A bit of an 80s/euro vibe this time around. With the notable exception of "Song For Him", as far I know the only song Bob Seger ever wrote about Jesus. Which is ironic, considering that during the early 70s - i.e. the out-of-print Seger golden period - Bob rocked the Jesus-look harder than anyone (which is saying something). Enjoy:
1. The Riddle - Nik Kershaw 2. Left To My Own Devices - Pet Shop Boys 3. 1963 - New Order 4. The Gift - INXS 5. The Feeding Of The 5000 - Ian Brown 6. Juxtaposed With U - Super Furry Animals 7. Disillusion - Badly Drawn Boy 8. Doctor's Orders - Carol Douglas 9. Glamsanity - JAZ 10. A Letter To Elise - The Cure 11. Forever - The Explorer's Club 12. Standing Next To Me - The Last Shadow Puppets 13. Tiny Dancer [live] - Ryan Adams and Elton John 14. If I Shoul Fall From Grace With God - Bill Mallonee 15. Song For Him - Bob Seger 16. Ash Wednesday - Elvis Perkins
Recently I noticed the following quotes from a series on the NYC subway called "Train of Thought":
Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made. - Immanuel Kant
I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me. - Isaac Newton
I couldn't help but feel encouraged by the humility of these quotes; the low, Bibliophilic view of humanity they present, which led to my next question:
Why were they chosen?
Thinking a bit further about how these words made me feel, I stumbled upon something: coming to terms with the truth about ourselves leads to humility, and humility leads to tolerance and patience, two emotions which are indispensable for a violence-free commute!
Mockingbird At The Movies: Cuckoo's Nest and Humboldt County
Another double feature night from resident Mbird expert, John Stamper:
I've never been able to say why I love One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest as much as I do -- and I am not sure I can now. Part of has to do with simply extraordinarily truthful acting by a large ensemble of people. See it for Danny Devito -- lovely gentle beautiful work, before he learned how to be America's rude nasty sarcastic midget. But every performance in it is wonderful, especially that of Brad Dourif, who plays man-boy Billy Bibbit.
It's also a movie about what happens when "the freedom of a Christian" (in a very loose sense) goes up against the crushing power of Pharasaical Law -- how this freedom evokes Rage And A Desire To Slay in the ecclesial hierarchy.
I couldn't figure out why, a few months ago when I was watching Humboldt County (2008), I kept strangely thinking of this old Jack Nicholson movie. And then I realized -- golly, that's Billy Bibbit. Brad Dourif, after a long time in the wilderness, started making a comeback in the last few years, and he's now appearing in a lot. Like Louise Fletcher, who so definitively created Nurse Ratched, Brad Dourif was so definitively Billy that it was hard I guess for him to get cast as anything else.
Humboldt County is a movie about marijuana. As in a LOT of marijuana. So be forewarned. It's also a movie, like Cuckoo, about the crushing power of the law (i.e. demand) in human relationships. The movie starts with a father, who's a professor in a med school, explaining to his student and son: "Well, you've just been accepted at the most prestigious residency program in the country. But I'm just so disappointed in your work in my class, I'm going to have to fail you." (That's my only spoiler.)
HC, like Cuckoo, is funny, touching, heartbreaking, frightening; and like Brad Dourif's earlier film, it's a movie with lovely ensemble acting, including among many the always wonderful Frances Conroy (Ruth Fisher in Six Feet Under).
It's also a movie about how graceful loving (with a little bit of, um, chemical assistance) is able to birth the very thing that the law destroys.
"The Distinctive Elements in Christianity" by Karl Holl (1866-1926)
A few quotes from the late Rector of the University of Berlin:
"I begin with what is best known and least doubtful, i.e. with that item in the teaching of Jesus which struck His kinsfolk most strongly, and which in fact must have excited the greatest surprise. Jesus is called by His opponents the 'friend of publicans (tax collectors) and sinners,' and He frankly accepts the title. It is His commission to go to the lost.
Jesus preaches a God who wants to have dealings with sinful men.
This conception of a God who offers Himself to the sinner is so familiar to present-day Christendom that it is hardly realized how revolutionary after all is such a doctrine - what a contradiction it implies to all religious conceptions recognized elsewhere.
Thus surely Jesus' conception of God was new. He dealt a blow at everything that earnest ethical thinking about the relation between God and man had established, and everything that the common-sense understanding of mankind down to the present day has held to be the only right standard."
