Dylan on a Sunday

I have this spot in a coffee shop in St Paul. It's a Dunn Bros and they roast their own beans in a big red roaster that sits in a corner among the table that host their guests. I like the table right next to the roaster. I like it mostly because its the easiest place to plug in my computer, but also because its red and sometimes in the cold months it produces a little heat. It also gives me a view of the entire place, which is what my ADD requires for work to get done. A little movement and distraction keeps me from getting totally bored.

Its like having a favorite pew at church. I don't have a pew per se at St Matthew's Episcopal, where I attend when I'm in St Paul. But I do have a section. Just back of half-way on the right nearer the wall as you face the altar. There I kneel and stand and pray for others and read and pass peace and pretend to sing. There I respond to the liturgist's "The Peace of Christ be with you," with "And also with you."

And there's something like that at Dunn Bros as well. I'm in there enough (its my primary office when I'm at Luther Sem) that all the coffee shop employees know me. Most call me by name. Today, a young woman who only works on the weekends was there. She is a college student at the U and nearly always has a concert t-shirt on. One day we were both in there wearing a Bob Dylan concert t-shirt. This mutual recognition began a little liturgy between the two of us. Something for us to say to each other that connects us, honors our common humanity. I don't know her name, and I doubt she knows mine, but we are connected through this liturgy.

Today she could hardly wait to begin. "I have tickets to Tegan and Sara," she said enthusiastically. For this is what we do. We tell each other about concerts we have attended or are going to attend. She often is going to see bands that I have only barely heard of or don't know at all. She mostly makes me feel old, but also young because she assumes I will know her bands. I was thankful today that I knew Tegan and Sara. (And also with you). I had heard that Tegan and Sara live in Portland (the Hawthorne district, along with Death Cab for Cutie and other alt bands) and asked her if she knew whether or not this is true. "I think that's right," she said. "They're orignially from Canada."

"I saw U2 in September," I offered. "Wow," she said, "how awesome is that!" The Dunn Bros equivalent of "The word of the Lord." "Thanks be to God." She pours my medium coffee, dark roast, in a "for here" mug with no room, without asking. And sometimes, like today, she will go back into the back as I read and put Dylan's greatest hits in the cd player. "Your sins are forgiven."

I heard Miroslav Volf speak yesterday. It was great. He was brilliant, and funny, and self-effacing. And he wore jeans. My kind of theologian. And he talked about why he currently worships at an Epsicopal church, having grown up a Pentecostal. "Wine and God," he said. He reported that on his coming to America, while at Fuller Seminary, he went to evangelical churches that served communion in trays with juice in what he called "shot glasses" (I know this arrangement well). Now, Volf likes a shot glass as much as the next guy, (more than a lot of the next guys I hang out with), but not with grape juice. He asked where he might find real wine to be shared from a common chalice. "Oh, you'll have to go to the Episcopal church for that." So, he went.

That might get one to the Episcopal church, but not keep one there. What kept Volf there was the liturgy. He was lamenting the lack of the gospel found in the preaching in many churches, the Episcopal church being no exception. "But its there every Sunday, in the liturgy."

"The peace of Christ be with you."

"And also with you."

This was my last Sunday at St. Matthew's for awhile (unless I fail my comps and have to come back). I told the rector as I left, "I need a few more Sundays of this." She's a good preacher, but that's not what I'll miss. It's the way the liturgy makes me feel welcomed, the way it connects me to everyone else in the room, and everyone else in the world, and Christians through history. I love the prayer time for the church and the world. And the words of welcome around the table speak the gospel to me every week.

I feel welcome at most Churches of Christ because I've been doing it my whole life. I'm a third generation preacher in this tradition. I'm bona fide. And most of the time, people there know me before I walk through the door. How could I not. But this is a luxury that most do not have as they visit in "free" churches. I wonder how it is they might feel welcomed. (I have often felt excluded at places where I am not known, precisely because they rely on intimacy, not liturgy to connect them to each other).

No one knows me at St. Matt's. They have no idea what a Bible lectureship is, much less that I directed one. Nancy was far more famous at St Matt's than me. But I felt profoundly welcomed and a part of things, primarily because of the liturgy.

Being at both St Matt's and the coffee shop today reinforced how powerful symbolic action and ritual is in creating a sesne of belonging and community. Wednesday night I will celebrate with friends who have already completed their comps, and others who soon will. We have developed a repertoire over the last few years that marks our common life. We will go to our place, Town Hall, and will toast the promise of our common life. And the sharing will be so thick with the repeated pattens of our life, we will have to wipe it from our eyes. Liturgy.

Dylan on a Sunday

I recently read a piece on Highway 61 and its relationship to the blues. Seems that this stretch of road has a bit of lore surrounding it, including the story that accounts for the naming of BB King's guitar, Lucille. And of course, Dylan has a song, Highway 61 Revisited.

It's one of those songs that has grown on me over time. It's rolling and fun. I love both Dylan's version and the cover by Karen O and The Million Dollar Bashers on the I'm Not There soundtrack. The whistles (outrunning the law), the oddball lyrics, the smiling vocal, all give you a sense that your on the lam from reality, which is what any good road trip ought to be.

I love the scenes from the Dylan documentaries when he's composing on a typewriter (ask an old person), and its just rolling out of him, stream-of-consciousness, onto the white paper. And this song feels like that. Words running over the dotted lines, fenceposts flying past your doors. Who knows what could happen? The life you still might have is out there.

Oh God said to Abraham, "Kill me a son"
Abe says, "Man, you must be puttin' me on"
God say, "No." Abe say, "What?"
God say, "You can do what you want Abe, but
The next time you see me comin' you better run"
Well Abe says, "Where do you want this killin' done?"
God says, "Out on Highway 61."

Well Georgia Sam he had a bloody nose
Welfare Department they wouldn't give him no clothes
He asked poor Howard where can I go
Howard said there's only one place I know
Sam said tell me quick man I got to run
Ol' Howard just pointed with his gun
And said that way down on Highway 61.

So great. (I love this version of the Abraham story. It could've happened this way on the road, on Highway 61).

The road is one of those big recurring music themes. Every good musician has a road song, and for many its a signature song (Springsteen, Thunder Road, Doobie Brothers, Rocking Down the Highway, BB King, Riding with the King, Jackson Browne, Running on Empty, Clapton, Further Up on the Road, Tom Petty, Running Down a Dream, the list could go on). The road is full of promise. It's adventure and possibility. It's a way to be free just for awhile of those things that tie you down, that make your arms heavy and your head sore. You never know what you might see. Think how many stories begin with the phrase, "I was driving once between Abilene and Dallas, along the backroads, and... ."

The road is Jack Kerouac, Thelma and Louise, Homer, Clark Griswold, Bill and Ted, Hope and Crosby, Harry and Sally, Bonnie and Clyde, Brando and James Dean. And the road is made up of actual roads all with their own stories. My world has been marked with long stretches frequently traversed, an eye-ful of life. Abilene to L.A three different ways, or to Portland five different ways. L.A. to Portland. Abilene to Dallas or Austin or San Antonio. Portland to the Coast or Seattle or the Wallowas or north through Spokane into Montana and the Dakotas, St Paul to Detroit. I've driven a 68 mustang, a subaru station wagon, my brother's vw beetle, a jetta, a sciorroco, a 24 foot u-haul with my father-in-law's cadillac in tow, a mercury marquis, a bmw 318e, a jeep cherokee, a lexus, and other lesser cars hardly worth mentioning. Warriors all. And in each case with the stereo blaring.

No road trip is right without some cranking music. Middle of the night. Cruise control. Led Zeppelin. Boston. Heart. Lenny Kravitz. Queen. More than a little head bobbing, fake keyboards on the dash, drum solo on the steering wheel and rear view mirror. Music and the road, the road and music. They just go together. And so today, Dylan is calling me into the freedom of the road. I'm on the lam, for just a few minutes, from comps. Wanna go?

Well Mack the Finger said to Louie the King
I got forty red white and blue shoe strings
And a thousand telephones that don't ring
Do you know where I can get rid of these things
And Louie the King said let me think for a minute son
And he said yes I think it can be easily done
Just take everything down to Highway 61.

Now the fifth daughter on the twelfth night
Told the first father that things weren't right
My complexion she said is much too white
He said come here and step into the light he says hmm you're right
Let me tell the second mother this has been done
But the second mother was with the seventh son
And they were both out on Highway 61.

Now the rovin' gambler he was very bored
He was tryin' to create a next world war
He found a promoter who nearly fell off the floor
He said I never engaged in this kind of thing before
But yes I think it can be very easily done
We'll just put some bleachers out in the sun
And have it on Highway 61.

Good to Great?

Wednesday, I will write for eight hours on issues of gospel, congregation, and culture for my PhD comps. Part of that time will have to do with notions of leadership, so I've been reading in the literature on leadership. There are leadership books that have real merit and cross the boundaries related to certain kinds of organizations. For instance, the sensemaking literature is equally valid for a retail business as it is a church. But some of this lit doesn't translate as easily, in particular the business management literature.

The book, Good to Great, has received high marks for methodology and results. This came from real social science research--grounded theory to be exact--and its conclusions are both apparent and surprising (the mark of any good study of this sort, it seems to me). And there is certainly much to commend the book, especially if you're an alpha dog running a major corporation. Seriously, if I was running a major corporation being evaluated by the bottom line, I would use this as my Bible.

But the author and lead researcher, Jim Collins, claims more for this book than business application. This book is not about business, he tells us, but about organizations, any organizations. And it is within all of them to be more than good. In fact, for Collins, good is the enemy of great, and all human organizations have the capacity to be great.

One of the keys here is knowing that one thing at which you can be the best. The paper company, Kimberly-Clark, for instance, got out of the paper mill business and focused on toilet paper and diapers because they could be the best at that. Apparently, and this is a quote, they had a real passion for diapers. God bless them.

These companies (only 23 out of the Fortune 500 list qualify) also have heroic leadership of an underdog sort. Humble-but-driven types who put the good of the organization ahead of their own ego needs. They make sure that the work gets done without taking any of the credit for it. Moving from good to great just depends on finding one of those persons--who, by the way, should also be brilliant. Otherwise, you're stuck with good, or worse.

Now I like this on the surface, because this rips the notion of the outside gunslinger who comes in and sets everything in place. Slow and steady, it seems, wins the race. The big flashy guys are often more trouble than they are worth. And Collins' book also blows up the myth of compensation driving excellence, i.e., without a big bonus structure, leaders simply do not perform. Not a factor, says Collins.

But as someone who coaches congregational leaders, I am overall discouraged by books like these. While Collins thinks that the principles apply meta-organizationally, the truth is it works only when an organization's identity can be boiled down to one thing simply stated. Great diapers. But there are some human organizations, congregations among them, that aspire especially to things that cannot be reduced so easily. A concept, like shalom, for instance, which should animate a congregation's life, is complex and holistic. It has to bring many things together. So, shalom refuses reduction and bears tensions which cannot be resolved easily as favoring one over the many (one of the marks of "great" is being able to get rid of dead weight quickly, even if its your brother-in-law).

It's got to be embarrassing for Collins at this point to have Fannie Mae as one of his exemplars. Doh!

Which brings up the question of criteria for evaluation. How does one measure greatness? Is it only internal to an organization? Would, for instance, a company that refused exponential push toward internal satisfaction for the sake of a better world be greater than Fannie Mae? In other words, how can one evaluate an organization apart from the conditions of the world around it, conditions that they both exploit (in good and bad ways) and create? Fannie Mae has left all of us in a helluva mess. How does society as a whole factor into evaluating something like this? And might a concept like the Kingdom of God lead to a different group of "greats?" Maybe some of these organizations still make it, but maybe they don't.

Don't get me started here. My frustrations are numerous with this book. I will stop with one last one (to keep me from getting started). I'm guessing that most church leaders, not to mention most business leaders, would look around the room after reading a book like this and either fire the preacher or give up. Again, I like some of the principles here. The bit about freedom and responsibility is very helpful, if not a little prosaic. But they are all stated in aspirational terms--things we would aspire for. And aspiration beats the snot out of most of us, paralyzing many of us, and sending the rest of us off on a never-ending, neurotic quest for a messiah. Collins is convinced there are more of those just lying around than we think, but my hunch is that most groups of elders would look around the room and disagree.

Here's the good news (perhaps even great). Churches are invited into strategies that do not pretend to words like "great." We are invited, all of us, to embody words like "leaven" and "mustard seed," words that know power in something other than big and awesome. And we are assured that even with pathetic little faith, God can still be revealed. This is no excuse for shoddiness. But it is an invitation to begin where we are with what we have because that is the point. God can be seen even in that--especially in that.

