The joys of being a parent

I don't talk much about my family here on the blog, and that's somewhat intentional. But this is one of those "daddy moments" that I can't pass up commenting on here.

Our daughter has a good bit of musical talent that she comes by from both her mother and I, which we've cultivated over the course of her life with music lessons, first on piano and then for the past six years, violin. She also plays flute in school concert band, is learning the electric bass for jazz band, and is quite a good singer and actress. She is, at 14, an accomplished fine arts nerd (which I mean in the endearing sense). As parents we're very proud.

Last week she asked me to get out my recording equipment so she could start messing around with multi-track recording. With very minimal guidance and instruction from me, she quickly picked up the requisite tools and produced this little lo-fi music video, a cover of the song "I'll Think of You" (aka the "Epic Patty Cake Song") by Kurt Schneider & Sam Tsui...

Mumford & Sons among the virtues

Last night I noticed in my blog traffic reports a spike of visits from this NPR story on Mumford & Sons new album, Babel. The author, Ann Powers, linked to my fall 2010 post, The Avett Brothers' narrative doctrine of Love (and Hate). This post has surprised me because it's now two years old (to the day!) but is consistently in the top ten list on any given month, and people often find it by searching for an answer to the question: "Are the Avett Brothers Christian?" (<--See for yourself.)

But anyway, on to Mumford. First watch this...

Then read on for some reflections on the three things related to Christian virtues which I see emanating from this beautiful song: Humility, embodiment, and purpose.

The savior of agriculture is...Chipotle?

Consider the following...

This video is brilliant. It works on me at so many levels, it's almost kind of creepy. (Indeed it is creepy, stick with me.)

The spiritual disciplines of being troubled and peaceable

It’s been a troubling year. The Arab Spring protest movements that went (relatively) nonviolently in Egypt have devolved into bloody and protracted conflicts in numerous other countries across the Middle East. Then in early May, the world’s most wanted man, Osama bin Laden, was killed by the US military and buried at sea, only to return as a 500 foot monster wreaking havoc on the United States. (Okay so that last bit is obviously not true, but the Onion article offers golden social commentary.) As I watched fellow Americans dancing in the streets in early May, I became troubled and began offering theopolitical and pacifist Christian commentary. This commentary was lost on many of my non-Anabaptist friends, both Christian and non. One piece of criticism that I welcomed was that my arguments didn’t allude to or reference Scripture, so I promised my friends to follow up my pacifist grumblings with biblical-theological reflections to help non-Anabaptist, non-pacifist Christians see the world in ways which trouble us as we should be troubled.

Last week I wrapped up a class at Eastern Mennonite Seminary called “Biblical Foundations for Justice and Peace,” taught by Mark Thiessen Nation, one of the leading scholars of influential late 20th century theologian, John Howard Yoder. Mark began the class with something surprising: He showed us a music video by Tom Jones (yes, of “What’s New Pussycat?” fame). As he introduced this video, my Gen-X sensibilities were offended (Tom Jones?!), but I must now say this song is profound...

This song speaks to the ways in which the Lord troubles us and the ways in which humans often resist that movement of God’s Spirit. The church has certainly closed its eyes, “slept too long and...too deep” and not allowed “the tears of (our) brother” to move our hearts. We “let things stand that should not be.” Into this sin-induced coma, God sends dreams, visions, and inspires songs which are “ringing (like) a bell in the back of our mind(s).” Our souls are stirred, we are troubled. And the purpose for this divine disturbance from our slumber? “To make (us) human, to make (us) whole.” In Christian biblical anthropology, Jesus is the true, whole human. Jesus is our vision for fullness of life to which his disciples gravitate toward and invite others into Christ’s “gravitational pull” toward fullness, shalom, life abundant. Which brings us to biblical-theological pacifism...

