visit next..
"there exists a fundamental tension between the loic of nature, and the logic of human industry, at least as it is presently organized. Our ingenuity in feeding ourselves is prodigous, but at various points out technologies come into conflict with nature's way of doing things, as when we seek to maiximize efficiency by planting crops or raising animals in vast monocultures. This is something nature never does, always and for good reasons practicing diversity instead." -p.9
"I think Europe is much more geared up for the future, in a way, than America was before this election. I think Europe is generally looking forward to the turn of the century (and) a little bit more cynical about the grip of the media upon it. So I think..these two ideas of the turn of the century, and the media as such and what you believe and what's truthful and what's relevant to your life and how much of it's under your own control... are
issues that are going to be valid in Europe over the next ten years.
I think the unification of Europe is going to present as many problems as it solves..people are aware of that...so I think what we're going be be trying to do is touch on those issues, and not necessarily preach to anyone, but certainly in our own way, within in the context of the ZOO TV (Zooropa) Tour is perhaps have our own particular unity..the 'United Colors of Zooropa' or whatever.
I think it will be a ray of sunshine in a very bleak year"
BY BECOMING A HOLY FOOL, REMIXED FOR THE NEW MILLENIUM
All this emphasis on the critical nature of prophetic weeping and lamenting . reminds that deep imside, no matter how numbed-over; no matter how deathed-down we are all crying. Or at least crying to cry. We intuitively know that tears are not only healing but prophetic. But we hide behind a mask, and only cry the tears of a clown.”
In the 9O’s Bono often wore a mask. For dismantling death and consumerism in that neo-nihilistic era, that was the proper costume. But the 00’s are a time to “pray naked.”
Bono: (Paul McGuinness) would sit me down and say, “You have what it takes. You must have more confidence in yourself and continue to dig deeper. And I don’t be upset or surprised when you pull something out of the depth that’s uncomfortable.”
Assayas: So you discovered things that, on first glance, you’d rather have kept hidden? What were those?
Bono: The gauche nature of awe, of worship, the wonderment at the world around you. Coolness might help in your negotiation with your world, maybe, but it is impossible to meet God with sunglasses on. It is impossible to meet God without abandon, without exposing yourself, being raw. That’s the connection with great music and art, and that’s the other reason you wanted to join a band: you wanted to do the cool thing. Trying to capture religious experiences on tape wasn’t what ypu had in mind when you signed up for the job.
Assayas: What about your own sunglasses, then? Do you wear them the same way a taxi driver would turn off his front light, so as to signal to God that this rock star is too full of himself and not to hire at the moment?
Bono: Yeah, my insincerity… I have learnt the importance of not being earnest at all times. You don’t know what’s going on behind those glasses, but God, I can assure you, does. (53-54)
Sans glasses, still wearing wisdom, and more irony than one might think. It’s just been properly retooled and “dreamed up again” for a new millennium. He’s still a
“Holy Fool,” which is a wonderful tradition of the Eastern Church who periodically pops up here in the West. In the Russian tradition, some of the saints would do almost anything to avoid being perceived as saints. One of them kept offering to wrestle bears so people would think him a nut and not praise him as a saint. In the West, St. Philip Neri acted goofy, partly because he enjoyed being a goof and partly to throw people off the scent of his sanctity and keep them from gushing over him. When offered a cardinal's hat, he proceeded to play football with it. Currently, we saw something of the Holy Fool in Forrest Gump a few years ago. All such fools have one thing in common: they know they are not wise. Similarly, those who are convinced of their innate wisdom are invariably great ninnies. It's far better to be a fool for Christ than to be a fool on one's own. Today, thank God for the folly that is his wisdom.
1 Corinthians 3:18: Let no one deceive himself. If any one among you thinks that he is wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise.
-Mark Shea, Daily Cathloc Exchange Devotional, Aopril 1, 2005
He’s still a holy fool, just more stripped down and streamlined. Far more subtle, no devil mask. But how is is that, on this current tour, he can dedicate “Running to Stand Still” to the troops in Iraq with a straight poker face, let alone without a McPhisto/devil mask to make the irony obvious? Does no on get it? Has anyone booed? No, they applaud what they perceive as patriotism (and they are partly right) and miss and misunderstand the subtle point (War is an exercise in death; in futility, and in standing still). Applaud is what they should do……but for another reason altogether: the singer has just brilliantly and understatedly (!) pulled off a holy fool moment. And dismantled death even. Even if not many “get it.”
