12.31.2003

Toronto book launch report

Happy New Year's Eve to everyone. Thanks to Waving or Drowning? for blogrolling me (and congratulations on the 35 goats).

From Toronto, Henry VanderSpek writes, "We had a big snowstorm on the day of the launch (Dec. 14th), but still had a good turn-out. Brian Walsh & I were introduced by John Franklin, the director of IMAGO, a Canadian Faith & Arts organization, and then we each shared for 5-10 minutes our perspective and feelings re U2 as well as the same re the book. It was followed by a free time to talk, sign books as people requested, and to watch the Slane DVD. The book [was] mentioned on two radio stations - one called EDGE 102.1 here in downtown Toronto, an alternative rock station - and the other a rock station in London, Ontario, (a smaller city about 2 hours southwest of Toronto.)"

Wish I could have been there!

12.30.2003

U2 Lyrics Move to Church Pulpits

An equally good title - with a slightly different meaning to the verb - would have been "Church Pulpits Move to U2 Lyrics." Here's an article about the book from The Irish Catholic. Warning: this is a large JPG of a scan of the actual page. But if you read it, you will also learn how to enroll in the Sodality of the Holy Face.

12.29.2003

Today's Psalms: Scholar finds 'liturgy of life' in music of U2

The Grand Rapids Press has published a superb interview with Steve Garber of Calvin College about his contribution to Get Up Off Your Knees and the book in general.

"(U2 takes) the heart of biblical faith and finds ways to translate that into language that the whole world finds intriguing," Garber said.

12.26.2003

Dwell

I haven't had time to blog this story till now. A couple days before Christmas, I was in a local Christian bookstore which was selling off all the demo CDs they'd used in the past year. I buy almost no CCM per se, but I do buy worship music every few months -- partially to use myself and partially looking for things that might work for my congregation. (And incidentally, you may remember I was talking some weeks ago about Eoghan Heaslip from Dublin, Jack Heaslip's son; though he didn't write it, a song I learned from his CD Mercy was our Christmas anthem this year, and the choir did it proud, I must say.)

So along with a little stack of books, for about $2 I got a demo copy of Dwell, a new Vineyard project. It presents itself as a compilation, recorded in Cincinnati with players from Vineyards all over the country, of their best new songs that are "personal and congregational friendly." Upon getting back to the car, I had a little debate as to whether or not to take the live recording of "Mysterious Ways" I had been listening to out of the CD player; well, checking out Dwell won.

The opening track didn't make much of an impression on me (probably because I was paying more attention to getting out of the parking lot), but the second track? Well, it features just a completely transparent Edge ripoff. Audio sample here, and this is only part of it, too. I started laughing and said to myself, Might as well just put "Mysterious Ways" back in!

Belated blogosphere gratitude

Thanks to Christian Computing and to Plastic Flowers Falling Trees for the links, and to RoDog, jonathan, and Urban Onramps for blogrolling U2 Sermons.

12.25.2003

Merry Christmas from U2 Sermons

And what am I to do?
And what in the world am I to say?
There's nothing else to do;
he says he'll change the world some day:
I rejoice.

12.24.2003

SSJE Christmas music

In some sort of supreme irony, not only does this nice bunch of monks now have a book on the rock group U2 out, they also have their own hit CD, recently featured on NPR. [I mildly resent this: I was buying SSJE's stuff on tape, back before they became big, when they were still playing the small clubs... ;-) ] Brother Kevin, who is interviewed in this segment, was the acquisitions editor for our book. You can see him on the left, talking to Brother Daniel, who's on a listserv with me, in the top picture here.

That's In Quiet Silence: Christmas in a Cloister. Really no book content here, just promotin' our monks.

12.23.2003

Heads up for anyone who still needs a 4th class at Mercyhurst

Now and again, I continue to enjoy running searches that brought people here. Many of them are predictable: ("U2 Christian," "U2 Bible," the book title, proper names of various contributors, etc.) However, a recent search string was pretty clearly a student looking for (I'm sorry to say) a pre-written essay on U2 and social justice. There's a certain "what's wrong with this picture" about turning in a plagiarized paper to your ethics professor, isn't there?

But anyway, what I learned by running the search myself is that if you attend Mercyhurst College and happen to be taking Religious Studies 405 (Social Ethics) this winter term, one of your possible major presentation topics will be "U2�s Bono and Third World Debt." You can also do Walmart, Exxon, or sweatshops (I bet I'd do sweatshops if I were taking the class. Sometimes I miss school.)

12.22.2003

One more Advent sermon

Among the Christian groups our U2 book unfortunately does not have represented are any of the historic Peace churches, such as the Church of the Brethren. Which makes me all the more happy to have happened on, and now to be able to share with you, this Brethren Advent sermon from only 2 weeks ago which draws on "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For."

Excerpt:
The road God paved will not lead to the mall, to the special gift, to the reach and grab and push and shove of December. It doesn't lead to weariness. It doesn't lead to the warmth of our Christmas traditions, as wonderful and important as they are. It doesn't take us to the "after Christmas let down" that many feel. It leads us further... to the source of our longing.

There is more anticipation leading up to Christmas than at any time of the year, even among those who claim not to have a drop of belief in their system. Why? People know in their depths that Christmas is about something they do not have. They may not have words to describe it, but it is still strong enough to flock folks into church pews that are vacant the rest of the year.

Make straight in the desert a highway for our RSS feeds.

Well, shortly after I posted, lamenting its absence, Blogmatrix came back up. Hurray!

Blogmatrix

Does anyone out there know what's up with Blogmatrix? (Other than the obvious "it's down.") That's where I get the RSS feed for this blog, and it's been dead for a few days now.

One of our local bookstores was able to verify, when a parishioner of mine asked, that there was such a book in the world as Get Up Off Your Knees: Preaching the U2 Catalog, and assured her that it could even be obtained. So that's good.

12.21.2003

Union

[grid blog :: advent 4]

Welcome all wonders in one sight!
Eternity shut in a span.
Summer in winter. Day in night.
Heaven in earth, and God in man.

--Richard Crashaw (1613-1649)

This post is my last contribution to the Advent grid blog.

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

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


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


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

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

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

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


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

12.18.2003

If you *really* wanted it for Christmas

Cowley has books and is shipping them. U2Mart has books and is shipping them. I have no idea about anywhere else.

12.16.2003

Merlyn the Magician and the Pacific Coast Highway

Quirky and amusing article about the book Merlyn the Magician and the Pacific Coast Highway, which shows
1) to what lengths the media will go in generating a U2 headline (I mean, the story here is: "Bono uttered two sentences recently about a guy who used to write for us.")
2) just the kind of classic juxtaposition (backstage) that is designed to annoy equally both a segment of Christian U2 fans and a segment of non-Christian ones, and
3) a nice deadpan last line.

12.14.2003

Source

[grid blog :: advent 3]
This post continues the Advent grid blog, in which several Christian bloggers look at four themes. I'm doing so through U2 songs.

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


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

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

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

12.12.2003

Realized Eschatology, part 2

I have now, personally, seen actual copies of Get Up Off Your Knees.

{Update: the cover picture wraps around and the Edge is on the back! How great is that?!}

12.11.2003

Advent Update: Realized Eschatology

There are books in Toronto. I'm sure the Toronto book launch party organizers are breathing a corporate sigh of relief.

Amazon.co.uk: Get Up Off Your Knees: Preaching the "U2" Catalogue

At last... Amazon.co.uk has a price for the book. I am intrigued by the squeamish way they put "U2" in quotation marks.

12.10.2003

[grid blog :: advent]

Jonny Baker has a list of several of the Advent grid bloggers. Others are still welcome to join in.

Paris Match

Bono was interviewed in the French magazine Paris Match, and @U2 sent a translation around on their mailing list (but haven't posted it on the site). A couple topically-relevant excerpts...

Bono: I can't stand injustice. There's an emergency in the world. It is completely unacceptable that in Europe and America we have drugs that cost almost nothing to make, and there are hundreds of thousands of children and parents who die every day because we aren't sharing those drugs. That says a lot about human nature. It's obscene. History will judge us harshly, and so will our children, and God even more. We're present for a new Holocaust and we don't even budge.
...I'm going to take my daughters Jordan (14) and Eve (12) to Africa very soon. My sons, who are 4 and 2, are still too young. But I want to shape them, gently, to be aware of the world. For the moment, I want my daughters to see how the Devil has done his best work. As my friend Bob Geldof says, AIDS is a medical problem, but people are dying because of a political problem.


and this:

PM: You have faith. How do you know God exists?

Bono. The Bible is my bedside reading. That said, I've always thought the important thing was not to know if I believe in God or not, but to know if God believes in me. I take my kids to Mass, but when it's too boring, I'm embarrassed, because I don't want them to think going to sleep in church is the normal thing. One day, one of the priests talked about football in his sermon and I saw stars in their eyes.

12.09.2003

Amnesty International holiday card action

Looking for a December project for your family, youth group, Bible study, or just you? Each year during the winter holidays, Amnesty International asks friends and members to send messages of support to prisoners and human rights defenders around the world. Pick a few at the Amnesty International Holiday Card action page, then mail out some cards.

