transformance art. Challenging the distinction between theist and atheist, faith and no faith our main gathering employs a cocktail of live music, visual imagery, soundscapes, theatre, ritual and reflection in an attempt to open up the possibility of a theodramatic event"

For their next gathering they are making it up together the day before.  Here's the blurb from Pete Rollins' site:

"This Sunday ikon will be collaborating with The Garden in the latest ikon gathering. The event will be planned from scratch the day before. If you are around come and join the fun."

Belfast for the weekend, anyone?

Anon and peace,
Chris

U2's "Let Me In The Sound" = "Amazing Grace, How Sweet the Sound?"

Mark Meynell, All Soul's London, has made a wonderful and I think brilliant observation connecting the repeated theme "Let me in the Sound" throughout their new album No Line On The Horizon.  As most people who have been listening know, their first single, Get On Your Boots, includes a bridge with this:

Let me in the sound, now
God, I’m going down
I don’t wanna drown now
Meet me in the sound
Let me in the sound

Could refer back to the song Drowning Man on their album War, perhaps, and be a way to speak of law and gospel, dying to sin and rising in the new life found 'in the sound' of grace. Could be. . .

The next reference on the album is the beginning of Fez . . . Being Born (interesting title in connection to our line of reflection, and could be connected to Atomic Bomb's "All Because Of You" with the first line "I was born a child of Grace).  Here we simply get a litany of the "Let me in the sound".

Then Breathe, the song that closes out the album.  Mark writes:

This is one of my absolute winners. My first impression is that it’s a reflection on how in Christ we have the fullness of life, despite whatever the world has to offer us, even if that means there is suffering and cost. It takes courage, it takes a determination to serve sacrificially - but I’ve found grace and so i can breathe now… In other words, i can TRULY live. It is set in the real world of news reports (e.g. Chinese stocks and Avian flu). There is nothing more fundamental than breathing - nor pleasurable when you think about it: think of taking a deep and long breath on a cold crisp blue-skied winter’s morning in the countryside.

Read the rest of his post here.

The song lyric in Breathe ends:

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

People born of sound: a reference to the fact that God creates through the word (Genesis 1, John 1).
Crown and sunburst streets language recalls the vision of heaven in Revelation.
The language of lost and found (from Amazing Grace) have shown up in U2's work since the single "I Will Follow" from their first studio album, Boy, in 1980.  So that's one clue.  That it is Bono's favorite hymn is another clue.  They've sung Amazing Grace in concerts many times over the past 20 years.  If this an underlying theme of the album, as I think it is, wow.

Anon and peace,
Chris

The Great Disruption

A few days ago I was talking to some friends about the economic mess we're in and suggested perhaps this is the end of our consumer-based economy.  Perhaps, I thought out loud, this would so fundamentally reorient our situation that we'd escape the circumstance where our well-being requires us to go out and shop to prop up the economy and keep America strong. Actually, it turns out, that kind of strength is a weakness not only for us but for the earth as a whole (nations, land, air, water, creatures, plants, etc.).  It turns out this argument is not crazy. Read Thomas Friedman's op-ed column from yesterday's NYT:

Over a billion people today suffer from water scarcity; deforestation in the tropics destroys an area the size of Greece every year — more than 25 million acres; more than half of the world’s fisheries are over-fished or fished at their limit.  “Just as a few lonely economists warned us we were living beyond our financial means and overdrawing our financial assets, scientists are warning us that we’re living beyond our ecological means and overdrawing our natural assets,” argues Glenn Prickett, senior vice president at Conservation International. But, he cautioned, as environmentalists have pointed out: “Mother Nature doesn’t do bailouts.”  One of those who has been warning me of this for a long time is Paul Gilding, the Australian environmental business expert. He has a name for this moment — when both Mother Nature and Father Greed have hit the wall at once — “The Great Disruption.”

Read the rest here. It is going to be painful, no doubt, and already is for very many poeple, but this may be a way that God is saying to us "no more, more, more, more, more."

