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Arcade Fire. The Suburbs

I read an article in the NY Times some years back that when the makers of Sesame Street released Seasons 1 and 2, they had to attach a warning label that it is not suitable for young audiences.

Virginia Heffernan writes, “The masonry on the dingy brownstone at 123 Sesame Street, where the closeted Ernie and Bert shared a dismal basement apartment, was deteriorating. Cookie Monster was on a fast track to diabetes. Oscar’s depression was untreated. Prozacky Elmo didn’t exist.” (“Sweeping the Clouds Away”, NY Times November 18^th, 2007)

“The Suburbs,” the newest album from the Montreal—via Haïti and Houston—band Arcade Fire, is brought to you by the letter M. The album is full of alliterations surrounding the letter M. They seem to come in three-syllable units: Modern Man, Millionaire, Month of May, Mountains beyond Mountains.

We've lost our innocence. We've lost our meaning. The Arcade Fire has its finger on the pulse of this quickly fleeting and fading heart of people in the First World West.

"This place has changed so much since I was a little child. Pray to God I won't live to see the death of everything that's wild." –City with No Children

I still remember an ad campaign for the General Motors Company. They were hawking a newer, bigger and better version of the Suburban Futility Vehicle, the Yukon Denali, evoking images of nature and wildness. Their tagline: "It's not more than you need, just more than you're used to." Not too long after GMC declared itself bankrupt.

The bubble burst.

"When we watched the markets crashed, the promises we made were torn." –Half Light II (No Celebration).

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"Vanity of Vanities. All is Vanity; a chasing after the wind." –Ecclesiastes 1

Qoheleth, the Teacher and writer of Ecclesiastes wrote these words well over 2,000 years ago. They still ring true. The Hebrew word he uses over and over again is hevel–translated smoke, vapor, steam, cloud–something that doesn't last; something you can't hold onto. Another way to translate it today in this market is bubble. The dot-com bubble, the housing bubble, and now the oil bubble. Vanity of Vanities, everything is a bubble and bubbles always burst! There is nothing to hold on to anymore, nothing that will last.

“Hope that something pure can last.” –We Used to Wait

Arcade Fire redefines hevel in this album as sprawl, the house of hubris built by those who bought the lie that "it's not more than you need, just more than you're used to." The sprawl has been brought to us by cheap oil prices allowing for single drivers in massive vehicles on 4 lane hi-ways.

“First they built the road, then they built the town. That’s why we’re still driving around and around and all we see are kids in buses longing to be free.” –Wasted Hours

Sprawl is perhaps one of many symptoms pointing to a larger illness in society today. We feed chickens so much food that they cannot stand up. Cows are stacked upon cows in order to supply our demand. Most of the food in our supermarkets is made with genetically modified organisms. Is anything real anymore?

“Strange the new half-light can make a place new, you can’t recognize me and I can’t recognize you. We run through these streets that we know so well, and the houses hide so much. But in the half-light none of us can tell they hide the ocean in a shell. Our heads are just houses, without enough windows. You say you hear human voices but they’re only echoes.” –Half Light I

Even though the world is getting smaller, more and more people are separated. Garages are attached to houses now so that you don’t have to talk to or see your neighbors. Let us not forget that one of the chief ways that we talk about sin is in language of separation: from God, from each other, from the world.

“All the kids have always known that the emperor wears no clothes but they bow down to him anyway ‘cause it’s better than being alone.” –Ready to Start

We’ve bought into the fake empire and now bow down to the wrong idol so as not to be alone.

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To make the album, Arcade Fire laid down tracks on a 24-Track Tape, pressed it onto vinyl and then recorded it to a digital location where from they burned cds and made a "Deluxe Digital Package" for instant download. It is humorous that out of that whole process the word "package", connoting something tangible that you can hold in your hands, describes the digital life of the album.

But the album is something you can hold in your hands. It carries meat and substance. To me it takes their seminal song "Wake Up" (Funeral, 2004), and pitches a tent with its themes and meaning: Wake Up! Life is slipping through your fingers; "listen, are you breathing just a little and calling it life?" (Mary Oliver). Rococo, the 4th track, is the first real and noticeable echo to "Wake Up."

"They will eat right out of your hand, using great big words that they don’t understand they’re singing rococo rococo rococo rococo….They seem wild but they are so tame"        –Rococo

Even its music resonates–though in a muter way–there is a graspable lift within the polysyllabic assonance and consonance of the songs title: rococo rococo rococo rococo ro-coco, RO-CO-CO! What does it mean? I don't know, but I can feel it when I listen to it. And I like it, even if it is a destruction of what we’ve built up.

