SOUL SURMISE

Alarms and Surprises - Please!

 

In July 2002 I was with my students on the Guguletu township in Cape Town, South Africa and I was asked to say a little bit about what my group was doing there. We were building houses on townships with Habitat For Humanity but when I started to explain why we had chosen Cape Town I was left untangling an interesting spiritual conundrum. In explaining my rage at apartheid and my following of the story of those I was now worshipping with I suddenly came to realise that it had not been from Church pulpits, Conference lecterns or Christian books that had had raised my righteous anger against the institutional racism that treated these people as something less than made in the image of God. Those who had spoken into my world were for the most part not even of a Christian profession; rock musicians like Little Steven, Peter Gabriel, Tracey Chapman, Jackson Browne and even Simple Minds. Why was the two edged scalpel of Biblical prophecy that operated on my comfortable soul in the hands of rock stars and not Church leaders?

On my return home I landed into the middle of the Steve Earle controversy on news pages across the world. Earle, for those who are unaware is a critically acclaimed singer songwriter who bridges the gap between country and rock. Known as quite a hell raiser he had never quite raised hell like this. His six marriages, his cocaine habit, his jail sentence all suddenly seemed like bland mundane small town consequences compared to being accused of being a traitor of America. That is how a section of the American media responded to his album Jerusalem calling for a boycott of any radio station that played it or any record store that stocked it. Earle has been quick to defend himself as being “urgently American” in what he sees as crisis days for his country. In foreword on the CD booklet he calls himself “the loneliest man in America”, and hauntingly predicts his vilification as he points out that during the Vietnam War “it was suggested by some that second guessing our leaders in a time of crisis was unpatriotic.”

My conundrum raised its head again. It is another rock star raising the issues of the day, speaking into the very heart of our exigent. Was this not what the prophets were all about? Would Jeremiah, Isaiah, Amos and the other Old Testament Prophets have been accused of betraying their people at a time when sympathy was needed? Would they have ever felt like the loneliest men in the land? Would they have been accused of being unpatriotic for second guessing the King or Queen? Would they have held to the belief that rather than being traitors they were “urgently Jewish?”

FW De Klerk the former President of South Africa came and spoke to our students just days after that Church service in Guguletu. History will show De Klerk to have been one of the most courageous leaders of the twentieth century, the man who freed Nelson Mandela and put him on the path from Robben Island jail to becoming his successor as President. Yet he was despised by many of his own people as a traitor, sacrificing his place in power to bring justice, by unravelling the oppressive regime that members of his own family had been involved in laying down. He spoke to our students about reconciliation and the things he had learned about peace making. The first rule in engaging with your enemy, he said, was to take a good hard look at yourself. To look down to the very bone and search out your own prejudices and put those right. The second lesson was to not delude yourself into thinking that you had done the first! These seem universal truths to any society that is seeking to live right. Indeed the prophets were men and women seeking to examine their people to the very marrow of the soul in order to put right the obvious and oftentimes oblivious wrongs at the heart of their nation.

Steve Earle might just be a prophet. For sure he cuts to the marrow. Jerusalem is the other side of the coin from, The Rising, Bruce Springsteen’s response to September 11th and a different currency entirely from Toby Keith’s “my country right or wrong” war mongering on his frighteningly successful Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue (The Angry American). Where Springsteen pastors his nation through the mourning and loss of the outrageous attack against them to bring some healing, hope and a way forward, Earle has taken to prophesying at the things below the surface of his country that caused the world’s suspicion, derision and hatred.

The fuss is over what many are calling the centre piece of the album, John Walker’s Blues, though it might be more the centre of the controversy than the musical pivot or political spine of the treatise. Those who have been provoked to almost wish Earle on to the Death Row that he has been vocally campaigned against in recent years, believe this to be a vindication of the American John Walker Lindh who turned his back on the American Dream he was born into in order to join the Taliban. It is nothing of the kind but more simply an attempt to provoke some insight into the sins of America that could have caused him to seek salvation in such a violent anti American train of Islam. Of course there is nothing simple about that but questions that need to be asked of a nation that seems to see herself as some righteous, infallible paragon of virtue that is judge and jury of all that is right and civilised in the world today. Delusions of spiritual grandeur in the midst of such a division between rich and poor and lack of care for the marginalized and desire for all things hedonistic and materialist was exactly the kind of thing that the prophets were raised up to rage against.

