teach me how to sing

Note to readers-- If you're avoiding tour spoilers this blog will not be safe from here on out.

I'm ususally grateful for the age of the Internet, but I kind of wish I didn't know that we were supposed to have gotten "Original of the Species" last night and that U2 had planned to close not with "'40'" but with "Bad."

One start on what I'm finding interesting: two new endings. One of them was already happening in Europe, and that's "Sunday Bloody Sunday." I couldn't quite tell at first, but I'm now pretty sure the song is regularly closing with "To claim the victory Jesus won, when death itself will be undone, on Sunday Bloody Sunday." Although last night it sounded like "To understand the victory Jesus won when death itself was undone." A nice way of concretizing the reference and linking it more explicitly with the dismantling evil theme.

The other is one of the real shocker additions this tour: the decade-old "The First Time." Off the Zooropa album, from the band's Ecclesiastes phase, it had its world premiere last month. The text has a reverse Trinitarian structure, with the first verse describing the narrator's relationship with the Spirit, the second with the Son, and the last with the Father. A very minor live change that's getting made to the Son verse ("life" instead of "time") allows a new play on the double meaning of the word "spend." But it's the Father verse that interests me. Drawing on the parable of the Prodigal Son, it depicts "my Father" as a "rich man" with "a rich man's cloak" who offers "keys to his kingdom" and a home among "many mansions" with "many rooms" -- but just as we're marveling at this tender generosity, the narrator abruptly declares, "But I left by the back door and I threw away the key."

People who enjoy attacking the band on religious grounds (and who take any artistic creation as baldfaced autobiography) have had a field day condemning this sentence. I've never really understood the objection: the son does after all leave in the parable, U2's musical setting at that moment is ineffably sad, and a faith-filled lovefest resolution would have been way out of place on Zooropa. Besides, the liturgical form for sacramental confession with which I'm most familiar puts words in your mouth that directly echo these lyrics: "Father, you clothed me with the shining garment of Christ's righteousness, and established me among your children in your kingdom. But I have squandered the inheritance of your saints, and have wandered far in a land that is waste." Some of us tell God regularly that we left by the back door, and telling him is considered a prescription for spiritual health.

However, all these years later in a live context, this poignant ending just isn't playing out the same way. Bono is experimenting with the verse to see what can be delivered authentically in the more religiously-assured context of the Vertigo tour. First off, there's a new call-and-response chant: "Love... (Love!) Love... (Love!)" In Chicago, the ending became "Hope I didn't throw away the key" plus a return to the Spirit verse (U2log has a little of it in this post.) And last night, we got "I threw away the key cause only Grace could lead me back to Thee," which almost invites us to redefine the "key" in some sort of Pauline way: whatever it is we do or believe that we selfishly think guarantees us some right to open our own doors into the Father's house. Watch for further developments.

Deadline approaching

One more reminder that tomorrow at midnight is the deadline to enter the ZooTV t-shirt contest.

Snapshots

The Globe review said it all about the crowd interaction from last night, comparing us to the Orpheum in 1983 and forcing anyone who doesn't know them to look up the words "manna" and "acolyte." I'm not ready to say anything about the show yet, so here are three snapshots from the whole experience last night:

1. I'm driving in on my way to circle 128 and park at Braintree, and I've decided that my best pre-U2 listening is a CD of a lecture by Peter Kreeft, a Catholic philosopher, on the "Argument from Desire" for the existence of God. Kreeft is explaining that C. S. Lewis is the clearest framer of this argument, and then he adds that even more, in terms of actually evoking desire for the transcendent as an effort to move people closer to knowing God, Lewis stands alone as the sole great example in the modern era. I start laughing.

2. Before the show I'm having a couple slices of pizza, after a great time hanging out with Matt McGee of @U2 and his son near the GA line. Every screen in the pizza place is playing post-1990 U2 videos, and most people are watching them. Across the aisle from me is a woman waiting for her companion to come back with their order, and her eyes are on the screen as the next video begins. It's "The Fly." She tears up and begins to weep.

3. About halfway through the set, I'm offered this classic example of reverse Bostonian praise, in as heavy a Bahstan accent as you can imagine, by the guy next to me: "So, they suck as usual, right?"

hopeful amphibian: Lentsongs

Mark from hopeful amphibian wrote to say he'd posted about "40" earlier this year in his "lentsongs" series. Sorry I missed it then... and here it is now.

@U2 on October

This week's My Fan Year muses on October.... and plugs our book.

Boston area readers

I have an extra ticket for Monday's show. Face value of course. Email if interested. Gone, thanks.

"I don't get it, but I'm not giving up."

A sermon from Encounter, which seems to be a student ministry in Lawrence, Kansas, on John 14 and the most-preached-on U2 song, borrowing from Steve Stockman and featuring an interactive exercise in the middle.

Contest reminder

One more week until the deadline to enter our 100,000th hit contest. Get those PEOPLE GET READY emails in by midnight Wed Oct 5.

Portland Oregon class

A journalist from Oregon writes to let us know he's offering a 3-session U2 class in Portland at Trinity Cathedral. "Unforgettable Fire: Theological Reflections on the Music and Words of U2" meets at 9 AM on Sundays October 9, 16 and 23, and will include among other things a panel of those "whose souls have been fed and challenged by U2." For more information, email bicyclejoe -at- gmail.com.

Theology of popular culture

Chris of faithasawayoflife (I can't look at his U2 "One Step Closer" blog to link it at the moment because it has concert spoilers) emails to say that Kelton Cobb, who has taught Theology of Popular Culture at Hartford Seminary, has a new book coming out, The Blackwell Guide to Theology of Popular Culture, that references U2 at many points. Like most Blackwell guides, it ain't cheap.

the grenzian: Faith in the Future

Catching up... Here's some musings inspired by a live performance of "Miracle Drug": are you an eschatological pessimist, or an eschatalogical optimist?

Speaking of live performances: thanks again to those who are nicely avoiding emailing me spoilers until after the Boston concerts next week.

Random roundup

Hyper-vigilant readers may remember my mentioning a flurry of press (such as this article) on a forthcoming Open Court book called U2 and Philosophy. I've been having an enjoyable email conversation with the editor, Mark Wrathall, and was really delighted by the nimble and illuminating use of U2's work in a rough draft of some of his own material.

Also: Keep the contest entries coming!

A little leaven leavens the whole lump

It would be interesting to know how many times U2 are quoted in passing in works of academic religious scholarship. I mentioned earlier that Bono's meeting with Jesse Helms is cited in The Blackwell Companion to Christian Ethics (ed. by Stanley Hauerwas, Samuel Wells, Blackwell Publishing, 2004). This post clued me in to the fact that Walter Brueggemann uses an older Bono quote in First and Second Samuel in the "Interpretation, a Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching" series.

Contest for our readers

Amazingly to me, U2 Sermons has just today had its 100,000th visit. When I started this blog to track the experience of publishing Get Up Off Your Knees: Preaching the U2 Catalog, I had no idea it would ever last so long! So, in celebration of our mini-milestone, I'm holding a little contest, one that will offer an actual prize: a vintage white Zoo-era t-shirt, definitely used and faded, but not falling apart or anything. It has the band on the front, Achtung Baby written in a red scrawl, and "every artist is a cannibal" on the bottom.

To enter, email (with subject line PEOPLE GET READY) to bmaynard -at- gmail.com your answer to the following question:
For years U2 have been inviting audience members onstage to play guitar; when they do, "People Get Ready" is often the song of choice. What obviously theologically-motivated change does Bono usually make to the lyrics of one verse of this classic Curtis Mayfield hit? (You may either quote any version of the changed text, or simply explain the doctrinal correction.) Feel free to link this contest on other sites.

The deadline to enter is two weeks from today: midnight USA eastern standard time on Wednesday October 5th. If I receive more than one correct answer, I will pick a winner by a spontaneous selection process reflecting grace over karma. Have at it!

Melancthon Sins Boldly: "40"

Some comments on "40" and "deferred redemption" from a blog with a wonderful name. It also cites the description of the U2 workshop at the upcoming Generous Orthodoxy conference that's been getting posted around the blogosphere.

New Student Orientation at Georgetown

I blogged about the upcoming Williams College course a while back, and I just heard about this already-offered event at Georgetown University: "The purpose of this program will be to explore the philosophy, theology and politics of How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb."

Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly on the Millennium Development summit

PBS featured Jesuit Fr. Drew Christiansen and the Rev. Richard Cizik of the National Association of Evangelicals last weekend in a segment on how religious leaders in the US are lobbying for expanded commitments to the world's poor. They also have a nice collection of links on the summit, including this article on last week's vigil and fast.

Journal of Lutheran Ethics

The Journal of Lutheran Ethics' September issue is on media culture, and it features two excerpts from Get Up Off Your Knees: the essay "Woo me, sister; move me, brother! What does Pop Culture Have to Do with Preaching?" by Raewynne, and three weeks' worth of my six-week Bible study in dialogue with U2 themes. Both are in PDF format.

The Statesman - New York Times

A better link that doesn't require you to click through all 14 screens of the New York Times Bono profile here.

"Actual solutions"

As the Global Summit ends, the folks at ONE remind us, "If you want to learn more about real-life examples of effective international assistance and the Millennium Development Goals, you can tune in to The Diary of Angelina Jolie and Dr. Jeffrey Sachs in Africa tonight on MTV at 8pm [EST]." (You can preview the show a little at that link, as well as purchase one of Sachs' "quick wins.") MTV adds: "The facts are staggering - but there is hope. There is now a feasible plan to end extreme poverty in our lifetime, and Sauri, a cluster of villages in Western Kenya, helps to show the world how we can make that happen."
Very attentive readers of this blog might possibly remember that I'd wondered how someone could follow results in Sauri; now we know.

Faith and Theology: U2's Grace

A quick reflection on the song "Grace" from the blog of a Ph.D. in seventeenth-century theology and literature.

"The American people would demand action on Africa if only someone would tell them the facts."

Another World Summit post: This coming Sunday's NY Times Magazine has a huge political article by someone working on a book on the United Nations. Its topic is "a new and heretofore undescribed planet in an emerging galaxy filled with transnational, multinational and subnational bodies.... a kind of one-man state who fills his treasury with the global currency of fame....the most politically effective figure in the recent history of popular culture." Um...that would be Bono.

The article (here) gives a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at how the amazing impact he's had for Africa has happened and what the outlook is now. I certainly hope there aren't many of our blog readers whose interests are so strictly and narrowly religious that you'll only want to skim this thorough and serious 14-page profile -- but if there are and if you do, you'll miss finding out what church Bono is raising his kids in. And no, I'm not telling you what page that's on.

Here's an excerpt from the New York Times Bono profile, recounting a famous story:
In mid-2000, Bono received an audience with Senator Jesse Helms, viewed by Bono's fellow lefties, including members of the band, as the archfiend himself. Bono quickly realized that his usual spiel about debt service and so on wasn't making a dent. So, he recalls: "I started talking about Scripture. I talked about AIDS as the leprosy of our age." Married women and children were dying of AIDS, he told the senator, and governments burdened by debt couldn't do a thing about it. Helms listened, and his eyes began to well up. Finally the flinty old Southerner rose to his feet, grabbed for his cane and said, "I want to give you a blessing." He embraced the singer, saying, "I want to do anything I can to help you." Kasich, who was watching from a couch, says, "I thought somebody had spiked my coffee."

And here's another which I just like:
By the summer of 1999, Bono was ready to take on Washington. The Clinton administration was already committed to canceling two-thirds or so of the $6 billion that the poorest African countries owed the United States, but Bono wanted 100 percent cancellation - not only because he thought it was right, but also because you can't sing about two-thirds of something. "It has to feel like history," he says. "Incrementalism leaves the audience in a snooze."

"less than Europeans spend on perfume - or than Americans spend on cosmetic surgery"

The World Summit begins today in NYC, as does the three-day fast for those of us who have signed up to fast and pray for it. (Quite an ironic week for the announcement that the UK has banned Make Poverty History advertisements from TV and radio, a fact which I found easier to learn about on U2 sites than anywhere else.) The NY Times has some sobering words on the summit and the MDGs, among them these: "the gap between the current trendline on child mortality and the one the leaders committed themselves to amounts to 41 million children dying before their fifth birthday over the next decade."

3rd leg

If anything theologically interesting happens on the U2 tour between now and the first Boston dates in early October, you probably won't hear about it here, since I'm trying to avoid spoilers so there'll be some surprise elements when I see them. This also means, please don't email me and ask for my comments on last night's fascinating live cover from Toronto of, you know, "God Said No," or "I Radio Heaven," or something. Just FYI.

The Well - Experience the Almighty

I was flattered to see that the folks at The Well at Langley Vineyard, a place near Vancouver whose worship recordings have taken some top honors, list Get Up Off Your Knees on their resources page along with works by Yancey, Yaconelli, and others as one of the books that "have especially influenced us." They even sell it in their online store. Well, thanks!

White Band Day - Wake Up To Poverty

With only a few days left till the World Summit, today, Sep 10, is White Band Day 2. Some photos of actions around the world are already here. I was really glad to see that the US has now stepped back from efforts to soften the draft document's commitment to poverty reduction through the MDGs.

Williams College course

Williams College will be offering in its winter term a poli-sci cource called "The Gospel According to U2" (PSCI 11.) This may be the first course on the band's theological significance I have seen at a non-Christian institution. Although the professor kindly sent me a nice flyer, you guys'll just have to scroll down to the P's on the main site if you want to read the whole course description. Here's an excerpt:

We will also read serious theological and philosophical tracts on U2 lyrics and explore the band's complicated interweaving of faith, sexuality, grace, fame, doubt, justice, and the meaning of America in a way which makes them a surprisingly popular and poignant spiritual voice in our superficial and materialistic age.... How does a band which quotes psalms at the Super Bowl and routinely stirs millions at its concerts to chant an Old Testament lament ("how long? how long?") get into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame? ...Is U2 following the Church, leading it or rivaling it? How far can you go with a red guitar, three chords and the truth?

Backing off the promises

Bread for the World has issued a press release about the World Summit next week, which will be the largest gathering of world leaders in history, and which is supposed to focus on improving implementation of the five-year-old Millennium Development Goals (eight objectives covering poverty, sexual discrimination, hunger, primary education, child mortality, maternal health, the environment and disease). If you've been wondering how the US's recent effort to disavow the Millennium Development Goals entirely relates to the US's commitments at July's G8, they can tell you. Call-in information in reponse is at Church World Service. Incidentally, to get a comparative sense of how this move looks to the rest of the world, you might visit EUROPE CARES, a project of the entire European Union publicizing what they are doing post G-8 in fulfillment of their promises on the Millennium Development Goals.

Who's that in the last row?

Hat tip to Waving or Drowning, perhaps the record-holder for hat-tips, for this funny story about Steve Stockman's session on Ubuntu theology and U2 at Greenbelt.

Also: I'm aware that the reblogger comment system is currently down; sorry to those who've emailed me about trying to leave comments.

You knew it was going to happen

Hyper-observant Get Up Off Your Knees readers may remember the name Robert Vagacs, whom our contributor Brian Walsh thanked at the end of his sermon "Walk On: Biblical Hope and U2," for "opening up new vistas of interpretation" of the band's art. Robert has emailed to let me know that within about six weeks a reworked version of his Wycliffe College Masters of Theological Studies thesis on U2 will be published in book form, under the title Religious Nuts, Political Fanatics: U2 in Theological Perspective.

"For those who have been in a monastery for the past 20 years, it may be useful to fill in a few details..."

The July / August 2005 issue of Eureka Street, an Australian Jesuit magazine "of public affairs, the arts and theology" reviews Bono on Bono.

Katrina Blogswarm

Joining today with lots of bloggers through Truth Laid Bear to raise awareness of flood aid relief efforts in the wake of hurricane katrina. You can donate through all kinds of places, including (just to pick one ecumenical group known to most readers of the Get Up Off Your Knees blog) World Vision.

I am always moved to see how charity efforts like this get such a huge response, and it really makes me think about the power of news/internet coverage to spark empathy. Most people are caring, and when they see their neighbors suffering, they want to reach out. And the media are helping: There are about 136,000 Katrina stories on Google news right now as I type, and it has been easy to find hours of coverage on TV and keep updated on the extent of the losses.

And what also is running through my mind: along with responding to people who suffer in sudden emergencies like this one (donate!) how could America generate this kind of cultural uprising of empathy for, say, the many more people whose lives are devastated every day by extreme poverty? Will we at some point see bloggers buzzing about not just tragedies that can be relieved by reactive charity, as important as that is, but about saving the lives of some of the millions of people, just as much our neighbors, living on less than a dollar a day -- but whose tragedies can only be changed with proactive justice? Since I'm wondering, I hope no one will mind my also linking ONE's signon letter in the runup to the World Summit.

For the required U2 content, since a lament Psalm counts as U2 content, we could all offer up Psalm 69 in the name of the victims of Katrina.

Where you live should not decide

The African Well Fund is now selling "Crumbs From Your Table"-inspired T-shirts.

What do Bono and Billy Graham have in common? ...OK, besides that. ...OK, what else?

Answer: In one week they both hired the same DJ/ pastor, Kenny Mitchell, who is profiled in the book Emerging Churches: Creating Christian Community in Postmodern Cultures. Here's his bio and personal statement. On his homepage, you can hear some excerpts of the Billy Graham material (go to audio, scroll down).

3 weeks till the World Summit and....

I posted maybe ten days ago about an opportunity to sign up to fast and pray for the World Summit, which used to be called Millennium+5 because it is to include a review of the world's progress towards meeting the internationally agreed-upon Millennium Development Goals. The summit is expected to bring together more than 170 heads of state in NY. Readers of this blog probably already follow things like the ONE campaign enough to know that 2005 has been a key year for anti-poverty activists and Africa in particular because of this upcoming summit, as well as the G8 in Gleneagles.

Well, I'm grateful, if that's the word, to Holly at Hunger for Justice for pointing to this article. Obviously there are all sorts of political issues at play here, but here's a section likely to be of interest to you if you texted during "One" or got yourself a white armband or watched Live8: Less than a month before world leaders arrive in New York for a world summit on poverty and U.N. reform, the Bush administration has thrown the proceedings in turmoil with a call for drastic renegotiation of a draft agreement to be signed by presidents and prime ministers attending the event. The United States has only recently introduced more than 750 amendments that would eliminate new pledges of foreign aid to impoverished nations.... The U.S. amendments call for striking any mention of the Millennium Development Goals, and the administration has publicly complained that the document's section on poverty is too long.

"Mammon Saves"

The story on Fugees rapper Pras sampling U2's "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" for the new single and video "Haven't Found" is getting a lot of play. Pras' mix of the personal and the political fits well with the song (early on we hear "you think that you can buy a better life" and "they got money for war but can't feed the poor," but then guest Sharli McQueen's verse is a reprimand to a boyfriend who has become distracted from her by "fancy cars" and "chasing the shine").

If you like these kinds of things you'll probably like this one. However, the refrain is changed to "you still haven't found," which in combination with the other lyrics and visuals to me gives it all an odd edge of criticism - it's easy to draw the inference that the narrator means to appear wiser than the person being addressed: I've found it, but you haven't....

Here comes the real theological point, though. Particularly given that tone and Sharli McQueen's verse, I was just floored by the irony of the online video, which uses a new technology called Pokeware. This allows you to pause the music and click on blue dots to "interact" with the artwork. A few of the blue dots reveal "Pop-Up Video" type facts about, say, the Atlantic Ocean. Most of them, however, say things like this:
I-Liquid Foundation by Iman. This oil-free, full coverage formula imparts a flawless, natural, matte finish as it softens and conditions. For combination and oily skin types. For more information about Iman Makeup Products click more info.
Or this: Lightweight Cotton Shirt by Gap. Our lightest weight woven cotton. Single chest pocket, button cuffs. 100% cotton. Machine wash. Imported.
Or this: 32" Sharp Aquos LCD-TV Sweepstakes. Popular Science invites you to enter for your chance to win a 32" Sharp Aquos LCD-TV.

I've been wondering ever since U2 released The Joshua Tree, and now at long last a prophetic voice has come forth to reveal how to find what I'm looking for. Pass the Visa.

U2 (band) - Wikipedia

I was kind of surprised to learn that Get Up Off Your Knees is now actually mentioned in the Wikipedia article on U2! Wonder who added it? (That's not a wink-nudge remark; I have no idea.) The cool ISBN function even lets you search for it at libraries.

Put your hand against the television

Not sure where this has been airing, but I just happened on this commercial for the revised edition of Walk On on Relevant's site. It's set to the studio version of U2's "Love and Peace or Else."

Thunderstruck article

Steve Beard, in an article called "Rock, Religion, and Relief," muses after a concert on U2's "charm or anointing to draw incongruent elements together for a common cause."

May your dreams be realized

Along with people everywhere, this blog is in shock and mourning at the news of the murder of Brother Roger of Taize in the middle of Compline last night, in front of 2500 young adult retreatants from all over the world. While it's not yet clear what the motivations of his murderer (a woman from Romania) were, one instinctively lines the situation up with the deaths of those other great peacemakers Martin Luther King and Gandhi. The community -- from 23 nations, Protestant, Anglican, and Catholic, living in a tiny village since the 1940s as a witness for reconciliation -- is perhaps rereading with new eyes the prayers of Brother Roger, one of which I have on my refrigerator and will excerpt here:
You, O Christ, open to me the way of risk. You walk ahead of me on the road to holiness, where happy is the one who dies of love, where martyrdom is the ultimate response. The No that is in me, you transfigure it day after day into a Yes. What you want from me is not a few bribes, but my whole existence.

A month away: Sep. 14-16 is the World Summit

The G8 was the first focus event for 2005; here's number 2 (and it used to be called Millennium+5, in case you're confused; I was). This 3-day event in NY will bring together world leaders to review how we've done, 5 years on, at achieving the agreed-upon Millennium Development Goals (hint: poorly, especially in Africa. Incidentally, the ONE Blog is beginning to try reporting on how debt cancellation and targeted aid are working in very specific locations, which if people pay attention could do a lot to reduce some Americans' chronic suspicion about partnering with non-Western countries).

