"Face-painters, Cheese Heads, Flatulence Giants,and other revolutionaries"...sounds like church to me!!

"Face-painters, Cheese Heads, and other revolutionaries: Fans who show up sporting a wedge of plastic cheese on their heads, or wearing nothing but a barrel and suspenders, or dousing themselves in purple paint are really just the modern-day, class-defying equivalents of flatulent giants, cross-dressing jesters, and juggling scullery maids of the Renaissance."


“Carnival is not a spectacle seen by the people; they live in it, and everyone participates because its very idea embraces all the people.” -- Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World


“We always strive after things forbidden and covet what is denied us.” -- François Rabelais, The Histories of Gargantua and Pantagruel



-all the above From the Pop Matters article here...

new U2 song, "Window in the Skies"

Gee, what do you think the new U2 song, "Window in the Skies" is about?

Some great lyric intrerp by Mother Beth at this link..

"Watch" the entire song here..just be aware that though the video below has the audio to the whole song; the video is a fan video (the official video is not out yet):


Most of the song is also in audio form online.... Linked from the 11/09 post on our forum right here ; (later note: It's also now on my myspace jukebox here.

"Window in the Skies"


The shackles are undone
The bullet's quit the gun
The heat that's in the sun
Will keep us when there's none
The rule has been disproved
The stone it has been moved
The grave is now a groove
All debts are removed

Oh can't you see what our Love has done
Oh can't you see what our Love has done
Oh can't you see what our Love has done
What it's doing to me

Love makes strange enemies
Makes love where Love may please
The soul in its striptease
Hate brought to its knees
The sky over our head
We can reach it from our bed
If you let me in your heart
And out of my head

Oh can't you see what our Love has done
Oh can't you see what our Love has done
Oh can't you see what our Love has done
What it's doing to me

Oh oh oh oh
Oh oh oh oh

Please don't ever let me out of here

I've got no shame
Oh no, oh no

Oh can't you see what Love has done
Oh can't you see
Oh can't you see what Love has done
What it's doing to me

I know I hurt You and I made You cry
Did everything but murder You and I
But Love left a window in the skies
And to Love I rhapsodize

Oh can't you see what Love has done
To every broken heart
Oh can't you see what Love has done
For every heart that cries

Love left a window in the skies
And to Love I rhapsodize

"He preaches WITH, not TO the damned...and he actually prefers their company"

Uncalculated and uncredentialed.

Two terms Eugene Peterson used here in defending his ...controversial in some circles...view of U2 as prophets.

Those three terms, then (uncalculated, uncredentialed, and prophetic) fit U2 and Johnny Cash well.

Unlike many Christians...let alone pastors...Johnny was honest and "uncredentialed" enough to say...well amazing, uncalculated prophetic stuff....like; well, read all the quotes here.

Like most prophets; Cash exhibted two more attributes of the prophetic (in Peterson's definition): bite and clarity.

Like most prophets, he died too young.

Read the articles and weep.

Watch this and pray.

Then do something with it.

Preach with the damned, for Christ's sake.

saddest post ever?

Someone called this the saddest post ever..



Or..


try this classic:
Open letter from a young "prodigal slacker"

A good read:

A growing collection of worthwile articles on the topic of "Detoxing From Church" is posted just a click away (right here on our forum)...Since I know that title intrgued you, check it out. It has received almost 20,000 hits; as opposed to most on the same forum topping at under 1000! Someone's hitting a nerve!

Kiwi and Wolf

I have never been so excited about a sequel since...uh, Matrix 2..and that didn't pan out as well as #1 or #3, unless you have a thing for Keanu's bare butt..

Wolfgang Simson, author of the seminal "Houses That Change the World," is about to bless us with a sequel..and in PDF...in the meantime, as the Skinny Kiwi reminds us here, it would be a good time to review his earlier masterpiece..and many of his choice articles in this closet..

Ted Haggard, Meth w/Gay Prostitutes...all in 2D

Stephen Shields has good words on all this craziness here

.

Let's all be in prayer..

Follow the news, see interviews w/Haggard, read blogger's challenges here