"Oh, #*#!, it;s really true!"
Many mornings in the weeks and months after my wife Sonya died, the sun shining through the window would wake me up, For the first few moments finding my consciousness, I was content: becoming oriented to the opportunities of a new day.
Then, ineviable, I remembered.
Oh, she's dead.
Wait, really? Was it just a dream?
"Oh, #*#!, it;s really true!," I actually said aloud more than once.
They joke there are two types of people: those who say "Good morning, Lord!" and those who say "Good Lord, it's morning!"
On most days I was both; finding a way for both to coexist in the same space, soul and morniong
But I am ghetting ahread of myself
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Seven years later, I woke up oner day and oriented myself to the fact that it was day.
And Good Friday, at that. A day always laden and loaded with grief over the death of Jesus, and the joy of the resurrection not far oof.
The "On, #318 , it's real morning surprises no longer a regular occurenmce,
I grabbed my phone, ostensibly to check the time or secure a morning devotion, but more likely to check Facebook..and found notification of a new U2 song.
One for Hal, it said. As I began plyaing ity, the soudscames began; some classic and exciting new Edge "swirling epiphanies>
The vocals began. They were good, but something wasn't quite right. Had I been fooled by AI?
No, it was the Edge on lead vocals..
Unlike most U2 releases lof the past, I was prepared for a new song by my favorite band. I had read the lrics and maybe evnb rveiew,
Biot this time I had no idea wht th song was bout, let alone whoi Hal was. Let alone that it was about:
And as the morning light Stretches out across the floor
Can't believe it's another day And life goes on like it did before
What? Wwere Bono and Edge readingin g my memory?
It wouldn/t be the first time.
"
To switch gears:
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To quote a book title that can be well-applied to personal journey/spiritual life: the "What to Expect While You are Expecting " principle is relevant here.
For one, we are all spiritually expecting, just ask Pastor Jack H (and my other favorite Pastor Jack H).
Two, I was not even expecting to expect two EPs ("Days of Ash" and "Easter Lilly"),
let alone one;
let alone two great ones;
from U2 this year before the full-blown album later this year.
Two albums (three releases) in their 50th year? And two (three?) that follow the liturgical calendar?
God is in the house. The lads are pregnant.
I consider the two surprise EPs as one whole; two sides of an album/coin/life posture. The band have spoken clearly about the first volume being more angry, political.. and lament-laden, and the sequel more personal and hope-filled .......as we are expectant of the "defiant joy" of the album to come,
To be expectant in U2 fandom is also to expect anxiety that the album this fall won't live up to these EPs. The worst fear is they partly lose the plot/baby. Me genoito, I hope Jacknife Lee is right!
I like these two EPs both very much ; especially the second, so I am writing about it today..
I won't write much, as I can't add much to...but can amen much to.... these great reviews that I recommend and will reference:
- Megan Click Easter Lily: A Journey with U2- Scars and All
- Angela Pancella U2's Easter Lily, And when blessings overflow.
- Sherry Lawrence Unapologetically U2: Taking Easter Lily To A Higher Level
- Peter Barrett : the new Eastertide-themed album recorded by U2
- Steve Stockman: A song by song look at U2's Easter EP... cross, resurrection and Psalms as a resistance to the world.
But I want to note two intriguing structural observations on the EP as a whole (as an artwork); and then give a few heteroclitic and maybe unobvious comments and questions on each song.
1) An inclusio of sunrise language; especially being surprised by the sunrise. Cheesy as it might be if another band adopted it , it is clear that in the U2 dictionary, "sun" is often code/standing in for Son (Jesus). Drawing the fish in the sand, Here the focus on sunrise/Sonrise : fitting for an EP with Easter in the title.
Here is that inclusio:
-First song "Song for Hal".
And as the morning light Stretches out across the floor
Can't believe it's another day And life goes on like it did before
-Last song: "COEXIST (I Will Bless The Lord At All Times?)
Every night we hope and pray for a new day to rise
Every morning when the sun shows up, it's still a surprise
And, as often with inclusios (and chiasms) , the term often shows up in the middle (more or less) of the narrative. Thus, in the song "Easter Parade,'
Every night we hope and pray for a new day to rise
Every morning when the sun shows up, it's still a surprise
2) An inclusio of the word/image "parade.'
First song "Song for Hal"
Then in "COEXIST (I Will Bless The Lord At All Times?)
. , the ;last song:
Changes, these changes
Will rain on this parade
Wherever the strange is on paradeWherever the music is madeYou'll be there
=
in "Easter Parade,' of coyurse, the whole song is the pragde.
Changes, these changes
Will rain on this parade
Changes, these changes
I am not afraid
Then in "Coets/COEXIST (I Will Bless The Lord At All Times?)
. I will Belss, the ;ast spong.
Changes, these changes
Will rain on this parade
And, as often with inclusios m(and chiasms) , the term often shows up in the middle (more or less) of the narrative. Thus, in the song"Easter Parade,' of course, the whole song is the parade.
What is "Easter Lilly" about? The surprising and subversive sunrise and prophetic and poignant parade that springs forth from death.
Heck, maybe the oridinal song "Easter :Parade" sung by Judy Garlad to Fred Astaire is a bit about that, too:
On the avenue, Fifth Avenue
The photographers will snap us
And you'll find that you're in the rotogravure
Oh, I could write a sonnet about your Easter bonnet
And of the guy I'm taking to the Easter parade
Inclusio and chiasm are, even witbiut the writer being fully aware of embedding these structures, revcal quite a lot about the overall meaning/message of a work. Don't get me started on Bible inclusio and chaism. But I could get started up here or here, LOL,. As Mick Jagger sang...
Alos, I note that every song (or almost every song on "Easter Lilly" endswith an outro or coda/last section.. that changes gears. I am sure there is a term for this in musical composition/theory. Instead of fadeout or repetition/reprise of a chrours, or an improv/scat/glossolalia/Bongolse ending (As in "Still Haven't Found".. a whole new thematic world opens up.
My Favorite example here is "In a Life" ...which nods to a Peter Gabriel lyic.A
And how about the final note of "Coexist." There are different theories about what it means: a nod to the ending of teh "Zooropa album, an esclamation point on the album. a "more to come" teaser,.a rewuiremenmt to say Edge played on the song...
:Let's return to "Song for Hal," which i now know is a respionse to death of the band's friend, Hal.
In a way it is my "Sond for Sonya."
I often play on shuffle, but even more than other U2 releases, it would seem blasphemy to consider any other intended running order of the Easter Lilly tracks. As Bono mentioned (quoting Dalai Lama) in the book accompanying "Atomic Bomb,' "To medidate on life, start with death."
-Question for fans and followers (Edge, I know you are reading, lol): Im the opening lyrics
Did you hear "Forever"?
Was it playing soft and low?
It's not a song you wanna hear
If you're not ready to go
the song "Forever" a specific atual song , por a symbolic.
lGregory Daujat in his free Kindle book on Easter Lilly says the point of “Song for Hal” is that “even the dead are not alone.”
Note also a possible connection bindinbg tghe tw EPS. The last siong oin "Easter Lilly," that is,
"You are not alone."
Now the first song on the next EP (or if you comsider tghe two as one album, the vetyu next song,
repeats teh lyric and message.
-Question for Megan et a;
--
The scond song, "In a :Life", per the Edge';s comemnts in :Proprghanda, and per the clear content of the officual music viseo, is about the friendship of the band over the teras.
OKya..but I don't hear that...at all.
I was alreadt with mefan on tgis;l ecev before I read her poost
It is valuable to quote Megan's full comment on the song, as it resonated with me.
Rhe song that follows feels like a cross between the underworld and purgatory. Strongly connected to Bono’s Stories of Surrender, it uses the London Underground as a kind of in between space. The repeated fare/coin imagery evokes Charon’s crossing or the purchase of indulgences. It begins with “I’ll meet you in the air… with the fare,” and the person is met “in the empty space that occupies your place.” The looping percussion and guitar during the Circle Line section accentuates the feeling of circling until one learns what they need for passage into the next life. These lessons are both relational and communal and include the futility of ignoring God’s instruction,”you’re kicking the pricks, an archaic form of goads, which references Acts 26, and the need to surrender. There is a driver on the train of this circle that notes how the “souls are in so much pain,” which possibly may be the wounded healer Christ presented in Scars. Only confession , both corporate (“when we make our bed out of war”) and personal (“I never achieved anything on my own”), breaks the loop. The song ends with grace: “A skipping stone I was thrown, the ocean floor is not my home.” and gratitude, “I only received from being shown.” and leads us to the encounter in the song that follows.
Instead of Charon, I thought of the Trainman n Matrix Reloaded , who lives in the subway/underground, headquartered at "Mobil Station " (Mobil is an anagram gor limbo? the writers did that on purpose) , and seems doomed to keep riding the trains in a purgatorial state . He wears multiple watches (hmm . note the song lyrics “And when we reach the Circle line, The name of the train is Loop, symbolizing a loop in time or endless cycle of limbo
And when we stop the clocks stopping time ” and jumps to the other side of the platform He is in charge of Mobil Station (Mobil is an anagram gor limbo? the writers did that on purpose). The name of the train is Loop, symbolizing a loop in time or endless cycle of limbo
https://sstockman.substack.com/p/u2-easter-lily don't know iof I would have guessed in 1984 that I would , and never toire pof ot.
To my amazxemt, I feel taht way abiyut Eater Lilly
I consifder the two suroise EPs a hole To have two new "albums" in U2 never, who gueseed , let alone on their 50tha nii etsary year.
II love the w two, espe afreid.
That the cannpt
What if the lyric ios ia klrafeklt abyut
But what of t dioes
"I feel like I wasn't there for him, really, in the way I should be," he said. "I apologized to my father in a little chapel in France after he passed away. I went up to this little chapel, there was nobody there. Lit a candle, and I got on my knees and I just said, 'Look, I'm sorry I wasn't there for you. You went through a lot and please forgive me.' And I felt free."
Megan Click I am still kind of in shock at how this EP is impacting me..and every U2 release has deeply impacted me, from the very beginning (hearing Boy on the radio when it as new!). The surpise release really helped
he repetitive “I feel alone,” conflicts with the refrain “you’re not alone” in “Song For Hal.” The personal confession of aloneness is raw — can’t see the forest despite the trees sort of thing. Here is a personal song about friendship, but he feels alone. Is it an emotional disconnect that’s being alluded to? Could it be that he feels that God hasn’t been with him? Bono did write in the book “me wrote meself”, Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story, that he was calling out to God during his brush with death and he didn’t hear Him.
Jesus’ last words before He died on the cross were “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me.” (Mark 15:34). It has been suggested that in the moment, the sins of the world were placed solely on Jesus and sin cannot be in God’s presence. With that, he became separated from God. He felt alone.
“I never achieved anything on my own” could also reference when Jesus said in John 8:16, “But if I do judge, my decisions are true, because I am not alone. I stand with the Father who sent me.” Later in John 8:29 Jesus also said, “The one who sent me is with me; he has not left me alone, for I always do what pleases him.”
We are now at the point where the risen Christ is showing his scars to his apostle, Thomas, who doubts that it’s really Jesus he’s seeing after the crucifixio
There is a marked change in the song where the singer isn’t comforting others, rather it’s Jesus taking the microphone to tell His story
https://medium.com/@u2isable2/unapologetically-u2-taking-easter-lily-to-a-higher-level-90a59400eb8f
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But then Bono handbrake shifts
https://sstockman.substack.com/p/u2-easter-lily
. The very title suggests a fractured world, one in which competing truths are forced into proximity without reconciliation. Yet the tone is intimate, almost lullaby-like, as though this is a prayer offered not to convince but to sustain. Blessing, here, is no longer declarative. It is aspirational.
What, then, are we to make of this work? Is this a Christian album? If one expects explicit proclamation, doctrinal precision, or evangelistic clarity, the answer must remain qualified. However, if Christianity is understood as the inhabiting of the Paschal mystery—the slow and often uncertain movement from death toward life, the holding together of absence and presence, the bearing of wounds that may yet become glory, the stubborn practice of hope in the face of doubt—then the answer is unmistakably yes. Easter Lily does not explain Christianity. It enacts it. It is, in the end, not a statement of belief, but a participation in the story itself—one in which faith is not possessed so much as pursued, and where resurrection is not assumed, but awaited, sometimes in silence, sometimes in song.
To ask whether Easter Lily is a “Christian” work is, finally, to ask the wrong question. The lyrics make clear that this is not proclamation in any simple sense. It is something more demanding. It is the language of faith spoken from within uncertainty, yet not abandoned. Moreover, in that refusal to abandon it, one hears something recognizably, even profoundly, Christian— and that is worth a listen.
Duane W.H. Arnold, PhDhttps://www.phoenixpreacher.com/easter-lily-a-theological-review-duane-w-h-arnold-phd/
In a Life:
Dedicated to Hal, friend of the band who died during the pandemic.
Lots of backstory in Progranda pages pages here
I will never forget the surprise of hearing thios song for the forst time, and then gradually realiziubg it wa sing ny The Edhge;
Sung gently by The Edge
Dedicated to Hal, friend of the band who died during the pandemic.
Lots of backstory in Progranda pages pages here
Megan ClickL
I. Sung gently by The Edge, it carries faint echoes of U2’s previous ventures into musical theatre, which is fitting for a song dedicated to a man known for them. The promise “You’re not alone” ,not in the “bright blue air,” not if your “voice is unheard,”sets the tone of accompaniment in grief and trouble, which runs throughout the EP.
Vocalist (The Edge): Overview: This is the rare lead turn that changes the whole temperature of the record. Edge doesn’t belt like Bono; he sings like a man who’s been in the trenches with you. Melodic Contributions: Fragile verses that build into a chorus that feels like a group hug you didn’t know you needed. Techniques: That falsetto edge on “you’re not alone” cracks just enough to feel human. Impact: Makes the lament feel personal instead of performative. Iconic parallel: Think of David Bowie handing the mic to someone else on
Blackstar—still the band,
Blackstar—still the band, but the voice shifts the meaning. Edge? He makes absence feel present. Gregory Daujat
Gregory Daujat in his free Kindle book on Easter Lilly says the point of “Song for Hal” is that “even the dead are not alone.”
Sherry Lawrence:
The track is described as both a song of lament, but also one of defiant hope by The Edge in the latest issue of Propaganda, the band’s official fanzine....
In this track, the physical world meets the spiritual world. They can sense their friend is still with them through his spirit. The unanswered questions posed in the first and last verses to bookend the transient nature of the physical world. The lyric, “the song of the mockingbird don’t last long, They appear and then they’re gone” is reminiscent of Psalm 103:15–16: “The life of mortals is like grass, they flourish like a flower of the field; the wind blows over it and it is gone, and its place remembers it no more.” The rest of the song point to a God who is present through all of it as you are not alone. For the band, they can sense Hal in those moments too. While this is dedicated to Hal, there is still a universality to it.
Quesitins . "Forever"
Here are some inyernet quessed.. Many suggest oit is just a symbol of thje afrterlife; but I am still haunted by the way it is mentioned as if an acula song
"In a Life"
Where to satrt woyjk a soing that is such a keppre that Edgfe had sais,
I will start with Megan. Since I had felt some pof the subo;m intermediate syarte, it fllored me. I even wpnder if it follow Song for Hal, as if oit cponitines his satriuafter death; maybe evne the whole album is his storu/
The song that follows feels like a cross between the underworld and purgatory. Strongly connected to Bono’s Stories of Surrender, it uses the London Underground as a kind of in between space. The repeated fare/coin imagery evokes Charon’s crossing or the purchase of indulgences. It begins with “I’ll meet you in the air… with the fare,” and the person is met “in the empty space that occupies your place.” The looping percussion and guitar during the Circle Line section accentuates the feeling of circling until one learns what they need for passage into the next life.
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