Today is a throwback. No idea these guys had a Vevo channel on YouTube. They were with it in the 70’s; they’re still with it today. You definitely have to watch the video below, especially for the big hair, tuxedo ruffles, smoke rolling across the stage, and other overt influences of glam. Which to me is counter to the idea of being mere “dust in the wind.” A better set would have been men in a barren field covered in sackcloth and ashes playing on rudimentary instruments with the lowest production budget possible. But whatever. It’s epic. And just look at these guys. You do not have to look beautiful to make beautiful music. Kansas has to be one of the ugliest-yet-successful bands of the 70’s. Love it.
I honestly don’t know much about Kansas, so for the most part I’m going simply reflect on the lyrics here, which I think are brilliant. I will say, though that this Kerry Livgren sounds interesting. A dabbler in various philosophies and religious experiences (including reading The Urantia papers), with a surprising conversion to Christianity—of the “born again” persuasion. I hope he didn’t renounce this song after his conversion. It is profoundly biblical.
There are two understandings about the self that the Judeo-Christian Scriptures seem to articulate. And they create an interesting tension. One is that we are everything on earth—the crown of Creation, the image-bearers of God, the ones by whom Creation is to be governed. Just lower than the heavenly beings surrounding the throne of the Creator. We are beautifully and wonderfully made. And that is a true and essential part of the biblical anthropology.
But the other side of the coin is that we are nothing special. Made from the stuff of the earth. We have but a breath in our nostrils. Take that away and we die. We aggregate into nations and empires which amount to mere dust on the scales, says the prophet Isaiah. A mere drop in the bucket. The psalmist says that even the rich and powerful are nothing, with the poor they are together only a breath. And this is also a true and essential part of the biblical anthropology. And this is what Kansas is singing about. Whether inspired by the Bible or not, it resonates with clarity.
I believe it was the Jewish philosopher Maimonides who said we must carry with us at all times these two understandings of the self, one in our left pocket, the other in our right. What a beautiful articulation. If we get to thinking too highly of ourselves, and esteeming ourselves better than others, we should fumble around in our left pocket for that bit of truth about our non-specialness and finitude. And if we are lowly and the mistreatment we have received begins to get into our psyche, and we start to believe it, we should fumble around in our right pocket, and grasp that truth that we have the breath of God in our nostrils, the Spirit’s spark of life lighting up our eyes, causing our hearts to beat. We are here in this time and in this place for a reason.
I think Maimonides, along the writer of Ecclesiastes, too, would have resonated with this Kansas song. I certainly do. For me, it counters the pop psychology b.s. that I heard so much growing up. I never got this message from Mr. Rogers, bless his heart, but I think my generation needed it. We wouldn’t bother anyone with our whining about how our world is falling apart when our internet connection goes down. Let’s get a hold of the big picture, folks. We ain’t nothing.
If at any time during Lent, this has to be an anthem of Ash Wednesday. “From dust you have come, to dust you shall return” says the Impositor of ashes. Recently some musically gifted folks in my faith community did this song during Sunday’s worship leading up to Ash Wednesday, and they did it beautifully. And strangely, I find there is something profoundly beautiful about the meditation upon our nothingness and finitude. The realization of my finitude seems to point to a transcendent one, that first mover, one who stands outside and is timeless and eternal. Which moves me to see God bound up in the very paradox we experience. God is this eternal one, and this temporal one. God is this uncreated first mover, and one born to Mary of Nazareth.
Is this not the human reality? Divinely sparked, yes, but mere dust in the wind.
Let’s watch this vid together, shall we.
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Tags: Ash Wednesday, Christian Theology, Dust In The Wind, Kansas the band, Kerry Livgren, Lent, Maimonides
But of course. This one’s hard to miss. When it comes to lyrics, Bono is at his best when he tips his hat to Bible stories—so cool how he slips it in with all that nonchalance. You have to pay attention to get it, but it’s all over the place. The brother has a prophetic imagination. But Bono, why ‘catorce’? C’mon, every-juan knows cuatro follows tres. Well, I have a theory. More on that later.
Thesis: Vertigo is explicitly a song about the Christ’s temptation in the wilderness. Bam. It’s also about our 40 day journey into the wild with the Christ. When Satan takes you up to the top of the temple, or wait, better yet, up on top of a really high mountain, you’re at a place called vertigo. Success and fame gladly take us there. So there’s vertigo. But then one of the album’s running themes is this idea of kneeling. That movement counters the nausea of the great heights. Which Bono is always honest about, that little Napoleon of a man. Little Napoleon is redundant, I suppose.
But this vertigo place is ‘everything I wish I didn’t know.’ Yep, it’s that journey into the wilderness that surfaces all the ugliness within. What’s scary is that it was there all along. But in the empire (the opposite of the wilderness?) we were so addicted to the constantly titillating stimulation that the ugliness never needed to rear its head completely.
