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What Song does a Sermon make?

A prophet is the one who, when everyone else despairs, hopes. And when everyone else hopes, he despairs. You'll ask me why. It's because he has mastered the Great Secret: that the Wheel turns. Nikos Kazantzakis, the Last Temptation of Christ

My incredibly smart and fabulous friend Anna made a playlist for part of her final project on the prophet Jeremiah.  I'll have to post her playlist later, as I can't remember what is on it.  Belle & Sebastian, Damien Rice, just to name a couple.  As I sat reading Jeremiah this week, I realized why he is dubbed th "weeping prophet;" it's because he makes you want to cry.

As I started out, I thought the best musical and lyrical accoutrement was Elliot Smith. 

He definitely understands the anguish of the prophet, but what of the faith?  What of the hope? 

Jeremiah 20:7-13 is thought to be the most blasphemous complaint in all of scripture.  The prophet complains that God not only enticed but seduced him; that God didn't only overpower him, but, within the words of the text, "raped him."  How does one begin to convey that image of God?

The prophet teaches us about the nature of life in God, within the life of faith.  It's not roses and sunshine.  It's not the daily lottery or mountain-top experiences.  Sometimes, and more often than not, our lives in God lead us to the absurd, defy rationality and call us do things we would rather not do.  In Jeremiah's case, tell Israel, his beloved, God's beloved, that they were headed towards death.  From Abraham Heschel:

This, indeed, was the roost of his anguish[:] Those whom he loved he was called upon to condemn.  When the catastrophe came, and the enemy mercilessly killed men, women, and children, the prophet must have discovered that the agony was greater than the heart could feel, that his grief was more than his soul could weep for.

The prophet's complaints against God were grounded in trust and faith.  Blasphemous as they were, they were honest and they were real and they were accepted by God, the same God who had formed Jeremiah in the womb, the same God who knew Jeremiah since before he was born, this God accepted Jeremiah's complaint.  Jeremiah trusted this, just as Jeremiah trusted that God would be the one to deliver Israel from  their sins and mistrust.  Jeremiah ends his complaint in praise:

Sing to the Lord; praise the Lord!  For he has delivered the life of the needy from the hand of evildoers.

This week for me has brought more bad news than good.  A diagnosis of Congestive Heart Failure for my Mom, the news of suicide of one of my co-learners at the seminary, my nieces still-troubling health and constant seizures, the heart-breaking and untimely death of Mike, my sister-in-law's dearest cousin, who had fought with such courage against the Leukemia that overcame him today.  Life is fragile and there is no safeguard against that. 

I went to the Brandi Carlile concert on Wednesday night.  Per usual, yet for perhaps the last time on tour, Brandi finished the show with the Leonard Cohen classic "Hallelujah."  Jeff Buckley, of course, made this song great with his arrangement of vocals and music.  Everyone now seems to cover the Buckley version of the Cohen standard.  Anyway, as she sang words I've heard so many times, one simple lyric struck me as Jeremiah's confession:

Love is not a victory march,
it's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah.

That's the song of Jeremiah and that's the song of our hearts from time to time, hopefully not too often, but it's so true.  To be faithful does not mean to live your best life now or to live always with a purpose in front of you.  To be faithful means that, when the shit hits the fan, so to speak, that the words that escape from your lips, the only words that you can lift up is hallelujah, however cold, however broken, Hallelujah.

On Marriage :: Kahlil Gibran

Jan Reiner, who was present at the engagement along with her husband Bob, sent this poem to me.  I like it enough to keep it and to pass it on to you.  Thanks Jan. 

I can't wait to marry Colin!
______________________________________________________________________________

On Marriage

You were born together, and together you shall be forevermore.
You shall be together when the white wings of death scatter your days.
Ay, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God.
But let there be spaces in your togetherness,
And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.

Love one another, but make not a bond of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup.
Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf
Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,
Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.

Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping.
For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.
And stand together yet not too near together:
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.

ah, some day I'll understand.

some people ride the wave of generosity
some people ride the wave of mediocrity
me, I ride the wave of never gonna drown
oh, just foolin' around

Devendra Banhart
Some People Ride the Wave
album: Cripple Crow

a poem from America's Young Theologian

My friend Dan posted this excellent poem titled When On Easter the Sun Doesn't Shine.
An excerpt:

And so Jesus sat unseeing, unseen
in the black at dawn
A rolling stone anxiously at rest
waiting for the darkness, the stone, to be withdrawn

Celebration to be sure is the day's mood
But when on Easter the sun doesn't shine,
Jesus recalls the Light sitting in
darkness and knows they intertwine

stand up to the karaoke dictatorship

I couldn't help myself.  I bought the Gogol Bordello album Gypsy Punks.  I can't help myself.  I love it.  It is not just the notion of Ukrainian Gypsy Punk, the way the phrase rolls off the tongue, the images it conjures, the looks one gets while driving down Lake Street listening to Immigrant Punk...it's that it is fantastic music, beautifully jarring one to subversive inaction with its pure dance beats.  Oh, and where else do you hear Russian references mixed with Spanish, well, save for Cuba circa 1963? 60 por minuto es mi reputacion y no te estoy hablando de revolucion hace mucho tiempo q ya no te decian basta de injustia, muerte y policia.

The Pitchfork review says this about Eugene Hutz, frontman for Gogol Bordello and Alex from Everything is Illuminated: "Hutz is pure sleaze, a long tongue down your mama's ear."

60 Revolutions (per minute):

I'm gathering new generation
That's gonna stand up to it
To this karaoke dictatorship
Where posers and models with guitars
Boogie to the shit for beats

Recommended Tracks:

• Start Wearing Purple
• Dogs Were Barking
• Illumination
• Immigrant Punk
• 60 Revolutions
• Undestructable
• Mishto!

song of the day:

Iron & Wine: Vigilante
Live Sessions (iTunes)

O I just come from the land of the sun
From a war that must be won in the name of truth
With our soldiers so brave, your freedom we will save
With our rifles and grenades and some help from God

I want to see my family
my wife and child waiting for me
got to go home, I've been so alone you see

You just can't believe the joy I did receive
When I finally got my leave and I was going home!
Oh I flew through the sky my convictions could not lie
For my country I would die and I will see it soon

I want to see my family
my wife and child waiting for me
got to go home, I've been so alone you see

When I walked through the door my wife she laid upon the floor
And with tears her eyes did soar I did not know why
Then I looked into her hand and I saw the telegram
Said I was a brave brave man, but that I was dead

I want to see my family
my wife and child waiting for me
got to go home, I've been so alone you see

just you and I, my dear

when all the world turns into hospitals and jails
I can always count on your love to be my bed

Artist: Mason Jennings
Song: Hospitals and Jails
Album: Simple Life

Rider or Steed

Friedrich, I understand your point about God,
As you meant it, you are, of course, correct,
but not otherwise.

this is a snippet from a poem by my friend Dan Morehead.  Read the rest here.

je suis vivant. non, tu es mort.

Maurice Blanchot writes the prose piece L'instant de ma mort, or, The Instant of My Death, concerning "a moment when a young man is brought before a firing squad during World War II and then suddenly finds himself released from his death. ... The accident of near death becomes, in the instant the man is released, the accident of a life he no longer possesses." [1]

There remained, however, at the moment when the shooting was no longer to come, the feeling of lightness that I would not know how to translate: freed from life? the infinite opening up?  Neither happiness, nor unhappiness.  Nor the absence of fear and perhaps already the step beyond.  I know, I imagine that this unanalyzable feeling changed what there remained for him of existence.  As if death outside him could only henceforth collide with the death in him.  "I am alive.  No, you are dead."

I don't know if I just find this interesting and I am honestly too tired and too overwhelmed with the constraints of life today to properly think about this brief text.  Galatians 2:20-21 comes to mind.

[1] so says the back cover of the text In the Instant of My Death, Maurice Blanchot, Demeure: Fiction and Testimony, Jacques Derrida, Stanford University Press (ISBN 0-8047-3326-0), 2000.

perches and poems

Read this poem , titled I Know Why Birds Like a Perch, by Dan Morehead, my friend and good music buddy that I met in Freiburg.  He is also a young american theologian.