Come late November, the seasons of the Christian calendar will begin to recycle themselves.  Advent will bring hopeful waiting and preparation, followed by the celebration of Christmas, identification with Christ’s suffering during Lent, redemption of Easter and the fulfillment of Pentecost.  Yesterday we celebrated the promised gift of the Spirit of the Trinity.  Today, we start counting Ordinary Time.

Ordinary Time…

The time of growth…

The time of day to day clinging to the vine and working out our faith with fear and trembling…

The time of going beyond the hopefulness, the waiting, the celebrating, the preparing…

The time of fleshing out what it means to be the Church and bring the Kingdom here on earth as it is in Heaven.

Ordinary time is when the Body of Christ stops staring up into the sky and starts living as the type of community that becomes the hands and feet of God toward a watching, waiting world.

Ordinary time deserves a soundtrack of its own.

Christmas gets entire sections of music stores devoted to it, and its such a tiny sliver of a season in comparison.

For the purpose of continuity, I’m using Pentecost as a jumping point, since the tracks came together in the midst of that focus.

Please feel free to suggest additions to the list… there’s no rule that says they all have to fit on one disc.

1. Joel – Daniel Amos

I’ll pour my Spirit on all flesh, your sons and daughters will prophesy.  Your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions… they will return to me.

1. Holy Spirit Come – Kate Miner

Holy Spirit come.  Holy Spirit dwell.  Fill your Church with joy overflowing and peace overflowing and love overflowing in all of your Glory.  Come.

1. Bhajo Naam – Aaradhna

(This is an interpretation… the song is in Hindi… another tongue…)

Sing His name, chant His name, the beautiful name, Jesus’ name…

1. Peace – Robbie Seay Band

We can feel you move, and cannot stay the same.  The winds are blowing strong.  God of heaven come.  Breathe peace. breathe your peace on us so we might breathe you deep.

1. Take to the World – Derek Webb

Go in peace to love and to serve, and let your ears ring along with what you have heard, and may the bread on your tongue leave a trail of crumbs to lead the hungry back to the place you are from.  And take to the world this love, this hope and faith.  And take to the world this rare, relentless grace.  And like the Three-in-One, know you must become what you want to save, ‘cause that’s still the way He takes to the world.

1. Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah – Randall Goodgame (original hymn: William Williams)

Guide me, O thou great Jehovah, pilgrim through this barren land.  I am weak, but thou art mighty; hold me with thy powerful hand.

1. Section 13 – The Polyphonic Spree

Don’t fall in love with diamond rings or tragedy will somehow find its way in all that you hold true.  Keep ‘em amazed with your mild devotion to majesty… keep the light on in your soul.

1. Said & Done – Speed the Plough

On the way to work, I rush past people just like me.  We’re really not alone, we’re just living life so separately… I could reach out for your hand and I am really not alone.

1. You Don’t Love God (If You Don’t Love Your Neighbor) – Rhonda Vincent

Oh, you don’t love God, if you don’t love your neighbor, if you gossip about him, if you never have mercy, if he gets into trouble and you don’t try to help him, then you don’t love your neighbor, and you don’t love God.

1. Ben Franklin Must be Proud – Eric Hurst

Hallelujah for the great American way, Ben Franklin must be proud - make all your money, then you throw it all away on a life that keeps you down.  And I would never trade my life, and I would never give back time, and I would never trade my life… oh, I love the simple life.

1. On Time – Victoria Williams

There once was a man with a clock on his hand, sour note in his heart, a tight grip on his plan.  One day he awoke, back to hard times and spoke, “How long have I been blind to the fact that you’re always on time?”… They say no one will know the day or the hour.  They say to just watch and pray and walk in His power.  Because if you’re ahead, or lost way behind, then how will you know that you’re always on time?

1. Hush – Waterdeep

When you feel like the days just drone on and on and on, and you feel like the nights seem quickly gone, and on the inside, you feel like your heart’s just gaping wide, and on the inside you feel like no one’s on your side… well, I AM.

1. Pass in Time – Beth Orton

So much stays unknown till the time you are strong.  Did you imagine you could ever feel so strong, and all your pain just turns into relief? All your doubt becomes your own belief?  So come on now, come on now, child. You’re here just a while.  You might as well smile, ’cause tomorrow, you just don’t know.  It will pass. It’s gonna pass.

1. Tarantella – Madison Greene

Come oppressed and broken child, serve around the firelight, sleep not a moment now, be not tempted by the night.  Come abandon hopelessness… arouse your limbs with hope.  The Drum, it calls you “dance!”  There is life within you yet!

1. Past the Wishing – Sara Groves

I’m gazing in these deep well waters, where the pennies of my life have all been cast, and I’ve decided I am going to save my money and do something that lasts.  And you’ve shown me my “man of Macedonia”, you’re calling me further on.  And I’m tired of saying “It’s a nice idea… I wish it could be done.”

Photo by clickykbd

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When May bleeds into June, rousing summer in its wake, a subtle yet significant loss will be felt in the music world.  The May-June issue (#75) of No Depression magazine, will be the final print issue published.  There are whispers of things to come, such as expanded web content and a semi-annual book version compiling feature-length articles, but the loss of the magazine is a blow to Americana fans, nonetheless.  Many of my favorite artists were selected from obscure ads in the margins of No Depression’s pages, or circled from lists of influences in ten-page reviews of artists I had already come to know and love.  The magazine was to alt-country fans what Al Mohler’s blog is to reformed theologians.

I have to be honest for a moment, and admit to our readers that I am partially responsible for the demise of a magazine you may care absolutely nothing about.  You see, I allowed my subscription to lapse several years ago, picking up only the occasional issue here and there, and cheating on it often with younger, hipper issues of Paste promising free CDs.  Luckily for our readers, this article isn’t really about the magazine at all. 

Featured prominently in this farewell issue is one of my desert-island, all-time, top five bands, the Old 97’s.  Next week the band will release its latest offering, Blame it on Gravity, and the article was a testimony to the band’s perseverance and the band mates’ commitment to one another.  The primary songwriters and leads of the band, Rhett Miller and Murry Hammond, have a friendship that dates back some-odd twenty years to their days in Dallas, Texas.  These days the two make their homes on opposite coasts, but the music still finds a way to creep out of their souls and meld together into something consonant.

Murry Hammond’s story has long intrigued me.  The man who co-lead an unforgettable experience at Deep Ellum’s Gypsy Tea Room four years ago leads a roots-style weekly worship in California.  In a phrase, he’s my kind of guy.  His faith often seems to crop up in interviews and reviews, and Hammond does not shy away from discussing it.  John Marks, the author of this Old 97’s tribute and retrospective, notes: 

Listening to [Hammond’s solo] record in contrast to Miller’s The Believer, it’s hard to imagine that Hammond, who opens his solo debut with “What Are They Doing In Heaven Today”, has remained lifelong friends and musical partners with Miller, who penned that gorgeous ode to one-night stands, “Fireflies”.  To put the difference in the starkest possible terms, it’s hard to hear much Jesus on Miller’s last record, or much sex on Hammond’s new one.

Hammond, naturally, comes to the defense both of the presence of God and of the presence of sex in his music.  Neither the presence of the creator of the universe or of procreation in the band’s lyrics was surprising to me.  As an avid fan and admitted music junkie, my mind immediately raced back to a humble interview with Murry Hammond published in 2004 on the seminal Christian-media webzine, the Phantom Tollbooth.  In that interview, Hammond was asked how he reconciled the themes of the Old 97’s music with his Christian faith.  As a writer and as a follower of Christ, his explanation has stuck with me over the years. 

While I am most definitely still a work-in-progress, I think I’m kinder to people because of my pursuit of God, I know my marriage is better for it, and I think I’m a more honest songwriter because of it. How some writers can discuss their craft without getting into their most important influence is beyond me. Creativity is one of the fundamental elements of God’s character, so how can you separate the faith of the writer from his or her writing?
 
Personally, I tend to write the same song, every time. I write about redemption. I got a pile of them! My life has been a cycle of moving toward God, then moving away, then toward Him again, so redemption plays itself out over and over again in my life. In every song I write, I illuminate some part of that ongoing dialogue between the Almighty and myself, of being restless, or injuring myself then being healed by God, of feeling alienated or disenfranchised in some way, then finding connection and hope in the upward reach.
 
But what happens most in my writing, is I’ll put a microscope on a specific part of the redemption story, such as with the character in “Up the Devils Pay,” who is struggling with his dark and light sides. Imagine that the act of crying out to God can be shown as a strip of film, say, a scene where a man realizes his need for God, reaches upwards, God meets him and the man is transformed. I tend to not write so much about the entire sequence, such as Hank Williams did with “I Saw the Light,” but rather, I will zero in on a portion or even a single frame and describe where that character lives and what he is feeling. As much as I ponder writing about the portion of the sequence where God lives to give grace to the hurting world, I tend to write my songs back toward the beginning of the film, where the man first realizes and struggles over his need to be redeemed. How can you tell the whole story of redemption without telling about the poor creature that needed it in the first place? That human end of redemption is not often written about in a way which attempts to really move the listener, at least not in modern Christian music, but this is what I most often attempt to do. I feel that I hit occasional bulls-eyes there, and people respond instinctually, at a soul level, and they get it. And grace is illuminated in some way. I just feel most strongly in my heart for the regular person who is hurting, and is searching for a home.
 
All people take music very, very personally, and Christians are no different. Some might ask why would a musician of faith write and sing about anything else but God? Why would anything other than a song of praise escape the lips of a follower of Christ? To me, it’s much like a calling to ministry: Why aren’t these children of God plunging themselves into ministry? Because some are given talents that call them to step up on the pulpit, while most of us are called according to our other talents. We are called to put our light up where we live in our homes, among our neighbors, in the office buildings, in the schools, in the coal mines, as writers, as truck drivers, as artists, railroaders, country-rock bands.

What say you?

Can we talk about grace, without understanding the need for it?

Can we talk about sight without at least a cursory knowledge of blindness?

Will people who are searching for what Christ has to offer pay us any mind if they don’t feel, at least a bit, like we know where they are coming from? 

In that same Phantom Tollbooth interview, Murry also touched on the vitality of his friendship with the men in his band. 

…I have figured out one good thing I can do for my band mates, and that is to simply to give them a safe place to bring that most private part of themselves to, without judgment or ridicule. They know they can open up to me about God, and occasionally we’ll visit that place together, in different ways for each guy. It has been a positive experience between my band mates and my self. They are pretty good guys. You know what they say, Some plant seeds, some tend seeds, some harvest. We’re just tending seeds around here.

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But as the castles receive their finishing touches,
No one comes to live in them, instead,
The workers all go home to their own beds for rest.

Subdivisions, cities and zip codes,
Cranked out by the labor of dreamers
Who are building the kingdom here on earth
Just as it is in heaven, or perhaps a little altered
Only because dreams are often skewed, or
Hard to understand because they are views of
What hasn’t yet been done or even seen,
A revelation of the invisible.

And one mans edifice, results in another mans’.
As reactions zig-zag across the landscape,
Competition interrupts the dream world.

The walls keep being raised, the ribbons
Keep being cut, but the neighborhoods lie
Desolate with no one to take up residence.
All the workers return to their beds for rest,
Only to rise again, build again, rival again.

All the mud, bricks and mortar, all the blood
Of friends and enemies, all for a kingdom
That no one wants to live in, a skeleton kingdom.

photo by Anim8ir

Author Bio:: Emily Miller lives in Durango, CO with her husband Brian. She enjoys Argentine malbec, good books, watching River Plate futbol, cooking, and both dreaming about and living presently the incarnation of Christ through his Body and the Kingdom which has come.

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I’m trading comfort for awareness
suburbia for community
middle class for creative class
American for Earthian
Evangelical for Christ follower.
Conservative for
Liberal for
Progressive for
fearlessly independent

It’s not about who you read
or where you shop
or what you drive
or even what you believe
it’s about all doing all of those things
and everything
with meaning and passion
and a conscience.

walking when you could drive
not because it saves you money
not because of global warming
not because of traffic
but because you like the flowers
and walking helps you think.

it’s learning from children

it’s peace like a tree
unmovable, growing in all directions

it’s the slow, painful process
of resensitizing.

It’s a strange life
it makes some people cringe
but to whom shall we go?

Author Bio:: Ted is currently working as a Youth Pastor in Kansas City and putting his wife Sarah through Nazarene Theological Seminary. They both like barbecue and Indian food. Ted blogs a lot, and sometimes Sarah doesn’t get his poems.

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let’s move out to the suburbs
we could buy ourselves a home
where the floors are made of granite
and the sinks are made of chrome
and our children will play soccer
and we’ll join the PTA
and we’ll never have to deal with democrats
and we’ll never have to deal with gays

we can join up with one of them churches
that looks like a shopping mall
where the wallets are the biggest
and the hearts are so damn small
and we’ll go to lunch on Sundays
in our Lexus SUVs
and the men will compare portfolios
while the women watch the babies

I don’t mean to put you down
or the life you choose to live
God knows that I curse way too much
and take more than I give
but when I’m on my deathbed
and I start to reminisce
tell me there’ll be something more than this

my boy, he’ll play football
whether he wants to or not
and we’ll bug him about his homework
until we drive him to smoking pot
and our daughter will be so pretty
and on Friday she’ll lead cheers
until 11th grade when she gets pregnant
after drinking too many beers

my practice will be the envy
of all my business school friends
we’ll have more debt than you can imagine
but at least you’ll drive a Benz
you will keep my stomach happy
twice a year we will make love
we’ll have everything our parents
have been dreaming of

