"I've Found Grace Inside a Sound"

I just found a well-written article (HT: Jeffrey Overstreet) by Jeff Keuss about the comedy of U2's new album No Line on the Horizon. He uses Gustav Freytag's "pyramid" to trace the arch of U2's whole body of work, focusing primarily on No Line and its comic movement. Keuss articulates well what I was trying to say in fewer words in a previous post, paying special attention to the "sound" motif throughout the album.

Poetic Preachers

I just found out about a recently published book by M. Craig Barnes called The Pastor as Minor Poet. I've been wondering when someone would publish such a book (of course, Eugene Peterson has done so--just not so directly--just not books aimed directly at pastors). As a friend of mine once said, "There needs to be preachers who are poets." Amen. We need pastors who view the world poetically as opposed to merely scientifically, legally, factually, etc. Though I've not read Barnes' book, it looks promising from a quick perusal of the table of contents.

Speaking of poetic preachers...one of the most poetic preachers I've ever had the privilege of hearing over a long period of time is Skip Ryan, formerly of Park Cities Presbyterian Church (where my wife and I met) and now Chancellor of Redeemer Seminary.

I am always a little leery of allowing the sermon to be so central to worship. We are, after all, more than minds and worship has to do just as much with our bodies as it does our brains (hence, we kneel, stand, smell the wine of the communion cup, etc.). Skip understood this, I believe. I remember him saying, a la Dorothy Sayers probably, that the whole worship service is a drama--a space created where we can encounter God through the sacraments, Scripture, fellowship, etc. We, in the fullness of our humanity, encounter the God who became flesh. Because that mystery was central to his preaching, Skip's sermons took on the character of poetry: he used language, rhythm, and his gravitas in such a way that the sermon left you with a deeper sense of awe and conviction. Listen to his sermons if you have a chance. They're worth your time. You can find them here.

(Skip Ryan meeting Bono in 2006)

RIP Horton Foote and Musings on U2's New Album

I heard last night that Horton Foote (March 14, 1916 – March 4, 2009) died a couple of days ago. If you don't know Horton Foote, you should really check out his screenwriting chops. He's also known for writing the Academy Award-winning Tender Mercies (one of my personal all-time favorite films and filmed near my home town--the rolling prairie land that makes up its geographical setting fills me with longing too deep for words...memory, dreams, Sehnsucht).

On another note...U2's No Line on the Horizon is quite the record. When I first heard it, I was dubious. I thought, "Ah, their music's gettin' soft...what is this poppy stuff." But then, through more listening, I think No Line is a truly comic album: an album that celebrates "love" that "can heal such a scar." This sentiment expresses a perfect answer to Achthung Baby's "Love is clockworks and cold steel / Fingers too numb to feel...Love is drowning in a deep well /All the secrets, and no one to tell./ Take the money, honey...Blindness." The former is the hopeful answer to the tragic limitations found in the latter's disordered love (HT to my friend and colleague, Brett, for that last thought). Bono has progressed as a writer, his artistic vision moving toward the wholeness of the time when heaven and earth will be one--as in "no line on the horizon."

If you don't own No Line already, give it a listen at U2's Myspace page. It has free streaming of the whole album. I'll leave you with a live version of the title song "No Line on the Horizon."

Spotlight on Poetry: Richard Wilbur's “A Baroque Wall-Fountain in the Villa Sciarra”

Today, I attended an AP conference where I got to listen to a retired teacher talk about one of my favorite poets, Richard Wilbur. Though I am fairly familiar with his work, I had not read read the poem you will find below. Please read it. It looks daunting and, well, it is, for the most part. But it will reward you. Spend some time with it. Look up words you don't know. You'll be glad you did. Hint: the speaker is thinking about two different fountains he's seen in Italy. Also, Don't read right past the reference to St. Francis.

Oh, I tried to get Blogger to copy the poem in stanzaic form, but it refused. It you want the poem with all it's stanzas, here it is.

