OURS/LIFE

WHEN WE MET, OURS WAS HAPPY AND AS LIFE PROGRESSED

OURS WAS THE WATCHWORD.

WE WORKED TOGETHER

READ TOGETHER

LAUGHED, YES EVEN CRIED TOGETHER.

ALL THE WHILE, A QUIET SOMETHING

HAD AN ARM AROUND OUR SHOULDERS.

UNAWARE BUT AWARE

WE ACCEPTED THAT LIFE AS OURS BUT WAS IT?

WE WERE GIVEN THAT WORD TO FULFILL A VACUUM

WE DID NOT KNOW EXISTED

BUT AS WE AGED, THE VACUUM FILLED WITH

LOVE AND APPRECIATION

ONE FOR THE OTHER. BUT THAT BUBBLE BURST

AND OURS BECAME HIS AND HERS WITH AN EMPTY CHAIR IN THE SITTING ROOM.

NOW OURS IS ONLY EMPTY SHOES IN A CLOSET, A COLLECTION OF BALL CAPS

PENCILS IN A DESK DRAWER AND A GHOST WHO COMES TO VISIT ONCE IN A WHILE.

BUT OURS NEVER FADES, THE WORD IS STILL HERE.

Jane P. Neale

2010

GULLS SOAR

GULLS SOAR

OH LOOK THERE ARE FOUR

GULLS DIVE

THEN THERE ARE FIVE

GULLS LAND

ON THE SAND

SCAVENGING THE BEACH

FOR A SEA-WASHED PEACH

OR A SCALLOP IN ITS SHELL

THEY ALWAYS TELL

WHEN THAT GULL LANDED

THE DENIZEN OF THE BEACH.

JANE NEALE

(Humility)

(Humility)

Parentheses enclose humility

To keep it in our hearts

They are like a hug that warms us up and keeps our thoughts enclosed.

Jane P. Neale 2010

why i'm agnostic

Since 1994, David Bazan has put sharp questions about faith, justice, and his Pentecostal-evangelical upbringing front and center in his songs. Like many doubters who came before, from Augustine to Mother Teresa, he wrestled with God while still counting himself as a believer. However, on his most recent solo album, Curse Your Branches, released last September, Bazan’s forceful, prodding lyrics find him still grappling with the big questions, but no longer counting himself as a Christian. With his trademark candor and thoughtfulness, Bazan, former front man of Pedro the Lion and Headphones, spoke with Sojourners assistant editor Jeannie Choi in the musty green room of The Black Cat, a music venue in Washington, D.C.




Jeannie Choi: How did your faith journey move from a place of belief to disbelief?

When I was in eighth grade, my mom got this book called The Light and the Glory; it was one of the first in the wave of Christian revisionist histories of the United States. It claimed things like the founders were born-again Christians just like we are. It just dawned on me—I couldn’t really trust the leaders of this movement to be intellectually honest. They were just trying to stack the deck so that they could get a leg up in the cultural battle.

For the longest time, I was concerned with reform more than anything, because I felt like the ship of the church was way off course. The church’s desire for political power and its relationship with wealth and the wealthy seemed to me to be unbiblical. But when I really started looking at the foundations to try to get those things right, I realized there were all of these fundamental assumptions that I’d made—from the inerrancy and authority and inspiration of scripture, to just the mere existence of God—and I started to think, “Well, if you’re really going to make this your own, then you can’t begin with these assumptions. You have to go below them.” And I just don’t really see a lot down there.

How much of your agnosticism is a result of your disdain for the evangelical subculture rather than the tenets of Christianity?

There isn’t, at this point, anything I find unique to Christianity that isn’t a first principle or a core idea. I really think that within natural revelation—which is, of course, a Christian way of putting it—there is enough to know how to live in harmony with the people around you and with the land and our environment. For me, that’s just enough.

When I think about the tyranny of the afterlife, and how people live in such a way because the possibility of the afterlife distracts them from doing good to others and living at peace with one another, the less it’s even plausible to me that a being who created the genome or DNA or our bodies or the ecosystem—things so elegant and finely tuned—would use the blunt instrument of physical violence as a way of getting people to stay true to the system. It just doesn’t seem compatible to me. I think that living for the here and now, fully committed to one another with no “escape hatch” of Jesus coming back anytime soon, is more compelling to me.