Because this too is an expression of human potential--the potential to welcome one another as we are, not for how great we might become. And most congregations have more real hope there than they do in the pages of Collins' book.

As I read Collins' book, I kept thinking of all the people who taught me things about being human who had no capacity for "making the leap to great." The chronically ill, the mentally challenged, the hopelessly awkward. They shall inherit the earth. And that's pretty great.

Dylan on a Sunday

I am in the middle of taking my comprehensive exams. The trick to these exams is to bring several different texts together under a unifying theme. It's great if the books themselves provide the the overlap that allows for themes to emerge. But sometimes you have to create them yourself. And really, if it weren't for this kind of creative challenge, I'd be doing something else. I'm not sure what, because I'm too old for the NBA (and other things).

But here's the point today, quick and easy because I have books to read. I started the Dylan on a Sunday thing on a whim thinking it might be a few song lyrics for a few weeks. But its turned into something way more. The reason for the productive vein? Well, Dylan is a fascinating figure. There's plenty to comment on. But more is that I'm listening to Dylan while immersed in a life of interpretation. I'm constantly reading and thinking about things, and Dylan crosses the path of that imagination often. This is called intertextuality. Multiple texts interpreting each other, creating new meaning in the process.

Thinking about Dylan has produced blog posts on phenomenology, eschatology, apocalyptic, narrative, and love. Hmmmm, things I've also be reading about.You can't do this with everyone. Brittney Spears on a Sunday is probably a week or two max. Dylan's texts are sufficiently thick to cross literary boundaries at several places. But this is the way meaning occurs, thick description of multiple texts.

Dylan on a Sunday

I got a text from my friend, Richard Beck, the other day. "Christmas in the Heart. Spoof or on the level?" He is referring to the new Christmas cd released last week by Bob Dylan. This is not a question that would be asked of Andy Williams, or even Sting or Bono. The very idea, however, of Dylan singing Winter Wonderland is a little jarring. A Christmas album requires a certain level of melodic competence and sentimentality (namely, crooning) that aren't often associated with Dylan. I haven't yet bought the cd, but the 30 second snippets on iTunes confirm the initial impression, "jarring."

And so the question. Is Dylan dealing from the bottom of the deck here? Does he know that this is a different animal than Amy Grant's Christmas album? Is he winking at us all? Or is he playing it straight, adding his voice to the chorus of great performers who have done Christmas albums (Jim Neighbors, Motown Christmas, A Chipmunk's Christmas are some of my faves)?

Rolling Stone's reviewer detects an earnestness here and the review in the Chicago Sun-Times reminds us that the Ray Coniff singer stylings found on this album have always held a certain fascination for Dylan. They think he's on the level. But as a ministry friend of mine used to say, once you learn how to fake sincerity, ministry is a breeze.

(Contrast this with Slate's hilarious review. "Mommy, Santa's scaring me! Just in time for Halloween, Bob Dylan's Christmas album is here, its arrival harkened by the 68-year-old legend's fearsome wheeze—a sound more Beelzebub than Jolly Old Elf. Christmas in the Heart is being called a goof, the latest of Dylan's many efforts to épater la bourgeoisie, confound his worshipful fans and exegetes, and generally mess with people's heads.").

This question is not just a question to ask about Dylan's Christmas album. It's a question that blankets his entire career (which was my response to Richard's text). For some, Dylan has always been a fraud (Robert Zimmerman), inventing himself (telling stories about crossing the country with hobos in box cars) in calculating and outrageous ways to make sure that everyone is looking at him. Others take Dylan's poses as the necessary invention to go along with out-of-the-ordinary gifts. This, it seems to me, matches Dylan's own public statements. Listening to his radio in Hibbing, MN, he felt born to the wrong family, that he belonged to a life other than the one he had inherited from his parents. But even in those statements, there's enough of a combination of earnestness and mischievousness that you're just not sure.

