Switchfoot Pictures

Switchfoot

I've liked Switchfoot for years. I wasn't the biggest fan, but I did like them a lot. But then, starting in 2007, I discovered Jon Foreman's solo EPs. The songwriting on those records was so outstanding that I instantly fell in love with them. Because of them, I went back and relistened to my Switchfoot albums, paying more attention to the craftmanship (both lyrical and musical). I realized that few bands could have such depth and originality and sense to their songs. Then their new album, Hello Hurricane, came out. It is a fantastic album. It was so good that the wife and I decided to drop $50 to go see Switchfoot in Austin this week. It was a great show. Once I finish editing, I'll upload some pictures as well as a review of the new album. But until then, here are two videos that I took. These two songs are two parts of a "trilogy" of songs: "Let Your Love be Strong", "Your Love is Strong" and "Your Love is a Song". The latter two are below. Enjoy!

Prayer of Adoration

Prayer of Adoration
Dayspring Baptist Church, 4 October 2009

Our gracious and loving God,
You alone are worthy of receiving all praise and adoration.
Yet how reluctantly praises come to our lips. We are quick to complain, quick to be disappointed, quicker to cry “Encore!” than to shout “Blessed be your name!”
Yet if we are silent, the rocks, the very limestone that shapes this land, will cry out.
So Lord, we come before you, King, Savior, Giver of life
We look to enter the chorus of praise for which we were created-- we recognize that it is our calling to magnify your name for as long as we are gifted with breath.

Let the praises of the heavenly hosts, those thousands upon thousands and ten thousand times ten thousand, be ours this morning; may we in one small church in Waco, Texas, enter into the eternal melody of adoration of the heavenlies:
“Worthy, worthy, is the Lamb, who was slain,
to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength
and honor and glory and praise!”
We confess that you, our God, are worthy-- beyond worthy-- to receive all praise. Therefore:
“To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb
be praise and honor and glory and power for ever and ever!”
We praise and adore you, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. May adoration be the air that we breathe, today and all days, for you deserve nothing less. Amen.

Prayer of Thanksgiving: Lent 2009

Our most holy and gracious God, we come before you as a people for whom the prayer of thanksgiving does not come naturally or easily.
We are quick to complain and slow to give thanks. Use this time, Father, to create in us the discipline and the habit of thanksgiving. As we take just a few moments to be intentional in giving thanks, we pray that you, Lord, will be glorified as our hearts and minds testify to your goodness.
Let us offer a few moments of silent thanksgiving to our Lord...
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Lord, for all the blessings of this life, we thank you with gratitude for your abundant grace.
For all the trials of this life, we thank you in faith for the promise of renewal and restoration.
In this time of Lent, we thank you, Jesus, for the 40 days you were tempted in the desert.
We thank you, Lord Christ, that because of your 40 days of fasting, our 40 days are lived in the strong presence of a high priest who sympathizes with our weaknesses (Hebrews 4:15).
We give you thanks, Holy Trinity, that you promise your people who dwell now in this season of ashes...
a garland instead of ashes/
the oil of gladness instead of mourning/
the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit
We give thanks to you, God, for the work you are doing in us during this season of Lent. We give thanks to you in advance for the beauty of the transformation you are bringing about in our lives through this season. All glory be yours, Father, Son and Holy Spirit divine. Amen.

Today

Today is glorious. The weather is perfect. Clear skies. Clean, cool air. Sunny with a light breeze. Hardly a cloud in the sky. This is a day when I am glad, so glad, to be alive. Not even my depression can withstand the quiet joys that flood me on a day like today. Hallelujah-- praise the Lord!

Old thoughts on U2's new album

These are my two reviews of U2's "No Line on the Horizon" that I wrote a few months ago. I had a good friend asking for my take, so I'm reposting them.

I’m a huge U2 fan. I love each of their albums (with the exclusion of Rattle & Hum). My favorite of their albums is, without a doubt, Achtung Baby! And though I don’t think they were their best projects from an artistic standpoint, I think that Zooropa and Pop I personally love those two bizarre albums. So in other words, I like U2 experimental side. I’m a fan of their stripped down, anthem albums like The Joshua Tree and All that You can’t Leave Behind but at the end of the day it is their experimental albums that I come back to again and again. All that to say, if you don’t like U2’s more experimental albums, then you may not want to put a lot of stock into what I’m about to write.

I’ve now listened to this album a few times all the way through, mostly when doing schoolwork. It works fine as background music insofar as several of the songs don’t call attention to themselves. This isn’t a record that demands a listener’s attention (except for the odd first single “Get on your boots” and the rocker of the album “Breathe”). But that doesn’t mean that the album is bland or dull. The complete opposite is true. This is an album whose depth (both musical and emotional) is there to be discovered, but it isn’t being broadcasted and exploited for attention. Nothing on this album immediately jumps out as an instant U2 classic! but instead this is simply a collection of good songs. At this point, I don’t really see this album joining the three U2 classic albums: Joshua Tree, Achtung Baby!, and All that You Can’t Leave Behind. Instead, I see this as a solid album along the lines of War-- a few highlights, a few lowlights but the highs aren’t outrageously high nor are the lows outrageously low. It is an even, solid, enjoyable album-- neither a bomb nor a classic.

STRENGTHS:
This album has a lot of things going for it. What follows are a few of my initial thoughts on NLotH’s strengths:
The Edge’s guitar. Over the last few albums, U2 has been talking about really wanting to make a ‘rock’ album where Edge’s guitar is front and center. And in many ways, 2004’s How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb was that rock album. But this current album has a few solid moments where Edge’s guitar really shines. “Stand Up Comedy” features a catchy riff which adds a muscular strength to the song while Bono contributes his typical “oohhhHooooo” effects. “Get On Your Boots” features Edge doing his crunchy guitar thing that was so typical of his work on Bomb. “Breathe” is the real rocker of this album and the guitar is probably fiercer in this song than it has ever been. It has been really great seeing the Edge experiment more and the focus on the guitar in the last few albums has been a refreshing turn away from the bleeps and boops of Zoo TV and Popmart phase.
The structure. This is an album that lacks a coherent musical vision or coherence and yet the way in which the songs are situation works very well. Instead of opening with a full out rocker like Vertigo, this album begins with the upbeat but instrumentally restrained title track that draws its strength and power more from the passion of Bono’s vocals than from the instrumentality. It then moves into the second track which offers shimmering guitars an electronic beat and soaring vocals. The same is true for the 7+ minute third track Moment of Surrender which rounds out the top three. Each of these tracks contain some elements that are different and create a different sound and beat for U2 but there are enough correlations to vintage U2 that you can easily see the connection between these songs and previous albums. The next five tracks, however, take us into a foreign realm drawing from Zooropa’s electronic experimentation, from Pop’s self-conscious and self-referential lyrics, and Bono’s ever persistent desire to have his goofiness taken seriously. The breakdown mantra of “Get On Your Boots” is Bono’s impassioned cry to “Let me in the sound”. This is nonsense of course but Bono’s voice is so passionate and sincere that you can’t help searching those lyrics for undiscovered wisdom. But much like 2000’s Elevation (“a mole/digging in a hole/digging up my soul), the lyrics of these rocking songs are more flash than substance but because they are placed after three deep, emotional and lyrically powerful songs, the fluff of these rock songs is given immediate credibility. The final three songs return to both musical and lyrical seriousness. Each of these final songs seem darker, or perhaps bleaker, than they truly are simply because they are proceeded by such off-the-wall fluff. This structure allows U2 to have a little bit of everything in this album-- the dark, the fluff, the epic. Structurally, though there is so much difference between each song on this album, the album flows beautifully.
The experimentation. U2 draws on a lot of different elements for this production that do not usually have a prominent role in their music. The use of brass instruments is an especially noticeable addition. I’m not a huge fan of brass in general and so I’m reluctant to accept its presence in rock music, but U2’s use of it is sparing and it adds a nice touch when they bring it in. You can also see some of the influence of recording in Morocco coming in with some of the instruments used in Breathe especially. There is a lot of choral presence in this album which is again atypical of U2. This works well for the album insofar as Bono’s voice is rougher and grittier than it was on Bomb and so the addition of a chorus behind him gives the vocal performance a more hopeful and more resonant quality.

