How Open Source Projects Survive Poisonous People

HT: Raymond Jones

See also:

Of course it opens a door to heresy...do it anyway!

"Contemplate the Emptiness" Jimmy A

Amazing song and lyrics, great guest vocals by Vicki Hampton and incredible drums by "A- Train": himself, Aaron Smith..

• Amazon link
• Jimmy A website

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What do you do when the night falls hard on you
And you're all alone
And the TV set's on and the light that it brings
Is the only light shining on you
And the voice in that box
Is the only thing that talks
To comfort your soul

Contemplate the emptiness, my friend
Contemplate the emptiness, my friend

What do you do when the last drink is gone
And the smoke burns your eyes
And the thrill has worn off and your friends have gone home
And you're coming down
And all that is left is to pick up the glasses
And empty the ashes

Contemplate the emptiness, my friend
Contemplate the emptiness, my friend

What do you do when she walks out on you
And you're holding the tab
And you say "What about all those promises we made
What about them?" and she says
"Didn't you know there's no such thing as promises here"

Contemplate the emptiness, my friend
Contemplate the emptiness, my friend
Contemplate the emptiness, my friend
Contemplate the emptiness, my friend

Do you remember riding that greyhound
Across that grey town
And thinking this isn't it. Like a voice saying
"There's something more" Like Jesus whispering to you
He was whispering to you...whispering to you

"Love the sinner, hate your own sin" -Campolo

"... In this video, (7 minute mark)Burke and Marin talk about sin. It’s a politically divisive word, and might seem to give us permission to discount or disconnect with people who we call sinners. But Marin (quoting Campolo) says, Jesus never said, 'Love the sinner, hate the sin.' What Jesus says is, 'Love the sinner, and hate your own sin.' (But isn’t it always easier to fix someone else’s speck that work on our own log!)..."
-from article accompanying this clip , found here

evangelical pornography or ideational ergative paraenesis

(image credit)

It's not the "evangelical pornography" of "Left Behind.'
(and hopefully you know who the Bible says will really be left behind)..

It will never make it on TBN..even if the writer turns out to be on crack.

And it is not for the casual fan, as Peter Wilkinson almost jokes here:

"requires an active brain, a working knowledge of NT Greek, and a dictionary which contains the definition of words like ‘ideational’, ‘ergative’, ‘paraenesis’, ‘anaphoric’ etc" link

But Wilkinson is right:

Gustavo Martin has, to my mind, made an important contribution in support of the case that the Olivet discourse has two horizons of understanding: the destruction of the temple in AD 70, and a more distant parousia of Jesus which has yet to occur. It’s also a fascinating piece of scholarship.

So here it is...have fun:

• Procedural Register in the Olivet Discourse: A Functional Linguistic Approach to Mark 13

If that was too heavy...start here with Rob Bell, below..he might be equallly heavy, but w/o the denseness...that is, no sightings of a ‘ideational’, ‘ergative’, or ‘paraenesis'...but the heresy hunters will have a field day with the title quote alone:

• "This is going to be helpful for people 2000 years from now who don’t want to get left behind”

substance, passion, commentary...or death cult shtick and tragic hipness

Robert Hillman: I have no idea where music is going and I have even less idea what rock’s role will be in that music. At present in America, rock ‘n’ roll has become very much a minority sound. There are many great young bands, such as Arcade Fire, but they only speak to a small fraction of the music world because most of the media and audience are caught up in what I’d call the American Idol/Celebrity complex. American Idol may be entertaining television, but it has been horrible for the health of pop music because it is not producing great, revolutionary talents. It is producing very limited, mostly mediocre artists and those artists are dominating the charts. A friend of mine, who is head of one of the most powerful record labels in America, said the music industry comes up with about four “breakthrough” acts a year and, for various reasons, three of those acts are going to be American Idol related because radio plays those acts and media writes about them. If Bruce Springsteen came along today, the executive continued, he doesn’t know what he could do with him because there’s no window of opportunity for that kind of artist. I worry that he could have said the same thing about U2. Until the mass music audience starts demanding substance and passion and commentary again, pop music — in terms of mass social impacts — seems like it is very marginal.
link

Bonus: Bono's intro to Hillburn's new book:

I’m not sure Robert Hilburn exists. I know he is not human. He might be a ministering angel or some kind of specter... he is certainly an enigma. Bob doesn’t drink or smoke, and his quiet conversation is the antithesis of the noisy messy rock and roll music he loves. He is the silent man on the other side of the “wall of sound”. His is the clarity that the chaos of creativity is always attracted to.

His column in the Los Angeles Times put the fear of God into rebels of the lowest common denominator but, encouraged faith from wild iconoclasts. High priests of schlock and roll withered rather than weathered the quietest storm that ever blew into town. Without ever being pious or elitist, he has the Levitical/Jesuitical energy of a keeper of the flame. So many of the artists he loved and detailed were consumed by the fire. It reinforced in Bob a reverence for the life force in rock - its truth telling vitality rather than its corny mythologies, its death cult shtick or its tragic hipness...read it all

the only thing God does

I have always gotten a kick out of the Delirious line (in "My Glorious"),
"all You ever do is change the old to new."



One thinks, "Is that ALL God does?"
Well, maybe everything he ever does is somehow filed under that heading.


And then there's U2's "I found grace, it's all I found" (in "Breathe")



One thinks, "Is that ALL?"

Well, yes.
And it's more than we deserve, and more than enough.
And any gift from God is filed under grace.
It's all he's got to give, he can do no other.

---
All God does, and can do, is convert old to new, and give grace.
Which is the same thing.

Busking for Dollars

I had to look up the Britishism "busking" when I saw Matt's post that Bono and Glen Hansard (of the Frames)...two of my favorite singers..were caught on video doing it in the streets at Christmastime.

Of course, having recently returned from San Francisco, I have seen plenty of busking..
and check out our friend Vincent hard at it...or maybe just posing for his album cover.
Buy his CD, or he may have to busk.
Stop him before he busks again!!
Don't wanna hear he became a serial busker.


The Irish boys were busking for charity of course..for the Dublin Simon Community, a group that works to prevent homelessness and aid the homeless.

Vincent would have known all the lyrics.
Of course the real news may be that Bono got his voice back over Christmas vacation, See:1:16-1:30 in 2nd clip.. More of the story here.

I didn't buy cigarettes at Berean, but I did find this..

What an amazing day at Berean Christian Stores. The chain is under new management, and for the first time I am aware of since 1984, they are stocking...U2!!

I almost snapped a photo of the remastered "Joshua Tree" CD on the rack, but I was afraid some kind of alarm would go off (:

I remember they stocked "War" when it was new.

But the story about the last time I spotted U2 at Berean is hilarious:

The last time I remember seeing a U2 record in a Christian store was so long ago that it WAS literally a record (the "Wide in America" EP, an import version), and the price tag was strategically placed over the cigarette hanging out of Adam’s mouth!
-LINK, "Is there such a thing as Christian music?"

But on this same trip to Berean...and even more controversial to some, I was able to buy (on the cut-out rack, of course...shhh, don't tell Jesus! What will they sell next!? See last year's post,"Lifehouse skit, and cigarettes on sale at Berean Christian Store") "Brothers/Sisters," the much-acclaimed (everywhere but in Christian circles! (See the amazon reviews, for example) 2006 release by MewithoutYou.

Some are wondering, "Are they a Christian band?"

Even though the only real answer to that question is "no,"
whether it's Gaithers or King's X (the only thing that can be "Christian" is a non-thing: a person)....



The enigmatic and autistic (or ADD, depending on who you ask)lead singer, who spent some time living in inner city Philly with Shane Claiborne's intentional, incarnational, missional community, The Simple Way (he talks about it in the video here) answers this way:

"It’s not like I’m offended if someone says we’re a Christian band. I just don’t think it’s true. I don’t think we live up to that calling, so I’d be reluctant to go saying that."
link, the Wikipedia page on the band

Wonder what he'd think if he knew his Cds were at Berean (Probably wouldn't be as colorful a response as was Ben Moody on finding out Evanesence was in Christian stores)...if he has heard of Berean. (:

But isn't it amazing to find lyrics liken this at Berean?:

"I'm still (...eeeh, technically) a virgin after 27 years/which has never bothered me before/what's maybe 50 more" (from "C'mon in")

The music and vibe?

Fascinating. Much better than "Gaithers and Benny Hinn on crack." (Though some might place them in that league").

If you like the Psalters (who have played with them), 16 Horsepower/Woven Hand, The Danielson, The Flaming Lips, the Pixies, or Arcade Fire, you might like them...

Or not.

Suffice to say they are from Philly, not Kansas.
I don't know if I'll ever acclimate fully to them.



Maybe that would be a bad thing anyway (:

A few article excerpts..