If you sympathize with ONE and Make Poverty History's campaign to hold our leaders accountable for their promises on this, you can sign up to fast and pray during the World Summit here. Also, can any readers tell me of online sites that have information on vigils/ demonstrations in NYC itself? It was very easy to find full instructions on how to travel to the G8 in Edinburgh, but I'm not having much luck this go-round.

Incidentally, the World Youth Day, which is a large Roman Catholic event going on this next week in Germany, is also focusing heavily on the Millennium Development Goals this year.

Finally, for readers who may not be familiar with the facts about trade, odious debt, and development that motivate this whole campaign, I've tried over the past several months to keep posting links to explanations. This time, let's go to a Christian on the ground in Africa (well, he's on sabbatical at the moment, but has lived there since 1989): here is a mission worker in Burkina Faso giving a very good introductory summary.

The Banner - The Faith of U2

In the August issue of The Banner, the denominational magazine of the Christian Reformed Church in North America, James Kwantes writes an article born out of his experience of a U2 Vancouver concert.

deliot's blog | U2Source.com

A newer site worth checking out is U2Source.com, whose one mission is to make audio of U2 interviews available. The first one I happened to load up was from 1985, done by Mary Turner, whose bright and cheery intro to the band hit all those notes U2 descriptions used to hit in the 80s. Her tone was already making me smile wryly ("Four musicians with more than cars, guitars, and girls on their minds!") before she made it crystal clear that this was 1985 (and made me laugh out loud) by adding, "Plus, three-quarters of the band are Evangelical Christians!" Somehow I don't think that kind of language has been on the bio handout for radio interviewers in awhile.

Mere words

A lovely personal post on faith and art from Waving or Drowning.

Grace over Karma

Anyone who watches the Christian blog world has seen the recent explosion of citations of one passage from the Assayas book, often not well attributed and lacking context. Christianity Today posts, on its Christian Music Today site, a much fuller and more professionally explained and contextualized excerpt from Bono: In Conversation.

Soul at Work

A recent article in the Sunday Independent (registration required, or you can read the @U2 reprint) features a new book by a theologian named Margaret Benefiel, whom the article claims "is one of the biggest-selling religious authors in the world" (Hmmmmm. Memo to Lamott, Warren, Meyer, Borg, Spong et al: call your publicists). The book, ExecutiveSoul: Soul at Work, profiles a number of spiritual organizations -- that is, businesses run on faith-based principles. One of the organizations she selected is U2; interestingly, The Edge agreed to be interviewed on this topic and appears in the book. Excerpt from the article:
Dr. Benefiel said: "Soul at work is not a theological abstraction or a dogmatic mantra but the way that sustained purpose, culture and identity can transcend and enhance an organisations performance and success."
In the book, The Edge said the band have their own Christian way of living.
He said: "There is that community sense that I would associate with the Christian ideal of looking after your neighbour.
"But it isn't always pretty. In fact it's often very rough. Like do you care enough to risk confronting someone with the truth even if it is going to hurt them?
"That's love in action, real commitment to one another, real community and it has nothing to do with being nice to everyone at all times."

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."

The sighs and joys of selling Harry Potter

Byron Borger of Hearts and Minds bookstore in PA has some good words about Harry Potter and a number of U2 books, including ours (and about U2 themselves.) He wrote a lovely review of Get Up Off Your Knees back in the day.

El Paso Times article

Playing catchup: There is basically nothing in this month-old article anyone interested in U2 and God doesn't already know, but I'll cite it anyway for completeness' sake, since it does mention Get Up Off Your Knees.

"Not for Christians, but out there for the world to see"

Here in quick time format (scroll down, it's a javascript window) is a U2 sermon entitled, but not based on "Vertigo" from a church called "the tapestry" in Richmond, BC. The preacher, who says he's about to see the band in a few days, quotes both a sermon by Brian Walsh and Eugene Peterson's forward from Get Up Off Your Knees, and also uses "Still Haven't Found," "40," and video from U2's performance at the Super Bowl where "Streets" was led into with a paraphrase of the same verse from Psalm 51 that launches the Church of Ireland matins liturgy ("O Lord open my lips/ that my mouth show forth thy praise" -- frequently misquoted as "that I might show forth" by people who don't recognize the verse, I might add.) The sermon is more about the overall witness of U2 than any particular song.

Stocki talk from last spring, and article from this summer

Calvin College's student activities weblog has put up some files of talks from the 2005 Festival of Faith and Music. One of them is "Crumbs from your Table: U2 and Justice" by Steve Stockman. I was interested in Stocki's comment about his white ONE/Make Poverty History wristband (the one that's on my left wrist as I type this, and incidentally I have some extras if anyone needs one). He asks how many people at the seminar besides him are wearing it, and then simply tells them if they were part of the same sort of evangelical Christian audience but lived in the UK, they would all be wearing one. He also talks about trade justice in the context of Edun, and mentions how his regular visits to Cape Town have changed his understanding of how necessary it is. (And incidentally, just because you're not in Edun's high-end fashion demographic, that doesn't mean you can't buy fairly traded clothes.)

While we're on the topic of Stocki's connections with Cape Town, ALL BECAUSE OF YOU, I AM - U2, AFRICA AND UBUNTU is an article he wrote reflecting on the political messages of the Vertigo Tour for a South African magazine. Excerpt:
The Biblical idea of interdependence, captured in Africa's idea of Ubuntu, was the secret of how Nelson Mandela reconciled his people with the violent criminals of the cruel white oppressor in post-apartheid South Africa. Co-existence was vital not only to the peace of the nation but to the very identity of his people. Archbishop Tutu took Ubuntu, the springboard of his thinking, and turned it into a theology that the world needs to hear, wake up to and start living. U2 have heard it and are spreading the word -- "All Because of You I Am." Everyone!

I still haven't found what I'm looking for - Generational Text

Duncan at PostKiwi uses "I still haven't found what I'm looking for" as an example of what questions to ask of texts that "form and express the values of a generational cohort." It's also worth reading his more general post which he links along the way. (As anyone who has read Get Up Off Your Knees knows, one of the sermons on "Still Haven't Found" makes a similar case about the song.)

odyssey: Mystic Preaching

The preachers' conversation over on Odyssey sparked by some remarks from Bono has been a good one, and after a break of sorts, Chris took it in a new direction: Mystic Preaching. Worth a read.

Sun and ONE

Have you heard the one about Bono, the Pope and the airport security guy?

LubbockOnline.com - The Gospel According to U2

I guess it's "Preach on U2 and Get Written up in Your Local Paper under the Headline "The Gospel According to U2" Week. (Registration required on this one, however. I'm a BugMeNot fan in such cases.) This preacher, ministry coordinator for Hockey Ministries International's Southwestern USA and chaplain for the Cotton Kings, is doing a 3-week U2 sermon series (with associated workshops) as a volunteer at Live Oak Community Church in Lubbock TX.

No secret at all, 3

Here is my "Fly" series' final post, in which we'll be going straight through the Vertigo Tour version as best I've been able to grasp it. As I said in #2, this presentation picks up on two repeated concepts in the lyrics: "secret" and "love." Any remaining lyrical connection is tenuous; there is clearly a narrative of resistance, which plays no part in the original text --although I could imagine someone arguing that the point here is about standing up, before it's too late, to the forces that want to take you to Hell (metaphorically and perhaps literally as well).

