"willing to embrace and be embraced by what they have been chasing all these years"

Thanks to an alert reader, as Dave Barry would say, for sending me the link to this reflection on HTDAAB's place in U2's oeuvre by Presbyterian Church (USA) pastor Jeff Keuss, currently Visiting Professor of Theology and Ethics at Fuller Theological Seminary, Seattle Pacific University and Northwest Graduate School. (Busy guy, huh?)

I'm not familiar with The Other Journal, where it appeared, but this bit should give a good flavor of the piece: The closing tracks of U2 albums always seem to close as a benediction and 'song of sending' of sorts - an overt turn to the liturgical and direct assessment of Christendom and the Christ that can be lost amidst it. Whether it is the direct Biblicism of '40' from War, the mystical apophatic darkness of 'Love is Blindness' from Achtung Baby ("Love is drowning in a deep well, All the secrets, and no one to tell"), the re-framing of Pilgrim's Progress for the E generation in 'The Wanderer' from Zooropa, the whispering cry of the Psalmist in 'Wake Up Dead Man' from Pop, or the resignation to the call of Grace - ("What once was hurt, What once was friction, What left a mark, No longer stings, Because Grace makes beauty out of ugly things, Grace makes beauty out of ugly things") in 'Grace' from ATYCLB - U2 continues to draw its productions to a close with an opening to something more - more than what words and music can convey and an opening to the 'not yet' of the Now. This is continued in HTDAAB with the ending song 'Yahweh.'

(Aside to theologically minded readers: I'm 100% with the link to apophatic theology for 'Love is Blindness,' but can someone tell me whether I have misunderstood the meaning of a word used early on in the article, 'perichoresis,' all these years? Is it not, after all, a word meaning the internal dance in which the members of the Trinity exchange mutual love? Sorry for the abstruse question; we now return you to the riot over the U2.com presale.)