THE TRUTH WE SEE

I know that at least a couple of the folks that check this blog occasionally dig Toad the Wet Sprocket as much as I do, so at least they’ll find this of interest. The rest of you should keep reading and check out some of the links… you might find something you like.

For about the last eight years we Toad fans have been trying to come to grips with the fact that our beloved band is no more. Thankfully their lead singer, Glen Phillips has continued to make music. His most recent album, Winter Pays for Summer, has some great tunes that come close to matching some of Toad’s best work.

Here’s the cool thing I’ve recently discovered. Glen is an artist who allows his live shows to be taped by fans and made legally available for free on the internet from a site called archive.org. As you might expect, the sound quality of these recordings is not always great, but this week I came across a performance from a solo acoustic show he played at a small venue in Washington, D. C., and the sound quality is pretty amazing. Glen played two sets, so there are 30 songs including some old Toad songs (like “Fly from Heaven,” “All I Want” and “Windmills”), some stuff off the new album (like “Gather” and “Don’t Need Anything”), and some nice covers (including a great cover of Van Morrison’s “Crazy Love”). There’s also some pretty cool unreleased material including a song about Jesus (“Warmth for the Many”) from an guy that I’ve heard identify himself as “one of those non-Christian fans of Jesus.”

Some of you who are of a conservative political persuasion or are offended by “colorful language” might find some things objectionable if you download the whole show. Others of you might find these same things endearing [yes, that means you Bill].

I’m asking my friends to pray for me for the next three weeks as I work on my dissertation. In order to be on track to graduate in May I have to have a complete rough draft of my dissertation ready by the middle of January. That’s not outside the realm of possibility, but at this point it is going to be quite a task. This week we’re in Texas where I’m house-sitting for some friends, which allows me to have a lot of quiet time and enables me to give the project my undivided attention. We’ll be heading back to the chilly Midwest next week and I’ll probably go into hiding again at the local Catholic seminary while my mom comes up to help with the kids. The next couple of months will probably be the most challenging and the most important months of my long academic journey. If you’re a praying person, your prayers for me would be greatly appreciated.

My wife has written a couple of great posts on her blog about our adventures in trying to introduce some advent traditions into our home, including the way in which our not-quite-4 year old tried to get Anakin Skywalker into the barn in Bethlehem. The first post is here and the follow up is here.

She's also written a wonderful (though rather convicting) post about the lost art of practicing kindness.

Not only is she a great wife and mom but she's a pretty dang good blogger too!

When you reap your harvest in your field and forget a sheaf in the field, you shall not go back to get it; it shall be left for the alien, the orphan, and the widow, so that the LORD your God may bless you in all your undertakings.
Deuteronomy 24:19

The Old Testament made it abundantly clear that the covenant community of God had a responsibility to provide for the poor and the vulnerable in their midst. One of the ways they were to ensure the welfare of those in need was through the practice described in Deuteronomy 24:19, a practice etched in our memories through the story of Ruth and Naomi. In the story these two women survive by the practice of gleaning – walking through the fields and gathering the grain that was left by the harvesters.

In the United States today some 35 million people – many of them elderly or children – have trouble finding enough food to sustain themselves. In the same United States we leave millions of pounds of perfectly good produce in the fields each year, not in an effort to provide for the poor but because of our use of modern harvesting equipment. I was surprised and thrilled several weeks ago when I heard a story on Chicago Public Radio and learned that the ancient practice of gleaning is still being practiced today. The story profiled a local man who coordinates church groups, boy scout groups, and others to go out into the fields and practice gleaning. They fill boxes with hundreds of pounds of produce left in the fields and donate their gleanings to local food shelters.

Though right now is not exactly the time to be out in the fields (especially here in Illinois!), I thought that this was such a wonderful idea that I had to pass it along. Check out the moving opening slide presentation from The Society of St. Andrew and consider how you, your family, and your church might be able to get involved.

Several of us Table and Fire Junkies are passing the time that the forum is down by blogging about our "Fives Lists," which I originally saw on Will Samson's blog. Russ, Gigi, and Amber have already posted there lists. Here are mine:

Five Things to Do Before I Die

• Spend two weeks with my wife, a good guidebook, and a rental car in Italy
• Publish a book with a reputable publishing company
• Learn to play chess
• Hike the Grand Canyon with my kids
• Own a cabin in the mountains where I can sit on the porch and read for hours on end

Five Things I Cannot Do

• Dance
• Sing harmony
• Stay away from Table and Fire
• Listen very long to Christian talk radio without my blood pressure going up
• Survive another Midwest winter (it was 5 degrees here today)

Five People I Would Most Like to Hang Out With For a Day

• Bob Dylan
• Bono
• Desmond Tutu
• Fredrick Buechner
• Jurgen Moltmann (one of the most important theologians of the latter half of the 20th century; converted in the German Amry when given a Bible while stuck in a British prison camp during WWII)

Five Most Influential (Non-Scriptural) Books on My Thinking

• A Kierkegaard Anthology edited by Robert Bretall
• Devotional Classics edited by Richard Foster and James Bryan Smith
• Ragamuffin Gospel & The Signature of Jesus by Brennan Manning (yes, that’s two, but they belong together; the first one is radical grace and the second one radical discipleship)
• Resident Aliens by Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon
• The Wounded Healer by Henri Nouwen (a powerful book; I read it in the hospital the week my dad died)

