Last night, we went and saw Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova (The Swell Season) perform at the Sydney Opera House. (Glen is the lead singer of the Irish band The Frames), and with Marketa released an album, and starred in the wonderful film 'Once'. I was stunned when I first heard their CD during 2006, and its lovely seeing them being recognised (playing three sell-outs shows in the Opera House). There was such a connection between Glen, Marketa and the audience, created through their personality and the honestly within their songs; songs which resonating as shared experiences. Glen was quite talkative throughout the night engaging with the crowd; he seemed generally delighted (if a touch nervous) about playing the Opera House Concert Hall (fulfilling a 'dream" he had when the Frames were last in Australia during 2007). Glen comes across as a larrikan - promoting healthy disrespect for the venue (asking us to stand, and kick the seat in front of us); and a self-deprecating sense of humour
Even though I had heard a few of their shows from last year, there was still a few surprises - the Frames "God Bless Mom", Leonard Cohen's "Famous Blue Raincoat", and "because they were in Australia" a classic AC/DC song 'give me a bullet to bit on'. One of my favourite songs by The Frames 'Fitzcarraldo' sounds great with the addition of Marketa's piano part. I really loved Colm Mac Con Iomaire's piece "The Court of
the New Town" off his wonderful CD - The Hare's Corner.
My best recollection of the set list is (I think I've got all the songs, if not the right order):
Say it to me now // Lies // This Low // God Bless Mom // The Moon // I Have Loved You Wrong // When Your Minds Made Up // Falling Slowly // Famous Blue Raincoat // Leave // Astral Weeks // Low Rising // Happiness // Once /// The Hill // If You Want Me // The Court of the New Town // Fitzcarraldo // Broken-hearted-hoover-fixer-sucker-guy // give me a bullet to bite on // You Ain't Going Nowhere ///
It was a really awesome show, and the crowd gave them three [well-deserved] standing ovations. There are murmurs of a new album coming out later in the year (given the few new songs they played), but I recommend a wait-and-see approach.
Some reflections on the Path to Life. "You have made known to me the path of life; you fill me with joy in your presence" (Psalm 16:11)
Friday, January 30, 2009
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Get on your boots
So, the new U2 song has arrived.
First impressions: "What?" . It remains a little bit hard to make sense of the lyrics (even for Bono).
Music: it seems a little bit edgier than U2 are normally, evolution more than revolution. The question remains, is this the typical or atypical track for the album.
Listen for yourself at U2's website.. the new album is out during March.
First impressions: "What?" . It remains a little bit hard to make sense of the lyrics (even for Bono).
Music: it seems a little bit edgier than U2 are normally, evolution more than revolution. The question remains, is this the typical or atypical track for the album.
Listen for yourself at U2's website.. the new album is out during March.
Optmism and Obama
I've been meaning to take some time to write about the inauguration last week. You didn't have to look to far for articles warning us to not get too invested in Obama, because he will dissappoint us, warning to us to let go of the idealism, and hope we have invested in him. Rather than responding to him with yes we can, we should respond with not in your life. It goes without saying that yes, Obama is not the messiah, and he will fail, but at the same time, I can't help but feel that the hope and engagement in the political debate is a good thing.
While i was thinking about this, I saw a great piece by Richard Glover in the Sydney Morning Herald over the Australia Day weekend, which made the point that emotion matters. Pessimism is a self-fulfilling prophecy, and likewise hope and optimism are important emotions too, hope plays a role in change. Its hope that drives many to make resolutions at the end of each year, in this sense hope is energising, and enables us to begin. Realism doesn't have the same motivating force (though perhaps it serves a function in tempering hope).
Obama might make a difference, perhaps, because many are inspired and will work with the administration towards change, change will be a tough road, but each journey begins with one step.
~~~
And on a slightly different tact - it was interesting to read a few comments from people (including the Australian of the Year) suggesting a debate around when Australia Day should be held. A debate that gave people opportunities to discuss the meaning and significance of the day. Even, if we keep Australia Day as the 26th, perhaps we can find ways to make the day more culturally sensitive.
While i was thinking about this, I saw a great piece by Richard Glover in the Sydney Morning Herald over the Australia Day weekend, which made the point that emotion matters. Pessimism is a self-fulfilling prophecy, and likewise hope and optimism are important emotions too, hope plays a role in change. Its hope that drives many to make resolutions at the end of each year, in this sense hope is energising, and enables us to begin. Realism doesn't have the same motivating force (though perhaps it serves a function in tempering hope).
Obama might make a difference, perhaps, because many are inspired and will work with the administration towards change, change will be a tough road, but each journey begins with one step.
~~~
And on a slightly different tact - it was interesting to read a few comments from people (including the Australian of the Year) suggesting a debate around when Australia Day should be held. A debate that gave people opportunities to discuss the meaning and significance of the day. Even, if we keep Australia Day as the 26th, perhaps we can find ways to make the day more culturally sensitive.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Inauguration Prayer (Rick Warren)
"Almighty God, our Father:
Everything we see, and everything we can't see, exists because of you alone. It all comes from you, it all belongs to you, it all exists for your glory. History is your story.
The Scripture tells us, "Hear, O Israel, the LORD is our God, the LORD is one". And you are the compassionate and merciful one. And you are loving to everyone you have made.
Now today we rejoice not only in America's peaceful transfer of power for the 44th time, we celebrate a hinge point of history with the inauguration of our first African American president of the United States.
We are so grateful to live in this land, a land of unequaled possibility, where a son of an African immigrant can rise to the highest level of our leadership. And we know today that Dr. King and a great cloud of witnesses are shouting in heaven.
Give to our new president, Barack Obama,
the wisdom to lead us with humility,
the courage to lead us with integrity,
the compassion to lead us with generosity.
Bless and protect him, his family, Vice President Biden, the Cabinet, and every one of our freely elected leaders.
Help us, O God, to remember that we are Americans--united not by race or religion or blood, but to our commitment to freedom and justice for all.
When we focus on ourselves, when we fight each other, when we forget you--forgive us.
When we presume that our greatness and our prosperity is ours alone--forgive us.
When we fail to treat our fellow human beings and all the earth with the respect that they deserve--forgive us.
And as we face these difficult days ahead, may we have a new birth of clarity in our aims, responsibility in our actions, humility in our approaches, and civility in our attitudes—even when we differ. Help us to share, to serve, and to seek the common good of all.
May all people of good will today join together to work for a more just, a more healthy, and a more prosperous nation and a peaceful planet.
And may we never forget that one day, all nations--and all people--will stand accountable before you.
We now commit our new president and his wife, Michelle, and his daughters, Malia and Sasha, into your loving care.
I humbly ask this in the name of the one who changed my life—Yeshua, 'Isa, Jesus [Spanish pronunciation], Jesus—who taught us to pray:
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name.
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil,
for Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever.
Amen."
[Text via: Between Two Worlds]
Therefore I exhort first of all that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men, for kings and all who are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and reverence. For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.
1 Timothy 2:1-4 (NKJV)
Everything we see, and everything we can't see, exists because of you alone. It all comes from you, it all belongs to you, it all exists for your glory. History is your story.
The Scripture tells us, "Hear, O Israel, the LORD is our God, the LORD is one". And you are the compassionate and merciful one. And you are loving to everyone you have made.
Now today we rejoice not only in America's peaceful transfer of power for the 44th time, we celebrate a hinge point of history with the inauguration of our first African American president of the United States.
We are so grateful to live in this land, a land of unequaled possibility, where a son of an African immigrant can rise to the highest level of our leadership. And we know today that Dr. King and a great cloud of witnesses are shouting in heaven.
Give to our new president, Barack Obama,
the wisdom to lead us with humility,
the courage to lead us with integrity,
the compassion to lead us with generosity.
Bless and protect him, his family, Vice President Biden, the Cabinet, and every one of our freely elected leaders.
Help us, O God, to remember that we are Americans--united not by race or religion or blood, but to our commitment to freedom and justice for all.
When we focus on ourselves, when we fight each other, when we forget you--forgive us.
When we presume that our greatness and our prosperity is ours alone--forgive us.
When we fail to treat our fellow human beings and all the earth with the respect that they deserve--forgive us.
And as we face these difficult days ahead, may we have a new birth of clarity in our aims, responsibility in our actions, humility in our approaches, and civility in our attitudes—even when we differ. Help us to share, to serve, and to seek the common good of all.
May all people of good will today join together to work for a more just, a more healthy, and a more prosperous nation and a peaceful planet.
And may we never forget that one day, all nations--and all people--will stand accountable before you.
We now commit our new president and his wife, Michelle, and his daughters, Malia and Sasha, into your loving care.
I humbly ask this in the name of the one who changed my life—Yeshua, 'Isa, Jesus [Spanish pronunciation], Jesus—who taught us to pray:
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name.
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil,
for Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever.
Amen."
[Text via: Between Two Worlds]
~~~~
Therefore I exhort first of all that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men, for kings and all who are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and reverence. For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.
1 Timothy 2:1-4 (NKJV)
Friday, January 16, 2009
[new] line on the horizon..
Perhaps old news now.. but here's part of the announcement via U2.com.
"Get On Your Boots, the first single from U2’s new album No Line On The Horizon, will be released as a digital download on February 15th with a physical format to follow on February 16 through Mercury/Universal.Produced by Brian Eno, Danny Lanois and Steve Lillywhite, sessions for No Line On The Horizon began in Fez, Morocco, and continued at the band’s Dublin studio, New York’s Platinum Sound Recording Studios, and London's Olympic Studios ... the album will be released on March 2nd (March 3rd in the US)."
~~~~
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Friday, January 09, 2009
A Literary Meme.
[via - Talking to Myself]
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline (or mark in a different color) the books you LOVE
4) Reprint this list in your blog. The premise of this exercise is that the (American) National Endowment for the Arts apparently believes that the average American has only read 6 books from the list below.
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee.
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte.
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy.
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare. (I have read a few of the Sonnets, and would like to read more...)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald.
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens.
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams.
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh.
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy.
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens.
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis ( is this excluding The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe?)
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen.
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis.
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown.
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins.
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery.
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding.
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan. (Seen the movie, but haven't read the book..)
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen.
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens.
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy.
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie (I've read some of his books, but not this one...)
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville.
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker.
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett.
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce.
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray.
80 Possession - AS Byatt.
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens.
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton.
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad. (On my shelf to read..)
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery.
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams. (I've seen the film, but haven't read the book...)
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare. (A lesser known play, not included with the complete works..?)
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo.
-- I tag ... those who notice ... and want to do this.
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline (or mark in a different color) the books you LOVE
4) Reprint this list in your blog. The premise of this exercise is that the (American) National Endowment for the Arts apparently believes that the average American has only read 6 books from the list below.
~~~~
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee.
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte.
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy.
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare. (I have read a few of the Sonnets, and would like to read more...)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald.
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens.
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams.
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh.
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy.
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens.
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis ( is this excluding The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe?)
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen.
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis.
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown.
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins.
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery.
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding.
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan. (Seen the movie, but haven't read the book..)
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen.
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens.
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy.
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie (I've read some of his books, but not this one...)
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville.
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker.
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett.
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce.
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray.
80 Possession - AS Byatt.
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens.
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton.
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad. (On my shelf to read..)
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery.
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams. (I've seen the film, but haven't read the book...)
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare. (A lesser known play, not included with the complete works..?)
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo.
-- I tag ... those who notice ... and want to do this.
Friday, January 02, 2009
Some Quotations..
I found a book of quotes from Winston Churchill, and there were a few which really stood out, and one I hesitate in sharing..
:: Golf is an ineffectual attempt to direct an uncontrollable sphere into an inaccessible hole with instruments ill adapted to the purpose.
:: It would be a great reform in politics if wisdom could be made to spread as easily and rapidly as folly
:: If we open a quarrel between the past and the present we shall find we have lost the present.
And the one I hesitated to share (because perhaps because it made me want to read more about Churchill, and hits too close to home ;-) )
:: It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations...the quotations engraved on the mind give you good thoughts. They make you anxious to read the authors to look for more
:: Golf is an ineffectual attempt to direct an uncontrollable sphere into an inaccessible hole with instruments ill adapted to the purpose.
:: It would be a great reform in politics if wisdom could be made to spread as easily and rapidly as folly
:: If we open a quarrel between the past and the present we shall find we have lost the present.
And the one I hesitated to share (because perhaps because it made me want to read more about Churchill, and hits too close to home ;-) )
:: It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations...the quotations engraved on the mind give you good thoughts. They make you anxious to read the authors to look for more
Thursday, January 01, 2009
Bad times Bigger Crowds..
Was reading an article in the New York Times, about how "since September, pastors [across the US] say they have seen such a burst of new interest that they find themselves contending with powerful conflicting emotions — deep empathy and quiet excitement — as they re-encounter an old piece of religious lore:Bad times are good for evangelical churches". The result of this, was that over the Christmas period the lessons from the pulpit were about the theological meaning of the financial crisis (or as I read on the sign of a local church in Sydney - God's Answer to the Financial Crisis - from 2 Cor 8-9).
And one of the more interesting points in the article was how some Church historians believe "the big Christian revivals of the 19th century were touched off by economic panics. [In] "Praying for Recession: The Business Cycle and Protestant Religiosity in the United States", David Beckworth, an assistant professor of economics at Texas State University, looked at long-established trend lines showing the growth of evangelical congregations and the decline of mainline churches and found a more telling detail: During each recession cycle between 1968 and 2004, the rate of growth in evangelical churches jumped by 50 percent. By comparison, mainline Protestant churches continued their decline during recessions, though a bit more slowly."
There's something in the fact that when times are tough people look for God; and in prosperity people perhaps turn away. Something for our churches to be mindful of I guess, thinking about how we can serve our community in the current financial crisis (and beyond).
And one of the more interesting points in the article was how some Church historians believe "the big Christian revivals of the 19th century were touched off by economic panics. [In] "Praying for Recession: The Business Cycle and Protestant Religiosity in the United States", David Beckworth, an assistant professor of economics at Texas State University, looked at long-established trend lines showing the growth of evangelical congregations and the decline of mainline churches and found a more telling detail: During each recession cycle between 1968 and 2004, the rate of growth in evangelical churches jumped by 50 percent. By comparison, mainline Protestant churches continued their decline during recessions, though a bit more slowly."
There's something in the fact that when times are tough people look for God; and in prosperity people perhaps turn away. Something for our churches to be mindful of I guess, thinking about how we can serve our community in the current financial crisis (and beyond).
2008 - Review
Here's another review of 2008 (from Johann Hari), focusing on what we misjudged during 2008- I totally agree about Palin and the Olympics being overrated. .
New Year's Day...
All is quiet on New Year's Day
A world in white gets underway
I want to be with you
Be with you night and day
Nothing changes on New Year's Day
On New Year's Day
I will be with you again
I will be with you again
Under a blood red sky
A crowd has gathered in black and white
Arms entwined, the chosen few
The newspapers says, says
Say it's true it's true...
And we can break through
Though torn in two
We can be one
I... I will begin again
I... I will begin again
Oh... maybe the time is right
Oh... maybe tonight
I will be with you again
I will be with you again
And so we are told this is the golden age
And gold is the reason for the wars we wage
Though I want to be with you
Be with you night and day
Nothing changes
On New Year's Day
On New Year's Day
On New Year's Day
:: Some music for Today, courtesy of U2..
A world in white gets underway
I want to be with you
Be with you night and day
Nothing changes on New Year's Day
On New Year's Day
I will be with you again
I will be with you again
Under a blood red sky
A crowd has gathered in black and white
Arms entwined, the chosen few
The newspapers says, says
Say it's true it's true...
And we can break through
Though torn in two
We can be one
I... I will begin again
I... I will begin again
Oh... maybe the time is right
Oh... maybe tonight
I will be with you again
I will be with you again
And so we are told this is the golden age
And gold is the reason for the wars we wage
Though I want to be with you
Be with you night and day
Nothing changes
On New Year's Day
On New Year's Day
On New Year's Day
:: Some music for Today, courtesy of U2..
Hope?
I was thinking about how to sum up 2008 this morning the word I thought of was hope.
Beginning with Kevin Rudd apologising to the Aboriginals. I'm not really getting into the politics of the decision, but there was a feeling that there might be a fresh start and a new page. I put Obama in the same boat too. The manner in which he engaged people in politcial debate was great to see. Palin too, whether you agree with her politics, also engaged some American's. Obama's calmness as he spoke about the economic crisis and spoke to the American people was great it see. He seemed like a natural leader as he spoke about Race, and Fatherhood. and I will be very interested to follow His presidency. (On another angle see this editorial in the Australian yesterday).
I enjoyed this look over what happenned through 2008.
2009, well it will be an interesting year, there are a few changes in the air at church, with the number of services, changes in staff, and we are also working towards our new building, (which from the plans at least looks great). Its going to be a great ride, and I have confident that through these events God is refining us, and teaching us to be sufficient on Him alone.
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