2009: A Good Year for music

My Best of 2009…so far



We are coming on the end of the 2000s. It seems like just yesterday we were fretting over the world being overcome by the Y2K computer glitch, who knew what we really had to fear was that the computers would keep working and someone would invent Facebook. In honor of the closing of this fine decade (have we decided yet what to call it, the aughts?, that just doesn’t sound right) Pitchfork has begun counting down its top 200 albums of the 2000s. They will be counting down all week, today was 200-151. Personally, I’m already outraged due to the fact that Okkervil River’s Black Sheep Boy was listed at 174…it easily should have been 165. I’m kidding, of course, it easily should have been in the top 20.
I really like lists. I find it odd how often I will click on a link to a story that has something to do with ranking something or other. Today it was ‘The Top 5 Overpaid CEOs’- I don’t care that the CEO of Abercrombie is overpaid, nor should I trust they guy making the list to determine whether or not the Abercrombie CEO even warrants being on the list- but I clicked on it, because it was a list. I don’t know why I do that. Same reason that I like award shows I guess, I even like award shows for stuff I don’t even like. I like to know who won a Tony, but I don’t really care much for musicals. Maybe lists bring some order and sanity to my otherwise chaotic life.
To commemorate my affection for lists, here is an early preview of my best albums of 2009, so far. There are a couple of releases coming up that could certainly make a run, but for now, I suggest that you check out these albums:
Phoenix- Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix (probably my album of the year)
The Antlers- Hospice
We Were Promised Jetpacks- These Four Walls
The Rural Alberta Advantage- Hometowns
Various Artists- Dark Was the Night (odd to have a compilation on the list, but this was outstanding)
Passion Pit- Manners
Animal Collective- Merriweather Post Pavillion
The Decemberists- The Hazards of Love
Grizzly Bear- Veckatimest
-Brian

What is the Good Life?

To love and to be loved in Him is to experience the good life. Is this what Jesus is saying to us by His way of identifying and relating to neighbors?

Jesus sets before us His love for children, the sick, the widow, and the poor. He dignifies and heals the sexually damaged, and the mentally broken. He lovingly cares for and wisely disrupts His enemies; those who bully. His love for the Samaritans, His call to all nations, and His humorous choice of a staunch Jewish man to become an advocate for the Gentiles, names our racial and ethnic bigotries and invites us to a neighborliness that crosses our fears of color and cultural identity.

By doing so, is Jesus suggesting that to be poor or sick, broken or misunderstood does not disqualify one from a good life? For these, love exists. For these, love doesn't quit.

Or is Jesus offering a mirror to the rich, the healthy, the whole and the privileged? Is he saying to the adult, remember you too were once a child whom any adult could overpower in arm wrestling. You too remember the pain of loveless power moves, manipulative words, or neglectful actions. Will you treat children the same way you were treated with some kind of "it's my turn now" mentality? Or will you have learned something from what was missing of love and seek to mend this breach for another?

Or is it simply that our pride of health is challenged by Jesus' love for those whose bodies are broken? