Songs of Innocence theological roundup

Readers may already have seen many of these articles, but just to get them in one place, here are comments from several writers who regularly treat the topic of U2 from a theological perspective. I'm on record, below, as saying that I find Songs of Innocence to have a different kind of focus than much of U2's work; some of these folks note the same thing in one way or another, others don't agree and see the same set of Christian preoccupations here that we've had in other albums.

Greg Clarke, for example, reads the opening track as about Christian conversion and only tangentially related to Joey Ramone.  Steve Harmon offers a typically thoughtful and subtle piece with some interesting comments on "Sleep Like A Baby Tonight." The folks at Mockingbird artfully take the album's delivery method as a metaphor for their laser focus, one-way love (grace). After that earlier Wordle, Mark Meynell looks to be planning on blogging on some individual songs; here's "Song for Someone," memorably called "opaquely specific."

There may be others I have missed. Do chime in in the comments if so.

A few comments on U2's Songs of Innocence

I expect anyone who reads this blog has seen a few other pieces dealing with U2's newest release by Christian reviewers already, and I'll try just to say a few words about my own reaction without rehashing what's already out there. I've been struck how many of the comments on Songs of Innocence by theologically-minded reviewers could have been written about any U2 album. And I suppose it is a truism that yes, of course, there are layers to any U2 song; YOU is often God juts as much as a woman; the eschatological horizon is ever-present. Who can argue?

But I have to say that my first impressions - and that's all these are - after a few listens to Songs of Innocence is of how specific and rooted and local this material is. I think on this album, far more than on any other I could name, a song about Joey Ramone is about Joey Ramone, and a song about meeting Ali Stewart is about meeting Ali Stewart. Is there a background, an overall outlook and vocabulary, shaped by the Christian narrative? Of course there is. But these songs strike me as being fairly far from vehicles for U2's traditional longing for the ultimate (or lament over its absence.) Sure, there are some stadium hooks that will provide wonderful group singalongs -- but is there anything with which 30,000 people can (consciously or unconsciously) cry out primal desire for God? I'm not hearing it.

It seems to me that before, U2's style has been to craft a specific shape that has its own style and message, but behind which we primarily read their general thirst for God and justice -- words and sounds that, whatever else they may mean, make the most sense when addressed to Jesus. That is not so with Songs of Innocence, to my mind. The words and sounds here make the most sense when addressed to the specific circumstances of 1970s Dublin on which they explicitly claim to reflect. They are shaped by a familiarity with the Biblical narrative, yes, and people will point that out endlessly as if it were news (which, honestly, it isn't by now, is it?)

So as one would expect, there are moments, phrases, that probably could not have been written other than by a mature Christian: "where there's no daylight there's no healing," "complete surrender: the only weapon we know," "crushed under the weight of a cross in a passion where the passion is hate" along with the persistent theodicy questions in "Raised by Wolves,"  and so on.  And there are the usual Biblical turns of phrase: "I'm naked and I'm not afraid,"  "I've got your life inside of me," "a long long way from your Hill of Calvary." But my strongest impression is that more than ever before these moments are not at all the main point; these are just the kind of phrases that are in U2's collective brain as they really write about something else entirely, something very personal and very specific. {Edit: I strongly suggest reading Camassia's comment below, which expands interestingly on this line of thought.}

I think the poetry is wonderful and the sounds are wonderful. I am very intrigued by the idea that there may be another album, or even two, on the way as part of this project. There is a part of me that still wishes they'd stopped with No Line, which far more encapsulates what I personally am looking for with U2. But does Songs of Innocence have integrity and beauty? Sure it does.

U2 Songs of Innocence Wordle

Remember Mark Meynell's fascinating Wordles of U2 albums at Quaerentia?  Well, here's one for Songs of Innocence. He writes, "it is interesting that knowledge and perception are standouts. An epistemological album? We’ll see."

U2 Songs of Innocence, post #2 of the day

"One minute you're reading it, next minute you're in it"
--Bono on the Bible in the liner notes

From the Miracle to the Troubles: U2 surprise album Songs of Innocence

Well, folks, it's here. While I digest, here's a quick guide from Rolling Stone and another from Neil McCormick.

It should be ordinary

A  nice piece by friend of this blog Mark Meynell on "Ordinary Love" for redeemingsound. Excerpt:

As the song suggests, [Mandela] showed a love for the other, the different, the opponent, that is unparalleled in the modern world. Which ironically makes it an extraordinary love. But the fact that it should be ordinary seems to be the point.  This is the song’s key refrain: “We can’t reach any higher/fall any further if we can’t feel/deal with ordinary love.”

