Description is Revelation

Description is revelation. It is not
The thing described, nor false facsimile.

It is an artificial thing that exists,
In its own seeming, plainly visible,

Yet not too closely the double of our lives,
Intenser than any actual life could be,

A text we should be born that we might read,
More explicit than the experience of sun

And moon, the book of reconciliation,
Book of a concept only possible

In description, canon central in itself,
The thesis of the plentifullest John.

Wallace Stevens, Collected Poetry and Prose, from "Description Without Place"

Everything Is Broken

This was an extraordinarily good time that I only recently recalled is available as a recording online FOR FREE as people put it sometimes. It's all in the context of John McClure's course last Fall, Popular Music and Religious Identity. It's where Czeslaw Milosz and Jars of Clay and Paul Simon meet. It's me, Sarah, Cary Gibson, Stephen Mason, Charlie Lowell, Brian Ritchey, Katie Herzig, Matthew Perryman Jones, and sweet people a-plenty. A conversation that could've kept going and might yet and probably always is.
Anyhoo, for your edification, it's riiiiiiiight....here.

Hello Darkness, My Old Friend

Jesus is God’s ‘revelation’ in a decisive sense not because he makes a dimly apprehended God clear to us, but because he challenges and queries an unusually clear sense of God: not because he makes things plainer—on the ‘veil-lifting’ model of revelation—but because he makes things darker.
Rowan Williams (appropriated from Chris K. Huebner)

No such tales are told

America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its
people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged
to hate themselves.... It is in fact a crime for an
American to be poor, even though America is a nation
of poor. Every other nation has folk traditions of men
who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and
therefore more estimable than anyone with power and
gold. No such tales are told by American poor. They
mock themselves and glorify their betters.
- Kurt Vonnegut

There Is A Place Beyond Ambition

There is a Place Beyond Ambition

When the flute players couldn’t think of what to say next

they laid down their pipes,

then they lay down themselves

beside the river

and just listened.

Some of them, after a while,

jumped up

and disappeared back inside the busy town.

But the rest—

so quiet, not even thoughtful—

are still there,

still listening.

- Mary Oliver

Here Goes Everything

God Bless...

Bless This Mess by David Bazan

god bless the man who stumbles
god bless the man who falls
god bless the man who yields to temptation
god bless the woman who suffers
god bless the woman who weeps
god bless the children trying her patience

trouble getting over it is what you’re in for so pour yourself another
it’ll take a steady pair of hands
holy or unholy ghost well now i can’t tell but either way you cut it
you should get some distance if you plan to take a stand

god bless the house divided
god bless the weeds in the wheat
god bless the lamp lit under a bushel

i discovered hell to be the poison in the well
so i tried to warn the others of the curse
then my body turned on me i dreamt that for eternity
my family would burn then i awoke
with a wicked thirst

by my baby’s yellow bed i kissed her forehead and rubbed her little tummy
wondering if she’d soon despise the smell
of the booze on my breath like her mom
through a darkened mirror i have seen my own reflection
and it makes me want to be a better man
after another drink

god bless the man at the crossroads
god bless the woman who still can’t sleep
god bless the history that doesn’t repeat

Notes on a Revolution

Not sure where to begin in broadcasting my enthusiasm for the subversive, life-giving text displayed above. Let's start with samples: "There is absolutely no reason that you, with your flute-rocking skills, cannot be the Ian Anderson of tomorrow,""Every musician since the beginning of time was, at one point, a beginner," "Your voice can be one of the most powerful instruments you ever own (if you choose to use it). And it’s free!," "A lot of things sound good with distortion on them; personally, I believe distortion is the salt of sound effects—it makes everything better." Amid an arsenal of accessibly technical tips on how to get your own act going (helpful even to a 39-year-old male), Jessica Hopper delivers these good news tidings to her growing and determined public. As a musician, a critic, and the music consultant for This American Life, she knows what she's talking about, AND she's coming to GRIMEY's THIS WEDNESDAY at 6:00 in the PM. Have you heard tell of Sister Rosetta Tharpe “the original shredder?” Did you know that Big Mama Thornton wrote "Hound Dog" or that Carol Kaye played bass on the whole of Pet Sounds? Come on out and hear what all's afoot. I'll be there with my ladies and my boys. I end with more Jessica: "You’ve got all the time in the world to edit and/or drive yourself crazy over the details; attempting to get it perfect on the first try (or second or third for that matter) will only trip you up. Self-doubt is something all artists struggle with, but being self-critical while you’re writing may stunt your growth as a lyricist, and you want to be full-size…You don’t have to try to achieve in a system that excludes you/your band. You can make your own system, whatever you want it to be like."

