7. cities 8. cities on rivers 9. cities in the mountains 10. cities on rivers in the mountains

Today campus minister/ESL teacher Ellen in Sarajevo lists in her Stranger in a Strange Land blog 100 things she loves, a high percentage of which I love too. There is U2 content, which is my excuse for linking it. The last one she says she loves is getting comments on her blog, by the way.

Opening Eyes

Relevant Magazine has an article on Bono and AIDS in Africa on the cover this month. So far, the best post I've read about it is by Andrew Careaga. It's a joke people.

International update: U2 book in France, Germany, Japan

Get Up Off Your Knees is now listed on Amazon.fr and on Amazon.de, where it looks like only resellers are offering it so far. It's also on Amazon.co.jp, who from my best guess look like they have it in stock.

40 days and 40 nights, tempted and yet undefiled

Today is Ash Wednesday and Lent is here, so let's welcome it with one of those classic Bono quotes:
"I met this guy once in a mental hospital I was visiting. He introduced himself as Jesus Christ. I just said, 'Haven't we met before?' He said nothing. I asked him why, if he was the Son of God, was he in a mental hospital? He said, 'Because it's my 40 days and 40 nights in the wilderness.' "

Hebrews 13:14

The epistle to the Hebrews, Douglas Coupland, "Walk On" and contemporary culture's pervasive sense of "homelessness"? Oh heck yes. That'll preach! In fact, it did last week, here. I think those seven characteristics of "home" are great. Hard to know what it is if you've never had one.

I also just want to note this phrase from Prodigal Kiwi's writeup, because amongst all the misunderstandings of focus ("But is U2 Christian?" "Who says Bono meant that lyric as a Bible reference?" "Are you bringing rock 'n' roll into church to reach the youth?"), he states exactly the approach Get Up Off Your Knees takes: "how U2 lyrics help us hear scripture and gospel in the midst of our contemporary context."

Attention Popmart Shoppers

I'm not sure what the deal is, but Walmart has our book listed and in stock for $9.42 right now. That's by far the lowest price I've seen.

Study group in Ohio

Kurt Wiesner of Cleveland writes in with two bits of news: first, a reminder that this coming weekend marks the end of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame's U2 exhibit, which has already been extended twice. There will be a fan gathering; more info here. I had a chance to go to the exhibit several months ago and it is really an amazing experience.

For anyone in the Cleveland area, Kurt will be leading the "Pursuing God with U2" Bible study from Get Up Off Your Knees at Trinity Cathedral beginning next week. They're meeting on Tuesday nights 7:00 - 8:30 pm at 2230 Euclid Ave., Trinity Commons conference room A/B. It's free. Call 216-774-0408 for details.

With or Without You

It's been a quiet week in U2-world, other than a few stories I'm not going to dignify by linking to. I'm talking with some folks about a New England speaking event in May, and some others about interviews, but nothing that's ready to be written about. Plus Lent is coming and my church is launching a new service in 2 weeks, so I have a lot on my mind that's not book-related.

However, here's one thing. Easily the most controversial track on the In the Name of Love Christian U2 tribute CD is the hip-hop Grits cover of "With or Without You." Jesusfreakhideout opined, "Grits desecrates 'With Or Without You', filling it with cliche gibberish." Christianity Today called the track "the only real fumble" on the album, while the Rebel Base memorably wrote, "No. No, no, no, no, NO!"

U2Guatemala has the MP3 and a chance for you to make up your own mind.

We just got done with the 2004 budget; yes, it's time to start on the 2005 budget

If you are in the USA and are interested in participating in efforts to help make sure that the promise of $15 billion to fight AIDS comes to more than (to cite 1 John 3) "words or tongue" and pays off "with actions and in truth," Church World Service will help you send an email to your elected officials on the topic. A particular concern right now is a 64% proposed cut to America's contribution to the Global Fund.

U2 book cover

Thanks to Thunderstruck for featuring the cover of our book currently. BTW, the source of the image is a photo by Otto Kitsinger of Performance Photography. (Several of the best known Elevation Tour shots are by him.) If you go to his site, where he has the Get Up Off Your Knees book listed among his credits, you can click on the cover and see what the original photo looked like.

More from New Zealand and the (expat) South of France

@U2's "Prayer, Prophecy, and Pop Culture" interview with several of us has popped up in discussions this week at Prodigal Kiwi, the New Wineskins blog, and Greenflame.

New Zealand connections

Brian Walsh, one of our writers, will soon be visiting Paul at Prodigal Kiwi, and other missional (or emerging or post-something or whatever we're calling ourselves these days) friends in New Zealand, for a conversation and a workshop on "Colossians as a Subversive Text." Thanks to Prodigal Kiwi for the little book plug!

I had the opportunity to hear Chris Tomlin, whose cover of U2's "Where the Streets Have No Name" closes the CCM U2 cover CD, lead worship at a conference this week. He didn't do "Streets," though - at least not at the sessions I was at. Several attendees were really interested to hear about the book, altho one person (from a booth that will remain nameless) pretty much cut me dead as soon as the word "U2" was out of my mouth, and that was unpleasant. Very atypical, however, so, you know... everyone is entitled to their beliefs.

Our chief weapon is ruthless efficiency.

Thanks to alert reader John for letting me know some of the links down there stopped working. Probably about 6 months ago or something. It's all better now. In the course of his email, he also talked me into linking the wonderfully purple-prose article "Why I Would Follow Bono Into Hell... and why evangelicals should listen to him and join U2's worldwide evangelistic outreach" by David Di Sabatino.

Two minor U2 sightings from the blogosphere

In response to John Kerry's favorite campaign music, Wonkette asks, "Isn't there a law by now to prohibit the use of U2's "Beautiful Day" at a rally of any sort? No? We would vote for the candidate that promised to legislate this." And a couple weeks ago, the Laughing Librarian, where you can't link directly to posts, mentioned having given a book of Bible stories to a child for Christmas because, after all, there is a really vital cultural literacy issue at stake: children ought to be able to understand the meaning of the lyrics of U2 songs.

The U2.com Steve Lillywhite announcement as an excuse for a very abstract cultural comment

For the first time in weeks an actual piece of U2 news was released yesterday - that Steve Lillywhite (producer of U2's earliest albums in 1980-1983) has stepped in as producer on U2's new project. There's lots of speculation as to what this says about their year of work on new material with Chris Thomas, as to how far back to the drawing board they're going, how much longer a delay it will mean, and so on. I have no interesting theories on any of that, but a really amazing thing about the news is that U2.com had it posted the same day. As many people have already pointed out, when an official site makes it into the same news cycle as blogs and fansites, you know something is up.

On a more personal level, I've been doing a lot of thinking these past couple days about those kind of divides -- not just the lugubrious formality of most official sites versus the interactive, professional relevance of many unofficial ones, but in a much more basic way the divide between people/organizations whose worldview is still based in print (or controlling, one-way broadcast) culture and people/organizations whose worldview isn't. (I'm not saying U2 as a corporation are the former - they're pretty savvy about things like offering multiple access points and viral marketing and added value - just that their main site does not normally behave as if it were on the Internet.) I guess what I'm wondering is this: Does the gulf ever get successfully bridged?

Review from Ohio

Here's a review of the book from the site of the Sacred Path Bookstore in Cleveland. {update: now replaced by a different one.}

...some of the preachers use the same U2 lyrics but end up in contrasting places that highlight the diversity of interpretations. This is a good thing, truly representing both the diversity of theological conclusions and the multiple meaning found in U2's lyrics.

But we're not the same

Bob Carlton from The Corner writes to share a reflection on unity, uniformity, and diversity --prompted by two visits to the local farmer's market and winding up with a U2 song.

GetReligion.org - U2 content but only if you click.