And Earle rages! The first words are spoken with an ominous apocalyptic growl of a whisper – “ashes to ashes” – before Earle warns that “nobody lives forever” and rips open the sensitive wounds of America with “every tower ever built tumbles” in a song that reminds us of the temporary nature of our place in the grand scheme of history. But it is bloody and gory and raging against man’s inhumanity to man and exposes how even more horrific it is when it is fired by “God on our side” arrogance.

From a rebuke of foreign policy we move to Amerika v.6.0 (The Best That We Can Do), an attack on home policies that leaves the rich more equal than others and democracy being about keeping the poor outside the gates of the country club, “I realise that ain’t exactly democracy/But it’s either them or us/and it’s the best that we can do.” It was written for the movie John Q where a man takes an Emergency Ward hostage to try and get his son the medical care that in a democracy can only be given to those who have the right insurance package. It was removed from the film because in the light of September 11th it was seen to be too insensitive in its criticism of George W. Maybe that in itself tripped a switch in Earle to be even less compromising than ever before.

This seems to be the actual centre piece of the record. It was the first song written and it is the song that mentions the Constitution that Earle surmises to be the only hope left in an America and in that foreword he demands “Fierce vigilance against the erosion of its proven principles.” The lyrics of Amerika v 6.0 could be straight from Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase of Amos or Isaiah. It rants against a nation where there has come too big a chasm between the rich and the poor and the sarcasm of the shrug of “the best that we can do” needs a response and quickly if the whole thing is not going to fall apart.

What Earle did on Jerusalem is what De Klerk demands and what we often pray from Psalm 139 verses 23 and 24, “Search me, Oh God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me, in the way everlasting.” He and other musicians have been making incisions through the pain to get to the diseased heart itself. Where most of today’s pop music is a palliate, dulling the pain or giving some hedonistic running on the spot relief, the need is to reach into the wounds that a healing might begin.

Don Henley of The Eagles, whose Greatest Hits 1971-75 is America’s biggest selling rock album of all time has moved away from the fist fighting drug fuelled haze that The Eagles were famous for become a prophetic voice against many things maybe most particular commerce and industry. On his most recent album Inside Job he rages against the “captains of industry/and their tools on the hill/They’re killing everything divine/What will I tell this child of mine.” Not only is he anxious to reveal the sins of the production line but the market place is also leading us into temptations that we could find it hard top be delivered from. Working It is specifically about the commercial lies and deception of the music industry but has more universal application. He introduced it on VH1 Storytellers by saying, “This is a song about corporate America…It’s about the marketplace, salesmanship, the lengths we will go…” The song tells us that “packaging is all that heaven is” before throwing over the tables in the temple of business, “We’ve got a whole new class of opiates/To blunt the stench of discontent/In these corporate nation-states/Where the loudest live to trample on the least/they say it is just the predatory nature of the beast.” It is strong stuff and filled with the passionate spirit and very same themes of the prophets and echoes the obsession of Jesus about how we treat the least.

Henley’s west coast neighbour and erstwhile songwriting partner, Jackson Browne is probably the archetypal rock prophet. Indeed when like Earle, Browne raged against America’s involvement in central America during the eighties he fell down quite a few rungs of the rock ladder, having perched himself almost at the top of it at the end of the seventies. On his 1996 album Looking East he too looked across the American horizon. The album title and lead off track were about him standing on the beaches of California with his back to the Pacific and asking the big questions about what was going on across the continent “Where the search for the truth is conducted by a wink and a nod/And where power and position are equated with the grace of God/These times are famine for the soul while for the senses it’s a feast/From the edge of my country, as far as you can see, looking east.” One of his conclusions “in the deepening night” is that there is “a God sized hunger underneath the laughing and the rage.”

These rock prophets are ploughing up the dirt across the nation and what they are turning up is spiritual bankruptcy. There is a great spiritual challenge in the work of such artists and lest we are stupid enough to think they are singing about American issues we need to realise that their baseball cap not only fits, it is very snug.