The opening (over the riff) introduces the theme of making the often costly choice to seek truth for yourself. I've become convinced it's a conversation:
SEE
I DON'T WANT TO
HEAR
I DON'T WANT TO
HEAR/ SEE/ HEAR
I DON'T WANT TO
KNOW

In the first knockout moment, we're warned of the formational power of messages we take in uncritically:
LETTERS/ BECOME WORDS/ BECOME SENTENCES/ BECOME LIES/ BECOME/ YOU.
As the first verse begins, the visuals offer statements missing a word or phrase so important that it determines the whole intent of the message. Your mind, of course, instinctively tries to supply what belongs in the blanks, e.g.:
I _____ my friend
she always _____
it never really _____
What is the _____
Why do you _____

And as we move into the first chorus, multicolored LOVE splashes across the side screens and we get an almost didactic explanation of what that all meant:
You fill in the gaps/ You are the difference
However, this gap-filling is not automatically benign; we learn that we have an adversary, here just called Them, and They've got an agenda for our thought-lives.
They are the givers/We are the acceptors/When will it end?
NEVER

Over the second verse, the visuals drop hints about the answer to dealing with our adversary. There's a secret. What do we know about it?
The secret is BEHIND YOU
The secret is INVISIBLE NOW
The secret is LOUD ENOUGH
THE SECRET IS WHAT YOU never want to see/never want to hear/never want to believe
For the chorus there is a rain of letters with messages on the side screens, and then as the band go into the brief bridge, some of Their words get blown to bits in front of us: INEVITABLE, IMPOSSIBLE.

[update 2/2006: a video of a slightly earlier version than this post narrates, beginning at this point, is now available here]

And over the solo, still with the fill in the blank technique, we get to see some of the statements They'd like us to flesh out for Them:
under-estim te/ feed y ur shadow / bl w your mind / s ll your soul
... except the screens also start exposing what They're really trying to do:
p rsuade/ de-base/ coerce/ bully/ bludg on


Over the chorus (you can tell everyone senses this is the apex of the message because of the wide availability of photos of it), the truth comes out, revealing where real freedom is to be found; it's superimposed over big white words like HOPE:
THE SECRET IS YOURSELF
THE SECRET IS YOUR PAIN
THE SECRET IS LETTING GO
GIVING UP
BREAKING DOWN
GIVING IN
...TO THE END
...TO THE BEGINNING [that would be giving in to the omega and the alpha, then?]
GIVING IN TO...[and as I said earlier, here I was really expecting at last to get the ironic turn, the way "it's your world you can change it" used to shift to "charge it," but, no, the 90s are well and truly gone:]

LOVE

The main theological point made, we can imitate Paul and move into the exhortation section. I know fewer of these lines, but it's things like
Re laim your space/ Recla m your space/ Reclaim your space/ It belongs to you
You can do it
They own you/ You own them
It is there/ Down the block / In your face
Close your eyes
Close your ears/ Shut them out
You will win
And then, over the final guitar crescendo to the end, the thing stuns you by reversing itself, and plays the beginning backwards. (This immediately conjured up the redemptive reversal scheme of the HTDAAB deluxe book for me.) YOU/ BECOME LIES/ BECOME SENTENCES/ BECOME WORDS... until Their lies and our apathy and powerlessness disappear into nothing before your eyes, the final triumphant word being

SEE

It's not fantastic if you can't see it

A brief break in the Fly action here for a comment. I rarely visit U2.com for any number of reasons: there are inaccuracies, the updates arrive infrequently and late, the way they handle their members-only thing offends me, I find the breathless self-promoting "reviews" of the shows utterly cringeworthy, and so on. However, I just got an email from them touting a new feature, "Light Fantastic," a "specially commissioned!" [cringe] slide show of the Vertigo Tour's "most iconic images" with commentary from their creator Willie Williams. Willie Williams is brilliant and a great writer, so of course I wanted to see if there were anything from "The Fly" to add to post #3. Off I went on a rare visit to U2.com, and I pulled up the slideshow only to discover that typically, IT DOESN'T WORK.

While I give them a day to get it working, then, I'll mention something else I saw: Bono's description from a recent concert of both "Elevation" and "All I Want Is You" as "marrying songs."

[Update July 30: the slide show seems to be fixed now. No "Fly."]

No secret at all, 2

This is the second in three posts about "The Fly." We last left our anti-hero splatted against some Elevation screen, and I didn't think we'd ever see the Fly again, given the song's omission from the Best of 90-00. But he's back, thanks to the Vertigo Tour's inclusion of a ZooTV set, presented almost as a greatest-hits nostalgia bit with period imagery. But this time, unlike during Elevation, the band all but vanish for the entire song as they are dwarfed by the visuals, which deliver neither the Zoo era's unmanageable message-chaos nor the Elevation era's trenchant simplicity, but a dramatic metanarrative of spiritual warfare against the culture.

I say visuals, and I'll be linking several pictures. However, in reality it's all text, which someone will probably email me and point out is an awfully Protestant way to inculcate a dramatic metanarrative of spiritual warfare against the culture. The presentation is extremely visceral as an experience, yes, but it's still all text.

I think I'm the first person to write about this anywhere, so if you plan to steal the onscreen text or any of my ideas about it, I'd really appreciate being cited and linked.

Before I really launch into discussing the new treatment, a few caveats. I don't know when it began, and I don't know how much it is still changing. I am sure that it always picks up on the slogan-visuals of the 90s and on two repeated concepts in the lyrics: "secret" and "love." If we had a DVD already and the material were thus well known, I could just make some shorter analyses, but since we don't I'm going to go through some sections of the text in my next post and let it speak for itself (the amount of searches I'm getting just on the few phrases I posted the first time shows there's curiosity about what's going on.)

What I'll be working with, I want to emphasize, is not the complete text (in particular, I have not included the side-view sections of rapid-fire phrases mimicking the 90s version, and I haven't bothered to signal the various random-letters sections.) Also, parts seem to change from show to show. However, I feel fairly confident that I've figured out, as they say in homiletics, the moves. I'll write more about them in my next post.

No secret at all, 1

After seeing U2 in Glasgow I posted that the spiritual highlight of the show for me was "The Fly," mostly due to the astounding visual presentation, and I tried to talk about it from memory. Having now seen it again, and having now received a substantial portion of at least one night's text thanks to the skills of a French fan, I think my initial take was a little off. So I wanted to repost a reading of it, and have decided I want first to comment on how different presentations have highlighted or downplayed possible themes in the song. It's going to be best to do this in stages, of which there will be three; this is number one.

Textually, the song is essentially, in its lyricist's words, "a phone call from hell, except the guy likes it there." Or as I often call it in workshops, a rockin' little number about apostasy -- the fear of, and fascination with, "fall[ing] from the sheer face of love," set in a frame of apocalyptic music/language which reveal the violent consequences of personal betrayals. (And of course there's more than one "love" in the implications, but what else is new.) The text ends, as the underworld pay phone is about to cut the narrator off, with a wonderful pun: "I'm running out of change." We're left to imagine that through what the narrator thought were small, understandable choices but turned out to be cosmically significant ones, he's shocked to discover that he's already passed the point where repentance would have been possible -- although another song on Achtung Baby, Until the End of the World, treats the question of how late one can repent with a more hopeful answer. (It isn't hard to imagine why these questions fit with U2's Zoo era.)

On its ZooTV tour performances, however, "The Fly" didn't really exploit those lyrical themes apart from creating an apocalyptically stunning experience. The text's terror of falling was mostly sublimated to the goal of exalting the stereotypical rockstar image of someone who would of course "like it there." But it also had several other tasks in the set: it needed first to introduce the character Bono would be playing, second to build the theme of media's effect on us, and third to deliver a massive opening slap in the face to U2's audience -- visual input too overwhelming to process, full of messages whose meaning couldn't be harmonized even if you had had time to read them. Every performance of "The Fly" since has in some way echoed this presentation.

"The Fly" disappeared for Popmart, but was reinvented for Elevation with a bittersweet fall-from-heaven opening and simpler visuals that highlighted more of the lyrics' subtleties. While I didn't believe the guy liked it there in this version, I did believe that we were orbiting apocalypse, hell and fear (as we watched, for example, Bono being pursued around the heart by...?) And I suppose they figured they'd better have a slogan or two for the traditionalists: "Love Me," for one, which I found quite poignant whoever's voice it was supposed to be (several possibilities, of course).

Fizz from ConsumerPop: So That's What the Kids Today Are Into...

The marketing blog Fizz recently cited U2's not becoming a nostalgia act as an example for "established brands that want to continue bringing new generations of consumers into their franchise." "How do brands that are 25, 50, 100 years old stay relevant to new generations of consumers?" the piece asks. (What about brands that are 2000 years old?) One thing Fizz commends in U2 is this principle: "Extend your brand in ways consistent with the brand." Now there's good advice for the church.

Circle of acquaintance

One of the interesting things about working with Raewynne to put together Get Up Off Your Knees was how many of the contributors were completely unknown to us previously. Over the past year I've had the pleasure of meeting a few of them for the first time (Steve Garber and Henry VanderSpek) and yesterday added another by enjoying a lovely lunch with Derek Walmsley.

"Now, if you know me fairly well you may be thinking: 'Oh no! She is going to write about Bruce Springsteen!'"

Long overdue catch-up: In the Jan 3, 2005 issue of Devotions: Weighty Matters from John 21:17: Sustenance for Christian Leaders, Rebecca Copeland turned her attention to how "God has placed weighty matters of mercy and justice in each of our lives. We can ignore them, like the scribes and Pharisees did, and Jesus will say to us what he said to them. Or we can see them as opportunities to participate in what God considers to be some of his most important work...." Her lead, and a topic woven through the article, is an analysis of criticisms of Bono from the Christian right -- about which she has some sympathy, but also a fine sense of perspective.

Table of contents for Library of Congress control number 2003021239

If you want to see the table of contents for Get Up Off Your Knees in a less-than-convenient format, the Library of Congress now has you covered.

Cross Rhythms takes the plunge

Since discovering over the last few years how easily available exhaustive resources on U2 are, both online and in print, I've started to wonder why the media (including blogs) don't seem to use them much when passing around material about the band. But along with wondering why things that are out of date or just obvious errors suddenly get picked up and spread like wildfire, I'm also intrigued by things writers don't choose to pick up. And so I've posed in a few different contexts this question: given the number of other tidbits in the book that got picked up, and given the almost iconic role he has fulfilled as the band's token nonbeliever, why did the confirmation in Bono: In Conversation (=Bono on Bono; we all know this now, right?) that Adam Clayton now shares the same faith as the other three members of the band get no press at all? I've heard some clever theories about that, but now I stand corrected. I know it will be in the new edition of Steve's book, but this is the first place I've seen it online.

U2 and Rabbi Jonathan Sacks

Here, a live experience of the Vertigo Tour COEXIST chant prompts some reflections drawing on Rabbi Jonathan Sacks' book The Dignity of Difference.

Taking suggestions for titles

I normally don't link this kind of stuff, but I dunno, maybe there's some kind of exception clause when it's Bono and a Gallagher brother, and I did link to episode one upon request, so what the hey. The saga continues. Warning to readers with pristine ears: contains lots of Gallagher language with asterisks (and is funnier for that reason).

G-8 leaders agree on $50B in African aid

"An alternative to the hatred."

[edit: here are quotes from Bono and Geldof.]

I'll leave it to those more skilled than I to do a real analysis of this as the days pass (how much is actually new money, how much is actually development aid, and so on), but it's something at least. Good to hear the whole EU is committed to the 0.7%, and that export subsidies were included in the discussion. Now we can all take a breath, celebrate a step in the right direction, and start our ora et labora again for September...

Noreena Hertz

Wow. @U2 actually interviews Noreena Hertz. A must-read, especially if you haven't had time to pick up her book on debt, or if you've been reading all the people who began expressing opinions about Live8 and the G8 before having learned what the campaign is asking for.

More book excerpts

I'm a bit late to the game here, but... as a lead-up to attending the Cardiff concert last week, Andy & Shona's Blog was posting several days of excerpts from Bono on Bono (or Bono In Conversation for American readers) This is only one; the first was about potatoes and there are some others I've not seen online elsewhere.

Group of Eight Nations

If you signed the Live8 list, you should take a look at this picture from the G-8.

For sale north of the Liffey, at least

I forgot to mention that I was pleased to see Get Up Off Your Knees at a large Christian bookstore in Dublin. I know this is a bit Anne Lamott of me, but I admit I did help out our book's display location a little, it being a big U2 weekend and all...

"Could we have a real sheep come in when the Gospel is read?" "Sure! What can go wrong?"

Willie's Diary, the online journal of U2's show designer, has been one of the fun parts of following any U2 tour since the Internet era began. Willie Williams is very smart and funny, and I especially enjoy reading him from the perspective of a liturgist (just as I enjoy critiquing Bono from the perspective of a presider.) In a way, I know the drill, just in a different setting and with -- well, maybe not all that different an aim. Anyway, this excerpt is for any clergy readers who have ever put on a big outdoor liturgy in which someone in the altar party suggested a "creative symbol" late in the game:

My second task was to co-ordinate the dove release. On Monday, Bono had asked if we could release doves in the middle of "Beautiful Day," so we put "Dove Release, UK" into Google and, amazingly, came up with a list of companies that do just that. Weeding out the less likely candidates was important and in order to find enough doves we ended up having to go with two rival dove release companies. We put them in the photographers' pit at the front, one on stage right, the other on stage left, but I couldn't help but wonder about the potential for Dove Wars....
...during ["Beautiful Day"] came the dove cue. I had imagined a gentle flock rising into the sky, circling over the crowd and heading off into the sunset, but as soon as the baskets were opened the birds shot out of there and would have had your eye out if you'd been standing in the way. Large security guys dived for cover as the jet stream roared past, straight over to stage right and were gone, leaving behind only a few tail feathers fluttering in the breeze. Somewhat less spectacular than I'd envisaged.

The Spirit of Live 8

This is a local article so it quotes several local religious leaders whom most readers won't have heard of, but The Spirit of Live 8 covers how religious leaders of all persuasions are reacting to Live8, what an important role faith has had as a motivating factor in participation, and how political and theological differences are getting set aside by clergy in order to promote Make Poverty History (that's ONE in the USA). Thanks to D. for sending me this link.

Live8 to G8: a letter from concert organisers to world leaders

If you haven't read the open letter from "Bob Geldof, Bono, Richard Curtis and everyone at Live8" to the G8, it's worth a read. Excerpt:
...you must treat the situation as what it is - a desperate crisis, a rolling tragedy totally unacceptable at the start of the 21st century. A child dies every three seconds. Millions are dying of preventable and curable diseases every year. There are countries in Africa where life expectancy is now below 40.... For God's sake, take this seriously. Don't behave normally. Don't look for compromises. Be great. Do more than expected, not the least you can get away with. ...Do it. Please, do it. The world is watching.

song #2: "Just give us what we want; just give us what we want!"