Courting an untamed God

Here is a look at the imagery of "Wild Honey," brought into dialogue with the Puritans, Isaiah, John Eldredge, Augustine, and others who have used courtship language about God.

Curriculum resource

Here is a little outline for one meeting of an adult class covering how three popular songs, including U2's "40," deal with Scripture. They're all older songs, but if you're stuck for a class, you've got everything you need to lead this one right in one post.

"We walk by faith and not by sight"

Here's a post on "Walk On" as a soundtrack for the Lenten journey from the blog God's Word, Our Words and the World.

I just heard about a new article called "Soundtracks of Acrobatic Selves: Fan-Site Religion in the Reception and Use of the Music of U2," which appears in the October 2011 issue of The Journal of Contemporary Religion. Free viewing of the actual text isn't possible for 12 more months (even from within an academic gateway with a subscription, it seems), but the abstract says that the article analyses 40 pieces posted on a fansite in response to U2 songs, looking at how such online reflection "may contribute to the development of religious/spiritual exploration in contemporary Western societies." The authors are Clive Marsh and Vaughan S. Roberts.

I believe in love.

Here is a brief post from The Scriptorium that takes a look at two possible readings of "God Part II," asking if the song's narrator is sincere or not in the final affirmation of belief in each stanza. Excerpt: Luther spoke of the dramatic tension of the Christian life as one in which believers are simul iustus et peccator —at once fully righteous and fully sinful. This makes no sense, but it sure does explain a lot. On this second reading, Bono’s ‘I’ is sincere throughout, even if he is a hapless, sorry mystery to himself and us.

Paul, U2, &...

A couple of interesting U2 related posts here from New Testament professor Tim Gombis. One recent post on hermeneutics takes on the task of comparing the benefits and perils of collapsing historical distance (between us and scripture, or us and the past in general), claiming that U2 see it as their mission to collapse historical distance. There's an unusual reading of the title track of No Line on the Horizon given as evidence (suggesting that the narrator of the song is deliberately situating himself with regard to music history). It seems to me personally that much of the evidence for U2's "collapsing of historical distance" would have to come from their live work, and can be most fruitfully analyzed through the liturgical category of anamnesis, or perhaps the literary one of intertextuality. Read the post and see what you think. (Hat tip DB.)

Another post looks at Romans and "Breathe" together, focusing on the inter-connections between Spirit, cross-shaped existence (cruciformity), and community life. I find this a great dialogue and a very fruitful, thorough reading of the song. Check it out too.

Some Spider-related lyric comments

I've been enjoying the previews of the Spider-Man soundtrack (more, in fact, than I enjoyed the music when I saw the show). It seems to me that both "Pull The Trigger" and "DIY World" are telling examples of a genre to which Bono and Edge have been drawn musically and lyrically before: exposing evil by depicting it unflichingly. While "Trigger" is a way better listen, I think, and also has a major modern-day political undercurrent to it (let the reader understand), it sticks to some fairly standard U2 "sin" themes (betrayal, violence, shame, fear), whereas "DIY World" newly tackles a widespread contemporary sin, the desire to live without limits and endlessly to construct and reconstruct one's own identity/reality rather than accept the givens of creation. There is some stuff about accepting limits joyfully on NLOTH, but I'm not, at the moment, recalling any previous work that enters into the negativity of rejecting creation/natural law (if you can call it that) in an effort to expose that attitude as wrong.

I don't know how the function of "Boy Falls From the Sky" has changed from its role in the earlier 1.0 version, but I was sad to see that as the song has become less dark and less of an expression of sensing oneself to be a failure, one of my favorite couplets in the show is gone
"Savior, save yourself" - can't even get that right!
I used to use a single thread to cross the sky.
However, as I remarked to some friends, the new couplet
Lighting splits the sky and kisses your face;
Yours the sacrifice, yours the grace
lets the song still hang on to a nice Good Friday reference. ;-)

Original verses to "The Wanderer"

The manuscript of "The Wanderer," which all four members of U2 signed and gave to Johnny Cash after he recorded the vocal for Zooropa, has been put up for auction. It's three pages, and most of the lyrics are as they stand on the album, but there were a couple of verses that were cut, which you can see here. I'm intrigued by the presence of imagery that's reminiscent of "Where the Streets Have No Name":
I went out walking to places not yet named
Where people dreamed instead of schemed
And no one was ashamed.
And then there's a sort of "conviction" verse too. Check it out.

U2 Lists: Top 6 U2 Christmas References

From @U2, a new entry in their series of "lists" features: Top 6 U2 Christmas References. It doesn't surprise me, as it does the author, that U2 don't make a lot of music about Christmas (they've made even less about the way more important Christian holy day, Easter); keeping the liturgical calendar doesn't feature prominently in any of the milieus/writers they've alluded to over the years as being influential on the particular shape of their faith. (When one of Bono's NY Times editorials a few months ago demonstrated some reflection on the formative character of the liturgical seasons, I was really surprised.) And anyway, for those of us for whom the calendar features prominently, they're way more of an Advent and Lent band, aren't they, with maybe some of the social justice Sundays from Ordinary Time thrown in?

That said, this is a fascinating list. It's interesting, seeing the songs all lined up in this way, to realize how resistant U2 have been to participating in cultural (or cultural-religious) sentimentalizing of this feast day and how quick they have been to point out the many contradictions all around us of the standard sentimental image. I am wondering, do I love U2 because I am the kind of person who very often preaches in this vein at Christmas, or am I the kind of person who very often preaches in this vein at Christmas because I love U2?

Advent blog repost 4

This is a repost of an Advent blog series I did in 2003: the theme for Advent 4 was "UNION."

Welcome all wonders in one sight!
Eternity shut in a span.
Summer in winter. Day in night.
Heaven in earth, and God in man.
--Richard Crashaw (1613-1649)

Despite what you've seen on TV or in the shops, this week the news is not birth, or babies, or shepherds, or stars. The real news is "UNION" - the marriage in Jesus of opposites, "without mixing, without change; [yet also] without division, without separation." That's the classic Chalcedonian definition of how Jesus is both God and human, but it's also a description of marriage.

Earth marries heaven as the Word is made flesh, and so our song is "When I Look at the World." It's a prayer that reveals a touchingly unfeigned admiration of Jesus:
I see an expression so clear and so true
That it changes the atmosphere when you walk into the room

What grips the narrator is not only Jesus as the Truth, as clarity, the one whose felt Presence changes everything; it's Jesus's steady ability to take into his open heart absolutely every moment of human suffering (and joy, but the ability to attend to suffering is in focus here):
When there's all kinds of chaos
And everyone is walking lame
You don't even blink now, do you
Or even look away

This point of union between God and man is a heart of compassion.

Naturally, we strive to emulate anyone we admire that deeply: "So I try to be like you, try to feel it like you do." But the singer's prayer reveals a discovery that he can't, that his efforts are "no use... without you." To be like Jesus, we need Jesus himself. Only by letting God graft us into the Union he embodies can we find the fruit of that Union manifest in us.

And so the song draws to a close still yearning for this marriage, this Union, with a heartfelt, almost teenage-romantic cry to the Beloved: I can't wait any longer!

I can't wait any longer
I can't wait till I'm stronger
I can't wait any longer
To see what you see
When I look at the world

All wonders in one sight. Heaven in earth and God in man.
....It's 4 Advent and we can't wait any longer.

Advent blog repost 3

This is a repost of an Advent blog series I did in 2003; the theme of Advent 3 was "SOURCE."

Lookin' for to save my, save my soul
Lookin' in the places where no flowers grow
Lookin' for to fill that God-shaped hole

The word of the day is "SOURCE"; the song of the day is "Mofo."

All of us have the "God-shaped hole" U2 sing about here. But not all of us are so desperate as the narrator to fill it, to hear the "sound that's gonna drown out the world," to see "the face I had before the world was made." Some of us have our thirst for the Ultimate ripped open early, and the wound is always with us; others pile trash on it our whole lives to keep from having to confront the emptiness.

This song screams the way we all would if we were willing to be fully human. It screams for the Source, for God, albeit in terms suggested by the dimensions of one particular human wound ("Mother, you left and made me someone.") It drives at a meeting with "baby Jesus under the trash." Whether you are one of the wounded or one of the trashed, there's still time to look for him.

Advent blog repost 2

This is a repost of a blog series I did in 2003. The theme for Advent 2 was "STRETCH."

"STRETCH" - what the word means is to make room, to change yourself so that you can accomodate or connect with something else -- something that, before you stretched yourself, was formerly too much, too far, or too unusual. Christ born in poverty was a stretch for some people. God born at all is a stretch for more.

The first glimmer of the stretch in U2, for me, is 11 o'clock Tick Tock (which qualifies here for its very Adventy title, too.) They're what, 18 or 19 as they write these almost inane words?

It's all hints, with U2 lyrics this early... but when I listen, I imagine the very beginning as setting up a conflict that endures for the rest of the song: "It's cold outside, but it gets so hot in here." Inside, the "boys and girls collide" to music you're offering them so they can escape from the outside world, where you know perfectly well "the children [are] crying"; shouldn't a moral person be telling the crowd that "it's time to go" do something about their plight because "we haven't long"?

That is the stretch that is at the heart of the U2 vocation -- having a heart for rock 'n' roll at the same time you have a heart for God's heart. Continually stretching to make room for both is, IMHO, a large part of how this band stays so fresh. And it does keep you on your toes, after all, to repeatedly discover -- and shouldn't this be true for all of us, now and again -- that all you can say for yourself is

We thought that we had the answers;
it was the questions we had wrong.

Keep stretching.

If you can

I drafted a post last summer in honor of what was widely anticipated as the world premiere of "Drowning Man," a never-before-performed song from U2's War album. Since it now looks as if we won't ever get that performance, and since the Advent piece I re-posted on Sunday quoted "Drowning Man," I thought I'd just go on and put the piece up anyway.

What I wanted to share was my theory about the title. As has been frequently remarked, drowning is not mentioned in the lyrics, although there is a quick nod to ocean imagery ("tides and storms.") (Incidentally, this piece looking at the history of water and drowning images in U2 is worth a read if you've never thought about how often such allusions turn up -- and I think they have different resonances in different places. Here I'm only considering the narrow question of this one song's name.)

Until "Unknown Caller," "Drowning Man" had the distinction of being the only U2 song which majored on lyrics obviously intended as the voice of God - who, however, quotes Isaiah along the way. It pictures an earnest Lover reaching out and appealing "take my hand," promising acceptance, steadiness, strength -- "if you can" bring yourself to accept the help and "hold on tightly." But again: why reference someone who is "drowning" for that appeal? Couldn't it apply to any addressee in any situation?

Well, here's what often seems plausible to me. I wager that the choice of a "drowning man" to characterize the addressee of the song may actually be a literary allusion. I would not be surprised to learn that this title draws on a striking and memorable image of the need to surrender completely to grace found in The Normal Christian Life, the best known work of early-U2-influence Watchman Nee:

When you are reduced to utter weakness and are persuaded that you can do nothing whatever, then God will do everything. We all need to come to the point where we say: 'Lord, I am unable to do anything for Thee, but I trust Thee to do everything in me.'

I was once staying in a place in China with some twenty other brothers. There was inadequate provision for bathing in the home where we stayed, so we went for a daily plunge in the river. On one occasion a brother had cramp in one leg, and I suddenly saw he was sinking fast, so I motioned to another brother, who was an expert swimmer, to hasten to his rescue. But to my astonishment he made no move. So I grew desperate and called out: 'Don't you see the man is drowning?' and the other brothers, about as agitated as I was, shouted vigorously too. But our good swimmer still did not move. Calm and collected, he remained just where he was, apparently postponing the unwelcome task. Meantime the voice of the poor drowning brother grew fainter and his efforts feebler. In my heart I said: 'I hate that man! Think of his letting a brother drown before his very eyes and not going to the rescue!'

But when the man was actually sinking, with a few swift strokes the swimmer was at his side, and both were safely ashore. When I got an opportunity I aired my views. 'I have never seen any Christian who loved his life quite as much as you do', I said. 'Think of the distress you would have saved that brother if you had considered yourself a little less and him a little more.' But the swimmer knew his business better than I did. 'Had I gone earlier', he said, 'he would have clutched me so fast that both of us would have gone under. A drowning man cannot be saved until he is utterly exhausted and ceases to make the slightest effort to save himself.'

Advent blog repost 1

This is a repost of a blog series I did in 2003. The theme for Advent 1 was SEEK.

The obvious candidate for "SEEK" is "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For," which is precisely why I'm not using it. Instead, I want to turn the image inside out and think about God's search for us. After all, those who traveled to seek the newborn Word could only do so because his own quest had brought him into the flesh first. So the song of the day is "Drowning Man." Put these words on God's lips in Advent and see what they reveal:

I'll cross the sky for your love
Give you what I hold dear

God who hung the skies crosses them, lovesick for his lost people. Christ, his own Self, the dearest gift, is surrendered into the fragile arms of a peasant woman.

Chorus and verse, over and over, the same message: the One we are seeking has already come out in search of us, and is only waiting for us to accept the offer. "Take my hand...hold on tightly," God calls repeatedly; "if you can," he promises to "be there" with a "love [that] lasts forever."