The Telethon Revival and Hope for Haiti Now CD – A theological review

Recently, George Clooney took a rather retro stab at the Haiti crisis by bring back what many considered a dead medium: the telethon.  Jerry Lewis is perhaps the best known celebrities associated with the telethon model: taking over the broadcast space for a focused period of live entertainment.  Part of what always made the ‘telethon’ such winning event was the strange alchemy of star power mixed with ‘live TV’ coupled with kitsch-y low fi-ness within the context of a cause beyond anyones ability to solve on their own.  Growing up in the 1970s amidst the golden age of the Variety Show – that granddaddy relative to American Idol (remember the Donny and Marie Osmond Show, the John Denver Show, the Johnny Cash Show, or (shudder…)the  Brady Bunch Hour?), the Telethon was the logical extension of the Variety show: putting stars in live broadcast where  ”whatever happens, happens” creates a sense of excitement, uncertainty and anxiety that offers something of the transcendent (well… that and the polyester jumpsuits…)

The Hope for Haiti telethon and subsequent benefit CD revived this model quite well and it was astounding how many people viewed this as a ‘new thing’.  The hot lights of a live set framed the stars is a harshness that couldn’t be airbrushed.  Given the short time frame to plan and execute the event, the celebs involved we obviously reading text off the teleprompter without any prep – it was true live television in ways that so-called reality TV could never approach.

The musical numbers that peppered through the event were evocative in two ways throughout the telethon that deserves some theological reflection – the role of nostalgia as secular lament and how the Gospel genre with the semiotics of the “gospel choir” in the background is secular culture’s bookmark for God.  First, the musicians all seemed to reach into their back catalogs quite far (at least those older than Taylor Swift) to the Beatles or for some or for others twenty years back into their 1980’s catalog.  What was fascinating about Madonna lifting out “Like A Prayer,” Stevie Wonder covering “Bridge over Troubled Waters” or Sting reframing “Driven to Tears” was the way that when we are devoid of methods for lament and loss, we replace it with nostalgia.  ”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.  Popular culture is framed by the perpetual state of nostalgia as the method to elevate suffering  – triggering instant occasions for longing and loss without sufficient means to satiate this longing.  For example, fandom culture surrounding everything from sports teams to popular culture conventions (i.e. Star Trek, Buffy the Vampire Slayer) 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.  These moments of nostalgia provide a secular culture a context within which to grieve in ways that are communal as well as distance ourselves from the true and abiding ache of loss: we can chuckle at Sheryl Crow and Kid Rock singing “Lean on Me” but in the same instant tear up and find our lower lip tremble a bit as we silently mouth the words along with them.  Another aspect of the telethon and the music choices in particular was how Gospel music as a genre has become the official secular mode of hyperlinking spirituality and transcendence into music.  In short, add a Gospel choir and Madonna moves from the dance floor to the sanctuary without missing a proverbial beat.  Whether is was Beyonce’s backup for “Halo” or Stevie Wonder’s mash up of “Time to Love/Bridge Over troubled Water” or Springsteen’s “We Shall Overcome” – the context of the transcendent was in the Gospel genre pushing these meager offerings by pop singers above their appointed station and into another realm.  Sure, we can be cynics and scoff at such attempts as merely sentimentality for a cause, but there was something more here.  In watching the Gospel singers – and here I am especially thinking of Madonna’s performance of “Like a Prayer” (here is the youtube.com clip of the performance) – there was a force born from a genre that came from a place and history so foreign and so beyond the reach and depth of the pablum that these pop songs (and their respective singers) had to offer that it was like watching a 20 foot wave crash on top of a sand castle.  Madonna’s performance was probably the clearest example of this – she is literally seems to be playing a game of “Frogger” with her backup choir and comes close a number of times to being an 80’s roadkill.  If CS Lewis’ line in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe in regard to Aslan can be riffed on here, it is that Gospel music is good… but it certainly isn’t tame.  This is the amazing thing to watch as these stars want so much to evoke something beyond their grasp given the tragedy that they face, but to roll out a genre and think that it will only add some character to the mix is misguided. Sure, you can tune it down in the studio recording… but the space of the live broadcast is where the Church has always done its best work and certainly the place where God shows up.  This was certainly apparent throughout the night… there was a spark flashing always in the choirs that kept these polished performers looking over their shoulder quite a bit.

Lastly, perhaps the part that truly framed the event as a viewer was the stillness and quiet as the editor jumpcut from set piece (Madonna or Coldplay) to Anderson Cooper live in Haiti, to another actor reading stats like Morgan Freedman or Ben Stiller.  There was no sound bed, no montage clips – just a raw jumpcut from one event to the next.  It was this stillness and silence that evoked a deep spiritual ache – you could honestly say that given this tragedy there was nothing to say – no amount of words nor images that could ever fill the pit of loss and humility the event caused.  For two hours, some of the most beautiful, talented, gracious and even ego-bloated people fell silent… after they sang their song or said their bit, there really wasn’t anything to say.  Words would only stain the void left by so much chaos and uncertainty.  The fact that the show allowed us to feel the silence and lack of polish proves that their is hope after all.  That even with the ‘best laid plans’ of mice, men, and George Clooney… God can show up.

(BTW – as a matter of endorsement… say a prayer for our brothers and sisters in Haiti and buy a CD – it is really good.  And yes, as hard as it is to admit, Justin Timberlake and Charlie Sexton covering “Hallelujah” (that sacred song of all Cohen lovers everywhere)  is really pretty amazing.  No, it isn’t Leonard Cohen nor Jeff Buckley, but it is magical in all the ways you would hope.)

Toward a post-conservative evangelical theology – what is on the horizon

As I teach Postmodern Theology at Fuller Seminary this quarter, I am reminded that so much of what is shifting in current discussions surrounding what constitutes ‘faith’ is a deep concern for the sake of the poor and the marginalized in our world.  The outpouring of support these past few days for Haiti, the constant desire to end human trafficking, the desire to return to the first impulses of the Reformers - to say once again that if the Christian faith is anything then it is deeply practical and bound up in God’s care and longing to reconcile a broken and battered world.  This is not a God of Deism that sits far off, indifferent to the cries of captivity, loss, mourning, joy, and wonder.  No, a generation is arising that so deeply cares about what it means to live and breath each moment of the day that they are willing to sacrifice everything – job security, church traditions, safe zip codes of comfort – just to taste it once before they die.  These are members of the community of loving defiance amidst the comfortable clubs of conformity that fill our web searches and reality shows.

One of the writers I continue to come back to and think has been lost in the Emergent swelling of writers is Millard Erickson.  Erickson was ahead of the curve prior to the wave of Emergent folks who blossomed in popularity in the last 10 years and I think needs to be re-read.  One book that is quite compelling is The Evangelical Left: Encountering Postconservative Evangelical Theology (Baker Books, 1997).

In it Erickson surmises the shift from evangelicalism as a movement toward a “post-conservative evangelical theology” which is marked by the following characteristics:

* Eagerness to engage in dialogue with nonevangelical theologians. Indeed, “they seek opportunities to converse with those whom conservative evangelicals would probably consider enemies.”  In particular Erickson refers to liberal and catholic theologians.

* Concern with theology’s domination by white males and Eurocentrism. Recognizing the influence of social location on theological work, postconservatives seek to include women, persons of color, and Third World Christians in theological scholarship.

* Broadening of the sources used in theology. This frequently includes an emphasis on “narrative-shaped experience” rather than “propositional truths enshrined in doctrines.” The sources may include, in addition to the Bible, Christian tradition, culture, and contemporary Christian experience.

* A discontent with the traditional ties of evangelical theology to the “evangelical Enlightenment,” especially common sense realism. Rejection of the “wooden” approach to Scripture, in favor of regarding it as “Spirit-inspired realistic narrative.”

* An open view of God, in which God limits himself and enters into relationships of genuine response to humans, taking their pain and suffering into himself. God is a risk-taker, not one who controls everything so that nothing contrary to his desires can occur.

* An acceptance, rather than a rejection, of the realm of nature. Nature, although fallen, is never abandoned by grace, which then pervades it.

* A hope for a near-universal salvation as far as access to God’s grace. God has not left himself without a witness in all cultures, sufficient to bring people to salvation if they earnestly seek it.

* An emphasis in Christology on the humanity of Jesus. While retaining belief in the divinity of Christ, this is thought of more in relational than in substance and person categories.

* A more synergistic understanding of salvation. These theologians are, overall, more Arminian than Calvinistic.

* A rejection of triumphalism with respect to theological truth-claims. Postconservatives are critical of belief in epistemological certainty and theological systems.

What do you think of Erickson’s points?  Given that Erickson wrote this over a decade ago, did he sum things up well and what did he miss as we enter the next decade of the 21st century?

10 resolutions for ‘twenty-ten’ from ‘Freedom of the Self’ – make this decade selfless and self-full rather than selfish

In my new book – Freedom of the Self: Kenosis, Cultural Identity and Mission at the Crossroads – I outline an argument to move away from the posture of consumerism and into what I call “the Kenotic Self” based on Philippians 2:5-11.  In the book I track the forgotten path of the Kenotic self in philosophy dating back to Aristotle and Augustine through to Derrida, Levinas and Jean-Luc Marion and theologians such as Karl Barth, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Graham Ward.  In light of this move toward the Kenotic self for 2010, here are 5 things to consider for ‘twenty-ten’ and 5 questions to ask yourself in making economic decisions in the new year drawn from the latter half of the book where I spell out the lifestyle choices of the Kenotic self:

1. God owns all things. As we hear in Ps 24: 11 and Job 41:11, the notion of personal and corporate ownership is an illusion. We have a lease relationship with this life. The fact that people in the U.S. speak of “owning” a home when the truth of the matter is that a vast majority of so-called “home owners” are tenants in a residence “owned” by a mortgage company or bank shows how far we have come as a culture into the illusion that “debt” can be equated with “ownership.” This mentality has seeped into the marrow of our understanding of God’s ownership of creation and all that dwells in it. Regardless of stance on free will and human ethical agency, it is central to the Christian story that God is the not only the sustainer of creation, but the owner as well. We are “stewards” of the garden, not owners. As John Taylor points out in his book Enough is Enough: “Only in his unbroken awareness of God is man’s technological mastery safe. Only in his acceptance of creaturehood can his dominion [over creation] be prevented from becoming raw domination. For being answerable to God, man remains answerable for his fellow creatures and for the soil of his earth.”

