"New Testament Social Networks"

 Check out "New Testament Social Networks"
by clicking here.  To see chart below, click it, then click again to enlarge:

Smoking Popes and pre-conversion worship songs

I don't know how I ever missed "The Smoking Popes"!
Great band name..lol...and they got pretty big in the late 1990s, opening up for Green Day, etc.

I hadn't heard of them until yesterday,when I  caught  passing reference in Paste Magazine to their song "I Know You Love Me" being "Christian-themed,"  and evidence that not all Christian-themed songs are unremarkable.

I found the song (below), and the lyrics are pretty upfront worshipm very CCMish..
but some research reveals frontman Josh Caterer wrote it even before he  officially became a Christian.
He was even giving sermonettes in concert about Jesus before he  knew Jesus..

Of course the conversion basically broke up the band...until just a few years ago; they have reunited.
Bottom video is interview with Josh re: all this,  See "the Lord told me to quit my rock band" for an earlier interview.

online communion? online baptism? (missional sacraments, part 15)

Online communion

• Online baptism

The End of the "Arbol Hot Sauce" Era

From Michael Toy's The Lingering Lemon of Death:

Why Victoria's In on the Secret

"Why Victoria's In on the Secret: Picturing Discipleship at The Moulin Rouge" is an amazing section of Chapter Two of James K.A. Smith's "Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview and Cultural Formation  "  It can be read HERE  (scroll to pp. 75-79) on Google books.

Those four pages have  got it all: sex, Walker Percy, epistemology, romantic theology....and a Bono reference. (:
All it's missing  are the two obvious U2 songs the soundtrack it, and I've added them below.

Note: a whole chapter (3) is sweetly named for a  Bruce Cockburn reference: "Lovers in a Dangerous Time: Cultural Exegesis of 'Secular Liturgies'"...but unfortunately the reference is never explained.

Note: Len has some helpful posts on the book, and I have posted  a video of Smith himself  speaking on the book's themes.  Smith has posted some audio as well.  See "labels" with Smith's name below.




SOUNDTRACK (If you don't know why this first song is commentary on the Smith excerpt, see this):

Peter Gabriel's mercurial, disruptive Moses: on the Mozo song cycle and making gold from crap

"I got power, I'm proud to be loud; 
my signal goes out clear
I want everybody to know that Mozo is here"
-Peter Gabriel, lyrics to "On The Air"

Having been a Peter Gabriel fan for almost forty years (!),  I am surprised I have  missed  the Mozo  backstory all this time,

I've posted on Pete Townshend/The Who's abandoned Lifehouse Project..

but I didn't realize that another visionary (Gabriel) had also planned an album/screenplay/film that  never completely happened..

Like Townshend's  Lifehouse,  Gabriel's project  did happen and emerge in parts, and can be traced and  trainspotted across decades' worth of albums..

Gabriel created a character named Mozo, the name an intentional play on "Moses."   I remember the name being referenced in the second solo album's "On the Air," where an intriguing messy, messianic dude longs to  makes his presence known to the world  via shortwave radio as he broadcasts by night from his home in a trash dump.
But I never connected Mozo to Moses;  never hyperlinked to the idea that Gabriel was playing Mozo on the cover of said album (see above; 10 commandments/10 fingers), and never realized he and others from the intended project showed up  and surfaced in other songs/albums.cycles...

let alone know that "Red Rain," which I had long  felt/heard was ultimately about the blood of Jesus overcoming the Exodus plagues ( see  "What can wash away my sin? Nothing but the Red Rain of Jesus").....was the very centerpiece of the song cycle and story.

Gabriel has always been Godhaunted and Bible-intrigued (entrigued), maybe most obviously in the apocalyptic 25-minute exorcism/anthem, "Supper's Ready,"  or  praying through "in Your Eyes"...but Gabriel doing Moses (or as Mozo/Moses), that's a film I'd see.

I found this from an old "Gabriel-authorized" biography:

Little more than a year after Rael [Christ-figure of "The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway." a Gabriel/Genesis epic that DID come to pass] was conceived, Gabriel invented the "mercurial stranger,"  Mozo.

He was partly based on Moses, but he was a fictional character who came from nowhere, disrupting people's lives and causing changes and then disappearing, said Gabriel.

