wise words

Pastoral advice from MC Naledge of Kidz in the Hall:

"...I don’t have to make the whole “this is the socially-conscious record” with a bunch of opinions, metaphors, big words and similes. I can just tell you a story and sometimes that’s what people need. They wanna feel like the music is genuine. I’m just saying shit from my heart and what’s going on in my life. It makes the music easier to perform and easier for me to rest my case. If you like it, you like it. If you don’t, you don’t. This is me." (The Smoking Section, March 2010)

A mid-morning antiphon

Hello hello
We're at a place called Vertigo
Lights go down and all I know
Is that you give me something

I can feel your love teaching me how
Your love is teaching me how,
how to kneel.





Bono: ''Grace defies reason and logic. Love interrupts, if you like, the consequences of your actions, which in my case is very good news indeed, because I've done a lot of stupid stuff''.

Assayas: ''I'd be interested to hear that''.

Bono: ''That's between me and God. But I'd be in big trouble if Karma was going to finally be my judge. I'd be in deep shit. It doesn't excuse my mistakes, but I'm holding out for Grace.

"I'm holding out that Jesus took my sins onto the Cross, because I know who I am, and I hope I don't have to depend on my own religiosity''.

Christmas Songs in February

There's something right about listening to a Christmas song in February.

With the bout of advertisements and seasonal jingles ringing through the air, Christmas can be - has become? - passe by December. Christus missus est ("Christ has come"), but so have Toys 'R' Us, Wal*Mart, and Best Buy, for all his consumer children.

But in February, snow lies dense on the ground; it was a brisk day, a sharp day, a clear day. I'm a little tired, and I'm nursing a little bit of a cold. It's late enough in the semester for me to have made mistakes, and plenty; early enough that I'm still uncertain about the rest of the school year. What might Spring's warmth bring? What shape will this semester take?

It seems like there's room for hope; and right now, with no holiday in sight, I feel readily the need for a Christmas (mas Cristo?) more than I did in December, December with its heady air of holiday and presents, home, finals, excitement.

So, you know, I listen to a Christmas song.

[Xanga] Christmas carols

...born to raise the sons of earth,
born to give them second birth.

So, I was just watching a Christmas episode of The Simpsons (among many others), and they closed with the entire town of Springfield singing "Hark, the Herald Angels Sing". It got me thinking:

What is it like for a non-Christian to sing a Christmas carol?

And don't get it twisted, like I'm thinking about the entire season in general. I understand how the "holiday season" can be a good time for all, regardless of your specific faith background. And there are songs which are just whatever whatever, like "Deck the Halls" or "Christmas in Hollis" or them likewise joints.

But what about Christmas carols, as in, the real ones? The ones which are specifically and explicitly proclaiming the birth of Christ, the son of God, born that he might die to save the world, and the sinners in it?

God and sinners reconciled

Lines like this seem like they would be less than meaningless to someone who doesn't believe in the Christian faith. And, sure, I can understand how certain melodies can be strongly evocative. But there's a mad difference between how I feel when I hear Ja Rule and Ashanti's ode to vague-commitment, "Always on Time", and a Christmas carol like "O Come All Ye Faithful," something that goes beyond my specific and individual memories of those songs, and accesses a picture of the future, not merely the past.

Word of the Father, now in flesh appearing

This is a challenge to me, too, and to all Christians. How easy is it to hear the first few bars of a melody and think, oh hey, i know this song. we used to sing it together at my kindergarten holiday party before winter break. How many times have I, shopping in the mall, heard Christmas carols blaring harshly over the intercom, and let them fade into the chatter and commotion of the background? How many times have I heard those words without listening to them?

How often do I live my life as a Christian without listening to Christ? And how much of Christmas have I let become - as the traditionalist refrain (aka the depressing view of modern Christmas) cries out - a crass celebration of modern materialism and wealth-elitism?

Joy to the world! the Lord is come;

Do we understand Joy? Do we understand that Joy and Christ are one? "Joy to the World" is not saying that there is joy to be found in the world. It is saying precisely the opposite: that Christ has come, and, in doing so, brought Joy, the antithesis of the world's happiness, into a world unprepared for it.

How easy is it to say "Joy to the World," and yet to fail to proclaim the name of that Joy! How easy to forget why it is I rejoice.

I'm not interested in no easily-spouted rhyming catchphrases like "Jesus is the reason for the season" or "without Christ there'd be no Christmas", that's not on my level: Amazing rhymes for days anyways, ya dig. But what I am interested in is this: I claim to be a Christian, and to sing

Fall on your knees! Oh, hear the angels' voices!

and just treat it as music is beyond foolish, it's blasphemous. For me to think of Christmas and not think first of the birth and death of Christ is to go against - and I do this mad often, so don't even think i'm tripping - everything I claim to stand for. Which I do on a daily (if not hourly) basis anyways, but that's another deal going down. Just a little self-reflection.

And for those who claim to not be Christians (or who actually are not Christians, which is prahlee identical anyways, but Rahner would have something to say about that), what joy do you find in Christmas? I'd really appreciate it if you took some time to think and wonder... why does Jesus's birth matter to a Christian? I'm sure Moonies celebrate the birth of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, and, i mean, i know people that celebrate TUPAC and ROBERT NESTA MARLEY's birthdays... but is there something different in it for Christians? Does it matter that Christ was born, beyond the fact that he started this whole Christianity ball rolling? I think it does. Why? Just a little reflection. Consider it your Christmas present to me.

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:

od is not dead, nor doth He sleep;

The wrong shall fail, the right prevail

With peace on earth, good will to men. - I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day, 4th stanza

For lo!, the days are hastening on,
By prophet seen of old,
When with the ever-encircling years
Shall come the time foretold
When peace shall over all the earth
Its ancient splendors fling,
And the whole world send back the song
Which now the angels sing.- It Came Upon the Midnight Clear, last stanza

[Xanga] the best 8 bars ever

I feel as though these eight lines from In Christ Alone are perhaps the eight lines that best describe the fullness of seemingly contradictory emotion that I see in the loving, just, and perfect God of Christianity:

In Christ alone, who took on flesh
Fullness of God in helpless babe
This gift of love and righteousness
Scorned by the ones He came to save
il on that cross as Jesus died
The wrath of God was satisfied
For every sin on Him was laid
Here in the death of Christ I live

This entire hymn, written in 2002 by two English songwriters, is one of great (and rare) theological and emotional depth, but, most importantly, it is fully centred on and supporting of the titular phrase. Often when we sing this song in church - or I'm contemplating it alone, silently or otherwise - I'm actually moved to tears by the idea of Christianity - of the Gospel itself - not being a revelation of literary or religious doctrine, but being a person.

What amazes me when contemplating these lines is that "This gift of love and righteousness" is not a state of mind or a way of being, but rather a sacrificial atonement of God by God for God. This fantastic non sequitur (by which I mean, the idea of God himself being our gift is unprecedented and seemingly unwarranted from previous religious tradition) is so unbelievable - that God would not only be the agent for redemption of sins, but moreover be himself the vehicle of this atonement.

These eight lines seem to me to encapsulate the whole of the emotional story of the Gospel: "In the beginning was the Word, who was with God, and who was God." " though he was in the form of God, he did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form". He was "the way, the truth, and the life," but "he was despised, and we took no account of Him." Until, on the cross, he was able to say, "It is finished," so that "the wrath of God was poured out on him; and by his stripes we were saved."

I think it might have been William James, the 19th-century philosopher and psychologist, who wrote that the mystical experience might be something strongly akin to a musical euphoria, a transcendent feeling of the Other. If that is the case - and I feel strongly that the statement may be true, at least in part - then I'd offer up this song as a great example of such a case.