I don’t mean to put you down
or the life you choose to live
God knows that I drink way too much
and take more than I give
But when I’m on my deathbed
and I start to reminisce
tell me there’ll be something more than this

pretty soon we’ll stop talking
when the trying gets too forced
and when the kids go off to college
we can finally get divorced
and our children will do cocaine
and I’ll screw my neighbor’s wife
everything will be perfect
in our Republican… fundamentalist… Christian…
college educated… I know I’m so jaded…
pipedream suburban life

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you got to look outside your eyes
you got to think outside your brain
you got to walk outside you life
to where the neighborhood changes

A year ago, the Washington Post ran an article about an experiment in art appreciation. I held on to that article, knowing it would come in handy someday. Given the lively discussion on poetry we’ve had lately, I decided the time had come for it to be unearthed.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder… or listener, as the case may be. Art emerges from an individual’s perceptions and experiences, and it is received through the lenses of others’ unique backgrounds. Some art is created in response to more universally acknowledged truths, and therefore speaks easily to many people. Other art is created out of a highly unique experience, and may communicate only with a choice few.

What is art?

Once upon a time, art = beauty.

But who decides what is beautiful?

For many, art = communication.

Swirling colors, soaring rhythms and succinct combinations of words serve to express what our soul cannot otherwise utter.

What is art?

We could say that art is the expression of emotions and ideas through various mediums.

But is that enough?

Communication is a two-sided process. The speaker expresses herself, the listener processes what is being communicated, and responds to the message she has received. So it is with art. The artist creates something outside of himself to express and understanding of something he has experienced within himself. Once the art has been created, it is out there, vulnerable to the receptivity of other people.

Back to the article, what makes an artist great?

So much in art is related to the context in which it is presented. When a virtuoso assumes the identity of a street performer, does their art decrease in value? According to this grand little experiment, it does indeed.

What is it that convinces us art is valuable?

I submit for your approval, mass appeal.

Despite our best intentions, we humans are a cognitively simple society. We like our choices well defined and served up in clever packaging. We like commercials that tell us which choice will make our life better. We like options that remind us we are sane because, after all, we share the opinions of others. We like things to fit neatly into an orderly coded filing system. When we’re not quite sure where something belongs, we don’t know what to do with it, and we either sit down and think about it or we toss it aside. We haven’t left ourselves much time for the “sit and think” option.

Or, perhaps, I’m just speaking of myself.

In honor of National Poetry Month, I challenged myself to write more poems in April. I am not a poet by nature. I fear that someone may not like what I have written, or it may seem elementary, or a word may not mean quite what I thought it meant. Yet, I write. In the moment, the words are coming from an experience, and I have to believe that can speak into someone else’s life.

I also must acknowledge that it will not speak to everyone.

So how do we respond to another’s offering of art?

Objectivity is not a choice, unless we want to turn art into something lifeless and mechanical.

How about trying to see it through different lenses, walk around it in different shoes, respond to it from different perspectives? Perhaps it speaks to you right where you are, and you can interact with ease. Perhaps you encounter it in a cordial fashion, but walk away without much to say. Perhaps you sit together in a coffee shop, late into the night, struggling to communicate through an exhaustive conversation, only to leave more confused than you entered. That’s ok.

Communicate your attempt.

We don’t all connect with every person we meet, and we will not connect with all of the art we encounter, but let us strive to understand the detachment. In the process, we may not only gain another perspective, but we will learn much more about our own.

photo by chrisjohnbeckett

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it doesn’t have to be

please
stop smoking
stop drinking
stop stripping
stop hitting your girlfriend
learn English
kill your TV
please, save $20 this month
for god’s sake, please put your kid in school
and then “hello, how was your day?” when he gets home

stop mooching
stop pleading
stop lying
stop treating me like a white god of trinkets
I am not your genie
please stop with the broken English
stop with the ignorance
stop with the lottery and polar pops and cigarettes
you are killing yourself
you are sucking me dry
please

maybe if you had learned to read
if your mother had read to you
if your brother didn’t get shot
if your father hadn’t left you
if your grandfather had the right to vote
if your uncle had legal documents
if your teacher had inspired you
if you had been born with a higher IQ
if you had gotten that scholarship
if you knew how to turn on a computer
if your skin was just a bit lighter
if you didn’t speak with an accent
if God or fate or a cosmic blip had favored you just a bit more

maybe your problems would be solved
maybe you’d be a friend instead of a client
maybe you’d be just like me

Author Bio:

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Author Bio:: John O’Hara is trying to follow Jesus. He rambles on at Arrogant Poetry and loves his wife and son.