Mozo was part of a "master plan" dreamed up during his sabbatical in 1975-6 which he alternately wanted staged or filmed. Mozo was inspired by Aurora Consurgens, a medieval alchemical treatise based on The Song of Solomon. It was brought to light by Carl Jung who thought it the work of St Thomas Aquinas. The text is full of alchemical and religious symbolism and apocalyptic imagery. Jung saw alchemy and psychology as having the common aim of self-transformation. Gabriel was captivated by Jung's alchemical writing.

"I have always been interested in transformation of one sort of another," said Gabriel. "When Mozo came in he upset the status quo and the story is about the struggles after his appearance."

Mozo was a catalyst for spiritual change. This was true alchemy of which changing base metal to gold was a mere analogy. Mozo was at the core of what Gabriel tries to express in music. Perhaps he sees himself as that mercurial stranger able to transform and uplift people. Gabriel wanted to scatter songs about Mozo over several albums, though they would make a complete story when put together. The songs were "Here Comes the Flood,"  an apocalyptic vision: "Down The Dolce Vita,"  a ship leaving harbour on an intrepid journey; "On The Air": Mozo and his fantasy world; "Exposure"" the struggle for salvation; "Red Rain" :denying one's inner feelings; and "That Voice Again." judgment.

"Mozo is set in this fishing village, which is very upmarket, not quite Mediterranean, but something of that ilk," explained Gabriel in 1987. "There is this volcanic sand which gives the sea a red colour. Everything is focused on the sea, which is very rough, and the great macho fear is to cross the water, which no one had done. Mozo is discovered in a tip, in a house built out of rubbish, on the edge of the city. And initially kids and passers-by are just very curious to look inside this little shed, and they see in it what they are most afraid of. They project their fears on to him because he is different. I remember in Horsell Common near Chobham, where my parents live, there was this beaten up old caravan, with newspapers in the windows. I used to think there was a witch inside there. And I think it probably fuelled this setting for Mozo. Eventually the people who have discovered Mozo in this hut on a tip get disturbed. They are upset by what they are seeing, by what they are projecting onto him and they try and kick him out. He escapes, and he proves later on that he has crossed the sea. So he goes from being the tramp underneath society to the hero on top of it. And then having been placed above other people he is challenged by the people who put him up there. They then have him as a target to push down to the bottom again."

"On the Air," on the second album, introduces Mozo, who lives in a fantasy world created by what he picks up and transmits on hi short-wave.

"Through short-wave radio he becomes whoever he wants, but in real life, on the street, he's totally ignored," explained Gabriel.

I got power, I'm proud to be loud; my signal goes out clear

I want everybody to know that Mozo is here

On the air. . . (On The Air; Gabriel, 1978)

"Down the Dolce Vita", from the first album, introduces characters setting out on the intrepid journey across the sea. Aeron and Gorham, like Mozo, have corrupted biblical names. "Here Comes The Flood," was written at the height of Gabriel's fascination with short-wave radio. If radio signals got stronger at night, he reasoned, maybe psychic and telepathic awareness could be similarly increased and made to flood the mass consciousness. Those who were honest and straightforward could take on board their new insights, while those who hid their thought and feelings would be lost.

When the flood calls

You have no home, you have no walls 

In the thunder crash

You're a thousand minds, within a flash

Don't be afraid to cry at what you see

The actors gone, there's only you and me

And if we break before the dawn, they'll use up what we used to be 

(Here Comes The Flood; Gabriel, 1976)

"Exposure", from the second album, is stark and minimal. The music was co-written by Gabriel and Robert Fripp, who named his 1979 album after the track. The version sung by Gabriel on Fripp's album is introduced by a recording of English sage J.G. Bennett uttering, "It is impossible to achieve the aim without suffering."

The final Mozo-linked songs to appear on record were "Red Rain" and "That Voice Again" from the So album. "Red Rain" is about repressed feelings and pain that

become expressed by the elements.

"That Voice Again", Gabriel explained, was about" judgemental attitudes being a barrier between people. The voice is the voice of judgement. A haunting internal voice that instead of accepting experience is always analysing, moralizing and evaluating it."

