Ne'er a day goes by that I do not praise Paste Magazine. This article, entitled The Maddening Protagonist, was included in the latest issue (#19). In it, Barry Hannah, a southern author, shares his thoughts on the the biblical account of Jesus Christ:
Still the best-selling book in the world, the Christian Holy
Bible sits unread and dusty on the shelf of staggering millions of professing
believers.
Thousands of pastors have memorized the work and
pontificated on it without an honest reading. You’d hear more honest confusion
and less braying rhetoric from the pulpits if the Bible were actually
confronted even by Christian-leaning ministers. You’d get fewer knee-jerk liars
from the so-called-Christian Right if they could or would read their own New
Testaments. The absence of many millions of sincere Christians and
near-Christians from church is less a matter of apostasy than disgust. ...
...I was raised Baptist, among those whose interpretation of
the Bible led them to decry the cult of Mary as intercessor to Christ, to decry
those Roman Catholics who built their increasingly heavy, rich and gorgeous
church around her. I now find myself drawn to Mary as the being who stands for
us all.
Mary provides bewilderment and also faithful attendance to
her son through the crucifixion, an excruciation beyond belief for a mother.
She remained on Golgotha after the faithless males fled.
Hers is a journey through the Passion never to be forgotten. She was a follower
of the tiger and the lamb, chided and deserted by her son, whose bigger deeds
must’ve remained confusing until his fulfillment.
But at the center of all my faith, as at the center of the
sadly unvisited Good Book, is a man who also forgives our wretchedness. He was
not always strong himself. In the garden of Gethsemane he asked his father
to let this cup, the crucifixion, be passed from him. His stumbling under the
cross up the Via Dolorosa reminds me always of our own stumbling and crawling,
over a mighty rough pathway of words left to us by long-dead writers, toward
the good mountain of our deliverance. (read more...)
Hannah talks of Beckett and Blake, Milton and Johnny Cash as he weaves his confession of faith across chasms of paradoxes and frustrations. It is an interesting and thought provoking read; not the sort of thing that one will usually see in a music magazine.
Brandi Carlile played the Varsity Theatre this weekend. Two sold out shows, of which I got to see the second.
From left to right: (back row): Amber and Kevin, Kris, Colin, me, Laura and Jesse. (front row): Anna, Julie and Audrey. Laura's sister Lizzie took the photo. 