Anon, and peace,
Chris

Coming Soon: The Official Study Guide for my book One Step Closer: Why U2 Matter To Those Seeking God

Written by an excellent young practical theologian and pastoral candidate Jennifer Grangaard, this study guide helps groups talk through my 2006 book One Step Closer: Why U2 Matter to Those Seeking God (Brazos Press). It will be a free, formatted and downloadable guide for group study of the themes of the book, but it will do two very important additional things.  First, it will open up some perspectives for discussing U2's new album No Line on the Horizon drawing on the book's engagement with Scripture and theology. Second, the study guide will provoke and encourage reflection on connections to other aspects of pop culture-music, film, TV and so on.  It should be posted here and a couple other places on the web within a week or so.  I'll be trying out some of the material in a two-week speaking gig at St. Matthew's Episcopal here in St. Paul on March 15 and 22, 9:15-10:15.  Come by if you can!

 I hope you'll find some people you love to talk faith and culture with and give the book a read with this new study guide.  It could be used for teens.  It could be used for campus ministry. It could be used by curious retirees in Sun City, AZ.  Who knows?  Anyway, the book is available at Amazon.com and elsewhere for as little as a dollar plus postage.  Some of the cool people who've had a good word for the book since it came out (more blurbs and reviews here):

"It is evidence of the new and vital appropriateness of what Martin Luther called 'the theology of the cross' that it finds expression now in the secular world, including the world of 'rock' music. Christian Scharen's book should be required reading for all pastors and anyone who works with today's youth--and not only youth."--Douglas John Hall, C.M., author of The Cross in Our Context, McGill University

"First you get Bono--a rock star and an activist who turns out to be an extraordinary theologian of grace. And then you get Scharen--a fine theologian and pastor who writes compellingly about the Christian faith with his ear close to the ground. I learned a lot by reading this book."--Miroslav Volf, author of Free of Charge, Yale Divinity School

"Yale Divinity School prof Scharen opens this work of pop philosophy with the declaration that 'the voice of U2 is not unique'--that it actually fits, as critics and youth-group leaders have been saying for years, 'within a longer tradition of Christian voices that point us to the cross.' He teases some revealing subtexts from their songs, but like Bono himself, Scharen is most convincing when he tempers theory with personal experience. . . . [An] earnest, plainspoken book."--Mikael Wood, SPIN magazine

"Christian's book is extremely convincing that many of the song lyrics [of U2] proceed directly from biblical verse. [Bono] said that the Bible is sustenance for him--literary sustenance and spiritual sustenance--but rarely has it been as clear to me as when I was reading through Christian's book."- Joe Levy, Deputy Managing Editor, Rolling Stone

Anon, and peace,
Chris

Obama a Socialist? Nope. He's 'too smart to be in the realm of certainty'

Complexity. There, I've said it.  I love that about President Obama.  He's not willing to make things more simple than they are. He must finally make decisions but he's not 'the decider.'   I've always loved this about U2, as well.  They see the complexity, they sing it, they open themselves to it, and it has something to do with 1) mystery and 2) humility.  They go together. In their new song Moment of Surrender they sing:

Two souls too smart to be
In the realm of certainty
Even on our wedding day

The question came up in the interview with Obama yesterday on Air Force One (which, if you've never been on, can be seen in a cool slide show here) when a reporter asked him if he was a socialist.  First, what a stupid question. Why do reporters stoop to the lowest chatter that is out there on the radio and in the blogosphere?  Anyway, Obama replied basically 'look at the evidence and you'll of course see I'm not.' To which the reporter followed up saying 'would there be anything wrong with that?' and Obama gives this extended answer about spending restraint except on key major areas we've got to address: health care and environment. To which the reporter says, well, you'll at least admit to being more liberal that you said you were in terms of spending in the campaign? And then this reply from Obama:

One of the problems that we’ve had is that we have put off big problems again and again and again and again. And as I’ve said in my speech to the joint session of Congress, at some point there is a day of reckoning. Well, that day of reckoning has come. What I’m refusing to do and what I’ve instructed my staff that we will not do is to try to kick the can down the road, to try to paper over problems, try to use gimmicks on budgets, try to pretend that health care is not an issue, to continue with a situation where we are exporting – importing – more and more oil from the middle east, continuing with a situation in which average working families are seeing their wages flat line. At some point, we’ve got to take on these problems.

Now instead of following up on that really interesting answer about taking our responsibility seriously to address the challenges we face, not putting them on future generations to cope with, the reporter keeps on with the effort to 'label' the president.

Q. Is there one word name for your philosophy? If you’re not a socialist, are you a liberal? Are you progressive? One word?

A. No, I’m not going to engage in that.

This reporter is a cipher for a segment of the population who want a name to call President Obama.  Who what to short-cut thinking and complexity by simply writing off what he's trying to do as "liberal" or "socialist" or whatever.  I think Christians need to reject that.  Our challenge is always to see in the other 'more', to surrender to them at least in the sense that they are beloved of God, created and gifted to be what they are called to be despite the brokenness within us all. That call to see something 'more' is a protection against reducing someone to a label and encourages engagement to see what actually is going on. This does not lead to blind support for leaders. Quite the contrary.  Rather than blind support or rejection based on ideology, we're called into critical and attentive engagement which last time I checked is what democracy is all about.

Anon and peace,
Chris

Mindfulness as narcissism and sloth

Judith Warner, who writes about daily life and family for the New York Times, has a great column on the everyday effects of what I'd call "pseudo-buddhism"--the movement of practicing mindfulness popularized by such writers as Thich Nhat Hanh.  Buddhism is among the most popular and diffuse religious practices of the over-educated elite in the US in part because it does not claim supernatural beliefs like God but rather advocates practices like meditation and mindfulness.  Warner, however, skewers the tiresome effect of people who totally get into their own mindfulness as just another form of narcissism.  She talks about Judith Pipher, author of a new book on finding peace through mindfulness and Buddhist practice, and how when people discover this approach they want most of all to tell everyone.

People who are embarked on this particular “journey of self-exploration,” as Pipher has called it, tend to want to talk, or write, about it. A lot. But what they don’t realize — because they’re so in the moment, caught in the wonder and fascination and totality of their self-experience — is that their stories are like dream sequences in movies, or college students’ journal entries, or the excited accounts your children bring you of absolutely hilarious moments in cartoons — you really do have to be the one who’s been there to tolerate it.  For the truth is, however admirable mindfulness may be, however much peace, grounding, stability and self-acceptance it can bring, as an experience to be shared, it’s stultifyingly boring.  I’ve also come to wonder if something desirably human is being lost in all this new and improved selfhood. That is to say: an edge. That little bit of raggedness that for some of us is really the heart of what makes us human.
Read the rest here.

The danger is on one level that this mindfulness movement can simply be one more way for me to be 'into myself' and want one more time for you to be interested in me (narcissism).  It can also make me not really care about you or your needs or the pain of the world because I'm busy being in touch with the moment, just letting it be, not really moved by anything too too much (sloth).  Thanks, Judith, for the rant and the call to be human.  That feels closer to God to me.

Anon and peace,
Chris

Atheism for Lent II: Green Day's "Minority"

Each Friday I'm posting a song that represents one kind of rejection of God, seeking to listen to this rejection as a spiritual discipline. I wrote about what I'm up to here. I won't repeat it all, but encourage you to read through it if you haven't already, before going on with this week's installment. Part of the idea is to understand that atheism is not one common shared view but rather distinct denials, and seeking to understand the particular characteristics of the denial may help clarify (as if by a purifying fire) our understanding of God. It opens space for 'undergoing' God again, stripped of our conventions. In this classic song from Green Day's 2000 album Warning, a particular kind of politicized Christianity as moral police is rejected, particularly its claim to be the 'majority'. I've never felt inside Jerry Falwell's movement, either when it first emerged or during more recent manifestations of that basic impulse. In this is, of course, the classic punk outsider point of view, the 'black sheep' running from the herd. One nation under dog. That's funny! Get it? god/dog? Such reversal and critique of the powers may seem cliche but for many young people it is real, and anthems like this give voice to the normalcy of dissent, of feeling like you don't belong. Read, listen, what might God be saying in this pop punk art?