The song was originally called "First Stone", but Gabriel abandoned the biblical allusions. He went through three sets of lyrics before David Rhodes came to the rescue and co-wrote them with him. Gabriel first sought backing to perform Mozo in early 1976, soon after the Genesis album A Trick of the Tail became their biggest success to date. It was an unfortunate time to make an approach. Genesis's good fortune overshadowed Gabriel's. There was little enthusiasm from publishers and record companies for what promised to be an expensive exercise and Gabriel was forced to wait until he had commercial success as a solo artist. He had discussed his ideas with Bob Ezrin the producer of his first solo album. Ezrin told him about the Czech theatre Laaterna Magica and the pioneering Josef Svoboda. Gabriel visited him twice in Prague in the late seventies. He was interested in Svoboda's perforated screen combining cinema with theatre. In it a film was complemented by live action using a device that made actors appear to go in and out of the screen. Gabriel was later introduced to Czech animator Raduz Cincera who developed his "Kineautomatâ". Cincera was working on opera sets for the London Coliseum when he met Gabriel.

"The 'Kineautomat has cinema seats with yes/no buttons," said Gabriel. "There were about a dozen decision points, the plot chosen by vote. So, for example, an actor would come out of the screen and say to the audience, 'Should I stay with my wife, or go with this woman?' And the cinema would become as lively as a football match."

Eventually the Mozo idea lost impetus, though in autumn 1985 Gabriel was still considering working on developing the story into an hour-long video.   -"Peter Gabriel: An Authorized Biography" by Spencer Bright

A later source:

“Mozo is someone who appears in various places in many disguises. I even sketched a film script around his character. I read JUNG and all this alchemy stuff, and they make gold from crap, from the junk, from the stuff people want to get rid of. In my new studio we try to combine hand-made, cheap, disposed-of elements with the best technology available. It is easy to get enthusiastic about this high-tech, reasonable, modern world and losing the gut feeling of being down to earth, the grunt factor, I like to call it, that comes from failures, mistakes, funny incidents and thrown-away elements" link

Note: "Signal to Noise"  and "Big Blue Ball"  has been suggested as part of the Mozo cycle/trope:

--
2015 update link:
"The Birth of Mozo"

at least it wasn't JESUS' autograph I crossed out

Being an unrepentant bibliophile...

whenever I get home with
my latest stash of used books from the thrift store, the
first thing I do is cross out the name of the previous owner and write mine.  Sometimes if I have quite a stack of new treasures (10 or 50 cents a piece), I do this pretty rapidly.

I should have been paying better attention, at least
on the day I brought home E. Stanley Jones'

"The Unshakable Kingdom and the Unchanging Person"

As you can see by the photo, I started crossing out what I thought was the previous owner's name....only to catch that it was an autograph by E. Stanley Jones himself, complete with his motto, "Jesus is Lord." 

 

Now, when I speak at Christian Ashrams (the movement started by Jones), I take along this book...not just to quote, but to show the first page as an object lesson in "Don't be in a hurry throwing things out/crossing things out; you might cross out/toss out something valuable."   Gee, what a preacher..turning everything into moralism/propositional truth... Shameless!

 

 By the way, if you click the book title above, it leads to a free (but unautographed) online PDF copy of the book.

Be sure to type in your name once you're there.(:

Oh, my other embarrassing Ashram story is linked below...I preach this one, too..as it's pretty funny. Click:

• Jesus' wife

 

"Demons, Piss Off!" or "I am baptized"? (functional equivalent)

You should check out Nadia (The Sarcastic Lutheran)'s sermon:

            " Baptism of Our Lord and How To Tell Demons to Piss Off " ...it's here.

It was censored a bit  when Sojourners picked it up  here .  The title became:

            "How To Say Defiantly, ‘I am Baptized!’"

I  get a kick out  of the (maybe) accident that  when Sojourners links to the original sermon, it doesn't go to the right sermon, but another one with a bit (only a bit) less provocative title).

I wonder how they would translate Kory's original  sermon title  (click for video)

Or this one that a nutcase I know preached several years ago:
"God loves the hell out of you"(click for audio)

"war creates no absolutely new situation"

It's  true of any war (literal, spiritual, war of words etc).
Nor does it  (if read in context) make light of the radical suffering and death that war does "create.":


"the war creates no absolutely new situation...

it simply aggravates the permanent human situation so that we can no longer ignore it."

                            -C.S. Lewis, "Living in Wartime," from "The Weight of Glory

Of course (!), two vintage Talking Heads songs come to mind:



                         i

"Desiring the Kingdom" video: James K.A. Smith

amazing book, too
James K.A. Smith - Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation from Calvin College on Vimeo.