Like I found in the Cape Town pulpit last summer Earle, Browne and Henley and others like them have been those who have given my discipleship its vitality in recent years. They have inspired me to follow Jesus radical agenda about “thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done one earth as it is in heaven” more than sermons or most Christian books. The conundrum is then back in the forefront of the mind. Why is it that rock stars draw comparisons to the Old Testament prophets and not a modern Church that goes on and on about the prophetic? Maybe never before in the history of the Church has so much emphasis been put on prophetic words and visions. The faithful in the growing charismatic movement go forward in weekly ritual to have supposedly gifted men give the direct line from heaven and yet the music coming out of such places is usually little short of sentimental self indulgent clichés about how God blesses us rather than the strong words that prophets were really made of.

Of course the Psalms are as much a part of the Old Testament as the Prophetic books and of course there should be worship music coming out of the Church but the conundrum is querying the balance, especially in a Church so anxious to take the moniker “prophetic.” Could it be that we go to Church for the palliate of the gentle melodies of our new worship movement or the celebratory rocked up pioneering versions. Where are the Ezekiels, and Isaiahs who are searching us to the very bone? Of course there are Christians very much involved in environmental issues and Christian Aid and Tear Fund raise the issues and help us act against all kinds of injustices. Bono has been raging across the world and even there he is still treated with suspicion among believers. Can we really say though, and maybe we can, that our leaders, in general are speaking with the cutting thrust of these rock musicians who as far as I am aware have no profession of faith in Christ. Could it be that they are saying things that we need to engage with and more importantly are they saying things where we are sinfully silent?

Let us draw to conclusion by looking at two newer artists, both of whom happen to be British. As we think of the palliate dulling the pain and missing the actual illness, David Gray’s Let The Truth Sting from his criminally neglected debut album Centuries End leads us onward. Gray does to late twentieth century Britain what Earle, Henley and Browne do to America. He looks across what he calls the land and gives diagnosis. The conclusion of this most literate of songs is that “into lies, ruin, disease/Into wounds like these/ Let the Truth sting.” Is that not our calling? In the church we worship in should we not be those who are urgently Christian, shaking up the status quo no matter what the reaction so long as we search our institutions down to the bone.

Should we not be urgently British gazing from coast to coast asking questions about those in power whether in politics, business, media or indeed Church and asking if their actions are accountable, if the results are those that God demanded in Amos when he said “Hate evil and love good, work it out in the public square.” In Birds another song off Century’s end, Gray irritates the soul again “And these are just thoughts/For lack lustre times/I’ve no interest/ In the excuses you can find/ Like you’ve had a hard day/And you’re too tired to care.” He describes society but as a Church member I apply it even closer to home, “A hollow people bound by a lack/Of imagination and too much looking back/Without the courage to give a new thing a chance/Grounded by this ignorance…and the cat comes and we are birds without wings.” Oh my goodness, preach it David, preach it!

On their much acclaimed Ok Computer album Radiohead speak for the busy and comfortable third millennium human with “a heart that’s full like a landfill,” who is happy “to take the quite life, a handshake, some carbon monoxide and no alarms and no surprises.” In the end a pretty house and a pretty garden and no alarms or surprises is the desire of the day. Never the hypocrites the Oxford band followed the success of OK Computer, that put them close to the “best band on the planet” label by setting off the loudest alarms and turning surprise to shock as they released an album of musical disjointed impressionistic avant garde that would on its very existence ask questions of the pop world’s attitude to product and charts and fame and art.

It asks questions of the Church too. Is the Church, even the pseudo lively and passionate wing of it, creating a safe place, a comfortable hotel-like Church where you can go outside like a tourist with a camera and be fascinated by what you see but can ultimately return to your room where everything will be laid out for you and you can simply relax and be blessed by a prophetic word or nice new worship song. Lies Damned Lies sing about “having eyes to see and ears to hear/What do you hear?” And I guess where do we hear? Let us keep our ears open in the most unlikely of places. Let us listen for alarms and surprises. Please!