Note the unapologetic assumption of the first sentence in this one (it would never appear in an openly Christian magazine):

An openly Christian band that frequently tackles religious themes, mewithoutYou has also accomplished the rare feat of creating music that transcends religious and social boundaries..
The Weiss brothers -- vocalist Aaron Weiss and guitarist Mike Weiss -- were raised in a Sufi Islamic household with a mother who had converted from Christianity and a father who had converted from Judaism. As a result, they were well-versed in multiple religions from an early age, and the influence has played a part in their lives as well as their music. The band members are indubitably Christian and believe that Jesus Christ leads the path to God; nonetheless, this disc heavily explores the idea that perhaps all of the world's religions
hold significance -- that perhaps all can lead to one coming face-to-face with an ultimate truth or higher power...
"Whenever you point a finger at somebody else, saying [he] is not a true Christian because [he] has a song called "Allah, Allah, Allah," on [his] record, you have three fingers pointing back at you. If you want to bring Christianity and Jesus into it, I don't think Jesus would ever put somebody on the chopping block for writing a song like that, honestly," Weiss states. "[The record is] meant to do nothing but glorify our Creator." Even with their faith in Christianity, though, mewithoutYou is really just a rock band when it comes down to it...

"I don't think we're up there putting on a ministry. We're not up there trying to come to your city to have church," says Weiss. "We're trying to be a band and are expressing ourselves as artists. That's what every band does."
-Redefine magazine

How about this:

SING TO THE LORD A NEW SONG: Swami-like and pedagogical in skullcap, glasses, corduroy blazer, and striped tie, with the first Beatitude (“Blessed are the poor in spirit…”) tattooed on his wrists, Aaron Weiss steps into the street after his band’s sound check and is promptly cornered by a young man wearing a homemade Aaron Weiss T-shirt. The young man has questions, questions; Weiss nods, smiles, radiates. The world is looking very worldly this evening, in Philadelphia’s Chinatown—the dazed conventioneers issuing from the nearby 1,400-room Marriott; the seamed faces of the homeless—but here outside the Trocadero Theatre, we’re running a slight spiritual temperature. Local theophile band mewithoutYou is playing a sold-out show, and the air holds the possibility that the kingdom of God, if it doesn’t descend to Earth tonight, will at least lower itself by a couple of inches.... http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200910/christian-rock

Or this from MTV:


>Mewithoutyou: Not Your Average Christian, Vegetable-Oil-Fueled, Flower-Flinging Rockers:Philadelphia band's eccentricity has worked in its favor.

See their MySpace for more.

Ryan's Top Ten...and an Irish Steak or two

A top ten albums list from Ryan (The Living Room) is always worth checking out.
You'll likely discover a new favorite...

Here you go, in a post from a five-degree day in the Netherlands, which of course finds him grilling steaks outdoors:

• Top Ten Albums 2009; Ice Grilled Beef

dark and murderous, one-horned, brokenhearted joy

As much as I love the more direct and unabashed worship of U2 2000s,
I still love/often prefer the irony and twists of the 90s..

And I do love Zoo Tv more than TBN..though it's a tough call which is more ironic and zooworthy..

I have always appreciated Beth's classic quote:

[1990s U2 was] marked by depicting and lamenting humanity's shadow side...including their own shadow side....(This was) misunderstood by observers, I'm afraid particularly by Christian observers, who bring to that art the naive thought that any artist who writes about sin must be in favor of it."
Link, audio

And now her new post:

...one of several reasons I've been hesitant to describe the 360 tour as having succeeded as well as previous tours in being real leitourgia. ..

..This mode is, I think, not as honest, not as successful and certainly not as liturgical as the way U2 have previously done it, which is to take the audience to a dark place of injustice/sin and then bring them out. Liturgical theologian Aidan Kavanagh writes of how in order to arrive at the Banquet of the Lamb, humans first need to face into a "dark and murderous transaction with reality... because we are a bloody bunch who have made the world a bloody place both for ourselves and for every other creature we have named." There wasn't much darkness in the 360 Tour, and when you don't see your face reflected in an inarguable darkness where we're all implicated, you're perhaps not as likely to transact with reality, and therefore also not as likely to take responsibility afterwards -- not as likely to be forced to make, as Kavanagh puts it, "an adjustment to deep change caused in the assembly by its having been brought to the brink of chaos in the presence of the living God...

Read more: http://u2sermons.blogspot.com/#ixzz0aYPd5tOf

This all helps me grasp more of what I have been missing in the shows/setlist/plot this time (besides Bono's voice)..it may be I am missing a full-orbed marrative arc..which makes a stop somewhere a "dark and murderous place."

Some have suggested the theme of this tour is optimistic joy.
Maybe U2 should read John Piper's article on brokenhearted joy...and break and shake it up a bit.

For the next leg of the tour:

• Bring back "Exit," as a segue into the title song from "No Line"? (:
• Maybe a cover of some classic Alice Cooper? (:
• Maybe just have Mac Phisto (with one horn...a broken one) sing "Moment of Surrender"?
• "Fast Cars"/"Yahweh" medley with Arcade Fire wearing Aung
  San Suu Kyi masks (:
  

• ?...

I'll settle for "Drowning Man"...just once.

But in Pasadena...second night...please.

If not, how about a version of what Bono and Julie did at my first U2 concert..?

"Because I'm the pastor. that's why"

more shifty envelopes

Still working on pushing envelopes (and "pushing towards the unobvious," as usual) re:

epistemology, emergence, and shift in wineskins..

I was glad to recently find this, in an article on panentheism:

Emergence:
Describes the process involved in supervenience. Emergence occurs when a new property arises out of a combination of elements. The traditional example is that water emerges out of the combination of oxygen and hydrogen atoms in certain proportions. There are a variety of types of emergence that have been identified. In part-whole emergence, the whole is more than the total of all the parts (Corning 2002). Strong emergence understands evolution to produce new and ontologically distinct levels characterized by their own laws or regularities and causal forces. Weak emergence holds that the new level follows the fundamental causal processes of physics (Clayton 2004, 9). Strong emergence is also known as ontological emergence and weak as epistemological emergence.
link

The research on panentheism was a follow-up on noting that Falk (p. 198) portrays Einstein's Godview as being "roughly" pantheism, when actually the rough connection be might more helpfully be coined "panentheism," (depends on how much personal God one reads between the lines in Einstein..I am guessing more than most see)....drives me nuts when folks confuse the latter with the former. (Check out the proposed term "poly-panentheist" (:...)

Wondering if our current epistemological shift is in sync with

• missiological shift,
• old>new wineskin shift and
• pan to panentheistic shift..

Guess it will pan out in the end...

our interview with Shane Claiborne : "doctrines are hard things to love"

Here below is the unedited audio (meaning we didn't have to bleep out his word "ass," the amazing question Jeff Bryant requested...and you get a little extra over the broadcast half hour) of the interview Keltic Ken and I had with Shane Claiborne, mostly about the new ledaership (and followership)book he wrote with John Perkins, "Follow Me to Freedom"
...though he wasn't hard to get going on several topics! One of my favorite lines of the day was "doctrines are hard things to love":


Subscribe Free for future posts Add this player to my Page
Other Shane posts, click his name below.

"To be like Jesus, we need Jesus himself"

Amazingly, I have not read many interpretations of U2's "When You Look at the World" that will even admit that the song only ultimately makes sense as a prayer..as the "you" is "You" (Jesus)...
(Almost everyone says it is addressed..only...to his wife).

And I am not sure I have read any that get what I have always maintained is obvious:
the "I try to be like you...but without you it's no use" is basic, profound gospel...
Until Beth, of course:

...Naturally, we strive to emulate anyone we admire that deeply: "So I try to be like you, try to feel it like you do." But the singer's prayer reveals a discovery that he can't, that his efforts are "no use... without you." To be like Jesus, we need Jesus himself. Only by letting God graft us into the Union he embodies can we find the fruit of that Union manifest in us.
-Beth Maynard, U2Sermons

When I Look At The World:

When You look at the world
What is it that You see
People find all kinds of things
That bring them to their knees
I see an expression
So clear and so true
That changes the atmosphere
When You walk into the room

So I try to be like You
Try to feel it like You do
But without You it's no use
I can't see what You see
When I look at the world

When the night is someone elses
And you're trying to get some sleep
When your thoughts are too expensive
To ever want to keep
When there's all kinds of chaos
And everyone is walking lame
You don't even blink now, do you
Or even look away

So I try to be like You
Try to feel it like You do
But without You it's no use
I can't see what You see
When I look at the world

I can't wait any longer
I can't wait till I'm stronger
I can't wait any longer
To see what you see
When I look at the world

I'm in the waiting room
Can't see for the smoke
I think of You and Your holy book
While the rest of us choke
Tell me, tell me, what do You see
Tell me, tell me, what's wrong with me



Rare live version snippet: