Google trends

The Beatles are consistently less popular than Jesus. The same is true for U2, thank God -- except A) briefly around the time of the release of HTDAAB and B) in Ireland, Slovenia, and New Zealand. (Ireland? I'm looking at you.)

Fear and Love

When Arcade Fire did their warmup concerts for the current tour, little tracts that simply read "DESIRE OR FEAR?" were left on the seats. This visual meditation on U2's "Yahweh" asks more or less the same question, with help from Scripture and artistic depictions of Jesus.

ApologetiX: Jericho

A little off topic here, but just for laughs.... Some of our readers may be familiar with ApologetiX, "that Christian parody band." They cover currently popular songs and rewrite the lyrics to tell Bible stories or refer to doctrines; it's sometimes rather clever.

(Note: Stop reading now if you don't want the first line of a U2 parody in your head.)

I'm told that their recent album, Wordplay, has a version of "Vertigo" retelling Luke 19. (Stop reading if you don't want to hear it! You've been warned!) The song is narrated by Zacchaeus, who begins by lamenting "Christ's in town - the Lord. The trouble is, my head can't see. I'm short."

U2 in the cloister: from a spring 2007 monastery newsletter

A note from inside the enclosure at the Carmelite Monastery of Saint Joseph, Discalced Carmelite Nuns of Piedmont (Oklahoma City), Oklahoma:
The week of Thanksgiving Fr. John Magdalene Suenram, OCD, who comes from San Antonio about three times a year for confessions and a conference, gave us a talk on the Gospel according to U2, the rock group led by Bono. Noticing the powerful message their lyrics contain, he had been thinking about putting his insights into a conference for some time. Our Sr. Donna had previously mentioned the group to Father and had given him a book on U2; we were all delighted with his presentation and enjoyed listening to some of U2’s music.

Exit and clarification

Trask at Agape Revolution sends along a link to a post he's written reflecting on U2's "Exit" as performed in "Rattle & Hum," not a song that is dealt with much. The post doesn't use the music at all in its analysis, but attempts to work with the text as describing the state of Lucifer during and after his fall from heaven. I don't happen to find this a successful interaction with the work personally, but it's interesting to watch the reasoning process and some of you probably may be persuaded.

On a more general note, incidentally (coming off a recent conversation with someone who had several mistaken assumptions about this blog and our book), I'd like to say again something I've said many times here -- when I link things on the blog, that doesn't automatically mean I think they are "sermons," or that I agree with the way they treat meaning-making in the arts, or that they would have fit in Get Up Off Your Knees, or that I endorse or don't endorse their perspective on the Bible or U2 or anything. It means I think they're making some contribution that's (for any of many possible reasons) worthy of note to the very diverse theologically-informed dialogue on various aspects of U2's work. (And if it's not, I tend to note that the link is off topic.) If I linked only things that could have gone in the book here, there would be one link about every three months.

"Grace is a thought that can change the world but it is also an imaginative engine to propel the change"

In the Phantom Tollbooth, Steve Stockman writes some extended thoughts about grace, the arts, the Kingdom, and Northern Ireland. Naturally, it has U2 material.

U2 and the theology of the body

Awhile back I linked an article by Christopher West discussing U2 and the theology of the body. Here, from the Theology of the Body Institute, is another foray into the same topic by the same author. He introduces his topic by mentioning that long ago U2 "possibly even helped open me in some way to Christ," and describes having "a very lively exchange" with Bono about the Bible, sex, redemption, and the Roman Catholic Church after having given him the book Theology of the Body for Beginners. Contains a somewhat more focused than usual, but not implausible, reading of "Window in the Skies."