Imagine no Imagination

 

“A hollow people,
Bound by a lack
Of imagination
And to much looking back
Without the courage
To give a new thing a chance
Grounded by this ignorance…”

I was convinced for a long time that David Gray’s Birds Without Wings was about the Church and that growing up in Wales he’s been sent off to some Presbyterian Chapel much the same as those where I minister in, in Northern Ireland. The words seemed to fit too easily, too perfectly. If I had the ability I could have written them myself. Now that Gray is a household name his past much more openly exposed, there seems no evidence that Church was the target of his prophetically barbed rhyme throughout his debut album Century’s End. I suppose the encouragement for us within the Church is that we are no worse than the society in general that Gray describes as being birds without wings with the cat coming to pounce. We are just a mirror image…

And yet that in itself is an indictment. The Church was never meant to be a mirror image and should be appalled at such a description. If the Church is the people and Kingdom of God that Jesus came to point to and die in order to release the possibility of then to be a mirror of society is not an acceptable accusation.

There is a word in Gray’s song that might point to clues as to why the Church has lowered her standards, expectations and possibilities; imagination; or a lack of it to be precise. If it is true that without a vision the people perish then it must be said that imagination is the engine room of vision. In a Church where the arts have been all but banished in preference for the confining straight lines scientific of precise definitions, decline can be diagnosed back to here. It is almost like the body being starved of her oxygen. Only in the centre of imagining can a new world be envisaged, can change by fired, can hope be born, can vision not only prevent the perishing but pump the blood around the heart of a world to bring God’s will on earth as it is in heaven.

Imagination begins with God. In the beginning God imagined. Blue, red, green. Blue sky. Red at night. Green valleys underneath that blue sky. Shapes and textures and movement and dance. Mountains and stars and beaches of sand. Gemsbok skipping, birds in flocks throwing shapes over the city bridges at twilight and humans touching lips and hearts. All imagined and then…then created.

The entire relationship between God and humanity has been about firing that imagination, giving a vision of how people could live; a dream of how society could be. The law would put in place a visionary pattern of how a society in a land promised could be better than what slavery had been in Egypt. The prophets continued to dream and rant about it. Isaiah imagined a lion and lamb lying down together! Micah imagined swords turned into ploughshares! Jeremiah imagined a brand new covenant and Ezekiel imagined a new shepherd king who would do justice.

God told his people that “young men would see visions and old men would dream dreams.” It is crucial to the whole deal. Sadly the Phariseeism of modernity sent the life of faith up blind alleys of dreamlessness. Indeed imagination and art became something to be suspicious of and even to despise. Not that it was quenched. It was just reversed. Imagination was turned negative and stories were made up to dismiss anyone who painted even vaguely outside the lines. The devil hijacked imagination and indeed not only took it out of commission so that indeed the people perished but twisted it to make the perishing even more torturous.

Old Testament theologian Walter Breuggemann has been trying to get the imagination back into Christian thinking for sometime. His books Hopeful Imagination and Prophetic Imagination have made Old Testament theology exciting as well as showing so articulately how high on the Biblical agenda imagination sits. He writes, “Jesus’ way of teaching through parables was such a pastoral act of prophetic imagination in which he invited his community of listeners out beyond the visible realities of Roman law and the ways in which Jewish law had grown restrictive in his time.”

Writing about Isaiah he shows how the prophet inspires the people with his poetic utterances to believe that another way is possible. He sparks their imagination to have faith in another day. He says, “The practice of such poetic imagination is the most subversive, redemptive act that a leader of a faith community can undertake in the midst of exiles. This work of poetic alternative in the long run is more crucial than one-on-one pastoral care or the careful implementation of institutional goals. That is because the work of poetic imagination holds the potential of unleashing a community of power and action that finally will not be contained by any imperial restrictions and definitions of reality.”

In American rock magazine Rolling Stones’ end of the year issue in 2001 David Fricke did an interesting and thorough study on John Lennon’s most famous song Imagine. And the themes of the ex Beatle’s song echo Brueggemann’s slant on the poetry of the prophets. Lennon’s classic peace anthem has been used in some pastoral way by America in responding to the shock and mourning of September 11th. Neil Young sang it at the Telethon for the heroes, Tori Amos sang it on the radio and the song like so many others took on a new meaning and responsibility.