2. God provides all things. As the Bible reminds us, there is no need for anxiety: Matt 6; Luke 12: 22–31; no need for love of money: Heb 13:5; no need to serve two masters: Matt 6:24; no need to seek secondary treasures: Matt 13:45. In short, what is needed is provided for—all the rest is fuel of fear at best. Part of the concerns surrounding economic flux in the global market and the rash responses—from Y2K paranoia to increased interest in Middle East oil reserves—has to do with a need to manage and control those things we need due to our deep lack of faith. In short, we pay lip service to God’s providence the more we hoard goods and services unto ourselves at the expense of others. The notion that we are to “focus on our family” as a “primary concern” only exacerbates the divide between our nuclear family and the “widow and orphan” whose caring is not additive, but central to our understanding of what the Kingdom of God looks like.

3. We release all things. Henri Nouwen spoke prophetically in regard to the only true prayer is the prayer offered with open hands. Jesus’ ministry was one of freedom for hospitality through our availability to others. In this way, the extreme is the normative—we are to sell all, give all, and ultimately receive all and pure gift as we hear in Luke 12:33–34 and Mark 10:21, 29–30. To “hold on” and grasp things is harmful—both to relationship with God (i.e. “Eye of the Needle,” Luke 18:18–24) and to one’s own identity and relations with others as we hear in 1 Tim 6:8–10. It is important to remember that the judgment upon Sodom and Gomorrah was a judgment primarily based upon a lack of hospitality—they had become so consumed with feeding their own lusts and desires that they had no time nor vision to acknowledge the needs of others. In this notion as Americans do not stand apart from Sodom, but in the Sodom town square.

4. We are called to desacralise all things. Jacques Ellul in The Technological Society argued that money in and of itself when we imbue it with idol-like mission—in this way money qua money has power in itself and we need to act counter to this temptation and set people and relationships in primary consideration as having priority over things. In this way we need to work toward a redefinition of the Good Life: not quantity of things but quality of relations. As we are challenged under the divine command ethics of the ten commandments, we are not to mission any other God than God, period. To hold things and the monetary value we have placed upon those things above drawing people close in relationship with ourselves and their Creator is to choose graven images. This goes for the notion of usury or putting interest upon money borrowed from others. As we hear in 2 Cor 8, we are challenged not to coerce more money from people but liberate people from addiction and release people from debts. The work of DATA and Jubilee 2000 is not merely fad, it is a mandate. As we learn from liberative and emancipatory theologies, God’s concern for the poor is primary throughout scripture. The “new poverty” is the poverty of ignorance to the cry from the margins. Theologian Ron Sider reminds us: “Are the people of God truly God’s people if they oppress the poor? Is the church really the church if it does not work to free the oppressed? [Regarding Matt 25:41] The meaning [of Matt 25] is clear and unambiguous. Jesus intends that disciples imitate his own special concern for the poor and needy. Those who disobey will experience eternal damnation . . . Regardless of what we do or say at 11am on Sunday morning, affluent people who neglect the poor are not the people of God . . . God is not neutral. His freedom from bias does not mean that he maintains neutrality in the struggle for justice. He is indeed on the side of the poor.” What are some of the challenges that remain before us in striving toward an authentic and humble biblical economics? We are reminded of the Lausanne Covenant:  “All of us are shocked by the poverty of millions and disturbed by the injustices which cause it. Those of us who live in affluent circumstances accept our duty to develop a simple life-style in order to contribute more generously to both relief and evangelism.”  In many respects, little has changed in the 30 years since the Lausanne Covenant was drafted, but the challenge before us as people of integrity is still there.

5. Create communities of loving defiance. Ron Sider puts it this way in Rich Christians in An Age of Hunger: “The church should consist of communities of loving defiance. Instead it consists largely of comfortable clubs of conformity. A far-reaching reformation of the church is a prerequisite if it is to commit itself to Jesus’ mission of liberating the oppressed.” There is a need for intentionality among the faithful to form a new vision of the church as “communities of loving defiance” is a world moving with the inertia of consumerism and an ego-born appetite that shows no natural hope of slowing. The time for a spiritual reassessment of economics and the “new poverty” where the deficits of the soul are acknowledged on the balance sheet alongside the deficits of the check book in now needed. Bonhoeffer made this all too apparent as a factor for authentic discipleship: “Earthly possessions dazzle our eyes and delude us into thinking that they can provide security and freedom from anxiety. Yet all the time they are the very source of anxiety. If our hearts are set on them, our reward is an anxiety whose burden is intolerable . . . When we seek security in possessions we are trying to drive out care with care, and the net result is the . opposite of our anticipations.”