Dylan reminds me of the story, Big Fish, where the Father has told such outrageous stories about himself that all of us are convinced he's putting us on. Turns out in the end, however, that while there were massive embellishments, the stories carried the truth of his life in ways that more straightforward accounts simply couldn't. It's not just that Dylan has lived into the stories that he has told so that they are now true in that they accurately deliver him to us (though I think this is certainly the case). It's that they are connected in some way to a core that is really Dylan. They are ultimately believable, even in their clearly fictional elements, because they share a riciprocal relationship with something irreducibly authentic. There was something in him big enough to pull this off. I'd like to think that if this weren't the case, we'd all be the wiser.

Richard chooses to accept this offering on the level (in his own words, he's sappy that way). I think its probably both. Dylan has to know this is not Bing Crosby, but he's gonna sing the Bing Crosby songs anyway. There's some mischief here and he knows we can't look away. But this is who he is and what he does. He just might pull it off, and I'm pretty sure he thinks he has.

Israel and the Scope of Salvation

It's not surprising, given our context. But precisely for that reason, because its explainable by our circumstances, the need to resist is all the stronger. It's not that we've reached some pinnacle from which to stand and judge all prior arrangements and agreements. But things have a way (the Spirit of God?) of showing themselves from time to time that are against the grain and deserve our attention for that very reason.

While this is true of many things, I have in mind here our notions of salvation. I have been bushwhacking at this for awhile now. And I've been staring at this picture long enough that every detail looks different to me now. And this new picture recommends itself at the level of fit (the pieces hang together in a more inclusive manner), of strong biblical attestation that brings more of Scripture into play, and it can be found in the tradition, even if at times as a dissenting or minority voice. It has the added benefit of bringing the question of God into a more satisfying relationship with human suffering. And that ain't small potatoes.

At its most basic level the shift can be said this way: salvation is about God and the renewal of all of creation. Which is to say, salvation is not about the eternal status of my skinny backside. This is not to say that there is no benefit to the individual within the scope of God's work on behalf of all creation. There is enormous benefit, including forgiveness of sin and eternal life. But this is one piece of a much larger picture that has God at its center.

The reach of this shift is enormous. I have written about many of the aspects from time to time here. It changes how we view God's engagement with the world, how we define gospel, understand eschatology, interpret the death of Jesus, and learn to recognize the Spirit of God. That's a big enchilada.

Equally as impressive as the magnitude of this shift is the stubbornness of the old perspective, the one that equates salvation with my personal destiny without remainder. And I have been searching for therapies, ways of interrupting this imagination long enough for something new to take root. Which means, I am constantly bracketing aspects of this phenomena so that it can appear in its force and complexity. And today I had another little aha moment.

I am reading NT Wright's book, Justification. Wright certainly is sponsor of my interests along these lines. And Justification, is a response to John Piper's push back against the "new" directions being charted in Pauline studies. Central to Wright's reading of Paul is the relationship between Jesus and Israel. Jesus is not God's plan B when the Israel thing didn't pan out. Jesus is the representative Israelite, the Israelite who fulfills Israel's calling in the world.

Now this is important for all kinds of reasons (not least of which is that it makes Romans 9-11 the high point of Paul's theological argument in Romans, not an embarrassing parenthesis). But at a far more fundamental level, it keeps Israel as an indispensable part of the story of salvation. Let me explain why this is significant.

I read a paper at a conference a few years ago arguing for an approach to theology that took the rich variety of biblical perspectives as its methodological starting place. I was challenged by an evangelical scholar who wanted to collapse all biblical narratives under an overarching scheme, namely creation-fall-redemption. Similarly, I have had a professor the past few years who uses this three-fold scheme as shorthand for the biblical story related to salvation. I resisted at the conference and in class (though to myself in class. I was, after all, being graded) and reading Wright today confirmed my sense of resistance. And here's why (all that to say...).

This three step shorthand cuts too easily from the Fall to Jesus. From this perspective, the problem is too easily summarized in individualistic terms. Adam sinned. Adam needs to be saved. What is at stake is individual guilt.

In contrast, Israel's calling in the story of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is not so easily reducible to individual salvation. God chooses a people to live together a particular way of life that has as its goal the blessing of all creation. It defines salvation from the first word as social, political, and ecological, without neglecting the burden of human sin (which is certainly also social, political and ecological). They are all of one piece. Jesus is not plan B. Jesus is plan A fulfilled, in continuity with God's saving purposes in the covenant made with Israel. He is Jesus Messiah, the representative Israelite.