Fricke speaks to a few rock stars about what the songs means for them politically speaking. Yoko Ono in some cerebral new age naivism suggests that her husband was not actually talking about action but literally changing the world by imagining, “Imagining, visualising – this is a powerful way of creating the future. It’s very gentle but also extremely basic. There is an incredible power to that.” Bono is a lot less in the clouds and feet on the ground. He is wrapped up in Yoko’s imagining for sure but then points to his favourite thing about Imagine revealing that what sets it apart for him “is the Buddhist core of the song, the idea that imagination precedes action, that you have to imagine something before you make it true.”

As a new year begins in Northern Ireland and again we have violence on the streets. As we see the place where the angels sang of peace on earth and see blood being spilled at will. As we wonder where the world will go post September 11, 2001. As the Church in the west hits the crisis of diminishing interest and impression in the wider world. As I seek to be a better father than I have been until now. What needs lit is the spark of imagining. Imagining a different world. Imagining a Kingdom where the last person becomes the most important, where we treat the tramp on the street like he was Jesus himself, where the poor are blessed, where the mourn rejoice, where there is dignity and love and a place of belonging for all.

It starts in the life of Jesus, the world that his life inspired us to live, that his death and resurrection won us the ability to make it a reality. It will be headed towards only as the engine of imagination fires. It has to be then constantly suggested to us in sermons and in lives and in songs and art like those of the prophets and that of John Lennon. God give us the art of imagination and may that imagination sustained through the arts become masterpieces of living to keep us keeping on in faith and hope and love. Then the birds will open their wings and fly. No fear of cats.

NO ART... NO GRACE

Without art there can be no grace! It is a bold statement but one that I am hoping to untangle over the next period of time; a statement that I believe has a great deal of truth. My theory comes from a new perspective on art as a result of studies I am taking added to a new perspective on the energy and enormity of grace. I guess Bono has had a part to play in all of this thinking though I have to add that it has been Bono the theologian more than Bono the artist that has had the most input. For some twenty years I have always apologized for quoting U2 and indeed some of my sermons have been criticized for quoting more rock stars than theologians. However, this Christmas I suddenly became aware that most of what I quote Bono saying is actually not pop interview soundbites but deep theology. Among his many personas he is also a theologian. He is well thought through and thinking it through from an artist’s context adds to the energy and impact of his theological utterances.

So let us start with some Bono theology. In his song Grace from the All That You Can’t Leave Behind album come the words, “a name for a girl and a thought that can change the world.” I agreed on both counts and so convinced was I on the latter that we used the former for the name of my daughter Jasmine Grace Stockman. It was when Bono then said that this was the song on the album that most reflected his work on the Jubilee 2000’s campaign to rid the world of Third World debt that I began to doubt the man’s utterances. This was a straight song of the doctrine of grace. It had nothing to do with debt or justice issues. Or so I thought. I have since come to realize that Bono was working on a whole bigger conception and impact of this thought that can change the world; he literally believes “change the world.”

In his Michka Assayas’s book Bono on Bono, Bono elaborates on all kinds of theological positions and influences and where he is most effective is his theology of grace. As in the song he speaks about grace as an alternative to karma. With karma, he goes on, you reap what you sow but with grace there is an interruption to the “sow – reap” cycle where we no longer receive what we deserve. He also speaks about the cross of Christ and how it is intrinsically linked to this forgiveness process.

The challenge then is whether we live by karma or grace. Bono often uses the phrase “interruption of grace.” This is the poet and the theologian coming up with a phrase that has so much power. Bono speaks about how grace interrupts South African apartheid with a new start in democracy. Karma would have escalated the situation but grace makes a clean sheet and allows a rebirth. Suddenly I was getting his drift about that grace that can change the world. If we in Northern Ireland go to our next election and ask ourselves whether we are voting for those who base their policies on the interruption of grace or karma how would that change our vote. If we start to live by grace we interrupt the cycle of karma and so change the world.