12.07.2003

Advent Grid Blog

Incidentally, some people are doing this based on the 4 weeks in Advent, and others are posting on 4 specific days... so if you're searching for other seasonal grid bloggers, don't let the date differences bother you.

And while I'm here, by the way, no, we still don't have any actual sermon books. All this waiting is very Advent-appropriate.

Stretch

[grid blog :: advent 2]
This post is the second of an Advent grid blog. I'm looking at U2 songs evoking four themes on which a number of bloggers who are fans of Jesus are reflecting this season.

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

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

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

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

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


Keep stretching.

12.05.2003

Ubuntu

Chicago Sun-Times religion reporter Cathleen Falsani talked to Bono this week, exactly one year after the DATA Heart of America tour. "He had kind words for the church, tough questions for the president -- and a keen understanding that his journey is far from over."

12.04.2003

Bridging the Betweens

No one has books yet. However, in the meantime, a sermon from Get Up Off Your Knees - in fact, the sermon after which the idea for the book was born - is featured at explorefaith.org this month.

12.03.2003

Book Launch Party in Toronto

Contributors Brian Walsh and Henry VanderSpek invite anyone in the Toronto area to a Get Up off Your Knees: Preaching the U2 Catalog launch party on Sunday, December 14, from 7.00 to 9.00 with videos and conversation.

They write: Finding harmony between the sugary smooth lyrics of a top-40 song and the direct, somewhat blunt, teachings of Paul can be a challenging task. Meaningfully weaving such a song into a Sunday morning sermon is another thing altogether. For twenty years now though, Irish rock group U2 has consistently transcended these false barriers and created music which stirs the heart and soul of the pew-dweller and in the concert attendee alike.

Get Up Off Your Knees is a collection of sermons written by preachers from several denominational backgrounds from England, Ireland, the United States and Canada. Each message takes inspiration from U2's lyrics, and incorporates them in a way that demonstrates how richly pop culture can resonate with the realm of faith.

So if you love U2, or just faith & culture discussions in general, please join us for a fun evening on Sunday, Dec 14. This is a family friendly event held in a "private party" room with no smoking permitted. U2 music and videos will be running all night (including the new
Live from Slane Castle DVD).

Sound like fun? For information on location and to RSVP, email Henry at hvs (at) interlog.com.

12.02.2003

Release Update

Well, things go the way they go. It is indeed after Dec. 1st, but the books are not available yet. I don't know when exactly they will be - that's a question for the publisher - but it shouldn't take too long.

"Doing some conversions is part of the job description in a way."

My bandwidth fingers are crossed, but let's give it a try: right click and save-target-as for Avril Hoare interviewing Derek Walmsley on Ireland's 2FM last night.

12.01.2003

World AIDS Day - 30 seconds of exegesis practice

Since this is a U2 blog, here's some U2 content for the World AIDS Day Link and Think: one of my favorite Bono quotes on AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa.

I think deep down, if we really believed in equality, we would go to the side of our brothers and sisters in Africa. What I would say is we don't really believe in equality. ...You think of these Jewish sheep-herders walking in, in front of Pharaoh, you know, without their shoes, and the pharaoh is going, "You think you're equal to me?" And they look in the Book, and they go, "Yeah... That's what it says here." And it's like "you're mad, you're out of your mind." --Well, it's true. And we accept that now between our own borders. We accept that women and Jews and blacks and Irish are equal and have equal opportunities, but we don't really believe that for the rest of the world -- because if we did, we would not be letting two-and-a-half million Africans die next year.

World AIDS Day - 46664

Watch Nelson Mandela and additional video clips from the 46664 AIDS benefit concert in WMV format.

World AIDS Day - Link and Think

Today is World AIDS Day, and U2 Sermons is participating in Link and Think, a chance for blogs to share information on AIDS. I'd like to highlight first the charity to which Get Up Off Your Knees' royalties are going, The AIDS Support Organization in Uganda. You can read how we decided to give them the money in the book FAQ.

If you have followed alerts from DATA (who have just vastly improved their website) or Stop Global AIDS, you've seen references to the importance of full funding for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria. Why not visit the Global Fund today and learn why. You can also donate to the Global Fund online; no amount is too small.

Another opportunity if you're in the USA: Church World Service will help you write the President to ask that the US keep its promise on AIDS funding in the 2005 budget request.

I don't know who these people are, really, but the Global AIDS Prayer Partnership has a very detailed (specifically Christian) prayer guide, day by day, for aspects of the global AIDS crisis.