“They build it up just to burn it back down.” –Rococo

Musically, this album is tops. The devastating string arrangements by Owen Pallett on Half Light I and its response in Half Light II are compelling. The album’s other part one and part two duo, titled Sprawl, offers one of the other points of notice. Régine’s powerful yet not forceful voice.

Régine Chassagne sings with great vitality against the threat of suburban settling (and some would say borrowing from Blondie’s Heart of Glass).

“If the world’s so small, that we can never get away from the sprawl. Living in the sprawl, dead shopping malls rise like mountains beyond mountains and there’s no end in sight, I need the darkness someone please cut the lights.” –Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)

The lyrics, along with Régine’s haunting voice, are an echo in the tradition of laments. It should be noted that the sub-title of the song, Mountains Beyond Mountains, is also title of a book about Paul Farmer, a doctor who provided medical care to people who could not afford it, most notably in Haiti, Régine’s home country (see Haiti from Funeral).

My favorite line:

“They heard me singing and they told me to stop. Quit these pretentious things and just punch the clock.” –Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)

No. Thank you. As Wendell Berry writes, “do something that doesn’t compute” (Mad Farmer Liberation Front).

Arcade Fire attempted and succeeded in building something tangible, something we can hold in our hands: a full album with substance and death as well as just plain enjoyable music. Is it as good as Funeral or as deep as Neon Bible? Not in the same way, but it makes its own way and one worth taking. It is an aural and physical reminder that life lies beyond what we possess, what possesses us and its always a good time to just waste time. As Annie Dillard says, “Don’t save and afternoon, spend it. You can’t take it with you. Go into the gaps.”

Lastly, this is an album to exiles from the location of exile. Walter Brueggemann noted that people of faith are exiles in this world in Cadences of Home. None of us is home and we all feel it.

“The last defender of the sprawl said, “well where do you kids live?” Well sir, if you only knew what the answer is worth, I’ve been searching every corner of the earth.”

–Sprawl I (Flatland)

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“People on “Sesame Street” had limited possibilities and fixed identities, and (the best part) you weren’t expected to change much. The harshness of existence was a given, and no one was proposing that numbers and letters would lead you “out” of your inner city to Elysian suburbs. Instead, “Sesame Street” suggested that learning might merely make our days more bearable, more interesting, funnier. It encouraged us, above all, to be nice to our neighbors and to cultivate the safer pleasures that take the edge off — taking baths, eating cookies, reading. Don’t tell the kids.”

Common :: Love Is

“Dang it Dr. Lose, I just don’t get it!” I cry to myself after yet another Middler preaching class in which the class prepared amazing yet sophomoric focus statements (thesis statements that note the intention of the sermon, what it is about) and incredibly lacking function statements (statements of what we as preachers hope to achieve in our hearers,[1] the effect). 

Though it is a frustrating exercise, the understanding of focus and function are integral to preaching. In our main preaching text, The Witness of Preaching, Thomas Long notes that separating one from the other is so meticulous a task that it requires tweezers. Unfortunately my greatest exposure with using tweezers comes from playing and failing at the game Operation. Every time I try to remove “Writer’s Cramp” or “Water on the Knee” the same obnoxious buzzing rings out which tells me, “You’ve failed yet again, Falkman!” It is a difficult but ultimately important task. 

Rapper Lonnie Rashid Lynn, Jr, better known as Common, evokes in his songs the meticulous movement from focus to function. I first heard Common on 89.9 about the same time I read this about him and the state of rap in the March issue of Paste Magazine: 

“…Rap has undergone a violent sea-change during the last 10 years. The mainstream had space for politically voluble hip-hop in the early ’90s…. In the aughties,[2] rap remains socially charged, but its conscience has receded behind an iron arras[3] of nihilism, conspicuous consumption, misogyny and violence. Yet Common, an everyman rapping about love, spirituality, fidelity and social justice, has managed to flourish in the heyday of superhuman crime rap.”[4]

Common has a valuable lesson for ministers of the word. The words we use are to have an impact in the lives of the hearer. Words must not find their telos in themselves, but in the effect they achieve in the hearer. According to Common, words that seek their own end in the current moment quickly pass away and lose their sense of meaning and power. 

In the song “Love Is” off of Common’s 2005 album “Be,” I hear a song that makes the connection between focus and function, moving beyond what love is to what love does. It also offers as much hip-hope as he does hip-hop (sorry for the pun, it is not my own). The chorus, which repeats throughout, binds the song together and bids the hearer to love: 

How beautiful love can be
On the streets love is hard to see
It’s a place I’ve got to be
Lovin’ you is lovin’ me.