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This year, I didn’t want to skip ahead to Easter. The friends and followers of Jesus sat through a long, cold Saturday before Sunday ever came. But the songs on my hard drive were too busy rejoicing to notice that the person on the cross was, in fact, a person on a cross and not just a supernatural check-in-the-mail. The fault may just as well lie with my own sorry excuse for a music library, so if any of you know songs that would echo this sentiment - post away.

This is the product of my angst. The pseudepigraphal thoughts of Christ as he walked toward the cross and a challenge to those who are now living as his body.

Here hang all the dreams of old
That now will never be,
All the expectations lost
On fragile royalty.
I know that I was sent for more
Than just to live and die,
And I can hardly say how bad
It hurts to say goodbye.

Here are all the lessons learned
That now will go undone.
All that’s plain and practical
Will never see the sun.
The ones who heard me then can barely
Find the strength to cry,
And all my comfort drowns in how
It hurts to say goodbye.

Who will stand before the thrones
Of pompous priests and lords?
Who will be the voice of those
The powerful ignored?
I showed them how the world could be
And this was their reply.
There was no other way, but still
It hurts to say goodbye.

Don’t compare this bleeding to a song
‘Cause musicals and monuments are bound to get it wrong.
Don’t forget what all creation sings,
That nothing less could show you what it means to be the king.

Author Bio:: Cullen is a proud husband and father, the youth guy at a Methodist church, and a PhD candidate in NT studies. In his free time . . . oh, wait . . . he isn’t allowed to have free time right now.

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Peter, James and John had it all wrong. They had it all wrong from the very beginning. They did not understand that the Kingdom of God was completely opposed to the Empires of Men. They did not know that the Kingdom of God had nothing to do with Temple Worship or Synagogue gatherings. They stuck with him this far because they thought he was going to call down God’s wrath on the Roman occupiers and the Jewish elite who cooperated with them in the oppression of his people. They were ready to take their seats in a throne room and lord it over those trampled by the Messiah’s armies.

They were like children in so many ways. They lived in a fantasy world of Jewish armies under a warrior Messiah. They dreamed of glorious battles and waves of battle flags waving under a sun that would not set until they had beaten the Romans away from the Holy Land of their God. They just didn’t get it.

When he spoke of the Kingdom as a weed in a well ordered garden, they wondered why he did not speak of the Kingdom as a cedar of Lebanon. When he spoke of the Kingdom as yeast mixed in flour to make bread, they were dreaming of armies rising up for God. When he spoke of God as a woman looking for a lost coin, they were dreaming of wealth and power that comes through war and victory. When he spoke of God as a mother hen gathering her chicks to herself to protect them from the storm, they thought of storming the gates of Roman cities and conquering them for God. When he spoke of the Kingdom as a group of little children at play, they were plotting who would get the first and second seats of power in God’s Kingdom.

He knew that they would not stay with him. He knew that when they saw what happens to those who oppose both religious and political authorities, they would scatter like pigeons when the fox leaps into their midst. They sought a new order that would be a replica of the old order, an order based on power, domination, exploitation and when necessary war, victory and peace. He understood that they simply were not ready, nor were they willing, to understand that the Kingdom of God happens when people live as he had them live. That is why he kept telling them that the Kingdom of God is here. It has arrived! Look at me! See how we live together! See how we share! See how we heal and bring peace and wholeness to those with whom we eat. This is the Kingdom of God.

He had lived with them and in the heart of the living was the message. But they were looking for something else. They were not looking for a Kingdom based on God’s radical justice which brings utter Shalom, complete peace.

Irony of ironies! He found that aside from the woman who anointed him at Simon the Leper’s house, it was Pilot who really understood the radical nature of his mission and his life. Here at last someone understood what it was all about. Here is someone who understands and also knows that anyone who has an agenda that is so radically opposed to that of Rome must die. Here is someone who understands and who will have him executed for what he always has been: a radically subversive enemy of the Roman Empire and those Jewish religious and political leaders who owe their positions and wealth to Rome.

The God of whom he preaches and of whose Kingdom he lives in and out of is far too dangerous. He must be killed. With any luck his movement will die with him. Surely no group of people, no matter how dedicated, will be willing to continue this Kingdom living after he is gone. He fears that it will all have been in vain because they might think that he’ll come back and “fix it all” for them. He hopes that someday they will understand that whatever he has done they can do…and more.

Then darkness fell.

Author Bio:: Bishop Leland Somers is a semi-retired Old Catholic Bishop whose ministry is as a now and then homilist for Holy Spirit Ecumenical Catholic Church and a teacher and learner of the meaning of discipleship. He believes that only JESUS IS LORD and no other loyalties may come first and this is the only meaningful creed.

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