Earlier this month, the Japanese Finance Minister, Shoichi Nakagawa, appeared at a press conference during the G-7 summit in Rome. He was wasted. Hammered. Three sheets to the wind. Plastered. Drunk as a skunk. I mean, wasn't even able to come close to acting even remotely sober. Worse than Joaquin Phoenix on Letterman. Watch the clip and be astounded:
Dave's last post about self-serving Lenten disciplines made the point that few such disciplines actually introduce real suffering in our lives. Mostly, these "disciplines" are about personal self-improvement projects. If we really wanted to suffer, Dave pointed out (somewhat tongue-in-cheek) we would do things like stop brushing our teeth or overdraw our checking account. Now we can add "Hold a major press conference in an international setting while completely intoxicated" to the list.
Watching this clip reminded me of the phrase in the Anglican prayer of confession: "there is no health in us." Heavy stuff. But this clip proves it. If someone in such a position of power could be enslaved to something that totally destroyed his career and reputation, the human problem must be pretty bad. I think Archbishop Cranmer was right. There is no health in us.
PS--Nakagawa resigned in disgrace but blamed the gaffe on some cold medicine and jet lag. Sounds like he hasn't yet reached a place where he can call a spade a spade. Wonder what it will take for him to hit bottom.
Working in ministry, it's hard not to develop a sense of humor about Lenten disciplines. I need tangible reminders of the sacrifice and suffering of Christ as much as the next guy, probably more - but let's face it, some of the practices people adopt are so transparently self-serving that you can't help but chuckle (on the inside).
We all know that things like giving up dessert for forty days or abstaining from the internet often double as self-improvement projects - the potential benefit to the person doing them is just too blatant. Not that I would ever want to discourage someone from trying them - after all, these are objectively good ideas. But from a spiritual perspective, they could also be seen as perpetuating the self-absorption that Lent is intended to challenge.
Perhaps I'm overdoing, and we can chalk the cynicism up to five years spent in youth ministry. But in the spirit of self-deprecation, a few of us here at Mbird have developed a list of alternative Lenten disciplines that we think might be more in keeping with the season. They are all guaranteed not to have any positive consequences whatsoever, other than engendering some humility/making youfeel the sting. Here goes:
1. Stop brushing your teeth. 2. Overdraw your bank account. 3. Get into a fender-bender. 4. Don't take out the trash. 5. Wet your bed. 6. Stain your clothes.
We could have easily gone with TS Eliot today. Lord knows we were tempted. Maybe next year. This year, we thought we'd post our favorite Ash Wednesday-themed song, "Ash Wednesday" by Elvis Perkins (Thank you, Trevor). Elvis wrote it in part about the death of his father, Anthony Perkins, of Psycho fame. So it's very serious and sad but also beautiful, like the day itself. Enjoy:
The tents go up as I go down Down to the flats and into the sound The closer I get to the city The further I am from memory In the green grass looking up For the words of the angry sun 'No one' when he says 'no one' Yeah he means 'no one' No one, no one will survive Ash Wednesday alive No soldier no lover No father no mother Not a lonely child in the up and in the bedroom A black and white of the bride and the groom Will bring me to my knees With the colorized bad dream That takes its place on Ash Wednesday
White noise and love Will be my only drug On this day nine suns away From that sad sad saturday When fire my friend Fire my villian You take away yesterday To give to me today When nothing's free no now it's Ash Wednesday
So each day is Ash Wednesday All this life is Ash Wednesday
All the doors are shut And the windows barely opened up The fires all around It's the ending of the drought And we are ready now For tear gas clouds on my mind Come on fill the house Finally and weep For it's king and queen sleep Both now in the arms of Ash Wednesday
True Love enjoys twenty-twenty vision, but talks like a myopic. --------------- Justice: permission to peck a wee bit harder than we have been pecked. --------------- He hid when he saw a Minister approaching with a worried look. --------------- Years before doctors had invented the jargon, he knew from watching his maiden-aunts that illness could be psychosomatic. ---------------
As a bonus, here's the solo from The Twelve:
O Lord, my God, Though I forsake Thee, Forsake me not, But guide me as I walk Through the Valley of Mistrust, And let the cry of my disbelieving absence Come unto Thee, Thou who declared unto Moses I SHALL BE THERE.
I Found Grace Inside the Sound: U2's No Line On The Horizon
Over the weekend Mockingbird received an anonymous, theological review of the new U2 record, which was just too good not to post. The record is out 3/3/09:
Good music is like a diamond; one can look at it from many different angles and see various facets of beauty. The new U2 album is like this, and I could have written a review about many other topics, such as its guitar riffs, its “moments of surrender”, or whether or not it is the “best ever” U2 album. Instead, I’m going to focus on the facet that played loudest to my ears: the repeated lyric, "let me in the sound."
