Political Pastors?

As regular readers would know I've been following the US Election, and I found it quite intriguing the read a  number of American Evanlegical pastors are preaching sermons on the election, and some actively endorsing candidates because they are "not sure their congregations could join the dots".  Interestingly religious leaders are technically unable to endorse candidates as they are tax-exempt organisations.

My concern is that  if the role of the church (perhaps like any interest group) is to stand apart from government, to speak truth to power, doesn't siding with one compromise the ability to do this? I also wonder, given there may be legitimate reasons for supporting different candiates, might endorsing one over the other, make it harder for some people to hear the other points they make. (Note: I'm sure that there are times when we do need to stand up, and exercise caution about voting for a particular candidate).  Even with an issues focus, endorsing one of the other from the pulpit, suggests that there is one biblical approach to issues, which I just don't think is always true or that simple. What I find more positive, is to let the candidates speak to the issues, in a forum perhaps and that gives voters tools to enable them to decide how to vote.

One of the things that I will be interested in seeing after the election  is the breakdown on evangelical vote in the exit-polls.

Saturday Song # 3: The Frames (The Swell Season) - Star Star

Its quite funny, I've been planning to post this for a while now, as it had been sitting on my mind, and I'd transcribed most of the intro too ;-) , and just before I headed off to my lunch break on Thursday, I saw the post on Something this foggy day - which picked up most of my thoughts. I thought that the two options he poses summarises a number of positions quite nicely; in the sense we are part of the great environmental cycle - or there is a reason outside of, and larger than ourselves.

Courtesy of Something this Foggy Day here's the way Hansard introduced the song, at one gig (at St Louis, last year, which you can buy, along with many others from "Played Last Night").

"This song is like a little consoling lullaby to yourself. It's written in that lovely state of mind where you're (pause), you're drunk - but, you know, it's neither good nor bad, it's just (does something that makes people laugh) ... This song was written in the middle of a field in the middle of the night in the middle of Ireland looking up - I'd like to say looking up at the stars but looking up at a cloudy grey black sky and knowing that the stars are somewhere beyond it and pretending that it's a lovely starry night in the middle of summer, even though you'll probably have pneumonia in the morning. And it's a song about looking up and asking the big questions to the man above or to the stars above or to whatever ... just that beautiful metaphor that there's the sky and the answers are up there somewhere - because otherwise being a human is boring. There are two ways to look at, I think, everything. We're either a fungus on this earth that's eating it up and chewing it up and we're all going to die, or we're here to sow poetry into the ground and to do as much good was we possibly can. (Everyone cheers!) Some of us live the other way and some of us live that way. It's really up to yourself I guess."

Star star, teach me how to shine shine
Teach me so I know what's going on in your mind
'Cause I don't understand these people
Who say the hill's too steep
Well they talk and talk forever
But they just never climb

Falling down into situations
Bringing out the best in you
You're flat on your back again
And star, you're ever word I'm heeding
Can you help me to see?
I'm lost in the marsh.

Star star, teach me how to shine.. shine
Teach me so I know what's going on in your mind
'Cause I don't understand these people
Who say we're all asleep
They'll toss and turn forever
But no rest will they find...

(I love the line which he often insert into the song: "There is no life, I know, to compare, to pure imagination")

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And on Glen Hansard - there's something so familiar about him, he speaks like he's having a conversation with you  - in another recording he talks about how as musicians you are kicking and screaming to get someone (anyone) to pay attention and then, all of a sudden - the world turns around and says "What?!", and secondly I love this story here).

Finally - the Frames' Sydney concert (Aug 14 last year) is available to watch online - Yay!

On Failure and a comic's approach to death

I caught this commencement address, given by JK Rowling - the CASE email. Rowling spoke about failure and its benefits, and a lot of this rings true for me, in fact, behind most successes are many failed attempts

I quite like the below excerpt:

However, the fact that you are graduating from Harvard suggests that you are not very well-acquainted with failure. You might be driven by a fear of failure quite as much as a desire for success. Indeed, your conception of failure might not be too far from the average person's idea of success, so high have you already flown academically. [...]  Now, I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun. That period of my life was a dark one, and I had no idea that there was going to be what the press has since represented as a kind of fairy tale resolution. I had no idea how far the tunnel extended, and for a long time, any light at the end of it was a hope rather than a reality. [...]  So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had already been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

When a humorist receives a dire prognosis, there's nothing left to do but make God laugh  [PJ O'Rourke via Search]

Saturday song #2 ... Every Grain of Sand

:: words and music by Bob Dylan ~ though I love the version recorded by Emmy-lou Harris (Wrecking Ball)

In the time of my confession, in the hour of my deepest need
When the pool of tears beneath my feet flood every newborn seed
There's a dyin' voice within me reaching out somewhere,
Toiling in the danger and in the morals of despair.