Five Things That Continue to Attract Me About My Wife

• She is the least pretentious person I know and has a wonderful ability to make people feel at ease in her presence (myself, most of all)
• She is a great conversation partner
• She is incredibly thoughtful, both in the sense of being kind and considerate, and in the sense that she thinks carefully and deeply
• She makes me laugh A LOT
• She is far too beautiful for a guy like me, but she doesn’t mind being seen with me in public anyway (or at least she doesn’t let on if she does)

Five Movies That I Would Watch Over and Over Again

• Henry V
• Star Wars IV: A New Hope (the original!)
• Rattle and Hum (contrary to what my wife says, it IS a movie!)
• The Three Amigos (but only if my buddy Erlon is around)
• In the Name of the Father

Five Things I Wish for My Children

• That they would have well-formed imaginations and insatiable curiosities so as to ask meaningful questions in life
• That they would love to read deeply and broadly so as to find meaningful answers in life
• That they would make deep and lasting friendships that would sustain them through all of life’s challenges and bring them great joy
• That they would make enough mistakes to learn important lessons but not so many or so great as to be plagued with scars or regret
• That they would not be so attatched to this world that they would fail to give themselves away for God and other people

Some of us who are (at least loosely) associated with Irving Bible Church are suffering through the long days of agonizing waiting, while we anticipate the return of our beloved Table & Fire Forum (perhaps a healthy advent exercise). I came across a blog entry that I thought could give us some fun things to talk about while we wait.

One of my favorite blogs that I’ve come across recently is called Willzhead from a guy named Will Samson. Will has an uncommon ability to be funny, cranky, and profound, often all in the same post. One of his recent entries was called “Fives List,” which included the following categories:

Five Things to Do Before I Die

Five Things I Cannot Do

Five People I Would Most Like to Hang Out With For a Day

Five Most Influential (Non-Scriptural) Books on My Thinking

Five Things That Continue to Attract Me About My Wife (or Husband)

Five Movies That I Would Watch Over and Over Again.

I’m working on my list and will try to post it in the next couple of days. In the meantime, check out Will’s list and start thinking about your own. You can post your list here or on your own blog if you have one.

Okay, you’ll have to forgive me. The new U2 DVD has just come out and I’m a bit giddy. It was filmed at the United Center in Chicago back in May. We had tickets to the show, but ended up having to sell them to a friend so that we could make a trip back to Texas. Thankfully, we got tickets to the show on their second trip through Chicago back in September.

In one sense of the term, Bono has made a career out of being a prophet. One of the hallmarks of the biblical prophet was his insistence on speaking truth to power, even when that truth was not particularly flattering or popular. Bono has used his platform as one of the most popular musical performers in the world to speak out about injustices in his native Ireland, in the United States, in Latin America, and perhaps most famously in his advocacy on behalf of the continent of Africa. A recent New York Times article noted that “Bono's willingness to invest his fame, and to do so with a steady sense of purpose and a tolerance for detail… has made him the most politically effective figure in the recent history of popular culture.” In large measure, it’s the “prophetic voice” in U2’s music, performances, and off-stage political advocacy that has made them who they are and distinguished them from so many other bands that have come and gone over the course of their 25 year career.

But another sense of the term “prophet” – the more popular use of the term – refers to an ability to “see into the future.” Now I’m not sure that I’m ready to suggest that Bono has some divinely given gift of clairvoyance (those of us who aren't charismatics have all sorts of ways of explaining why this isn't happening much anymore), but I was struck when listening to “Where the Streets Have No Name” on the new DVD. In introducing the song Bono says “from the bridge at Selma on the Mississippi [site of the American “Bloody Sunday” in 1965, though not actually on the Mississippi], to the mouth of the River Nile, from the swamp lands of Louisiana, to the high peaks of Kilimanjaro, from Dr. King’s America to Nelson Mandela’s Africa, the journey for equality marches on.” Then when singing the song he changed the line about taking shelter from the “poison rain” to taking shelter from “the hurricane.” Now, the reference to the swamp lands of Louisiana and to taking shelter from the hurricane would not have been at all surprising had the concert been filmed after all that we witnessed in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, but the film was shot three months before. I was struck by how the words he said then have even more meaning now. Hopefully the journey for equality will indeed continue to march on, both in the swamp lands of Louisiana and the heights of Kilimanjaro. Katrina made it clear that Dr. King's dream is still waiting to be fulfilled, not only in Africa but here in America too.

For all you other U2 geeks out there, there has been a spate of recent reflections from Christian writers on U2’s spiritual journey and message: Steve Stockman’s Walk On: The Spiritual Journey of U2, a collection of sermons reflecting on the intersection of Scripture and U2 songs called Get Up Off Your Knees: Preaching the U2 Catalog, a more theological piece by Robert Vagocs called Religious Nuts, Political Fanatics: U2 in Theological Perspective, and a forthcoming book from Brazos Press (which means its bound to be good) called One Step Closer: Why U2 Matters to Those Seeking God. Also of interest is the recent ‘autobiography-of-sorts’ called Bono: in Conversation with Michka Assayas, a fascinating excerpt of which is available from ChristianityToday.com.