If the title No Line on the Horizon refers to a yearning for the removal of the barrier between heaven and earth, then I assume it is evoked from Jesus’ prayer to his Father, “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” It is an idea displayed in visual form on the album’s cover, which is a photograph of a blurred line where the ocean meets the sky, and an “equals” sign over it (…on earth as it is in heaven). The theme certainly would fit within the larger context of Bono’s theology of eschatological tension (the “already / not yet” reality of Christ’s Kingdom), so poignantly painted in the scenes of Sunday Bloody Sunday and many other examples.
In that earlier U2 era, the tension was mostly focused on the brokenness of life on earth’s side of the horizon line (“broken bottles under children’s feet”). It sometimes alluded to the Kingdom on heaven’s side, showing us that it would include unity and hope (“tonight, we could be as one”). That unity was later analogized as radiant color, for example in the lyric “then [in heaven] all the colors will bleed into one” in I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.
So many times, Bono has pleaded with the Divine to come down through the barrier once again. He would wonder why the delay (“how long must we sing this song?”), especially in the face of such a mess here on earth. He even pleaded by mocking God’s absence in Wake Up Dead Man: “I know you’re lookin’ out for us, But maybe your hands aren’t free?”
But on this latest album he has started to paint a fuller picture of that “other place,” the Kingdom (not yet) come, on the other side of the horizon line.
Moving beyond the color analogy, Bono here describes heaven as full of sound.
In the new song Breathe he has us imagine “the roar that lies on the other side of silence” and in I’ll Go Crazy If I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight, he sings “…the sweetest melody is the one we haven’t heard.” I think this sound--a roar!--must be the same vision of heaven described in Revelation 4 and 5, where all the living creatures in heaven and on earth say/sing without ceasing “Holy Holy Holy” to the lamb on the throne.
Pointing us toward that sound, Bono invokes a prophetic tone by asking God to be witness to the truth of the Kingdom (“let me in the sound!”) and then he declares that he’ll be communicating that truth on earth, singing to the hearer, “Listen for me, I’ll be shouting. But we’re gonna make it all the way to the light.” Like a prophet, he then gives a rally cry to his people: “Let’s shout into the darkness, squeeze out sparks of light.” This lyric is an obvious footnote to the Bruce Cockburn lyric that Bono quoted on Rattle and Hum, “gotta kick the darkness till it bleeds daylight.” But here, instead of kicking at evil, Bono asks us to sing into it. He asks us to listen for Jesus’ tune, then sing with him that not-yet-heard melody of the Kingdom.
Walk out into the street,
Sing your heart out.
The people we meet,
will not be drowned out.
The song concludes its last verse with this:
We are people born of sound,
The songs are in our eyes.
Born to wear them like a crown, oh.
Walk out into the sunburst street
Sing your heart out,
Sing my heart out. I found grace inside the sound, I found grace, it's all that I found.
Like a minister reminding his flock of their mission to be salt and light, Bono declares to us that we were created to sing of God’s grace. If we would yearn to hear, as he does, the song already being sung on the other side of the horizon, we might catch a note or two. We might “tune our hearts to sing God’s grace”, as the 18th century hymn Come Thou Fount also beckons. We might sing these notes in the darkness until we see sparks of light.
How long must we sing this song? Until that day when Christ returns and there is no line on the horizon.
I just read a review in the NY Times on an off-broadway play entitled "This Beautiful City," which traces the transformation of the city of Colorado Springs into a "miniature capital of (Evangelical) Christianity." As expected, one of the storylines is, surprise, surprise, Ted Haggard and his fall from grace (covered elsewhere on this blog) . What caught my eye in the review were the lines spoken by the character who plays Marcus Haggard, one of Ted's sons.
“Sure, tragedy happened there,” he reflects. “Flip side is, in my view, my dad’s understanding God for the first time. Because, you know, we believe God is unconditional love. He is the only one who can love us completely for who we are, no matter what we’ve done, and heal us. So I think my dad’s being healed. I think he’s closer to being human now than ever before.”
I would never wish what happened to Haggard on anyone. Having said that, if that is what it takes for us to become "closer to being human," it can only be a good thing. As Luther points out, "A theology of glory calls evil good and good evil. A theology of the cross calls the thing what it is." May we all be similarly healed!
