all the trees of the field will clap their hands

reflecting: Mark 6:53-56

2011-08-18T11:50:00.000-04:00

Amidst all the commotion of Jesus walking on water (and rightfully so, I mean he WALKED ON WATER!), we may have totally skipped over the healing in Gennesaret that Mark records afterwards.

This little episode shows the crowd’s immediate (a great Markan word) recognition of Jesus and how they flock to him for healing. What ensues is the oddest kind of mayhem. Jesus gets rushed by all sorts of people, misfits and outcasts, wherever he goes. If they can but “touch the hem of his garment they’ll be made whole.” This is the same desperation we saw in the interruption in Chapter 5 (Mark 5:21-43) as Jesus was en route to Jairus’ dead daughter.

I’ll go ahead and out myself…I’ve probably been to hundreds of concerts and, Lord willing, will go to many more yet, but the first concert I ever attended was at the Daytona Beach Ocean Center in 1992. Two as yet unknown acts, TLC & Boyz II Men, opened for MC Hammer’s 2 Legit 2 Quit tour. My best friend in third grade and me rushed out of our seats, leaving his chaperone mom in her seat, desperate to try and get a hand on those famous parachute pants as Hammer moved freely about the arena flaunting his brilliant new wireless microphone headset technology. We elbowed and vied, only to get boxed-out by some screaming girls, who needless to say, hit their growth spurt before we did.

All joking aside though, I’m indicted by the fact that my most diligent attempt to get to somebody in a crowd, that I can remember, was not, and tends not to be, me getting to Jesus. In these gospel stories, I’m most struck by how Jesus is the obvious hope for these people’s hopelessness.

This is not obvious to me most of the time.

I go through most of my days trying either to ignore the hopeless moments or areas of my life, drowning them out with shear busy-ness, or attempting to solve my own problems so that I don’t have to go through the hassle of having Jesus heal me.

Jesus, make me desperate for the healing that I need and that you offer.

Show me the ways I clutch at other things and people that aren’t you and can’t do what you can do.

Let me recognize you immediately in my life and in the lives of others who are hurting.

Amen

A bit better musical accompaniment to Mark 6:53-56.

preaching: You Give Them Something to Eat

2011-08-07T11:45:00.000-04:00

Sermon text: Mark 6:30-44

Stream it from the Gathering Church site or subscribe to the podcast via iTunes.

reflecting: Mark 6:30-44

2011-08-05T11:42:00.001-04:00

Have you ever seen one of those “hoarder shows” on TV?

They’re kind of fascinating, but they’re also kind of upsetting.

Reality television is largely a case-in-point that truth, or at least “real life,” is stranger than fiction. When I was watching, I was about to totally disengage with the lives on the screen, till a behavioral psychologist came on. It seems that these professionals’ main role is to get to the bottom of some fundamental problem of “enough-ness” in their patient.

I can connect with this issue. The old man on the program hoarded because, in his estimation, there was a good chance that at some point there just was not going to be enough. He held onto things and food and memories because he didn’t believe that the future will be so kind to him.

The sad irony was that this holding onto resulted in him being threatened with losing his home because it was dangerous, losing his relationships because he had alienated the people closest to him, and losing his own possessions because of rust, corrosion and rot.

Sunday we’ll explore a famous passage in Mark’s Gospel (Mark 6:30-44), but common to all four accounts, about Jesus feeding more than 5.000 people with just 5 loaves and 2 fish. Sounds suspicious given the lack of “enough-ness” in Jesus’ camp.

We get the privilege of not only hearing the good news about how Jesus manages this, but we also get to participate in a meal of communion together, remembering another dramatic moment when Jesus fed his disciples with bread. Look forward to seeing you then.

review: David Rosenfield- Son of Ojito

2011-07-13T08:22:00.001-04:00

Originally Published at The Blue Indian on July 13, 2011.

To start, David Rosenfield’s Son of Ojito promises an interesting mix, a veritable gumbo, of poetry, folk, blues, punk-rock storytelling. The fourteen tracks seethe with pledges of unorthodox hippy ditties in the vane of mewithoutYou or Edward Sharpe, but ultimately fail to deliver the goods on that oath. The result is an album of busky, suitcase songs, tinged with open-mic emoting and Shel Silverstein jejunery.

This album was incredibly approachable and, for me, initially appealing. Lest you think I’m being too hard on this one, let me try to explain. I wanted to love it; I wanted to sink my teeth into the zanily imaginative snapshots. To put it culinarily: I wasn’t expecting fine dining. I wasn’t hungry for fillet or lobster. I didn’t expect silverware or cloth napkins. I was okay with that. It seemed Rosenfield’s album was to be some sort of fused streetfood, served in a corn tortilla out of the side of an old plumbing truck, alloying cultures and sensibilities. I readied my taste-(ear)buds, and prepared a makeshift bib out of a single-ply napkin, but when I took my first bite, it lacked the basics, the salt and the pepper, and the chicken was a bit on the pink side.

Underdeveloped, most tunes lacked the passion and believability they warranted. Sing It exudes some of the Danielsonian charm, laced with dormy acoustics and a campy chorus, that this artist and album are capable of. “Streetlights Playing Dixie” sounds like a song begun in one of John Darnielle’s old notebooks, while “The Cat’s Meowing” too bears some of the marks of playful potential.

Rosenfield will undoubtedly continue to cook. My hope is not only that these tunes continue to marinate and develop, but also that he hones his unique recipes into something even more square and satisfying.

Rating: 2.5/10

Hymns from the Gathering Church Kickstarter

2011-07-12T17:02:00.000-04:00

A very important project to me that I’m currently working on:

My church (the Gathering Church, Durham, NC) is beginning work on a full-length record of Christian hymns re-spun by our rotating casts of musicians and special guests. I realize that we’re in trying economic times, but I can truly testify that this project is no less than mission-critical to who our church is, where we are going, what we’re called to be.

Our three emphases (by no means innovative) at the Gathering Church are presence before God, connection to one another in community, and engagement with the world. The hymns that we’re getting our hands on are even less novel than the worship our Church hopes to share in. In a lot of ways we’ve come to realize that looking back is our best way forward, and that old idioms can nourish our devotion in surprising ways. This record of reworked songs will serves as a worship/devotional companion, hopefully successful in both clinging to old stories of gospel-fidelity while jarring loose the corrosion that comes with familiarity.

You may ask, if this is so critical, why didn’t it make it even make a line item in the church budget? By using innovative fund-raising techniques like www.kickstarter.com (sometimes referred to as “crowd-sourcing”) we hope to generate and renew an important culture of artistic patronage within our local community (inside and alongside of the church). Understanding the vitality and gratuity of such endeavors pairs with my understanding of the gospel of grace that these songs sound.

These songs “make sense” within our community. By that I mean, all of the songs we’ll commit to production have been integral to our Sunday worship at some point. They all have concrete connections to our particular community. These memories span child dedications, Holy Week services, kids’ devotions, baptisms, communion, and of course, ordinary time. They train us in a new way to speak to each other. They anticipate the choruses we’ll belt when we’re granted true union with Christ and one another.

But these songs aren’t only “ours.” We’ve also found that they are disarmingly accessible to even the most hardened cynic. Their melodies and content have a mysterious ability to bring people into a space of exploration and participation in the worship of the Triune God. These mere tunes profess a profound confidence in the creativity and redemption of the Holy Spirit at work in the world.

Finally, my hope is that my excitement about this project be evident and that you’ll consider partnering in some way with this undertaking, even as you are already an invaluable partner in the Gospel of God in Christ Jesus.

Here are streams for some of the guest artists to be featured, for your enjoyment:

&amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://floatingactionmusic.bandcamp.com/album/floating-action"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Floating Action by Floating Action&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;gt;
&amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://philcookandhisfeat.bandcamp.com/album/hungry-mother-blues"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Hungry Mother Blues by Phil Cook and His Feat&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;gt;
&amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://lizjanes.bandcamp.com/album/say-goodbye"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Say Goodbye by Liz Janes&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;gt;
&amp;lt;a href="http://skylargudaszandtheuglygirls.bandcamp.com/album/two-headed-monster"&amp;gt;Two Headed Monster by Skylar Gudasz and the Ugly Girls&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;

reflecting: Mark 4:21-34

2011-06-17T09:50:00.000-04:00

This Sunday we'll continue on in chapter 4 of Mark's Gospel. This chapter is laden with stories and teachings by Jesus on the Kingdom of God. I can't help but remember, when I read this chapter of farmers and mustard seeds, when I was called on to preach one of my first sermons to a rural North Carolinian congregation two years ago. It was pretty intimidating to drive to work everyday that summer past fields and barns and then try to explicate how the Kingdom of God is like something that they knew far more intimately about than I do.

But maybe that's the point.

The Kingdom of God is like a seed, even like a mustard seed. Small, but when nourished and come to fruition, yielding great and surprising things. Mysterious at its core. We rely on seeds and their fruit everyday (ie "our daily bread"), but can we really explain them, can we totally domesticate or control them, or do we, at some point just have to sit back and relish in the mysterious bounty and sustenance they provide us?

I look forward to meeting this Sunday to learn more about, to participate in, and to continue to imagine this mysterious Kingdom of God with you. I thank God that his kingdom resists mine, or ours, or really anybody's attempts to control it. I thank God for the mysterious, manna-like provision with which He keeps us and pray for the faith and patience and awe to really appreciate a loving God that works that way. Finally, I pray that I get used to that kind of Kingdom, which looks and feels so different from any kingdom I would imagine on my own or try to make for myself.

Here is the manuscript for the sermon given (sorry there's no audio, but if you were there you'd understand why there is no audio!)

reflecting: Mark 4:1-20

2011-06-09T09:46:00.000-04:00

This Sunday we dive back into the story that we put on “pause” since Holy Week. We fittingly pick up Mark’s Gospel in chapter 4. I say that it is fitting because the setting of this passage that features Jesus teaching is a lake. This setting is especially familiar as we spent last Sunday at Camp Chestnut Ridge celebrating the baptisms of Steve, Tanner, and Mike. We can imagine ourselves on the shore of Jesus’ lake because we’ve so recently worshipped by the lake.

We’re involved. We’re invited to participate.

Beyond the mere setting, we’re also invited by Jesus’ teaching itself. Jesus teaches by the lake, but hardly as some sort of professor. Rather than lecture, he tells stories in parables. Jesus uses these parables to involve us. To invite us into the story. To do the imaginative work of figuring where we are in the story.

To form us rather than just to inform us. To leave us affected.

So when we read and hear Mark 4:1-20 this week, jump into the story. Imagine the scene he paints with a sower sowing seeds that either die or flourish and bear fruit. Let this simple agricultural story put the question to yourselves and your life.

What kind of soil does God’s Word land on in you?

What are the thorns in your life?

Where are you shallow? Where are your roots weak?

Where are you bearing fruit and how is that fruit blessing people?

review: Skylar Gudasz & The Ugly Girls- Two Headed Monster

2011-06-08T09:25:00.008-04:00

Originally Published at The Blue Indian on June 7, 2011.

After the bizarre announcement earlier this year that Rufus Wainwright would father the resulting offspring of himself and Leonard Cohen’s daughter, the mere metaphor of musical love-childhood largely pales. Skylar Gudasz may not be the real or imagined kin of such folk giants as a Cohen, a Wainwright, or, say Joni Mitchell, but her and her compatriots’ debut forces such family resemblances.

Two Headed Monster, while clocking in at a all-too-brief twenty nine minutes, weaves tales of midnight-lovers and dream-believers, while painting airy, tranced, sonic landscapes. From the opener, which sits you on the steps of a house in Nowheresville (which simultaneously doubles as Anytown, USA), there is both a fantastic unfamiliarity and a comforting mundanity to the scenery that only happens while you dream.

The warm, trademarked organ whir of producer Jeff Crawford continues on the second track, Killing, perhaps the most accessible and infectious of the album. Gudasz leaves behind the mystery and mystique of Hotel Chelsea lobby muzak for a just a moment to surprisingly channel the absolute best of a nineties coffeehouse Sheryl Crow.

Bison re-injects the kind of tension and drama that can only lead to the extrication of someone who “ain’t taking your words as roots no more.” The freedom of her characters’ newfound “fast sets of legs” sprint throughout the remainder of the album amid the Ugly Girls’ (spoiler alert: they’re really boys!) poppy “badda bahs” and William Taylor’s precise tone on his diligent solos. Skylar’s voice only gets deeper and richer as the album winds to the end of its breathless half hour.

The shape-noted O West closes by employing a gifted choir of some of Triangle NC’s finest young guns. As the choristers’ voices rise Casey Toll’s gravitational double bass tethers the ghoulish party to the studio floor. Keep your eye and ears on this young band, such a mature debut can only lead to yet unexplored, dreamier, more expansive vistas.

Rating: 8/10

reflecting: Ephesians 6:5-9

2011-06-02T10:06:00.000-04:00

The resurrection and work.

This connection is not, at least to me, as readily apparent as the things we’ve been focused on up to this point.

Easier to see how Jesus rising from the dead might represent a fundamental shift in the way we conceive of ourselves (identity) or others (community). It might even spur on a new way to talk to each other (psalms, hymns, spiritual songs) (kind of the ANTI-Post-traumatic Stress Disorder, instead of sealing us down because of traumatic event, it opens us up following the most pivotal positive event in human history!).

But work? What’s an empty grave got to do with work? Or maybe more importantly, how can we say that things are different when they don’t look like it?

Servants, respectfully obey your earthly masters but always with an eye to obeying the real master, Christ. Don't just do what you have to do to get by, but work heartily, as Christ's servants doing what God wants you to do. And work with a smile on your face, always keeping in mind that no matter who happens to be giving the orders, you're really serving God. Good work will get you good pay from the Master, regardless of whether you are slave or free. –Ephesians 6:5-9 (the Message)

This passage puts forth, with painful realism, that the revolution caused by Jesus’ resurrection from the dead might not look like much at all. Wouldn’t we expect Paul instead to say something along the lines of, “Slaves, you’re no longer slaves anymore, forget about what that guy’s telling you to do,” or “Masters, you should be ashamed of yourselves, don’t you know this way of doing things is done for?!”

Instead of totally flipping over the social tables though, the resurrection does something maybe even more subversive here. The resurrection changes the terms. It teaches us that living into the miracle (if there ever was one!) of Jesus leaving an empty tomb, might (and probably won’t) mean leaving your job to pursue a sexier (and presumably holier vocation), it probably won’t mean telling off that boss of yours, or becoming your own boss. It (gasp) might not even mean going to seminary to learn how to be a professional God-lover.

Working in light of the resurrection is instead going to entail a lot of the hard work of service. It’s going to be a new perspective on the same old thing, seeing everything, every moment as an opportunity to demonstrate the kind of world that Jesus’ risen body sets up and anticipates. It shows off the fact that living only comes through dying, and that God is faithful and able to raise the dead, to heal what’s broken, and to bring about peace, justice, and restoration even in the darkest and most unlikely places. Oh, and maybe one of those places is where you punch a clock.

reflecting: Ephesians 4:4-6

2011-05-26T10:04:00.000-04:00

There is one body and one Spirit- just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call- one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. Ephesians 4:4-6

Sometimes it is hard for me to grasp this new identity that Jesus’ resurrection makes possible. Paul’s letter to the people in Ephesus tells them, like it tells us, that they are now free to be one. One with God and one with each other. Because of what God did through Jesus on the cross and afterwards we have this hope. We are called to this hope. Resurrection hope touches every part of our lives: our work, our words, our families, our communities, even our own hopes, dreams, and expectations. Because our sins have been atoned for (literally putting us at-ONE with God) we can live this new life.

