"This is Water"

One of the most brilliant American authors in recent years was David Foster Wallace. My personal favorite is his nonfiction Everything and More about the mathematical history and philosophy of infinity. He took his own life in 2008, and this spring a graduation speech of his was issued posthumously, titled This is Water: Some thoughts, delivered on a significant occasion, about living a compassioante life.

To an astute reader, the book is a modern rewriting of the book of Ecclesiastes. Midway through, Foster Wallace writes, "In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worship. The only choice we get is what to worship." He goes on to examine the various idols of modern life: money, the human body, power, and intellect. He concludes about each that they are inadequate for worship, like Ecclesiastes chasing the wind.

The conclusion goes further, however, by positing that the main reason these worships are poor choices is that they are default settings. He argues that people mindlessly make the big decisions of life to focus on the minute freedoms of daily life. He writes, "The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort..."

The real freedom of church and worship and music is to focus our attention, to sing and pray and meditate mindfully. Like the title metaphor, those of us who attend church regularly can be surrounded by hymns and liturgy and miss their vitality and meaning without careful, thoughtful attention.

Incidentally, since the book is a graduation speech, it can be read in less than 30 minutes. Pick it up from the library, if you're interested.

Change in perspective

The musical Jekyll and Hyde includes this lyric: "One rule of life we cannot rearrange, the only thing constant is change." Of course, all our discussion lately about contemporary music, new liturgical settings, and so on are a question of how much change is appropriate and when. How much of the past should we cling to? How do we keep the best of it, while still evolving and growing over time?

Those questions were in the back of my mind this afternoon when I sat down to read Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold History of English by John McWhorter. I'm certainly not a linguist, but I'm perpetually fascinated by both language and history. This book explores the origins of our modern language as well as its quirks and eccentricities.

What I most noted, however, was a two-page summary of the progression of the English language, beginning with Beowulf in Old English and passing through a whirlwind of historical highlights, including Chaucer's Middle English writing, Shakespeare's plays, the King James Bible, Samuel Johnson's dictionary, and Jane Austen. Somehow that progression seems neat, orderly, even teleological - English is constantly changing while also improving until it reaches "the end" sometime in the 19th or early 20th centuries. In McWhorter's words, "...somehow there seems to be an idea that the process had an inherent end point, beyond which we are not to go. It's as if somebody somewhere had been endeavoring to meld...the English we have right now, that they officially declared themselves finished sometime not long ago, and that from now on, we are not to mess up their creation."

That's not much different from the progression of music we could expound: Gregorian chant, Monteverdi, Bach (Luther), Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, Verdi, Brahms, Chopin, Wagner, Debussy...and then we're done. We don't need pop, rock, blues, jazz, 12-tone, atonal music, or any of the other oddities that the modern world has given us...or do we?

We'd never give up the diverse wealth of 20th century literature, but we might pick and choose some of the best from each decade. Similarly, we need to sample music of the modern styles and eras, being judicious in our standards. The jumble and confusion we experience is a problem of perspective. It's too easy to pigeonhole the 18th century because we only know a handful of names, dates, and facts about it. The 1960s are considerably harder to summarize because it's such a recent lived experience; we haven't yet decided what was the best and what was the worst, what will last and what will fade away.

The debate itself is where the value lies when it comes to modern music, so don't be afraid to make suggestions or comments anytime. You'd hate to leave the process to the "experts" only, wouldn't you?

The human side of Christ

Pastor's sermon this week mentioned the musical Jesus Christ Superstar as doing something radical in its depiction of the human side of Christ. I think we'd all agree that popular culture has done its best to portray that side of Him in literature and film in the past fifty years.

Gibson's Passion and Scorsese's Last Temptation of Christ both focused on the physical incarnation, with minimal interest in the divinity. Conspiracy theorists of all kinds have postulated the survival of Christ's descendents through Mary Magdalene. The blockbuster Angels & Demons is just one of the many versions of that theory, and the film Dogma poked all kinds of fun at religion in general, while fitting into the same category with its idea of a "last scion."

But the most hillarious (and completely fictional) story of Christ is the novel Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal by Christopher Moore. I have recommended and given the book to many people since I first read it, and it has received universal acclaim.

Much like Rufus complained in Dogma about being left out, Lamb begins from the premise that Biff is an unknown disciple. He refers to Christ as Josh, and chronicles their adventures for the "missing" childhood that the Gospels tell us so little about. I won't ruin any of the plot for you, but suffice it to say that it's full of laughs (and a few lessons) and would be the perfect summer read for a hammock or the beach, or the couch on a rainy day.