The Pilgrim And His Lack Of Progress

A couple more soundbites from Bono, this time from his Rolling Stone interview in 2005:

Q: How big an influence is the Bible on your songwriting? How much do you draw on its imagery, its ideas?

Bono: It sustains me.

Q: As a belief, or as a literary thing?

Bono: As a belief. These are hard subjects to talk about because you can sound like a d---head. I'm the sort of character who's got to have an anchor. I want to be around immovable objects. I want to build my house on a rock, because even if the waters are not high around the house, I'm going to bring back a storm. I have that in me. So it's sort of underpinning for me.

I don't read it as a historical book. I don't read it as, 'Well, that's good advice.' I let it speak to me in other ways. They call it the rhema. It's a hard word to translate from Greek, but it sort of means it changes in the moment you're in. It seems to do that for me.

Q: You're saying it's a living thing?

Bono: It's a plumb line for me. In the Scriptures, it is self-described as a clear pool that you can see yourself in, to see where you're at, if you're still enough. I'm writing a poem at the moment called 'The Pilgrim and His Lack of Progress.' I'm not sure I'm the best advertisement for this stuff.

(The man himself with my friend and fellow fanboy, Nathan Hart!)