As we prepare for next week’s baptism service at Camp Chestnut Ridge, we’re called by this passage to remember our own baptisms. To remember that moment when we dramatically signaled that we’ve died and been raised to new life with Christ.

This is a time to re-repent, recognizing the ways we still live underwater, dead.

But it’s also a time to re-rejoice, remembering what has surprisingly and mysteriously happened on Easter, and recognizing the “call to the one hope that belongs to your call.”

My prayer over the next week and a half is a prayer for one-ness. That we feel near to the God who has brought us close. That we share in this unity together as we worship and celebrate the one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. Amen.

preaching: Psalms, Hymns, & Spiritual Songs

2011-05-15T10:00:00.000-04:00

Sermon text: Ephesians 5:8-20

Stream it from the Gathering Church site or subscribe to the podcast via iTunes.

reflecting: Ephesians 5:8-20

2011-05-13T09:55:00.001-04:00

This Sunday I have the privilege of continuing the theme that we’ve been hitting on post-Easter. The resurrection is so central to the Christian faith it must have some pretty major implications.

It means that we have a new identity (Ephesians 2:1-10), marked not by our performance or the road that we’ve paved (cause that’s gotta end, and it will definitely end in the grave).

It means that we have a new conception and possibility for community (Ephesians 2:11-21), surprisingly open to different people than the ones we see in the mirror (and the resurrected Jesus tells us through Paul’s writings that this is an occasion for praise and not fear or strife).

And this week we find that we have a new resurrection language (Ephesians 5:8-20): Song. (song?!) That can’t be right, with all the bad stuff going around we need ways to speak that do things, good things, and you’re asking us to make music?

Here’s a parable about what possibilities song has following Jesus’ victory over death in the resurrection. I look forward to seeing you there!

reflecting: Ephesians 2:11-22

2011-05-12T09:45:00.006-04:00

Sitting in church during Mark’s sermon on Ephesians 2:11-22 last Sunday, I was distracted in my thoughts by a book I’m current reading. It is, I think, a pretty regular phenomena for someone just finishing a school program forcing tireless amounts of academic reading over the past three years to want to read some of the leisured non-fiction they’ve missed out on.

I started with the short-story fiction of Flannery O’Connor. If you’re not familiar with O’Connor, she was a brilliant Catholic writer from Savannah who, perhaps better than about anyone, spun gripping tales about the “Christ-haunted South” in which she lived (and we still live).

As Mark expounded on Paul’s exhortations for Christians to understand and live into the “peace-making” work that Christ bought on the Cross and made possible by rising and defeating death, I mused on Flannery’s hard-hitting critiques of how much the church lags to do so. In her famous (infamous?) short story, Revelation, she introduces a terribly unsympathetic (pathetic?) character named Ruby Turpin. Mrs. Turpin sits in a doctor’s waiting room assessing those around her, measuring herself by demeaning others. She even falls asleep at night by trying to sort out the hierarchy in her head (confused about whether it be better to be a land-owning n____r or white trash). Regardless, she is glad to be who she is, pious and with quite a “good disposition.”

Just when you want to really hate Mrs. Turpin, her world gets turned upside down by a series of events that forces her to see that the “bottom rail” might be on top, and to cry out to God at the apparent injustice of such a thing, at “those people” being not just included in God’s mission but actually prioritized.

What bothered me though, in conjunction with Mark’s sermon, is that I’m not sure this is true. That the bottom rail does get put on top. Ephesians 2:14-18 says,

“For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.“

When it says this, it seems that rather than the rails switching places, the train skips off the track. Indeed, rather than the bottom rail being on top, the Cross and Resurrection have actually totally de-railed the way things are and will be. And the Church is the first place that we should actually see proof of this.

jamming: Mount Moriah live @ Cat's Cradle

2011-04-15T17:31:00.002-04:00

reflecting: Mark 2:18-22

2011-04-07T09:21:00.002-04:00

Why a wedding? I’m still stuck on that.

Read back through Mark 2:18-22.

Why, when asked about rule-keeping and rule-breaking, does Jesus go down this rabbit trail?

How, when these folks are asking legitimate questions about the ethical out-pouring of their worship, can Jesus get all sentimental and abstract and start talking about going to the chapel? We’re talking about obedience here. We’re trying to be God-lovers. Here. Now.

Last week at a talk at Duke, world-renowned artist Mako Fujimura brought this theme into better focus. He described the vocation of the Christian, for his talk specifically the Christian artist but more generally any follower of Christ, as being a Wedding Planner.

That's what we are...Cosmic Wedding Planners.

We are wedding planners because we always have an eye on the end. The Wedding Feast of the Lamb when we are united with Christ and worship God face-to-face forever.

Ask anyone who has ever planned their wedding how myopic their vision can get among all the stress and organization and details. How easy it is to separate the preparation from the celebration. How easy it is to forget the reason you’re doing all this in the first place.

But Jesus reminds us, as he reminded them.

Our faithfulness now is not just for our own sake. Our present suffering is not for naught.

Rather we plan constantly for a Great Wedding Feast. We keep our eyes fixed on Jesus so that we don’t loose the plot. Every bit of our planning (praying, loving, sacrificing, serving, cultivating our specific callings, and being faithful where God puts us) needs to know the end.

So why a wedding?

Because, without a wedding, none of this makes sense. Without the groom waiting at the altar all of our work, even our best attempts, is in vain. Because, if we can’t recognize Jesus in our midst and can’t look forward to being united with him in the end, we’ve missed the point altogether.

jamming: Luego & Jeff Crawford live @ MotorCo

2011-04-04T22:49:00.001-04:00

reflecting: Mark 3:7-21

2011-03-31T11:34:00.000-04:00

This Sunday, we continue to follow Mark’s narrative of Jesus’ ministry (Mark 3:7-21). Fresh off the heals of Jesus’ surprising encounters with the Pharisees and the crowds where he gives a fresh vision of the Sabbath, wineskins, and what it means to be in the presence of Christ (in short: the feasting and celebration that belongs to a wedding!), we find a bit of a summary of what’s been happening.

Crowds.

Impure Spirits.

Different levels of recognition.

And a sort of expansion and contraction.

By that I mean, the withdrawing of Jesus before the crowding around him; the gathering of his disciples before the sending of them to preach and drive out demons. This might seem exhausting. We know what it’s like to be busy, over-extended, scattered.

But it is Jesus, who brings us together. That brings us to Himself, in order to send us back out to involve others in this dynamic life with God. It is Jesus who also has the discipline to retreat to a quiet place, to narrow everything down to communion with his Father, before re-igniting His hectic life of being “for” others.

This retreat and mission, contraction and expansion, receiving and giving, reminds me of something that Paul leads with in his Second Letter to the Corinthians (2 Cor 1:3-5):

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ.

As we gather this Sunday, I invite you to come to the Fount, the source of comfort, refreshment, forgiveness, and life-abundance, that you may share in these gifts, be recharged, and be (as John Jay mentions) re-membered for the purpose of offering that the power, love, friendship, and resurrection-hope to others who are hurting in our families, communities, and world. I pray that we all might find time and space to be with Him, that He might then send us out.

Mako Fujimura @ Duke Divinity School

2011-03-31T10:56:00.003-04:00

reflecting: Mark 2:18-28

2011-03-24T09:33:00.000-04:00

This coming Sunday we’ll keep moving through Mark’s gospel (Mark 2:18-28) and catch Jesus in a couple of encounters with observers trying to figure out what following Jesus entails, and Pharisees, the good Jews who know what being in relationship with God requires and looks like.

First, the question is put to Jesus about fasting, essentially asking, “John the Baptizer’s followers and the Pharisees are taking this whole thing seriously, bending their wills and their bodies in order to worship God, why don’t you teach that to yours? Why instead do you hang out late with these scoundrels?” Keep in mind the major contrast that’s happening here, considering the previous scene shows Jesus wining and dining with Levi and Co (Mark 2:13-17).

Jesus’ response is a deeply theological one. One that tells what time it is (not time for fasting, but rather feasting!?), and understands what’s going on not as anything less than a sacred event like Marriage (“how can the guests of the Bridegroom fast?”)

This frames Jesus’ call to and hang with Levi not as something periphery, but as the main event to Jesus’ ministry. If Jesus had just identified himself as a Doctor (Mark 2: 17), now he describes his coming as a Bridegroom looking for a bride. In the Levi feast, we get a glimpse at what it looks like when Jesus finds one. And celebration is in order; diet starts Monday, because today it’s time to party (ie Luke 15’s story of the Prodigal Son that we studied in last fall)!

The next encounter about the Sabbath again shows this reckless perspective. It features a Jesus who does not seek to abolish the Law but to fulfill it. It reveals a God walking amongst us that is so full of Grace that He and only he is Lord, only he has the authority (a big word in Mark’s gospel that keeps popping up…), to interpret what such a grace-full thing as the Sabbath means for God’s people.

What it means is that the Sabbath is a time for feasting; a time to understand the freedom and joy in God. That God-with-us (the definition of Emmanuel) means abundance (John 10:10) and revelry. But not just a party for partying-sake, but a party that celebrates when Jesus looks for his long-lost Beloved, often the least-likely looking bride in a soiled dress, and as the Bridegroom Lord, finds and claims her for His own!

jamming: New York Hymns- Songs for Lent

2011-03-23T20:50:00.003-04:00

I don't know if jamming is the right way to necessarily put it, but you should certainly check out this free offering/compilation/devotional project by New York Hymns available for stream/download at NoiseTrade. It reimagines the Stations of the Cross through newly written and newly arranged tunes. Some of the stand-outs include buddy Bruce Benedict's meditation (track 5) on Jesus meeting his mother on the road to Golgotha, an unbelievably poignant Bowerbirdsian rumination by Benj Pocta on Christ being stripped of his garments (track 13), and of course Jason Harrod's resurrection song (the final song). I thoroughly appreciate and commend this project.

review: Arthur Alligood- I Have Not Seen The Wind

2011-03-15T21:48:00.001-04:00

Originally Published at The Blue Indian on March 15, 2011.

Who has seen the wind?

Neither I nor you:

But when the leaves hang trembling,

The wind is passing through.

Who has seen the wind?

Neither you nor I:

But when the trees bow down their heads,

The wind is passing by.

-Christina Rossetti (1830-1894)

I know nobody wants to be preached at. I know no one wants to be made aware of where they’ve come up short. Where they could do better. Where their vision is blurry, their faith shaky, their knowledge incomplete. Where they took what wasn’t theirs or thought better or worse than was the case. But maybe our best friends are those that know how to preach to us without coming off as self-righteous. They tell us the kind of truth that make us want to be the kind of person that believes it. Maybe the most intimate conversations are just really good sermons. Maybe confessing your own crap is the best homeletical move: vulnerability over fire and/or brimstone. And maybe good sermons can be better poems. Maybe they can even be woven into an album of great songs.

Enter Arthur Alligood: a preacher disguised as a folk singer. At the get-go, Alligood hums the sparse tune “Show Some Heart,” pleading earnestly with the listener to let down some walls, unlock some doors, and follow some of those suppressed dreams. He might as well have written this tune with a busted guitar over late-night drinks with Bill Mallonee.

He hauls the next several songs over Wallflowers dirt roads, all chugging percussion and whining steel. Just as I Have Not Seen the Wind starts really moving with Nashvillian adroitness, Alligood crashes with the confessional “Piece Me Together.” And in so doing, he empties any pretention that he knows exactly where he’s going.

Alligood re-mounts his whistle-stop soapbox on “Gavel”: the sweetest, most Townes Van Zandt-ian polemic against hypocrisy and shallow judgmentalism I’ve ever heard. Instead of harping on the sodden now, or looking for a clean-slated future, he asks us to remember the past when we “were better as a criminal begging for a second chance.”

The title track, for me, actually surpasses Alligood’s own humbly-opinioned tune for best-written song on the album. Alligood grafts an image from the Bible into an allusive and illustrative prayer. The small, humble situatedness that Alligood shares with Christiana Rossetti and sings like Josh Ritter is a powerful centerpiece, a saw dust altar call, of sorts, to the type of meekness that shall inherit the earth.

Rating: 8.4/10

review: luz- Light Among Other Things

2011-03-14T11:19:00.000-04:00

Originally Published at The Blue Indian on March 14, 2011.

In just under 32 minutes, Charlotte, NC’s luz (formatted that way) manages to bring you on a bumpy sonic ride of fear, faith, and vulnerability. The goal of this project, seemingly, from a band with such a name, is to illuminate via lyric and musical texture what it means to move from dark to light; despair and disrepair to hope and wholeness. Interspersed with screeching atmospheric guitar and affective ambient noise, the EP is an offering from an honest young artist to do just this.

Stephen Morrison strives to express and discover what it means to have “religion” and “try believing.” The record’s opener, “Nobody Knows My Name,” reads as a hopeful lament. The blues: frustrated with stuck-ness, fearful of the pain that change might involve, but hopeful for that better future. There’s always a tinge of hope in the blues.

“Try Believing” continues this narrative, starts to employing more of the light (than the “other things”) in order to dream of possibilities, and to struggle to find an apt “object for affection.“ The future again proves simultaneously hopeful and dreadful. Kids. Family. Fulfillment. Security. In the immediate present: none of this, and no way to get there. This is an achingly practical take on what it means to believe. To believe that these will come about, to not despair in how long they take to form, and to not force the issue in the meanwhile. The substance of the belief we’re being invited into being “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”

The next few tracks shed but more glow on the danger of living this way, leaving behind. “What I Leave” and “Come On Honey” weave eerie vocal harmonies and aggressive guitar sections to form a tapestry of regret-tinged remembrance and forward-moving closure.

Finally, “Effect” (which could have come right off of For Emma, Forever Ago), uses Bon Iver’s sprawling falsetto to close the journey. This is perhaps the short album’s pinnacle, where the band most artfully combines all the threads its been pulling, with the effect of exposing the false and pursuing “new ways to get born.”

Rating: 6.7/10

reflecting: Ash Wednesday

2011-03-09T06:04:00.001-05:00

Growing up going to Catholic school, it never really occurred to me how odd it is that so many Christians show up at work or school on some seemingly random Wednesday with a dark smudge on their foreheads. The more I think about it the stranger it is. It can certainly remind us of our mortality (the whole “ashes to ashes, dust to dust” thing). It marks off a season of penance for that hard-partying during Mardi Gras the night before?

Ash Wednesday is a pretty enigmatic holiday for Christ-followers. Historically, it marks off the beginning of a Lent season, a lean period before Easter, which in itself is wrought with paradox. The word “Lent” comes from the word meaning “Spring.” This is a season of longer days, abundant flourishing, and a brilliant turn of seasonal weather. But it is also during this change that we’re asked to stop for a second and consider where we’ve come from, and who we are.

Perhaps its only by having a big, sloppy smudge placed right between our eyes that we are stopped from jumping into the feast of spring by observing a period of fasting and repentance. It is this forty day period of hesitation and evaluation that slows us down enough to see where we are, what we depend on most, who we are becoming, and where we are headed.

