Music find: Progeny

I came across Vincent Anastasi & Progeny from a post at the Rabbit Room.

I like their music, but how not to be in love with a guy who plays in a band with his adolescent sons (or the idea, not the guy).

Check out this radio show where they're featured. Wonderful!

Hot in Paraguay

Yesterday, I went to bed right before midnight, and the simple indoor thermometer in our kitchen registered 96°F.  This is what weather.com has listed as yesterday's (Feb 1, 2013) temperatures from 5:00 on:

Nights like these always bring to my lips the song "Satin Summer Nights" from Paul Simon's musical The Capeman.

"In the light" by Charlie Peacock

After an enthusiastic post at the Rabbit Room, I downloaded a sampler of Charlie Peacock's music at Noisetrade.

"In the light" used to be one of my favorite songs, and this live version has a lot of vibe:

Smorgasblog from November

Here are some of the more interesting things I first posted on Facebook in November:

November 12

"Dancing to jazz (Coal Train Railroad) with a toddler on lunch break!"

November 13

Silver & Gold, by Sufjan Stevens

"

Great news today! New Christmas album fromSufjan Stevens!

He writes:
"Who can save us from the infidels of Christmas commodity? Look no further, tired shopper, for your hero arrives as the diligent songwriter Sufjan Stevens: army of one, banjo in one hand, drum machine in the other, holed up in his room, surrounded by hymnals, oratorios, music charts, sacred harp books, photo-copied Readers Dige

st Christmas catalogs—all the weaponry of Yuletide incantations—singing his barbaric yawp above the snow-capped rooftops.

His song is love; his song is hope; his song is peace. His song conjures the fruitcake world of his own imagination with steadfast pursuit of the inexplicable bliss of Christmas Promises—“Gloria in excelsis deo”—summoning the company of angels, the helper elves, the shepherds keeping flock, the innkeepers, the coupon-clippers, the marathon runners, the cross-country skiers, the bottom feeders, the grocery store baggers, the bridge and tunnel drivers, the construction workers, the ice cream makers, the toll booth workers, the street sweepers, the single mothers, the custodians, the rich and the poor, the walking dead, the community of saints, the Virgin Mary, the Holy Spirit, the Prince of Persia, and all the invisible hosts of heaven to participate in this absurd cosmic adventure, pursuing holly-jolly songs of hope and redemption with a sacred heart for the love of the holidays, for the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen."

"

November 21

Christian? Pro-Life? Resist or Subvert Thanksgiving.

www.jesusradicals.com

"Some food for thought for Thanksgiving, which this author suggests is "idolatrous and pagan in that [it gives] heavy, even ultimate, theological significance to the nation-state of the United States of America.""

A simple look at Lincoln's speech shows how much good there is in Thanksgiving:
"I do therefore invite my fellow-citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a day of thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners, or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the imposition of the Almighty hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it, as soon as may be consistent with the divine purpose, to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity, and union."
http://www.washingtoninst.org/2893/on-lincoln-and-his-thanksgiving-proclamation/

November 25

N.T. Wright, It's About the Bible, not Fake ideas of Progress - in the Fulcrum:

www.fulcrum-anglican.org.uk

"‎"The resurrection of Jesus is the only Christian guide to the question of where history is going. Unlike the ambiguous 'progress' of the Enlightenment, it is full of promise""

November 30

A Sophisticated Philosophy of Functions

phiwumbda.org

"This is really classy"

"Exhaustingly joyous": Lee C. Camp on vocation

Lee C. Camp has an invigorating post on vocation. The following excerpt begins with a quote from Evelyn Underhill:

“Our place is not the auditorium but the stage—or, as the case may be, the field, workshop, study, laboratory—because we ourselves form part of the creative apparatus of God, or at least are meant to form part of the creative apparatus of God. He made us in order to use us, and use us in the most profitable way; for his purpose, not ours. To live a spiritual life means subordinating all other interests to that single fact.”

We are not called, she goes on to say, to be amateurs, messy and hap-hazard in our work, but to keep a steady hand on the plow, employing constancy, subordinating our own agendas to a larger agenda one may sometimes not understand.

This liberty—this rigorous, demanding vocation—to form part of the creative apparatus of God, is exhaustingly joyous... It is the sort of freedom and joy that the famed runner Eric Liddel, was trying to get at when his character in Chariots of Fire says, “I believe God made me for a purpose, but he also made me fast. And when I run I feel His pleasure.” Or the well-spoken commentary of Frederick Beuchner upon vocation: “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”

Petra Bosma on dialogue

Petra Bosma has a great piece at Christianity Today, emphasizing the importance of face-to-face dialogue in our technocratic world. She writes:

"Real conversation uses different skills than online communication. It requires the participants to have patience with each other, and to reveal more of themselves than they would online. We dumb ourselves down in online conversation. We depend on sound bites. We expect responses faster and are more likely to relay only the polished version of what we are truly experiencing. Though social media consistently requests status updates, rarely does it require us to post anything of depth... ideas, especially important, difficult, maybe treasonous ones, need time, care, and interaction: around dinner tables, holding cups of coffee, or holed up in burntout bunkers."

Have I won monopoly to forfeit my soul?*

Tim Chester's summary of CB Samuel’s presentation on Integral Mission, Humility and Lifestyle (Sept 2001):

Photo by: Antonio Correia

"The problem with lifestyle is not its theory, but its practice. The story is told of an Indian guru who taught his disciples to live on just the basic necessities of life. One day he sent his best disciple out to make his own way in the world. This disciple owned only two loin cloths – one to wear while the other was washed. And so this disciple lived, each day wearing one cloth while he washed the other. One day a rat ate his spare cloth as it hung out to dry. His neighbors gave him another, but he realized he also needed a cat to keep the rat away. And because the cat needed milk he got a cow. To feed the cow he obtained a small piece of land for fodder. Soon he was hiring people to cultivate the land so he did not have to interrupt his meditations. In time he acquired a large estate and a fine house. One day his guru came by. Seeing the large house, he asked his disciple how this had happened. The disciple said: 'I need all this to protect my loin cloth’.

"When many of us were young Christians we committed ourselves to radical lifestyles. But now we have many justifications for the possessions that over time we have acquired. We need to recover a biblical perspective on wealth and money. Jesus sees money as a spiritual force. He says we need consciously to short-circuit its power in our lives. Jacques Ellul said Jesus was the only one who was prepared to describe money as mammon. We need to define limits for consumption. We evangelicals have a theology for the creation and distribution of wealth, but we need to have a theology of consumption. We need to define what is enough? We need to learn that we do not need own everything. We need to explore the possibilities of sharing with others and owning things communally."

*I have had Switchfoot's "Company Car" stuck in my head for the last couple of days.