 I’m thinking of this song in terms of what it is we will preach in the coming years. I’m thinking of this song and it’s talk of love and am reminded of Susan Palo Cherwein, a hymn writer and poet, who has a list of words that she doesn’t let herself use too often—if ever. These are words that are too commonplace or words that have lost their meaning and effect. One such word is ‘love.’  

Love is a good word. How has it lost its meaning? How has it become a word that has found its telos in itself, devoid of meaning and power? In My Fair Lady, Eliza Doolittle would assert that love has lost its power because it has lost its action. She sings an important lesson:

“Words, words, words, I’m so sick of words! I get words all day through first from him now from you. Is that all you blighters can do? Don’t talk of stars burning above, if you’re in love show me! Tell me no dreams filled with desire, if your heart is on fires, show me! … Don’t talk of love lasting through time make me no undying vow, show me now! Sing me no song, read me no rhyme, don’t waste my time, show me!”

By Eliza Doolittle and for the sake of the people in our congregations, we are being urged not only to use words which connect to our minds but also to use our words in such a way as to create or achieve a reality of which we speak. After all, you can’t interpret words apart from actions just as you cannot separate faith and good works or a flame from its heat.

Love is more than a word. Love is more than admiration of a beautiful thing. Love is a guts out, irrational giving of yourself for another. It is hard to see not only because it doesn’t happen too often, but also when it does happen, it generally includes sacrifices that one person makes for another. However we dress it up, there is a death there.

But amidst that death is exactly where we experience life. Life is ordered by love, in our families and congregations, with our friends and peers and under God’s care, we are called to love both attractive and unattractive. Human love is attracted to the attractive, but God’s love is attracted to the unattractive, for the love of God does not find but creates that which is pleasing to it.[5] God creates that which is pleasing to him and calls preachers, teachers and all Christians to hear it. It is not our hand that achieves this but the word we speak and hear. It is God’s word and it will not return to him empty (Isa 55).

We cannot predict what our word will create or the places to which it will bring us, but we are called to hear it, to preach it and yes even believe it to be true in and for our lives. We walk by faith and not sight. While we see love now, we often have to hold it in faith and hope. Love is hard to see, but it is a place we’ve got to be.

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[1] I say hearers here, but I don’t limit hearing to a function of the ears. Many in our church hear with their ears and some with their touch.

[2] Aughties: The decade from 2000 to 2009. A play on the phrase "the eighties" and the word aught, meaning "zero".

[3] Arras: a tapestry of Flemish origin used especially for wall hangings and curtains; a wall hanging or screen of tapestry.

[4] Brian Howe, Paste Magazine, Issue 29, March 2007)

[5] Martin Luther, Heidelberg Disputation XVIII.

New Order :: Love Vigilantes

Formed in the ashes of Joy Division, New Order was a popular English Rock band in the 1980s. Both bands were known for post-punk, synthesized dance music; they have been influential in today’s alternative and dance genres of music. I came to New Order through the cover “Vigilante” by Iron & Wine. Iron & Wine is the name of the Sub Pop artist Sam Beam. Beam sings Southern roots music and does not seem like a natural choice to cover a New Order song, but Beam’s record of translating synthetic music into visceral, earthy tunes is near perfect. In a musically cyclical fashion and with beautifully whispered vocals, Beam retells a common story:

Oh I’ve 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
I’ve 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 hide
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
I’ve 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 were sore I did not know why
Then I looked into her hand and I saw the telegram
That 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
I’ve got to go home, I’ve been so alone you see.

New Order and Beam provide an interesting and oft overlooked aspect to the reach of war: the trauma of family life. The issue at stake isn’t a soldier’s vocation, the lyrics do not lend to conscientious objection. The issue at stake isn’t the tendency to justify wars in the name of God, though the lyrics facetiously do. The issue at stake is the family. 

What God has joined together, let no one separate (MT 19:6b). 

Beyers Naudé, an Afrikaner Pastor in South Africa in the 1940s and ‘50s, was a man who, by all conventions, should have eschewed resistance to Apartheid. After all, Naudé was a member of the Broederbond, the secret league of Afrikaner brothers that sought to forever codify the reaches of Apartheid: white supremacy at the cost of black subjugation. Naudé could rested in the bivouac of Apartheid and the power of his own National Party. However, Naudé was faced with a metanoia.

Naudé witnessed the destruction of black families under the South African migrant labor system: Men were sent off to work in the mine, laboring over diamonds they would never own, hundreds of miles from their families, living in dire conditions; it was common for men to fulfill their intimate needs in the arms of strangers. Women were sent to work in the homes of the whites, often becoming the mothers of other children; children were often left with extended family members and sometimes left to fend for themselves. Naudé’s metanoia or conversion culminated in the Sharpeville Massacre, whose anniversary comes next week. On March 21^st, 1960 an act of civil action met governmental over-reaction when people organized to burn their pass books, which had to contain stamps providing official proof that allowed a black to be in one town or another. Basically, blacks had to carry a passport to travel around in their own country. A shot was fired and what was a peaceful act of civil disobedience quickly became a massacre. When the smoke cleared, 69 people had been shot and killed, mostly from the back and mostly from the side; most of the protestors were running away from the guns that shot them down. This event shook Naudé; he could no longer accept Apartheid. Because of the detriment to life, especially at the familial level, resistance was necessary.

Resistance is an unfortunate yet necessary aspect of life East of Eden. How can it not be? Sin abounds, evil is ever-present and there must be an avenue of resistance. To be precise, resistance comprises of many levels—violent though preferably non-violent—and serves the tele of reconciliation and peace.

What of the inverse? What of ceasing resistance in order to preserve family life? At what point, though, does resistance stop being a life-giving and chaos-ordering and begin to be life-taking and chaos-making?  

Almost 50 years later, we are faced with the fourth anniversary of the war in Iraq. In a war that was started in order to protect our families and save families in Iraq, families are being torn apart. Many troops are on their second or third tour of duty, separated from their families, injured in the line of duty and too often killed in the line of duty. The effects are also felt at home:

“Since my husband has been gone, I have potty-trained two kids, my oldest started preschool, a kid learned to walk and talk, plus the baby is not sleeping that well,” said Lori Jorgenson, 30, whose husband, a captain in the Minnesota National Guard, has been deployed since November 2005 and recently had his tour extended another four months. “I am very burnt out.”

…At home, spouses say, they try to keep their young children connected to their deployed parents…. She buys them surprise gifts from their father, like boxes of Fruity Pebbles or camouflage sheets. Meanwhile, she thinks, “Will I ever get through bath time and get them to be without screaming and losing my patience?”[1]

Sadly, we can’t even empathetically scratch the surface of the plight of the Iraqi families, who have, to a much larger extent at least numerically, have been torn asunder or separated. All we have is a number: about 650,000 (see The Lancet report).

What necessitated South African resistance to Apartheid? What necessitates our reevaluation of the current war in Iraq? Its treatment of the family structure that so binds and propels society forward. What God has joined, let no one separate.

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[1] Lizette Alvarez, “Long Iraq Tours Can Make Home a Trying Front,” NY Times, February 23, 2007.

Death Cab for Cutie :: I Will Follow You Into the Dark

Benjamin Gibbard, lead-singer and primary song-writer for the indie-rock turned Atlantic recording artists Death Cab for Cutie is interested in the end of things. Usually for Mr. Gibbard this has meant the end of relationships; love gone awry with all of its accompanying lament, despair and self-loathing. With their 2005 release Plans, however, Mr. Gibbard sings, in a sense, of love gone right; the love with which you spend the rest of your life. But, in Death Cab for Cutie fashion, the end remains and so Plans is wrought with “images of love being [a] prelude to death.” Here I could quote song number 14 off of the Magnetic Fields first of three volumes of their epic ode to love. I could, but I’d like to contend that this song is neither depressing nor nihilistic.  

My friend Terri loves this song. I’ve had the opportunity to work with Terri on several occasions with fair trade fairs and awareness. Terri works for Lutheran World Relief. Terri and her husband Bob live in Sandgren Hall where their kids Aidan and Amanda pretty much run the kid social scene. Bob, an M.Div graduate of 2006 was close to receiving a call when the darkness came. Bob became gravely sick after taking Augmentin, a simple antibiotic prescribed to quell Bob’s bronchitis. Immediately Bob became sick and wasn’t getting any better. Bob became so sick that he had to be rushed to the hospital; he’s been back there 5 times.  Terri writes, “During one of Bob’s hospitalizations, I heard one doctor explain to his medical students who were studying Bob…that Augmentin is a very good drug that helps a lot of people. That only one in 5 or 10 million…are destined to have a severe allergic reaction like Bob’s. I guess the pharmaceutical companies didn’t realize that my Husband is one in a zillion.”

Love of mine, someday you will die
But I’ll be close behind,
I’ll follow you into the dark…

Ash Wednesday, a day where people actually parade into church to be reminded of their sin and death is a week away. We flock to churches and have ashes imposed onto our foreheads; we impose, we establish or force the awareness of our own death, our own frailty upon us in such a way that our death and frailty stare back at us when we look into the mirror. The season of Lent is a humbling practice guided by repentance and awareness of the poor among us, often experienced as a discipline or journey that culminates in the three days—or Triduum—of Easter.