Here are five more resolutions to ask yourself for ‘twenty-ten’ form Ron Sider in Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger:

6. Does this purchase I am about to make move toward a globally sustainable personal lifestyle? Are the choices you are making sustainable outside of the US?  Can someone from different economic system live into the life you are surrounding yourself with?  If making high end purchases – clothing brands, technology upgrades – are not attainable by others then why are you binding yourself to such a lifestyle?

7. How am I distinguishing between necessities and luxuries in my economic priorities? One of the best ways to life into this is to surround yourself with a community of discernment who have permission to speak into your purchases and economic decisions.  Remember, what becomes normative is what we spend up to.  Find friends who share a lifestyle you wish to hold as normative and then give people permission to hold you to it.

8. Work toward eliminating “status expenditures”—can a basic Mp3 player do the job that the iPod can? On a recent trip to Hong Kong, I was amazed that most of the brand clothing lines (think: ‘7 for all mankind’ jeans) merely have labels attached to them where as the same jeans in a discount store do not. Same jeans sans the label.  Another thing I advise college students to do – wait 1 day for every dollar you are thinking of spending on entertainment items.  If a new CD or download costs $12, then wait two weeks before buying it.  I have often found that the “need to buy” and the “need to have” diminishes merely by waiting to see if you really want and need it. I still have that stupid T’Pau CD that if I had waited a few days I would have released how lame it was...

9. Work toward distinguishing between expenditures for creativity and recreation and excessive self-indulgence. People spend often when they are bored and as a way to alleviate loneliness and boredom.  ”I don’t have anything to do, I will go shopping.”  If the chief question is community and connection, then begin with people and have spending follow.  Additionally, you do not need to spend money to spend time with people – i.e. you do not need to buy food as an excuse to spend time together.

10. Strive toward severing the connection between what you earn and what you consume. This is by far the most difficult task for many. The reality that “downsizing” is incredibly difficult shouldn’t surprise anyone—but the call to do so is certainly central to what it means to life selflessly and self-fully rather than selfishly.

Let me know what you think.  Since I am in the final stages of editing Freedom of the Self, your comments may make it into the final book!

What does love got to do with it? – Jean-Luc Marion and silly love songs

I was in fourth grade when Paul McCartney’s musings in 1976 that ‘you think that people would’ve had enough of silly love songs, I look around me and I see it isn’t so…oh no…’ filled the airwaves.  Retrofitted by Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman during a montage dance number in Baz Luhrmann’s film Moulin Rouge in 2001, the question of whether there is a place for love anymore continues to perplex and befuddle.

I am a second reader on a senior thesis honors project looking at phenomenological turn in the work of Jean-Luc Marion.  One of the grand works of Marion is his reflections on the absence of love in philosophy.  As he notes in the beginning of book The Erotic Phenomenon:

Philosophers have in fact forsaken love, dismissed it without a concept and finally thrown it to the dark and worried margins of their sufficient reason – along with the repressed, the unsaid, and the unmentionable.  Doubtless other forms of discourse claim to recover from this escheat, and, in their own way, they have sometimes succeeded.

I fear that he is correct.   Spend time in the philosophy section of your local college, university or seminary library and flip through the generous tomes that bear the heft and girth of centuries of the ‘philo-sophia’ or ‘love of wisdom’ and where is the passionate call to love and be loved in return?  As Marion goes on to say in The Erotic Phenomenon, we have relied too much upon poetry, novels and even theology to frame the conversation and therefore releases philosophy from its mandate.  Such assumptions need to be reconsidered :

Poetry can tell me about the experience I have not known how to articulate, and thus liberate me from my erotic aphasia – but it will never make me understand love conceptually.  The novel succeeds in breaking the autism of my amorous crises because it reinscribes them in a sociable, plural, and public narrativity – but it does not explain what really and truly happens to me.  Theology knows what love is all about; but it knows it too well ever to avoid imposing upon me an interpretation that comes so directly through the Passion that it annuals my passions – without taking the time to render justice to their phenomenality, or to give a meaning to their immanence.

It is this last statement about theology that vexes me the most.  Have we so easily resigned the task of critically reflecting upon the nature of love to the ’soft disciplines’ that we have lost the ability to speak of love, let alone render some grounded understanding of what love truly entails – this most elusive yet necessary of all truth?

Perhaps the question isn’t whether people have had enough of silly love songs… it is why they continue to stomach such shallow ones.  Perhaps we haven’t given people many choices…

The Gospel according to George Bailey: Musings on “It’s a Wonderful Life”

As with most years, my wife and I sat in front of the fireplace and watched “It’s A Wonderful Life.” Perhaps it is because my Scots-Irish heritage goes back to the Bailey clan 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 (pretty much every Christmas since high school), it’s 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 (akin to suburban Magi), but the most important gift they bring is something George has had in spades all along: 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 doesn’t 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 presence 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…

(view the ending at YouTube.com here… but have some Kleenex with you…)

Top recordings of 2009 – the final four downloads

well… last week I started my top 9 list for 2009 spelling out the first five downloads and streamings for the year.   This week will round off the final four for 2009.  So… without further adieu…