From a WSJ review of the 1935 essay "Puzzled America" by Sherwood Anderson, a description of the "American Theory of Life":
The notion that the United States is a uniquely open society, where the talented and industrious always have the chance to better their lot, is a central element of American self-understanding. The notion has been a prominent feature of American culture since the days of Ben Franklin, and it remains a core feature of the national ethos to this day. Indeed, in recent months the election of Barack Obama has reminded Americans of the promise that in the United States opportunity can be open to all.
Then it is discussed what effect the "American Theory" had on people during the Depression:
[In Anderson's travels around America during the Great Depression, he] found the people he met to be imprisoned by what he called the "American theory of life"--a celebration of personal ambition that now seems cruelly inappropriate. "We Americans have all been taught from childhood," Anderson wrote, "that it is a sort of moral obligation (editors note: the law) for each of us to rise, to get up in the world." In the crisis of the Depression, however, that belief appeared absurd. The United States confronted what Anderson called "a crisis of belief."
Wow!!! Read the whole article!! The author of the review (from Wesleyan University) has a really full and amazing understanding of the law! He rightly notices that the "American Spirit" or "American Theory of Life" rather than helping people during the Depression to "pull themselves up by their bootstraps", etc. actually imprisoned them and paralyized them. With all the discussion about how America emerged from the Great Depression, it was not the law of the "American Spirit" that rescued us!
This clip of 12 year old Tony Royster Jr. struck me as an obvious musical interpretation of Luke 2:42-47.
When Jesus was twelve years old, they went up to the Feast, according to the custom. After the Feast was over, while his parents were returning home, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but they were unaware of it. Thinking he was in their company, they traveled on for a day. Then they began looking for him among their relatives and friends. When they did not find him, they went back to Jerusalem to look for him. After three days they found him in the temple courts, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. Everyone who heard him was amazed at his understanding and his answers.
A great comic from Pictures for Sad Children by John Campbell! This dark and hilarious webcomic is best enjoyed from the beginning as it tells a number of stories following two characters: Paul, who is a ghost, and Gary, a man dissatisfied with most things.
While this comic in particular is about techno-nerds (one of my favorite types of nerds), it hits on a pretty central coping mechanism. We pour ourselves into something we can obsess over, something we can master, but typically as a mask for the emptiness we feel. We try to find comfort in things or identity and if we can just figure out the world within our particular realm of expertise then "the world will conform to our speculative fiction." Then it becomes easier to fictionalize our lives instead of seeing them as they really are: broken and in desperate need of restoration that can only be found through the Cross. The reality of life and freedom found in the Cross is the only thing that can fill the crushing vacuousness of our lives.
For Your Weekend Viewing Pleasure--Jesus People: The Movie
I can only hope that this movie signals the emergence of a newfound levity and self-deprecation among Christians, particularly among the "Evangelical" wing (of whom I consider myself a member). Perhaps this will equal the skewering brilliance of South Park's Faith+1 without the sardonic edge---we'll see. You can watch all 6 of the original shorts here. Best quote so far, "She has a real heart for God. . . and for fundraising."
From a review found here : Jesus People, a Christian-made parody of evangelicals, was created by professional comedy writers and actors in Hollywood. The film is a feature-length version of a six-episode online series that debuted early in 2008 on Independent Comedy Network (ICN), sort of a "minor league" for shows hoping to make the jump to the bigs—traditional TV or, in this case, film. It's currently on the 2009 festival circuit; it will screen at the Gospel Music Association's annual celebration week in April, and will likely be released on DVD in the late summer or fall.
The Jesus People online series—a web hit, with more than 500,000 views—tells the satirical story of Cross My Heart, a Christian dance-pop band-in-the-making. The four-person, coed group—an homage to Christian dance-pop classics like Jump 5—includes an aging CCM pop star trying to resuscitate her career after a sex scandal (played by Edi Patterson), a newbie Christian party girl with a wild streak (Lindsay Stidham), a goody-goody fundamentalist with a fondness for God's wrath (Damon Pfaff), and a token minority member who plays the sympathetic everyman (Rich Pierrelouis). The cast also includes the group's pastor/manager/entrepreneurial handler Pastor Jerry (Joel McCrary), and an impressive array of guest stars from across the comedy spectrum, including SNL's Victoria Jackson, The Office's Kate Flannery, Will & Grace's Tim Bagley, and Waiting for Guffman's Deborah Theaker.
