Still enjoying U2: real joy

Here's where we gotta be / Love and community / Laughter is eternity / If joy is real

- Bono, "Get On Your Boots" from No line on the horizon

Love and community are the great marks of Christian discipleship. "By this, shall everyone know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another." (John 13.35)

This is hard. This is where we have got to be, but find ourselves continually slipping away from. Community takes time, commitment, forbearance, repeated attempts at communication, and forgiveness, forgiveness, forgiveness. For many people, such a message seems hopelessly idealistic. They have been hurt too many times, misunderstood, ignored, abused or rejected by the very community that is meant to be the place where we learn love. Are love and community even possible?

Here's where we gotta be / Love and community / Laughter is eternity / If joy is real. And yet the Christian message is, in the end, a message of joy and of reality. It claims that being touch with reality is to be in touch with the deepest of joys, that existence is not ultimately tragic, that pain is not the final word.

Of course, being in touch with reality now also means mourning and weeping. Jesus said, "Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh." (Luke 6.21). Life in a broken world yearning for God's healing breath will remain a life of groaning. But such sadness is due to the depth of love that God leads us into. It is love that leaves a mark, that opens us to the wounds that hurt so much. But love is also the only path to laughter and joy. And the good news is that God promises to comfort those who mourn, to turn weeping into laughter. It is God's redeeming love which means that weeping may linger for the night, / but joy comes with the morning.

And this hope - that the story of the world will, in the end, be a comedy rather than a tragedy - this hope is what makes possible a commitment now to "love and community". If our love springs from desperation then sooner or later, faced with difficulty, it will wither and die, or at least retreat to a safe distance. Love must be sustained by hope and faith. But just like love, faith and hope cannot sustain themselves, or be merely wishful thinking in the face of desperate need. Only love can sustain faith and hope, not our love, but the fact that we are first loved. We do not yet know how loved we are. We do not know how beautiful we are. We do not know how beautiful we will be.
Image by CAC.

U2: No Line on the Horizon

So I bought the new album (actually, Jessica bought it for me). I will leave the full reviews for others; suffice to say that there are definite highlights and a number of tracks that I think will grow on me. Instead, I will just comment on what I take to be one of the key lines in the album:

Only love, only love can leave such a mark / But only love, only love can heal such a scar

Love is an intensification of the problem. In fact, some may say that love is the problem. It is our attachment to perishable things that causes us pain. We invest ourselves in our work that is ignored or undone by our successor, in crafting music that fades before the next bar begins, in sculpting bodies that sag and bruise. We love dying people. We love and let down our guard, becoming vulnerable to pain.

But there is no other way to live. Love is what makes us human. We are loved into being, and quickly learn to love in return, though the quality of our love varies with the object of our love and with our perception of being loved first. Love is our origin, our task, our burden, our destiny.

Love is a wound that only love can heal.
For a more cynical take on the matter, Michael offers ten things that irritate him about U2 (perhaps I have just transgressed against #3... And since when was being earnest a hanging offence?).

Priorities

"It's extraordinary to me that the United States can find $700 billion to save Wall Street and the entire G8 can't find $25 billion dollars to saved 25,000 children who die every day from preventable diseases."

- Bono

The full story is, of course, more complex. But sometimes such blunt juxtaposotion throws new light on our assumptions and priorities.

UPDATE: Here's three.
UPDATE #2: And the other side of the equation is no longer looking like a given either.

Stealing sermons?

Immature poets immitate. Mature poets steal.

- T. S. Eliot, "The Sacred Wood"

Every artist is a cannibal.
Every poet is a thief.
All kill their inspiration,
Then sing about their grief.

- Bono, The Fly

Do you think there is anything wrong with preaching a sermon that someone else wrote? What about preaching a famous historical sermon (perhaps giving a little context where necessary)? In both cases, I am assuming the preacher gives due credit.*
*Though even this concession makes me wonder how much preaching is about building a reputation.

Wave of sorrow

Originally written back in the 80's during the recording of Joshua Tree, this moving song about Bono's experience visiting Ethiopia in 1984 has finally been released. Make sure you don't miss Bono's rewriting of the beatitudes at the end. Here are the lyrics and Bono speaking of his experiences and explaining some of the references. H/T Rory.

