I went to a Talib Kweli concert last night at the Chicago House of Blues with some friends. A hiphop concert is an interesting place to worship. I love the power of a bass that rumbles through my chest, and words that spit truth without hesitation. One of Talib's songs, "I Try," has Mary J. Blige singing the following:
"An upside down kingdom where life is just not fair
So many suffering cuz deep inside they're scared
Fear pumped into their veins to keep them from their destiny
Where would they be if you and I don't care?"
Recently, news headlines have been pointing to Israel's injustices towards the 1.5 million people living in Gaza. If ever there was a good way of creating more animosity and perpetuating the cycle of hate, Israel continues to do a wonderful job at it. It's response, once again, is disproportionate, ineffective, and being resisted even among members of their own government, not to mention receives harsh condemnation from the UN and Oxfam. How, in the name of all things holy, can Christians just proof text their way to supporting Israel?
In an attempt to save the Gospel, we have truncated it. In an attempt to focus on the root, we consistently ignore or conveniently forget the deep implications of living in the Kingdom, a Kingdom that is more than just "me and my relationship with God" and opposes the powerful and the proud but belongs to the poor and the oppressed. We have neutered the Gospel and sapped its ability to free prisoners when we support those who imprison. We have lost the prophetic voice of the Body when we blindly toe political lines and fail to see that Christ desires Life not just after death, but in the here and now. Our compartmentalization of the Gospel, our dualistic understanding of ourselves and our blindness towards everything that has shaped our priorities, values, spirituality has made us think that life will be all well if people would just pray an acceptance prayer. We miss the fact that it is so often the powers and authorities, the systems in which we blindly participate in and benefit from, that causes the suffering of His children.
It is far easier to tweek our theologies so that our "passions" conveniently eclipse the real difficulties of gray areas and places in our own lives.
Apathy is easy. But ignorance is not bliss. It is not impartial. Does it make our modernist selves uncomfortable to think that we might not have concrete answers to everything, so much so that we are not willing to entertain the questions?
I think back to the time I tried to post on the Facebook wall of a group called "Christians Standing with Israel," and had my post deleted despite the fact that it was civil and simply raised questions. Is this what Christians are made of? Foolish dogmatism and desire to run from the truth? Are we really that afraid of anything that challenges our narrow understanding of the world? (Here's the old post about it).
We are the Pharisees. We are the Sanhedrin. We are those who pound our Bibles and claim to hold the absolute truth, yet sit in the seats of judgment against the sinners and gentiles, not knowing that all the while, we spit in the face of Jesus.
"Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God."
Showing posts with label Music. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Music. Show all posts
Monday, January 21, 2008
Thursday, November 22, 2007
My Muse is a Hag (Who Lives on Government Cheese)
If I didn’t know better
[Or if the world were like me]
I would think that artists learned to tickle the keys
To paint the notes they could not see
And puerile musicians with only 4 chords
Spilled the inkwell to blot out silence.
I’d think writers were poets
Who were packrats with words
And poets who attempted free verse as such
Were lazy and sucked at making thoughts rhyme
[So I slapped on a bumper sticker that screams:
Po-Mo! Creative! Unique!]
If painters were seraphim
And poets were saints,
I would be me.
Scraping month old paint chips off the palette
Closing my eyes to miss the sour keys
[If I hit them, it’s called Jazz.]
Telling myself that free verse has enough space
To let me act a fool.
My thoughts lean heavy against my eyes
And I can’t tell if it’s my soul or my gut that’s rotund and full.
Something heavy inside me churns like butter.
An ocean? A storm? (Dysentery?)
[No, pick some spiritual imagery.]
It’s the Holy Ghost haunting me, according to Over the Rhine.
Whatever notions, vague premonitions
Whatever desires to create like God
and speak existence into the unspoken,
All that is hope and frail and much broken,
Is but a spark caught flickering on an unfocused camera frame,
While the inferno dances out past the corner of my eye.
