the church could use "accordion-like walls" like these

From New York Times:

"Gary Chang, a Hong Kong architect, lives in a tiny apartment, but thanks to accordion-like wall units, he can create at least 24 different room configurations."

link and photos
ht: Matt

vocabulary quiz

Brian Dodd, in a post called "We need to burn more books," offers:

I submit these words because I rarely hear them used in a remotely accurate way (that is, used as a way that is grounded in their foundational meaning as used in the Bible).


WORD//MISUSE//USED TO MEAN
church//building, organization//gathering of friends
worship//religious concert & lecture//a life poured out, as a sacrifice
saved//guilt free pass//salvaged and put back to hard work
truth//proposition, world view//a person--Jesus
christian//religious conservative//one who loves & suffers like Jesus
preach//religious lecture//announce on the street
ministry//professional religious program//serving like a slave
apostle//spiritual superstar//expendable messenger
prophet//dead, lacking diplomacy//listens to God
pastor//religious CEO//smelly sheep tender
love//feeling or mood//sacrificial, tender care acted out
Link,

shift

machines form thoughts: Nietzche and Gear Lust

That “our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts”
is no small insight for students of the Reformation (Printing Press)
and this current Reformation/Reformission/Reorientation/"weird moment"
(Internet, Google, texting):

Sometime in 1882, Friedrich Nietzsche bought a typewriter—a Malling-Hansen Writing Ball, to be precise. His vision was failing, and keeping his eyes focused on a page had become exhausting and painful, often bringing on crushing headaches. He had been forced to curtail his writing, and he feared that he would soon have to give it up. The typewriter rescued him, at least for a time. Once he had mastered touch-typing, he was able to write with his eyes closed, using only the tips of his fingers. Words could once again flow from his mind to the page.

But the machine had a subtler effect on his work. One of Nietzsche’s friends, a composer, noticed a change in the style of his writing. His already terse prose had become even tighter, more telegraphic. “Perhaps you will through this instrument even take to a new idiom,” the friend wrote in a letter, noting that, in his own work, his “‘thoughts’ in music and language often depend on the quality of pen and paper.”

“You are right,” Nietzsche replied, “our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts.” Under the sway of the machine, writes the German media scholar Friedrich A. Kittler , Nietzsche’s prose “changed from arguments to aphorisms, from thoughts to puns, from rhetoric to telegram style.”..
-link, Nietzche and Gear Lust

Colbert on 60 Minutes

Click here for two minute video of the "real" Colbert talking on 60 Minutes about his childhood and the tragic death of his father and brothers in a pane crash..

The complete 60 Minutes interview is posted below, but these often get yanked offline..

SEE ALSO:

Colbert interviewed out of character about his character:

• "I don't get Colbert"

• 60 Minutes article on Colbert
• VIDEO: Morley Safer talks about his upcoming profile on Stephen Colbert
• Colbert interview:"If you are laughing, you can’t be afraid"

--
complete Colbert on 60 Minutes:



60 Minutes with Stephen Colbert by Meowbay
(if videos below go offline, try this)
family deaths:

"don't ever use seminary words"

Video of Christian Schlaren, of course author of a great book

("One Step Closer: Why U2 Matters to Those Seeking God ..."),

speaks on preaching/translation:

Postman/virtual community

Great post by Wabi Sabi on Postman/virtual community

"read Postman, 'the news’ is a form of entertainment, nothing more”.
link

The Edge and 'the evolution of cooperation"

The Edge, in the video below, offers (among other topics) reflections on
band ego, selfishness, loyalty, the emergence of ideas, never "taking a vote," creative process.
Sounds like church to me.
He even references political scientist Robert Axelrod's seminal writing on "the evolution of cooperation."

No wonder the interviewer calls him "the brainy one."
(If you'd like to see a more human film of him, go here)

"The signs won't look as you expect them to look"

"Here on the mountain, the air is clear and your mind is clear; as you drop down into Narnia, the air will thicken. Take great care that it does not confuse your mind. The signs which you have learned will not look at all as you expect them to look, when you meet them there. That is why it is so important to know them by heart and pay no attention to appearances”
-Aslan in C.S. Lewis, The Silver Chair, 25-26).
Thanks, Tia

Eugene Cho interviews Phyllis Tickle

interview with Phyllis Tickle from Eugene Cho on Vimeo.

a scary Christian card

Walt found this greeting card at a Christian bookstore, and comments:

Ty and I are looking through the stacks of Thank-You cards and he tosses me one that has me doing a double-take. There printed on the front is a quote that makes my head spin: "May the Lord repay you for what you have done." I wouldn't send that one to anyone other than an enemy. I would be quaking in my boots if I received that card in the mail. Everything I've done is deserving of death. I don't want the Lord repaying me for that.
-Walt Mueller

simulacra-kklesia (part 16): Extreme Fakeover

People act differently in front of the camera, even when the camera isn't real."
-link and clip

Ever since our family toured Universal Studios when I was a kid,
and I learned that when people are eating ice cream on TV,
it's often not ice cream, but mashed potatoes..

...due to the heat of the lights..

I have realized that TV is inevitable even better/faker than the real thing.

Recently, Extreme Makeover made over a house in our city.
Tim has some good thoughts about this show.

I really want to like it; and do on many levels.
But I have many questions.

About the heat of the lights.

Here is a road sign around the corner from our house; something you don't see every day:
"Road Closed: Extreme Makeover."




But it was this video (from another city's filming) that captured my unease.
It should speak for itself;
but if you can't tell what's going on,
the answer is "nothing."
They filmed the whole famous "family returns in a limo to thunderous applause to see their home makeover.
Problem is it's all staged; no family in the car.
It was just to get the best shot for TV.

Just like church.




Hemant Mahta, the delightful atheist who "sold his soul on ebay,"...or better yet offered to visit and offer practical observations/critique of how Christian worship serviced come off to an unbeliever. What we we notice as visitors to a church service?

On pages 85 and 99 (at two different churches), he notices how hard it is to see the "stage" for the obtrusive video cameras.

"Every church seems to have a stage, regardless of the church's size." (73)

"Several times, when the pastor was right next to certain audience members, they weren't watching him, Instead, they were staring at one of the two large screens displaying a video image of the pastor." (102)

simulacra-kklesia (part 15): how to do simulacra in Sarajevo

the third sea change/power shift

In The Post-American World (published some months before the Wall Street meltdown), Fareed Zakaria argued that modern history’s third great power shift was already upon us—the rise of the West in the 15th century and the rise of America in the 19th century being the two previous sea changes. But Zakaria added that this transition is defined less by American decline than by “the rise of the rest.” We’re to look forward to a world economy, he wrote, “defined and directed from many places and by many peoples.”

by Richard Florida, How the Crash Will Reshape America

Hat tip:Len

the impulse is instinctual..

"On previous albums, Bono brazenly beseeched listeners to fall to their knees, but on tracks this potent, he doesn't have to ask - the impulse is instinctual..
'Let me in the sound!' Bono shouts...and it's no empty slogan - it's an order."
-Joe Bosso, Music Radar


"U2 have broken away from safety to offer us something prophetic..

Latterly, they have been about a Proustian rampage through the debris of a music that happens too quickly for clarity, excavating pieces that seemed like they might have contained something more than they revealed first time around. In these tracks, you keep hearing snatches of elusive allusiveness that take you to a deeper level of memory, but in a way that suggests redemption rather than repetition...

...one leg in a future as exciting as anything they have hitherto allowed us to glimpse. If, as we have previously noted, music is prophetic as to the drift of wider reality, then this album may be the most hopeful thing you will hear all year."
-John Waters, Irish Times

Christian T shirts and songs that won't sell

I appreciate Brant's post

Please Help Me Launch My T-Shirt Business: Christian T-Shirts that Christians Won't Like...

Jon Foreman (of Switchfoot) has already written a song (below)that
Christians, churches and pastors won't like.
Why haven't I heard it on Christian radio yet?
It's got plenty of Scripture!! (Isaiah 1, and the Amos 5 quote (from God, no less) of the T-shirt...):

final version:

'you can actually hurt yourself up there and not know it.'"

"such a primal connection
between a pastor
and their congregation
can be so strong that
'you can actually hurt yourself up there
and not know it.'"

Oops, it was prophetic quote, so I framejacked it.
The real quote:

"Tom Petty once said such a primal connection between a musician on top of his game and his fans can be so strong 'you can actually hurt yourself up there and not know it.'"
link

Tom Petty's quote, in context, along with some other fascinating quotes, here

faith's "beneficial taskmaster": uncertainty

Last U2 album, one of the buzzwords was knees/kneeling.

This time, "uncertainty" pops up at least twice:

"But while I´m getting over certainty/Stop helping God across the road like a little old lady." ("Stand Up Comedy")

" Two souls too smart to be in the realm of certainty"
("Moment of Surrender")

Of course, prayer/faith and uncertainty are connected.

-We walk by faith,
and not by sight;
so certainly this is not certainty. 2 Cor 5.17

-Abraham left home, completely clueless about where he was going;
knowing why he was going was enough. Heb 11.8

Actually, Andy Prickett prefers "How" to "Why?":

...What IS celebrated perhaps by the underworld is your insistence on getting so stuck on arguing with Why?, you never ask yourself the other, oft forgotten, but hugely important question: How? And while answering Why? is usually considered the gateway to the secret of life, I’d like to vote for How?. Because how you respond to life’s immense cause and effect scenarios is where you actually find meaning. Why? is a question that leads to ends that are beyond our understanding (why is God love?) How? has answers that have either come before you, or are created by your attempt to actually ‘do’ something. And your responses to How? can actually have a positive impact on future events....
-Andy Prickett, "Why Ask Why?"

“It is not the place but the Presence that upholds you! This is your only certainty.”
-Erwin McManus

"The opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty"
-Anne Lammott

"I'm not certain about much. I woke up today feeling the ridiculousness of believing in an invisible partner to fashion myself after and follow. This whole idea of religions seems rather foolish. Why not live my own life my way? Prayer seems like one step removed from the delusion of talking to your self. The whole idea of church struck me as rather cult-ish. So why do it? Why put myself through all of the mental anguish that comes with faith? If I don’t want to come at this from a ‘yay! I’m down with Jesus’ perspective, what am I left with?'
-Maurice Broaddus

Kierkegaard often gets the last word around here:

Thus everything is assumed to be in order with regard to the Holy Scriptures--what then? has the person who did not believe come a single stop closer to faith? No, not a single step. Faith does not result from straightforward scholarly deliberation, nor does it come directly; on the contrary, in this objectivity one loses that infinite, personal, impassioned interestedness, which is the condition of faith, the ubique et nusquam [everywhere and nowhere] in which faith can come into existence.
Has the person who did believe gained anything with regard to the power and strength of faith? No, not in the least; in this prolix knowledge, in this certainty that lurks at faith's door and craves for it, he is rather in such a precarious position that much effort, much fear and trembling will indeed be needed lest he fall into temptation and confuse knowledge with faith. Where as up to now faith has had a beneficial taskmaster in uncertainty, it would have its worst enemy in this certainty. This is, if passion is taken away, faith no longer exists, and certainty and passion do not hitch up as a team.

-Soren Kierkegaard,
Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments
lifted from Tommy's blog

I am NOT over 30

"Did You Know?" 3.o:


If You Are Over 30:

2 megachurch items

1)Poster from Out of Ur:


2)I might love the church in this video, but can you guess where in this clip I had the hardest time? Why does the clip feel like on of the
"The Church You Know" spoofs?

the redemptive gift of the "meme from hell'

Some good articles recently about Facebook..

like

Why Facebook Is for Old Fogies

and

Facebook: An Entertaining Saboteur

But on the front page of the Fresno Bee today was a helpful piece by John Timpano of the Philadelphia Inquirer. It deals, in part, with what some call the "meme from hell"

You send your "25 Random Things" chain-letter-style to 25 friends, and they fill it out and tag 25 others, and ...

And soon Facebook — a virtual living room where people hang out and tell everyone else what they're doing and thinking — is awash with personal revelations, admissions, info once kept private.

Facebook turned five Feb. 4. Sometime in mid-January, "25 Random Things" became a wildfire fad there.

Many have called Web lists such as "25 Random Things" "narcissism...But Facebook users and experts are saying: not so fast

Of course, ego is involved. But "25 Random Things" is a product of the information age. And that age is simply different from what went before.

If they are right, "25 Random Things" reveals a decisive shift in our society, and there's no going back. Many of us — younger, mostly — take a distinctive view of private and public, in which a permanent, always-connected audience trades personal, even intimate, information as part of having friends and being social. That hyperconnected life is here to stay. Call this narcissism, but it might be that the train left and you weren't on it. link

This all reminded me of Earl Crep's thoughts on public/private space, and my experience being

"Uncle Ernie at Uncle Harry's"..

The changes are here to stay...if I hear one more reference to the"evils of postmodernism," or Facebook being inherently evil, I may have to..

Uh, I have already done it.

Yes, I condescended to post one of those "25 random things about me."
I just couldn't tag people, it's against my religion. And I had to call it something diferent:
16 (not 25) top secret items about one of your favorite people
(And I felt a bit better about accepting the assignment to post "Top 25 Teaching Tips,"
especially as the tagger was an esteemed professor..will post that soon).

Maybe Chuck Colson is next..

arts may save the church

"In the medieval world the church saved the arts.
In the future the arts may save the church."
-Robert Shaw

let me in the theoacoustic/holosonic Sound, God

“Acoustemology..an exploration of sonic sensibilities, specifically of ways in which sound is central to making sense, to knowing, to experiential truth. "
-Feld

"It's time church leaders developed a philosophy of soundness, even a sound spirituality.
-Leonard Sweet, "Summoned to Lead"


It might have been just my U2intuitiveness,
but as you can tell by my post when the first single of the upcoming album came out
it felt like the "let me in the sound" outro/prayer in that songs was somehow more than a spliced tag-on at the end of one song (2:28ff in the clip). It felt like the lyric (and the sound) was something larger; perhaps a metanarrative/motif/midrash for the whole CD/tour/season.

And now we hear (literally here, play the third song) that the "let me in the sound" lyric is looped into another song ("Fez-Being Born") or two, and may well be the name of the upcoming tour (the tour itself is rumored to feature breakthrough holosonic technology--"sound spotlights," if you will--that well, let listeners into the sound).

And now we read that the song "Breathe" includes the line
"I found grace inside a sound."

"'Let me in the sound'" is a repeated lyrical motif .. The theme of the album is surrender." - Neil McCormick

How does sound connect to surrender?
"Sound confronts us with interiority, Craig Matson suggests,"To hear is to relinquish our place as sovereign spectators and managers in the world and to position ourselves in medias res as morally obligated and mortally vulnerable hearers of the word."
-Craig Matson

For a student of acoustemology/theo-acoustics, theology of sound, this is engaging stuff.
Of course, the core premise of string theory is that life/God are at core, sound. That sound is somehow the most fundamental sense is suggested by scientists worldwide.
I just finished teaching a leadership class centerpieced around Leonard Sweet's amazing sonogram/book,
"Summoned the Lead"{Chapters one and two online here}.

I often return to Stephen H. Webb's loaded "The Divine Voice: Christian Proclamation and the Theology of Sound."

But my life is soundtracked by U2.

We in the church have often been more concerned with sound doctrine and sound mind (good and godly things), but at the expense of a sound theology of sound.

God is longing to meet us in the sound, but we miss out wait for him by sight.



In the song "Unknown Caller," (of which McCormick offers,
"Words and music dovetail in surprising ways that send the senses spinning."),
the lyrics include:

"Escape yourself/and gravity/Hear Me/ cease to speak/ that I may speak/Hush now."




Bono free-associates his thoughts on the album:

"Lifeforce, joy, innovation, emotional honesty, analogue not digital, home-made not pro-tooled, unique sonic landscape...
Soul music for the frenzied, rock music for the still."

Only the still hear/see/are let fully into the Sound of the sonic landscape.

"Let me in the sound sound
God I'm going down
..Meet me in the sound"

Shane Hipps video: virtual community

prophecy outside the church

Someone (Emerging Grace) finally said it:

"I think the thing that could transform the gift of prophecy

would be to get it outside of the church box"
link

The anointing is ready...in the marketplace.
But the bench in public.

Bono sings in "Moment of Surrender":

I was speeding on the subway
Through the stations of the cross

apostolic anabaptist teams

Hans Kasdorf (I had this guy for Church History, amazing!) in the Wilbert Schenk-edited "Anabaptism and Mission:

"The Anabaptist churches {of the 1500s} discerned and sent out many apostles. The designation 'apostles' was deliberately chosen for those who were sent out in apostolic teams...the Anabaptist apostolate took on new shape and form..
and we, too, must view with equal significance the ethical teaching of the Sermon on the Mount and the 'magna charta' of the Great Commision.
..The Anabaptists retained the New Testament concept of apostle and applied it to their own missionaries. In fact, they considered the apostolic band of a Paul and Barnabas to be a legitimate model"
(59, 69)

the Fresno Drop again

a piece on The Fresno Drop I had missed is here;
it picks up on the history, and future, of credit cards since that fateful day in my hometown.
It concludes:

If the past is any predictor for the future, the future of cards is very clear: there won't be any of them, and we'll be using our mobile phones as a mass market payment mechanism before 2012.

For previous articles, click "Fresno Drop" in the "labels" below.

simulacra-kklesia (part 14): Joaquin Phoenix

For real? If so, "talk shows (are) confession."
Hoax? Publicity stunt? Zoo TV character (see this)?
Is his life falling apart before us,
Andy Kaufman all over again?
..or will this eventually be revealed as an experimental film?

"returning to their roles as community centers"

If "movie theaters are returning to their roles as community centers"
(see article),

whatsup with us?

Reformation and capitalism

Tall Skinny Kiwi blogs:

I was reading a little on the relationship between the Reformation and capitalism, but not enough to speak fluently and with accuracy. It was interesting to see the Reformer's attitude towards "avarice" and debt and how churches would punish the money lenders for usury that went above acceptable levels - levels that we have seen recently. The church has not had much of a voice in the events leading to this recession [and many churches have bought into it] but maybe the church will speak wisdom into our currently circumstances and offer a way out that is not reliant on more debt, more buying, and more greed.
link

"harvesting human feelings"

"harvesting human feelings":
http://www.wefeelfine.org/

when the spiritual visit church

see also, "The Good Samaritan":

"I don't look at porn for all the wrong reasons"

Bob Hyatt is brilliant:

A confession: Since becoming a pastor, I find that I struggle with very different things now than I did before. For instance, I don't look at porn. But I don't look at it for all the wrong reasons.
-Bob Hyatt, continued

honest instead of perfect

John O' Hara comments after watching Ted Haggard on Oprah:

our idealization of spiritual leaders establishes a fertile environment for the kind of duplicity, deceit and denial (sorry for the alliteration) shown by Ted in the unravelling of his professional life as a pastor. In churches like Ted’s and mine, too often repentance of sin is marked solely by an altar call or a baptism, a “come to Jesus moment” after which the race looks more like image management than the life integration suggested by the gospels and epistles. What if we expected our church leaders to be
honest instead of perfect
servants instead of rulers
friends instead of managers

coaches instead of performers?
It might not make for good TV, but it may just change the atmosphere in our communities.
link

This is a good post to dovetail with Russell Willingham's message.
Fill in these blanks; then you can read on to compare your answers with his.

• "The pastor/shepherd's job is to keep watch over __________"
• "Your most anointed ministry as a pastor/leader will flow from your being ___________."

LINK to Russell's answers

Peter Rollins Denies the Resurrection

Peter Rollins Denies the Resurrection

church life is not native to this planet

"Organic church life is not native to this planet.
It began before time in the Godhead."
-Frank Viola 2/4/09

Time to time travel.

a "community called" and gallows humor

I love the new "educational mission" statement and ad tagline for the seminary I attended, Asbury:

"a community called."

Since it is all about the calling of the called-out community/communitas, anyway..

But what I particularly enjoyed in the seminary magazine unveiling the new statement,
was the confession by seasoned president, Elworth Kallas:

"I regret that I never really helped my people find their place in the Body of Christ. I tried, but inadequately. At a certain point in the church year my congregations had their financial campaigns, during which members pledged their monetary support for the coming year. In time, we came to include in the financial appeal a second pledge form in which people were asked to indicate how they would like to use their gifts in the church: Teach Sunday School? Usher and greet? Sing in the choir or play a musical instrument? Serve on a committee?
(I remember the little gallows humor: 'I went to church to find Christ, and they appointed me to a committee.')
-Ellsworth Kallas, "On the Journey," The Asbury Herald ,Winter 2009, p.13
(emphasis mine)

It's this "gallows humor" quote that I latched onto; as it reminded me of the simlar statement from U2's live version of "Last Night on Earth"
("I wanted to meet God, and you sold me religion") and the many others you submitted earlier.

It is so easy for church to become an

organized "committee of buzzards,"

and not the

organic communitas of beatifics that she is called to be.

economy of relationship building

Q. In the long run, I have heard this will be a good experience for the nation.

A."We are ending the economy of gluttony,
and replacing it with the economy of relationship building."
-Dr. Leslie Sappini, Examiner.com
Fresno Bee 12.24.08,p.5

Lost Moments in Church History!

"Lost Moments in Church History"
Episode #1: My Church is Better
:



"Lost Moments in Church History"
Episode #2: Preaching the Gospel:



"Lost Moments in Church History"
Episode #3: The Church Service/We Need a Building:


Episode #4:
Don't Argue with a Pastor's Wife:


Episode #5: Vacation Bible School:


Episode #6: Church Attendance:

aren't these two always related?

This paragraph, especially the sentence I have in bold print,  from "The Pope's Denial Problem," (a Newsweek article on the pope's  decision to include and ordain holocaust deniers):
:

The crucial change brought about in the everyday life of Catholics by Vatican II was the dropping of the Tridentine or "Latin" Mass and its replacement by services in the vernacular. The crucial change brought about in the relationship of Catholics to non-Catholics by Vatican II was the abandonment by the church of the charge of "deicide" against the Jewish people as a whole: in other words, the dropping of the allegation that the Jews bore a historic and collective responsibility for the torture and murder of Jesus. The two changes, perhaps unfortunately, were and are related. The old Latin form of the Mass included a specific Good Friday prayer for the conversion of the Jews, who were in some versions of the ritual described as "perfidious."

The Pope's Denial Problem
By Christopher Hitchens

...causes me to ask about the connectedness of the two changes in the broader sense.

In other words:

Doing and being church "in the vernacular,"  in the language/culture of the people is simply being incarnational/missional.

Is doing church this way and means related to the church freeing itself from ethnocentricism/perjuidice/racism/anti0Semitism/holocausts?

I am sure it is, but help me connect the dots.

How do we default to prejudice, bounded set-edness, koinonitis, and racism 

as an inevitable byproduct of "doing church in an unknown language," especially be us clergy types?

Hmmm, the proposed answers to "what factors caused the Holocaust" may be related here?

Don;t systems always kill the "other"?

As MacP once said...sorta:

"Goodbye all you neo-Nazis...I hope they give you...uh, grace...after you reoent and make amends"

Time for a temple tantrum?  If so, how do we our violence peacefully (or our peacemaking violently?)?

Meet me, octopi and supernovas in the sound of music

Bono must read physics.

Or maybe he just does it.
He has often said,
“Music is the language of the Spirit."

The upcoming album suggests he may have not only the Good Book
but a good physics book by his bedside:

"I was born to sing for you/

I didn't have a choice but to lift you up..

And sing whatever song you wanted me to/
I give you my voice back."

-"Magnificent"

"Let me in the sound sound..

God..Meet me in the sound."

-"Get On Your Boots"

What's all that to do with physics?

Only everything:

"When I began reading physics texts on my own...(I learned) that the top quark is that last elusive piece of matter....But (now we read) that the top quark may itself be composed of still smaller pieces of unnamed matter that are so small they have no position in time and space.

We live in an ocean of energy. Life is energy. God is pure creative energy...You and I are an emergent human form of organized energy, the mattering of God's Spirit.

Music does more than to experience God as spirit as we experience life as spirit.
Music is more accurately the essence of who we are as human beings created in the image of God.
If the most elemental and elementary aspect of life is energy that vibrates, then life is at base music.

For anything that vibrates give off sound. Sound is a function of vibration, of resonance.

..Everything that is has sound rhythm-from whales and octupi to supernovas and quasars.

Cosmic vibration are everywhere. From cells to our cellular phones, from snowflakes to supernovas, everything emits vibrations, sounds to feed or famish the soul.

You and I are at base sound-a human organization of dancing energy. You and I are at base a song. There is not an atom in our body that is not singing a song. The vibrations and resonance
that go on at the atomic level rveal that our entire body was created to hear-burst into song..

There is no one who isn't musical."

-Leonard Sweet,
"Eleven Genetic Gateways to Spiritual Awakening,"p. 163, 165

Of course the mystics could have told us that all along (see Cioran on music/mysticism)..

..which is why I started this post with
the mystic who years ago summarized:

“Music is the language of the Spirit."

"Life sucks...."

"Life sucks order from a sea of disorder"
-James Gleick

Context:

"Pattern born amid formlessness:

that is biology's basic beauty and its basic mystery.
Life sucks order from a sea of disorder.
Schrodinger put it this way:

A living organism has the

'astonishing gift of concentrating a stream of order on itself,

and thus escaping the delay into quantum chaos.'"

-Gleick, Chaos, p. 299