Opening grace up to its full potential is vital. For many from my evangelical tradition grace has been limited to a ticket to heaven. It is a doctrinal definition that once recited gets you “saved”. There it is often left languishing around the foot of Christ’s cross, making no impact in the life of the individual or society. Grace is so much more than a ticket to heaven. Indeed it is hard to see it as the dynamic of grace that the Bible speaks about at all if it is confined to this selfish goal. Grace is not a cold creedal confession but the energy that interrupts our lives with an alternative way to live. From living for our own selfish ends we follow Christ into a self denial that serves society instead of expecting society to serve us. Grace is an energy driven by the Holy Spirit to turn our lives around in a lifelong repentance. It is living and powerfully transformative. As the hymn about how amazing it is says, “Grace has brought me safe this far and grace will lead me home.” It has an impact on our past, on our present on our future.

We therefore come to realize that this grace is not only the ticket in, and the energy when we get in, but the very life of the Kingdom itself. It is not the help we need to live the principles of the Kingdom; it is the Kingdom. When we look in the mirror in the morning we should see grace staring back at us in how we see ourselves, not in the karma of being affirmed for how beautiful we are, but in the eyes of a God who loves us as we are. As we relate to friends or strangers we do not treat them according to what they give to us or what they have achieved in themselves that makes them deserving of our attention but by grace. When we find ourselves in conflict scenarios we don’t continue a karma driven dominated stand off but seek grace to interrupt. When it comes to social justice issues like Bono’s debt relief campaign or in HIV/AIDS advocacy or encouraging Fair Trade or environmental action we do it not because those we will struggle for deserve it but because grace is our driving force to serve rather than be served.

Which brings us back to the importance of art in the scheme of things; for grace to interrupt we need imagination and creativity. We need to conjure that alternative way to do things. It is why, I believe, God promised that we would dream dreams and see visions. It is why we believe that without a vision the people perish. Walter Brueggeman put it succinctly in his book Prophetic Imagination when he wrote, “The task of the prophetic ministry is to nurture, nourish, and evoke a consciousness and perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the dominant culture around us.”  The prophets were indeed artists who imagined. The danger is that when we relegate the arts to the fringes we limit the possibility of prophets rising up to save us from the way things are.

From this hypothesis there are a few things to consider. One of my recurrent thoughts has been that the Catholic community in Northern Ireland is more artistic than the Protestant community. I confess that this is a generalization, but the theological ideas of the Reformation emptied Churches of art and the theology married to modernity squeezed out mystery. Taking our students on a trip up the Shankill Road (Protestant) and down the Falls Road (Catholic) one of the contrasts they articulated was the memorial gardens for those murdered in the troubles. On the Shankill these were very stark with only names and Bible verses. On the Falls they were ornate and lavish. Neither of the paramilitary groups erecting such memorials to their volunteers would be Church going or theologically astute but the theology drips down through history.

With this in mind could this be why the Catholic community seems more able to deal with the new dispensation of power sharing. Their souls are more artistic and therefore they have a fitter imagination to conjure new ideas and the alternative of how it can be as opposed to how it was. Theology still dominates the Protestant psyche and, with its scientific roots, this leaves little room to dream but a strong tendency for the status quo. My photographer friend Gordon challenged me on this, stating that not everyone goes to art galleries or concerts like we do. Yet, my theory is not limited to those who engage on the coal face of art whether artists or aficionados. If art is held in high esteem in a community then the consensus of the community will be affected.

Of course something else is at play in the Northern Ireland situation. Could it not be that Catholics are able to dream and readjust because they are the ones who are gaining rather than losing? Is it not easier to imagine an alternative if you are the beneficiary? Yes, is the simple answer and that leads to another observation on art and transformation. Is there is a tendency that artists are looked on suspiciously by those who have a vested interest in the status quo? We can see this having happened with Gospel and blues coming out of the civil rights movement where the black slaves empowered their liberation with songs. Art in South Africa was energized by black artists needing to overthrow the injustices of apartheid. In Northern Ireland the oppressed nationalist community through artists likes Christy Moore. The Wolftones or even, the punk pop stars, The Undertones sang about their struggle and the dominant unionist community’s musicians like Van Morrison, Stiff Little Fingers or Ash never stood up for the union with Britain. Where artists did engage on the Protestant side they were usually haranguing their side and ended up outlawed and maybe even in physical danger. O course, I understand that there are some generalizations here but I think there is a robust enough argument too.