Is there anything still attractive to you about Christianity?

On a song on the new record I talk about these “beautiful truths”—justice and honesty and the belief that who you are when you’re alone is who you truly are. These basic principles of fairness I feel I understood thorough my Christian upbringing. So one of the themes I still feel like I have in common with Christians is when Jesus is asked to sum up the law, and he says, “Love God and love your neighbor as yourself.”

Now, ironically, these same principles have pulled me out of Christianity and caused me to reject it. Believing the right things and not doing any of the right things is the norm in evangelical Christianity, and it’s really perplexing. I’m flabbergasted every time I run into this, because basically there’s this whole movement of people who ostensibly believe the right thing, but are the pawns of the military-industrial complex, and that’s just too bad. It seems like high comedy, like a very twisted joke.

In a song on your new record, you wonder how your mom is going to react to your rejection of Christianity. What was her response?

She really liked the record, but it’s hard for her and my dad. I sent them that song—“When We Fell”—as soon as I wrote it and said, “I’m not necessarily asking for permission, but I just wanted you to hear this, and if it’s just not going to work for me to sing this tune, then I want to know.” They wrote back and said, “This is perplexing, of course, but this is your tune.”

My mom said something really sweet not too long ago. She said, “I just want to clarify that the only reason I taught you to follow your heart was because I thought Jesus was in your heart.” And, well, I thought that too. And I told her that I learned to follow my heart just from watching her. She’s where I learned compassion for the underdog, and my sense of justice comes from my mom and her impulse to lift every voice. So, I worry about my parents, and it makes me feel a little bit of sadness, but at the same time I hope that they can see that all of this is honest, not just messing around.

Many of your songs are declarations about what you see as wrong with this world. Are you writing those for yourself or do you hope they’ll cause your listeners to also question?

I always think of it like I’m back in school and in class. If the extrovert raises their hand and asks the question, the five or six introverts think, “I’m really glad that person asked that question because I really wanted to know that too.” For me, so many times a way of thinking is opened up just because somebody spoke truthfully about something.

You’ve described “introvert” Christians as unable to ask questions about faith. Why do you think that is?

Well, I can understand the impulse to have a cultural identity that is defined and that you can broadcast easily. I empathize with that impulse, but it strikes me as fundamentally misguided.

I have to go with my gut about these things and try to figure out what I think is right and true, and I’m really encouraged when I see other people doing that, even if we come to different conclusions.

Return to roots

especially Christians who have turned their backs on Jesus’ teachings about peace, justice, and the poor. Bazan nailed it when he said: “Believing the right things and not doing any of the right things is the norm in evangelical Christianity.” Fortunately, there is a movement away from the Christianity that aligns itself with wealth and political power and toward a Christianity that aligns itself with the heart of the Person the faith is named after.

David Bazan

OURS/LIFE

WHEN WE MET, OURS WAS HAPPY AND AS LIFE PROGRESSED



THAT WAS OUR WATCHWORD



WE WORKED TOGETHER



READ TOGETHER



LAUGHED, YES EVEN CRIED TOGETHER.



ALL THE WHILE, A QUIET SOMETHING



HAD AN ARM AROUND OUR SHOULDERS.



UNAWARE BUT AWARE



WE ACCEPTED THAT LIFE AS OURS BUT WAS IT?



WE WERE GIVEN THAT WORD TO FULFILL A VACUUM



WE DID NOT KNOW EXISTED



BUT AS WE AGED, THE VACUUM FILLED WITH



LOVE AND APPRECIATION



ONE FOR THE OTHER. BUT THAT BUBBLE BURST



AND OURS BECAME HIS AND HERS WITH AN EMPTY CHAIR IN THE SITTING ROOM.



NOW OURS IS ONLY EMPTY SHOES IN A CLOSET, A COLLECTION OF BALL CAPS



PENCILS IN A DESK DRAWER AND A GHOST WHO COMES TO VISIT ONCE IN A WHILE.



BUT OURS NEVER FADES, THE WORD IS STILL HERE.



JANE NEALE

GANDHI

Pericope Snickersneed Indeed!

"Pericope?"

Yes, yes, I see --

You disagree

respectfully

with its presentee.



So "pericope"

will now flee

back to committee

a refugee

of poetry's

great reportee

(no guarantee

it will not flee

its conferees!)



Who could forsee

the great jubilee

of such a word spree?



Doug Behm

GREATNESS

During the reading of Susan Cheevers' American Bloomsbury, one phrase stayed with me. In the presence of greatness. And so, the obvious comes to mind. Greatness in my mind is first manifested in GOD but it also recently came to my attention when, as we drove into the yard today, we discovered a ‘new’ bird eating the Flowering Crabtree’s apples. Helen said she thought it was a Cedar Waxwing. What a thrill! we had not seen one for years and to think he was eating his lunch at our old tree. Speaking of being in the presence of greatness, Yes to see a simple bird in a tree makes one realize that at that moment greatness is with us. Just as the red berries on the Barberry Bush are there to cheer us each time we step out the front door; I am in awe each time I see the Great Blue Heron ease himself up from the little pond below the barn. I could think of lots more but you probably get the idea. When one is in the unencumbered position of concentrating on one great thing it pushes all the unimportant frivolities to one side. Awe is a good word to describe these feelings of another presence. I think we all have at one time had an awestruck happening in our lives. And, if we think about it we might be able to reach into a corner of memories and find one or two.




So greatness instills in us a feeling of awe and wonder. In trying to find other examples, I came upon the mountains, and glaciers of Switzerland and our own Alaska. I might even include man-made wonders the designers of which must have felt they were in the presence of greatness when the designs were developing. And too, our great authors, especially those who established a writing tradition in our country. They also believed they were in the presence of greatness. Ralph W. Emerson, his friends Thoreau, Hawthorne, Bronson Alcott, and Louisa. And so we arrive at that place in our personal world for isn’t it that greatness that guides our thinking and writing and communication with one another? Thanks be to GREATNESS.


JANE NEALE

Music and its charms

What better beginning for a short essay on music? Coined by William Congreve, in the Mourning Bride, 1697:

“Musick has charms to sooth a savage breast,
to soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak?”



Do we realize all the things about music that we love? Maybe, but I was thinking about it yesterday and wondered if any of us realize the thoughts and talents that are necessary to compose or conduct a symphony or a concerto or even an oratorio. The words of direction that give music its personhood are also a large part of our enjoyment, Piano, pianissimo, andante, largo forte all Italian words that make our music what it is. I discovered this year why an early piano was called a pianoforte. It is because it was capable of playing piano and forte soft and loud.

How in the world did Beethoven know what he was creating? He had lost his hearing; did he know the notes so well that he heard them in his head? The Moonlight Sonata, in his head, what a blessing and even his Ninth Symphony that we sing in church as Joyful Joyful, we adore thee. And little old Mozart the genius at such an early time in his life. He remains a favorite to this day. It would be difficult to mention his name and not have it recognized. And the film Amadeus brought even more interest to the general public. And many other stories surround the lives of the composers. F or instance I did not know that Robert Schuman died in a mental hospital. He had tried from an early age to commit suicide so requested to be hospitalized. And Franz Joseph Haydn’s head was stolen after he died Chopin died of pulmonary turberculosis.



Do you leave classical music playing all night? It is a good way to unclutter a brain; making room for ideas that have lain dormant for too long. ..The saying, “music hath charms” was coined by William Congreve, in theMmourningBride, 1697:



What better beginning for an essay on music?

classical music as we know it has been invaded by some real genius. Stravinsky, Copeland* and some of the raucous modern stuff that we have had to learn to accept. The Beatles did make compositions that were more musical than noisy definitely contrasting with what I call noise of the present day. Speaking of Copeland, his Fanfare for the Common Man comes to mind with its trumpets so pure. What is your favorite instrument? I think woodwinds are purer as are the trumpets. Must admit to influence of wynton and Ellis Marsalis and their brasses who have almost brought American Jazz into the classical sphere.

Copeland’s *Ballet Rodeo. And Appalachian Spring too have almost made it. We also know that the film industry borrows regularly from the old composers for its background music in many films.

Speaking of jazz, it is a little tough to take unless you can hear the engineering it takes to play the instruments. There are many devotees of this branch of music and perhaps it is well-earned. Having roots in our country in the New Orleans tradition many of us have learned to appreciate it to a great degree particularly for the talents it exhibits.