“A Baroque Wall-Fountain in the Villa Sciarra”

Under the bronze crown

Too big for the head of the stone cherub whose feet

A serpent has begun to eat,

Sweet water brims a cockle and braids down

Past spattered mosses, breaks

On the tipped edge of a second shell, and fills

The massive third below. It spills

In threads then from the scalloped rim, and makes

A scrim or summery tent

For a faun-ménage and their familiar goose.

Happy in all that ragged, loose

Collapse of water, its effortless descent

And flatteries of spray,

The stocky god upholds the shell with ease,

Watching, about his shaggy knees,

The goatish innocence of his babes at play;

His fauness all the while

Leans forward, slightly, into a clambering mesh

Of water-lights, her sparkling flesh

In a saecular ecstasy, her blinded smile

Bent on the sand floor

Of the trefoil pool, where ripple-shadows come

And go in swift reticulum,

More addling to the eye than wine, and more

Interminable to thought

Than pleasure’s calculus. Yet since this all

Is pleasure, flash, and waterfall,

Must it no be too simple? Are we not

More intricately expressed

In the plain fountains that Maderna set

Before St. Peter’s – the main jet

Struggling aloft until it seems at rest

In the very act of rising, until

The very wish of water is reversed,

That heaviness borne up to burst

In a clear, high, cavorting head, to fill

With blaze, and then in gauze

Delays, in a gnatlike shimmering, in a fine

Illumined version of itself, decline,

And patter on the stones its own applause?

If that is what men are

Or should be, if those water-saints display

The pattern of our arête*,

What of these showered fauns in their bizarre,

Spangled, and plunging house?

They are at rest in fullness of desire

For what is given, they do not tire

Of the smart of the sun, the pleasant water-douse

And riddled pool below,

Reproving our disgust and our ennui

With humble insatiety.

Francis, perhaps, who lay in sister snow

Before the wealthy gate

Freezing and praising, might have seen in this

No trifle, but shade of bliss –

That land of tolerable flowers, that state

As near and far as grass

Where eyes becomes the sunlight, and the hand

Is worthy of water: the dreamt land

Toward which all hungers leap, all pleasures pass.

* ancient Greek term used to describe "excellence" or the pursuit of the highest limits of human potential

A Quick Evaluation of Benjamin Button

Spoiler Alert: This post contains details pertaining to the film The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

I haven't been able to get out and see many of the films that have been nominated for the Academy Award's "Best Picture," but Jana and I were able recently to drop the little one off at the folks so we could go watch The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. We wanted to see Slumdog Millionaire, but it was not showing in the part of town we were visiting, so we settled for Benjamin Button.

I have read various judgments of the Academy's nominations and many of them have been highly critical--including this one. I have to say, after seeing Benjamin Button, I tend agree with these nay-sayers.

The main problem with film--besides the fact that its been done before (see Forrest Gump)--is that Benjamin is so uninteresting. He doesn't change. Actually, I take that back: he does change, but the change is only skin deep--quite literally. He goes from ancient-ugly-infant to a weird A River Runs Through It Brad Pitt to adolescent-trying-figure-himself-out to cuter infant. But that's it. He's a manchild all the way through and static; his co-star Cate Blanchett's character (i.e. Benjamin's "Jen-nay") is more interesting with her moving to New York, talking about D.H. Lawrence, and having a career-ending accident. Her struggle is more internal, and she seems a bit more complex and therefore, interesting.

Also, I am not sure why Hurricane Katrina in the frame story is so important. Is it there simply for context--to let us know that the frame story takes place in recent years? Fine. But when the waters from the broken levees begin to flood the basement where the clock, which is so central to the story, is stored, you being to think Katrina is supposed to represent something more than just a backdrop to the present-day story.

I am not always this critical of the Academy. I was pleased with No Country for Old Men's selection last year. But then again, there have been other years when the Best Picture went to more mediocre fare.

Throw Down Your Heart

I just found out about this documentary coming out this Spring. In it, Bela Fleck (you should know him and his music if you do not) takes the banjo back to Africa, where it is believed this beautiful instrument originated, to play with African musicians from all over the continent.