When we are locked into the malaise of our culture whether it is materialism, racism, sectarianism, environmental catastrophe or war then grace comes alive in alternative possibilities. Grace is more valued with those who need its interruption but when grace interrupts those who receive its benefits should be those who are turned upside down to start using it, not or their own selfish ends but, for the good of others; it is the fruit of grace’s interruption. For followers of Christ who aim to bring God’s Kingdom on earth as it is in heaven, the respect that they give art in their community will deem whether they make any impression in interrupting how it is on earth to conjure how it is going to be in heaven. Grace is a thought that can change the world but it is also an imaginative engine to propel the change. Demean the artist at the cost of the Kingdom.

Wishing Bruce Cockburn was Here

More an array of thoughts on Bruce Cockburn, mystery and faith than a traditional album review, Stocki listens to Life's Short, Call Now in the scenic beauty of Cape Town...

I found myself in Cape Town gazing from my apartment across to The Lions Head, companion to the magnificent Table Mountain. When it comes to sunsets though The Lions Head beats it’s more prestigious buddy with swathes, swirls and washes of colour drifting around it at the end of daylight. It’s a mystical vision of God at his easel throwing us humans another sweet surprise of beauty. Anyway, as I sat there I sought a soundtrack, a help in my untangling of the mystery and wonder; something to make sense of it but to aid the mortal mind to describe it. What music? Who?

Which is how I found myself rediscovering the masterpiece that is Dancing By The Dragon’s Jaw by Bruce Cockburn. This was my introduction to the Canadian Christian mystic way back in 1981 Magdala Street where Queens University Medics had a house that had their alarm clock wired up to a magnificent stereo system and Alan McIlroy was going about his efforts to convert me to guitar genius of Mr Cockburn. Eventually I was won over by the lyrical splendor of his poetry. Here I was nearly 25 years later rediscovering it. Every song seemed to be gazing at the same scene as me. The finger dancing melodies running across the fret board of my soul evoking the awe. The poetry perfectly giving my brain words to latch onto in some hopefulness of explanation. And it was every song. How I’d forgotten songs that had once been every day meditations; Creation Dream, Hills Of Morning, After The Rain, No Footprints and the best known Wondering Where The Lions Are. It was the best kind of spiritual moment.

It was literally a coincidence that my wife had just brought me the promo of Cockburn’s new album when she joined me in Cape Town; a beautiful surprise, indeed. And more beautiful the surprise was that there were echoes of Dancing in the Dragons Jaw in the acoustic sound. Cockburn can make an acoustic guitar jig and reel, infuse it with life and the spirit of something beyond. His last allbum You've Never Seen Everything suffered from being a little over burdened in its production. Life Short, Call Now is not sparse making good use of brass and strings but it allows Cockburn to do what he does best, giving room for the depth of his lyrics to breathe around the bounce of his fluid jazz influenced playing.

Of course after the mystical landscape, horizons and skies of the seventies Cockburn started to look at what lived in the shadow of the mountains in the eighties. From the Creation Dream of God he turned to the Destruction Nightmares of Humans. On Life’s Short, Call Now both these themes live, side by side. When it comes to human nightmares Cockburn has looked down the barrel of American guns for decades and a war in Iraq was hardly likely to go without comment. His work has been informed by many fact finding missions to Central America, Mozambique and Nepal among other places. So, his recent trip was to Baghdad and so George Dubya is asked to stop “projecting his shit at the world” in Tell The Universe. This Is Baghdad that follows is one of those descriptive pieces of place and event that only Cockburn can pull of with such detail and feeling. I was thinking a little bit more of this skill as I tried in vain to capture in detail the impoverishment of townships.

Throughout these songs of political warfare, economic injustice and materialist obsession, there are echoes of transcendence and the questions are always addressed to the soul. Love and mystery bring light through the cracks and hopefulness of another world tomorrow keeps the guitar dancing and the poetry full of mysterious something-other. The last words on the album on the song To Fit In My Heart, before the third instrumental track, are a case in point, “Spacetime strings bend/World without end/God’s too big to fit in a book/Nothing’s too big to fit in my heart.”

Or on the slow burn blues of Mystery he is seeing snow lying on the junkyard lit by moonlight to point to something beyond our world and deep inside his soul. He is arguing with the cynic who tells him there is no mystery that it is overflows his cup. It is close to how I feel as I spend my evenings gazing at the wonder of the Creation Dream of The Lions Head and pondering the Destruction Nightmare of Humans on the streets of townships where people are dying of HIV/AIDS, oppressed ‘neath the injustice of my wealth and living in hardboard and cardboard. I’m deep in the mixed themes of Cockburn and wishing he was here to make my confused cocktail of emotions rhyme. And as if on queue the song concludes, “So all you stumblers who believe love rules/Believe love rules/Believe love rules/Come all you stumblers who believe love rules/Stand up and let it shine/Stand up and let it shine.”

LIES DAMNED LIES - LIVING ROOM TOUR IN BELFAST

My word, this was a musical treat. Over the past year Scottish three piece Lies Damned Lies have been doing Living Room gigs all over England and Scotland. The idea is simple, you book them for your Living room and then they invite in friends and charge £10 each. The neighbours and friends bring their own bottle and with 25 people crammed in these guys play the most exquisite music imaginable without mics and PA. Yes, they compromise with a small speaker for the electric guitar parts and keyboard but it is quiet, chamber music as they have come to call it. Last night they came to Ireland and played in our front room! Flip!

Now this idea will not work for everyone. But for Lies Damned Lies it is a near perfect environment. Dot Reid’s textured piano, warm and spacious, gives a canvas for guitarist Charlie Irvine to splash sounds with intricate precision and Steve Butler’s strong vulnerable voice is so close in such confines to literally touch you. When they harmonize it is like a burst of colour or melody lifting you to a gentle wonder. Everything is for a purpose and done with a scientific calculation but it comes across as seamless and smooth and wonderfully literate in classy music ways.

Lies Damned Lies have never been known for their cheery songs. They very much come from a Leonard Cohen school of subject matter but neither can it be said that they are nihilistic. To listen to the oldest song on tonight’s set list, Heavenly Train and hear an Episcopalian priest as singer Steve Butler is ask what the Church has to do with him would suggest an atheist disposition but no, the chorus declares, “Like a child who rides on a heavenly train/I laugh at the night and I sing in the rain.” Though all their album’s recorded on their own Sticky Label got a song on the list tonight it was their most recent album After Virtue that took up the most of the night. One of those songs I’d Make It Up includes another indicator of this band’s mindset, “I live in a city/But I am drawn to the wild/These are the things I’ve reconciled/My heart’s in heaven/But my soul is here/ this is the life- these are the years.”

In the casual conversational front room chatter between songs Butler gives a few clues to the songs and you find his father-in-laws death and a book by Jewish diarist Etty Hillesum as deeply influential. Glorious Land uses the latter’s work extensively and it is a remarkable story of finding little colourful patches of grace in a horrifically unjust existence. Other highlights tonight are Human Dress’s Divine Image and two folk revival songs, one Bob Dylan’s Boots Of Spanish Leather and then their own We All Have Troubles Of Our Own. On these three the harmonies really burst through, Dot doing a great Joan Baez on Spanish Leather and a sound like Crosby, Stills and Mitchell (!!!) on Troubles Of Our Own. There’s a maturity to the playing and the content of songs that brings an honesty, blessed honesty to what these guys are doing. Songs of parting and struggle underpinned with a near irrational belief “points to the conclusion” of their encore, “that we are loved.” Those looking for soul surmising rather than sermonising will find much to think about here. The chorus of In A Different Voice is a lyric that comes as close to defining a generation as anything Dylan ever concocted, “I tell you what’s true/You say how you feel/I tell you what’s fair/You say what you need.” Goodness me!

When artists are interviewed by my dear friend Ken Hefner at Calvin College he always asks the artists what they would like the audience to bring to the performance? Tonight’s audience were not asked but I can’t imagine Reid, Irvine and Butler wanting much more than they got. Thirty people really listening with the ability to discern the brilliance can transform a concert and tonight there was a sense of engagement between artist and audience that was refreshing.

It is hard to express the wonder of this type chamber music experiment. It takes confidence to be so vulnerable as to be this close to your audience and go without mics. Lies Damned Lies are made for it. If you weren’t there don’t try to imagine it just phone them and have them do it in your front room. A night of gentle beauty like being a child again, riding a heavenly train, laughing…