Bono and Glen Hansard sing Prayer of St. Francis

resurrection and insurrection

\

The Insurrection from Peter Rollins on Vimeo.

"the world will not forsake..."

"the world...
will not forsake 
what it thinks it knows 
in favor of
what Jesus wants it to believe."
-Robert Farra Capon,"Kingdom, Grace, Judgment: Paradox, Outrage, and Vindication in the Parables," p. 438

"Beyond A/Theism: Postmodernity and the Future of Religion."

Video of  this James K.A. Smith lecture below:

What is the place for religion in our postmodern society, if any? While new atheists spar with fundamentalisms of various stripes over concerns of exclusivity and violence, there has been a quieter proposal for a "pure" postmodern religion offered by figures as diverse as Jacques Derrida and Mark Johnston. These voices suggest a religion purified of particulars (dogma, institutions, authoritative texts), offering us an alternate hope. But is such a proposal "postmodern" enough, or is there better way to understand God in our conflicted time?

James K.A. Smith is Professor of Philosophy at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, MI. He specializes in contemporary continental philosophy, philosophy of religion, and philosophy of social science. He is the author and editor of a number of books, including Jacques Derrida: Live Theory and After Modernity? Secularity, Globalization, and the Re-enchantment of the World.

This lecture was recorded at the University of Ottawa, October 2010
For a copy of the full dvd, visit www.the-house.ca

Beyond Atheism: Postmodernity and the Future of God - James K.A. Smith from David Robinson on Vimeo.
----------
Shorter excerpts/teasers here.
-----------------

6 Degrees and Network Theory

"Daddy, What Does Overdose Mean?”

Looking for Arvo Part's Tabula Rasa CD in a  used record store, I found a very different "Tabula Rasa"  disc
filed in the same bin, and I once again took a chance (a dollar!) on buying a CD/band I had never heard/heard of.  The 1992 CD was "Confined in Skin and Bones" (note the prophetic U2 "Yahweh" lyric  reference)  by Tabula Rasa.  I couldn't help but be intrigued by that....and the bizarre, Godhaunted lyrics, long playing times of the songs, and Doug Kershaw on violin fiddle...sounded like it might be a Dave Matthews/Gabriel-era Genesis/Van Der Graff/prog/pre-screamo hybrid.


It turned out to be pretty much that.
Good quirky stuff.

 I figured the singer/writer grew up Christian.
A Googling proved that right.


Turns out the band--broken up long ago--was big in hometown Dallas.
Leader/singer Ezra Boggs  (Linked In, Facebook) has since started various bands :The Jury, Trio of One, The Drive-By Orchestra  ('You can tell everybody in the band has a music degree,' Boggs admits, 'but it's still really ear-friendly').

But here below is his amazing God-story. Amazing guy:

• "Daddy, What Does Overdose Mean?”

• The Effects of Divorce on a Husband

• The Circus I Saw

 

"We don't sing what you aspire to, but what's actually going on"

Meet Todd and Angie Fadel, AKA  Agents of Future (a "jalopy gospel" band, which includes many others, see also their Facebook) , "worship leaders" at The Bridge, North Portland. 

Start with this  first video below ""What would it look like for pain and suffering to be worked out through the worship of God? We don't sing what you aspire to, but whats actually going on....Besides, someone will call us on it if there's any bullshit.":

Interview with Angie:


Documentary on the church:


Crossrythyms review:

"AGENTS OF FUTURE - SNEEK PEAKS AT MAGIC MOMENTS - 8/10 stars - The confidently named Agents Of Future from North Portland, USA, have been much talked about after their Greenbelt appearances - some loving their eccentric eclecticism, others detesting their rather shambolic stage presence. To be frank, their album here is bizarre - it's raw, unrestrained, messy, passionate and raucous garage rock blitzed with erratic melodies and screeching vocals harmonies. In fact the whole vocal department feels like a shout-along session the entire band decided to join in on - there's barely a moment where one voice is allowed to sing on its lonesome. However, while it's not pretty and polished, the vocal talent is glaringly present; the performance on "Perfect Love" can't be faulted for its beautiful emotional intensity. Note as well that while eclectic, the record manages to deliver the kind of memorable melodies you'd expect from a band like The Killers. The closing cut's rhythmic ending chant of "Heaven is sewn in my skin" is fantastically infectious while musical intelligent (in its own unintelligible way). The magnitude of chaos within 'Sneek Peeks At Magic Moments' guarantees it not be an all round people pleaser, and admittedly there are moments where the entropy exceeds the effective quota, but if you're the indie type fed up with cookie-cutter rock worship, give the disc a spin and you may be proclaiming it your gem of the year." - Martin Smith for CROSSRHYTHMS

solitude vs isolation

:Solitude vivifies; isolation kills.”
—Abbé Joseph Roux, 19th-century priest and poet

a song (not just) about Spiderman

Boy Falls From The Sky" (live from Coimbra)

