We've had a death in the family, and as a way of praying with it I was listening to "Kite." This was a live performance, and as usual the audience all joined in loudly on "I'm a man; I'm not a child." And at that moment a realization hit me, fully formed....

@U2 runs polls on their front page; the current one is serious, but they've also had some very funny ones. Perhaps their best ever, IMHO, was something like "What is your favorite Bono lyrical redundancy?" And it had a whole list of options, among them
I'm a man/I'm not a child
I was blind/I could not see
I'm wide awake/I am not sleeping
I can't remember the others now, but I thought highly of whoever was observant enough to make that question up. I'd never noticed that tendency, but it's definitely there.

Here is what hit me during "Kite": well, of course Bono would gravitate to poetry based not on rhyme or rhythm, but on parallel, seemingly redundant phrases. That's how the Psalms are organized.

@U2's Angela Pancella has posted an article on "The Nashville Summit: Behind the Scenes with Bono, DATA, and the Christian Music Industry." This expat Nashville girl recommends you read it. There is also a sidebar of quotes by Dan Haseltine of a band which our main editor -- not only an all-around interesting guy but also an SSJE monk -- told me he listens to in his cell: Jars of Clay.

Angela's article refers to the video of Bono's 2002 speech at festivals like Creation and Cornerstone. Apparently he also recorded a new, longer one for this year.

Especially, maybe, if you've ever watched anyone learn to preach (specifically, watched the part where they work through the awkwardness of that almost universal horror of "ME? talk to THEM? ...HERE?!"), it's kind of an interesting sidelight, I think, to compare the two videos.

Here's an article about Wheaton College as a key ally of DATA.

It turns out that Darlene Zschech, whose song "Shout to the Lord" my church loves to sing, is covering "Walk On" on her first non-worship, studio album. This inspires me to type out a reflection involving U2 and Darlene Zschech I have had in my head since All Saints Day 2001.

At the seminary where I got my M.Div. (BUSTH), we read a book called Celebration and Experience in Preaching by Henry Mitchell. It is about the experiential and participatory nature of African-American preaching, which I had the privilege of hearing a lot of in our chapel. The book is at church, so I can't cite accurately, but one idea from it has stuck in my mind for the intervening 12 years, and basically it was this:

The preacher must be the first one off the diving board into the pool of ecstasy, or nobody else will ever believe it is safe to jump.

In any vocation, I guess you gradually acquire specific personal lenses through which you often look to evaluate what's going on; and this idea, as challenging as it is to me, has become one of my lenses: Is anyone in the pool, and how did whoever's up front do at inviting them to jump in? (A somewhat similar lens from my other seminary, SWTS, was acquired when the then-liturgy professor bellowed at a diffident student presider in "play church" class, "Take CHARGE of the thing!!")

OK, that was the background, here's the reflection. I know enough about worship music (i.e. music found at places like Worship Together, or Integrity, or Vineyard Music) to have heard about a sort of worship music tour that was coming to our area in October 2001. A group from my church went to what was in essence a 2-hour worship service with maybe 3000 people, and I had on my Henry Mitchell lens throughout (though I also worshipped, of course.)

Now, the presider I was really waiting for was Darlene Zschech. People who know a lot more than me had told me "she's the real thing; she's the most gifted worship leader of our generation" and so on, and I wanted to see it for myself. They saved her for late in the evening, of course, so for the first hour plus, a series of people whose names I have to admit I didn't really recognize led us. It took most of them a few songs to get people in the pool, but they all did a good job.

Then Darlene Zschech came out, and you could feel the atmosphere in the room change. Not only did she "take charge of the thing," but it was crystal clear that unlike everyone who had preceded her, she was already where she wanted us to be. Where it had taken most of the leaders a few songs to jump off the diving board, she came onstage already swimming. I didn't especially care for most of her repertoire (I'm personally more of a Passion or that sort of often-British modern worship type - or chant, or really substantial hymns), but I had to admit that by the middle of her first song, the assembly was in the pool. This impressed me; at that point, I'm not sure I'd ever witnessed anyone enable that corporate leap so naturally and smoothly.

Two weeks later I saw U2.

Probably most of you can describe the Elevation Tour entrance: house lights on, totally low- key, mild "hey everybody" waving from the band. Also typically, as Bono neared his mike he knelt and crossed himself. Getting to his feet, over beats 2, 3, and 4 of the final bar of the intro tape he cried out something - perhaps "lift us up," perhaps just one of those glossolalic Bono yells. And the moment the band hit the downbeat of "Elevation," 20,000 people were in the pool.

Perhaps that will sound like an exaggeration; it isn't. I'm not saying they accomplished it every night, but they did that one. I have a recording of the concert, and it almost seems to me sometimes that you can hear it, hear something happen, at that moment.

I didn't think about Darlene Zschech and liturgical presiding at the time (I was in the pool!) but the next day was All Saints and I thought about it a lot. I thought about "take charge of the thing." I thought about pools that have big signs on them reading "Christian Church Liturgical Gathering; All Welcome" and how few people jump in those. I thought about what a presider does and what Bono was doing. I thought about the real meaning of that high-church hobby-horse "liturgy is the work of the people" (which I do believe is a great and powerful truth; however, just saying so can't make it happen).

And as good as she is at what she does, I thought, more than once, with a big grin on my face: "Darlene Zschech, eat your heart out."

Congratulations and blessings to Jamie Parsley, whose sermon in Get Up Off Your Knees uses If God Will Send His Angels, as he becomes the Rev. Jamie Parsley this evening in Fargo, North Dakota. It may be the stuff of country songs, but it's definitely something to go on.

Thanks to our friends at U2 Page for the link.

DATA has issued a press release on the events of this week in Congress.

Six Degrees of Separation

I think I will tell you how some dots recently got connected for me. So, there's this priest Paul Zahl, Dean of the Cathedral of Church of the Advent in Birmingham AL, and I recently got involved in a conversation about a phrase in a current article of his. Well, this brought to mind that he had invited Steve Stockman to talk about U2 as part of that parish's Lenten series last year. With me so far?

So I got curious as to whether they'd done anything else U2-ey at Advent Birmingham, and was looking at their website, browsing their online articles. And I came upon one where Paul Zahl described speaking at an Anglican church in Dublin (CORE) and mentioned that one of the claims to fame of CORE's rector (senior pastor) is that his sister-in-law was "directly involved" in Bono's conversion. (A comment to which Zahl charmingly appends: "No kidding"!)

Well, naturally, being an Anglican and everything, I looked CORE up. There are lots of kinds of Anglican churches; we're a pretty diverse denomination. CORE is the kind of Anglican church with a house band, and its leader is a young man called Eoghan Heaslip. He has a "live from Dublin" CD called Mercy, and turns out to be U2 quasi-chaplain Jack Heaslip's son. If I'm ever in Dublin, I guess I know where I'll be going to church.

Permit me to give whoever just got here searching for U2 + lectionary a virtual hug.

It's fun to be linked. We just showed up on djchuang's pensive journal (check out his main page for lots of great stuff). What it's all about found us while he was trying to write a sermon using Mysterious Ways. Fly Over Country and Cutting Room Floor and Acrobat have also mentioned U2 Sermons. Plus our contributer Wade Hodges, who has a streamlined new site design, regularly sends us hits. There; I think I've now linked everyone who linked to us. Go look at their blogs.....

Chicago religion reporter Cathleen Falsani, who interviewed Bono for Christianity Today, published this article about the $1B cuts in the promised AIDS funding after talking to TASO volunteer Agnes Nyamayarwo (again, TASO is this book's charity) and getting a late night phone call from outside a certain studio in Dublin last week. I agree with her: "It's sinful to break a promise. And it's just plain cruel to promise help to a dying person and then dawdle, or not follow through."

(thanks to Thunderstruck.)

I haven't put up any excerpts in awhile. Here's one, from Mike Kinman's sermon on "Pride."

The greatest irony, though . . . and our greatest hope . . . is that Christ has actually shown that one person coming in the name of love truly is an army. Jesus, betrayed by his own friend with a kiss, abandoned by most of the rest of his friends and beaten and killed on the cross, had a greater effect on history than anyone in history. Those who followed in his footsteps, who had the courage to be armies of one coming in the name of love . . . did likewise.

Mahatma Gandhi was �one man come in the name of love,� and he overthrew an Empire with active loving nonviolent noncooperation. They took his life, too.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was �one man come in the name of love,� and he opened the eyes and engaged the conscience of a nation to the evils of racism and helped set in motion a tide of justice that still rolls today. And the shot that �rang out in the Memphis sky� on April 4, 1968 indeed did take his life, but it did not take a pride, an identity, a vision that was not about himself but about love....