No flashing lights,
Nor tunnels to gates of white
Just our hands clasped so tight
Waiting for a hint of a spark… 

What is it, after all, that we are waiting for? We are, in Heidegger’s terms, beings towards death, we are in one way or another on a journey. We are also beings who already have death behind us. Even more so, we do not wait for our syntersis, our spark to ignite; we are beings into darkness. And yet, though spark-less we are not without light, for Christ is in the darkness of death and corporeal fallibility. We are, in Christ’s own choosing, beings towards Christ, beings in Christ, called to love and to one another in and into the dark. 

In Catholic School As vicious as Roman rule
I got my knuckles bruised
By a lady in black
I held my tongue as she told me, “Son,
Fear is the heart of love.”
So I never went back

Like the nun in the song (the knuckle bruising lady in black), we talk about the correlation of fear and love; Luther writes, “We are to fear, love and trust in God above all things.” When fear is involved, it seems much easier to flee–from God, from one another, from ourselves. To fear and love seems paradoxical and yet that is what we are commanded to do. Rather than fearing and fleeing, we are called to fear and cling to God and come to God as we would come to our fathers or mothers. Love leads us into fearful events and experiences and gives us the strength to remain; love is the end of fear: “Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness on the day of judgment, because as Christ is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear” (1 John 4:17-18a). We do not live in fear, but in the love of Christ. Our death, our judgment is already behind us. What’s left for us now that Christ has accomplished everything for us? Well, life! 

You and me
Have seen everything to see
From to Bangkok to  CalgaryAnd the souls of your shoes
Are all worn down
The time for sleep is now
It’s nothing to cry about
Cause we’ll hold each other soon
In the blackest of rooms

 If heaven and hell decide
That they both are satisfied
Illuminate the “Nos” on their vacancy sign
If there’s no one beside you when your soul embarks
Then I’ll follow you into the dark

Love isn’t just the stuff of Hallmark cards and chocolate, flowers and fine gifts, romantic comedies and winning one-liners. Love is a digging in, a pouring out, a giving of yourself to another, to your family, to your neighbor. Love is in sickness and in health: Gibbard asks, “Do you want to be with somebody that you’re going to have to sit with in a hospital waiting room, not sure if they’re going to live or die?” (SPIN Magazine, September 2005, 58).

This is perhaps too much for a spring chicken such as myself to contemplate, but I see it being played out presently by the Speirs; they are perhaps my guiding image of love this Valentine’s season. Bob writes:

“My illness has been an unbelievable experience all the way around. From despair, depression, hopelessness, to reflection. The greatest gift of all of this during this time has been my wife, who I have grown attached to and totally love and respect way beyond what I could even imagine. I thought we had a good relationship before, but I think this has just put me onto a different level of how two people can connect. And just have their lives enriched and blessed. And be certain that the hand of God was somehow involved in us meeting. I always knew that I loved my wife before, but maybe took that for granted on occasion. That's not a mistake that I'll ever make again.”

***Please note: There will be a benefit for the Speirs on Thursday, March 10 from 4:00 to 8:00 p.m. at Christ Lutheran by Capitol Hill; in church fashion, a spaghetti dinner with some international accoutrements. Please come and participate! Tickets are $10, but you can pay more if you’d like; see Margaret Obaga, Victoria Smith or Judy Hedman.

The Decemberists :: Sons and Daughters

I recall telling a preaching professor that I wanted to preach like Nina Simone sings. Simone has a style that is all her own: rich, visceral, classy, passionate and authentic. She can manipulate what she sings stirring even the coldest heart to life. I’ve added another singer par exemplar to my preaching paradigm: Colin Meloy and his traveling troupe of musical acrobats The Decemberists.

Named in part for the failed Russian Revolt of December 1825 and in whole for the melancholy that surrounds the month of December, The Decemberists are also known for their obscure and dark literary rock that, literally, rocks. Jaunting across the Rubicon from the independent label Kill Rock Stars to the major label Capitol with their 2006 release The Crane Wife, The Decemberists continue their dark story telling ways: “Winsomely balancing frivolity and gravity, the Decemberists assemble an oddball menagerie of the usual rogues and rascals, soldiers and criminals, lovers and baby butchers.”[1] The Decemberists love to tell stories, even ones that appear gruesome, and they tell the stories well. In the same way, we as preachers, teachers and Christians are to tell the story of Jesus, the joyous, the strange and yes, even the dark.

