In Ireland, Tuesday’s Grace - NYTimes.com

I've only linked (I think) one of Bono's New York Times columns, but this one gets theological enough with its Bloody Sunday reflections that I'm going to link it: In Ireland, Tuesday’s Grace. Real forgiveness is a distinctive thing, indeed: it's "daylight," as Bono writes. (But doesn't he have the date of the U2 song's birth a year off?)

marks and layers

Thought I would pull this out of the comments: Steve Taylor, whom I still look forward to meeting at the U2 Conference whenever it happens (kind of hoping we'll be in the same session since we're both giving papers focusing on U2's live work), offers some thoughts on the "Magnificent" video. While I agree that the connection of the visuals with the text is somewhat tenuous, we read the video a bit differently, as I think we do the song and the "the sound" concept, and maybe the album... but that's what makes it all fun.

"voice that gave my life a rhyme, a meaning"

A bit off topic, but unique enough that I would like to share it anyway; here's a transcription of a poem handwritten by Bono that is on display at the Billy Graham Library but that I don't believe has been available online before:

"The journey from father to friend
is all paternal love's end.
it was sung in my teenage ears
in the voice of a preacher
loudly soft on my tears [years/fears?]
I would never forget this melody line
or its lyric voice that gave my life a rhyme,
a meaning, that wasn't there before
a child, born in dung and straw
with The Fathers love and desire to explain
how we might get on with each other again...."

for The Rev. Billy Graham (that preacher)
Ruth and all the Graham Family
from Bono (March 11 2002)
with much love and respect....

FT.com | MDG Blog

Some may see this as less or more off topic, depending on your theological persuasion, but: Beginning with this Q&A on the MDG summit, you can follow a series of blog posts all week from Bono as he spends a week in New York at the Millennium Development Goals summit. Jeffrey Sachs also will be contributing. (The MDG blog itself is here.) Interesting in this Q&A to hear Bono refer to what he does with world leaders as "judo," the same noun that the band used repeatedly to describe the aim of their ZooTV personas.

On the same topic, readers in the US who support the goals of the ONE Campaign, have you signed their petition for Jim Lehrer to ask one question about global poverty at the presidential debate?

Bono at the NAACP awards

....What was it I was talking about last night again?


Watch for a subtle evocation of a relevant passage from the epistle of James in there.

"...always reaching out for people who you least expect to be your friend."

I'm not sure how I missed this at the time, but the recent book Mandela: An Authorized Portrait contains an essay by Bono that will probably be of interest to readers involved in social justice ministry. You can read it on the site of Borders Australia.

On the Move, from W publishing group

Just announced for February 2007, another book directly involving U2 and Christian faith, now available for preorder... but this one's definitely unique. Note that this is the same publisher who did The aWAKE Project (now in a second edition).

how far down the rabbit hole goes

I've posted a few times previously about how difficult it is to identify specific Bible references in many U2 songs -- that so often there is not exactly a quote of one particular verse, but a generalized Biblical language or restatement of ideas that could draw on several sources. U2 by U2 provides an example of this difficulty from a whole different direction in its treatment of the lyrics to "Walk On." Bono cites a particular New Testament passage as being the root of one theme in the song (the distinction between things that can and can't be left behind in the opening couplet and the closing litany). So here's a case in which a listener now knows definitively from the lyricist that this particular section in "Walk On" has a Biblical source, though not a verbatim quote.

My challenge to you? Working backwards from the lyric, name the New Testament passage you'd expect to be connected to it.

Got one? OK. (It might be fun to post what we came up with in the comments.) And then, you can click and find out how close you came.

...See what I mean about how complicated this is?

Conquering and to conquer

For those of you who missed it during its run on @U2's front page, the Edge contributed this image, an original drawing, to be auctioned next week as a fund raiser for the Irish Seal Sanctuary. Seals I-III, as Matt pointed out, is a pun, and he explained it better than I could: The hand image with writing is reminiscent of one of the images from the HTDAAB deluxe book. But the text here refers to three seals -- a white horse, red horse, and a black horse. Some of you will immediately know that Edge isn't referring to seals that swim in the ocean; it's a reference to the first three of the seven seals of Revelation in the Bible. Reading this as someone with congregational experience, I had to smile thinking back to the different groups of parishioners who were always intrigued by the detailed symbolism of apocalyptic books, one of whom was those Christians with precise, technical, scientific minds. Incidentally, I would much rather have this as a T-shirt than the similar Edge "intelligent design" maze U2.com is selling.
[post edited 5/16 to include image, courtesy of @U2.)

Make AIDS a crucial topic at both conventions

Bono had an editorial in my hometown paper today.

Sola Fides, Sola Gratia

The April 15 issue of Rolling Stone is on the 50 "immortals" of rock 'n' roll. I don't know why we feel such a need to make these lists, but we do, so there it is. Elvis is #3 (after the Beatles and Dylan), and the essay on him is, unmistakably, by Bono. He has interesting things to say about blues and gospel, as well as about the political power of music, and as usual he recycles some of his own prior material in the course of the essay.

Here, for this narrow-topic site, I'm going to quote three things, one a description of seeing Elvis on TV in 1968 that is perhaps as telling about what U2 value as about what Elvis did: Pretty much everything I want from guitar, bass and drums was present: a performer annoyed by the distance from his audience; a persona that made a prism of fame's wide-angle lens; a sexuality matched only by a thirst for God's instruction.

The second is this line, a sort of Philippians 2 or Hebrews 2 comment on our longing for Incarnation: Interestingly, the more he fell to Earth, the more godlike he became to his fans. Gee, I wonder why.

But the most poignant section, to me, is one that suddenly forces the wash of gossip-column images we carry of Elvis' final years into a new focus, analyzing his decline and end in starkly theological terms, as a battle with ho diabolos-- the accuser. Perhaps the shocking spiritual clarity here just suggests that, as one God-haunted international celebrity to another, the writer knows the territory.

When Elvis was upset and feeling out of kilter, he would leave the big house and go down to his little gym, where there was a piano. With no one else around, his choice would always be gospel, losing and finding himself in the old spirituals. He was happiest when he was singing his way back to spiritual safety. But he didn't stay long enough. Self-loathing was waiting back up at the house, where Elvis was seen shooting at his TV screens, the Bible open beside him at St. Paul's great ode to love, Corinthians 13. Elvis clearly didn't believe God's grace was amazing enough.

"Self-loathing was waiting back up at the house." The threads of association from that personified image, for me, run through Genesis 4 ("sin is waiting at the door and its desire is for you") through U2's "Acrobat" ("if you just close your eyes, you can feel the enemy") and on to so many pastoral situations. (Or of course, taking someone who understood "mock the devil and he will flee from thee," to Luther: "When I awoke last night, the Devil came and wanted to debate with me; he rebuked and reproached me, arguing that I was a sinner. To this I replied: Tell me something I don't already know.")

"He was happiest when he was singing his way back to spiritual safety. But he didn't stay long enough." The ability to name the battle, to perceive the intense theological drama behind those sordid paparazzi pictures, impresses me, but what impresses me more is the insight as to where the fight is won or lost. Most people, and surely most celebrities, do what this piece suggests Elvis did and try to win on their inner accuser's playing-field (sell more records, win more hearts, make more money) -- but that's the one place you always lose. Bono's battle-scarred answer is the right one: Forget all that. Just keep singing till you actually believe in grace.