You change your mind

But you cannot change your heart

It's a compass and a map

The key to the chart

I'd be myself

If I knew who I'd become

You fly too high

And get too close to the sun

See how the boy falls from the sky

Not every wanderer

Is lost or far from home

I didn't have to move so far

To find myself alone

Savior, save yourself

Can't even get that right

I used to use a single thread

To cross the sky

And now the eye of a needle

Is that heart denied

See how the boy falls from the sky

The city converts to a symphony

The search through shit for a melody

A single scrap of dignity

In the junkyard of humanity

On the burning rubble, in a sulphur sky

We look for music, you and I

Over the screams and the siren wail

The cackle when love is up for sale

The subway screech slows down the drain

The thunder when there is no rain

So listen hard, listen again

To your own lone voice when there ain't none there

You know exactly what to do

The you in me, the me in you

Together, you start, must help us see

And when you're done

And when you're done

And you believe

The Monkey and The Fish: Third Culture Liquid Leadership

"The Monkey and the Fish: Liquid Leadership for a Third-Culture Church" by Dave Gibbons:


a conversation with Dave Gibbons


 from Verge Network on Vimeo.
----------------

Book description from Amazon:

"The Monkey and the Fish decodes profound shifts and events taking place in the world today due to globalism, multiculturalism and technology, and introduces an original approach to ministry, church, and leadership known as The Third Culture. The book title refers to an Eastern parable that will challenge you to reexamine fundamental assumptions of the evangelical movement, including erroneous interpretations that have made the church increasingly irrelevant in North America and the global village.

Our world is marked by unprecedented degrees of multiculturalism, ethnic diversity, social shifts, international collaboration, and technology-driven changes. The changes are profound, especially when you consider the unchecked decline in the influence, size, and social standing of the church. There is an undercurrent of anxiety in the evangelical world, and a hunger for something new. And we're sensing the urgency of it.

We need fresh, creative counterintuitive ways of doing ministry and church and leading it in the 21st century. We need to adapt. Fast. Both in our practices and our thinking.
The aim of this book is simple: When we understand the powerful forces at work in the world today, we'll learn how something called The Third Culture can yield perhaps the most critical missing ingredient in the church today--adaptability--and help the church remain on the best side of history.

A Third Culture Church and a Third Culture Leader looks at our new global village and the church's role in that village in a revolutionary way. It's a way to reconnect with the historical roots of what Jesus envisioned the church could be--a people known for a brand of love, unity, goodness, and extravagant spirit that defies all conventions. -Amazon

Church, Pastors, The Arts

David Taylor: Three Exciting Developments As Churches Engage the Arts:

Subverting "God hates fags" with "God loves poetry"

Westboro Baptist: God Loves Poetry

by Tara Culp-Ressler

Steve Sjogren: My favorite mistakes of the decade

We don't see things as they are..

"We don't see things as they are,
 we see things as we are."
 -Anaïs Nin
(quoted in Doug Pagitt's wonderful "Church in the Inventive Age," p. 73


When I first saw the quote, I thought it said, 'we see things as we were."  That will preach, too.


More Nin quotes:

• "Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage."
• "Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of withering, of tarnishing."
• "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are."
• "If what Proust says is true, that happiness is the absence of fever, then I will never know happiness. For I am possessed by a fever for knowledge, experience, and creation."
• "For me, the adventures of the mind, each inflection of thought, each movement, nuance, growth, discovery, is a source of exhilaration."
• "It takes courage to push yourself to places that you have never been before, to test your limits, to break through barriers. And the day came when the risk it took to remain tight inside the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom."
• "How wrong is it for a woman to expect man to build the world she wants, rather than set out to create it herself."
• "Creation which cannot express itself becomes madness."
• "Shame is the lie someone told you about yourself."
• "We don't have a language for the senses. Feelings are images, sensations are like musical sounds."
• "The body is an instrument which only gives off music when it is used as a body. Always an orchestra, and just as music traverses walls, so sensuality traverses the body and reaches up to ecstasy."
• "Something is always born of excess: great art was born of great terror, great loneliness, great inhibitions, instabilities, and it always balances them."
• "The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say."
• "The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery"

Charlie Peacock, Acoustic Trio :Unchain My Soul

Here's a video for anyone who never saw the classic Charlie Peacock acoustic trio..with Jimmy A. and the late Vince Ebo (see my memorial to Vince at  "Two Smiling St. Vincents  saved my life....or at least my preaching"):

Rich Mullins: A Ragamuffin's Legacy (teaser trailer)

with Brennan Manning

"If Tennessee is part of the Bible Belt.."

‎"If Tennessee is part of the Bible Belt, I consider California to be the Bible Sunglasses..."
- Jon Acuff

That reminded me of the quote Tim Nuefeld (et al) got out of Bruce Cockburn when they explained to him that our California town (Fresno) was the Bible belt of California : "That's not the Bible's fault."

Love Letter to Syracuse

A LOVE LETTER TO SYRACUSE from samuel j macon on Vimeo.

"Prodigal Son" misunderstood

Kenneth Bailey:

"the blogs are always lies"

See video below, where David Mainse says "Don't tar everyone with the same brush," then goes on to say "all bloggers are liars."
Great reminder of the perils of communication. "all or nothing" thinking, "tarring everyone with the same brush"

Backstory:

• David Mainse Calls ALL Bloggers Liars

• David Mainse of Crossroads slams blogs – the blogs are always lies

!!!

Wait till the end-times conspiracy people get wind of this. I am not making this up, and this is a news video, not a Christian video. All I can say is watch it until you hit 1:00-1:15:

new U2 concert screen content

(Ht: Matt)
Interesting new "questions" sequence being prepared for next leg of the U2 tour, uploaded here by WillieWiilliams.. Questions include: "Why is it so hard to believe?." "How do I know what's true?" and (inevitably) "Why does a good God allow so much evil and suffering?:





















Also, a new video background for "Moment of Surrender," with the "passersby" that the narrator
"did not notice" as he had his enconter with God at the ATM:

connection of worship and prayer: church and temple

For two decades now, in many evangelical churches, it's obvious that "worship" means "music." (See"worship is not music"...and on a lighter and more whimsical note, see the 'Worship' paragraph of one church's "order of worship" at "Virgin Sacrifices")
For some strange reason, the word has come to be synonymous with "the songs sung early in the meeting."

"Good morning! After the worship, the children will be dismissed, and Pastor Steve will share from God's word."

Translate: "after five songs."

Music is central to worship (see 

Cioran on music/mysticism)

, but is not the whole deal.

In a sense, itwould/could be just as wrong to translate "worship" as (only) "prayer."

But:

"It appears that the early church patterned itself after the synagogue and continued the same practice of living and worshiping together as a community, often in private homes (Acts 2:42?4). The modern 'assembly' of Jesus' followers would do well to remember that the roots of the church are in a community living and worshiping together. Worship (prayer) was a natural extension of the life of the community.

...Christians describe the church activity of formal interaction with God as 'worship.' Jews describe the same activity in synagogues (or, in Bible times, in the Temple) as 'prayer' In Jesus' parable, the tax collector and Pharisee go to the Temple to pray (Luke 18:10). Their activity certainly included prayer, for going to the Temple to pray meant going at the time of worship and sacrifice. The Temple is called the House of Prayer (Isa. 56:7;Luke 19:), meaning 'the place of worship'."

-Ray VanDer Laan 

Theologian Harry Nilsson: God and poo-poo in the yard

"He goes and makes


the planet blue


And all the thanks he


gets from you


Is, 'Look at all that poo poo


In the yard!'"
-Harry Nilsson, "Good for God"



One of many songs that could be included in his theological canon/cannon, beginning with "I Guess The Lord Must Be in New York City," and scattered throughout his career.  Of course, "(I Can't Live if Living is) Without You"  (sometimes known as "Ken Lee")
can be sung in church straight up as a passionate worship song.

Some even

say his "Jesus Christ, You're Tall" is not  (just) a throwaway song taking the Lord's name in vain, but an attempt at prayer..

Try out "Many Rivers To Cross,' with John Lennon, for one..

Don't forget the partly prophetic opera "The Point"..