8.08.2005

El Semanal article

I normally don't post quotes, but I'm making an exception for this one, since this is an Anglophone blog and the passage is probably not widely available in English; it was translated from a magazine in Spanish (El Semanal, #927, 31 July, p. 22 for you archivists out there). Most of the article, it seems, is about Africa and political work, but the piece includes this section as well:
"The spiritual journey, faith, is the important thing about U2. For me, rock is something spiritual," [Bono] explains. "We live in a bizarrely agitated world with a tremendous void of spiritual life. I've always been a very reflective person and I feel that music is like a sort of sacrament that speaks of magnificent things. All the members of our group are spiritually centered."

Bono cites the Scriptures with the mastery of a theologian, and the Bible is his bedside book. "I always felt a relationship with God through silence, and in the Bible I found the answer to everything, but when you come down to it none of that that had anything to do with religion in Ireland. My father was Catholic and my mother was Protestant. Irish religion was lived in such a strange way. I wouldn't say [my family] gave me any religious training."

"The religious instinct is something innate," he claims, "like the instinct of play, and it should be the basis of people's lives. I'm always cautious in talking about my faith because it gets dealt with in a weird way in the world. You've got to be careful, because there is a lot of fanaticism and very little respect or tolerance."

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