-link
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Richard Inchausti:
The point that many moderns fail to grasp about Christian thinkers is that they have very little interest in changing the world. They seek merely to see things clearly in the light of God's hidden logic. And if by so doing they expose the narcissism of their contemporaries, the false agendas of their leaders, the didactic pornography of their artists and entertainers-well, that is all to the good. But unlike their more utilitarian peers, they desire to live in the truth even more than they desire to be effective in the world. ...Evil manifests itself in absence of perception, and in the negation of Being more than it does in the presence of stupidity, violence or even hatred. It is more often than not a species of folly-a commitment to "virtues" that are not really virtues...It wears a suit or a uniform, waves a flag and has credentials. That is why the primary moral task from a Christian perspective is first to perceive evil. And this requires that one see what isn't there and through things that are. This is possible only for someone who is suspicious of virtre and believes in a greater reality than his own. What the Christian mysteries require from us is not that we construct a better world, but that we love and serve the one we are given. As one Parisian graffiti artist wrote in 1968:: "the intellectuals have hitherto only changed the world, the point is to understand it." This is a decidedly contemplative observation, one that confirms Blake's suspicions of the new aesceticism and Kierkegaards' view that even if someone were to speak the Word of God directly today, no one in the modern world would hear it, simply because there is too much noise and distraction. The function of the modern apostle, therefore, is to create the silent contemplative places where individuals can
experience truth for themselves.
-Subversive Orthodoxy: Outlaws, Revolutionaries and Other Christians in Disguise. pp187-189
the suggested possible sites for
(or better yet,
imbalancing,
or
keeping in healthy rhythm,
controlled chaos)
rhematic God-moments. So when Bono said (1:37ff) "what makes a good concert is when both {the band's giving of themselves and the audience doing the same] spiral up and up and up" I really resonated.
ation (even if it's an NAACP awards meeting) does indeed feed him (see the closing moments on the video at bottom of this page...oh that all churches were black churches in spirit)..Or watch his prayer breakfast sermon..The Lord will watch your backas you do!
is so God-breathed that it would be no surprise one would mistake it for the real thing...or even better than the real real thing.. (Simulacra Geist)." all our producers tell us we should write our songs, but not record them until we've toured them a couple years..because the material gets better and better as we feed from the audience..in a sense, the interaction between us and the crowd gives us a new insight into the songs themselves."
, and not JUST preaching. That has blessed and stretched me, as I am still detoxing from fundagelicalism and lo-church. I don't know all that that looks like...maybe something like this pic (click for story).Dream duet (or two bands you'd love to see join up)?Because when one thinks of drummers whose invocations could be rapture/Armaggddon-inducing, Karen Carpenter does not show up.
Gee, this just happened...U2 and Green Day...so now I'll wait for Kate Bush, Sinead O'Connor, Bob Dylan and Keith Green to sing alongside the Violet Burning/77s/U2 while Neil Peart ,Chester Thompson, and Keith Moon drum...gee, that might cause the rapture.
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The song has been highly regarded by fans for its epic nature and cathartic climax, with Gabriel in particular delivering an emotionally charged vocal performance at the close of the song. Referring in part to the song's lyrical depiction of a struggle between good and evil, Gabriel has been quoted as saying he felt he was "literally singing for his life" in the recording studio. In contrast, Hackett is said to have responded to a fan who enthused "Steve, I actually saw God at the end!" with the rather more down-to-earth "Well, I was just trying to get the notes right"Ok, the clip:
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I have many favorite Larry moments but I would have to go with his thunderous drums on the Rattle And Hum film version of "With Or Without You". The drums in that performance are absolutely amazing, and help to make that my favorite version of "WOWY". He really seems to be in his own world during that performance, which I believe was one of the first times they ever played that song live.
And at the climactic point just before Bono explodes with the added verse of "Yeah, we'll shine like stars in the summer night...," Larry, sitting with his headphones on, seems to slip away into his own private universe, playing as fast as humanly possible and showing his true emotion and love for the song. I love the way the spotlights come down on him too like he was alone up there on his drum riser. The energy is indescribable!-- Ian Kelly, atu2.com
Isaiah 42:21 “…He will magnify the Law and make it honorable.” Honor figures heavily into the marital covenant!Of course, eleven out of ten regulars around this blogthing will get why I love that choice
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We are living in a day when the Lord is stirring in remarkable ways to restore the church in our land. If you're like us, you've experienced forms of institutionalized church that fall short in fulfilling Jesus' mandate to "make disciples." Throughout our culture many who profess Christ "hold the form of religion, but deny the power of it" (2 Timothy 3:5). Too often church leaders (at both local and denominational levels) serve the best interests of the religious institution rather than the cause of Christ. As we work to fulfill the Lord's call to us, we see the "house church" as a way of being the church that looks like the New Testament church. ...