In the dark and waning days of the year, when things are bleakest, we, as a church, begin. We call it Advent, meaning arrival, start or beginning; in a word: new. Advent is often marked as a time of anticipation and preparation, of waiting and looking forward: we wait for Jesus and we look forward to celebrating Christmas. It is at Christmas that we hear the story of Jesus' nearness to all. And what is this story? Jesus, the son of God, eternally begotten from the Father, is born of a woman and placed in a manger, between an ox and an ass. Jesus was literally born into the feces of this world in an era of not peace but rather strife; the most infamous example of which is Herod’s Murder of the Innocents (Matthew 2).

Can we tell such a story without offense? If we do not tell the whole story, we usurp its meaning for us. Jesus came to a world that was not ready for him. There was no anticipation and no preparation; Jesus simply came.

But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children. And because you are children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, "Abba! Father!" So you are no longer a slave but a son or daughter, and if a son or daughter then also an heir, through God (Galatians 4).

What exactly did Jesus get himself into?

Jesus got himself into our narrative, our story, our joy, our darkness, pain and even our death; Jesus became the new story teller of our lives, bearing us up with the script of his life by taking our sin and death and giving us new life. Jesus has already come. Jesus is already with us, God, Emmanuel, has come and we live in him now. Much like the manger scene of the incarnation, this looks most interesting as we do not live in glory or power but in suffering and feces, between the ox and ass, until what we hold in faith becomes sight.

So what’s left for us? The story. It is this story that tells us that what we see at present in not all that we get in Christ Jesus. The news of war, genocide, political impropriety and famine that line our wastebaskets is not our telos. We live our lives as this story in our care for our neighbor and we tell the story, a story that breeds life amidst death, a story that is enmeshed in darkness but yet is full of hope.

The Decemberists, for all of their melancholy, do not neglect hope. The Crane Wife ends with the eager “Sons and Daughters,” which joyfully looks forward to a moment of arrival amidst its present darkness. When they played this song at their concert in November, we pumped our fists in the air in celebration for a time when no one would ever hear any bombs, when there will be no more weeping, a time when we will call a “calm harbor” home. It is itself the album’s denouement, its final resolution, its final hope; it is a song that we can join in as we wait in the hope of what has already come to us and what we proleptically wait for.

When we arrive sons and daughters
We’ll make our homes on the water
We’ll build our walls with aluminum
We’ll fill our mouths with cinnamon, now

These currents pull us cross the border
Steady your boats, arms to shoulder
Til tides all pull our hull aground
Making this calm harbor now home

Take up your arms sons and daughters
We will arise from the bunkers
By land, by sea, by dirigible
We’ll leave our tracks untraceable now 

When we arrive sons and daughters
We’ll make our homes on the water
We’ll build our walls with aluminum
We’ll fill our mouths with cinnamon, now

Hear all the bombs fade away
Hear all the bombs fade away

 

[1] Pitchfork Media Review, Stephen M. Deusner, 10-03-2006.

John Wayne Gacy, Jr.

Discussing: Solon the Athenian, CHCl₃, Heidelberg Disputation Thesis III, Romans 3, Pogo the Killer Clown, Floorboards, Preachers of Mercy, East of Eden, The State of Illinois, Matthew 5:18, Pretentious yet informative song titles, and John Wayne Gacy, Jr.

Sufjan (pronounced SOOF-yan) Stevens has chosen to accept an impossible mission: to write an album for each of the 50 states. Even with his most recent contribution Stevens still has a long way to go, as his 2005 album Come on, Feel the Illinoise, is only number two.

Stevens, a writer of literary fiction, uses the banjo, oboe and a sweeping falsetto to paint dense references into song. Many of the songs are historical (see: “The Black Hawk War, or, How to Demolish an Entire Civilization and Still Feel Good About Yourself in the Morning, or, We Apologize for the Inconvenience but You're Going to Have to Leave Now, or I Have Fought the Big Knives and Will Continue to Fight Them,” which of course is instrumental but whose title says all) and many of the songs use history as a jumping off point to speak about more universal topics (see: “Casimir Pulaski Day”). Stevens manages to allude to: Frank Lloyd Wright, Carl Sandburg, Helen Keller, Andrew Jackson, Mary Todd Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln, Stephen A. Douglas, The Pullman Strike of 1894, Superman, the Cubs, the Trail of Tears and even the infamous serial killer John Wayne Gacy, Jr. It is the track “John Wayne Gacy Jr.” that I wish to discuss here.

John Wayne Gacy was born and raised in Chicago. As the song tells it, Gacy’s father was a drinker, an abusive alcoholic who was relentlessly cruel to his son. Gacy related more to his mother, who, as the song suggests aloof, tended closely to his needs. Hitting his head on a swing set in his youth, Gacy would later suffer from blackouts. These blackouts would be blamed but never confirmed for Gacy’s unconventional behavior; a posthumous examination of Gacy’s brain revealed no abnormalities.