Okay. So what doesn’t work?
No classics. Like I said before, this is a solid album and all of the songs are good but there’s not a single song on this album that I would predict being a classic. The song that comes closest to being a U2 classic is Moment of Surrender. That song has the quasi-spiritual content and the epic sound that may give it staying power.
This album will become dated because the lyrics (with few exceptions) address the spirit of the age instead of timeless issues of love, hate, forgiveness and redemption. One of the major themes of this album is ‘the land’ (White as Snow, Cedars of Lebanon). Such a focus on contemporary issues makes this album relevant but I think it will end up dating the album. I really see this album as a new “War”-- “War” was a great album but it doesn’t have the timeless quality of JT, AB!, or ATYCLB.
Cedars of Lebanon. One of the things that I like the most about U2 is that most of their albums end with a spiritual song: Yahweh, Grace, 40, even Wake Up Dead Man. But Cedars of Lebanon is a disappointment. Instead of being a cry to God (even a cry of dereliction and rebellion like Wake Up Dead Man), Cedars is a bleak meditation on being an exile from ‘the land’. While that is a powerful topic, it ends the album on a bleak and unresolved note. Musically, I find Cedars to be a disappointment as well. It is a spoken-verse song which ends on a musically unresolved note by having Bono’s final spoken words being muttered overtop of a few last electronic bleeps. So both lyrically and musically Cedars ends the album on a loose, unresolved note. I imagine that this was what they were trying to do but I found it to be a misstep especially in comparison with the way Yahweh brought such clear resolution and consummation to all of the songs on Bomb. But I suppose this again is a testimony to the fact that No Line lacks a coherent vision in the same way Bomb did. Bomb’s subject was the atomic bomb of Bono’s heart and Yahweh was the spiritual culmination of the emotional outpouring of Bono’s heart on that album. But No Line has no such coherent vision and so there isn’t really any way to have the last song serve as a summation of the entire album. So I suppose Cedars is the inevitable conclusion to this album but it is representative of my main disappointment with No Line and that is that it lacks the thematic and musical unity of U2’s other albums. Maybe one day I’ll see this as a benefit but for this initial review, I find it to be more of a disappointment.

So that’s my conclusion: this album succeeds insofar as it is a collection of good songs. But the album fails insofar as it is merely a collection of good songs. I could never be so critical of any other band other than U2. But U2 has the ability to make an album that is greater than the sum of its parts. This is not one of those albums. Grade: B.

**FURTHER THOUGHTS**

Alrighty, so I’m a solid fan of the new U2 album, No Line on the Horizon. Big fan. It’s not my favorite album by any stretch, but I do like it a lot. So I thought I would follow up my initial review with some brief comments/ratings about each song:

No Line on the Horizon: 7/10-- This is a solid opener to the album. It is familiar sounding enough for old school U2 listeners to feel comfortable but some of the shimmering keyboard effects and loops point to the fact that this is a more experimental album. The bridge, complete with Bono’s typical “Ohh ohh, uh ohh oh oh oh” is insanely catchy.
Magnificent: 8/10-- As far as I can tell, this will be the second single of the album. It is definitely one of the best songs on the album-- straight forward U2 melody and guitar with the addition of some loops and a more aggressive drumbeat than usual. This song strikes me as a deliberate updating of their old pre-Joshua Tree sound. Very good song; I love Edge’s subtle guitar on this song.
Moment of Surrender: 9/10-- I love this song. Soaring vocals, shimmering music and earnest lyrics of spiritual longing and awakening. That’s what makes a good U2 song in my opinion. Bono’s vocals on this song are, in my opinion, the best on the album. I love the lyrical allusions as well: I was speeding on the subway/through the stations of the Cross. Good stuff that.
Unknown Caller: 6/10-- I honestly do not know what to make of this song. The lyrics are so strange and the choral chorus is so foreign to U2’s studio albums that I feel like I’m in a completely different world with this track. It starts out slow and quiet and then builds to an upbeat chorus. Honestly, I feel like this is akin to a trippy Beatles’ track: odd combinations of music and vocals and lyrics. It’s enjoyable to listen to at least.
I’ll Go Crazy if I Don’t Go Crazy: 8/10-- This is standard U2 pop. And a gem at that. Insanely catchy and cheerful. This is a song that makes me glad to be alive.
Get On Your Boots: 6/10-- I don’t know what to do with this song either. I like the dirty guitar on this track a lot, and I like the funky breakdown where Bono begs to be ‘let into the sound’-- whatever the heck that means. Still, the drums are weird, the lyrics are strange and the chorus falls flat. The best parts of this song are Edge’s guitar and Adam’s bass line.
Stand Up Comedy: 7/10-- Another song that highlight’s Adam’s bass line. Another upbeat celebration of life and love. Another good guitar hook. And it has a great line: Josephine be careful/ I’m a small man with big ideas. You gotta love it when Bono makes fun of himself.
Fez/ Being Born: 7/10-- The most experimental song on the album-- a double song really-- Fez is just some electronica but Being Born is a solid, Zooropa-esque track.
White As Snow: 10/10-- Hands down the best song of the album and one of the best songs U2 has ever written. Bono’s vocals are soaring and passionate here but it is the construction and lyrics that make this song so amazing. Lyrically, the song is the dying memories of a Palestinian solider who is dying from wounds he received in the war with Israel. But what makes this song so powerful is that these lyrics are structurally built around the melody of Oh Come, Oh Come Immanuel. I can’t think of a more powerful statement than that.
Breathe: 9/10-- This is the hardest rocker on the album and my favorite out of the harder songs. I love the combination of guitar and keyboard and Bono’s off-kilter lyrics and delivery. An enjoyable rocker-- the Elevation and Vertigo of this album.
Cedars of Lebanon: 3/10-- I do not like this song at all. Some of the lyrical imagery is memorable and captivating but neither the music nor the vocals are especially noteworthy. The lone curse word seems pointless to me as well. I can’t imagine why U2 decided to end the album on such a sour, dull note.

So there you go. It’s a good album and definitely worth repeated plays.

Poor Texas

As if 56 days of temperatures over 100 degrees this summer wasn't bad enough, Cyanide and Happiness had to hurl its own (hilarious) mockery at our poor state:

What a (good!) day...

Sometimes being in a PhD program is a drag. There are so many books to read, so much abstraction to wade through, so much critique to be done that the simple joys of life get lost. They get lost because they are not as immediate as the demands of the Academy. So it is with most professions I suppose but the Academy is a little different. The Academy, the academic life, is primarily a life of thought and deep thought demands a certain degree of leisure. Yet with the demands of books, papers, presentations, emails, colloquiums, conferences, publications and meetings, that leisure gets lost. And with the loss of leisure goes, I believe, some of the opportunity for deep thought.

I had a immensely productive academic day today. Yet my work was couched within the confines of leisurely, pleasurable activities: a long morning hike, a trip to the coffee shop, grilling burgers outside after the rain. There might be something to that pattern: when my work is done within the context of refreshment and enjoyment and play, the work itself ends up being more productive and of better quality. I suppose that is something to think about.

Bad teacher

Whew so I totally blew my second class of the semester on Friday. Seriously. I sucked as a teacher. I was teaching on friendship and so I was bringing in Aristotle's three types of friendships and the virtues. But I could not talk well to save my life. My brain was simply fried. It was awful. Then to see students zoning out or falling asleep-- that threw me even more.

Uncool.

Then of course all of my insecurity kicked in and I felt like hiding from the world and giving up on my dream to teach. *Sigh*. I'm noticing a pattern: when I go in with all of these expectations and performance oriented goals, I end up completely sucking and being boring. When I go in with a focused desire on being a source of encouragement, I do better.

So I think I might need to send my class an email of apology or something because I was pretty lame and pretty irritated at their lack of response by the end. Ugh. Here's hoping next week will be better.

"Three Descents" by Scott Cairns

I'm not much of a poetry reader but I've found this poem by Scott Cairns endlessly fascinating. It appeals to so many different interests of mine: theology, Eastern Orthodox thought, classical mythology.

Cairns' poem has three movements. The first two movements depict two pagan tales of journeys into the underworld: Aeneas and Orpheus. The third movement depicts the Eastern understanding of Christ's own descent into hell.

What follows is my own amateur commentary on the poem:

Three Descents

I. Aeneas

As the beloved Palinurus sank

more deeply beneath wave and memory,

as the remnant of his race descended

painted planks to step on foreign shore

and there spark fire, gather wood and water,

even as the god's red fist fell hard into the

sea,

Aeneas pressed through the tangled underbrush

to gain the door to hell. First, of course, he found

the temple of another petty god, graved

with images of all that lay ahead--

his fortune and fate of every soul

he'd implicated in his flight from Troy.

He barely looked, so used he had become

to how little pleasure Time could bring,

so engaged by the prospect of stepping

briefly out of it, if only to return

to Time's demands when he returned to light.

He hurried through the golden vault to find her

whose words would lead him throu

gh the awful gates.

And what would he remember years from now

of what he'd find? Little, save the wretched

figure of his own father coupling death,

nearly indistinguished amid

that mass of shades like dogs tied together

whining. And the figure of the Sybil

likewise bound, then tossed, a bent toy skipped across

a marble floor, moot refusal widening

her eyes, opening her throat as the god's thin voice

coughed out the infernal terms Aeneas

believed he sought, might welcome, until he heard them.

Commentary:

This first section of Cairn's poem tells the tale of Aeneas of the Aeneid. The hero, Aeneas, as he fled from the ruin of Troy in order to fulfill his destiny to be the founder of the Eternal City of Rome, seeks out the entrance to the Underworld in order to fulfill his duty to visit his dead father. In order to do this, as the priestess of Cumae warns him, he must be approved by the gods for if he is not he will be unable to leave the Underworld once he has arrived. The way for him to determine his divine approval is if he finds a golden bough which will grant his access. He does and so he enters Hades, guided by the Sibyl.

His journey among the dead is painful as he must confront the woman, Dido, who killed herself for love of him as well as the ghosts of fallen warriors and dead babies. It is not a pleasant journey. Close to the climax of his journey, meeting with his dead father Anchises, Aeneas witnesses the final purification that dead souls must undergo before beginning their new existence: drinking from the river Lethe, the river of forgetfulness.

Cairns' commentary on Aeneas' journey is brief yet telling. In the

fifth and sixth stanzas, Cairns cites Aeneas' selfish desire to undergo the adventure to the underworld: to escape from Time. Even as he fulfills his duty to honor his father, Aeneas' journey out of Time causes his to turn a blind eye to "the fate of every soul he implicated in his flight from Troy". Consumed as he was with his desire to escape from Time, Aeneas was ignorant of his own guilt in their deaths, and especially in the death of Palinuris, the captain of his ship who he threw overboard to please the gods.

Another important characteristic is the state of the population of the underworld. The Shades- mere shadows of their living forms- are an indistinguishable mass "

like dogs tied together". Here there is no individuality, no self... only the huddled mass of humanity reduced to a pack of dogs. This is a tragic vision no doubt.