There are not many instruments that "send the chills down my spine," as I heard Bill Monroe once say, like the banjo. Its history also interests me given that it was brought over by slaves and eventually became a core instrument of bluegrass, country, etc.

It's Been a Really Looong Time...

It's been a really long time since I posted anything on this blog. I had pretty much given up on it. What, with taking on new teaching duties and adopting the cutest baby in the world, I've had little time for such superfluous activities. But, hey, here I am taking some steps back into the blogosphere.

I thought I would re-christen this weblog by posting a copy of the poem that inspired its name. It captures, I think, the single most common theme running through the lives of all men and women and children: limitation.

I was reminded the other day of why this fact of life is of such interest to me when I was listening to some old radio interviews with Rich Mullins. In one of them, he points out that that most blessed of gifts we have been given, friendship, is not a cure for loneliness: that even in the most intimate moments with an Other, there is something undone, something not-yet-united, something incomplete. This absence, or lack, is always there lurking underneath all the fluttering emotions and the activities of the glands (a la Faulkner) that often accompany our many and varied experiences--including friendship. It's that lack, which works itself out into a holy "restlessnesse" (see the poem below), that is central to this blog.

As Herbert depicts below, we are body and spirit, and though these two forces are meant to live in harmony, they often are at odds. Moreover, though the Incarnation reaffirms our life in the body, we will never, in this age of the "inaugurated eschaton" (thanks, NT Wright, for that apt term), find rest-wholeness-unity in its complete and final form. This blog is borne out of that restlessness and the urge it creates to continue to explore God's wonderful (literally) world, looking for signs of wholeness, beauty, truth--signposts of that wholeness to come--even in the midst of darkness and brokenness--especially in the midst of the darkness and brokenness.

So, one of the signposts I hope to continue exploring on this blog is art in all its forms: poetry, prose, music, painting, design, etc. The postings may be sparse, but I plan to at least be "faithful" (wow, that feels silly--faithful to a blog).

Enjoy and see you 'round the 'sphere.

THE PULLEY.
WHEN God at first made man,
Having a glasse of blessings standing by ;
Let us (said he) poure on him all we can :
Let the worlds riches, which dispersed lie,
Contract into a span.

So strength first made a way ;
Then beautie flow’d, then wisdome, honour, pleasure :
When almost all was out, God made a stay,
Perceiving that alone, of all his treasure,
Rest in the bottome lay.

For if I should (said he)
Bestow this jewell also on my creature,
He would adore my gifts in stead of me,
And rest in Nature, not the God of Nature :
So both should losers be.

Yet let him keep the rest,
But keep them with repining restlesnesse :
Let him be rich and wearie, that at least,
If goodnesse leade him not, yet wearinesse
May tosse him to my breast.

~ George Herbert

Having Children Not Eco Friendly According to Some Women

How did we arrive at this place:

"Having children is selfish. It's all about maintaining your genetic line at the expense of the planet"?

Actually, here's one with more gravity...

I couldn't pass up posted a link to this fine piece of writing by Peggy Noonan. It was in Friday's Wall Street Journal Opinion section. It's a commentary on Hillary Clinton and her recent slide in the polls. Noonan compares her to Margaret Thatcher. Here's an excerpt.

The point is the big ones, the real ones, the Thatchers and Indira Gandhis and Golda Meirs and Angela Merkels, never play the boo-hoo game. They are what they are, but they don't use what they are. They don't hold up their sex as a feint: Why, he's not criticizing me, he's criticizing all women! Let us rise and fight the sexist cur.
When Hillary Clinton suggested that debate criticism of her came under the heading of men bullying a defenseless lass, an interesting thing happened. First Kate Michelman, the former head of NARAL and an Edwards supporter, hit her hard. "When unchallenged, in a comfortable, controlled situation, Sen. Clinton embraces her elevation into the 'boys club.' " But when "legitimate questions" are asked, "she is quick to raise the white flag and look for a change in the rules."
Then Mrs. Clinton changed tack a little and told a group of women in West Burlington, Iowa, that they were going to clean up Washington together: "Bring your vacuum cleaners, bring your brushes, bring your brooms, bring your mops." It was all so incongruous--can anyone imagine the 20th century New Class professional Hillary Clinton picking up a vacuum cleaner? Isn't that what downtrodden pink collar workers abused by the patriarchy are for?