One of famed poet T.S. Eliot’s most renowned poems reflects on Ash Wednesday and Lent’s ability to do just this, letting him re-center himself. When he starts to till this ground, he turns up all sorts of mis-directions that require acknowledgement and repentance: from false hopes, to distorted love and vain wastes of time. Eliot’s prayer starts the Lenten season by entreating that God may “Teach us to care and not to care, Teach us to sit still;” that we may be reoriented in our wants and needs and freed from anxiety enough to be present to God.

Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man's gift and that man's scope
I no longer strive to strive towards such things
(Why should the aged eagle stretch its wings?)
Why should I mourn
The vanished power of the usual reign?

Because I do not hope to know
The infirm glory of the positive hour
Because I do not think
Because I know I shall not know
The one veritable transitory power
Because I cannot drink
There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is
nothing again

Because I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place
I rejoice that things are as they are and
I renounce the blessed face
And renounce the voice
Because I cannot hope to turn again
Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something
Upon which to rejoice

And pray to God to have mercy upon us
And pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss
Too much explain
Because I do not hope to turn again
Let these words answer
For what is done, not to be done again
May the judgment not be too heavy upon us

Because these wings are no longer wings to fly
But merely vans to beat the air
The air which is now thoroughly small and dry
Smaller and dryer than the will
Teach us to care and not to care Teach us to sit still.

Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death
Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.
[T.S. Eliot, Ash-Wednesday, 1930.]

Let us take this time to realize where our loves lie, where our time goes, who and what we are dependent on, and where we are headed.

Let us see the new creation of the springtime through the smudged realization of our own brokenness, mortality, and lack.

Let us follow Jesus through this season, to the cross and into the resurrected, free, and abundant life he made possible for us and gives to us.

reflecting: Mark 1:40-45

2011-03-03T10:22:00.000-05:00

I don’t envy the folks that do bible translation and scholarship. I’m in the second semester of my second biblical language and am tired of it. Most days it’s incredibly tedious. You spend essentially a whole semester learning language and syntax, vocabulary and verb conjugations, and only get to the gratifying stuff way later. With this in mind, it’s puzzling to me when I actually come upon a verse or word that these really smart academics can’t boil down.

So we find at the end of Mark’s first chapter in Jesus’ dealing with the leper. A man suffering from leprosy, a terrible disease where your flesh rots even though you’re alive, comes to Jesus in order to be healed. Rather than asking earnestly, “Can you heal me? Can you stop me from being the living-dead? From being a social, religious, and physical outcast? Can you make me whole?” Instead, with desperate confidence he states, “If you want, you can make me clean.”

It is in Jesus’ response that the translators and commentators make their money. If you pick up ten bible translations mostly likely seven will say something along the lines of “being moved with pity and sympathy” (Amplified Bible), “moved with compassion” (NLT/KJV), “moved with pity” (ESV/NRSV/RSV), or “Deeply moved…” (The Message). The greek word that yields these translations has to do with the human bowels (splangknidzomai). His guts; the very depths of the Jewish understanding of the person. His compassion is literally sympathetic, it makes Jesus sick to his stomach. It churns his insides to see this man in this state.

The other three bibles will say something along the lines of “Jesus was indignant” (NIV 2011/TNIV) or “Jesus was incensed” (CEB). What is ticking Jesus off and why? Is he upset at the presence of this man’s brokenness before him, his deadness? Put off by the gross display of depravity? What gives?

Readers of Mark’s good news have long tried to marry these two emotions of Jesus. Based on what’s just happened (the speaking with authority and confronting demons in Mk 1:21-28), both give us a valuable insight into how Jesus encounters and overcomes evil. Jesus has just cast out an unsettling and unclean spirit from a man at the synagogue and his fame is spreading. Mark scholar Joel Marcus helps us understand that, “Jesus’ rage at the disease or at the demon that has caused it is mixed with his compassion for the man whom it has attacked, and by his gesture of touching the man he even risks contracting ritual impurity himself. But instead of impurity passing from the man to Jesus, the purity of Jesus’ holiness passes from him to the man, and the latter is cured” (from Marcus’ Anchor Bible Commentary on The Gospel of Mark, Vol 1).

Jesus doesn’t merely rage at the evil that is singling this man out and ravaging his body. Neither does Jesus’ healing good news handle his broken, dirty death with the kid-gloves of disinterested pity. He takes it on. He feels and risks. He gets angry at the right things (because this man’s sickness isn’t what it means to be human) and responds in the right ways (because of his authority, things can be different).

This is good news that reaches down to his guts.

jamming: Jessica Long & Wind & Willow live @ Motorco

2011-02-25T10:57:00.000-05:00

reflecting: Mark 1:21-39

2011-02-24T12:28:00.000-05:00

I want to rethink job descriptions a little. It seems like most job descriptions should instead be called “job prescriptions.” After all, you get them at the beginning of your work, they prescribe to you what you should do, what your responsibilities are, and how you should spend your time. We all know that these job prescriptions don’t always indicate what you actually do. Maybe they call for you to do more work (Slacker!), maybe, for the work-a-holic, far less. Job prescriptions prescribe the task ahead. Job descriptions describe what’s actually happening, and what should continue to happen…

It’s with this frame of mind that we stumble onto a pretty odd job description for Jesus in Mark’s gospel. Verse 39, in chapter one, states, Jesus goes around “preaching in their synagogues and driving out demons.” Wait, what?! Preaching and exorcising?!

Jesus says that this is why he’s come. Sure it’s at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, this statement is definitely a sign of more to come, but it is descriptive of what Jesus is doing. The two prongs of his controversial mission: preaching a message of God and confronting evil head-on.

These two facets are important for us not to separate, nor to privilege one over the other.

Jesus is not just a gifted speaker, wooing crowds with his religious knowledge and oratory polish. Though he was not afraid to encounter folks in a religious arena with the uncomfortable possibility that connection to and life with God might look different than what they thought.

Jesus is not just a social worker, activist, or community organizer, dead-set on eliminating personal and societal ills. Though he was certainly not afraid or ashamed to leave the synagogue and enter into the spaces of turmoil, ambiguity, darkness, suffering, and fear.

Mark sets up Jesus’ job description in a way that forces us to realize that Jesus is reordering things. Jesus exhibits authority to teach, because he’s the Word being taught. Jesus has authority to still the turbulent spirit in the man on the church house steps because he is “the Holy One of God.”

For us who are “in Christ,” receiving the authority and healing of Jesus, but also participating in it and offering it to the world, we better pay attention to this job description. Does it describe what we know? Is it descriptive of who we are on a daily basis? If not, let us continue to rethink, and by the Holy Spirit, relearn who Jesus is and what his authority means in our lives, our families, our community, and our world.

jamming: Floating Action, Schooner, & the Tomahawks live @ Kings Barcade

2011-02-18T08:36:00.000-05:00

reflecting: Mark 1:12-13/Luke 4:1-13

2011-02-17T12:24:00.000-05:00

As we’ve previously seen in Mark’s gospel, Jesus’ coming marks the beginning of a reign. The names and lingo surrounding Jesus are regal and politically charged (“gospel,” “Anointed One,” “Son of God”). And we all know that the whole point of having a king is to concentrate authority in one place. In short, Jesus comes onto the scene and anyone (or thing) who has had dominion is threatened to have that power toppled.

In a world with violent political unrest in the headlines on a daily basis (Egypt, could be Haiti next…), we assume what it means for Jesus to do this. When the “heavens are torn open” we might imagine some sort of theme music being cued, fanfare, etc. But then, almost inexplicably, the Spirit leads Jesus into the dessert.

The writer of Mark’s gospel briefly alludes to this, but leaves the details out. However, we can supplement our understanding with Luke’s account. In chapter 4 in Luke, he narrates the three temptations Jesus faces in the wilderness. These temptations and how Jesus meets them show what his kingdom and Kingship are going to be about: not just the ends but also the means. In doing so they assault the ways we might be accustomed to think. They show us a clear picture of who’s the real King and who’s not.

The hungry Jesus is challenged to make bread from stones. Something he no doubt could have easily done. He resists this temptation, because, while his kingship will meet needs in the most complete and sweeping way possible, drawing from a bottomless supply of resources, he will not turn the stuff of creation into a commodity. Eugene Peterson mentions in his brilliant book The Jesus Way: “ The devil wants us to [give into this temptation]: follow Jesus but then use Jesus to fulfill needs, first our own and then the needs of all the hungry people around us.” King Jesus won’t do it. Instead he’ll go hungry. He’ll suffer in order to bring his kingdom into being.

The second temptation is to throw Himself off the highest point so that a band of angels may catch him. The devil challenges Jesus to dazzle. To show off a bit. To compensate for the, up until this point, anti-heroic shape his kingship is taking. Jesus resists. He will not be used as a “hedge against boredom.” He will not be just another thrill to be sought, or cause to be rallied for. Jesus’ kingdom campaign doesn’t need pyrotechnics or viral advertising.

The final temptation leveled against Jesus is to be co-opted. The devil offers Jesus something he already has: authority. Jesus resists. He knows what he has and who he is. He knows he doesn’t have to “sell-out” in order to “make it.” He trusts his Father to accomplish his mission. Perhaps “the devil wants us to use Jesus in the same way. Use Jesus to run our families, our neighborhoods, our schools, our governments as efficiently and properly as we can, but with no love or forgiveness.”

Jesus, by establishing his Kingship in the wilderness, a Kingship that withstands these worldly, by-the-book measures, really exposes other kings (lowercase “k”); exposes them in the sense that they can’t rule like he can, nor are they willing to. The very trials the devil put to Jesus, which he withstood, are the very trials we pray against in the Lord’s Prayer. Because we know they’re tempting, but we also know who the Real King is.

I can’t help it, I’m a Disney-phile, but perhaps if coming out of the baptismal waters and heading towards the wilderness Jesus had a theme-song, it might have sounded a bit like one from the 1973 animated Robin Hood.

Living in an England ruled by Phony King John in a phony way, Robin Hood exposes him for who he is, a fake unfit to wear the crown or receive the people’s trust and obeisance. Jesus not only announces this, but is the alternative: the real King pronouncing a “pox on the phony kings” who do things in phony ways.

jamming: Ben Sollee live @ Casbah

2011-02-11T06:10:00.001-05:00

Read the Description from the Independent.

reflecting: Mark 1:9-13

2011-02-10T08:52:00.000-05:00

When the heavens above Jesus open in Mark 1:10, we are treated to a glimpse, a momentary peek, into the dynamic life of the Triune God. Christians throughout the ages have come to know and describe their God as both three-in-one and one-in-three; one God in three Persons. Thinking about this can wrack our brains, but it can also ignite our imaginations… This means that our God lives in love and unity: with Himself. That each Person of his being is distinct, but vitally connected, inextricable from the other Two. That the God of the bible is a Community of Love in and of Himself.

When the bible says that God is love (1 John 4:8), it means that God’s very being is love and that this love happens within Himself. God can love and dance (the best way early theologians knew how to describe this playful dynamic) without creation or without us. So when the heavens are “torn open,” when the Spirit hovers over the baptismal waters and descends upon Jesus as a Dove (think Genesis 1:2 or maybe Genesis 8:6-12), when the Father commends Jesus as His Beloved Son (ie John 3:16), it is as if we are standing on sidewalk looking through a lit window to see the fullness of God residing. This sets the table for the rest of Mark’s good news.

The wonder of Mark’s gospel, the reason he’s so intense, urgent and sometimes even impatient, is that he’s talking about God coming onto the human scene in a decisive and powerful way. Jesus bursts into the world not as a mere Messiah (though that would satisfy plenty of expectations in itself), or not as a messenger bearing a good word for people to accept (after all that was sort of John the Baptist’s job), but as the very image (Colossians 1:15) of the God who creates, redeems, and loves, not because he has to but because that’s who He is and that’s what He does.

Mark documents this baptism scene in such a way that braces us for a HUGE perspective on the events of Jesus’ ministry, death, and resurrection that further unfold who God is, what God has done, and what God can be about for us now!

reflecting: Mark 1:1-8

2011-02-04T11:00:00.000-05:00

As I start to read Mark in preparation for a lengthy sermon series at the Gathering Church, I’m arrested by the opening scene. Mark cuts right to the chase, not softening us up with any genealogies or birth (/pre-Creation) narratives. Mark’s “beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ, Son of God” is only prefaced by a messenger. Preconceived by the prophet Isaiah and actualized by a strange bird named John. John, preparing. John, pointing. John (as we find in the evangelist John’s gospel), decreasing that Christ may increase. I can’t help but recall Karl Barth’s comment on this scene as visually portrayed in the center panel of Grunewald’s Isenheim altarpiece (which a print hung above Barth’s desk for more than fifty years). He offers in Church Dogmatics, “…one might recall John the Baptist in Grünewald’s Crucifixion, especially his prodigious index finger. Could anyone point away from himself more impressively and completely?” What a challenge! What a vocation! To prepare. To point. To decrease that Christ may increase!

Come Holy Spirit!

Let us remember our baptisms that we may live into this life of witness to which we are called.

Let us point to Christ, who is the image of the invisible God.

Amen.

jamming: Brett Harris live at Fullsteam Brewery

2011-02-04T08:50:00.001-05:00

jamming: Christmas Nights performed live on NBC17

2010-12-22T09:37:00.000-05:00

jamming: Top Ten for 2010

2010-12-22T09:31:00.000-05:00

Written for The Blue Indian, 22 December 2010.

10. Women and Country- Jakob Dylan

Wallflowers’ front and legendary folk offspring continued to tick off his list of Hall of Fame producers this year. With the help of T Bone Burnett behind the board and Kelly Hogan and Neko Case in the background, he manages to craft a set typically textured and heart-rung ballads that would as easily soundtrack a John Steinbeck novel as they would a Nashville barroom.

9. Here’s to Taking It Easy- Phosphorescent

I caught onto this one pretty late, but am glad I did. A cross between Bonny “Prince” Billy’s winsome folk and Band of Horses alt-whine, Matt Houck turns in an LP without any gloss or accoutrement, just the basics. The pedal steel on tracks like “Heaven Sittin’ Down” complement his rambling vocals, and the sparse harmonious tracks like “Nothin Was Stolen” harken to Bon Iver at his de-Autotuned finest.

8. Man of Few Words- Brett Harris

From the first few strums on opener “I Found Out” to the final bluish self-pity on “Over and Over,” Man of Few Words offers a plentitude of neo-Brit-pop nostalgia. You only get this type of music when it seeps out of the pores of someone so reared on McCartney and Costello, that even “safer” alt-country breaks (“Unspoken”) bear the infectious melodies, showmanship, and profundity of such predecessors.

7. Cut Loose- The Tomahawks

Born of a songwriting backlog, Cut Loose is no haphazard dustpan of songs. Instead you find a complete and well-ordered mix of classic sounds and subjects repackaged by one of the most talented collectives (in every sense of the word) in one of the most overlooked music scenes (Raleigh-Durham-Carrboro). Moments like the first few seconds on “Hearts” or the sweeping Wilco-esque solo on Reason or Rhyme speak of more and better to come for this posse.

6. All Alone in an Empty House- Lost in the Trees

Orchestral folk music: perhaps the sub-genre with the highest potential for pretension. Instead, Ari Picker brilliantly conducts an album with so much emotion and vulnerability, anger, strife, memory, and hope that to patently discard it on those grounds discard it would be a huge mistake. My favorite tracks “Song For The Painter,” “Love on My Side,” and “A Room Were Your Paintings Hang,” display a deft self-awareness without being self-absorbed. What you get is a hybrid of Conor Oberst and Andrew Bird: screamingly honest and urgent, though playful, complex, and artistic.

5. The Suburbs- Arcade Fire

The “biggest indie album of the year” that got everyone questioning what that really means anymore anyway, got me wondering something else. Just when exactly did Arcade Fire become the heir apparent to Radiohead and U2? It wasn’t during Funeral. Not quite during the darkly topical Neon Bible. Surprisingly, it took a potentially painful concept album to get there. I wasn’t too interested in a heavy-handed hipster dirge to all things suburban, but that’s not what I got. Instead Butler and Co. put together a complex jeremiad of a spent and sometimes misspent youth.

4. Up From Below- Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros

The superlative for Weirdest Cult/Traveling Musical Gypsy Circus goes to these guys. They also wrap up the companion superlative for Least Likely Band to Pull Down Constant Car and NFL Commercial Licensing. From start to finish this album is my favorite kind of trip.

3. Wild Hunt/Sometimes the Blues is Just a Passing Bird- The Tallest Man on Earth

A powder-keg of lyrical intensity, Kristian Matsson chimes in with two solid albums. The latter EP, shows no drop-off from the brilliant early year full-length. Tracks like “Kids on the Run” or “Like a Wheel” jerk at your tear ducts, while anthemic “The Dreamer” and “King of Spain” buoy those blues. To date all of the cover art matches, and his songwriting is so strong that you get the feeling that these albums come easy, that he could do this output every year for the rest of his life and us listeners would be better for it.

2. Libraries- The Love Language

Part of a powerful triumvirate of national albums put out this year by Merge Records (including She & Him and Arcade Fire). Stu McLamb steps up his low-fi, soul-biting swagger from the eponymous debut on this crushing sophomore effort. My faves include playful yet pensive “Summer Dust,” slide guitar licked “This Blood Is Our Own,” and the less-than-Violent Femmed “Heart To Tell.”

1. Sigh No More- Mumford & Sons

I don’t know of anyone that I’ve recommended this album to this year that hasn’t been wooed by the band’s earnest and powerful brit-grass tunes. From the opening harmonies which harken Fleet Foxes at their best, to “The Cave’s” topsy-turvy image of reality, to the hopeful closer’s assurance of the “time with no more tears,” Marcus Mumford and Co. set out not only to make a brilliant and cohesive musical album, but to craft an inventive vision and definition of faith, hope, and love. Oh, and there’s banjo too.

I dug these too (in alpha order): The Black Keys; Broken Bells; Carolina Chocolate Drops; S. Carey; Johnny Cash; Justin Townes Earle; Gayngs; Ray LaMontagne; Luego; Mandolin Orange; Sandra McCracken; Megafaun; Josh Moore; Morning Benders; The Old Ceremony; Josh Ritter; She & Him; Ben Sollee & Daniel Martin Moore; Spoon; Sufjan Stevens; Angus & Julia Stone; Sharon Van Etten; Derek Webb.

jamming: Gathering Music: Hymn Sing and Album Release live @ Reality Center

2010-12-02T10:36:00.000-05:00

preaching: Advent I: Hope

2010-11-29T10:29:00.001-05:00

Sermon text: Isaiah 2:1-5

Stream it from the Gathering Church site or subscribe to the podcast via iTunes.

Download a Reading Plan and Devotional here: http://www.allgather.org/advent/.

Check out the upcoming 'Christmas Nights' record here: http://www.allgather.bandcamp.com/.

jamming:The Old Ceremony & The Tomahawks live at Motorco

2010-11-18T10:03:00.001-05:00

review: The Tomahawks- Cut Loose

2010-11-03T08:00:00.001-04:00

Originally Published at The Blue Indian on November 2, 2010.

From the soil beneath your feet to the sky above your head, opening track "Dear Mary” sets the tone for the Tomahawks’ expansive debut full-length record. What follows reads like a vintage-rock Farmers’ Almanac, telling stories of changes in mind and season; twists of time and tumult of heart. Said best, “If time can tear the concrete apart, imagine what it does to your heart.”

Second track, “Sunrise,” continues the theses, and serves as a disarmament. Frontman Nick Jaeger empties a suitcase of influences and allusions on the table: Son of a Preacher Man, Fortunate Sons and with Silver Spoon in tow, only missing a cat and a cradle. From the omnipresent ghosts of rock past, Neil Young and Creedance, to current landscapers, Wilco and My Morning Jacket, these unabashed nods allow the band to push onward, to “cut loose” from the company their sound keeps. So Jaeger continues to tell a hopeful story of a dimestore prodigal and like the rest of the album, his honest writing offers the reader faded snapshots, textured and as clear as they need to be. These “mid-fi” rhapsodies echo the album’s smooth but sometimes slurred production.

“Hearts” is a pounding, adventurous rollick. Jaeger’s grouped vocals allow him to wear his heart on his sleeve with the swagger of the kerchief that adorns his neck at the band’s live shows. Beyond the great writing though, this is in a lot of ways a guitar record. Jaeger comes off less as the son of a preacherman and more the son of a luthier. "A Moment to be Free’s” second half is my favorite portion of the whole album: part sweet harmony, part A Ghost is Born ax battle, building tension, tearing it down and then bleeding into the Comment-styled (Kicking Television) "Reason And Rhyme" to follow.

Benefiting from the indefinite hiatus of Chapel Hill mainstay Max Indian (which featured many of the album talented players), the Tomahawks seem poised to continue to develop their bouncy piano, infectious neon-soaked sing-a-longs, howling organ, and controlled shreds. Cut Loose is certainly one of my very favorite releases of a year that is rapidly coming to a close.

Rating: 9/10

preaching: Coming Home (Prodigal God Wk 6: Luke 15)

2010-10-24T17:02:00.000-04:00

Stream it from the Gathering Church site or subscribe to the podcast via iTunes.

jamming: Brett Harris & Keegan DeWitt live @ Nightlight

2010-10-23T19:18:00.001-04:00

review: Griffin House- The Learner

2010-10-20T13:47:00.001-04:00

Originally Published at The Blue Indian on October 20, 2010.

Griffin, you had me with the first three tracks. In fact, this record is almost completely about these three. If You Want To hooked me with a sort of re-packed Tweedy likeability and reeled me in with the line: “So maybe when you’re ready/ and if I’m ever steady enough/ If I’m ever Tom Petty enough/ then I’ll write you a song.” I went to school in Gainesville; I spent several hours of my most recent summer in rock-umentary training learning just how to run down my dreams. Petty was the key to getting me on board early. Petty is the standard of likeable pop-Americana to which artists like Griffin House aspires, and rightfully so.

House continues to cull from a palate of pleasing alt-country on the second track. It’s hard to ignore the similarities between River City Lights and any track you might like to access off of Ryan Adams and Co.’s Follow The Lights EP. I’ll even concede House comes off with a sensitivity and a sincerity that I’m not sure Adams is capable of.

The final track of this triumvirate, Standing At The Station, does a pretty fair Bruce Springsteen impression. If the cover art suggests Darkness-era Boss, the howling squeals demonstrate Nebraska’s rambling swagger; though the chugging tune’s outlaw persona quickly gets dashed as the album spins on.

Beyond these three (perhaps barring the spare Adam-esque Rule the World), the rest of the album falls flat. It seems that once House veers from these well-known and proved influences, there’s just not the same intensity. Here’s to hoping that this “learner” continues to sit at the feet of some of the great performers he emulates at the beginning. He has definitely chosen some of the best of his genre. But, the remainder of the album makes it painfully obvious that the student has yet to surpass his mentors.

Rating: 4/10

review: The Old Ceremony- Tender Age

2010-10-12T09:28:00.001-04:00

Originally Published at The Blue Indian on October 12, 2010.

The Old Ceremony’s vocal leader, Django Haskins, playfully acknowledges that his Chapel Hill band’s fifth LP was originally conceived as a double-EP. He reasons that half of the material is acoustic, the other half the thoroughly textured “pop noir” the band has been cultivating for the better part of a decade. The gimmick never quite came to fruition, and thankfully so. Not that EP’s are bad, but an EP (or two, for that matter) just can’t match the lasting power of a well-made Long Play. The result, the Tender Age LP, gives seasoned fans a worthy continuation of the last two records (Our One Mistake, 2006 and Walk On Thin Air, 2009) and new listeners an apt primer into the homespun drama of this brilliant bunch.

The polyphony and varied influences arrayed on this disc belie its cohesiveness. The best way that I can think to describe Tender Age is as a well thought mix tape, culling voices, moments, and snapshots that, while strange and varied only make sense next to one another. This is the type of album that you can listen to a couple of times and remember which song comes next. Memory fills the pregnant, muted pauses between tracks with the opening bar of the next. These, despite the band’s penchant for writing great melodies and hooks (Haskins furnishes the instrumental play-in music for some local NPR programming), are not singles, but acts of a play; facets of a whole musical digest.

Haskins and co-conspirators craft kick the album off with the title track, pulling in some eastern influences that bespeak of a nagging Harrisonian affinity. The relational lyrics of the opener crack the lid on a gumbo of love, suspicion, loneliness, regret, and vulnerability to follow. Ruined My Plans continues to pour on the dark charm and moody wonderment that the band has patented. Just when the Cohen-esque, minor-chorded melancholy seems to dictate the record’s mood, they change it up with a bouncy pop number, not differing so much in content, but rather style. Within TOC’s own canon, this resembles the delightful Papers In Order of OOM.

The rest, a panoply of diverse yet convergent tunes. All At Once might have been lifted straight from a Frank Black and the Catholics’ record. Good Time has all the crunchy swag of any one of the songs from Spoon’s Gimme Fiction. Rufus Wainwright or Andrew Bird couldn’t have matched Haskins’ theatrics on Wasted Chemistry. My personal favorites are the stripped down and truly Carolinian Wither on the Vine and the pre-Rubin Avett Brothers’ dead-ringer, Never Felt Better. The album closer subtlety chronicles the NC Triangle’s best current attribute: collaboration. Gone Go the Memories bids us a fond farewell amid a buoyant piecemeal chorus featuring a bouquet of local indie rockers (from the The Love Language, Schooner, and Annuals).

Ironically, Tender Age tells a tale not of novelty, youth, or immaturity, but of sly security, adroitness, and versatility. Tune your ear to The Old Ceremony’s best offering to date.

Rating: 8/10

My Goggles and The Two Lost Sons

2010-10-07T12:05:00.000-04:00

Originally posted at the Gathering Church.

It’s crazy what being thoroughly immersed in Scripture can do for you, or should I say do to you. John Calvin famously equated Scripture to being the eyeglasses by which the Christian is able to see the world. My fuzzy logic then follows that the deeper and more immersed you are in Scripture, as we’ve been and will continue to be in Luke 15’s Parable of The Two Lost Sons, the thicker your spectacles will get.

I’m not bragging when I say that 3 solid weeks in, I feel like I’m wearing those nerdy coke bottle glasses. I say this not because I’m a particularly good or dedicated reader or that I feel at all like I’ve got this parable pegged, but because, the more I’ve wrestled with this text and the more I’ve forced myself to come at it honestly the more God has surprised me.

As I’ve tried to put myself in the world of the parable, I’ve come to wonder about how each of the characters (Father, Prodigal, & Elder Brother) thought of themselves. If they were introducing themselves at a cocktail party, what might they say?

“I’m such-and-such and I’m so-and-so’s Father,” might be the reply of the Father. And as far as I can tell, this reply is the only identity that doesn’t change throughout the story. The younger brother tries with all his might to un-son himself and to un-brother himself. And we find later on the Elder tries to do the same. How is it that despite the fact that the family is being torn apart, the Father’s seems rock solid? Why does what the Younger Brother do bother the Big Bro so much? Why isn’t the Younger Brother content with just being in the family and having what he is related to who his Father is? Why does he try and go it on his own?

Here’s where those bizarre new scripture shades come in for me.

So I was watching Survivor on tv (nice segue, right?!)… This season features famed college and NFL football coach Jimmy Johnson along with other folks of various backgrounds, most of which were leaders in their contexts. Insert someone with a bit of self-assurance, fame, and confidence and all but a few of them took him as a threat immediately. It was bizarre. Jimmy seemed content to be there for the experience, he certainly doesn’t need the cash, and in no way was an advantage written into the game for him. Why did everyone care? Why were they threatened by someone having fun? Someone more interested in fishing, giving pep talks, and calling to wildlife than in game-play and outwitting his opponents?

It made me wonder what ways I try to make up my own identity (like the Prodigal), not being content with what and where I am?

It made me wonder what ways, when my identity gets pulled out from under me (like the Elder), that I start flailing and trying to take others down with me?

It made me want my identity to be grounded in the kind of confidence that Jimmy exhibited (certainly in a small and imperfect way) on the island. It made me look back to Luke’s parable with more admiration for the love of that Father, whose love was so solid that neither being abandoned and un-Fathered or being doubted and pestered could budge.

Mostly it made me want to live into the steady-love of God in a more assured way. In a way that grounds me and in a way that sends me out as an imitator.

What have you been seeing through the lenses of this parable?

NT Wright/Andy Crouch/Rob Bell at Duke Divinity School

2010-10-06T12:55:00.000-04:00

Here's the agenda:

Friday, Oct 8 | 3:30-5
Goodson Chapel

Revelation and Christian Hope: Political Implications of the Revelation to John
(with C. Kavin Rowe)

Monday, Oct 11 | 11-12:30; 2-3
Page Auditorium

The Living Witness:

Tradition, Innovation, and the Church

Tuesday, Oct 12 | 9-10:30

Page Auditorium

The Living Witness:
Tradition, Innovation, and the Church

Tuesday, Oct 12 | 2-3:15

Page Auditorium

The Living Witness:
Tradition, Innovation, and the Church
Hickman Lecture

review: Megafaun/Fight the Big Bull/Sharon van Etten/Justin Vernon live @ Hayti Heritage Center

2010-09-27T09:04:00.004-04:00

Originally Published at The Blue Indian on September 27, 2010.

We settled into the back pew of Saint Joseph’s AME Zion on a Friday night quite aware that we were in what used to be used as explicitly sacred space. What I’m not sure we immediately realized, but understood soon enough was that we were there for some sort of revival.

Walking into an empty sanctuary, my eyes sweepingly moved from the elaborate crown molding and ceiling installation to the old balcony hanging close and low enough for the preacher to receive some of the overflow: either rote, fanned air or spontaneous, dripping Hallelujahs! They panned down to the anachronistic contraptions cluttering the stage and the wires pouring into each and every of the 46 channels of the house soundboard. Then they wandered around what, on this occasion, is a congregation made up of hipsters, no more or less distracting than the usual Sunday gang, though with get-up constituted of rimmed glasses, beards, and half-sleeve tats rather than pin-striped suits and ornate hats. An odd “Who’s Who.” Notably, but not exhaustively, filled with Mountain Goats and Rosebuds. A vast array of the NC Triangle’s best, looking oddly out of place, not because of the ecclesial surroundings, but rather because of their bizarre idleness. A Friday-night sabbatical.

Finally, hosts/cogs/chief kids-in-the-candy-store, members of avante-folk group Megafaun, took the stage to an anticipatory applause and then sheer, holy silence. The intro song was a fitting tone-setter for the night. Armed with a washboard and empty hands made for clapping, the Cook brothers and Joe Westerlund interpreted the old Green Sally Up for new ears. That was to be a theme for the night: interpretation. Alluded to and matched only by the other pervading theme: collaboration. Mumbling, self-deprecating, and assuredly sober, de facto emcee Brad Cook mentioned of the set of songs taken from the box set of Americana standards and obscurities compiled by Alan Lomax, “We found these songs together. We want to share them with you together. Here’s how we interpret them.”

As the night wound on, the backing band, Fight The Big Bull, from Richmond VA, not only textured what the Cooks had in mind, but created an entirely new world. And praise the Lord that they did, because this realm featured some truly special moments and characters. We saw Bon Iver front man, Justin Vernon (just “Vern” that night…) transfigured before our eyes: from brooding cabin-fevered freak-folker to bolo-tied, Most-Reverend-Al-Green, tambourine man in numbers like Calvary and I Want Jesus to Walk With Me. We witnessed guest Sharon Van Etten offering her sweetly eerie take on the onomatopoetic nursery rhymes of Almeda Riddle, reminiscent of Natalie Merchant's handling of Woody Guthrie’s set on the Mermaid Avenue discs. She pulled and tugged at her black slip dress until the bawdy Coll Water Blues slid throughout the late summer evening. The two combined for a Book of Revelation recounting in Tribulations that yowled truthful tales of dragons and blood baths in a familiar David Rawlings/Gillian Welch idiom.

The climax of the night was one the cool crowd seemed not ready or fully equipped to embrace. What grew to a critical mass of thirteen musicians on stage at one time lead the “congregation” in shape-note singing and evoked claps, stomps, hallelujahs, and aisle-dancing. Between the band’s extensive brass section, lead by a spectacular muted-trumpet and the singular percussive madness of Westerlund’s seemingly bottomless box of noisemaking accoutrements, unwarned, Mardi Gras (or maybe Pentecost) fell upon Durham, North Carolina.

But, just when our tongues were loosed, it was over. They were gone. Or so it seemed, until a last-gasp encore yielded a choired reprise of another group of “Northerners attempting a song about the South”: Robbie Robertson’s The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.

Though, perhaps the most touching moments of the night weren’t the ethereal or transportive performance moments (which were bestowed in spades), but rather the also abundant, candidly earnest glances and smirks between the players; telling in their incredulity and unadulterated joy. They spoke of a certain danger (“is this happening?”), but more so of surging delight (“this is really happening!”).

I am thankful to have taken all of this in: the sacred intimacy furnished by the hardwood pews to the blessed verity of the sounds that swept through the aisles and filtered up to the balcony.

One A Day

2010-09-25T21:23:00.001-04:00

The fruit of a year-long mini-project.

I took a photo of myself, via MacBook, everyday for a year. The results were not nearly as self-revelatory as I would have imagined. But did confirm three things I already suspected:

I fancy myself with a beard.
I rarely comb my (rapidly greying) hair.
I enjoy being shirtless around the house.

One A Day from chris breslin on Vimeo.

jamming: Megafaun, Justin Vernon, Sharon Van Etten, & Fight the Big Bull live @ Hayti Heritage Center

2010-09-15T06:23:00.001-04:00

As part of Duke Performances' Sanctified series, these acts will perform shape note tunes over 3 nights this weekend at Hayti (formerly known as St. Joseph's AME Church) in Durham. Rach and I are going out Friday night. If you can get a hold of a ticket, especially a $5 Duke ticket, I'd try to be there.

Megafaun Daytrotter Session.

Bon Iver Daytrotter Session.

SVE Daytrotter Session.

jamming: Matt Hires live @ The Cat's Cradle

2010-09-10T17:27:00.001-04:00

Eschewing the drive to Hopscotch for some lighter, closer-to-home fare. Starting out at Wyatt's photo exhibit and finishing up at the Cradle with one of Rach's childhood friends, Matt Hires.

interview: Sharon Van Etten

2010-09-10T08:50:00.001-04:00

Originally Published at The Blue Indian on September 9, 2010.

CEB: Thanks for taking some time to chat with us. You’ve got to be busy tying up loose ends before heading out for a couple weeks. You’ll head down South to play this stretch. A few dates in particular stand out this month. You’re set to play three nights in Durham, NC with a slew of insanely talented musicians, in an old church, doing shape note hymns. First, how’d you get to know all these guys (Megafaun, Bon Iver, Fight the Big Bull)?

Sharon Van Etten: I got to open up for Megafaun earlier this year. It was one of the most fun tours I have ever been on. They made me realize how much I miss the south. By the 2nd show they were like “we want to be your backing band!” They ended up being my backing band for 3 shows and learned 3 part harmonies for my songs. I wanted to cry – it was so amazing.

CEB: And how’d this project come together?

SVE: Those guys work really hard. We had a really good connection, and on top of that we share a love for harmonies, so when they said they were working on this project I wanted to be a part of it as soon as they asked me. Of course! They have such a natural ear for vocals and are amazing musicians. I feel so lucky. That’s all I can say.

CEB: It seems like these days Sacred Harp singing and gospel music has begun to enter into the mainstream consciousness in an interesting way and in interesting places. What’s your personal experience (past and present) with church music?

SVE: I was in choir all of my life. My mother, my sisters and I sang harmonies with each other constantly. The only reason I WENT to church was to sing. I love that feeling of people all singing together. It is something so much bigger than I will ever be able to understand. A group of people getting together to feel better and make something beautiful – together.

CEB: Alan Lomax (who compiled Sounds of the South) has been widely championed in the folk community for his extensive work with world music and various historical and cultural expressions. How important is it for young artists these days to know these sounds?

SVE: I think it helps to know where music has come from to understand where it is going and how it influences everything around us. All music is an oral history, whether or not “it’s cool” or whether or not we like it. It is forever stamped in time as “that moment.” I love that.

CEB: When you’re writing, how much do you try to balance revisiting the past with blazing new musical trails?

SVE: I don’t know. I explore my heart, my head, and try to have realizations. Who knows the depths they explore? I know not what I do. Not usually until after the fact do I realize it was a musician that influenced me or a moment that created the lyric…

CEB: Tell us a bit about your album, Epic, set to come out October 5. If your previous album came “Because You Were in Love,” what would you say “caused” this album?

SVE: Being more confident in who I am, the choices I’ve made, and where I am today.

CEB: What have you been listening to of late?

SVE: Autmelodi, Fanuelle, The Shivers, Lower Dens, OMD, Low, Die! Die! Die!, Skogar, Meg Baird, She Keeps Bees,… to name a few.

CEB: Besides playing and listening to music, do you have any other hobbies or past times?

SVE: I love eating, cooking food (when I have time) sitting on the deck in quiet, learning how to relax. I also just started writing more electronic music. I started calling it my after hours music cause it isn’t as loud as guitar, and with headphones on, I am learning to program beats and synths… but it’s slow still!

Either/or:
CEB: Sweet vs. Savory
SVE: Sweet

CEB: Beatles vs. Stones
SVE: Stones

CEB: Coffee vs. Tea
SVE: Coffee

CEB: Sunrises vs. Sunsets
SVE: Sunset

Free Association:
CEB: “epic.”
SVE: groundbreaking

CEB: “hope.”
SVE: optimsim

CEB: “Elvis.”
SVE: the king

CEB: “secular gospel.”
SVE: consoling

CEB: “home.”
SVE: comforting

CEB: Thanks for your time Sharon. Enjoy the tour, I look forward to seeing you all at Hayti!
SVE: Thank you so much, Chris! I can’t wait. You have no idea.

review: The Weepies- Be My Thrill

2010-09-08T06:42:00.000-04:00

Originally Published at The Blue Indian on September 7, 2010.

Sweet.

The “bless her heart” of artistic descriptions.

But California duo, The Weepies’ new effort via Nettwerk Records, Be My Thrill, just might best fit this moniker.

From the first notes on opener “Please Speak Well of Me,” we are served an appetizer that hints at what’s to come. As Deb Talan’s voice chimes in, visions of department store commercials and Starbucks’ lattes fill our heads. Perhaps it is that commercial capitalization on mellifluous indie rock that forces such a visceral reaction in these post-Garden State days in which we live.

But you can’t fault this married duo for it. They try to resist. These songs are sweet in aesthetic, but their content speaks of the grit and uncertainty of “real” love. Thus there are several times when their confection is liberated from being saccharine or merely sentimental.

From the plaintive “They’re in Love, Where Am I?” to the relationship-sustaining hard work of “Add My Effort,” the pure moon-spoon-june-ity of the vocal harmonies and instrumentals often overwhelms the band’s undeniable candor.

What can be said is that these folks know how to write a hook. And perhaps this is the place for a little sugar. The “kissing-booth youth” and “sweet teeth” of the title track nail the blissful marital indie rock vibe that Mates of State and Ben & Vesper have made a (modest, but enjoyable) living at.

All this said, Be My Thrill only goes as far for me as surfing the crest of what I’m already feeling. It succeeds at supplementing my emotions; much like the doubtless slew of commercials and motion picture soundtracks its tunes will backdrop. But, it fails to actually change my mood or mind, to brighten my lows or to at least interestingly narrate them.

For all its sweetness, I will save this album for the occasional road trip indulgence or dinner party hors d’oeuvre. Enjoyable, but not enough of a main course in and of itself.

Rating: 6/10

review: Wye Oak- My Neighbor/My Creator EP

2010-09-06T23:00:00.001-04:00

Originally Published at The Blue Indian on September 6, 2010.

On the heels of their stout sophomore release, The Knot (via Merge Records), Baltimore duo Wye Oak comes with a short set of holdovers and redos that might have made the original even stronger. Sandwiched between the co-title tracks, Emmylou can be described as more of an anchor than just a “stroke mark.” Its rollicking guitar from the initial click-in and fuzzed vocal harmonies soundtrack the odd territory the band inhabits (they get their name from the official Maryland state tree). Such is the mid-Atlantic: hinting at the deep-fried drawl of the Carolinas, yet deeply related to the port-laden, bustling, caustic North.

This identity, not mistaken but certainly fitful, plays itself out in the finale, a remix of a track from the previous LP, That I Do. The serenity of the original gets disrupted by bassy, police-siren bombast and chill rap verse. Only the city like Baltimore, home of the mean streets shown on the Wire and the sullen fandom for basement-dwelling Orioles and jilted Unitas supporters, could produce such an ex-lover mash-up track.
This juxtaposition is fitting and the dischord finds perhaps its most clear lyrical home back in a verse from Emmylou. Jenn Wasner whirs:

“I believe in commonsense

And meaningless coincidence.

But I don’t believe in heaven

So I have to have you now.”

Such honesty and urgency can be both blessing and curse. This set of neatly organized B-sides spends its nearly 18 minutes trying to figure out which is which. It is no wonder these songs provide neither tidy love swoons nor direct “screw you’s,” but rather more complicated ruminations on relationships and rupture, fight and flight, certainty and insecurity, devotion and distance.

Rating: 8.5/10

jamming: Luego/Brett Harris live @ Forever Duke Block Party

2010-08-30T17:36:00.002-04:00

worlds collide for me: work. school. friends. church. rock.

review: Brad Laner- Natural Selections

2010-08-22T10:01:00.002-04:00

Originally Published at The Blue Indian on August 22, 2010.

The album art says it all, the rest is but commentary.

Maybe it’s judgmental or simplistic to evaluate a book by its cover, or in this case an album, but Brad Laner’s new, self-produced solo effort, Natural Selections, communicates with sonic fuzz and feedback the same furrowed brow of its cover boy.

An industry vet, Laner continues to explore and experiment. With a child-like resourcefulness he samples and overdubs, picking up drum sounds and textures like walking-stick scepters from the side of the road. The trail he winds up blazing is but the result of his self-described exercise of translating his dreams into reality. The record communicates this pastiche: restless but adventurous; raucous but somehow softened and tamed by a familial presence. Its vocabulary is fluently avante, and evokes the scheming knob-twiddling innovation such as Brian Eno, or current clamorous fellow journeymen like Animal Collective.

The first three tracks robustly break in, starting this wandering trek. The stand-out opener, Eyes Close, transports us into Laner’s twisted nocturne where we are simultaneously lulled with picked guitar loops and harmonious vocals and woken by rousing percussion. Throat continues the disorienting momentum with an undomesticated Death Cab-rhythm, and a synth-laden bridge. The final part of this trilogy, features the tortured Lancaster, asking for an admission of sorrow, but mostly just begging for some understanding.

Crawl Back In hints at Of Montreal’s swagger while Why Did I Do It and Dirty Bugs each display moments of grandiosity and sheer brilliance found nowhere else on the album. With all the wizened adroitness Laner holds up behind the façade of youthful whimsy, there are moments of weakness. Perhaps against his better judgment, the impromptu pre-school jam session throwaway, Vicky, misses much more than it hits in the nine-slot. I suggest it is a sloppy moment of sentimental weakness in an otherwise strong and whole piece. It reminds us that grown men are as likely to veer from the cut path as any undisciplined youth.

Overall, Laner’s wanderings remain engrossing and surprising all the way through. Natural Selections delivers as an able companion to the complicated but capricious cover it explicates.

Rating: 7/10

jamming: Thad Cockrell live @ American Tobacco District Music on the Lawn

2010-08-19T10:07:00.001-04:00

review: Bradley Hathaway- A Thousand Angry Panthers

2010-08-16T21:18:00.000-04:00

Originally Published at The Blue Indian on August 16, 2010.

Perhaps I betray a bit of East Coast bias, or at least a supreme ignorance when it comes to Midwestern geography, when I wonder just how far Goshen, AR is from Omaha, NE?

439 miles.

More than a whimsical daytrip, to be sure. Bradley Hathaway howlingly traverses this space between his own hometown and that epicenter of Midwestern folk discontent (care of Bright Eyes’ Conor Oberst) in the mere span of 4 songs. But it is here, in the space between his adolescent spoken-word ramblings and his burgeoning folk-stylings that Hathaway has made his home. The same disturbance and sincerity that allowed him to pen self-searching poetry about his “manliness” enables him to speak of matters of love, death, Jesus, sickness, war & rescue with more precision than Conor’s crazed apocalyptic. Though She Was Raised By A Man With A Sickness does share Casadega’s penchant for duality and drama (and Oberst’s general proclivity for lengthy song titles).

Track two reminds us of the consequence of distance and geography. Carolina acts as a circuitous interstitial between heart (KY) and dreams (AR). This middle ground, Hathaway proves, can be a fruitful place to look both back and forward; inching closer to something (or someone) only to leave behind what you’ve known and where you’ve been. It’s no wonder that a spoken-word poet might be firmly in his conceptual and lyrical wheelhouse. Like Oberst, such sustained interiority sometimes yields moments of eye-rolling indulgence. But for every “my heart breaks into a thousand pieces like glass” (Would You Think…) we get several earnest revelations like, “There is love, there is beauty, and then there is pain, and at the moment I can’t help but feel they’re all the same.”

But perhaps what impressed me most was his tasteful and complementary instrumentation. He textures earnest contemplations with fittingly delicate electric guitar scales and mandolin (Carolina). And on Would You Think Less of Me, we are served an appetizing dose of ghostly piano trickle.

Finally, The World is Screaming harkens to a late mewithoutYou ballad. Though squarely within the Weiss/Oberst mold, there’s plenty of room for Hathaway on the theology-infused-folkster horizon. This EP marks a significant milestone in maturity and growth for the young wordsmith. Perhaps the most pivotal part is the restraint he’s shown. Hathaway seems to be getting comfortable with himself, secure with his words and more understated in his delivery. The result is a quartet of songs with enough intensity to hold the Angry Tigers at bay and enough gripping honesty to captivate the listener.

Rating: 8/10

jamming: Summer 2010 Listening (I)

2010-08-09T15:10:00.004-04:00

So Runs the World Away
Josh Ritter

This picks up where Animal Years and Historical Conquests... left off. He manages, like his personality at his incredible stage-show, to pack some dense thought and narrative in his lyrics, but somehow come off likable and listenable. There is a certain boyishness to his personality that really comes across in a charming and transparent way. His previous work has shown that he can really identify with everyone from Huck Finn (ie Monster Ballads) to Townes Van Zandt (Me and Jiggs), this album allows him to undeniably and seamlessly channel the Boss (Lantern) and the Apostle Paul (Lark- Philippians 4), as well as weave folk tales about Mummy-love, shipwrecks, and hypothetical shootouts between fictional characters. Grab on to this one, if not for the sheer thrill of hearing such a pleasing work from a staggeringly talented artist.

Dear Companion
Ben Sollee and Daniel Martin Moore

These charming Kentucky boys have been in my ear all summer. What they've managed to do is combine Sollee's apt, and anything-but-traditional cello and soft croon with DMM's even softer and croonier vocals and song writing to make an avante folk record that transports you to the joy and pain of Appalachia. Throw in the atmospheric genius of My Morning Jacket's Jim James (AKA Yim Y.) and there you have it, a protest/activist record creating awareness and funds to counter mountaintop removal, under the guise of good ole Bluegrass State bluegrass. Stand-outs for me were especially: Something, Somewhere, Sometime and Only A Song.

Libraries
The Love Language

Despite the fact that you can't read about the Love Language around here without the tiresome report of the drunken and arrest-ridden history of frontman Stu McLamb (there, see how I too included it!), this album is noteworthy enough on its own. Heart To Tell is definitely the radio track of the bunch, but there's hardly a track that doesn't catch you. This one is but one of a slew of significant Merge releases this year. Really enjoyable, perfect summer musak.

Brothers
The Black Keys

“Let me be your everlasting light,” is quite the request. You’d think opening a disc with such an entreaty might doom it, particularly such a tongue-in-cheek sarcastic album such as this (“This is an album by the Black Keys…”). With Danger Mouse production and the deconstructed rock-blues we've come to know and love fromt his Ohio duo, such a bombastic request comes instead as a beacon, ushering in an album with so much cool and skill it threatens to soundtrack your day, like it or not.

Tribute To...
Yim Yames

Since being thrust back into the world of "Harrisongs" through some church buddies and by voyaging through the Beatles' Anthology earlier this summer, this set of George covers has been heavily rotated. Jim James has a real knack for getting to the haunting brass tacks of the situation, that's what he does here with Long, Long, Long, Behind That Locked Door, & All Things Must Pass.

Broken Bells

Broken Bells

Call me slow, but it took me a while to understand that I am indeed a Danger Mouse fan. He enticed me to buy the first Gnarls Barkley record at a time when I wasn't looking to buy a rap record, he's caused the Black Keys to blow up beyond any prediction Thickfreakness and Rubber Factory (killer as each of them are in their own rights) might have occasioned. So why not throw some Shins on top of some gritty bass and percussion? James Mercer keeps up his end of the bargain with some witty indie-rock songwriting, the only thing I really miss is the Chutes Too Narrow, Kinks-esque guitar swagger. Probably not a valid criticism based on the fact that this isn't actually a Shins record though.

North Carolina
Twelve Thousand Armies

Probably easier found on his myspace page than anywhere else, this set of tunes from Justin Williams displays his uncanny knack for vulnerable lower-mid fi pop songcraft. Your probably more likely to hear jams like My Bag out of the mouth of other (Drug)horses, but nothing beats the original. This album bleeds like an Elliott Smith album appropriately filtered through James Wallace fuzz and antics. Tracks like Darling Let’s Breathe and Pardon the Earthquake show the range of buoyantly honest tunes that 12K Armies is capable of.

The Wild Hunt
The Tallest Man on Earth

It must be really obnoxious to play the type of music that you forces you to be consistently and legitimately compared to Bob Dylan. Of course Swede Kristian Matsson must, if he hasn't figured out how to by now, handle this problem. Because, besides a scattered few folks like Joe Pug, I can't see too many that shoulder this mantle more or better than he currently does. King of Spain wound up being such a nice gloating song for my World Cup pool victory. Other songs are so wonderfully and imaginatively crafted that they beg to speak for themselves rather than be ruined by some merely pallid description. For instance: But now the ghost is in my jacket and my stairs were built in anger/Winding forcefully but end up where I stand/But there are no rocks or salt and nails, I low my cannons not to kill you/Simply lost the words to tell you I'm afraid (from Troubles Will Be Gone).

review: Trances Arc- TA

2010-08-05T06:10:00.004-04:00

Originally Published at The Blue Indian on August 4,2010.

With the hellacious Southern summer a full 7 or 8 weeks from even letting on at relenting, one might expect a mid-July rock release to bear some of the scalding intensity of these dog days. Tentatively enter: Trances Arc’s TA. This sophomore release is self-admittedly a battle against the “headiness” of their first XOXOX. In that capacity, TA achieves a summery freeness perhaps not as readily evident as before.

But we’re talking about Southern college rock here. Forget the over/under-thinking and put out a melter to match the climate! A true summer rock record warps like vinyl on an Atlanta sidewalk. Instead causing me to retreat into the deep-end of a lukewarm pool, this release merely had me wondering why they thought they could light me up with a magnifying glass? Nothing hurt, just a lot of the same old tricks. Warm, but not blistering. SPF 5.

Barring a few moments, the pilot-light flare-up track “Fuego Balloons” and the terribly delightful ripping solo in “Black Lung,” the album, on the whole, lacks either the risky abandon or the tight cohesion that might really give the listener something to sweat. Sure, TA provides great shuffle-fodder: which could either be the start of something beautiful (creating buzz for the band and giving you that perfect track for the state-line on that last interstate stretch before heading back to campus) or more likely dooming the disc to the bottom of the stack and letting the albums of folks who make albums (the Thom Yorkes, Strokes, Muses, and Cold War Kids of the world, to whom this band certainly nods), rise to the top.

Maybe I’m being a bit harsh. Let me backtrack a bit. There were some noteworthy moments. The aforementioned “Fuego Balloons,” with its drum, organ, and handclap-infused swagger, lit me up. “Our Wild Eyes” struck a nice balance between arena-rock grandeur and intimate emotion; a mischievously playful young-love ballad done well.

I have a hard time with this collection of songs, because it’s not at all unlistenable; they’re just not, especially as a whole, all that compelling. Have a listen for yourself, and I think you’ll find a few solid tracks, some more than capable musicianship, fleeting summer fun, and a bit of underachievement.

Rating: 5/10

jamming: Max Indian live @ Duke Gardens

2010-07-20T17:15:00.004-04:00

Photo courtesy Betsy Harris.

Video courtesy Karen Mann.

jamming: Brett Harris/Luego live @ Jessee's Coffee

2010-07-17T09:14:00.001-04:00

screening: fpn's "35 Seconds- Short Stories from Haiti"

2010-07-06T08:52:00.004-04:00

My documenteur friend and his co-conspirators went down to Haiti a few months ago to bring back some stories from the folks drastically and tragically affected by the earthquake. The result is this 13 min. doc about the 35 seconds of crisis: literally the fault-line between normal and the rest of their lives. Amidst some heartbreakingly beautiful photography and music, there are some surprising accounts (in Creole, subtitled in English) of just what went through some folks' heads when their world came crashing down and glimmers of hope for a people and a country rebuilding from the rubble.

http://www.fleshprofitsnothing.com/

http://erichires.com/

http://nathanblewis.com/

processing: Summer 2010 Reading (I)

2010-07-05T11:40:00.002-04:00

For The Beauty of the Church

Ed. David Taylor

Since meeting a popular songwriter we hosted in college and being told to check out Steve Turner's Imagine, I've maintained a detached interest in the merger of theology and the arts. As my theological mind has expanded, so too has my appetite for this intersection. Duke's (by way of Austin, TX) David Taylor writes and edits this wonderful volume replete with talented and interesting authors and a panoply of perspectives. Besides Peterson, who can hardly do wrong by me, I was surprised, edified and provoked by John Witvliet Worship piece (I look forward to thinking about original songwriting & worship with some amazing songwriters in our community) and especially Jeremy Begbie's musing on Art and Eschatology. I highly recommend this to anyone who's ever even considered the role of art in the life of the Church.

Practice Resurrection

Eugene Peterson

The capstone to his prolific Spiritual Theology series, Peterson embarks on a thorough and serious treatment of growing up, being the Church, and living in terms of the resurrection existence Christ inaugurated, as articulated by the letter to the Ephesians. I really appreciated how constructive this work was. While providing harsh and prophetic criticism towards the failed and unfaithful ways we North American Christians attempt to build, progress, and grow, the tone and timbre of the whole matches the exciting, creative, and counterintuitive character of the great biblical letter it explicates.

Resident Aliens

Stanley Hauerwas and Will Willimon

About halfway through this book I really began to resent whoever chose our entrance reading requirements a couple years ago for Duke. While Dean Well's Power and Passion was somewhat helpful, I can't really think of something else that could provide such a succinct and challenging primer to how things are thought and done at Duke than Prof. Hauerwas' and Bishop Willimon's landmark book. I might have spoken louder, earlier, and more often in some precepts had I tackled this one prior to the summer before my final two semesters. Spanning ecclesial ethics, the dangers of no-holds-barred modernism, and introing a Yoderian, post-Constantinian vision, these two master communicators also realize the importance of both eschatology and worship for the life of the Church in the world. This work begs to be engaged with and achieves the provocation the cover advertises.

The Prodigal God

Tim Keller

I was really excited to dig into this one. The final parable in the Luke 15 series has always been one of my favorites to read, preach, and re-evaluate. This fall at Gathering Church, we're looking to focus on Keller's take. His dealing stuck me as a bit unique, devoting a lot of space to the consideration of the older brother in the story (and going on to portray Jesus as True Elder Brother), going as far as to interpret him as but one of a couple of Lost Sons in the story. I liked the accessibility and intrigue created by this. It seems it will be a great entry point for those without a ton of study and small group experience as well as those, who know the story well. It also made me go back to last summer's read: Volf's Exclusion and Embrace, to re-visit his brilliant exegesis of the characters within this keystone parable. One main gripe I have is the over-villianization of the Pharisee character in the story. While I don't deny the teeth the the story has towards that crowd, the NPP-reader and Mel Gibson critic in me cringes at the careless portrayal of Jews as the epitome of flagrant unfaith. All this said, I'll return back to Prodigal God (no spoiler alert: prodigal means extravagant, excessive) quite a bit more as a resource.

Deep Church

Jim Belcher
Anyone looking for some sort of positive assessment of the messy tangle encountering evangelical(-ish) church-life to come, should pick this one up. Belcher offers an accessible and erudite survey of the landscape and painstakingly critiques and offers a way forward (which he, following CS Lewis coins the deep church). This "third way," for him, is rarely a synthesis of the other two poles, though Belcher possesses all the charity, skill, and machinery to form such syntheses. Belcher instead looks and, more often than not, finds a true new way. This way of Orthodoxy and Engagement, truth and warmth, set-apartness and engagement must be the way forward and the type of leaders needed for such a grand endeavor must be committed to ecumenism, creativity, and generosity. I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It accurately mapped and widely conversed un order to generate a gravitational vision around the Triune God in community. Well done.

jamming: Bowerbirds live @ Duke Gardens

2010-06-22T11:20:00.000-04:00

jamming: Jakob Dylan- Women & Country

2010-06-19T08:05:00.005-04:00

Perhaps the other duo of unmentionables, besides religion and politics, is women and country. Or maybe Dylan, like his dad did so expertly before him, shows how these things are the most mentionable, the unmistakable currency with which we deal, like it or not. It is both women & country root us to the stuff of our lives: conflict, loyalty, relationship, hardship, violence, love and lust.

While it has been unfortunately advocated that all is fair in love and war, Dylan ventures into the complicated homeland where love can be warfare, and war the result of disordered affection.

This record bridges Dylan’s barebones, Rick Rubin-produced Seeing Things with T-Bone Burnett’s intense production from the Krauss/Plant Raising Sand record. Alongside Neko Case (New Pornographers), Kelly Hogan, and a throbbing, consistent upright bass, Dylan finds conveys the lonely forsakenness of exile in tracks like Everybody’s Hurting and Holy Roller’s for Love. The opener sounds the most optimistic note, a combination campfire sing-along and unconvinced praise chorus.

Dylan weaves a masterful soundtrack for troubled times, giving voice to the difficulties while sounding a call to band together:

We hold our ground.

We don’t kneel

If we go down,

We go down on our own shields.

Sure, we may be inside of a “bottomless well,” these might be dire straits and we may in fact go down, but it’ll be together and it’ll be fighting. But, this fighting is not the scrappy, desperate fighting of the blaze-of-glory patriot, but the convinced loyalty of a lover. All this dejection in relationship and citizenship forges a new identity. After all “faith is believing what you see ain’t so,” and a crazy world good at making extremists. Dylan crafts hymns for this new persona, these holy rollers.

These are the ones who understand women and country best. Because they are willing to sacrifice, unwilling to be party to the deception and destruction. Underneath the mellow, chugging sounds, lies a zealous, subversive record of true protest songs.

jamming: Mandolin Orange live @ Bynum Front Porch

2010-06-17T12:16:00.004-04:00

http://www.bynumfrontporch.org/

jamming: Mount Moriah & Lonnie Walker live @ Duke Gardens

2010-06-08T10:33:00.000-04:00

jamming: Luego- Ocho

2010-06-04T10:01:00.003-04:00

¿Como se dice “run the gamut” en espanol?

Not to judge an album by its cover, but…judging Ocho by its cover: for better or worse your looking at polarities. Pluses and minuses.

This diversity is evident by the album’s Spanglish lingua franca: Bienvenidos to How ‘Bout Them Rules??

Likewise, the feel of the music may shift within a single song, or even verse: from brawny saloon music to daytime TV catharsis/self-loathing (see Ain’t It Sad).

A superfluity of influences pops each of their heads up like lemmings on the mesa landscape Patrick Phelan has painted: from John Lennon to The Band and the Beach Boys to Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros, Blitzen Trapper and Dr. Dog.

It’s equally likely that a song’s going to be primarily about a prep school kid, a penpal or some shepherd to corral it all back together and carry that load; in “space,” Colorado, at the Cat’s Cradle, or in Venice.

Frontman Phelan seems to relish in this exercise: subjecting even his own persona to the drill. He effortlessly ranges from lunatic to heretic to Most Interesting Man in the World, without ever breaking character, or really even letting on that there are characters in play.

All this roaming isn’t aimless though. Perhaps the cipher for the whole thing comes in the seemingly harmless instrumental track that bisects the album, +/-. Without this track, you may get lost. You may migrate from the wacky world created by Ocho. +/- instead holds it all together. It gives some of the best players around a chance to flex their muscles. It tinges the rest of the record with a subtlety and confidence that might otherwise go unnoticed. It provides the punch line to some of the album’s jokes: they meant to do this. The textures and personality created by Phelan and produced Jeff Crawford mean as much if not more than the actual lyrics or the song structures. This is not a hodgepodge or a bunch of disparate clips from spaghetti westerns and Corona commercials, it is a world to be stepped into.

So maybe the C batteries on the cover are a fitting. After all, these brilliantly mundane “jumping-buddies” manage to house some real spunk. Like this record, they work and get their punch from holding it all together.

Stream it here.

jamming: Luego/Tomahawks live @ Nightlight (OCHO Album Release!)

2010-05-28T09:55:00.007-04:00

Get some pre-game prep on the album at luego.bandcamp.com.

Luego team photo courtesy of Hathir Pfau.

Tomahawks team photo and OCHO album artwork courtesy of Nick Jaeger.

jamming: Mumford and Sons- Sigh No More

2010-05-26T13:05:00.006-04:00

Of this raucously honest debut offering from Britain's Marcus Mumford & Co., one UK reviewer remarks:

"What's missing here, apart from an antidotal dose of Dawkinism, is a modicum of self-restraint. Sigh No More is so earnest it weeps holy water, from theatrical drum rolls to jiggedy banjo riffs to trumpeting fanfares that are too bloody obvious to swallow. Pomp and pop are common bedfellows — but with Jesus squeezed between them, three's too many for your average proverbial duvet."

To say I disagree might be both too simple and too mild.

Mumford and gang's consecrated tears flood the record with the gorgeous fusion of transparent self-criticism and burly assurance that the Avetts have long patented. If England doesn't know what to do with this sort of thing, we'll take their export in this case.

From the opening Sigh No More to the closer (perhaps the strongest track on the album) After the Storm, the album breathes hope, transparency, and surprise (see Roll Away Your Stone). The odd thing about this hope is that it is indeed incarnated in "jiggity banjo riffs and trumpeting fanfares." Perhaps more complicated and possibly unpalatable to some audiences is that this hope also manifests within the desperation of a string of self-flagelating F-bombs in Little Lion Man. It is only in the recognition of this despair and the accompanying realization that to come out of such a "Cave" might actually require walking on one's hands in order to see how things actually are and need to be.

In this way this disc is brilliant and disorienting. Perhaps the final brilliance comes from the fact that we are left re-oriented. Pointed towards something or at least shown glimpses at the joy and peace and grace available.

"Lend me your hand and we'll conquer them all
But lend me your heart and I'll just let you fall
Lend me your eyes I can change what you see
But your soul you must keep, totally free"
-Awake My Soul

jamming: Brett Harris- Man of Few Words

2010-05-24T17:00:00.133-04:00

It's been a while since I've had the time, availability and stamina to offer any decent blog ponderings. A terrible shame considering some of the incredible music I've come across over the hectic last couple months. This week I hope to get up a couple of reviews.

Since Good Friday , I've been steadily engrossed with Brett's first full-length record. Relying on deft production and stout playing by some of the Triangle's most talented dudes (along with a guest appearance by Brooklyn dudette Annie (sans Beekeepers)), Harris comes out of the LP gate strong with a set of sophisticated pop tunes.

I Found Out opens summer every bit as much as it opens the album. Its hopeful and epiphanic tone continues with the Abbey Road-esque album track Something Beautiful. The song's gentle melody and vinyl character offer 52 seconds and then a gripping ellipsis...

For such a beautifully cohesive album, perhaps both the sonic outlier and the centerpiece is the lilting country harmony, Unspoken. In a way, this track wrests the record's mood from the pubs of 60's Liverpool back to the PBR-swilling bars of Carrboro, where it was made. Brett proves that he can hold his own around venues and listeners well-acquainted with the broken-hearted ballads made recently popular by acts like Whiskeytown and Tres Chicas.

Other stand-outs include the groovy Viva la Vida-styled Perpetual Motion, the title-track, and the Oh Darling re-rendered blues number Over and Over.

Brett is quickly proving his chops as a songwriter, performer, and student of music. Keep your eye on his talent and get an ear on this remarkable album.

Photos Courtesy of Monica Damron

jamming: Mount Moriah/Brett Harris live @ Tir Na Nog

2010-05-20T06:00:00.003-04:00

Poster courtesy of Nick Jaeger.

jamming: Jeff Crawford & Howe Gelb live @ Local 506

2010-05-18T07:52:00.006-04:00

JC photo courtesy of Hathir Pfau.

preaching: Interrupting Our Story: God's Covenantal M.O. (Gen 12)

2010-05-17T14:21:00.001-04:00

I had the chance and privilege yesterday to preach at the Gathering Church in Mark's stead. Because we're in the middle of a sermon series considering the Christian life and mapping where we are with God, combined with this great season we're entering filled with weddings and baptisms and new starts: I found it only fitting to take a crack at communicating how God does things in the midst of all this and what that means for us. If we're trying to walk with God and be conformed to the likeness of Christ, we better take consider how God operates so that we can appreciate it and imitate it.

It was a blast to plan and prepare the service. Brett Harris & Co. lent their wonderful talents to a beautiful set of hymns and spiritual songs that preached, better than I could ever hope to, God's covenantal faithfulness to us throughout history.

Here's a link to the podcast on iTunes.

As always, I'd love and appreciate any feedback.

preaching: Re-imagining the E-Word: Confession, Cost, & Community (Ps 32)

2010-04-20T07:30:00.014-04:00

Here is the final installment of preaching class preaching. We were given an assortment of Lectionary passages for the 11th Sunday of Ordinary Time. I chose to re-evaluate Evangelism in light of David's maskil of Psalm 32. Let me know what you think.

Re-imagining the E-Word: Confession, Cost, & Community by cebreslin

jamming: Mumford and Sons- The Cave

2010-04-19T09:19:00.002-04:00

I can't really get enough of any part of this:

"So come out of your cave walking on your hands
And see the world hanging upside down
You can understand dependence
When you know the Maker's land"

Ethics & Baseball.

2010-04-12T18:42:00.002-04:00

As far as I can tell, Sam Wells' schema translates over to baseball as such:

Universal Ethics.

I don't even think I need to define who "we" is to go ahead and say, "We all hate the yankees." These guys represent everything that's wrong with the MLB. Big money, no empathy for the little guy, no creativity or theo-athletic imagination. These guys are definately about decisions and not people, particularly in the off-season and around trade deadlines.

Subversive Ethics.

Bent on stickin' it to the Man (the Man's name is George Steinbrenner). Billy Beane is the Gustavo Gutiérrez of beisbol. Joe Morgan brings his categorical imperative to every AL West game he broadcasts. Supreme Billy-Ball hater. You really wanna root for them, but they don't do you any favors not having made the playoffs since 2006, trading anyone and everyone who could help them, and playing in the Pacific time zone.

Ecclesial Ethics.

Likable underdog. Well-loved around the hallowed halls of DDS. In some ways doomed to failure, but relying on some sense of eschatological divine justice. Hauerwas, shockingly a Cubbie fan, once even likened cheering for the boys from the North Side to pacifism, "This commitment [becoming a Cubs fan] came at the same time I was convinced by John Howard Yoder that I had to become a pacifist. I like to think being a Cubs fan and being a pacifist are closely linked- namely, both commitments teach you that life is not about winning." God indeed has given them everything they need, except a pennant.

Sympathy for the Devils

2010-04-09T09:35:00.003-04:00

I must first disclaim that I am a Duke graduate student. I was a bit excited about this past Monday’s victory.

I enjoy the buzz. The excitement. The idea that I am, in some small way part of something big, special, victorious.

I didn’t grow up a Duke fan, but was sort of grafted in, if you will. I didn’t go to Indy for the game. I didn’t even go to Cameron to watch with the blue huddled masses. I watched at my house, with some friends. These friends, by and large, were (temporary) Butler supporters (aka Carolina fans).

How quickly have I forgotten my black and white Floridian upbringing: Seminoles=Good, Gators=BAD.

Now, in a new place, with new people I couldn’t understand the static between these two Triangle rivals. My thinking went, “Well, UNC’s out, might as well ‘root for the home team/ACC team/etc’?!” I forgot how absurd this is for ardent sports fans, myself included, how rooting for one team necessarily excludes the other. But also how great it feels when your rival complements you or roots you on, despite your history.

But I’ve seen exceptions to the hard-and-fast fandom: a through-and-through Tarheel admitting some respect for Coach K when he pulled the starters early in a blowout. Even Mark recognizes the intensity, coaching, and teamwork of an under-talented champion. I have no illusions that Carolina will stop referring to my school as Dook, or that Duke will put away their GTHC cheers. But, I have seen a bit of civility, a bit of reason. Perhaps even a bit of identification, sympathy, and admiration.

Perhaps, it’s a bit of a stretch, but these are the makings of reconciliation (see 2 Corinthians 5). Getting your boast under control and having our opinions about others crucified and resurrected. Then been free to start afresh, to unmask the silly divisions. Admitting that someone else has done a good job, that they’re worthy, that your former frustration might have been a bit of jealousy, but now can be channeled into sincere, positive words. This kind of interaction causes us to look at our selves, at the other person/team/group…, and back at ourselves. When that happens we end up a bit disoriented, a bit confused at why we were so convinced at our difference in the first place.

Sure Duke’s team may be filled with obnoxious little scrappers and Carolina might be a bunch of NBA-bound thoroughbreds, none of that will change anytime soon. But each side is fooling itself if they think they’re all that different. They are both excellent. They each have their strong suits and weaknesses (this year the scales were a bit tilted). Even in UNC’s down-year, Duke can learn some things from that program: particularly how to win, then not meet up to high expectations, and then how to rebound (I’m sure Harrison Barnes will be helpful at writing this chapter). And perhaps even in the midst of their worst recent season, Carolina can admire, learn from, or at least respect Duke’s program and season.

Who have you convinced yourself is unlikeable, too different to even bother having your mind changed?

What weaknesses in yourself cause you to resent others?

What strengths in others are you jealous of?

When have you been surprised at someone else’s joy at your joy?

What boasts do you hold onto, even when they are dying or dead?

Visit original post at allgather.org.

Johnny Cash: The Revelator

2010-04-08T06:31:00.010-04:00

Resources for presentation given in Dr. Hays' Revelation Exegesis class.

Download the Powerpoint.

Download the Handout.

When The Man Comes Around

J.R. Cash

(American/Lost Highway/Columbia 2002)

Spoken: And I heard, as it were, the noise of thunder: One of the four beasts saying: "Come and see." And I saw. And behold, a white horse.

There's a man goin' 'round takin' names.
An' he decides who to free and who to blame.
Everybody won't be treated all the same.
There'll be a golden ladder reaching down.
When the man comes around.

The hairs on your arm will stand up.
At the terror in each sip and in each sup.
For you partake of that last offered cup,
Or disappear into the potter's ground.
When the man comes around.

Hear the trumpets,
hear the pipers.
One hundred million angels singin'.
Multitudes are marching to the big kettle drum.
Voices callin', voices cryin'.
Some are born an' some are dyin'.
It's Alpha's and Omega's Kingdom come.

And the whirlwind is in the thorn tree.
The virgins are all trimming their wicks.
The whirlwind is in the thorn tree.
It's hard for thee to kick against the pricks.

Till Armageddon, no Shalam, no Shalom.
Then the father hen will call his chickens home.
The wise men will bow down before the throne.
And at his feet they'll cast their golden crown.
When the man comes around.

Whoever is unjust, let him be unjust still.
Whoever is righteous, let him be righteous still.
Whoever is filthy, let him be filthy still.
Listen to the words long written down,
When the man comes around.

In measured hundred-weight and penny-pound.
When the man comes around.

Spoken: And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts, And I looked and behold: a pale horse. And his name, that sat on him, was Death. And Hell followed with him.

Revelation 6:1-2a

“There's a man going 'round taking names (taking names)/He's been taking my fathers name/an' he left my heart in vain/there's a man going 'round taking names” (Leadbelly)

Gen 28:12
Jn 1:51

Mt 27:7
Also: Mt 27:9; Jer 19

Mt 24:31
Also: Rev 1:10; 4:1; 8:13

Rev 1:8, 21:6, 22:13

Job 38-40

Mt 25:1-13

Paul’s conversion in Acts 26

Rev 22:11
Rev 16:16

Lk 13:34

Rev 4:10/Rev 7:15/Mt 2:7-12

Rev 4:10

Rev 6:6

Revelation 6:6a, 8

Johnny Cash Playlist

Further Listening:

American Recordings (I-VI)

Unearthed (Box Set)

Personal File

My Mother’s Hymn Book

Live from Folsom Prison

Further Reading:

Johnny Cash, Man In White (Thomas Nelson, 2008).

Johnny Cash, Cash: The Autobiography (HarperOne, 2003).

Antonino D’Ambrosio, A Heartbeat & A Guitar: Johnny Cash and the Making of Bitter Tears (Nation Books, 2009).

Leigh H. Edwards, Johnny Cash and the Paradox of American Identity (Indiana University Press, 2009).

Michael Streissguth, Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison: The Making of a Masterpiece (Da Capo Press, 2005).

Steve Turner, The Man Called Cash (Thomas Nelson, 2005).

Dave Urbanski, The Man Comes Around: The Spiritual Journey of Johnny Cash (Relevant Books, 2003).

Further Viewing:

Gospel Road (1973)

Walk the Line (2005)

The Johnny Cash Show: 1969-1971 (2007)

screening: Spoken Word, Preaching Visuals, & Prophetic Jesterdom

2010-04-07T18:43:00.005-04:00

Topics from today's preaching class:

Spoken word poetry as embodying and unleashing the Word.

Anis Mojgani performs Shake the Dust at HEAVY AND LIGHT. from To Write Love on Her Arms. on Vimeo.

Using visual media to deliver and enhance the message.

Lump (Rob Bell - Nooma)

Using humor/satire/fable as a subversive, prophetic, surprising alternative.

mewithoutYou - The Fox, the Crow, and the Cookie from David Bell on Vimeo.

preaching: The Shape & Sound of Resurrection (Mal 4)

2010-04-06T07:17:00.000-04:00

Here is my second sermon for preaching class. My first sermon started Lent, this one concludes Lent and anticipates Easter. I went for it a little by using music (the Welcome Wagon's rendition of the preaching text). I also tried to improve my delivery, there's still much work to be done. I had fun with this one. Let me know what worked and what can be improved, I'd love feedback...

The Shape & Sound of Resurrection (Mal 4) by cebreslin

Congrats Duke!

2010-04-05T11:37:00.000-04:00

Kinda cool that Rach and I are now tied for Grad School B-ball victories during or post-graduation. Great season and a great finale! Butler was worthy and scrappy. Had my mental, physical, emotional, spiritual, and financial all not gone into this school over the past two and next one years, I probably would have been going for them.

Rach's first game in Cameron this year:

rach's first game in cameron from chris breslin on Vimeo.

Now on to the pep ralley, class, and working to defend our Campus Intramural Softball Crown!

Easter!

2010-04-04T10:29:00.000-04:00

Intro to Tom Wright's Easter sermon yesterday titled, "Resurrection & Rock'n'roll.":

The taxi driver looked back at me in his mirror. His face was a mixture of amusement and sympathy. We were stuck in traffic and he’d asked me, as they do, what I did for a living.

‘Ah,’ he said, ‘you Church of England people’ (having told me he was a Roman Catholic himself). ‘You’re still having all that trouble about women bishops, aren’t you?’