II: Orpheus

That his eyes positively shove with the image

he had shaped- of sweet reprieve, of his hand upon

the beloved, lifting her from the narrow crypt

caught floating on barren stillness, unaccustomed

silence-- could not be comprehended by those few

whose minds retained a trace of how the present gloom

was nothing of itself but served to amplify

the absence of the luminous occasions worked

above. That his lit gaze upon those shades who lined

the path could hurt them like a flame did not occur

to him, though he observed their trembling as he passed,

had puzzled as they shrank, slipped back into the Dis.

Her tender heel bitten to the bone, the woman

could barely walk the ruined path she followed down,

and as he pressed with greater speed to apprehend

her frail figure hobbled by its crumbling clay, she turned

to understand the source of sudden suffering,

as if a boy had held a surgeon's glass above

a shriveling midge now stricken by the sun's light drawn

and focused to a beam. As their eyes met, her loss

was total and immediate. When he returned

alone to the sunlit world of things, his life

became one long attempt at shaking free his culpability

in her undoing. And later, as his own flesh

was torn, his body sundered by the famished hands

of famished women, he breathed a last, a single note,

contrite at how his lesser love had hurt her.

Commentary:

Orpheus' quest to the underworld was spurred, not by a selfish desire for glory, but to pursue his wife Eurydice who had died after being bitten on the heel by a poisonous snake. The tale of his journey into the underworld is a tragic one. Granted the graces of the gods, Orpheus ventures into the underworld to reclaim his beloved from her crypt. Orpheus charmed Hades and Persephone with his music. These gods of the underworld then promised that Eurydice could return to the living world. But her rescue and resurrection would contingent on a terrible condition: When Orpheus and Eurydice climb the long stair out of the depths of Hades' realm, they could not look back. If one of them looks back, Eurydice will be lost forever. Such a condition will discern the quality of Orpheus' love for Eurydice: if his love is ruled by agape, a desire for her best interest, he will be able to deny his passion for her long enough to guarantee her resurrection. If, however, his love is selfish and under the control of his passions, he will not be able to resist turning back to her.

The tragedy of Orpheus' tale comes when, just upon reaching the living world, Orpheus' passions overwhelm him and he turns to watch Eurydice. As he turns, as her form fills his vision, he breaks the condition of her resurrection and she is snatched back into the underworld, lost to him forever. And, as if the loss of his beloved was not punishment enough, Orpheus was himself killed by being torn to bits by the impassioned Maenaids in the midst of a Bacchic orgy. And upon his death, his last thought was, as Cairns so carefully and precisely puts it, how his lesser love, his love driven by passion, had doomed Eurydice.

Like Aeneas, Orpheus passes the residents of the underworld in his quest. The Shades, in Cairns' recounting, are wounded by the life that Orpheus brings with him. Like the pain that occurs when a light is first turned on after being in the dark, Orpheus' life burns the Shades whose entire existence is shadowy, barely corporeal, all but annihilation. Orpheus' life hurts those who exist only in death.

III: Jesus

That his several wounds continued to express

a bright result, that still the sanguine flow

courses tincturing the creases of his cheek

and wended as he walked to bless the bleak,

plutonic path with crimson script declaring

just how grave the way that he had come,

that underfoot the very clay he traveled

sank beneath an unaccustomed weight

occurs as no surprise. That he was glad

is largely otherwise, as would be the news

that every sprawling figure found en route

acquired at his approach an aspect far

more limpid than the lot that lay ahead.

As if his passing gained for hell itself

a vivifying agency, each shade

along the way rose startled, blinking, at once

aware that each had been, until this moment,

languishing, until this moment, dead.

Thus, suddenly aware that each among

the withered crowd had by his presence met a sudden quickening, the multitude

made glad by his descent inclined to join

him on the path recovering each loss,

exulting in each past made newly present.

His etched face luminous and very flesh

mde brilliant by the unremitting pulse,

he gains the farthest reaches where the ache

of our most ancient absence lay. He lifts

our mother and our father from beneath

the mindless river, draws them to himself, and turns.