There's a new religion and media blog, featuring writings by Doug LeBlanc and Terry Mattingly, both of whom are well known journalists, one (LeBlanc) more in Christian media and the other (Mattingly) more in secular media. GetReligion.org looks like it may be somewhat similar to Jeff Sharlet's The Revealer (although those two sites clearly represent very different political and theological perspectives), as a locus for intelligent conversation about the religion beat in general... how the media interpret and cover faith.

I point this out not to promote either site or either site's perspective, but to say I'm quite charmed by Mattingly's choice of picture.

Contest of the week

Pastor Ben Squires over at the Music Spectrum blog wants everybody to know that he's giving away CDs.

MOMA exhibition article -- Your spiritual guide . . . Bill Murray?

A comment on the general faith and pop culture subject.

New York's Museum of Modern Art is in the middle of a series called "The Hidden God: Film and Faith" which is showing films featuring "the theme of a hidden spirituality, or, alternatively, of spirituality�s absence." The schedule is on the MOMA site. One of the films is Groundhog Day, and this article, "Your spiritual guide . . . Bill Murray?" asks, "It turns out, curators say, that religious scholars from many different traditions have used the movie for years to teach fundamental spiritual themes. Who knew?" The article interviews one of the writers, as well as reporting on Lutheran, Buddhist, Jewish, Wiccan, Falun Gong, and Catholic interpretations of the film, and it turns out, guess what.... they all knew!

Really nice to see an article in secular media that can grasp the concept that the reason theologians point it out, when pop culture does theology, is not that religious institutions are so desperate to lure the youth in that we'll cravenly stick in phony references to anything we think they'll like. It's that - who knew? - pop culture is doing theology and theologians are interested in theology.

Amazon has more copies

If you have been trying to buy the book on Amazon, they have copies now. Can't guarantee for how long. {Update late afternoon: well, they've already changed the availability listing to reflect re-ordering time, so....}

Also: Boa vinda a nossos amigos "Musica e Musico Cristao" de Brasil. (I hope that's something like a coherent sentence.)

Technorati Profile

Steve Stockman redux

Didn't find this till now, but here's Steve Stockman on his own website, talking about doing the Irish media circuit for Get Up Off Your Knees last month.

Insightful Hearts and Minds/ CCO review article

One nice thing about this being a blog, and not some sort of sterile promotional site, is that I can express opinions. Here is one: the 10-paragraph assessment of Get Up Off Your Knees near the end of this review article on books exploring faith and popular culture could only have been written by somebody who really gets what we were trying to do.

A few excerpts:

What I want to holler is the great news that this book, these sermons inspired by the lyrics of U2, really is a fine collection. It reminds us of the power of using contemporary poetry alongside biblical poetry. It juxtaposes modern rock culture with stories of biblical times. It allows the contemporary anguish carried by the band... to influence our reading of the Bible. It is a collection of good sermons in their own right and can serve as case studies of sermon construction. (It is too often embarrassing and frustrating when a well-meaning preacher throws in a line from a rock song or, these days, a movie clip, without adequate awareness of the piece, or without allowing the song or film clip to have an integral role in the sermon.) These sermons are not just about "using" pop songs to relate to a young audience, say, but rather invite us to seriously engage the serious art of this serious band. And it is about developing a Christian perspective on pop culture � one that... celebrates moments of insight or grace that appear there and which necessarily informs our Bible reading as it is the contemporary context from which we do our reading. This book shows you how to do it and get it right!

and

The book is arranged in six parts, with brief meditations welcoming us into a theme. The sermons are somewhat topically arranged, although nearly all have this constant refrain: that the realistic and painful and hopeful lyrics of U2 allow us to recall that Jesus was human, that faith is gritty, that the seasons of the church year are a time for transformation and change.... Get Up Off Your Knees simply cannot be summarized. Each sermon deserves its own critical and prayerful engagement.

Devoted U2 experts will notice a couple factual slips, but overall I couldn't be happier with the take this article presents on our book.

It's Friday But Sunday's Coming.

I don't much like the song, but yes, Rudy, now that you ask, I do think that'll preach!