I'm intrigued that people seem to be getting here searching on things like "U2 lyric meaning" or "meaning behind U2 songs." There is in fact a site, U2MoL that, unlike Get Up Off Your Knees, purports to tell you what U2 songs "mean." It actually is more of a compilation of references, purely private opinions, and comments band members have made about U2 lyrics, and it's interesting. There is also a book by Niall Stokes on this topic (Into The Heart), which has lots of lively comments from Bono about what U2 lyrics mean; I own it, and it's good enough, but (for one thing) it sure doesn't evidence much ability to notice and understand U2's spiritual allusions.

We talk about this overall issue in the U2 sermons book, but I guess if I were going to make a short comment it would be this: I certainly understand the fascination in wanting to unearth what U2 were "on about" when they wrote a song. However, IMHO a key aspect of U2's work is that the songs have elastic, allusive, re-assignable meanings. So any question that is after "The" meaning of a U2 lyric is by definition, I think, going to chop off part of its own answer.

Today marked our 1000th visitor, someone from AOL in the US.

TASO and Jeff Sachs

President Bush visited TASO, the charity to which our royalties will be going, yesterday, touting his $15 billion AIDS package at the same time Congress was cutting funds for its first year. For any who may be interested, the Boston Globe published this op-ed by Jeffrey Sachs (any U2 fan will know that name) and Paul Zeitz laying out some of the realities amid all the spin. Bush's radio address today is on the same topic. Bono was on CNN last night to say what he thought, and U2 World has Bono's subdued and saddened remarks in WMV and RealMedia here. OK Edge, play the blues.

I'm enjoying emailing with the author of the U2-as-psalmists dissertation. In our conversation, the recording of the opening Elevation Tour blessing by Church of Ireland priest Jack Heaslip came up. For anyone else who's a fan of U2 theology and so on, but who never got to hear it when it was circulating earlier, I put a copy online here.

...And here is another new article on the same topic as the one below, from Christianity Today. The cause of AIDS in Africa and Bono's usual, theologically-informed analogies about justice are much more important of course.... but I'm pretty happy to hear this side comment from Bono about how touring Midwest evangelical churches/Christian schools last December affected him:
"I didn't have a very good impression of the church up to that point, in the sense of their ability to sort of wake the sleeping giant and put it to work for the world's most vulnerable. I kind of thought the church was asleep and it turned into a 'holy, bless me club' or whatever you want to call it, [but] I'm glad to say I was wrong. Particularly evangelicals who seemed very judgmental to me over the years turned out to be incredibly generous in their time and their support of this effort. I've really had my view of the church turned upside down, but I will be honest � it's ruined things for me now. People are asking 'why aren't I at Mass?'"

CMCentral urges you to contact your elected officials this week as Bush leaves for Africa and DATA holds a "Christian artists for Africa" summit in... my hometown. I wouldn't call myself a big CCM expert, although growing up in Nashville you kind of get it through the groundwater, but still, seeing the list of Christian artists who have endorsed DATA at the bottom of this article is really a thrill.

The royalties we'll be sending to TASO address the problem from a different direction, but we all have the same goal.

Well, that ad up there finally noticed that the topic is U2.

I hope that rumor about the Slane DVD is true, altho I'd still rather they rerelease the official Zoo and Popmart shows on DVD first. I agree with those who find the Boston DVD rather flat as a document of the Elevation Tour -- altho the purchase still would be worth it purely for that moment on disc 2 when we get to see Hamish Hamilton going into profane ecstasies in the booth at the beginning of "Streets."

(Can you tell I have a thing about the beginning of "Streets"?)

But... if we're getting a U2 Slane DVD at the end of 2003, doesn't that make it almost certain the new U2 album will be delayed well into 2004?

Bono is featured in the book Spiritual Journeys: How Faith Has Influenced 12 Music Icons , a new release from Relevant, who published our contributor Steve Stockman's Walk On: The Spiritual Journey of U2. You should all buy that book while you're waiting for ours. Steve Beard, editor of Thunderstruck and a friend of this U2 project, wrote the Bono article and I think the Johnny Cash one too.

Another featured artist is Bob Dylan. I remember watching, wide-eyed, as Dylan sang about Jesus on SNL after the release of Slow Train Coming; Eric Idle was hosting the show. I was in high school and had just become a Christian, and that Monday morning I commented to the English teacher I idolized that Eric Idle's accent seemed much less British than I remembered from Monty Python. Her reply was "Eric Idle's lost his accent, but Bob Dylan's lost his mind."