Commentary:

We come finally to the descent of Christ into the underworld. The richness of the symbolism that Cairns' invokes in this poem is extraordinary; the contrasts between Christ and both Aeneas and Orpheus are sharply drawn and exquisite.

First, the symbolism:

The first stanza depicts Christ's blood on his cheek as a "a sanguine flow coursed tincturing the creases of his cheek". The sanguine flow, of course, describes the redness of the blood of Christ. But the language of the sanguine is also an echo of the tradition of heraldry. Further, the language of "tincturing" is also reminiscent of the colors used to emblazon a heraldic shield. What emerges from this heraldic imagery is a picture of Christ, noble even in death: death was something that he chose, that he willed for our sake and so Christ-in-death is not made subject to the horrors of being dead but instead demonstrates his Lordship even in death.

In the second stanza, the "crimson script" is an image of the blood that marks the path that he walks into the underworld, a path "that sank beneath an unaccustomed weight". The unaccustomed weight is, as C.S. Lewis once wrote, the "weight of glory". Christ is a presence of substance in an unsubstantial place.

Second, the comparison:

When it comes to the population of hell, we saw in Aeneas that the Shades were a pack of dogs, no personality. In Orpheus, the Shades were burned by the life that Orpheus bore into the Underworld. With Christ, however, we see that the presence of Life itself, instead of hurting the Shades, brings life to them again. His presence is a "vivifying agency" that causes them to awake, creating in them a "sudden quickening". This language of "quickening" is an archaic way of speaking of living: "the quick and the dead". But there is more to this language than simply the image of life; it is the image of birth, the image of brand new life. The "quickening" is the name for the when a woman first feels her fetus move. Christ is the "firstborn from the dead" as Scripture calls him, yet the birth pangs of his glorious rebirth are felt, echoing, throughout the realm of the dead. At the presence of Life in the realm of Death, the quickening movement of new life, a vivifying of that which had previously been amorphous mass, is felt and all hell trembles.

Finally, Christ reaches the end of his journey into hell, and the resting place of Adam and Eve, our first father and first mother who sleep beneath the river of forgetfulness, the river Lethe. Christ pulls our parents from underneath the mindless river-- from out of forgetfulness into a new sort of knowing, an "un-forgetfulness", an a-lethe. Christ pulls Adam and Eve (and thus all of humanity) out from the river Lethe into his presence of Alethea, out of forgetfulness and ignorance and oblivion and into Truth, the Greek word for which is, of course, alethea. Christ "draws them to himself", to he who is Truth itself. Adam and Eve, who (according to Ireneaus), fell to temptation because of their ignorance, their forgetfulness and immaturity, are now bound together to He who is Truth, he who is Lord of the realm of the living and of the dead. And with our parents now nestled to his bosom, Christ turns and is raised from the dead and draws us out of death and into a glorious new life, a life that is nothing other than Himself.

Happy Things

A friend of mine, a member of the Official Baylor Theological Drinking Society aka "The Drinklings", is in Oxford now for a conference. I just finished a Facebook conversation with her in which she told me that my prospective dissertation advisor, who is also there at this conference, was talking about me and my dissertation project in very positive terms. He said that he believed I would contribute something important to the field of von Balthasar studies.

This makes me happy.

Some other things that make me happy:

1. Being done summer employment.
2. Being listed as a Graduate Fellow of the Baylor Honors College.
3. The prayer: "Catch for us the foxes in the vineyard."
4. A new tasty beer: Hefeweizen.
5. Interesting cinematography
6. The fact that we are closer to cool weather.

Two things that make me sad:

1. My haircut
2. This darn book that I have to read for a class I'm teaching. I'm not a fan of deliberately southern fiction. I've tried but I just can't get into it. Even Walker Percy, who I really want to like, just irritates me.

Back to more happy things:

7. Our new roommate, Ivy. She's super great.
8. That I own what is probably the world's oldest guppy: 2 years and 1 month old.
9. The prospect of eating out this weekend.
10. Being a teacher.

