Literally

I can't remember ever being this excited in my life. Simon & Garfunkel are playing here in June.

I'm stumped again for something to say on Sunday. I'm tempted to go the way of, "I struggled to come up with anything this week and here's why," but I feel like I just did that. Oh yeah, it was Easter.

Good Music, Good Coffee, Good People

Dividing the Plunder is playing this Friday night at Rohs Street Cafe with a gentleman named Eric Peters. 9 PM/$3. Ought to be a good time.

It's Not Like I Know It All Already,

But this training I'm doing is so boring that I left work six hours early today.

My Friend Ted Wrote This

I’m likely to go in twelve different directions today – for those of you who know me, this is not unusual, but I feel like I need to apologize up front to those who aren’t so much a part of the Cult of the Random.

Lent is the season in the church year just prior to Easter, and we Protestants don’t pay much attention to it. I suppose we’re too busy trying to figure out how our lives can be more purpose-driven, or we’re hung up on how the Catholics are wrong about everything, so surely this whole Lent business is for the birds. Besides, most of us just associate it with things like giving up chocolate or TV. But Lent is a season of preparation, a season of the desert, a time set aside in the church calendar to let go of our obsession with saccharine cheeriness long enough to do some reflecting. Historically, the church observed Lent, or something like it, a century or two before they co-opted a pagan holiday to observe Christ’s birth.

The season of Lent has passed, of course, so I’m hopelessly untimely, but I noticed something this Lenten season that I hadn’t before. The Feast of Annunciation, which celebrates Mary’s pregnancy with the Christ child, falls in Lent. In the midst of this season of reflection, of desert, of preparation, we have this image of expectation and hope, mingled with the expectation and hope of the resurrection. The church year folds in on itself like some kind of liturgical wormhole.

In Luke’s telling of Jesus’ story, Mary is greeted by Elizabeth while they are both pregnant, and Elizabeth blesses her. Mary’s response, in Luke’s Gospel, is very poetic:

My soul magnifies the Lord,
And the breath within me has been delighted by God my savior,
That He should look down upon the lowness of His slave.
Why, look! From now on, all races will call me the lucky one,
Because the All-Powerful did great things with me.
His name is holy, and His mercy is for generations and generations toward those who fear Him.
He summoned strength to His arm,
He scattered the proud with the thoughts in their heart;
He pulled dynasties off thrones
And put peasants on high.
He loaded starving people with goods
And sent rich people away emptyhanded.
Israel has claimed its child
As a reminder of mercy,
As He said to our fathers, to Abraham and his seed forever.

Luke’s Mary is awfully literate for an obscure 1st-century Palestinian peasant. This song, similar to Hannah’s song in 1st Samuel, is called the Magnificat, and it has been set to music over two thousand times. That’s more times than Paul McCartney’s “Yesterday” has been recorded, and it’s the most recorded pop song of all time – talk about peasants being put on high.

The important thing here is the imagination, the vision, of Mary’s song. The things she says had not actually come to pass, and in many ways they still haven’t. But for Mary, just the knowledge that the Messiah was conceived meant that those things were as good as done. God would be faithful to his covenant, to his character. The mighty would fall and the lowly would be raised up – were being raised up even as the child moved in her womb.

I’m glad we didn’t have a “worship time” tonight. I’m glad we got to hear some good music, and appreciate it for being just that. I think, as a church, we are too focused on music’s role in the assembly. I think it is a distraction. I love music – most of you know that. And I think it has a powerful role to play. I would love to see the church support the arts in a strong and powerful way. I think music and art can help us imagine, and that is definitely important. But we are addicted to the catharsis of worship, and I think it distracts us. In the prophetic tradition God never says, “Hey, sacrifice more goats. I really dig that. More blood. Gotta have more blood.” Generally, he seems to be upset that the really important stuff was being neglected: that injustice was being done, that the poor were not being cared for, that the alien and the widow and the oppressed were not being looked after properly. I don’t think He is saying to us, “Hey, sing more songs, and make sure you get worked up doing it. I love that. Oh, and clap for me – please. Applause for Jesus, what a beautiful sound.”

I appreciate what J had to say in his senior sermon on Tuesday, that we don’t really appreciate what it means for God to be terrible. But I am also more and more coming to see God as much less concerned about whether I sneak off and smoke a cigarette as he is that the migrant workers picking the tobacco can’t support their families or break free from the oppression of poverty. We’re experts in personal morality; it has been the purview of fundamentalists and evangelicals (“kinder, gentler” fundamentalists) for years. I’m afraid we’ve turned a blind eye to systemic injustice; to the sin that permeates our power structures and social systems. That, we are told, is liberal territory, and while I try to live in a world where “liberal” and “conservative” don’t mean anything anymore, there are still some fighting that battle.

There’s a billion-dollar industry in place to convince us that Christian music is important, that we need a soundtrack to our lives and it needs to be written by Michael W. Smith and sung passionately by Jaqui Valasquez. That we need worship songs in our assemblies about how nifty we are that we were smart enough to accept God’s grace. That the role of music in church is to help us get worked up for God. That we need to buy Christian things, that our lives need to be annotated with slogans and decorated with inspirational trinkets. That making fun of secular tunes and turning them into cliché-ridden testimonies is a charitable and cool thing to do.

Don’t get me wrong – there is some good stuff out there. But for every song that says “Let injustice bow to Jesus” it seems like there are twelve that say something like “Hey-O, I receive your mercy.” I try to be careful with anthropomorphisms, but God at least has a forehead and a hand to smack it with.

How about a billion-dollar industry to tell us that the poor are important, that AIDS patients are important, that eliminating the debilitating debt owed by third-world countries in a spirit of Jubilee is important? Better yet, forget the whole industry idea altogether. What about a people preaching that these things are important and leading the way?

I think we need more of Mary’s kind of imagination, of Mary’s kind of hope. This is eschatology, I think, in its best form. I’m not much for rapture theology, though I sometimes pray that God would go ahead and take everyone who expects to be raptured. The idea of that many fundamentalists gone at the same time makes me a little giddy. Okay, that was a cheap shot. But I do want to ponder, as a kind of heuristic device, what it would be like if the entire Contemporary Christian cultural apparatus were to disappear overnight. I want to engage in my own kind of eschatological imagining.

Imagine that suddenly we stopped making Living Epistles T-shirts, that it suddenly dawned on us that “I’m saved and you’re not” is not really the Gospel. And bumper stickers. Imagine every Christian bumper sticker gone, and the aluminum fish with them. Imagine no one wrote books any more with “Purpose Driven” in the title, that church growth suddenly ceased to be a field of study. Imagine that no one was making worship albums with pictures of devout and pious youth on the front cover – you know the look – that no one thought music was going to take them to the throne room. Imagine there were no new church buildings built. Imagine there were no Christian leadership books, no irrefutable laws being handed down from on high, no obsession with being highly effective people, or how many habits those kinds of people have. Imagine no Christian bookstores, no Christian romance novels, no “Armor of God” playsets for kids. Imagine sending food to Nicaragua instead of our leftover VBS materials. Imagine a world where being powerful or beautiful or talented didn’t get you any special favors. Imagine a world where the Christian counterculture is defined by how we love, and not by the success of Christian marketing for Christian products.

Imagine that instead of sappy worship songs designed to give us warm fuzzies about God, Christian artists wrote songs about social justice, about righteousness and peace kissing each other. Imagine that church buildings were being turned into low-rent housing. Imagine that instead of thousands of evangelicals fretting about how to have better church meetings, there were soup kitchens cropping up in every major city like something out of Fight Club. Imagine a strange group of people concerned about the outcast, the downtrodden, the oppressed, to the point that governments had to pay attention. Imagine that we didn’t say a word about ideology, or belief system, but we just invited people to live in a way that honors justice, that teaches us to love God, and neighbor, and even our enemy. Imagine a Christianity that got over its obsession with the speck in Islam’s eye. Imagine studying other cultures and religions not from the standpoint of knowing our enemy, but that we might better love our neighbor. Imagine a Christianity that respected the flag under which we live, but did not bow to it. Imagine a Christianity that inspired people to hold governments accountable for their use of power.

