Public Service Announcement

I expect that this may not be available for very long, but for those who have not seen it, the video of Bill Hybels' interview with Bono as broadcast at the Willow Creek Leadship Summit last summer has been put up in several parts on YouTube, beginning here.

The Brian Eno word for the day is "teleological"

There's not too much to say about the various reports about U2's time songwriting in Morocco, but I did have to smile at the coy U2.com writeup of their attendance at a Festival of Sacred Music concert: "Turns out the Ensemble are the most famous classical Iranian group in the world and they deliver a virtuoso performance on the kind of percussion and string instruments rarely played in the West. Parissa herself is a mesmerising Arabic soul singer, totally lost in the music, hands raised heavenward in mystic praise even though no-one has a clue what she’s singing about." Come on, dude, who are you kidding? Everyone in the place knew what she was singing about, and if you didn't all you had to do was Google Rumi (the author of the texts); he's only the most famous Sufi mystic poet in the world.

"That's where the gifts come alive"

Here's a recent reflection from a Glasgow church planter on teams and how they function, using U2 as an example.

33 1/3 takes on Achtung Baby: "the zeitgeist of our fallen world"

Continuum has announced that forthcoming in their series of 33 1/3 books on seminal albums will be Achtung Baby by Stephen Catanzarite. The author's nascent blog is here; judging from it he will be drawing on a Roman Catholic perspective as well as prior training in writing (and music! hurray! Far too much of the philosophical/theological material on U2's art bizarrely stops short at the lyrics) for his work.

I have to say I am pleased to hear him comment there that "it is not a book about U2... it is also not, properly speaking, about the album Achtung Baby. It would be much more precise to say that the book is about what the album is about (or at least what I believe the album to be about)."

You can read an excerpt from chapter 1 at the Continuum 33 1/3 blog I linked above. (HT: Scott)

Countdown to Sunday

At the time they originally were going on a couple years back, I highlighted some u2-related conversations about preaching over on Chris Erdman's blog Odyssey (one of my pointers was here). Those, and many other, posts by Chris have now grown and morphed into a book, for which I happen to be one of the blurbers. You can take a look at it and preorder on Amazon if you care to.

[edit: link fixed, sorry.]