Much ink has been spilled about the so-called “love songs to Jesus” many of us sing week after week at church. Many writers have critiqued popular worship music’s theological shallowness (or worse, incorrectness) and detachment from human experiences like doubt, pain, and suffering. Not to mention the almost complete lack of mission-or justice-related themes in most of the songs we sing at church.

Several years ago, Brian McLaren waded into this issue by penning an open letter to worship leaders, which appeared in a number of Christian magazines, as well as on the Web. In it, McLaren — who himself is a musician — issued a request for “the songwriters among us to explore and then lead us into some new lyrical/spiritual territory.” He maintains that too many of our songs are “embarrassingly personalistic, about Jesus and me.” He goes on to suggest that worship music, if conducted thoughtfully, could actually lead spiritual communities into a more holistic theology that embraces spiritual realities beyond the individual self.

This is the spirit in which The Restoration Project (Tracy Wispelwey) is releasing its sixth album — “Hold on to Love.” Wispelwey, who, with McLaren, co-produced “Songs for a Revolution of Hope” in 2007, has produced an eclectic, powerful, and inspiring collection of songs that remain remarkably accessible. Eclectic in that every song is different: from the unmistakably upbeat, African stylings on “Amahoro,” to the funky (Tracy calls it “electroacoustic”), R&B track “People Come Together,” to the decidedly more somber and lamentful track, “Nazina.” I don’t disagree with Brian McLaren’s assessment of the general sound conveyed on “Hold on to Love”: “the musical love-child of Sarah McLachlan and Sigur Ros.” Indeed, both Sigur Ros’ slow, ambient build and McLachlan’s hauntingly sweet vocals are easily traceable on the album’s first track, “To See You.”

The collection is powerful in its message of peace and solidarity with the world’s poor and suffering. The Restoration Project lives up to its name as both announcing and participating in God’s reparative work in the world and drawing in the voices and stories of numerous communities and individuals Wispelwey has met in her journeys. Often preferring to play her music to prisoners and refugees over the coffee house crowd, Wispelwey has weaved into her latest project the sounds of a number of the thousand or so communities she’s visited in the last decade. Recorded in five U.S. states and South Africa, the international collaboration reveals itself throughout the instrumentation and deep into Wispelwey’s song lyrics. Two of the tracks are sung fully or partially in Spanish. “People Come Together” is a triumphant, bluesy collaboration with a Portland R&B ensemble. A South African choir contributed vocals to the joyful “Amahoro,” an East African greeting similar to “shalom.” And the haunting “Nazina” speaks of a Burundian person who is named “nothing” (Nazina), referring to the country’s often forgotten Batwa people. The album showcases the instrumental sounds of the sitar, saw, kalimba, marimba, bell and chimes, and piano, in addition to plenty of acoustic guitar and synthetic beats. In this way, “Hold on to Love” is like a satisfying tour of the world, minus the vaccination shots and food poisoning.

But in this reviewer’s opinion, it’s lyrically where Wispelwey’s album soars. Simple, easily memorable words — many of them based in the Beatitudes — embody in substance everything McLaren and others have called for in recent years. It’s no surprise, given that Wispelwey is currently completing a masters of divinity at Harvard, a degree she began pursuing to serve as a foundation for her life and ministry. But her biblical studies have only given theological meaning to what she’s observed firsthand in her world travels: immigrant struggles along the U.S.-Mexico border, extreme poverty in sub-Saharan Africa, political strife in Central and South America, and incarcerated persons in prisons and detainment facilities. As much as anything, it is this identification with the suffering, the poor, the war-torn, the broken that drive and defines “Hold on to Love.” “Call to Nonviolence” ends with a theologically robust refrain that one imagines could go on and on and on (and maybe it should):

We will draw our hands
From things that destroy
Systems that oppress
From our selfishness.

Wispelwey’s themes of solidarity with the weak continue with some beautiful imagery in track 13, “Do Not Be Afraid”:

Do not be afraid
To stand with the weak
You are strong in peace
A flower piercing concrete

Finally, “Hold on to Love” is accessible. The versatility and simplicity of the album make these songs ideal for singing in both everyday activities and in Christian gatherings (a digital songbook, complete with words and music, accompanies both the digital and physical album). The theological truths here — though often countercultural even in religious circles — are lifted directly from the Bible’s red letters and infused with the stories of many of Wispelwey’s friends from around the world.

Whether you are a part of a spiritual community seeking to expand your worship music catalog or simply a lover of music that inspires, this album will be a blessing and embolden you to join Tracy in “finding transformational love where things suck the most.”

They’re everywhere. In our gardens, in pots on our porches, in vases (pronounced “vah-zes”), and even in our noses*. Some of us eat flowers everyday. They’re pretty, they’re funky, and one day in the not-too-distant future, they’ll raise a citizen army and stage a revolt against those humans who didn’t appreciate their contributions to society. Folks, the stakes have never been higher.

If we don’t act now, our kids will inherit a floral armageddon of biblical proportions. You don’t want that, do you? Some flowers have thorns!

Here’s something you can do right now to stave off the impending attack: buy flowers. Put them everywhere. Tell your friends who are getting married or expecting to die. At your next event, fill the room so full of flowers that attendees can’t even enter the room. (or make a “flower maze” and spank those who make it through**) Buy flowers indiscriminately and throw them haphazardly in the streets, from the rooftops and bridges, and into the ocean.

If you live in Texas, there’s really only one source for floral amazingness: Lindy Floral.

She’s based in Austin. She’s fully accredited by SPIFA (Society for the Prevention of the Impending Floral Armageddon). And she’s my sister-in-law***.