Here's the rest.

It's been a while...

I recently checked my blog (the first time in months) and saw a couple of comments from as many readers (my two faithfuls) asking for another post in order to move the mug of Hillary further down the page.

School's keeping me quite busy but I thought I'd post this clip from a favorite old SNL sketch of mine: Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer (starring Phil Hartman--one of my old favorites). Enjoy. (At least it will push Hillary further off the opening page).

unfrozen caveman lawyer

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Girls Just Wanna Have Fun...Hillbilly Style

I really don't have time to do this, but I need to blow off some steam as my entire day has been consumed with the business of getting the school year started.

Below, you'll find a clip of The David Rawlings Machine (which is really--again--just Gillian Welch and Rawlings, but here, with The Machine, Rawlings is the frontman). They're singing a cover of "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" by Cyndi Lauper. Just in case the clip in the last post of their singing "Caleb Meyer" was a little too dark.

Also, if you find this version of "Girls" a little lethargic, give it at least until the last minute of the song when Rawlings does his big solo.

Murder Ballads

I like a good murder ballad. Why? Well, I'm feeling a little too brain dead to get into it right now (from a retreat with students, which was good)--maybe in a later post. In the meantime, why not enjoy this footage of one of my favorites--Gillian Welch and her partner, David Rawlings--singing "Caleb Meyer."



This next one I've written about before. Just listen to the next to the last verse if you find the song a bit unsettling and let the video play out until the end. Cash wrote this years before he recorded it with Rick Rubin.

The Assumption of Mary

August 15 is the day that the Church has traditionally celebrated the Assumption of Mary--the Blessed Virgin's being taken up into heaven without experiencing death. There are a couple of views on how this happened. The Eastern Orthodox Church believes that the Blessed Virgin actually died but was not confined to the grave. Her body was inexplicably removed from its tomb and assumed to heaven. I think the story of one Eastern tradition goes something like this: the same apostle Thomas, who doubted Jesus' resurrection, wanted to see the dead body of Mary after her passing. When they took him to her tomb, the body was gone. The Orthodox do not view this as a resurrection. Rather, Mary's body was simply taken up into heaven as Enoch's and Elijah's were.

The Western Church, on the other hand, has mixed views. The Catholic Church claims that Mary was assumed before she ever died. And from what I understand, this view solidified as the cult of the Virgin grew in popularity in the Western medieval church.

Of course, most Protestant denominations do not recognize Mary's assumption--mostly due to their belief in Sola Scriptura. However, the Anglican church--especially Anglo-Catholic churches--do pay some attention to it--though I believe their observance of it tends to be more private than public (I could be wrong). Lutheran churches, on the other hand, I think, do have a place for its observance in their calendar.

I like the position that the Orthodox take. It is not an official teaching, or dogma, of their church, and seems to be a via media between the Catholic view of perhaps honoring Mary to much and the extreme Protestant view of not viewing her as "Favored One" and "Blessed among women" but as just another one of us. Any thoughts?

Cootie Queen

Stinky McStink Face!

Once

Pseudo Spoiler Alert: I am writing about the movie Once below. I don't give away the ending but I do try to enter into the plot a little to provide some insight into the film. I don't think I give awaytoo much, but you may be really fastidious about what you do and do not know about a film before you see it.

There is a film that is out now that would be worth your seeing: Once. It's a lovely film about a man and a woman and their mutual love for music. The movie is, in fact, a musical of sorts--not the Sound of Music type but a new kind. The characters, played by Glen Hansard (of the Irish rock band The Frames) and Marketa Irglova (who has recently recorded an album with Hansard under the title The Swell Season which contains some of the songs from the movie), tell the story through songs--most of which were composed by Hansard.
What I liked most about the film was the way the music acts as a medium through which the characters approach each other. To paraphrase Wendy Shalit from her 1999 book A Return to Modesty, there was a time when it was widely considered necessarily sexual for a man and woman to simply be alone in a room together. There are plenty of scenes where the two main characters are alone and yet their music (along with a couple of other important checks) acts as a mediator, allowing them to transcend their raw (albeit good) desires for companionship. The music also is the thing that gives the movie an unfulfilling---yet at the same time, fulfilling--ending. I don't want to spoil the whole thing for any of you interested in seeing Once, so please go watch it to see if I'm on to anything.

Poets as Painters

I have, in recent years, been interested in why I am personally more attracted to the particulars of poetry and painting/drawing as opposed to the particulars of music. I took up the guitar in high school and I still play it, but I never could stick with--what I now see to be--the abstraction of music (I'm not talking about what we call lyrics here but what we might call tune). (I also could never muster up the energy to handle the exactitude needed to really learn how to play "my axe"). Stephen Henderson over at Trees Walking has an insightful quotation by the poet Richard Wilbur on this subject. I'll insert a little of it below.

I think I can say why there are more painter-poets, or poets who are would be painters, than there are poets who have to do with music. It strikes me that music is infinitely more abstract then painting or poetry. That you can't make any precise statements as to what music is up to. Poetry simply has to be exact and concrete or it bores to death. And on the whole, I think--despite some successes in abstract painting-that it's the same with painting.

The Masculine Mystique

There are a lot males in my family. I have two older brothers (my poor mother!). My oldest brother now has three sons (the youngest of which you see to the left here with me--I just met him for the first time this past weekend). My other brother and his wife will be welcoming another boy into the family in September.

My wife and I are adopting from Ethiopia. I think we're going to aim for a girl.

Ralph Wood on "Holy Time"

I am attending the Trinity Arts Conference at the University of Dallas this weekend. I listened to Ralph Wood, professor of literature and theology at Baylor, speak about how the Christian story redefines beauty (an element, by the way, that often gets less press in Western churches compared to truth and goodness).

This afternoon, when Wood showed us the Grunewald painting above, someone made a remark about John the Baptist (on the right, pointing) being present in it. I appreciated Wood's response: "Holy time is not chronological time." Wood had just finished talking about the importance of the church calendar to our lives.

Here are some musings based on what Wood said: We need a way of shaping our view of time that is free from the demands of the fiscal year, work year, etc. In the end, what we do in worship is "useless" according to the world's (I mean world in the way John the Revelator used it) understanding. We need something to remind us that work and acquiring "stuff"--dare I say, even acquiring knowledge--is not our ultimate end. We need something to remind us that our Ultimate End is the enjoyment of God--the beatific vision.

For all you Facebookers out there...

China's One-Child Policy

I found this interesting piece about a recent Chinese governmental birth control raid in southern China. Here's a few excerpts:

Residents of this southern China county on Thursday angrily accused authorities of forcing women to have abortions and vandalising homes in a brutal campaign to enforce birth-control policies...

Authorities had even forced women pregnant with their first child to undergo abortions merely because they had not completed paperwork required before getting pregnant, said a woman surnamed Xu, a waitress in a Bobai restaurant that was deserted at lunchtime due to fear pervading the district.
"This has been going on for about three months. The one-child policy is wrong. We are totally against it. I know a woman who committed suicide by jumping in the river because she did not want to be caught by the work teams," Xu said.
A feeling of palpable tension has gripped the area, where deserted roads contrast with bright red-and-white banners and billboards bearing government slogans such as: "Support the one-child policy" and "Happiness is to have one child".

More than a year ago, I posted an entry about this alarming statistic: by 2020, 40 million frustrated Chinese bachelors will have no one to court and marry due to the one-child policy in their country.

The scary thing about China and their desire to modernize and be progressive (and yet still hold on to their nationalistic ideas) is the lack of foresight they exhibit and the seeming inability to learn from history (perhaps because theyhave been closed off from Western history for so long--I don't know). We in the West have learned what happens to over-masculinized (in China's case, literally over-masculinized) cultures: it's called Nazism--with its desire for a perfect race, its nationalistic pride and devaluing of the feminine virtues and so on.