"Wave of Sorrow" (Lyrics)
by U2

Heat haze rising
On hell's own hill

You wake up this morning
It took an act of will
You walk through the night
To get here today
To bring your children
To give them away

Oh... oh this cruel sun
Is daylight never done
Cruelty just begun
To make a shadow of everyone

And if the rain came
And if the rain came

Souls bent over without a breeze
Blankets on burning trees
I am sick without disease
Nobility on its knees

And if the rain came
And if the rain came... now
Would it wash us all away
On a wave of sorrow
Wave
On a wave of sorrow

Where now the holy cities?
Where the ancient holy scrolls?
Where now Emperor Menelek?
And the Queen of Sheba's gold

You're my bride, you wear her crown
And on your finger precious stones
As every good thing now been sold

Son, of shepherd boy, now king
What wisdom can you bring?
What lyric would you sing?
Where is the music of the Seraphim?

And if the rain came
And if the rain came... now
Would it wash us all away
On a wave of sorrow
Wave
A wave of sorrow
Wave.

Blessed are the meek who scratch in the dirt
For they shall inherit what's left of the earth
Blessed are the kings who've left their thrones
They are buried in this valley of dry bones

Blessed all of you with an empty heart
For you got nothing from which you cannot part
Blessed is the ego
It's all we got this hour

Blessed is the voice that speaks truth to power
Blessed is the sex worker who sold her body tonight
She used what she got
To save her children's life

Blessed are you, the deaf cannot hear a scream
Blessed are the stupid who can dream
Blessed are the tin canned cardboard slums
Blessed is the spirit that overcomes

Around the web

Do you suffer from Bono fatigue? H/T Drew.

Review of the first Mac back in 1984. Amazing how many of the innovations are now standard across the board. H/T CraigS.

An intriguing stunt by the Washington Post: Pearls before breakfast. What would happen if "one of the finest classical musicians in the world, playing some of the most elegant music ever written on one of the most valuable violins ever made" were to try busking in a busy Washington D.C. train station? The article is long, but well written. H/T Benjamin Ady.

Popular evangelical liturgy as recorded by Chrisendom.

How to get from NYC to London. Don't skip step #24. H/T Daniel Kirk.

Weekend links

Blogs
• I've already mentioned Rev Sam on peak oil pledges. Go and have a look.
• Ben has been thinking about how to settle theological debates.
• Meredith has started a series of "ten things I think about the environment": Intro; I; II; III. As a bonus, there are lots of great pics by Meredith too.
• Kyle has declared War on Christmas.
• David is worried about Surnames and sexism. I suggest what I humbly believe to be the perfect solution (see discussion in comments).

The rest of the virtual world
• Bono + sacramental theology = U2charist? H/T Aaron.
• If you're feeling a little down - make sure you scroll down to 'Mediocrity' and 'Quality'. H/T Paget.
• And check out these for corny but fun political activism: The Meatrix; The Meatrix II; The Meatrix II 1/2.

The Mini MEme

Having only just realised that I've been tagged, here is my contribution to Rachel's mini MEme. For all these questions, there could be many answers; I've picked the first ones to jump to mind today.

A Piece of Art that you Love
Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas (and this one). I could have kept wandering and wandering in this enormous public sculpture. Very moving: enormous, dramatic and yet understated at the same time.

A Line in a Song or Line of Poetry that Reaches Your Core
I will show you fear in a handful of dust - from T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land. I remember coming across Eliot in year 11 and he was probably the decisive factor in 'converting' me to love English. Until that point, I'd always avoided humanities. Now, I barely remember all the maths I used to do...

An Experience in Nature that was Really Special and/or Spiritual
The heavens on a glorious Sydney day.

The Movie that Changed the Way you saw the World.
Atarnarjuat: The Fast Runner - I will never look at snow the same way again. Seriously, this was a fantastic movie, unlike anything you've seen and was the first full-length film made by, about and in the language of the Inuit people of the Arctic circle. See also here.

A Piece of Music That Makes You Cry
Wake up dead man - U2. The eschatology of U2 deserves its own series. Unfortunately (or fortunately?) Drew has already beaten me to it! Enjoy the series as it progresses.

I tag Beeston, Frank, MartyK, David, Cynthia, Rob, Patrik and Christopher. I've tried to tag different people to last time. I've also done more tagging of people I've only met over blogs. Hope you don't feel I'm rushing the friendship...