Check out her website, inquire about her services for your next event, and do your part to delay or diminish the inevitable. Knowledge is power, people. And now you know.

Do it.

That’s all.

*not sure where that came from.
**ditto.
*** she’s not blood related to the Holts, so she’s actually talented.

Here’s the link to the new blog. Enjoy!

How can a holiday that celebrates one group of mostly professing Christians violently overthrowing another group of mostly professing Christians be venerated by people who are called to love their enemies and to be peacemakers, even if they happen to find themselves on the side that won? (read the whole essay here)

This is (partly) the argument N.T. Wright makes in his new book, After You Believe. The following passage gets us down the path a ways in the discussion of Christian witness in “secular” societies:

Those who are called to reflect God’s image through their own work must give attention to the task of working out, in a highly contested contemporary world, what that restorative justice ought to look like and how we might help bring it about. This will mean engaging with political debates and processes of various sorts, campaigning on key issues, and highlighting oppression and injustice wherever they occur. The Western world has supposed, for two hundred years and more, that splitting off questions of social justice from questions of God and faith would give us a more just society. The revolutions, totalitarianisms, and all-out wars of that period have proved us wrong. But to put God and human justice back together again will require a sustained effort, not only by individuals but by the church as a whole, developing the corporate virtues of justice-work that will become habits of the church’s heart and will appeal to the conscience of the wider world. (Wright, p. 231)

Put another way, to eliminate religious speech and expression from the public square (as we’re seeing in many European countries) is to cut off the branch on which human rights rest. Christian witness has a place at the table in conversations about justice and the betterment of society. A crucial place.

God is Big Enough to Take Our Doubt and Anger

by Steve Holt 04-23-2010

“To believe is human, to doubt divine.”

Those words are central to the self-described “incendiary theology” Peter Rollins preaches. Amid a Christian culture known all too often for its belief in absolutes and pervasive positivity, Rollins completed a pre-Easter tour in April to give these communities the permission to doubt and lament. The 10-city “Insurrection Tour” didn’t take place in churches, but pubs.

That’s because a message touting doubt, questions, and skepticism is often not welcome in our sanctuaries. Pubs and bars, however, serve as venues for discussing life’s toughest issues nearly every night of the week.

Folks in the pews, Rollins asserts, doubt all the time. They have terrible days, feel oppressed and cheated, and wonder if there’s anything to this Jesus-y stuff. And then they come to church and hear motivational pep-talks and putridly positive prayers and music.

Not only that, Rollins maintains that churchgoers expect their churches to do their believing for them. Though it isn’t their reality, we eek our good feelings of faith off of our pastors and liturgies. But what if our pastors themselves stop believing? Well, last month, Daniel Dennett (Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon) and Linda LaScola of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University released a study entitled “Preachers Who are not Believers.” One full-time minister the researchers interviewed, “Adam,” self-describes as an “atheist-agnostic.” Here’s how he says he handles his job on Sundays:

Here’s how I’m handling my job on Sunday mornings: I see it as play acting. I kind of see myself as taking on a role of a believer in a worship service, and performing. Because I know what to say. I know how to pray publicly. I can lead singing. I love singing. I don’t believe what I’m saying anymore in some of these songs. But I see it as taking on the role and performing. Maybe that’s what it takes for me to get myself through this, but that’s what I’m doing.

He went on to describe why he sticks it out saying and doing things he doesn’t believe:

I’m where I am because I need the job still. If I had an alternative, a comfortable paying job, something I was interested in doing, and a move that wouldn’t destroy my family, that’s where I’d go.

How did we get to this point? Simple. We don’t allow each other to voice our questions and doubts. Church isn’t a place for questions, but absolutes. It’s certainly no place for shades of gray — black and white are our colors. We certainly don’t get this from the narrative of scripture, where we find a motley cast of characters who are quite comfortable expressing doubt and anger — even to God. Rollins paraphrased Kierkegaard, who, in his commentary on Job, advised the troubled man to yell at God because God can take it.

But the Insurrection Tour gave me hope for what is possible when faith communities not just allow doubt to enter, but embrace it. I was touched by the hauntingly beautiful poetry and music of Pádraig Ô Tuaman that reflected the pain and lament of the human soul. Johnny McEwan’s moving beats and graphics complemented Rollins’ provocative words and rounded out a night of spiritual exploration unlike anything I’d ever experienced. The church desperately needs poets and artists whose creations not only reflect the joy and beauty of life, but the pain.

What I and Christians everywhere need is the permission to be human, living and struggling daily with the range of human emotions. Sunday morning services — with their “love songs to Jesus,” as Rollins terms them — would have us believe that Christians are “in-right, outright, upright, downright happy all the time.” This is so far from the truth, it’s not even funny.

What if, little by little, we started to believe that God is big enough to take our doubt and anger? What if we changed our culture of false pretenses? What if we began to not only share our struggles along with our joys, but were present to lend an ear to a struggling friend, without judgment? What if our hymnody, sermons, and prayers began to reflect more fully the range of human emotions, including doubt, fear, and anger?

We will become healthier and more effective ambassadors of love when our gatherings — from the kitchen table to the Lord’s Table — become places where we can struggle with the existence and character of God. Because while a conclusion is the place we arrive when we’ve stopped thinking, struggling — even with faith — assumes movement. And in the kingdom of God, movement is rarely a bad thing.

Checked out the Museum of Russian Icons with a friend today, and I highly recommend it!  Aside from the moving and beautiful art, the architecture and layout of the museum was incredible.  Religious or not, you won’t regret taking a day to explore the place.  It’s in Clinton, MA.

What do you think?