[Or if the world were like me]
I would think that artists learned to tickle the keys
To paint the notes they could not see
And puerile musicians with only 4 chords
Spilled the inkwell to blot out silence.
I’d think writers were poets
Who were packrats with words
And poets who attempted free verse as such
Were lazy and sucked at making thoughts rhyme
[So I slapped on a bumper sticker that screams:
Po-Mo! Creative! Unique!]
If painters were seraphim
And poets were saints,
I would be me.
Scraping month old paint chips off the palette
Closing my eyes to miss the sour keys
[If I hit them, it’s called Jazz.]
Telling myself that free verse has enough space
To let me act a fool.
My thoughts lean heavy against my eyes
And I can’t tell if it’s my soul or my gut that’s rotund and full.
Something heavy inside me churns like butter.
An ocean? A storm? (Dysentery?)
[No, pick some spiritual imagery.]
It’s the Holy Ghost haunting me, according to Over the Rhine.
Whatever notions, vague premonitions
Whatever desires to create like God
and speak existence into the unspoken,
All that is hope and frail and much broken,
Is but a spark caught flickering on an unfocused camera frame,
While the inferno dances out past the corner of my eye.
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Embracing the Silence
Silence is frightening. It’s frightening when it reveals how unsettled I am when I’m surrounded by it. Like a crack fiend’s craving, I’m looking for my fix of lyrics and music. Withdrawal is difficult. LSD users have flashbacks. Musicholics have earworms… an auditory itch that yearns to be scratched in the form of sound waves. But instead, there is silence.
I decided that for some people music is just a pastime. It’s something fun to move to, something you belt out with friends when you’re cruising down the highway with your windows down. For others though, it’s like psychological cutting… the emotions that are squeezed out of the blank spaces between the black dots on lined paper and the insinuation of experiences in the lyrics are the razors that remind us of our existence. The bleeding that ensues confirms that we can still feel, for better or worse. We breathe a sigh of relief after our depths are stirred, even if we know nothing has changed after having the last three minutes and fifty three seconds light up our auditory cortex.
For the last five days, I haven’t listened to music. Like an addict, all I’ve wanted to do is to take an injection of iTunes. I cooked and I cleaned without the normal hiphop. I walked around in my boxers, while the gravity of the piano called to me like a black hole. “Just a few chords,” I thought. “Just one or two times through the Damien Rice and Over the Rhine songs I’ve been learning.” Being forced under the lulling non-noise of the ceiling fan and air conditioner, I realized that the frightening roar I heard was my own emptiness.
This is the very emptiness I sought to inundate with music. From Scr-pture, I get the vague sense that G-d isn’t a fan of artificial opiates. When I sat there in silence and kept the professionally recorded melancholy from using my heart as a treadmill, I could no longer ride over this chasm on the borrowed wings of someone else’s talent.
The process of addiction is often perpetuated by the fear of facing reality on the road to sobering up. A temporary escape becomes a desire to remain in a state of ignorance. (Insert Homer Simpson here, toasting, “Here’s to alcohol: The cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems!”) I’ve always prided myself in being a realist. And I’m too proud to turn my back on that claim now. So here I am, simultaneously acknowledging my idolatry and confessing the unexpected emptiness left by a masked but shriveling spirituality.
I take great comfort that J-sus is “G-d with us.” I’m relieved that we are indwelt by the Holy Sp-rit. I’m grateful for a love that casts our fear and grounds my identity as a child of the Father. I think sometimes, we can worsh-p in silence. I look forward to when this naked emptiness will be filled again.
But not with music or lyrics.
I decided that for some people music is just a pastime. It’s something fun to move to, something you belt out with friends when you’re cruising down the highway with your windows down. For others though, it’s like psychological cutting… the emotions that are squeezed out of the blank spaces between the black dots on lined paper and the insinuation of experiences in the lyrics are the razors that remind us of our existence. The bleeding that ensues confirms that we can still feel, for better or worse. We breathe a sigh of relief after our depths are stirred, even if we know nothing has changed after having the last three minutes and fifty three seconds light up our auditory cortex.