But when we’re all alone, with no to-do list, with no meds, with no drone of the tv or radio or twitter feed, Temptation starts to get into our heads. And ‘though your soul it can’t be bought / your mind can wander.’ I mean, you know you’re not gonna sell your soul or something crazy like that, but you have to entertain the idea anyway. Just for a little bit. So you can know what you’re saying ‘No’ to. You consider what the stones would taste like. You try to feel the sensation of jumping from the temple and being caught. You imagine the power trip for if you just bow down. And man, just letting the mind wander is fun. That’s vertigo right there my friend. Temptation is a trip. Bono gets it.
‘All of this, all of this can be yours.’ There goes Bono slipping into that Macphisto alter-ego again. Minus the accent. Brilliant.
Interesting how Bono pits the evil mind against the good heart… See, the mind wanders, but the heart can feel—’You give me something / I can feel your love teaching me how / How to kneel.’ I don’t know, Bono. Is it my mind, that cool rationality, that gets me in trouble, or is it my wandering heart? For me it’s a chicken or the egg thing. But Bono says ‘Your head can’t rule your heart / A feeling’s so much stronger than a thought.’ Ok, I’ll go with you on that one Bono. That’s kind of my bent anyway. I am a man who lives by the heart. But what you live by, you can also die by. Most of my sins are sins of passion. They’re not very well thought out, just reactionary from a gut feeling. My mind tends to shut down when temptation comes. But wait, is that what my mind wants me to think? That it wasn’t there? It’s not to blame? That it didn’t see what my right hand was doing? Tricky stuff.
Yep, I’m pretty sure Bono was camping out in the story of Jesus in the wild when he penned this one.
Ok, my theory on catorce. Catorce is 14. He throws those Spanish numbers in to appeal to his growing Latin audience, yes, but he’s got theological reasons for catorce. We’re still in the Gospel of Matthew, where the story of Christ tempted in the desert is best told. Read the genealogy that starts the whole thing off. 14 is the numerical value of David where D = 4, V = 6, and D = 4 again. (You do the math). It’s like A = 1, B = 2, C = 3, but only in Hebrew. If you look at the genealogy of Jesus that Matthew tweaked for blatant theological purposes, 14 is all over the place. It’s Matthew’s lucky number that ties the whole thing together. It’s Matthew’s wink to his audience, that he believes this Jesus really is the Messiah. There are three sections of 14 generations from Abraham to Jesus. 14 is also twice 7, which is like Jewish double rainbow perfection. It gets even crazier than that, but I say all that to say, “catorce” is intentional. But he slips it in, and most people are like, yeah that’s funny and cool cos it’s Bono. But there’s always something driving the nonsense. This time it was the gospel according to Saint Matthew.
So what to take away from this reflection. Probably that kneeling is a good counter-movement to the vertigo of temptation. A love that brings us to our knees is worth bowing down before. But any time we find ourselves kneeling to get something out of the deal, we’re already screwed.
Let’s take a moment to watch this together.
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So yeah Lent is about following Jesus into the desert for 40 days, and Caleb Followill did that for one night and he got scared and wrote a song about it. Well, he only wrote the first verse—the last two, and the wailing tag just came to him in a state of drunkenness. But there’s something spiritually raw and beautifully honest about it. And amazing how it just flowed. Listen to the album track—it’s the first and only recording of Cold Desert. You can hear the studio engineer fading out, and then fading back in because Caleb wasn’t finished. Yeah, his broken heart still had some bleeding to do.
It’s difficult for us to live with ourselves. It’s scary to throw ourselves into the elements. If we haven’t slowly eased our way into the desert, it can be like throwing a pre-schooler into a marathon. That’s why I’ll be hanging out on the edges of the desert for Lent.
But I really only want to sit at the feet of those who have done some time in the desert. A prolonged experience of intentional silence and solitude seems to give people their voice. I mean ‘voice’ in the sense of vocation. I haven’t really had the chance to do that myself. I’m still finding my voice. In a Protestant-y work ethic context, 40 days in the desert seems unproductive at best, even for us ministers who are supposed to follow in the tradition of Jesus. But as one can see, it worked pretty well for Jésucristo, and Juan el Bautisto, and some others. Well, “worked pretty well” means they ended up getting crucified and beheaded, respectively. So I should probably rephrase that. But I don’t want to rethink it. I feel a pull to the desert.
Maybe my spell in the desert is coming. I’m turning 30 in a few months. They say 30 is the new 20. But I think 30 should be a sacramental year, kind of like 15 is for quinceñera girls. It should be something special. At 30 you are feeling joy of freedom along with the weight of responsibility, and you have a sense your own strength along with your own mortality as well. You can see the beginning and the end. And it feels like you’ve got to make a move.