Here are the lyrics:
I wanna be the minority / I don't need your authority / Down with the moral majority / 'Cause I wanna be be the minority /  I pledge allegiance to the underworld / One nation under dog / There of which I stand alone / A face in the crowd / Unsung, against the mold / Without a doubt Singled out The only way I know/ I wanna be the minority / I don't need your authority / Down with the moral majority / 'Cause I wanna be the minority /  Stepped out of the line / Like a sheep runs from the herd / Marching out of time / To my own beat now The only way I know  / One light, one mind Flashing in the dark / Blinded by the silence of a thousand broken hearts / "For crying out loud" she screamed unto me / A free for all Fuck 'em all / You are your own sight 'cause... /  I wanna be the minority / I don't need your authority / Down with the moral majority / 'Cause I wanna be the minority / 'Cause I want to be the minority (I wanna be...) the minority (x4)

When you reflect on the video a number of could be said. First, I think it is interesting how the band start alone and begin to find the people rejected by the moral majority as "immoral' who come out to follow the float. Are these the people of the thousand broken hearts? Second, the video is itself a float 'like' the Macy's Day Parade, which if you listen to the album is the title of the next (and final) song. In this song, an acoustic ballad, you find a remarkably mature and hopeful longing for something deeper, something more believable, than the politicized and mean Moral Majority who would likely write off Jesus, too, as a drunkard who eats with sinners. The key lyric here: "And I'm thinking about the only road / The one I've never known and where it goes / And I'm thinking about a brand new hope / The one I've never known / 'Cause now I know / It's all that I wanted" And the video:

"Moment of Surrender" a gospel song even the non-religious gush over

More on U2's No Line on the Horizon.  Here's the pic of the band shoveling snow outside the Ed McMahon Theater in New York where the David Letterman Show is taped.

Those who've traveled a long journey with U2 know about the religious side of the band, and especially Bono's more public confessions of a pretty orthodox Christian faith (see Bono by Michka Assayas, a book length interview with substantial discussion of faith questions).  Anyone with eyes to see finds it in their songs, too, and looking for bible references in their work is for some a lot like trainspotting.  So I always find it humerous and interesting to see how hip music mags that have no religious commitments (officially) deal with this aspect of U2.  Here is a lovely example from the five-star review in Blender (hat tip to Jeni).

“Moment of Surrender” is the high point—seven minutes of Bono in gospel mode, lost in the late-night city (“I was speeding on the subway/Through the stations of the cross”), questing for salvation and finding it in Adam Clayton’s bass. The Edge fleshes out the yearning with some piercing crazy-diamond guitar. It’s the kind of gimme-divinity anthem that U2 cut their teeth on, except it really does seem like they’ve gotten better at these songs now that they’ve picked up some bummed-out adult grit. Bono actually sounds scared of something in this song, and whether his nightmares are religious or sexual, the fear gives his voice some heft. Compared to “Moment of Surrender,” “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” just sounds like a callow kid trying to snag a date at Bible camp.

Great line, isn't it?  Like a callow kid trying to snag a date at Bible camp.  Yep, one think that makes sense to me as I listen to this album is a kind of maturity. Here's where we are, here's the art we want to do, in fact were made to do (cf. the song Magnificient).

Anon and peace,
Chris

On holy ground? U2's next album, Songs of Ascent

This from the new cover article on U2 in this month's Rolling Stone:

Bono already has a plan for the first single from the band's next album. RS uncovered details of that project, described as "a sister release to No Line on the Horizon, a Zooropa to its Achtung Baby," which could arrive within the year.  Bono already knows the title -- Songs of Ascent -- and the first single, a surging anthem called "Every Breaking Wave" that was left off No Line at the last minute. Songs of Ascent will be quieter than No Line; in many ways, it's that ghost album of hymns and Sufi singing. "We're making a kind of heartbreaker, a meditative, reflective piece of work, but not indulgent," Bono says. "It will all have a clear mood, like Kind of Blue. Or A Love Supreme would be a point of reference, for the space it occupies in people's lives, which is to say, with that album, I almost take my shoes off to listen to it."

Ah! Take off your shoes because you are on holy ground, Bono?  I always knew you were capable of making such music!

Anon, and peace,
Chris

Magnificent: "I can feel that right in my chest"

Did Letterman have a John Wesley moment, with his heart being strangely moved, as he listened to U2's great performance of their new song Magnificient last night on the show?  As they ended the song, David came out saying, "how about that! I can feel that right in my chest, tremendous good, good, good."