My professor, Pat Keifert, told me once that a person's theology is determined to a large degree in relation to the place assigned to Israel. I wonder if this is what he had in mind, at least in part. The larger point is that I think the exclusion of Israel as a necessary part of our shorthand version of the salvation story might be one of those places that both reveals and reinforces our individualistic assumptions regarding salvation. The creation-fall-redemption schema fails to adequately interrupt our a andropocentric soteriology. As NT Wright puts it, "God is not circling around us. We are circling around him." Or as my former student, Jarrod Robinson, put it, "Salvation is not so much getting God into my life, but getting us all together into God's life."

Brandi Carlile on a Sunday

The new Brandi Carlile cd came out this past week. I discovered her about four years ago when a friend sent me KINK (a Portland, OR radio station) Live cd consisting of performances done in their studios. Brandi's song was my favorite in that particular collection of songs.

I loved her last cd, The Story. I saw her in concert summer before last in St Paul at the state fair where she played some of the material that would be on her new cd. It was great, and I've been anticipating its release ever since.

This cd lives up to the anticipation. It's different than The Story in some ways. It doesn't have as much of the rocker sensibility that you have with songs like The Story or My Song (a little bit in I Have Dreams and the bridge of Before it Breaks) , two of my Brandi favorites. Not much growling on this cd. And I miss that. Some of my favorite moments in the concert in St Paul were covers of Fortunate Son and Folsom Prison Blues. Brandi can flat rock and she has the band to pull it off (she is backed primarily by twins who play guitar and bass and who are great vocalists in their own right). Not much of that on this cd. Some reviewers, in fact, have placed it in the country genre.

(Another favorite part of the concert in St Paul was when Brandi played about 10 opening verses to country standards that she grew up hearing. She can do the country thing. She knows how to slide into a note).

What this work does feature is the piercing clarity of her voice and portrayals of the tenderness of life, especially with regard to desire for the other. These two things, her voice and tenderness, go very well together. She has two qualities in her voice that make it striking. It has an edge to it. It's textured and distinctive. But it is also clear as a bell, especially as she slides into falsetto. These things don't often go together. You're either Bonnie Raitt or Sarah McLachlan, not usually both and even both in the same phrase. This gives her songs a great emotional depth in performance.

In Pride and Joy, for instance, the of resignation and loss is captured perfectly with the break at the edge of her tone: "The time of day I can't recall, the kind of thing that takes it toll... all in all it wasn't bad, all in all it wasn't good." No less moving, however, is when her voices opens up in the longing chorus. With plaintive transparency she sings, "Where are you now? do you let me down? do you make me grieve for you? do I make you proud? do you get me now? am I your pride and joy?" A perfect fit.

It's worth noting here that Rick Rubin is the producer of this cd. I buy almost any cd when I know he is the producer, regardless of the artist. (Though I have resisted the latest Neil Diamond cd). Rubin has a way of isolating the voice of the performer, finding just the right setting (usually spare) to bring out all the textures. The most vivid example of this is the multi-cd collaboration Rubin had with Johnny Cash toward the end of Cash's life. Cash's voice, wavering but proud, fills the space completely that Rubin leaves for it. And some of the same Rubin trademarks are in play here. To go back to Pride and Joy, there are piano accents that don't carry the melody but give it a certain pounding gravity. And as the second chorus reaches its climax the strings come to the fore and swell the lilting longing of the song. Pretty great.

There are several good to great songs here (love Before it Breaks, but I can't get around Caroline, performed with Elton John). The song I keep coming back to, though, is Oh Dear. It may not ultimately prove to be my favorite song on the cd, but it is the one that has grabbed my attention through the first few listens. It has a Beatles-esque quality to it, espcially in the call and response sections. The ukulele and the harmonies are perfect (thanks, twins, someone help me with their names). And the vocal is sublime. No one moves from full throat to falsetto more brilliantly than Brandi, and this song showcases that ability. "Together you and I forever... It's only you that my heart desires, only you alone can break my fall." Beautiful.

Brandi sings about the desire of love, and often of love that is just out of reach. Her voice is built for longing and this cd is a perfect fit. Another Rick Rubin cd, Jakob Dylan's most recent effort, features the lyric, "my line of work suits me fine." That's a wonderful thing to find and beautiful to behold. Fit, vocation, meaning. Brandi's line of work suits her fine.