A musical eschaton

Nearly 15 years ago a handful of high school buddies with some modicum of musical talent came together and formed a band called “Honnold.” It's an odd word, “Honnold.” It's a German family name, as well as the name of the eponymous street in Monroe, Iowa, our hometown. Yes, I was in Honnold, which existed as a proper rock band for just two years before college scattered us across the country, far from each other and our childhood homes in small-town Iowa. As our lives have taken shape since then, Honnold has lived on in various ways, both musically and otherwise. The former drummer, Kyle, and I, with a few other friends along the way, have managed to record three albums, the most recent one in 2008. Especially for Kyle and I, the songwriting and recording bug has never stopped biting, so I suppose we'll continue to periodically come together and do that for years to come.

Writing lyrics has been my least favorite part of songwriting since day one. It's never the first thing that comes to me and it's often pushed to the absolute end of my creative process. I fancy myself a wordsmith but there's something about lyrics that I've never gotten the knack for. There are a few Honnold songs, though, whose lyrics seem to have hit the mark and continue to have particular poignancy vis-a-vis my spiritual journey. The purpose of this post is to explore the lyrics of one such song and let them be a bidirectional lens for reflection on aspects of my spiritual/religious formation. So let's begin at the end.

First, take a listen to the song in question:
Last Song by Honnold

Now read on for the extended reflection...

Jesus Christ the Apple Tree

My friend Matt, who handles music for chapel worship at EMS, sent me a last-minute request this morning to help out on a few songs. Happily agreeing, I walked into Martin Chapel 30 minutes before worship having never heard two of the three songs. The one song I'd like to share here is called "Jesus Christ the Apple Tree," whose lyrics are attributed to an unknown 18th century New Englander (thx, Wikipedia; though my prof said 17th century). Anyway, the arrangement we used in worship, and the one used for the video below is by Elizabeth Poston, a 20th century British composer. The video below is a performance in the 90s by the Choir of King's College, Cambridge. Check it out...

After the break you'll find the lyrics, which are as beautiful as the music, and theologically vivid and rich. Because of the echo in the recording, it is helpful to look at them. Give the song a few plays, both watching the video but also going over the lyrics as they're sung. Ethereal and moving...

Giving thanks for what, exactly?

Turkey fried! (by Lily Gicker)

James K.A. Smith put a great post up over the Thanksgiving weekend: The Secularization of Thanksgiving and the Sacralization of the Military. It's a quick read but he does heavy lifting in that short space. His analogy of the American soldier as the "warrior-priest" protecting our materialistic freedom has some resonance with me, especially if filtered through the lens of country music.

In the song "Chicken Fried" by the Zac Brown Band you'll find the following lyrics toward the end:

I thank God for my life
And for the stars and stripes
May freedom forever fly
Let it ring.
Salute the ones who died
The ones that give their lives
So we don't have to sacrifice
All the things we love
Like our chicken fried (the chorus goes on to list: cold beer, blue jeans, etc.)

Let me be frank: I'm no fan of contemporary country music and this song is probably the most shining example of why that is. My bellyaching has less to do with my being a pacifist vis-a-vis the song's referencing of military service than it does with this song being crassly materialistic and idolatrous. Heaven forbid that we'd have to stop eating fried chicken and drinking beer.

I don't want to sound like a complete jerk about this so, yes, over Thanksgiving I enjoyed many of the same things that Zac Brown holds so dear in the song: Poultry, football, and even cold beer (on a Friday night, no less). Heck, I was even wearing a pair of jeans that fit just right! That's all nice stuff that I don't want to take for granted, but to signal an unwillingness to sacrifice those things? Indeed, the logic of the song implies that God doesn't want us to sacrifice our creature comforts, which is far outside the fence of orthodox Christian teaching. Jesus' call to those who would be his disciples is to "deny yourselves, take up your crosses, and follow me" (paraphrase of Mark 8:34). Also note the use of the word "love" in the lyrics. Biblical love looks much different than the song's list of great American leisure activities and culinary delights.