For the last five days, I haven’t listened to music. Like an addict, all I’ve wanted to do is to take an injection of iTunes. I cooked and I cleaned without the normal hiphop. I walked around in my boxers, while the gravity of the piano called to me like a black hole. “Just a few chords,” I thought. “Just one or two times through the Damien Rice and Over the Rhine songs I’ve been learning.” Being forced under the lulling non-noise of the ceiling fan and air conditioner, I realized that the frightening roar I heard was my own emptiness.
This is the very emptiness I sought to inundate with music. From Scr-pture, I get the vague sense that G-d isn’t a fan of artificial opiates. When I sat there in silence and kept the professionally recorded melancholy from using my heart as a treadmill, I could no longer ride over this chasm on the borrowed wings of someone else’s talent.
The process of addiction is often perpetuated by the fear of facing reality on the road to sobering up. A temporary escape becomes a desire to remain in a state of ignorance. (Insert Homer Simpson here, toasting, “Here’s to alcohol: The cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems!”) I’ve always prided myself in being a realist. And I’m too proud to turn my back on that claim now. So here I am, simultaneously acknowledging my idolatry and confessing the unexpected emptiness left by a masked but shriveling spirituality.
I take great comfort that J-sus is “G-d with us.” I’m relieved that we are indwelt by the Holy Sp-rit. I’m grateful for a love that casts our fear and grounds my identity as a child of the Father. I think sometimes, we can worsh-p in silence. I look forward to when this naked emptiness will be filled again.
But not with music or lyrics.
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Clear as a Distortion Pedal
We spent the blackness of our pens and ivory of keys
Trying to pierce the shell of the reluctant masks
So we hear a snare but the heart shakes with the bass
No blade sits deeper than four strings and a bow.
Those dancing harmonies trampled over my composure
And the harp shred through my Kinkade, spilled my ghosts.
Who knew that the muse moonlit as a janitor.
But no one told me that he couldn’t mop up the fog.
Trying to pierce the shell of the reluctant masks
So we hear a snare but the heart shakes with the bass
No blade sits deeper than four strings and a bow.
Those dancing harmonies trampled over my composure
And the harp shred through my Kinkade, spilled my ghosts.
Who knew that the muse moonlit as a janitor.
But no one told me that he couldn’t mop up the fog.
Sunday, May 27, 2007
The Devil's Music
A part of me cringed just a bit today.
The church I used to go to had a picnic, and I showed up just to say hi and bye to my friends. They had set up a speaker system next to the large gathering of those sitting in little groups munching on burgers, pasta and baked beans. It played background music...
... But the background music was CCM worship music. CCM criticisms aside, words about the glory, love, and power of God was, at that point, relegated to being background noise, nothing more than the equivalent of elevator music. Kickball, volleyball, barbecuing, bantering, all of the normal Memorial Day hubbub, was baptized and christened in CCM as opposed to classic rock or some of this weeks top 10.
Yes, some will say I am being too harsh... it's just a church social. It's just music. It's not like someone sat down, took music (supposedly) written for the explicit worship of God, and decided to desensitize it for everyone, using it as a cheap and clean substitute for the devil's rock and roll. It was unintentional, if it can even be considered an offense.
But this is why I'm sad and not angry... the fact that it was unintentional. The fact that music used to worship in one setting is used as noise filler in another, without bothering anyone, says something about the role of that music in our lives. It's not really set apart... it's just a replacement for the worldly version. In this case, I wonder what is more harmful, letting the sacred and holy become mundane, or "subjecting" ourselves to the mundane and worldly.