There you go. A happy blog from the depressed guy! The world may in fact be ending.

Why do I love the Fricks...?

Why do I love my friends the Fricks?

1. They are both hilarious people as demonstrated on their blog which I hereby recommend: frickhouse.blogspot.com
2. They are both intelligent people who are a delight to talk with.
3. They are dead sexy as demonstrated below:




Let's be honest, folks. That is hot.

So check out their blog and become friends with them. Their intelligence, humor and sex appeal all demand your attention!

Why Craig Ferguson is Brilliant

About the name of this blog

The translation for the name of this blog from Latin to English is, "Oh God, you have made us for yourself." This phrase has become important to me as I've been studying Roman Catholic theology in earnest over the last few years. I first discovered it in the writings of Henri de Lubac, particularly in his book from 1946 entitled Surnaturel (that's French for Supernatural :).

In de Lubac's book, he uses this idea of being created by God for God as the liturgical prism through which he examines the ontological (ie: the studying of 'being') understanding that developed in the late 15th century with Thomas Cajetan.

Cajetan argued, based on his faulty analysis of the Angelic Doctor, Thomas Aquinas, that the natural order and the supernatural order were two completely separate orders. Nature is completely distinct from the supernatural-- it has its own means, its own end, its own natural beatitude. The supernatural then becomes something superadded on to the natural. Cajetan arguably read Aquinas in this way in order to safeguard the sheer gratuity of supernatural grace. This, of course, is an important and a noble task. However, de Lubac's point (besides the fact that Aquinas does not fit Cajetan's assessment) is that to think of the supernatural as something "added on" to the natural is to create a dualism between the orders. This dualism, de Lubac rightly warns, may lead to the downfall of Christian engagement in the world (ie: Christianity being relegated to the privatized, supernatural sphere).

What de Lubac counters Cajetan with is this: he argues that there is no such thing as an "ungraced nature". The supernatural is not laid on top of the natural like a layer cake but both infuses and transcends the natural. God created the natural for Himself. That is, God created the natural world so that it contains within itself the desire for God. Nature was created in order to have a supernatural end-- divine beatitude-- rather than a natural one (ie: political, social, economic beatitude).

But what does all of this mean for me and for this blog? As far as I can see it, what de Lubac is arguing for opens up the door for a larger expression of worship. Worship becomes more than just an additional activity that is added into our lives. Rather, supernatural worship fills and floods every natural (read: ordinary) moment. This means that every ordinary event, whether it be plunging the line of a clogged toilet, reading a book, mowing the lawn, talking to the wife, going to work-- all of these things are oriented towards the supernatural. All of the ordinary things are avenues to and are themselves drawn towards fulfillment in supernatural beatitude.

This blog then will dabble in both the sacred and the seemingly profane because, since God has made all things for Himself, even the most worldly and normal things are filled with the scent of the Sacred.

Something old and something new

This is my first posting here on Blogspot. I previously had a full scale website called Wanderings that I had to give up because I couldn't really justify paying Apple another $100 a year for an occasional hobby. So here I am, living it up on a free service! :)

I'm not a particularly good blogger. I don't write consistently. My posts aren't particularly entertaining or scintillating. Mostly, I use the blog to experiment.. with writing, with thinking aloud, with new styles of expression and worship. I will probably talk a lot of theology, a bit of story-telling, a smattering of philosophy, and perhaps a smeckle of art. Sometimes I'll probably talk about my life as a student, as a Christian, as a sinner, as a pilgrim, as a pastor, as a teacher, as a lover of books, as a lover of beer, and as a lover of long, meandering road trips. If that sounds like something you'd enjoy, hey, welcome. If not, no offense taken!

Some of the things that I'll be posting here are old writings from my recently retired website. Others will be new. You'll just have to wait with baited breath as to which you'll get first!

Anyway, welcome and see you guys around.