I had to admit that that was indeed the case.

‘The way I look at it,’ he said, ‘is this: if God raised Jesus Christ from the dead, all the rest is basically rock’n’roll.’

Rob Bell's (dynamic, as always) new work, "Resurrection":

Resurrection: Rob Bell from The Work of Rob Bell on Vimeo.

jamming: Brett Harris/Luego/Bright Young Things live @ Nightlight (CD Release!)

2010-04-02T04:00:00.004-04:00

Click to stream this great new album in its entirety.

April Fools & Holy Weak

2010-04-01T11:43:00.003-04:00

For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength. (1 Corinthians 1:25)

I hope the irony of April Fools’ Day and Maundy Thursday coinciding hasn’t been lost.

Though, Maundy Thursday may strike even the most ardent churchgoer as the junior varsity of Holy Week activities, it may actually hold the key to the whole week. Sure, we all know: Friday=Cross, Sunday=Resurrection (chocolate bunnies, special outfits and hats, peeps, etc…). But what about Thursday?

Maundy comes from a Latin word for mandate/command. This refers to Jesus saying, “A new commandment I give unto you, that you love one another as I have loved you.” (Jn 13:34) . This statement, of course comes well after Jesus interrupted a nice dinner with his palls, tied a towel around his waste and got on with the washing of the feet. Foolishness. Weird stuff. At least Peter thought so.

Jesus explained himself by saying, “What I am doing you do not understand now, but afterward you will understand.” Perhaps the best summary for the whole of Holy Week. Foolishness that later comes to make sense in light of Sunday. We later come to really see that foolish weakness overcomes conventional wisdom and strength.

Peter didn’t understand the foolishness of what Jesus was doing. Frankly, neither do I most of the time. Jesus patiently uses this as a teachable moment saying, “If I am your Teacher and Lord and I wash your feet, do this to each other.”

Think about how silly this would be for us. “You mean you want me to drop everything and getting down to the dirt of where someone has been? You’re kidding me. You want me to clean feet? No way.” Jesus shows us a foolish type of friendship and asks his friends and us to follow suit.

I wish these two “holidays” coincided a bit more often. It might make it a bit easier to remember how Christ’s wisdom looked like foolishness, how his strength looked like weakness, and his victory looked like defeat. The shape of his very life, looks on first blush, like death.

I pray that we really embrace this call to be holy April fools, that we take on this free and costly life. That we see strength in apparent weakness. That we get comfortable under the table doing this foolish work of friendship and service. Amen.

Original Gathering Church post.

"Forgiveness is the Final Form of Love."

2010-03-25T10:16:00.004-04:00

"Forgiveness is the final form of love." -Reinhold Niebuhr

About this time of the year last year I went and watched a film about forgiveness (actually in the same room that we’ll remember Christ’s sacrifice and forgiveness next week!). As We Forgive is all about the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide that took place, ironically enough, during Holy Week in 1994.

If you’re unfamiliar with the history of this recent atrocity- neighborhoods, churches, communities, and, in some cases, families were ripped apart by mass-scale bloodshed. The film focuses on putting the pieces back together. Forgiving (but, certainly not forgetting). Moving on. Together.

Perhaps the strongest part of this film was its concreteness. It’s easy to get hypothetical about this sort of thing. We tend to boil these topics down to some far-fetched example where it eventually seems fair not to forgive. (“If my spouse ______, there’s no way I could ever forgive him/her.”) In a lot of ways, that seems to be a cop-out. If we imagine a situation, where forgiving is unimaginable, then all of the sudden its okay for us not to forgive something petty. What if, as Christians, we lived as if forgiveness was not only imaginable, not only possible, but normal?

By normal, I don’t mean average or easy. Everyone knows what a crazy thing it is to forgive. Everyone knows what it feels like to be wronged. By normal, I mean our default. What we do. How we live. Together.

How is this possible? Where does this vision come from?

It has to be God. It has to be how He treats us. It must be how Jesus teaches and practices this radical forgiveness. We’re in bad shape trying to come up with this kind of thing on our own. We’ve learned (and taught) plenty of ways to get around forgiving others, even when we claim God’s forgiveness for ourselves. The movie portrayed this. It showed folks sitting down with the people who killed their loved ones and finding a way to live together. It showed the God-kind of forgiveness. The kind of living that is both free and costly.

Free, because we’ve already been infinitely outspent. Costly, because it requires us to lay down our pride, cop-outs, and hypotheticals and deal with the messiness of hurt and healing.

I pray that as we remember God’s forgiveness through Christ’s faithfulness, we consider places in our lives that need forgiving and people who we need to forgive. Prepare us, Lord, for the cost of this forgiveness. We thank you for your free forgiveness that we live in. Amen.

Original Post at allgather.org.

What's The Deal With St. Patty?

2010-03-18T08:00:00.003-04:00

After a long day of widespread celebration and Danny Boy singing, one is left to wonder in typical Seinfeldian fashion, “What is the deal with Saint Patrick?”

I ran across an online article that put it pretty accurately: this mythical Saint Patrick had become all things to everyone.

The scarcity of facts about St. Patrick's life has made him a dress-up doll: Anyone can create his own St. Patrick. Ireland's Catholics and Protestants, who have long feuded over him, each have built a St. Patrick in their own image…Outside Ireland, too, Patrick has been freely reinterpreted. Evangelical Protestants claim him as one of their own. After all, he read his Bible, and his faith came to him in visions. Biblical inspiration and personal revelation are Protestant hallmarks. Utah newspapers emphasize that Patrick was a missionary sent overseas to convert the ungodly, an image that resonates in Mormon country. New Age Christians revere Patrick as a virtual patron saint. Patrick co-opted Druid symbols in order to undermine the rival religion, fusing nature and magic with Christian practice. The Irish placed a sun at the center of their cross. "St. Patrick's Breastplate," Patrick's famous prayer (which he certainly did not write) invokes the power of the sun, moon, rocks, and wind, as well as God.

Not included in the article, but perhaps most revealing and forgotten come from Patrick’s own words in his Confession (testimony):

“But this much I know for sure. Before I was humbled I was like a stone lying in the deep mud. Then He who is mighty came and, in His mercy, he not only pulled me out but lifted me up and placed me at the very top of the wall. I must, therefore, speak publicly in order to repay the Lord for such wonderful gifts, gifts for the present and for eternity which the human mind cannot measure.”

The beauty of this testimony of confession, repentance, mercy, and praise is precisely Patrick’s willingness to be a “dress-up doll.” He is clothed not in Catholic, Protestant, Evangelical, Mormon, New Age or Druid garb, but rather in and by Christ (Galatians 3:26-27). This “Humpty Dumpty” tale tells of the Lord’s mercy and grace, faithfulness and generosity. Patrick is concerned with wearing this on his sleeve, speaking publicly about it, and wrapping his head around the crazy thing that God has done in his life and homeland.

I pray that my life be this transparent. That I put on Christ, not creating and re-creating myself, but being clothed and formed by Jesus.

View original post: allgather.org.

Confession: of Light, Mirrors, Basins & Towels

2010-03-11T08:55:00.000-05:00

We want our confessions to take place in the dark.

We want dark confessional booths with screens between us and our confessor, whether that confessor is our God, our priest, our friends, our spouse, or ourselves. We want anonymity. We want our faces to be digitally obscured and our voices to be scrambled. And then, only then, might we freely confess our shortcomings, sins, failures, and regrets.

This doesn’t fit well with the image of walking in light and fellowship with one another found in 1 John 1. The picture we get there is not solitary and dark, but rather communal and light. Transparent and open. Free and unbound.

I recently had the opportunity to bodily engage with and reflect upon this kind of confession. This past month, there has been an art exhibit up in Durham, fittingly titled The Confessional. The artist (Carole Baker) was inspired by the story of the woman caught in adultery and facing execution (John 8). When Jesus encounters the woman and her accusers he disarms the situation by causing everyone present to reflect on their own sin.

There is no longer an accused and accuser. There is no longer condemnation and judgment, but rather truth and mercy. The dark/light divide has been broken down and Jesus has shed light on the whole scene.

The exhibit features a cumbersome, room-sized wooden crate. Stepping inside this “confessional booth,” you are surprised. Rather than darkness and privacy there are mirror-lined walls, a pile of stones, and the unavoidable scripture text, “Let the one who is without sin throw the first stone," (Jn 8:7). Immediately you are forced to look yourself in the eyes. You see yourself from many angles. There are no shadows or corners where you can hide. It may sound creepy, but it became soothing. Cathartic. Sure there was a moment of startled unease, seeing yourself, again and again, with all your frowns and blemishes. But then there was a freedom, a comfort, and a curiosity.

The next phase of the exhibit was a sparse room with white walls. The only items in the room were a chair, a pitcher, a basin, and a towel. After confronting myself in the mirrored room, I was very convinced that the chair was not for me.

The towel, pitcher, and basin were.

Only by confronting and confessing my selfishness, am I able to embrace my identity as a servant.

I pray that we, as a community, recognize confession as a practice where we can move from darkness to light, loneliness to fellowship, and selfishness to service.

But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.

(1 John 1:7)

Visit the original post at allgather.org.

The Priestly Man In Black

2010-03-04T08:34:00.003-05:00

After the last couple weeks, mulling over the image of our priesthood (1 Peter 2:9) and having conversations about what it means to be a priest, I’ve come to the conclusion that the word “priest” itself is sensitive and charged. People conjure images of everything from witchdoctors and monks to the Pope and Philip Seymour Hoffman. The word may carry positive connotations or extremely negative ones. Given that this word and the office it represents is so polarizing, how can we expect to minister and serve as priests when often times priests are exactly who people don’t want to be in contact with (contact and connection are after all what we are after here!)?

These men in black serve as our point of reference to what it means to be a priest. But I want to offer another image, the Man In Black, as an illustration of our identity as a holy people, and a royal priesthood belonging to our God. This last Friday marked what would have been Johnny Cash’s 78^th birthday. To celebrate I donned my black t-shirt and sifted through the liner notes of the box set I got for Christmas a few years back. In doing so I was struck by an episode that captured Rick Rubin, Cash’s legendary bearded, Buddhist producer, describing Cash’s spirituality.

When Johnny and June were staying at my house, before dinner he got out a big old Bible and had everybody hold hands and did a prayer. It was fantastic. You felt blessed. Because he comes from such a deep place of faith, that you know it’s real. You don’t have to believe; all you have to believe in is him, and if you believe in him, you go for the ride.

Right when you think that Rubin would dismiss Johnny’s bible-belt piety with an eye-roll, he instead is drawn in, connected to Something. He felt blessed and he went “along for the ride” because it was obvious that Cash was so deeply connected to God.

I pray that we don’t get distracted by our own or other’s preconceptions about priests. I pray instead that our priesthood is surprising. Surprising in its depth and authenticity; undeniable in its reality and genuineness.

I pray that when we encounter those who do not know God, our presence beckons them to go for a ride.

Link to original post:

http://www.allgather.org/2010/03/04/the-priestly-man-in-black

resources: 5/on/5 prayer card

2010-03-03T12:42:00.004-05:00

Here is a prayer resource I helped develop for our church during Lent.

WEB POST.

DOWNLOAD.

Priests? Really?

2010-02-25T09:45:00.006-05:00

Mark has asked me to start posting on the church blog each Thursday. Here is the first go:

I’ve been thinking a lot about becoming a priest lately.

Not in a crisis-of-identity sort of way. After all, my mom always thought I would be a Catholic priest. When someone tells you that, it can be construed as a sort of backhanded complement: you’re pious and sweet, but you may be neither marriable or employable. I’ve proven to be both (somewhat). So that’s settled.

Since Sunday, when Mark challenged us with our identity as God’s priests in the world (1 Peter 2:9; podcast), I’ve been trying to consider what that looks like. No, I don’t mean how weird it might look during our potluck to have everyone wearing clerical collars, but what it might feel like and take to be such a priest.

I think back to my Catholic childhood, full of good priests and not-so-good ones. I try to remember what I thought of in my encounters with the good ones. I think of vows they take: poverty, chastity, & stability. Each of these represent their self-giving and devotion. At their best they present a brilliant witness to both Christ’s way and the life of Christian discipleship. I think of the parish priest who is always available. Who welcomes the outsider. Who is so for people that they understand that God too is for them. I think of the relentless monks at the Abbey where my brother went to school, praying and singing at all hours. I remember the joy and contentment of these set-apart fellows. I remember the grace and appreciation shown to me, the husky, irreverent altar boy, ringing the bells at the wrong times and always forgetting my dress shoes. All these things made these priests accessible, and by extension, made God accessible to me.

Consider with me, in this time leading up to Easter, what it might mean to take up this mantle as priests. What if the Gathering Church continued to grow into a community of priests, being present to both God and our neighbors? Connecting people to God by revealing God’s “rare relentless grace.” What might it look like in our city, if the Good News was proclaimed in and by a handful of holy lives pointing wholly to Christ?

Link to original post: http://www.allgather.org/2010/02/25/priests-really/

preaching: To Be A Good Note-taker (Rev 10)

2010-02-22T20:02:00.006-05:00

Here is my first sermon for preaching class. It is Lenten-themed and inspired by my study in Revelation this semester and enjoyment of Eugene Peterson's insights (Reversed Thunder, Eat This Book). I would appreciate any comments, feedback, and constructive criticism as I seek to hone this daunting and beautiful craft of preaching.

To Be A Good Note-taker (Rev 10) by cebreslin

jamming: The Punch Brothers live @ Reynold's Theatre (Duke)

2010-02-18T12:38:00.001-05:00

Chris Thile & gang tomorrow night at Duke!

Daytrotter Session!

processing: Ash Wednesday- T.S. Eliot

2010-02-17T06:39:00.000-05:00

Because I do not hope to turn again

Because I do not hope

Because I do not hope to turn

Desiring this man's gift and that man's scope

I no longer strive to strive towards such things

(Why should the aged eagle stretch its wings?)

Why should I mourn

The vanished power of the usual reign?

Because I do not hope to know again

The infirm glory of the positive hour

Because I do not think

Because I know I shall not know

The one veritable transitory power

Because I cannot drink

There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is nothing again

Because I know that time is always time

And place is always and only place

And what is actual is actual only for one time

And only for one place

I rejoice that things are as they are and

I renounce the blessed face

And renounce the voice

Because I cannot hope to turn again

Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something

Upon which to rejoice

And pray to God to have mercy upon us

And pray that I may forget

These matters that with myself I too much discuss

Too much explain

Because I do not hope to turn again

Let these words answer

For what is done, not to be done again

May the judgement not be too heavy upon us

Because these wings are no longer wings to fly

But merely vans to beat the air

The air which is now thoroughly small and dry

Smaller and dryer than the will

Teach us to care and not to care

Teach us to sit still.

Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death

Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.

processing: Barth on Love (for Valentine's day)

2010-02-14T08:09:00.001-05:00

This quotation from KB hangs on the bulletin board above our desk in the office:

"Love does not question; it gives an answer.

Love does not think; it knows.

Love does not hesitate; it acts.

Love does not fall into raptures; it is ready to undertake responsibilities.

Love puts behind it all the 'ifs' and 'buts,' all the conditions, reservations, obscurities and uncertainties that may arise between a man and a woman.

Love is not only affinity and attraction; it is union.

Love makes these two persons indispensable to each other.

Love compels them to be with each other."

(Karl Barth, CD III.4)