A seemingly upright citizen, Gacy was a business man, a hard worker and a member of the Democratic Party. Gacy even hosted block parties for which he would entertain the neighborhood youth and perform shows as Pogo the clown. It was as Pogo that Gacy lured young men and boys into his house where he employed chloroform (CHCl₃) to render his victims unconscious so that he could freely torture, molest and murder them. When the ink dried on his rap sheet, he had killed 33 people, 29 of which were found buried underneath his floorboards.

What compels Stevens to write such a song? The subject matter is dark and repulsive; Gacy is not cast in a new light. The only beauty of the song comes in its music, which is chilling. A haunting departure from the upbeat music that surrounds this song (see “Come on Feel the Illinoise!” and “Jacksonville”), its piano and finger-picked melodies are subdued by the ever-grounding bass line that will not let its listener escape the darkness that is sin. In the song, Gacy is neither pitied nor is he absolved, but rather understood to be similar to you and me.

Perhaps there is something to be said about a sense of unity in our identity as sinners. This past Sunday’s Epistle lesson (Romans 3:19-28) puts us all on the same level. Stevens bows to the universality of sin. In an article in Spin Magazine, Stevens said,

“People are always asking what made Gacy what he was, but we're all monsters. By nature, humans are deceptive and selfish and manipulative. I don't see that as any better [or worse] than killing someone. I don't have a prioritation [sic] of sin in my mind.”[1]

Coupled with last week’s lectionary was the celebration of the Reformation and its famed leader, Martin Luther--perhaps you’ve heard of him. Martin Luther, of course, would agree with Stevens. We are all sinners, we are all unable to justify ourselves. Justification does come by faith alone and is imparted as gift. What then are we to do? What then are we to say?

“If you are a preacher of mercy, do not preach an imaginary but the true mercy. If the mercy is true, you must therefore bear the imaginary sinners. Be a sinner, and let your sins be strong, but let your trust in Christ be stronger, and rejoice in Christ who is the victor over sin, death and the world. We will commit sins while we are here, for this life is not a place where justice resides.”[2]

So, are we to sin boldly and do what we wish? By no means! All baptized are to be preachers of mercy and therefore confessors of real sin. This, of course, is not a call to sin, but a call to confession. We know that neither a jot nor a tittle of the law will pass away until the law is accomplished (Matthew 5:18). We prosecute, incarcerate, and in the case of the people vs. Gacy, condemn. What is the final word for Gacy? I don’t know; I can offer speculation at best. Thanks be to God it is not for me to decide, for it is only Christ who can preach to the dead.

In John Steinbeck’s gripping retelling of Genesis in Chapter 34 of East of Eden, we read a tangential, existential poem:

“…Virtue and vice were warp and woof of our first consciousness, and they will be the fabric of our last, and this despite any changes we may impose on river and mountain, on economy and manners. There is no other story. A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well - or ill?...”[3]

Of course, Steinbeck is also retelling the human condition using Solon the Athenians’ admonition that we must judge our life by our death. Steinbeck employs the Hebrew timshel (תּמּשׁל) meaning “you will rule” to sweeten the bitterness of the questions that we inevitably ask at our end: Have I done good or evil? Does it make a difference?

Nevertheless, our best works merit nothing. And even more so: “Although the works of man always seem attractive and good, they are nevertheless likely to be mortal sins.”[4] All have sinned and fallen short. Along with Stevens we can confess this: “in my best behavior, I am really just like him/look beneath the floorboards for the secrets I have hid.” It is Jesus Christ alone who forgives sinners and merits righteousness:

“Do you think such an exalted Lamb paid merely a small price with a meager sacrifice for our sins? Pray hard for you are quite a sinner.”[5]

---

[1] Spin Magazine, September 2005.

[2] Let Your Sins Be Strong, A Letter from Luther to Melanchthon, 1 August 1521Letter no. 99, trans. Erika Bullmann Schriften.  (Also found in Luther's Works Volume 48).

[3] John Steinbeck, East of Eden, (London: Penguin Books, 2000), 503ff.

[4] Heidelberg Disputation III, LW 31:43.

[5] Let Your Sins Be Strong, A Letter from Luther to Melanchthon, Letter no. 99,

1 August 1521, trans. Erika Bullmann Schriften.

The Sweet Sound of Speculation

So, I'm writing and editing for our school newspaper The Concord.  In this our first copy of the academic year, I wrote a hopefully recurring piece: The Sweet Sound of Speculation.  I took a song, Love, Love, Love by the Mountain Goats (thanks, drm), and looked at its theological implications. 

Discussing: King Saul, Sonny Liston, Joseph, Raskolnikov, pious prostitutes, phantom punches, prolepsis, 1 Corinthians 13:12, tiger balm, faith, hope and love, love, love.

What is it about a song that carries us through a moment, through a movie, through a life? Why do couples have “their song,” one that conveys a memory, a meaning and a promise? And why does the rain in Spain stay mainly in the plains? I don’t know; I just know that I love music. I wake up in the morning with a song on my mind and it carries me through the day. Between classes and a busy work schedule music is a three-and-a-half minute repose that allows me to breathe, focus and abstract myself for just a moment before jumping back into the chaos. Music helps me to create order.

I find in music what I find difficult in class: the articulation of a thing. One can find sermons in songs, and not even Christian songs. One can find brief summaries on human sin and despair in songs, even in Christian songs. Songs, music and melody can help to convey our collective and individual experiences, theologies and heresies.    

As a brief introduction to this feature, I’d like to note that knowledge of the songs here discussed is not necessary. I believe that the theological outsights (not so much insight) can be understood without hearing the song. However, let this also be an introduction to some music you might just enjoy. I know I sure do.

The song I have selected for this issue is “Love, Love, Love” by The Mountain Goats. It is found on the 2005 release The Sunset Tree. The song examines the motivation of love, the work of love, and the promise of love: 

King Saul fell on his sword when it all went wrong
Joseph’s brothers sold him down the river for a song
And Sonny Liston rubbed some tiger balm onto his glove
Some things you do for money,
and some you do for love, love, love

We first see the outcome of actions that are not motivated by love. King Saul, fleeing from the wrath of God and afraid of David’s ascension to power, falls on his sword in a cave, eventually killing himself (1 Samuel 31:4). Joseph’s brothers hated him for the dreams they feared to be true, first conspiring to kill him, but later deciding to sell him to a passing cohort of Ishmaelites (Gen 37:5, 27) only later to fulfill Joseph’s dreams. Charles “Sonny” Liston cheated in both of his fights against Cassius Clay/Muhammad Ali. In their first fight in 1964 Liston rubbed tiger balm onto his glove blinding Clay; Liston would eventually pull up lame and end the fight. Second, in 1965, Liston feigned a knock out in the opening minutes of the match while Ali threw the infamous phantom punch, which may or may not have landed across Liston’s jaw.    

Raskolnikov felt sick, but he couldn’t say why
When he saw his face reflected in his victims twinkling eye
Some things you do for money, and some you do for fun
But the things you do for love
are gonna come back to you one by one. 

Next we see the trump of the power of love on those who would hope to transcend it. Robbing and murdering two women in Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, Raskolnikov hoped to escape any sort of judgment, as if he were above the law. Despite Raskolnikov’s attempt to ignore his sin, thus making it inapplicable, his guilt would not let him. Raskolnikov’s guilt drove him mad. It was the love of the pious prostitute Sofya whose love not only forced his confession, but also rehabilitated his life. He loses everything, but love does not lose him.

Love, love is gonna lead us by the hand
Into the white and soundless place
Now we see things as in a mirror dimly
Then we shall see each other face to face

Is love then what we search for; is our love redemptive? Indeed, love is what we are called to do, but love is also what we are looking forward to; love is what we are hoping for, but, “Now we see things as in a mirror dimly,” now we have love only in faith, only in hope, we do not yet see love face to face. Even so, “We shall see face to face.” This does not mean that we hold off on love, by no means! It means that what we see now, our generation’s malevolence, like those before, is not the ultimate epitome of love and it is not all that we get in Christ: “Faith, hope and love abide and the greatest of these is love.” This is not the trite stuff that weddings are made of, but rather a confession that when we see God face to face we will no longer hold God in faith and hope but will see God, we will see love, the greatest of all things as reality. But I proleptically digress.

Way out in Seattle, young Kurt Cobain
Snuck out to the greenhouse, put a bullet in his brain
Snakes in the grass beneath our feet, rain in the clouds above,
Some moments last forever,
and some flare out with love, love, love

I find the order of the song, that this verse immediately follows the Pauline reference, crucial. We, as Lutherans, as Christians, as people, are never above what we see currently. We do have the peace that passes all understanding, but this peace does not mean that we are sheltered from strife. Nor are we to shy away from it. The song ends in reference to Kurt Cobain, the lead singer of the ground-breaking grunge band Nirvana, who killed himself with a sawed-off shotgun at the age of 27. He was young; he was talented; he was a lot like a lot of people we will encounter in  our congregations. We are called to preach, teach, care for and minister to these very people because of and out of love, love, love.