I know I’m crazy. This kind of world, in which dynasties are pulled off thrones and peasants are put on high and starving people are loaded up with goods doesn’t exist.

Or does it?

Don't Miss This! (Ted)

Over The Rhine, Friday, June 25.

Looks Easy to Me

And by the way, it's rained off and on here for a couple days and you wouldn't believe how green the view out my back window is. Justin, you'd love this.

The Times They are A-Blah, Blah, Blah

So I've taken a this new position at The Depot--up at the Special Services desk. Started Monday and I have a lot to learn. It's been a long time since I've had to think at work. I think this is one of the reasons I needed the change. At any rate, once I get all the new stuff learned I think the biggest adjustment will be to my new schedule, which is the same goofy, unpredictable retail schedule that the rest of the store has had to work all along. Ruthie and I have essentially had the same schedule since I started at The Depot and I've wondered how the new one would work for us--different days off & me working some nights--but it looks like there'll be some advantages to it too. So for those of you who've asked, the new jorb is off to a good start.

There's a pretty significant (and exciting) change coming for us church-wise too. More about that next time.

What do you Call it When your Snake Runs Away?

Mordred made a break for it today. Ruthie found him down in one of the ducts, but he was out and free the whole time all of you were here watching "The Remains of the Day." Ha!

Digging Paul Simon today. "Hearts and Bones." Very nice.

Now What

Big day for me tomorrow. I begin my new job with The Depot after four years of being an RTV superstar. More later, but this is gonna be weird.

Has it Come to This?

I heard the saddest thing this morning that I think I've heard for a while. The guy at church was talking about what a pleasant time of year this can be and he said, "Not to sound too pagan, but I really love the flowers and the green leaves..." He went on to talk briefly about new life in the spring and resurrection. Now this guy was a visitor and therefore didn't realize that that kind of stuff is okay with our people, but he's not just paranoid. There are plenty of churchy people who would consider a statement like that inappropriate, even pagan. These are the same people who think that easter eggs are of the devil. Makes me want to show 'em my May Pole.

Seen on a T-Shirt Yesterday

"You may not know me, but I'm right in front of you."

Spring

Listened to the Reds on the radio this afternoon, the sun is shining and I just had a catch in the yard with my wife. Nice.

One Heart at a Time

Welcome Dale & Andrew to the world of blog. Family both.

Greetings, One and Everyone

I know I'm like the last person in the world to catch on, but this stuff is hilarious.

The Man in Black

My friend Shawn has recently resensitized me to the genius of Johnny Cash. I'd forgotten how cool he was. Any of you who do itunes should check out a song called "The Mercy Seat." Wow. If you do and then wish you hadn't I'll personally refund your dollar. Incredible stuff.

The Shawshank Redemption

is the greatest movie of all time.

Labels

Talked for way longer than I'm comfortable admitting at work today about where the dividing line is between a Novel, a Novella and a Short Story. How many pages constitute which? The Old Man and The Sea is technically a short story they say, though it's longer than some novellas I've read. Where's the magic line of demarcation (the Mendoza Line for you baseball fans) between these different literary forms? And who put it there? And who cares? Does it make any difference what you call a given work? A better question might be, "Is it worth reading?"

This just reinforces my growing conviction that labels are almost completely worthless. If I'm a person (and I am) then deal with me on that basis. Getting hung up on labels like Post-Modern (as if we're all the same) or Christian (whatever that means) or Liberal (ditto) or Visionary or White Guy or Slob seems like a lazy, arrogant excuse to avoid getting to know me and talking about things that are real.

Stop labeling. Read the damn thing.

He's a Daisy

Shawn blogs.

Love Song Game

Justin Wins

"One moon appears everywhere in all bodies of water; the moons in all bodies of water are contained in one moon. This is a metaphor for one mind producing myriad things and myriad things producing one mind. This refers to dream illusions, flowers in the sky, half-seeming, half empty."

-Hsueh-yen

Hey Check This Out

It's Cameron!

This Book is My Life

"Most of the cowpokes who went north from Lonesome Dove just went to Kansas and thought that was far--but Montana must be twice as far. He couldn't imagine what such a place would look like."

from Lonesome Dove, by Larry McMurtry