4. Mark Knopfler, Get Lucky – As I have said in other postings, I have had the privilege of attending schools with great music alumni – Garfield High School (Jimi Hendrix, Quincy Jones) and University of Glasgow in Scotland (Eric Clapton went to the Glasgow School of Art for a spell).  Glasgow is a city of great musical heritage – whether being the port from which Johnny Cash’s grandparents set sail from for America or the emo arthouse stylings of Belle and Sebastian it is a rich place to be from.  Mark Knopfler is certainly no exception.  Born in Glasgow and later to be the lead singer/songwriter for Dire Straits, Mark Knopfler is simply one of THE great rock guitarists out there.    With the release of Get Lucky this year, Knopfler has now released equal amounts of music as a solo artist as well as the lead for Dire Straits which makes this release an important shift.  Many reviewers are luckwarm to brazenly thumbs down about the album, but I frankly find Knopfler’s storytelling only growing more grounded with every release.  From the opening strains of pennywhistle, brushes rapid fire on the snare and rabid fiddle playing wrapping around the opening line “Southern bound from Glasgow town, she’s shining in the sun/My Scotstoun lassie, on a border run…” on the lead track “Border Reiver” you know this is a supreme Celtic shout out through and through.  The album rounds off with “So far from the Clyde” and “Piper to the End” in the event that you didn’t pick up the post code of this release and is a strong CD all the way through.  As always, Knopfler’s guitar technique is front and center on a number of tracks, but it is the sage-like musings of the seasoned storyteller that takes you back in this CD. The lost soldiers on “Remembrance Day” recalls the bitterness of loss amidst war that “Brothers in Arms” did in the Reagan era, the track “Before Gas and TV” opens wide the storyline of “Money for Nothing” without the irony – a working class outside the stream of change and not included in the vision of upward mobility that continues to frame a consumer culture.  It is unfortunate that the reviewers didn’t catch the Glasgow vibe – many simply wishing for another “Sultans of Swing” or “Money for Nothing”.  But standing against the artists out there, Knopfler is a giant and the waters of the Clyde flow through words and finger picking…

3. mewithoutyou, it’s all crazy! it’s all false! it’s all a dream! it’s alright - I mentioned this in an earlier posting on my facebook page, but I once again will admit to being very, very late to this party.  I had the privilege of working with a student on her honors project this past term and through her reflections she introduced me to mewithoutyou. Yes, there is a debt Aaron Weiss (singer, chief wordsmith and religious vagabond for the band) must pay to Sufjan Stevens, The Polyphonic Spree and the Handsome Family for kicking open the door for this “hey, let’s play crazy music with whatever we find laying around but make it so compelling that people will listen deeply rather than run away” genre.  But what separates mewithoutyou from the fray of Sufjan Stevens wannabes is the depth and integrity with which Aaron Weiss had been willing to go in his creativity and seeking after the muse regardless of what religious camp they may find themselves.  Having signed with Tooth and Nail a few years back, the band flew a distinctive alternative Christian band flag with the proper noun in their band title – mewithoutYOU.  These days, Weiss considers himself to be a theological freegan polyglot finding hybridized meaning in his readings equally of a Greek morality play rendered by a Sri Lankan teacher named M.R. Bawa Muhaiyaddeen from a children’s book (click on this hyperlink to see the video to the song “The Fox, The Crow and the Cookie” which bears a striking resemblance to Wes Anderson’s “Fantastic Mr. Fox” aesthetic), Christian traditions as seen in the revisioning of King David in “The angel of death came to David’s room” to the turning to Sufism with his anthem that anchors the CD entitled “Allah, Allah, Allah”.  In this move toward seeking wisdom from such seemingly polarizing sources has left many scratching their heads – some calling Weiss a “backslider” and betrayer of the Christian faith to those who denounce this theological journey as merely a play for a wider audience.  It takes courage to journey into such waters and for fans of a certain stripe it will take more than courage… it will take faith.  And perhaps that is what mewithoutyou is offering their audience after all is said and done.

2. Bob Dylan, Christmas in the Heart – of all the releases this year, this has probably been met with more befuddlement mixed with rage and disappointment than any other.  This is of course due to His Royal Bobness ‘(HRB) rabid fan base  coupled with Dylan being the closest thing to a living legend that American popular music has still recording that existentially stems from the folk revolution of the late 1950s.  As a bearer of a legacy, Dylan’s every move is watched and turned over and over.  On a recent Kindlings Muse podcast we tackled the question of Dylan and his legacy through such artists as Fleet Foxes and Sufjan Stevens.  During the Q and A portion of the show, one of the audience members asked bottom line question – “So, where is Bob Dylan going?” It seems that he has gone right to the heart of American chestnuts – the Christmas song – and played it straight up.  Some reviewers think that this project is nothing more than a joke – basically an ironic mockery of the Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, et. al.  industry of tree-trimming carols that assault shoppers in malls and become the stuff of disdain for children as their parents remember their past.  These are people – IMHO – who still think that irony and sarcasm are the twinned voices of the generation.  No, I listen to these gems and hear nothing by honor and a tapping into something so much deeper than irony.  To his credit, I think the home and hearth that HRB is crowing on about in these standards is a home that the man who sang “Like a Rolling Stone” would like to come to rest in.  Like George Bailey in the finale of “It’s a Wonderful Life”, I think HRB is tired of singing alone and would love a singalong.  Mark my words all you naysayers… this is a recording that will be with us… and we will be better for it.  And of the nine downloads I have listened, this is as guilt free as it gets – all proceeds from the sales of the CD will provide 500,000 meals to school children in the developing world through the World Food Programme, 15,000 meals to homeless people in the United Kingdom through Crisis and more than 4 million meals to 1.4 million families in America through Feeding America.  Take that you cynics…