I had really wished they would have just turned up Classic Rock 103.7 or 99.3 The Buzz and broke out the brewskies instead. I could have at least gotten jiggy to Foreigner and Shakira.
To top it off, on my way out, a man in a wheelchair sat on the outskirts of the group, by himself, watching everyone else have a great time. Perhaps it was just that moment, and perhaps I'm wrong, but no one was talking to him and he looked a little alone. No one in that meeting of Christians, seemed to see him.
To make it worse, I saw him but continued on my way out even after making that observation.
"Jesus said, 'For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind.' Some Pharisees who were with him heard him say this and asked, 'What? Are we blind too?' Jesus said, 'If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains.'" -John 9:39-41
The church I used to go to had a picnic, and I showed up just to say hi and bye to my friends. They had set up a speaker system next to the large gathering of those sitting in little groups munching on burgers, pasta and baked beans. It played background music...
... But the background music was CCM worship music. CCM criticisms aside, words about the glory, love, and power of God was, at that point, relegated to being background noise, nothing more than the equivalent of elevator music. Kickball, volleyball, barbecuing, bantering, all of the normal Memorial Day hubbub, was baptized and christened in CCM as opposed to classic rock or some of this weeks top 10.
Yes, some will say I am being too harsh... it's just a church social. It's just music. It's not like someone sat down, took music (supposedly) written for the explicit worship of God, and decided to desensitize it for everyone, using it as a cheap and clean substitute for the devil's rock and roll. It was unintentional, if it can even be considered an offense.
But this is why I'm sad and not angry... the fact that it was unintentional. The fact that music used to worship in one setting is used as noise filler in another, without bothering anyone, says something about the role of that music in our lives. It's not really set apart... it's just a replacement for the worldly version. In this case, I wonder what is more harmful, letting the sacred and holy become mundane, or "subjecting" ourselves to the mundane and worldly.
I had really wished they would have just turned up Classic Rock 103.7 or 99.3 The Buzz and broke out the brewskies instead. I could have at least gotten jiggy to Foreigner and Shakira.
To top it off, on my way out, a man in a wheelchair sat on the outskirts of the group, by himself, watching everyone else have a great time. Perhaps it was just that moment, and perhaps I'm wrong, but no one was talking to him and he looked a little alone. No one in that meeting of Christians, seemed to see him.
To make it worse, I saw him but continued on my way out even after making that observation.
"Jesus said, 'For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind.' Some Pharisees who were with him heard him say this and asked, 'What? Are we blind too?' Jesus said, 'If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains.'" -John 9:39-41
Friday, May 18, 2007
Golden cows play in the speakers of my mind
I think we all need something to worship.
I don't find it a coincidence that music and poetry is saturated with different variations on the theme of love (or lack thereof, or the disappoints, hurt, etc.) It takes the means we have of deeper expression and combines it with the thing we are trying to worship, elevating it (whether or not it deserves to be elevated).
We all need something to worship, to give ourselves to, to depend on and take joy in. To love.
The difficulty for some of us is learning to worship the right thing, or rather, right Person. The difficulty lies in worshipping the right Person when other things and people are right in front of us... when the deep expressions of music, art and poetry encourage us to be idolaters and crown something or someone else lord.
We all need to worship. I desperately want to worship. The question is what, or who, am I worshipping?
I don't find it a coincidence that music and poetry is saturated with different variations on the theme of love (or lack thereof, or the disappoints, hurt, etc.) It takes the means we have of deeper expression and combines it with the thing we are trying to worship, elevating it (whether or not it deserves to be elevated).
We all need something to worship, to give ourselves to, to depend on and take joy in. To love.
The difficulty for some of us is learning to worship the right thing, or rather, right Person. The difficulty lies in worshipping the right Person when other things and people are right in front of us... when the deep expressions of music, art and poetry encourage us to be idolaters and crown something or someone else lord.
We all need to worship. I desperately want to worship. The question is what, or who, am I worshipping?
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