Thanks to Jeff Jones design guru and Rilian Torode artist sage, we will have prints to raise funds for the DPC summer arts program. Check it.

You can buy one riiiiiiiiiiiiiight HERE.

More art show images. The show will include ceramics and a variety of other mixed media.

The Divine Within: Documenting the Secrets of Childhood

You are cordially invited to the 4th annual children's art show at the Downtown Presbyterian Church featuring the collaborative work of well known Nashville theologians under the age of 12. 

Below is a copy of the press release. If any of you know anyone who wants to do a story on it... there is definitely one here. Hope to see you there. 

THE DIVINE WITHIN: Documenting the Secrets of Childhood At our most artful and receptive moments--Sarah Masen suspects—we all understand that paying close attention to the creative wisdom of a child is every bit as enriching as meditating, reading sacred text, or taking in a good French film. For Masen, the Director of Children’s Education at Downtown Presbyterian Church, moving out of comfort zones and past an easy sentimentality in our openness to what children would show us is probably our best—our only—hope for emotional development. Opening September 5th in collaboration with the first Saturday Art Crawl, The Downtown Presbyterian Church presents: “The Divine Within: Documenting the Secrets of Childhood”.  This years children’s art show features works of collaboration which tweak the conventional mentor/mentored model. The guiding vision places a child-artist in the role of instructor and a collaborating adult as the recipient of theological instruction afforded by the child. This partnering flips the script on curriculums often associated with churches (Point #1 “You’re a sinner”) and presumes, from the outset, what Masen frequently cites as “the already holy spirit” of the child. Prepare your hearts for illumination. Opening begins at 6:00pm. Light fare will be provided for small and grown wayfarers. *** If you would like more information about this show, the participants and origins, or to schedule an interview with Sarah Masen, please call her at (248)505.1476 or email her at sdarkdpc@gmail.com

 

Wheresoever

Biblically, the Holy Spirit names the faithfulness of God to his own creation. Biblically, the Holy Spirit means the militant presence of the Word of God inhering in the life of the whole of creation. Biblically the Holy Spirit is the Word of God at work both historically and existentially, acting incessantly and pervasively to renew the integrity of life in this world. By virtue of this…affirmation of the biblical witness, the false notion—nourished in my childhood in the Episcopal Church—that the Holy Spirit is, somehow, possessed by and enshrined within the sanctuary of the church was at last refuted, and I was freed from it…It was—it is—the biblical sage of the Word of God as Agitator, as the Holy Spirit, that assures me that wheresoever human conscience is alive and active, that is a sign of the saving vitality of the Word of God in history, here and now. 

--William Stringfellow, The Politics of Spirituality

"Wherever men hold unequal power in society, they will strive to maintain it. They will use whatever means are convenient to that end and will seek to justify them by the most plausible arguments they are able to devise. Nevertheless there are possibilities of increasing social justice through the development of mind and reason.”  

Reinhold Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society 

Due Reverence

“An irrational society accepts injustice because it does not analyze the pretensions made by the powerful and privileged groups of society. Even that portion of society which suffers most from injustice may hold the power, responsible for it, in reverence.” Reinhold Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society 

God Bless the History that Doesn't Repeat

It'll take more time than I have before me right now to make a start at saying what I want to say about Dave Bazan's latest. I'll begin by asking everyone to pay heed to "Bless This Mess" which looks to be the first single (and a magnificent intro to the sensibility of the whole album). Then mosey on over to "The Passion of David Bazan" which, for my money, (and at the risk of putting it oddly) bears witness to his witness better than anything I've read (not just because its author was kind enough to quote me profusely). The author, Jessica Hopper, will be praised at length in a future post noting her upcoming Nashville appearance at Grimey's to promote THIS. In the meantime, consider the song. I believe it's an instance of cosmic plainspeak which, as ever, expands the sphere of sanity little by little.

Piety ought to be inseparable from critical thinking

Here's the teacher making plain:

We have to pay debt to the sources to the sources of our being. That includes mom and dad. That includes the community that shaped you. That includes the nation that both protects you as well as gives you some sense of possibility. And for religious folk, of course, it includes God. Now, the problem is there has to be some Socratic energy in one's piety. Piety ought to be inseparable from critical thinking.

--Cornel West in conversation with Eduardo Mendieta

People Have the Power

"The tactics are unorganized, largely leaderless and only just beginning," says Robin Wright.

And this just in from the BBC.

There was a muddy centre before we breathed.

There was a myth before the myth began,

Venerable and articulate and complete.

 

From this the poem springs: that we live in a place

That is not our own and, much more, not ourselves

And hard it is in spire of blazoned days.

 

We are the mimics.Clouds are pedagogues.

The air is not a mirror but bare board,

Coulisse bright-dark, tragic chiaroscuro

 

And comic color of the rose, in which

Abysmal instruments make sounds like pips

Of the sweeping meanings that we add to them.

from Wallace Stevens' "Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction"

Prophetic Alignments

This is the comprehensive wit of Hortense Spillers. One of my favorite people in the world. I'm not sure how to adequately recommend her beyond urging people to google away and pay heed to the care and subtlety and subversiveness with which she puts things.
I here paste one text she draws out and places along a certain continuum (a "prophetic alignment" she calls it). It's Thomas Jefferson on the slave economy in which he lived and moved and upon which he had his material being:
"Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep forever: that considering numbers, nature and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of the situation, is among possible events: that it may become probable by supernatural interference. The Almighty has no attribute which can take side with us in such a contest."
Think about it.

To begin, the image is the work of Jaap Scheeren, a recent fascination of mine. And what follows is something I wrote the morning after our relationship with Noisetrade had begun. Here tis:

“I made $10.95!” Sarah exclaimed from behind a laptop this morning. She went to bed, woke up, and witnessed the appearance of nearly eleven dollars worth of public affirmation of her song-craft which braved the oceans of Internet while she slept. All manner of things made well.

I wish I was more the lyrical wit, but I’m the one in this relationship who types out the largest number of straightforward sentences (My books, let me say it again, are footnotes for her lyrics). It befalls me to offer the following report.

A little over two years ago, Sarah had a couple of performance appointments closely aligned, Calvin’s Festival of Faith and Music (Emmylou, Neko, Sufjan) and the Greenbelt Festival (Billy Bragg, Over the Rhine), and she suspected it would be impolite to show up without what the young people call product. With the help of Todd Greene and Tony Doling of Bulb, Chris Leonard  and Brad Ritter of the Contemporary Music Center, and Brother Jon Foreman of Switchfoot, she’d long accumulated three EP’s worth of material and now saw fit to put together individual, everyone different, stenciled artworks (Like snowflakes I tell you!) to house the plastic. They sold, we might say, like hotcakes, but the demand, mail-order-paypal-wise, was a little more than we could comfortably manage. She ended the online dealio, but often sent them out for free (her anxious partner noticed) to e-mailers whose demands dribbled in via the mostly quiet but still glowing website.

So, just last night, we’re having dinner with Mark and Molly Nicholas at our home. Inquiries concerning one another’s projects leads to Mark’s casual mention of Noisetrade goings-on. We begin to suspect this is what ancient texts refer to as The Shape of Things to Come. So many of our friends and neighbors have climbed aboard. Why not? Joe Kirk and Derek Webb strike us as upstanding citizens. Wouldn’t it be cool it being a gift economy we’re in and all? Molly types away, images are shared, and after they’ve gone home we get an e-mail pronouncing it a done deal. We’ll have the other EP’s up over the next few months.

I think it’s an excellent fit. People who extol Sarah’s music have always been potential friends and co-conspirators rather than--what do they call them?—fans? Share away, my friendlies. Publicize as you see fit. Blog if you want to. Blog around the world. Consider yourselves deputized. Enjoy. 

Speaking is resurrection

I really enjoyed this. Think you all will too.
Sarah

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=co-c5gPWfiM