Postmodern Hymn: The Earth Forgives

"The World," from the Zombie Tarot

Today's hymn is literally postmodern; it was written by Margaret Atwood for her book The Year of the Flood. It is part of a collection of hymns that members of God's Gardeners sing. While Atwood's invented religion is far from perfect (she says so herself in an interview on To the Best of Our Knowledge), there are aspects of it that clearly are meant to resonate with contemporary culture. The website devoted to the book includes tips on how to become more saintly green, which I love. But there's also the lurking message that no religion is the whole story; no religion can make a perfect human adherent.  

The hymn itself is so simply sweet to my ears. After just a few listens, I feel that John Denver would be a better representative for the God's Gardeners' hymnal, but I do appreciate the critical tone of the hymn.

Postmodern Hymn: Time out of Mind

via SCA German Renaissance

This groovy tune promises some very exciting transformations, if we would only keep our eyes on the sky and recognize the light in our eyes. 

"Tonight when I chase the dragon

The water will change to cherry wine

And the silver will turn to gold

Time out of mind"

The phrase "chasing the dragon" can refer to using heroine, but  I choose to see a much lovelier meaning, which has nothing to do with chemically-enhanced states of being. For this song, I'm happy to do some creative misreading.

Postmodern Hymn: No Line on the Horizon

Benten, by Warwick Goble

I could make a whole hymnal out of U2 songs, and I know they would be totally happy with that. It's common knowledge that they make use of Christian imagery in their lyrics and promote what they would say are Christian values, although their brand of Christianity is definitely not mainstream.

But before we get too concerned with labeling anyone "Christian" or "not-Christian" though, I'd like to look at one powerful image that continually resurfaces in their songs: the divine feminine. It's an image that blurs the line between Christianity and non-Christianity. Listen to songs such as "No Line on the Horizon," "She Moves in Mysterious Ways," "Grace," "Lemon," "Gloria," and you'll hear a collection of recurring motifs: the mysterious female, grace, ocean, moon.

What do these motifs have in common? For one thing, the lyrics point to a lack of control, either in the creative process or in the search for absolution. Creativity and grace come unexpectedly, as Bono says in an interview with Rolling Stone: "This kind of spirit blows through every now and then. It’s a very strange feeling. We’re waiting for God to walk into the room – and God, it turns out, is very unreliable."

If you're interested in this topic, here are some fun reads on the interwebs:

• "U2: The Stadium Psalmists and Prophets," by Mark Meynell
• U2 posts on Rock and Theology
• "Yeats, U2, and Poetic Imagination," by Joe Bisz 
• "Mysterious Ways: The Kabbalah of U2," by Geofrey Dennis

Postmodern Hymn: I Am the Starlight

Big Star, by frecklefaced29

One of the final songs from the musical Starlight Express, by Andrew Lloyd Weber, is a sweet song about finding out that all the answers you seek come from within. 

The Starlight Express is a musical made for children: it tells the tale of toy cars who come to life. Rusty, the protagonist train, calls on the Starlight Express for help in winning a race. I got to see this musical when I was a child, and the magic of seeing people on roller skates, acting like trains, and singing with such hope has stayed with me all this time.

I think it's good every now and then to return to childhood fantasies and see the world again in a playful, hopeful way.

Bob Ross: His Grooviness

I'm always the last to hear about new memes, but nevertheless I want to share this lovely video by John D. Boswell of Symphony of Science, which I found on Drawn. I have a special soft spot for Bob Ross, particularly for his way of waving good-bye as though he was sending out the good vibes. 

For more background on this piece, visit the Washington Post's article here.

Postmodern Hymn: Country Roads

via Vintage Plum

I remember visiting my brother at his summer camp in Colorado, sitting around the camp fire with him and his friends and listening to them sing from their repertoire of songs. I remember Joni Mitchell's "Circle Games" and John Denver's "Country Roads" in particular. And I remember thinking how great it was that they had classic songs to share together. I'm off to the mountains this week, and I think I'll be singing John Denver songs in my head as I hike. 

Postmodern Hymn: We Will Never Pass This Way Again

Tryptavision 4, a light painting by Joe Mehl of Tryptavision
via Deviant Art

Time has been playing funny tricks on me lately. I used to think of my life as one-directional, but lately I've been noticing loops and spirals in my life's story. Places, interests, and people that I didn't expect to ever reconnect with suddenly reappear.

It feels like I'm already in the eternal return, learning to affirm past choices and reintegrate them into the ever-growing pattern of my life. (I tend to think about my life in terms of quilting, even though I've only ever made one quilt). It's a bit of a relief to have these unexpected continuities, honestly, because I'm so intent on making the most of each scrap of experience. The scraps may be bigger than I had first imagined!

The discovery of spiraling time doesn't make each moment any less special, though. It makes me want to appreciate these pleasures now, so that when I perhaps return to a similar moment somewhere down the line, I will have double the joy in greeting it again. 

Postmodern Hymn: God Above

"God Above," by John Fullbright is a song that gives me goosebumps. I watch him sing it, and the song looks like a revelation, the way his fingers, mouth, and his whole body work together to create those notes. Then there are the lyrics, which for me, point to the troubles that can come from a theology of omnipotence. Why does God allow feebleness, sin, and evil? 

For one meditation on this question, I suggest the first few chapters of Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes, by Charles Hartshorne, which offers helpful alternative perspectives to the traditional Christian theology.

"Omnipotence as usually conceived is a false or indeed absurd ideal, which in truth limits God, denies to him any world worth talking about: a world of living, that is to say, significantly decision-making agents. It is the tradition which did indeed terribly limit divine power, the power to foster creativity even in the least of  the creatures. . . . The only livable doctrine of divine power is that it influences all that happens but determines nothing in its concrete particularity."

    —from Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes, by Charles Hartshorne

Postmodern Hymn: Pig

Flowers in Your Hair, by Louise van Terheijden

I woke up with a fragment of a song floating in my head the other morning, and it took me a while to figure out which song I was singing to myself. It turned out to be "Pig," by the Dave Matthews Band.

Wash out this tired notion 

That the best is yet to come 

But while you're dancing on the ground 

Don't think of when you're gone 

Love! love!? what more is there?

Apparently I had the lyrics slightly wrong, because I was singing "wash out this time notion." Oh well, the message is still the same. Enjoy life as it comes, and open up to love.

Postmodern Hymn: Morning Has Broken

Foxglove, by Beatrix Potter
via Shelley Bean, via Victoria Albert Museum

Here's another hymn that isn't entirely new (see my post on Brother Sun Sister Moon for another example). Cat Stevens brings a earnest, hippie feeling to this classic hymn, and the tone seemed just right for these spring days we've been having. I walk outside and see bursts of new color each day—what a miracle this world is!

Ritual for a Bad Day

Cherry Blossom, by Kirra Jamison
via Black Eiffel

Some days just throw it all at you, and all you can do is go with the flow. Here is my ritual for a bad day:

1. Listen to Joni Mitchell sing about laughing it all away.

2. Look at art that looks back at you. Looking at Kirra Jamison's art is like having a conversation with all the magic in the world.

3. Cuddle your dog after a good walk, and trade your worried human mind for calm dog mind. 

4. Eat the most colorful food you can find.

Music, art, food, love are the things that can reorient your whole day. I'd seek these types of "rituals" out even on a good day, but there's something about having a bad day that makes you cling/take refuge to those things you know to be good for you.

Postmodern Hymn: Droit Devant

by Emma C.

I'm having fun listening to French musciennes on Spotify these days: Camille, Rose, Marie-Pierre Arthur. I have to say, there are lots of songs I thought would make lovely hymns, but then I actually paid attention to the words and realized that maybe the ideas didn't fit with my idea of a hymn! For me, a hymn needs words or the absence of words pointing to particular alchemical method.

So, I present "Droit Devant" by Marie-Pierre Arthur. It made the cut and provides a nice focus for meditating on French hymns. 

"Droit, droit devant
Mes yeux cherchent la lune
Je marche pour changer le temps
Pour m’effacer dans la brume

Bye bye,
M’en aller loin, loin
Bye bye

Par delà,
Toutes les peurs et les silences
Les mots dansent
et mes pensées se balancent"

I hesitate to provide the translation, but here it is, courtesy of Pearl Kleppin:

"Right, straight ahead
I am looking at the moon
I walk to change time
To erase myself in the mist

Bye bye
I go far
Bye bye

Beyond
All fears and silences
The words dance
And my thoughts sway"

Dancing with the Water

Behind the Surface, by Nadaia Moro
via trendland

I've been having lots of watery dreams lately, so these pictures by Nadia Moro really speak to me. In my dream space, water brings non-differentiation and returns what's not important to prima materia. 

If water dissolves the irrelevant, the key to living joyfully is to identify with what is lasting. (Not that I'm saying what that is.) 

After this dissolution comes the dance. Recognize you're part of something powerfully creative and join in its creative song.

Postmodern Hymn: Bowl of Oranges

Today's hymn comes from Bright Eyes, an indie group headed by Conner Oberst. I love Bright Eyes for the bravely earnest lyrics and for the creative melodies. "Bowl of Oranges" is one of their more uplifting songs: 

"And we'll keep working on a problem we know we'll never solve 

Of Love's uneven remainders, our lives are fractions of a whole. 