Martin Luther: What to Look for and Expect in the Gospels (1521)
(An excerpt from this short but powerful treatise)
"Be sure, moreover, that you do not make Christ into a Moses, as if Christ did nothing more than teach and provide examples as the other saints do, as if the gospel were simply a textbook of teachings or laws. Therefore you should grasp Christ, his words, works, and sufferings, in a twofold manner. First as an example that is presented to you, which you should follow and imitate. As St. Peter says in I Peter 4 [2:21], 'Christ suffered for us, thereby leaving us an example.' Thus when you see how he prays, fasts, helps people, and shows them love, so also you should do, both for yourself and for your neighbor. However this is the smallest part of the gospel, on the basis of which it cannot yet even be called gospel. For on this level Christ is of no more help to you than some other saint. His life remains his own and does not as yet contribute anything to you.
In short this mode [of understanding Christ] does not make Christians but only hypocrites. You must grasp Christ at a much higher level. Even though this higher level has for a long time been the very best, the preaching of it has been something rare. The chief article and foundation of the gospel is that before you take Christ as an example, you accept and recognize him as gift, as a present that God has given you and that is your own. This means that when you see or hear of Christ doing or suffering something, you do not doubt that Christ himself, with his deeds and suffering, belongs to you. On this you may depend as surely as if you had done it yourself; indeed as if you were Christ himself. See, this is what it means to have a proper grasp of the gospel, that is, of the overwhelming goodness of God, which which neither prophet, nor apostle, nor angel was ever able fully to express, and which no heart could adequately fathom or marvel at. This is the great fire of the love of God for us, whereby the heart and conscience become happy, secure, and content. This is what preaching the Christian faith means. This is why such preaching is called gospel, which in German means a joyful, good, and comforting 'message'; and this is why the apostles are called the 'twelve messengers.'"
Mockingbird At The Movies: Rossellini's Blaise Pascal
This week's MATM column comes from Paul Francis Matthew Zahl:
In January, Criterion/Eclipse released its long-awaited collection of Roberto Rossellini's French/Italian tv movies from the early 70s. We just saw the "Blaise Pascal". I cannot recommend this one highly enough -- it's easy to Net-Flix.
The humility and utter Christian power of the portrayal of Pascal, with Rossellini's camera that never ever comments but lets the viewer interpret and feel the material, is moving. I think the final long scene, shot in one long take from one spot that is never interrupted, conveys the definition of Christian humility.
As usual with Rossellini, he leaves you on such a transcendent tragic (supernal) moment that it is almost unbearable. This "Pascal" is the opposite of glitz, and conveys what the Jansenists were about. In fact, I bet it is the only movie on Jansenism ever done that we could ever see. The actor, too, who portrays Pascal, is the image of what the saint actually looked like.
This is consummate.
The last two things that Rossellini did were a 12 hour television version of "Acts of the Apostles", which is supposed to be very fine; and his odd and very zoom-lensish life of Christ entitled "The Messiah". He died right after finishing the last, and no one knew whether to bury him as an Italian Red or as a devout Catholic. So they buried him in two different services...
Hey everybody! So here's a little fun DZ and I cooked up that will attempt to entertain as well as generate some good discourse. We each wrote a gospel-oriented music trivia question that deals with musicians that everybody's heard of. Use the comments to answer. While each question has only one main answer, they are somewhat geeked-out, so feel free to answer on multiple levels pertaining to the different references. Additionally, for extra fun on this first installment, see if you can guess who wrote which question. And this is by no means a set format, so let us know if you have any cool ideas!
Question 1: Which Silverado-inspired music video prominently features the extensive crucifix collection of its singer, who grew up teaching Bible classes at his local Pentecostal church, 3-8 times/week before moving to the other side of the country to earn his living smoking cigarettes?
Question 2: What son of a conservative Catholic father and Episcopalian mother came to popularity with his seemingly reactionary art and persona with the help of a now classic 1996 cover, half-penned in the early '80s by a frequent British Bob Dylan-collaborator of the '80s and '90s?
Malcolm Gladwell on Rugged Individualism and the Myth of American Success.
Excerpts from an interview with Malcolm Gladwell about his new book Outliers: The Story of Success: To a great extent, you’re debunking rugged individualism, the myth of American success, right?
I am, I mean, in some ways this book is somewhere between a corrective and a full-scale assault on the way Western society in general and American society in particular has thought about success over the last few hundred years. You know, we have fallen in love with this notion of the self-made man, of the rags-to-riches story, of the idea that if you make it to the top of your profession you deserve a salary of 20 million dollars a year because you’re the one responsible for getting to the top. Why shouldn’t you be richly rewarded? And that idea and that ethos has permeated virtually every way in which we think about achievement, and I think that that idea is completely false; it’s worse than false, it’s dangerous!
And it completely obscures the real reasons why people succeed. It obscures the extraordinarily important role that we, by which I mean society, can play in promoting success. We make decisions every day over who gets to succeed and who doesn’t without realizing we do it. I want to bring those kinds of hidden mechanisms to light as a way of helping us understand what we can do to promote achievement on a much broader scale than we do now.
You’re Canadian. Has this distance from American culture sharpened your perspective?
I think so. I think because as Canadians we’re far less caught up in the myth of individualism. It’s a much easier argument to make in Canada that success is a product of many different factors and forces and environments and legacies working together. Of all the books this is the most personal in the sense that it really does represent my bedrock philosophy as a human being and that was very much formed by my upbringing in Canada.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I recommend this book, and post the above comments made by its author because, as a Christian, I find it interesting when non-overtly-professing Christians and/or non-believers come to similar diagnostic conclusions about life to the ones that I hold because of my Christian faith (i.e., the way that I understand the Bible to explain the situation that is human life). I tend to think that the Bible’s picture of what is really going on from moment to moment and year to year parts ways tremendously with the majority of people’s commonly held assumptions about life and human nature.
Two of my personal favorite bones of contention are found in 1) humanistic understandings of the human heart (as opposed to a traditional doctrine of total depravity), and in 2) Pelagian-type understandings of how to live, wherein your life’s success is based entirely upon individual effort and all emphasis is placed upon personal decision-making and trying harder (as opposed to, say, the notion that the will is bound, necessitating the need both for grace and God’s intervention upon the ways of the human heart).
Along these lines, you can find really good non-Christian intellectual arguments against the pure free-will idea these days (see Bonnie's amazing post from last June), but it seems that secular arguments against what the interviewer calls “rugged individualism, the American myth of success” are quite rare. Gladwell’s book is an insightful exception. While it is not exactly Christian in any overt sense, Outliers is deeply critical of certain ideas about life that the Christian Gospel is also critical of, and I would argue that it is not because they are good criticisms, but, rather, because they are truer than the lies about life that many people are romantically wedded to.
One More Basketball Post: The Law Shall Never Pass Away (Mt 5.18)
From espn.com comes this touching story about the grace shown by one basketball team towards another:
"Milwaukee Madison senior Johntell Franklin, who lost his mother, Carlitha, to cancer on Saturday, Feb. 7, decided he wanted to play in that night's game against DeKalb (Ill.) High School after previously indicating he would sit out.
He arrived at the gym in the second quarter, but Franklin's name was not in the scorebook because his coach, Aaron Womack Jr., didn't expect him to be there.
Rules dictated Womack would have to be assessed a technical, but he was prepared to put Franklin in the game anyway. DeKalb coach Dave Rohlman and his players knew of the situation, and told the referees they did not want the call.
The referees had no choice. But Rohlman did.
"I gathered my kids and said, 'Who wants to take these free throws?'" Rohlman said, recounting the game to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. "Darius McNeal(pictured above) put up his hand. I said, 'You realize you're going to miss, right?' He nodded his head."
McNeal, a senior point guard, went to the line. The Milwaukee Madison players stayed by their bench, waiting for the free throws. Instead of seeing the ball go through the net, they saw the ball on the court, rolling over the end line. "I turned around and saw the ref pick up the ball and hand it back to the player," Womack said in the Journal Sentinel. "And then [McNeal] did the same thing again."
Said Rohlman: "Darius set up for a regular free throw, but he only shot it two or three feet in front of him. It bounced once or twice and just rolled past the basket."
To me, the interesting thing about this story is the inescapability of the law. The DeKalb coach wanted to "let it(the foul) go", but the referees simply wouldn't allow it. Yet it was their very insistence that the law be fulfilled that led to the graciousness of Darius McNeal.
In basketball, as in life, grace only makes sense, is only felt, in light of the unwavering, unmerciful demand of the law. Darius, in missing the free throws, in giving up the points, giving up his right to them, was truly Christ-like.
An interesting article from last week's Wall Street Journal about celebrity and our collective defense mechanisms. Perhaps all the Christian talk of "cosmic accounting" (substitution, propitiation, expiation, etc) isn't so far-fetched after all... A few excerpts:
Americans who like their dudgeon high and their blood boiling have worked themselves into a tizzy now that the news about Alex Rodriguez's steroid use has broken. The Yankee third-bagger's fall from grace, coupled with Olympic hero Michael Phelps's shocking admission of drug use and Tom Daschle's unseemly failure to pay his income taxes has apoplexy aficionados digging into the record books to remember a time when the American people had worked themselves into such a sustained, unmediated level of fury at once-revered public figures. How could they do it? We all keep asking one another. How could they be so stupid? How could they be so callous? And what kind of message does it send to the kids?