The monastics—now there’s some desert experience for you. They seemed to preserve Western civilization pretty well. Outlived the Roman Empire while in the desert, that’s for dang sure. Those Fathers and Mothers were well acquainted with themselves, their god and the arid landscapes they chose to inhabit.
But back to the song Cold Desert. You’ll either feel god-forsaken or god-taken in the desert. It seems to be a crest that sends people down one way or the other. Unfortunately Brother Followill felt the former.
The desert is the perfect training ground for spiritual masters. Harsh elements. Scarce food and water. No technology. No busyness or constant stimulation. No companions or fellow travelers. I reckon folks find out who they are pretty quickly.
For Lent, I hope we can follow Jesus into the desert. But don’t go too deep unless you know who you are and whose you are. Because there’s a tempter that will be waiting on you.
Let’s listen to the song.
And the backstory.
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Tags: kings of leon, Lent
Lots of bloggers give up blogging for Lent. Seeing how I have a churned out a mere handful of posts over the span of the past few years, I hope to take up blogging as a discipline of sorts. It will be a mish-mash of reflections, and I think I’ll be mining popular culture (and not-so-popular culture) for songs with Lenten themes that lead us into deeper reflection.
This year for Lent, I’m giving up beer, cigarettes (I roll my own on occasion), and cursing (mostly done to myself, in the car, and around Helen, but it’s gotten a bit out of control). Based on what I’m giving up for Lent, I am more Catholic than I’ve ever been. Oh, and I’m also giving up trash. Yes—trash. I will attempt to follow the Three R’s even more–Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle. I can’t claim originality for this ‘Trash for Lent’ idea though. I think I first heard about it a few years ago on a Homebrewed Christianity podcast via Tripp Fuller. The idea has stuck with me, and the timing is right.
So here’s how I’m going to attempt to fast from trash. Simply put, I am not allowed to throw anything away. What I cannot recycle, compost, or reuse, I will have to carry with me in a handy bag that I picked up today at a thrift store. (This is excepting, of course, toilet paper—although I suppose I could compost that too. Hmm…). And that bag will go with me everywhere I go. It’s a sweet vintage 80′s duffel bag, so at least I’ll be carrying my trash in style.
Trash for Lent works well for me because I already reuse shopping bags, I rarely eat out, and I’m an aggressive recycler (read: I recycle #6 plastics and I’m not scared of dumpster diving). And as a (non-strict) vegetarian, I will continue to discard all my food scraps into the compost bin at the church building next to Gordon’s Garden. Yeah, it probably wouldn’t work so well if I had to carry around meat scraps and bones in my trash bag. Every dog in the neighborhood…
I’m going to stock up on handkerchiefs because I go through too many kleenexes (even though I sometimes compost those–but re-using cloth is better than consuming paper goods). And I’m going to become even more meticulous about recycling. Right now on average, Helen and I throw out a very light bag of trash once a week. With Trash for Lent, I’m going to attempt to trim that down significantly.
So yeah, I will be accruing trash starting tomorrow, Thursday. I think the only trash I had from today were a few paper towels and two Amy’s Organic Spinach Tofu packages when I broke fast this evening, so I’m off to a good start. Now, you may be thinking that I’m going to have to carry the same trash with me for 40+ days, but since Sundays are feast days, I will relieve myself of the contents of my trashed-out duffel bag, and begin again.
Why give up trash? I think my American way of life has lost touch with the amount of trash I/we create. It’s utterly mindless and the wheels have come off. Our Depression-Era grandparents and great-grandparents are likely appalled at what we carelessly use once and then throw away without second thought. Trash for Lent is a push-back against the culture of expendability. We have been slowly trained to use it once and throw it away, so that the demand for outsourced production continues to consume the limited resources of our already stressed planet as we turn forests into landfills. In giving up trash for Lent, I really hope to lessen my role in the crucifixion of Creation.
I’ll need encouragement along the way, and if you see me ducking off to secretly throw something in the garbage, call a brother out.
pax
t
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Tags: Lent
proof that kids are getting it
Not all kids get it. But some do. And I offer this as proof that some do. This piece was written by an amazing younger guy named Garrett. He’s a few years into college at Auburn and is doing great things. In summer of ’09, I led my first group to Tegucigalpa Honduras for a 2 week mission trip. Each night we had “devotionals”–some vibrant singing followed by a message from a courageous volunteer. One night, Garrett was that Spirit-prompted volunteer. He had decided to spend his summer in Honduras as an intern with Mark and Lori Connell, leading mission groups and building houses and playing with kids. His energy seemed limitless; his heart was overflowing. And below is what he dropped that night.
It stirred me to the core. It flipped everything inadequate that I was feeling about “ministry” up-side down. It was a slap in the face that kids are getting it. They are listening. They are watching. They are understanding, knowing, and living it. The gospel is being translated to new generations. By the power of the Spirit. In spite of me.