1. U2, No Line on the Horizon - Sure, they are the biggest band in the world and may be the biggest band in the short history of rock and roll (the jury is out) – so why can’t they have the biggest and best release of the year?  Yes, perhaps there is no surprise here for those who follow Theology Kung Fu (which one friend called a “U2 lovesite”), but when I heard the first single “Get On Your Boots” I honestly thought “so, this is it, isn’t it?  U2 are trying to re-capture some energy but this feels all wrong.”  But then the album was released and the digging into the album began and as I have written in many venues (my theological reflections on No Line on the Horizon were published as an article here)  this is yet another masterpiece of production, songcraft, and zeitgeist ready-at-handness hitting hard on questions of faith, war, poverty, racial discord, and what it means to be human.  The current 360 tour only seals it for me – this is U2’s year yet again and it is… wait for it… “magnificent” (click here to watch the boys perform “magnificent” during their weeklong stint on David Letterman… to see is to believe).

Well friends, that is the list.  Let the dogs of war loose – what did I miss?  where did I hit the nail on the head?  Where would you put these?

Top recordings of 2009 – 9 downloads to consider before the New Year

Like most people I both love and detest “best of” lists – I often gawk at what people choose (I mean, do the Oscars EVER get it right?) but at the same time can’t keep myself from pouring over them.  With that, I culled through my downloads and streaming for the year and akin to past Theology Kung Fu lists, have let the year set the number.  So here are my nine recordings to consider for download and streaming (you will see why I make this designation as you look at the list) before singing Auld Lang Syne at your New Years party:

9. Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse with David Lynch, Dark Night of the Soul

One of the marks of this decade was the move of artists to (in the words of the Flobots) ‘fight with tools’ such as Garage Band, Facebook and MySpace to subvert the industrial strangehold on music distribution to varying degrees of success.  In the vain of Radiohead releasing ‘In Rainbows’ for ‘donation only’ via the web, Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse teamed up with a bevy of artists to record an amazing album true to its Carmelite title -  a homage to St. John of the Cross’ passive purgation into the ‘dark night of the soul.’  Filmmaker and auteur David Lynch (he of Mulholland Drive and Eraserhead fame) joined in to create filmic versions of the project as well as producing a photo journal.  The entire project was slated to be released with EMI this Fall but the project was pulled.  But if the move to the ‘computing cloud’ has taught us anything it is that no power on heaven or earth can stop the world wide web.  The album can be heard in its entirety via NPR’s First Listen site here.

My favorite track: Suzanne Vega on “The Man who would play God” and Gruff Rhys from Super Furry Animals on “Just War”

8. Fanfarlo, Reservoir

Lovers of Hey Marseilles, Arcade Fire, Beirut will find a home with Fanfarlo’s bookishly twee graduate student  aesthetics.  Similar to the Decemberist’s Victorian revisionism, the London sextet took their name from, of all places, from a book by the 19th century French critic Charles Baudelaire. As lead singer Simon Balthazar said in an interview on NPR “I was reading French symbolists at the time, and I sort of just reached out on the table and there was this book [by Baudelaire].”  Keeping with Baudelaire’s romantic sensibilities, Fanfarlo blend cello, violin, trumpet and mandolin into literate reflective flow that feels both at home at the circus and the critical theory post grad seminar.

7. The Flaming Lips/Stardust – “Borderline” off the Covered: A Revolution in Sound compilation

It probably isn’t fair to put just one song… let alone a cover song… let alone a cover of a Madonna hit from the 1980’s… in a list of “best of” releases at the end of the 21st century, but what can I say?  Wayne Cody, frontman for The Flaming Lips teamed up with Stardeath and White Dwarfs (which is fronted by his nephew Dennis Cody) to record this freaking AMAZING revisioning of this Madonna chestnut of yore. Like Madonna – while the songs made for great fun on the dance floor, it was the visuals with the dawn of MTV that grafted music to image for all time and this isn’t missed by the Lips.  As with all things Flaming Lips, there is the tinge of spaceman irony in their aesthetic – to hear them is to see them as it were with the big bunny suits and huge plastic beachballs. As the Lips toured this year they threw this cover into the mix to roaring acclaim and you can see why in the video of the song.  As the song builds, watch Wayne Cody in the background with his Emo puffy coat banging the large gong while his nephew in the argyle vest throws his hair around like Kurt Cobain at prep school and think “I bet Thanksgiving is a riot at their place…”

(btw – the Covered compilation that has this track also has a cover of Neil Young’s “Like a Hurricane” by… wait for it… Adam Sandler. Yes… THAT Adam Sandler.  He sings it straight up and it isnt that bad…)

6. Neko Case, Middle Cyclone

When Fox Confessor Brings the Flood came out, the days of Neko Case being the secret crush of KEXP and NPR listeners was over.  With that CD, the sometime-singer in The New Pornographers whose pure voice channeling Patsy Cline, swirling lyricism of a bookworm, and non-sequitur arrangements forged by someone who spent too much time on craigslist (she bought up 100 pianos on craigslist and stored them in her barn… go figure) came to roost.  While the 2009 release of Middle Cyclone wasn’t quite the level of genius that was Fox Confessor, it still stood head and shoulders over many of the releases this past year.  Her cover of “Never Turn Your Back on Mother Nature” stands in the middle of the playlist as a tent pole for the eco-centric themes running throughout – whether it is the fact that Killer Whales get their name for a reason in “People Got a Lot of Nerve”  to the 30 minute plus (yes… 30 minute plus) ending track “Marais la nuit” which is just the sounds of her backyard at twilight (I wonder how many people just download that single…) it is really a tour d’force.

5. The Mountain Goats, The Life of the World to Come

I first came across the Mountain Goats (the band fronted by John Darnielle) with their release “The Sunset Trees” a few years back and especially the single “This Year” which is a rousing singalong that I usually play every year now on my birthday and love the “maybe this year in Jerusalem!”

There is a level of irony that so-called Christian bands will try to reach their audience by making their songs as abstracted and removed from biblical references as possible with not so much as a fish symbol on their CD cover art, yet a deeply ‘secular’ band like the Mountain Goats will release an album of songs whose titles are all direct biblical citations.  To read the linear notes and track listing in “The Life of the World to Come” is to get more engagement with the Bible than a year of Sundays in half the rock band churches popping up in warehouses everywhere.

Yet rather than either dismiss the project as the work of a cynic or disregard the songs as having no hermeneutic relation to the texts cited in the title, take a moment and just listen to the stories that Darnielle spins forth in each track with a Bible in your lap.

“Matthew 25:21” takes the parable of the Sheep and the Goats into the room of Darnielle’s mother-in-law as she is dying of cancer.  When you think of his chosen text as a rendering of promise for the “good and faithful servant to go into the joy of the Lord” it puts irony out in the hallway.   For U2 fans, Psalm 40 is considered almost untouchable since the definitive version anchored their “War” LP in 1983.  That said, the Mountain Goats take in “Psalms 40:2” is a kicker with a pulsing bass line fronted with Darnielle’s charistmatically frantic voice proclaiming “He has fixed his sign in the sky / He has raised me from the pit and set me high” that he is seeming to dare God to save him.  In “Genesis 30:3,” Darnielle sits at an old beaten piano singing about a kind of love few songwriters have the courage to reflect on let alone sing aloud.  Here Rachel, the beloved of Jacob, offers her maidservant Bilhah to her husband so that they can bear a child: “I will do what you ask me to do / Because of how I feel about you” sings Darnielle with a weight to his voice that speaks of love, understanding and pain in ways that much of what is called CCM could learn from.

I will upload my top 4 downloads tomorrow… any guesses what will make the number 1 spot?

The ‘oughts’: a decade embracing the ‘cloud’, the ‘Long tail’ and the end of the CD era

With the end of a decade comes the flood of lists – best movies, best CDs, biggest changes of the decade, man and women of the decade. etc.  Pundits are racing to label this first decade of the 21st century – depending on whether you are a glass half empty person or glass half full, you could say that this has been the decade (00) of the ‘naughts’ or the ‘oughts’ (as in ‘ought 5′, ‘ought 6′).   While those who have read my musings both here and elsewhere would say that I lean toward the cynic repose, I will say that the past 10 years deserve to be seen as the decade of the ‘ought’: whether framed by the stunning political upheavals in the Presidential race with the election of Barak Obama – a relative unknown at the beginning of the new century who sits in 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue as Commander and Chief today, or the economic upheavals of the end of this decade where people are scrambling to make sense of a consumer culture without the means to sustain consumerism resulting in not only a loss of jobs, homes, and lifestyle – but a serious crisis of identity as well (“if I can’t spend… who am I?”).   One of the greatest shifts of this decade has been the full-on embrace of what has been termed as “The Long Tail” phenomena.   The term was framed in the middle of the decade by Chris Anderson, an editor at Wired magazine, who essentially argued that where much of consumer choice was framed by access to goods found in traditional ‘brick and mortar’ shops which were limited to inventory and therefore shops were driven only to stock items that were deemed the most popular and generally appealing – the ‘oughts’ have fully realized the shift to online retailers such as Amazon and iTunes and as such have essentially endless ’shelf space’ (a phrase that will quaint to my children in the years to come).  Anderson puts it this way in his 2004 Wired article cited above:

You can find everything out there on the Long Tail. There’s the back catalog, older albums still fondly remembered by longtime fans or rediscovered by new ones. There are live tracks, B-sides, remixes, even (gasp) covers. There are niches by the thousands, genre within genre within genre: Imagine an entire Tower Records devoted to ’80s hair bands or ambient dub. There are foreign bands, once priced out of reach in the Import aisle, and obscure bands on even more obscure labels, many of which don’t have the distribution clout to get into Tower [Records] at all.