---------------
No public misdeed is too insignificant to earn our limitless fascination. Actor Joaquin Phoenix caused a stir this week following his appearance on the "Late Show with David Letterman." His principal offenses: chewing gum and maintaining a generally unresponsive demeanor throughout what proved to be a very painful, unproductive interview. (Mr. Letterman finally said, "Joaquin, I'm sorry you couldn't be here tonight.") And thus ensued a heated debate about whether Mr. Phoenix was acting, on drugs or just spaced out. Meanwhile, in a nearby solar system, the stock market dropped another 400 points.
These misbegotten individuals, their names dragged through the mud, can perhaps be forgiven for thinking that their miscues might have generated slightly less rancor given the perilous circumstances the nation currently finds itself in. After all, virtually concurrent with the disclosure of their misdeeds, the global financial system has imploded, the housing market has collapsed, both Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers have ceased to exist, unemployment has reached a level not seen in decades, millions of citizens approaching retirement age have seen their 401(k)s pulverized, and some of the most illustrious banks in American history seem poised to be taken over by the federal government.
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What accounts for the shock that greeted the Phelps miscue, the anger that greeted the Daschle disclosure and the rage that continues to be directed at Rodriguez? For one, we the public think that we know these people because we see them all the time on TV. Because of this, they root us in the here and now in a way run-of-the-mill white-collar villains do not. They have violated an old-fashioned code of morality that we can all understand in a way we cannot understand a $50 billion Ponzi scheme or the fact that Iceland has put out a "Closed for Business" sign.
Another explanation for the ire directed at this trio of sacrificial goats is that we enjoy having baseball players and swimmers and pols in our crosshairs, and we aim to keep them there. This is not so much out of a desire for retribution as a desire for therapy. Athletes, movie stars, pop singers and politicians are part of a consistent narrative that runs through our lives. They reach out and touch us, but we also reach out and touch them. This makes them entirely different from thugs like Bernard Madoff, a parvenu scumbag none of us had even heard of six months ago. When our luminaries, our heroes and heroines disappoint us, we feel that we have the ability to punish them because we know where they will feel it most. And so we keep on punishing them. Over and over and over, day after day after day. Until somebody really awful like O.J. Simpson comes along to redirect our rage elsewhere.
From the therapeutic perspective, this is vastly superior to ranting about the latest depredations of Wall Street. No matter how much we froth and foam, none of us can lay a glove on imperious figures like John Thain or the haughty fat cats who run the auto industry or the inept regulators who let Mr. Madoff run wild in the first place. ---------------- Another reason public outrage has reached such a stratospheric level is because Messrs. Phelps, Rodriguez and Daschle are people who can actually hear our derision, people it is possible for the public to punish.
Recently, my town installed a large decorative fountain in the local park in an effort to spruce up the neighborhood. About a week after the fountain was built, this sign appeared next to the fountain.
I believe this sign is a strikingly honest reflection of the nature of the law, aka, the "ought's" of life. The law presents itself to me under the guise of safety ("Please keep off the fountain"). The law says that I would be happier and less stressed if I were to follow it. I would be a better person, I would no longer have any strained relationships, I would have career success, etc. The law says it's simply looking out for me.
But beneath this veneer of charityalways lies the curse of conditionality ("Violators will be prosecuted"). Were I to falter in any way, were I to violate the simple statutes in place for my benefit, then I cannot expect to get off with a warning. No, transgression of the law demands prosecution.
The same thing is true when one offer a simple suggestion or piece of advice to a friend. It may be that such advice is told to them for their own good. That new girlfriend may be totally wrong for him, that tie may not go with his shirt and that college may be worst place she can go. But when one's advice is not followed, anger, indifference, passive-aggressive manipulation, or the self-righteous “I told you so” will always follow.
All this demonstrates that what seems to be given for my good (advice) only leads to destruction. Or as St. Paul says: "for if a law had been given which could make alive , then righteousness would indeed be by the law" (Galatians 3:21).