Listen to an interview with Holly Hight, Bread for the World fellow for the ONE campaign explaining to rock radio listeners what live8 is all about and how she got involved.

And... why not release some doves? Sure.

ONE Blog

As we wait for live8 to start, good news: One million Americans have joined ONE.

What concertgoers know about Africa, and Africans know about Live 8

I stumbled on this fascinating post while exploring Technorati's Live8 tag system.

"He moved. Any man can move one hundred and eighty degrees."

A big bravo to @U2 for getting permission, on the occasion of live8, which will focus on consciousness raising about debt, trade, and aid for Africa, to post the whole first chapter of Noreena Hertz' The Debt Threat: here are parts one and two. This is the chapter that recounts Bono's role in brokering the initial round of $435 million in Jubilee debt cancellations. I own The Debt Threat, and reading the whole thing is a great way to learn the real story on debt -- which is very different from the ridiculous myths one usually hears about how developing countries accumulated debt and why they spent loans as they did. A big step was made by the G8 finance ministers recently, but it's people like Hertz who can help you understand why more, and what more, is needed and how.

G8 Gleneagles

It's almost time. I'll be at a White Band demonstration tomorrow; will you? For readers interested in Live8 and the Gleneagles Africa summit, here's a site full of G8 stuff from the BBC. On the Live8 front, one wonders if the leaked story revealing that U2 and their manager are giving about 6 million dollars personally will have any effect on all the voices accusing them of hypocrisy for being successful in their profession while also participating in consciousness-raising about debt, trade, and aid. Also, here's Jeffrey Sachs in the International Herald Tribune, tirelessly trying to get the facts out in the face of spin. You could also go sign the actual Live8 List.
And: since Blogger won't let me use javascript in a post, I can't display the real-time badge here, but you can see, minute to minute, how many of us are blogging about this stuff with a very cool special Technorati feature. (For the Technorati tag thing, then, I'll footnote this post: live8 gleneagles.)

"something ancient and altogether magical"

Many thanks to David Williamson for giving me a heads-up about his reflections after the U2 Croke Park concert we both attended. It's not about the concert in particular, but is a lovely piece of writing. I enjoyed his opening image of what you'd have to throw in the mix if you were going to try and clone U2, and I grinned at the phrase "exploring the most sensory fringes of Christendom." Excerpt (U2ey poem links are mine):
The 17th century metaphysical poets, who included in their ranks John Donne and George Herbert, used metaphor to explore the ecstasies of love and religion with footloose wit and invention. Bono and the Edge arguably had more in common with these erstwhile wordsmiths than the likes of Simple Minds and Big Country. Together with drummer Larry Mullen Jr., the three had been immersed in a charismatic Christianity which was as far removed from the ritualistic Catholicism of Dublin as punk rock was from the Monkees. This intensity of religious experience starched the band of the sceptical cynicism which had killed off the optimism of the Sixties. Though their rhythms may have come from the Velvet Underground and the Clash, they kept hold of the ideals of love and fulfilment that a society reeling from Watergate and Vietnam was fast abandoning. This willingness to paint a musical landscape where the mountaintops point, literally, to the heavens didn't shipwreck their careers. In moments of love and friendship, even the jaded urbanite can believe momentarily in the joy such music mirrors. The thousands - and later millions - of people who punched the air during U2 concerts may not have realised how similar the events were to spirited revival meetings, but in a secular age such highs are hard to come by.

I ______ my friend.

As long as I'm linking some images in this post [which was edited to add new images 7/7], I'll give you Yahweh (which reprises the COEXIST theme and ends with a series of Sacred Heart images - no Jesus, just the Heart). But the most theologically impressive thing to me in the stadium version of the U2 Vertigo tour was the treatment of "The Fly." I wish I had it on film because I am writing from memory and I know it varies a bit; would love help from readers. The Zoo portion of the show features this song with its "traditional" destabilizingly fast slogans, some of them flip and some not. But it's no longer just a presentation about media chaos; this time, there's a metanarrative. The opening warns us that LETTERS/ BECOME WORDS/ BECOME SENTENCES/ BECOME LIES and the visuals focus on statements and their potential effects. By a fill-in-the-blank technique they keep the amusement going while also sending a message (eventually stated explicitly) about the power our own choices have to determine what we agree to (i.e. evil or good). There are dialogues in different colors:
I HAVE NO MONEY I HAVE NO POWER
THIS IS WHAT THEY WANT YOU TO THINK
As we learn how to fight "Them," "They" go on telling lies, often in red and black, and near the end the truth comes out, superimposed over big white words like HOPE:
THE SECRET IS YOURSELF
THE SECRET IS YOUR PAIN
THE SECRET IS LETTING GO GIVING UP GIVING IN
TO... [and here I was expecting at last to get the ironic turn, the way "it's your world you can change it" used to shift to "charge it," but, no, the 90s are well and truly gone:]
GIVING IN TO...
LOVE
all gold and white. And then the thing reverses itself, and plays the beginning backwards until "their" lies and "our" apathy/powerlessness disappear into nothingness before your eyes. HTDAAB deluxe book and "death itself beginning to work backwards," anybody?

Fish Part 2

I mentioned earlier, on the occasion of the new edition of the U2 Bible references archive, having written and lost a few extra comments. What I was thinking about was that I'm glad I didn't have to make a list for How to Dismantle, because I find it very hard to decide on whether particular turns of phrase are an allusion, or just part of the Biblical worldview (which would disqualify them for "Drawing Their Fish.")

For example, "always pain before a child is born": yes, or no? "I was born a child of grace" -- the concept is transparently Christian, but can you actually locate it at a particular verse? It's John 3-ey (as is the whole "at the door of the place I started out from and I want back inside" bit), and also pretty Pauline, but what would you cite specifically for Paul? Maybe something in Romans? Or maybe not. "From the brightest star comes the blackest hole" - probably some kind of reference to the fall of Lucifer, but tough to find an actual a passage containing both halves of the concept. "Catch you by the heel" -- is that Jacob, or Achilles, or something else?

I do have to say, however, that I would definitely have included one reference that didn't make this update: "Take this mouth, give it a kiss."

Croke Park

Someone we met from South Africa while in Dublin this past weekend said to my husband, "We have come here to see U2 and die." While our pilgrimage-intensity was not quite at that fever pitch, getting to go to a Dublin concert (the first one) was a thrill. The volume and enthusiasm of the audience singing was extraordinary; during the first chorus of "Beautiful Day" I actually became concerned about the structural soundness of the stadium, which (hyperbole-free statement here) was literally shaking. A side benefit of the trip was getting to meet Get Up Off Your Knees contributor Henry VanderSpek for coffee and have a nice conversation about his new work with World Vision, Make Poverty History, and some other things.

"Music of this caliber and class feels as primal as shelter and food. "

Writing in PopMatters, David Kootnikoff presents a retrospective of U2's career read through Frederico Garcia Lorca's concept of "Duende" --that "mysterious power which everyone senses and no philosopher explains."

U2 lyrics - Bible references

"Drawing Their Fish in the Sand," the archive of U2 Biblical citations, has now been updated through U2's most recent work. I was interested to read that that piece, apart from the home page, is the most frequently linked-to page on @U2.