Don't have the inclination to look back on any mistake,
Like Cain, I now behold this chain of events that I must break.
In the fury of the moment I can see the Master's hand
In every leaf that trembles, in every grain of sand.

Oh, the flowers of indulgence and the weeds of yesteryear,
Like criminals, they have choked the breath of conscience and good cheer.
The sun beat down upon the steps of time to light the way
To ease the pain of idleness and the memory of decay.

I gaze into the doorway of temptation's angry flame
And every time I pass that way I always hear my name.
Then onward in my journey I come to understand
That every hair is numbered like every grain of sand.

I have gone from rags to riches in the sorrow of the night
In the violence of a summer's dream, in the chill of a wintry light,
In the bitter dance of loneliness fading into space,
In the broken mirror of innocence on each forgotten face.

I hear the ancient footsteps like the motion of the sea
Sometimes I turn, there's someone there, other times it's only me.
I am hanging in the balance of the reality of man
Like every sparrow falling, like every grain of sand.

(Note: Saturday Song, became Sunday's Song, owing to Sun and Surf on the South Coast).

Graduation Address

I saw a link to an address given by the late David Foster Wallace, its well worth having a look over (I've never really heard a memorable address at a graduation ceremony). I really liked this passage here:

In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And an outstanding reason for choosing some sort of God or spiritual-type thing to worship -- be it J.C. or Allah, be it Yahweh or the Wiccan mother-goddess or the Four Noble Truths or some infrangible set of ethical principles -- is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things -- if they are where you tap real meaning in life -- then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you. On one level, we all know this stuff already -- it's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, bromides, epigrams, parables: the skeleton of every great story. The trick is keeping the truth up-front in daily consciousness. Worship power -- you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart -- you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. And so on. [..read the full address here]

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Update: I have to admit that I am not too familiar with the writing of David Foster Wallace - but here's a piece he wrote about the 'dying for the American idea' arguing that "a democratic republic cannot 100-percent protect itself from without subverting the very principles that make it worth protecting?", from the Atlantic Monthly.

Catching up on reading

:: our political views defined by our psychology. (via the BBC), John Hibbings, the project leader agrued that perhaps this explains why it is so hard to change someone's mind in a political debate.We all start from a different psychological point.

:: On Fear v Hope in November. (via The Guardian)

:: Thacker writes about why suffering strengthens religious hope (via The Guardian)

:: There's also an interesting piece about Team sports. (via The Guardian)

Saturday Song lyric

Thought that I'd do something a little different for my blog, and post a song lyric each weekend (and mostly Saturdays). I like the Chesterton quote below (which provided some shape to the song I chose for today).

"I don't deny that there should be priests to remind men that they will one day die. I only say it is necessary to have another kind of priests, called poets, to remind men they are not dead yet"
GK Chesterton.

So for the first one, I thought that I'd use one of the newer songs on my I-pod, and chose one from Andrew Osenga's Letter to the Editor, Vol II. Andrew Osenga was the lead singer of the band the Normals, and more recently has been playing with Caedmon's Call. Letters to the Editor was a project that Osenga did where he asked people to contribute and he used these to form the basis of songs. The first collection was released early 2007 with a "pay what you want" type arrangement, and this week the second project was made available under the same arrangements. The song I've chosen is Let Us Know You, which is the final song the EP. Andrew Osenga is a storyteller, and his lyrics are personal, humble and revealing of both himself and human nature. (Needless to say I'd recommend downloading and listening to the EP)

(where does my help come from)
 

my friends have sent me letters
I've read them all and then
I've tried to make sense of the stories
but I was overwhelmed

so much anger, so much pain
we've had to go numb to survive

so I'm closing my eyes
and I'm praying for those in my life
let us feel, let us love
let us be alive, let us know you

my friends have shared their secrets
and I have given mine
the anarchy of what we think
no one will ever find

in the daylight, to our surprise
our secrets are shades of the same

so I'm closing my eyes
and I'm praying for those in my life
let us feel, let us love
let us be alive, let us know you

in the beginning was the Word,
and the word was with You
You parted the seas
held up the flame in the night to guide us through
You drew in the sand
dropped the stones from violent hands
heard the cry of the crow
and set Your eyes on a faithless friend

You are who You are, and You are and You were and will be

so I'm closing my eyes
and I'm praying for those in my life
let us feel, let us love
let us be alive, let us know you

~~~~

 And when Osenga, wrote about the song in the booklet, he spoke about the below quote.

"I have come to believe that by and large the human family all has the
same secrets, which are both very telling, and very important to tell.
They are telling in the sense that they tell what is perhaps the
central paradox of our condition - that what we hunger for perhaps
more than anything else is to be know in all our humanness, and yet
that is often just what we also fear more than anything else".

Frederick Beuchner - 'Telling Secrets'

Lessons in losing

Here's another great article about the value of losing, from the point of view of a parent.

[We] tend to frame things in terms of contests and wars that must be won or lost. Many challenges, however, are about hanging in there and managing a bad situation.

Losing prepares you for the slog that is life. The world doesn’t give us many finish lines, but it does give us the long run. Let other parents scream and curse at the opposing team, and berate their own kids over their performance. I’m just glad that Sammy was in the game.

He didn’t always win. But he’s a winner.

As for me - I haven't been involved in a team which won everything - but I valued the opportunity to get out there contribute (win or lose) and have fun with the teammates.

(Also on 'losing' - here's a great article here about rejection letters, from the Kenyon review)

More on The Swell Season.

I'll admit it I am also quite addicted to the Swell Season. After I saw the post on Something for this foggy day - I had to post the links to this version of If I have Loved You Wrong and one for Go with Happiness. Well worth a watch/listen

On church attendance..

An interesting piece in the Telegraph about research Kristin Aune has been doing on the number of women attending church in the UK, and how this number appears to be in decline.

Over the past decade, it claims, women have been leaving churches at twice the rate of men. In addition, the census is said to show that teenage boys now outnumber girls in the pews for the first time.Dr Aune says the church must adapt to the needs of modern women if it is to stop them leaving in their droves. She believes many women have been put off going to church in recent years because of the influence of feminism, which challenged the traditional Christian view of women's roles and raised their aspirations. Her report claims they feel forced out of the church because of its "silence" about sexual desire and activity, and because of its hostility to single-parent families and unmarried couples which are now a reality for many women. But it also says changes in women's working lives, with many more now pursuing careers as well as raising children, mean they have less time to attend church. Dr Aune believes churches must now introduce services and activities that fit in better with modern's women's schedules, such as Saturday morning breakfast clubs. She said: "Gone are the days when the mother was at home during the day and had time to visit the church's coffee mornings and mother and toddler groups. With the pressures women face, churches must adapt to make themselves more accessible."

(Note: the heading is a bit of a laugh - but the question is serious -how can the churches continue to attract women as well as men while staying faithful to biblical teachings).

Weekend Reading...

:: Saving the world is off the curriculum... Audio: interview with Stanley Fish author of Save the World On Your Own Time)

:: An experiment on teaching taste ... (Interview)

:: One I don't need to be convinced of - the value of the male school teacher. For more about teachers and teaching, Lesson Plans (a new NYT's blog) is well worth a read.

:: A day without google...

:: Depression and men ..

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September ...

There's something that I love about September (even though at the moment it doesn't feel like spring) - the scripts written on the grass of our stadiums that grab my attention.  The red and white will be out in force (for this week at least) - as the Swans dance with North Melbourne tonight - the loser plans for 2009; and the winner gets another dance. Will see how it goes, but it is hard to see anyone other than Geelong or Hawthorn winning the flag and to be fair that is the final most neutrals hope for.

The Qualifying for the World Cup continues this week too; New Zealand booked themselves a place in a play-off with the 5th best team in Asia.  The European Qualifiers continue tonight; and the Socceroos play the Netherands in a friendly before heading to Tashkent for their qualifier against Uzbekistan (on Wednesday). The 642 days will disappear pretty quickly too...

Links..

:: Here's one piece on Facebook, about the how the News Feed page and Twitter, is impacting how we relate (via NYT).

You could also regard the growing popularity of online awareness as a reaction to social isolation, the modern American disconnectedness that Robert Putnam explored in his book “Bowling Alone.”

:: I enjoyed this piece about Bono, and his activism. As for me, I am glad to see people like him out there speaking about what's going on, and the profile he has, brings light onto the cause.

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Elections..

For those like me who have been following the US Presidential Election this year - here's another site to keep an eye on - FiveThirtyEight - which projects the result of the election. (See the FAQ here for information about the methodology they used).

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The Swell Season

Can't let this pass without comment - in the latest newsletter from The Frames, there was a mention about The Swell Season touring Australia 2009, probably January. I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to it. Colm Mac Con Iomaire, the 'fiddler' from The Frames has his own CD coming out too...

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Couple of shorts..

:: Here's some of the speeches from the Convention last week. [via NPR]

:: Found this piece about the athletes behind the salute in 1968 quite interesting; I am keen to see the film Salute, which was released recently. [via NYT]

:: A review of Sunday mornings, Staying home -how American evangelicals are quitting churches...

She reports, among other things: a lack of a feeling of community among church members, inducing loneliness and boredom; church teaching that fails to go beyond the basics of the faith or to reach members grappling with suffering or unanswered prayer; pastors who are either out of touch with their parishioners or themselves unhappy, or who fail to shepherd their flocks, or who are caught up in scandal, or who try to control the lives of church members in a high-handed way. She claims that many churches have "inefficient leadership models" and that many, preoccupied with the care of families, neglect single people. [via Wall Street Journal]

I also thought this quote, made a great point -- should we really be concerned with numbers anyway?

From a theological perspective, there is no guarantee that churches will prosper as they attempt to make disciples -- if we judge prosperity by church membership alone. A church might conscientiously carry out its biblical tasks and yet, by measures of popularity, do poorly in this world. Such a church would not be doing right if it adjusted its mission for the sake of higher attendance records. Note that by the end of his ministry the number of disciples with Jesus was down to 12. Now there was a decent church, one might say, if a small one.

:: An interesting piece on young American evangelicals and purity. [via The Chicago Tribune]

:: There's a the "gene's made me do it" excuse for everything... "a genetic variation may be responsible for weakening some men's ability to be monogamous" via NPR.

Some links..

I've been catching up with Google reader tonight.

:: Another piece about adjusting medal tallies. [via The Guardian]

:: Punditry .. or prayer [via The Guardian]

:: Fallen Stars.. [via the NYT]

:: Obama accepts the Demorcatic nomination [via the NYT]

Alternative Olympic Medal Tallies

So, heres' the current 2008 Olympic Medal Tally (via SMH). Interesting note that New York Times Medal table list countries by medal's won.

I'm quite interested in the adjusted medal tables. Here's two alternative tallies:

:: via Andrew Starr which ranks according to the number of medals won per 10 million of population.

:: the second, ranks by points (Gold = 3, Silver = 2, Bronze = 1) divided by Population (in millions)

I'm keen to see one adjusted by GDP (or by average per cent of GDP spent on sport). Here's the final GDP-Adjusted table from Athens 2004.

Olympics..

I watched a little bit of the Olympics (I've probably read more than I've seen), but I quite liked these pieces from the mainland (c/o the NZ Herald).

:: If all else fails, join Australia - this one was published last week, before NZ had won any medals.

:: Whatever happened to winner-take-all?

:: And as you can see, TV coverage is the same the world over ;-)

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How to know your a tragic...

... when you see something like the below, and go wow~! this sounds cool.

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U2: The Hype and The Feedback (May 13-15, 2009) is the first conference to examine U2's considerable catalog of music as well as their influence in the areas of the music and entertainment industry, popular culture, humanitarian relief and the global politics of peace and social justice.
We invite proposals for papers, presentations or panels on any topic relating to the music, work or influence of U2 that would appeal to an audience of scholars, students, journalists, musicians and intellectually curious U2 fans.
We encourage proposals from established or independent scholars; faculty, graduate or undergraduate students; journalists, critics, musicians and fans.
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I'll be keeping tabs on this for sure.. not that I could go though.