Devils, Dust & Hope

Tuesday, April 26, 2005

Devils, Dust & Hope

I like lists - crazy about rankings - its the J in me that likes to see things lined up in the pretense of order. On my iPod, the ranking of artists with the most songs are:

U2 112 cuts
Bruce Springsteen 64 cuts
James Taylor 61 cuts
Dixie Chicks 58 cuts
Radiohead 53 cuts
Lyle Lovett 51 cuts

At this moment, I encourage you to look at this listing and realize that I am a pretty simple guy, a product of '80s & '90s media. While I aspire for the hipness, messanic arena rockers like Bono or Natalie Manes or the Boss just make me wanna grab the closest Bic lighter, hold it high above my head and belong and scream while the guy with the mullet and the girl in the tank top in front of me spill beer all over my shoes. (James Taylor and Lyle Lovett are there as sorta aural Zoloft).

A few weeks ago, I was slumming thru VH-1 when I stumbled upon the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame induction speech of U2 done by Bruce Springsteen - it's was surf 'n turf combo that I could not resist. I actually found myself tearing up when the Boss held forth:

For in art and love and rock and roll, the whole had better equal much more than the sum of its parts, or else you're just rubbing two sticks together searching for fire. A great rock band searches for the same kind of combustible force that fueled the expansion of the universe after the big bang. You want the earth to shake and spit fire. You want the sky to split apart and for God to pour out.

You see, every good Irish and Italian-Irish front man knows that before James Brown there was Jesus. So hold the McDonald arches on the stage set, boys, we are not ironists. We are creations of the heart and of the earth and of the stations of the cross -- there's no getting out of it. Bono - Shaman, shyster, one of the greatest and most endearingly naked messianic complexes in rock and roll. He is gifted with an operatic voice and a beautiful falsetto rare among strong rock singers. But most important, his is a voice shot through with self-doubt.

My counsellor wife would call the Boss on his Hector the Projector issues here - he was describing himself just as much as he was inducting the lads from Dublin. In a world shot through with the warring forces of certainty and ambiguity, a battle field where so much of life seems caught between people reasonably interpreting life and politics and Scripture in more than one way, poets like Bruce (and Bono and the Chicks) are few and far between. For me, they remix hope into a set of loops that often do not seem to nourish hope - the paint on canvasses that call me to be truly human, naked in my joy and in my vulnerability.

On the title song from his new album, Bruce articulates what I have found myself caught in, spelunkering in the bowels of the American Empire, feeling my way past the comfort zone of God thinking and inherent power:

I got God on my side
I'm just trying to survive
What if what you do to survive
Kills the things you love
Fear's a powerful thing
It can turn your heart black you can trust
It'll take your God filled soul
And fill it with devils and dust

What if what you do survive kills the thing you love - fear's a powerful thing. Bruce sings about lives ruined, about the mess of ongoing redemption. About the arrogance of knowing that God is on your side. About the tyranny of just trying to survive, giving up on riding out tonight to reach the promised land, of still not finding what you're looking for. I want escape, I want a travel plan, I want to get out this town and feel....insert whatever automotive metaphor you prefer. I want this hope to come in on a white horse and smite my enemies (when do we get to do the smiting ?), I want wrongs righted, I want justice. Instead, these voices I adore and am fed by - well, these voices are preaching a different way to dismantle the bomb (Paul says it better than I ever could):

Love Dismantles the Bomb: my rage, my hatred, my prayers that God would smite down George W. Bush as He did the King of Babylon…. What more in the name of love? A lot more. More self-sacrifice. More compassion. More patience. More love. More worship. More repentance. More activism.

Justice - this justice - is love in conditions of conflict, as Catherine Keller suggests.

May we sing the new song of God’s grace forever. But Yahweh, let us sing this song, this song of pain and pleading for the redemption of the world not too much longer.

Hallelujah. Blessed be the name of the Lord.

Posted at 02:35 PM | Permalink

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