It's also interesting to remark that there are many fewer direct Biblical allusions on How to Dismantle than on several previous albums, despite the fact that the CD's Biblical worldview is unusually pronounced. I wrote a little paragraph with examples of hard-to-call lines and then lost it; may try to reconstruct it for you in a few days.

Thought for the day

"Trying to change the way art itself works, for the sake of the so-called 'service of the Gospel,' just does a disservice to both. Art is a terrible preacher. If you want to preach, be a preacher. When you try to force art to preach, you get bad preaching and you get bad art." --Colin Harbinson at the Rencontre Europeene d'Artistes, Paris, June 2005

Thank You Billy Graham

@U2 has already posted the story from Rolling Stone, but in fact there's no need to stop at reading about it; you can actually go watch the Pat Boone video with the above title, including Bono's introduction.

Pilgrimage Project

Thanks to Pilgrimage Project for naming us Blog of the Month for June.

Prophetic voice sometimes sings

Looks like the Anglican Journal in Canada for some reason just noticed Get Up Off Your Knees. Many common comments, the usual couple well-taken critiques, and this nice bit:
Ms. Whiteley rightly laments the two paths that have often happened with respect to popular music and Christianity. She regrets a mutual abhorrence of one group's fans towards the other. She also skewers the vacuous attempts to borrow religious trappings to give a "spiritual" effect to a secular work or the adding of pop music and general simplicity to "attract the young people" to the Christian religion. She says, "Neither of these responses does full justice to the integral and substantial relationship between religion and culture." This book, and its sermons regardless of quality, scope, or theology, does.

Did they come here to play Jesus?

If you're interested in audio of Steve Stockman's recent talk at The Inn at University Presbyterian Church, it's available here. If you don't have time to listen to all of it, the earlier material is older and the later material is newer.

"This is one of the three asks"

Since this is a U2 blog, I'll link this story in particular as I say: Alleluia.

Jubilee 2005, letter to Bush, more on the "Marshall Plan for Africa," and, OK: Live8.

So far in the American run-up to the G8, it's been "Crumbs for Africa," (wonder where they got that title?) which is why a great thing for American bloggers to link is the pre-G8 ONE letter to Bush. At least one prominent Christian leader is sending it out as a broadside on his email lists.

I also want to thank a reader for sending me a link to this action from the UK Jubilee campaign, which can be taken by people in any country since it addresses all the G-7 Finance Ministers (meeting this weekend). For Americans, you can also now send an online WIPE OUT DEBT in 2005 postcard to President Bush and Treasury Secretary Snow urging them to follow through on the commitment to 100% debt cancellation at the July 2 G8 summit in Scotland. American bloggers reading this post, here's another thing to link; it's no secret Jubilee doesn't have the highest profile in the USA.

If you haven't been following why 2005 is a key year for debt cancellation and other issues related to the Millennium Development Goals, I did a sort of resource post on that earlier. On the other hand, you might be better served to read an up to the moment article on the "New Marshall Plan for Africa" concept in the run-up to the G8 here. The article gives some helpful instances of interventions on a scale that could never be done by private charity. Or, a bit heavier on facts about Africa, this article: "It is difficult to think of any area in which so much could be done to improve human welfare for so little."

I suppose I might as well mention that the site for Live8, the multinational concert event kicking off a week of actions including a massive gathering just before the G8 Africa summit, has some info on this up too. (Anyone taking bets on how many times Live8 will be criticized for not raising money?) By the way, if you'd like to see what Make Poverty History has planned for the G8 gathering, check it out.

"...the world's richest countries sleepwalk their way to a heavily signposted human development disaster."

On the same topic as my larger post from today, The Guardian has a pretty gutsy headline about the results of the Millennium Development Goals so far.

SOS Sermons

An audio file has been posted of something I noted some weeks ago on the site of Shepherd of the Sierra Presbyterian Church MP3 Audio Recording of a sermon (28:50 long) titled "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For: The Theology of U2" and given the weekend U2 were in the Bay Area. The text is, guess what, Psalm 40, and the pastor is clearly more of a 1960s guy who made an effort to learn about U2 but is talking to a congregation who hasn't. His sermon lists 4 themes in U2: Questioning Faith, Social Justice, Sin and Forgiveness, Praising and Longing.

BTW, since this issue has been raised with me recently, can I just state something that should be obvious? This site collects links to material that is very religiously diverse as a way of noting how theologically-grounded minds are working with U2's art. It is not safe to assume that because I link to something or someone, it fully reflects my own beliefs, and even less so that it reflects the beliefs of anyone else who was associated with the book this blog is promoting.

How starving Africa got under my skin

Another long excerpt from Bono: In Conversation inthe Sunday Times this week. This one's about Africa.

WWJDT?

I feel as if I'm hat-tipping Mike at waving or drowning a lot lately, but perhaps he's just on about U2 a lot lately. Anyway, it was at waving or drowning that I found this post (which asks interesting questions itself) linking to Relevant Magazine's post of an audio clip of Bono speaking to an audience about truth in music and about worship in music. (I have to say I come down pretty much exactly where he does: never have been able to muster interest in mainstream CCM, but worship music is "something entirely different and that I'm interested in.") While some of the points we've heard before, I don't recognize the source and Relevant doesn't identify it. I have a guess, but am curious if anyone can tell us for sure where it's from?

Service Jun 10

Get Up Off Your Knees contributor Derek Walmsley invites UK readers near St. Mark's Utley to a Friday night cafe service using U2, part of a series on "Icons of Our Time." (Previous "icons" have included McDonalds and James Bond). The U2 night is this Friday, June 10th, at 7pm for 7.30, starting with coffee.

odyssey: Preachers Who Have Everything But It

A series of posts that began with "Why Preaching Requires Blood" at odyssey borrows from Bono: In Conversation to illustrate the "It" factor in preaching. Marvelous connection.

Academic quiz moment

Bono is mentioned in The Blackwell Companion to Christian Ethics (ed. by Stanley Hauerwas, Samuel Wells, Blackwell Publishing, 2004) in the section on "Authority and Obedience." Anybody want to try and guess what principle he has been chosen to illustrate?

A Natural Alliance - New York Times

Interesting piece by David Brooks on the way the fight to end extreme poverty has bred new alliances that cross old American "culture war" boundaries. Excerpt: I recently went to a U2 concert in Philadelphia with a group of evangelicals who have been working with Bono to fight AIDS and poverty in Africa. A few years ago, U2 took a tour of the heartland [sic], stopping off at places like Wheaton College and the megachurch at Willow Creek to urge evangelicals to get involved in Africa. They've responded with alacrity, and now Bono, who is a serious if nonsectarian Christian, is at the nexus of a vast alliance between socially conservative evangelicals and socially liberal N.G.O.'s.... The world is suddenly crowded with people like Rick Warren and Bono who are trying to step out of the logic of the culture war so they can accomplish more in the poverty war. Hat tip to Holly, ONE Campaign Organizing Fellow with Bread for the World, at Hunger for Justice. I only later found out that Christianity Today also blogged about this under the rubric "What Doth Bono Have To Do With Rick Warren?" (although their piece unfortunately helps spread the misconception that the Africa segment in Vertigo concerts is a request for donations "to the band's hunger-relief charity" -- a "charity" which, of course, doesn't even exist.) The Grenzian, who read the same CT piece, adds that Rick Warren talked about U2 recently at a Purpose-Driven Church conference.