There is perhaps no greater example of this revolution in economics and seismic lifestyle shift during the ‘oughts’ than the rise of the iPod and iPhone driven by iTunes.  Akin to the Facebook explosion where people began reconnecting with people they barely spoke to in high school and now share status update quips with on a daily basis, now with the advent of the digital music player, the ubiquity of laptops and now netbooks, and the move away from server mentality to ‘cloud computing‘,  the flow of music and video is no longer restricted by shelf space at the corner Tower Records (R.I.P) or big box Walmart.  While iTunes still operates on a purchase model – you buy the 99 cent download and therefore ‘own’ the song on your music device –  services like Zune and Rhapsody have a pure ‘cloud’ model where you merely pay a subscription to their library and while you never ‘own’ the music you are listening to, you can listen to it as long as you wish and trade it out when Lady GaGa (who I have to admit frames the mantra of the ‘oughts’ – “I want your everything as long as its free” –  in her zeitgeisty song/video “Bad Romance” which will stick in your head for days… so just be warned before listening/viewing gets irritating or simply embarrassing to have on your playlist.

What this essentially signals is the end of the CD era as we turn the page on this decade in a matter of weeks and rush face first into 2010.  Having lived thus far through rise and fall (and rising again) of various media delivery modes – whether it be vinyl, 8 track, cassette, CD and now digital download and streaming – what is apparent as we enter the next decade is that while we will continue to listen to music, it will be with our head in the proverbial and yet very real ‘cloud’ as much as with our feet on the dance floor.

Stay tuned – Theology Kung Fu will be posting our ‘oughts’ wrap up posting in a couple days…

As the year ended in 2008, I posted my top 8 CDs for the year here on Theology Kung Fu – a list not so much of ‘new music’ but music that was certainly new to me or at least renewed to me via the growing use of digital media.  This is what , predicted in his theory called ‘The Long Tail’

Freedom of the Self – finishing editing on the book

The work on my book – Freedom of the Self: Cultural Identity and the Mission of God at the Crossroads – is wrapping up this month and will be sent off to the publisher in early January 2010. More to come!

Advent 1: Silence in Luke 1 before song

This past Monday The Kindlings Muse had their annual Christmas show at Hale’s Pub in Fremont.  Always an eclectic gathering (read: island of misfit toys) of passionate artists, writers, singer/songwriters, and book worms reflecting on this season.  For my part, I read a portion of an unpublished book I have had sitting on my hard drive for the past three years entitled ‘Fear Not! – Reflections on the Sounds of Christmas‘.  Basically,  as the title points to, I trace the ‘fear not’ refrain from Isaiah 41 through the various uses in the New Testament.  One of the chapters of the book looks at Luke 1 where Zecharias the husband of Elizabeth (Mary’s cousin and soon-to-be mother of John the Baptist) is praying in the temple when he is visited by the angel Gabriel who announces that his wife, advanced in age, will give birth to a son.  In many churches, Advent is about the ‘popular’ stories of the season – the shepherds in the fields, Joesph and Mary travelling to Bethlehem for the census, Mary’s Magnificant where she declares that her ’soul magnifies the Lord’ (we can all hear Handel’s musical score at this point).  But before everyone starts breaking into a version of ‘High School Musical’ in bathrobes under the Palestinian moonlight, there is silence.  Zechariah upon hearing that there is no reason to fear turns his well-heeled overly educated mind to Gabriel’s announcement and questions how such a thing could even be possible?  Certainly a valid question for many of us – how indeed.  How can the Divine break into our lives without so much as an Outlook calendar invite?  How can an angelic visitor come into a very busy schedule of pious prayer, interrupt, and expect anything but serious questioning?  To say that Zecharias reminds me of many of my clergy friends during this time of year is a vast understatement.  To put a sharper point on it – I think we skip preaching on this passage of Luke because it simply hits too close to home.  But there it is: the religious professional doing everything ‘right’ as the guild expects of him, yet misses the forest for the proverbial trees.  The result of this theophany? Silence.  Zecharias loses his ability to agree or disagree with the message before him and has to just “be” in the midst of the gathering glory – no longer able to either validate or invalidate what is taking place.  Probably the most painful place for a religious leader in many ways – to just “be” in the midst of the swirling events.   Elizabeth can now be heard – given voice in the narrative along with Mary with some of the most important insights into what the coming of Christ will mean and how we are to prepare a place in both our hearts and the world for this Emmanuel moment (something certain churches that denounce women’s leadership should take note of as well lest an angel shut their mouths as well …)

So Silence comes before the Song in our story.  Advent begins with waiting in the quiet…

Let those of us that have ears… be still…