By “gospel” I don’t refer to a watered down individualized story-less cognitive belief system based on sterile metaphysics void of context that has no political implications. By gospel, I mean a radically good, true, and beautiful message that you cannot help but believe is real, that you cannot help but be made new, that you cannot help but live in an altogether reconfigured way. It is a violent earthquake that knocks all powers off their thrones and fundamentally alters the foundations of a culture, and generates tremors in even far away places. And it is a gentle whisper of the goodest good and truest truth in so ordinary of terms that it just might slip past your consciousness if you’re not paying attention.
This is gospel. And Garrett translated it into “Hondureno” that night, and broke it down for us. It went something like this.
Honduran Jesus
What if Jesus were here in Tegucigalpa today?
Imagine the country of Honduras. Just pretend you’re on Google Earth and you zoomed in on it. Notice all of the jagged mountains and rugged terrain. And the rivers winding through the valleys.
Now imagine a small village out in the country. Not the bustling metropolis of Tegucigalpa, but a lonely, insignificant little colony with little shacks strewn across the steep slope that lines the edge of a valley.Nobody spectacular has ever come out of this village. No awesome soccer players, no successful businessmen, no popular politicians. Just a bunch of ordinary people, even less than ordinary, generation after generation.
Now in one house, a young boy can be heard learning the family trade, carpentry. The whole house smells like freshly cut wood and he is covered from head to toe in sawdust and his hands are sticky from sap. The boy’s name is Jesus (pronounced Hey-Seuss). Jesus, I don’t know, Martinez. The noise coming from the house is deafening as his father, Jose, teaches Jesus how to use a chainsaw.
Everything about the boy is quite average. He’s not particularly good-looking and at futbol, he’s average at best. But there IS one thing that sets him apart. Something that makes him different than any person to ever step foot in Honduras, or the world for that matter….
He knows God. Personally. He just seems to have an internal radar that senses God’s presence. Jesus talks to God like he is his best friend, but also like his Father. Somehow, God’s natures and his nature are EXACTLY the same.
As he becomes older, he realizes the incredible and divine gifts he has, and he becomes conflicted. He can’t help but wonder if he could use his abnormal abilities to gain political power and fame. An earthly kingdom. But he swiftly shoots down these temptations by relying on the truth of God’s word that he had heeded in his heart.
After he moved past Satan’s test, he began to see things in his community that bothered him. Deep down, to the point that he feels compelled to change them. Jesus sees the corruption of the way things have been done around his town. He has a keen eye that enables him to see the way things could be. If only people would understand and follow two simple principles:
1. Love the lord with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.
2. And to love your neighbor as yourself.Heaven could be brought to Earth. And anyone who earnestly seeks can enjoy the peace of a relationship with their Almighty Creator.
But this profound message of love, hope, and peace is a shock to many. Its good news to some, but to others it threatens everything they have based their life upon. And to embrace this message and follow this man would mean abandoning their old foundations and losing their high and mighty standing in Honduran society along with their fortune and wealth.
And so starts The Revolution. Despite heavy opposition by the government, Jesus marches on to Teguc with his growing multitude of believing followers. There he encounters countless cases of poverty and greed and injustice. He boldly calls out the perpetrators of such atrocities and swiftly comes to the aid of those who simply ask for his help.
The hungry beg for food, he tides them over with a meal. Jesus truly knows their hunger because he disciplined himself to fast for 40 straight days.
The homeless ask for shelter, he helps put roofs over their heads to protect from the torrential rain.
At the hospital, he finds children without parents and not only spends precious time with them, he lays his hands on them and comforts them with his touch. And when the sick ask for medicine, he meets their need.At the dump, Jesus touches the untouchables and offers them hope of a life beyond the physical realm. He even walks down to the hotel district in Teguc and eats dinner with the prostitutes. When people stop to harass them, he stands up for their dignity because he sees the image of God in them. Jesus even sees the image of God in the little boys who sniff glue at the Texaco station, some of the lowliest people in the city.
And after a good day’s work, Jesus gathers his closest amigos and has an all night FIESTA! That’s right, in the midst of all this hard work, he still finds time to celebrate and sing songs, and joke around, and talk soccer. Everything he’s a part of is just…good.
Some people find Jesus’ message to be too radical, and they go back to their normal, run of the mill lifestyles, not willing to make the sacrifice that Jesus demands. Those who are still following Jesus around the streets of Teguc do not fully understand the meaning of everything he is doing or his “kingdom of Heaven.” But they know that whatever is happening is good. And whatever is good is true. And they continue to pursue truth and be a part of good wherever they go. Even after his mortal body is no more, his spirit is resurrected in those who believe and trust in him.
Garrett Fox
(All rights reserved)
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emergent village blog- daily office lectionary texts
- January 28: January 28, 2012