...We believe that Jesus is fully present in the lives of his followers whenever two or three are gathered in his name to watch over one another in love (Matt. 18:20). We recognize the value of various kinds of small groups like Bible studies and prayer groups. However, we believe that the "house church" is a renewed form of church that the Lord is using in our day to equip the body for more effective outreach and ministry.
When we say "house church" we mean a small gathering of believers meeting regularly under the care of gifted, equipped and called leadership to share the Word of God, the Sacraments, mutual accountability, praise and worship, and outreach. We expect a house church to be a gathering
"where divine life and power is manifestly present to glorify God and meet the needs of repentant human beings"
(p. 246, Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart).
A healthy house church conforms to the description of the early church found in the Book of Acts.... And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved. (Acts 2:46,47) A house church has its own spiritual integrity. It is not merely an adjunct small group of a larger group that is somehow more "church." While it participates with broader expressions of the church in the community in which it resides, a house church is nevertheless fully church. The Holy Spirit is present and at work within the gathered body to equip the saints for the work of ministry (Eph. 4:12) through sacrament, word, order, and outreach...
-Kyle Phillips, full article here
“One of the places (my mother and I) both connected was in our appreciation of the spiritual nature of the artistic and innovative experience, and how to bring that into practical, everyday use. She was very interested in taking this idea that she had pieced together from her work as a commercial artist and secretary and making it available to a lot of different people. She was always combing and rinsing her thinking to make sure that she was developing the idea according to a higher spiritual sense of it.”
-Mike Nesmith
“The greatest thing by far is to be master of analogy....it is also a sign of genius, since a good metaphor implies an intuitive perception of the similarity in dissimilars.”
(Poetics, 1459 a 5-8, "The Basic Works of Aristotle")
It's the New Physics, as St Mike Roe sings.
“Prophets are characteristically masters of metaphor. Metaphor is the witness of language to the interconnectedness of all things visible and invisible….When prophets use metaphor, we get involved with God whether we want to or not, sometimes whether we know it or not…. If we are lucky, a prophet, one of the descendants of Hosea, or Jonah, or Habakkuk, shows up and with the simple expedient of a metaphor, said or sung, drags us outside into the open air when all the stuff we are studying is alive and moving and colliding with us. For many these days, it is U2 that shows up.”
-Eugene Peterson , Preface to "Get Up Off Your Knees : Preaching the U2 Catalog"
I'd like to share a new take on Romans 3:23 "for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God."
As an evangelical the interpretation that I had always been taught for this verse is that it means that everyone has done something wrong, we all have lied for example, and because God is holy this means that we need to be punished with Hell, even for one small infraction. Anyone who has grown up in Evangelical circles as I have will instantly recognize this line of argument.
Now I don't deny that sin and separation from God is a reality, and that we as humans need to be reconciled into a personal relationship with God. I wholeheartedly affirm that as an Evangelical. But reading through Romans, I do not think that Paul here was intending to present this verse as a kind of moral score card...
What I think Paul is saying here is that because we all are sinners, this wish for God to wipe out the "bad guys" means we would be wiped out too. That's why he says God held back (πάρεσιν), because Godwanted to show his righteousness and justice in a different way, though Christ now making us right (v 26). This is what Luther called "God's alien justice" making us right with him though God's righteousness. It's not a quid pro quo payback justice, its a justice that justifies - that sets us aright. This new way in Christ is the way of redemption instead of wrath. That means that in this context, Ro 3:23 is not some sort of judicial score card, it is a statement of non-violence. Paul is saying: look I know you want to see people being judged, I know you want to see those who have oppressed and hurt you get hurt back, but that way is a deathtrap because we all are guilty, we all have hurt and been hurt. This vicious cycle of blame will only perpetuate injustice. It's not just them over there, it's all of us, and so we all need mercy and redemption.
That's Paul's message here in its original context. Not one of petty accounting where the smallest infraction has the most severe consequence, but a recognition of our own brokenness and need - even as religious people, especially as religious people - to live in mercy and grace.
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