I realize I'm putting a lot of freight on a pop culture artifact, but it's worth questioning the pop theology that pervades public life and always has some formative influence on our faith and discipleship, whether we know it or not (more often not).

The Avett Brothers' narrative doctrine of Love (and Hate)

While in sunny Florida this past spring, my friend and I - together with our wives and together without our children - crashed a small hotel room on the beach for three days. We were in town for a wedding, so the clothes strewn around the room were a mix of sand-filled swimming apparel, suit jackets, and dresses. Flip-flops and dress shoes, sunblock and makeup. Late one night, we sat down to share with each other the music that had been tripping our respective triggers in the two years since we'd moved away from each other.

One of the bands my friend introduced me to was The Avett Brothers. They ended up being a sleeper hit for me. The songs he showed me didn't really fit the celebratory mood of weddings and beaches of the moment, but into my collection they went (not them, personally, rather their latest album, I and Love and You). There they waited. Well, this past summer their moment came, and into my heart they walked.

The past two summers have been rough for me. The rigor of graduate academic work has remained, but without the structure of the academic year. These experiences have patterned a physical response of guttural despair at the words..."independent study." Juggling that work with trying to help support the family and be a good husband and father produced some stressful, maybe even depressing, moments. In one such moment, I found myself driving up to Winchester, VA to meet with a professor. The song "Ten Thousand Words" came on and spoke to me at a level a song hadn't done for years. I must have listened to that two or three times on the way up the interstate, tears welling up from the sorry bottoms of my feet.

The rest of my family has also fallen under the Avetts' sway since then. So this past weekend, all three of us drove down to Charlottesville and saw them perform live in an outdoor venue on a beautiful fall night. During the show, Seth Avett performed a song by himself that I hadn't heard before: "The Ballad of Love and Hate," off the Emotionalism album. Here's a very good quality video of the same song performed in 2008 (It's worth switching the vid to HD and going full-screen for this one)...



Now, there are a ton of Avett Brothers songs that are just ripe for theological dialogue. In fact, I've wanted to make this post for months and had a few songs from I and Love and You in mind before hearing "Ballad..." at the show. So in the remainder of this post, I will put the lyrics out for your consideration and then do some theological dialogue with this beautiful song's doctrine (teaching) of Love and, conversely, Hate. A hint at my conclusion: It's very biblical teaching. (I don't want to load that conclusion of mine up on the Avetts; I have no idea what their faith convictions are, and I intentionally didn't go trolling around the web to try and find out, either.) So read on for more!

One Step Closer to Awesome!

Music is a topic that I haven't written much about on this blog, and that's too bad. It has been seated deep within my being for the whole length of my life. My eyes see the lyrical nature of the world before me. It is mostly through my ears, by hearing stories told in spoken and sung word, that I'm often penetrated to the very core. Music sends my spirit soaring and music evokes my darkest moments, when tears are the only thing left.

And sojourning with me for more than half my life has been the band, U2. I can picture clearly the first few times I heard The Joshua Tree around the age of 11 or 12, sitting on my brother's waterbed, wearing huge headphones plugged into his new CD player (the first in our house), listening to the ethereal and bowel-shaking organ that opens "Where the Streets Have No Name," followed by the Edge's angelic guitar riff that opens into a sprint toward paradise. Indeed, since that time I've consistently felt that in that song, "Yes. This is what heaven sounds like."

Simple put: I LOVE U2. A lot. The remainder of this post therefore feels like I'm selling them short, as it will be intended to fulfill class requirements to extract five "golden nuggets" from an assigned book: One Step Closer: Why U2 Matters to Those Seeking God by Christian Scharen, a Lutheran pastor and scholar (and huge U2 fan). But I've spent years with this band and will spend many years more, so perhaps I can come back to them in another way down the road.

A lot of the books I've been talking about lately have been intended for seminary nerds, but this was a refreshing change of pace. It's intended for a broad audience, both in and out of the Church. So read on for a few tidbits from this very cool book about theology through the life and music of a very cool band...