The child stood in the shed. The child went mad, later, & saned the wisemen. People gathered as he conjoined the Jordan joint and he spoke with them until he got smothered amongst their passion for mysterious healing had. They could not take his point:
-Repent, & love, he told them frightened throngs, and it is so he did. Did some of them? Which now comes hard to say. The date's in any event a matter of wrongs later upon him, lest we would not know him, medieval, on Christmas Day.
Pass me a cookie. O one absolutely did lest we not know him. Fasten to your fire the blessing of the living God. It's far to seek if it will do as good whether in our womanly or in our manlihood this great man sought his retire.
Bill Mallonee: If I Should Fall From Grace With God
Bill Mallonee rose to prominence in the 1990s with Vigilantes of Love, an indie rock/alt-country band out of Athens, Georgia. (Their breakout album was Killing Floor, produced by Peter Buck of REM and the amazing Mark Heard.) Paste magazine ranked him #65 in their 100 Greatest Living Songwriters poll. Mallonee’s music is dark, honest, and full of bleeding love. In other words, he is a Christian. That is, he is breathtakingly blunt about the excruciating suffering life entails, and through it all he hangs by his fingernails to the cross. His records should be on the shelves of all Gospel-lovers. I've been a fan for a long time and just want to "share the love."
Many of Mallonee's songs tell biographical stories, also, from lives of people that have been crushed by rejection, the Law, and the weight of existence. Some of his best in that genre are “Eleanor,” about Eleanor Roosevelt; “Skin,” about Vincent Van Gogh; and from his critically-acclaimed release Audible Sigh comes the song “Hard Luck and Heart Attack,” about Jack Kerouac, which includes these lines: Arms around me if I'm going through the ceiling Service stations of the cross, yeah the doctors they need healing Things clear for a moment when you're coming off desolation Between nothing and the atonement it all bleeds behind your cadence
Can you stand it?! But Mallonee's song, “If I Should Fall From Grace With God,” has captured me recently with its depiction of Romans 7. The lyrics, especially the last two stanzas, speak for themselves. Mallonee recorded the song in his home, and it sounds appropriately raw. From his 2007 Circa, here it is:
I've been sober for nearly forty winks Beating those odds ain't one of my strengths When your faith's a beat dog howling chained in some front yard If I should fall from grace with God
Sonnets of love and Gethsemane carved deep beneath my skin Hometown gatekeepers didn't like it much so I never did get in Somewhere between strawberry fields my backyard full of stars If I should fall from grace with God
Now I have stood in large places, but mostly they've been small I've ventured into spaces where I shouldn't have been at all Remove your shoes figuratively this is holy ground we're on If I should fall from grace with God
Well faith has its thorns 'cause faith she is a rose You can still smell the scent if you lean in real close Make them pry it from your hand after you're dead and gone If I should fall from grace with God
Judas was the traitor, Peter the cowardly man Which one I most resemble, the thirty pieces the silver in my hand My eyes were always set on high, the heart so deeply flawed If I should fall from grace with God
For those in the Pittsburgh area, Mallonee will be playing at St. Stephen’s Church, Sewickley, PA, this coming Wednesday, Feb 18, 2009, at 7 PM. $8 at the door. You can see his tour dates on http://www.billmallonee.net/. You can find his (and Vigilantes of Love) stuff on amazon and iTunes, but you can also buy all his albums (25 and counting, some self-released) at http://www.volsounds.com/.
PS--I highly recommend this article about Mallonee from October's Christianity Today.
Last week, Aaron likened the Roman Catholic practice of offering indulgences to similar practices in Evangelical circles such as exhorting people to read the Bible more or carve out additional devotional time etc. He went on to talk about how they are simply different approaches to dealing with the "lingering effects of sin". Aaron also observed that indulgences are for believers, not for those "outside the fold".
This reminded me of something that has been on my mind lately. We hear a lot of talk in churches about "spiritual maturity". But to be honest, I'm not exactly sure what that term means. The best I can tell is that it has a lot to do with morality and self control and discipline and that sort of thing.
Well, the other day while reading in my Educational Psychology textbook about metamemory(a type of metacognition that focuses on memory and memory processes) I came across this:
Preschool children have an inflated opinion of their memory abilities. For example, in one study, a majority of preschool children predicted that they would be able to recall all ten items in a list of ten items. When tested, none of the young children managed this feat. As they move through the elementary school years, children give more realistic evaluations of their memory skills.
As the children grew older, or matured, they became more aware of their limitations, or what they were truly capable of accomplishing. It occurred to me that the same is true on a spiritual level. That is, perhaps spiritual maturity begins with the realization that we aren't as "in control" as we once thought we were.