But if the world could remain within a frame like a painting on a wall. 

Then I think we would see the beauty. Then we would stand staring in awe 

At our still lives posed like a bowl of oranges, 

Like a story told by the fault lines and the soil."

Postmodern Hymn: Bottom of a River

Adam Arcuragi would like to share the gospel of death with us. Shall we listen?

I heard about Adam Arcuragi through a fantastic article on Sightings, where M. Cooper Harris describes the genre of Death Gospel and discusses the various artists who could be included in such a label:

"Death Gospel offers an interesting rejoinder to a culture that denies death and decay, insisting instead that particular individualities require a universal point of convergence; it addresses a generation of young adults (and their elders) who, despite their spirituality and electronic connections, feel alienated from their traditions (religious or otherwise), from their humanity, and from one another."

"Death Gospel offers no assurances. What it holds out for is the possibility that people may, together, be transformed in their attitudes toward living, may love and be loved, and thereby recognize in these fleeting moments of community a measure of authentic existence regardless of what lies beyond knowing."

Yes. Amen. I think I'll be learning the whole Death Gospel hymnal.

Postmodern Hymn: Brother Sun Sister Moon

Let's continue on with medieval Christianity, shall we? (Seeing as my last post was on Hildegarde.)

"Brother Sun Sister Moon" isn't really a postmodern hymn, because it was written by Saint Francis back in the day. What makes it postmodern is Donovan's singing of it, and the layer of 60s earthiness that Zeffirelli added to the film. I think this is appropriation and reinterpretation at its best.

This song comes from the movie of the same name, and Brother Sun Sister Moon is one of my favorite movies ever. You must watch it if you haven't already!

Postmodern Hymn: Simple Life

Life moves so quickly it's frightening sometimes, and that's when you've got to pause and sing a song like this, breathe, and smile.

Singing to Pain

Orpheus, by Odilon Redon
via Orbs of Zenith

Apparently I'm in a musical mood these days. The subject for today: musical therapy, which I first heard about from a friend, who literally sings to the parts of her body-soul that are in pain. She says it opens up those areas to "flow" and releases stagnation.

Then, I heard a segment on Talk of the Nation about musical therapy. The part that I found fascinating was a therapist who modified the stressful hospital environment by improvising melodies on the guitar, in response to the sounds of the hospital. What creativity! And he also improvised melodies in response to the patient's reaction. What compassion! 

In what areas of your life would you add song? What would you sing? What melody would you play?

A Poet Speaking through the Piano

Swedish Bonad
via Cupboards and Roses

Can you imagine what it would be like to lose your ability to speak? Now imagine if you could use music to regain some of your means of communication.

Tomas Tranströmer, a Swedish poet, was awarded the Nobel Prize, but because of a stroke, he was unable to give an acceptance speech. Instead, his poetry was set to music. I wish I could find a video somewhere . . .

At least I've been able to find some of his poetry, which I really like.

“Sketch in October”
The tugboat is freckled with rust. What’s it doing here so far inland?
It’s a heavy extinguished lamp in the cold.
But the trees have wild colors: signals to the other shore.
As if someone wanted to be fetched.

On my way home I see mushrooms sprouting through the grass.
They are fingers, stretching for help, of someone
who has long been sobbing alone down in the darkness.
We are the earth’s.

    —from The Great Enigma, translated by Robin Fulton; via ABC News

Postmodern Hymn: That I Would Be Good

Let's allow Alanis to break it down for us. If you're like me, you've probably heard "That I Would Be Good" before, but it still grips me when I hear it. She has a way of naming internal realities with such clarity.

I've been thinking about self-love lately and how to avoid the pitfalls of the selfish form of love Westerners can be so good at. I don't pretend to have it all figured out, but here are my thoughts:

Looking at common depictions of self-care, I find them very superficial. Take a picture of your body and call it accepting your body. This kind of practice seems very alienating to me. I know that when I'm happiest in my body, it is because I am enjoying the sensations of moving, breathing, and resting. The times when I feel the most self-love are when this feeling of body awareness deepens into a sensation that at the core of my being, all is well, and all is accepted. There is a softening, a loosening of resistance, to my struggles. I suspect that some thinkers might find some of these things weak and reprehensible. But I think the process of becoming gentle with oneself, in the way I've just described, resonates with what Alanis is singing about, as well as with what teachers like Pema Chodron advocate.

So, this is my invitation to allow your pleasurable practices of the body to penetrate to your core, and to love the body-heart-mind-soul mystery as you encounter it.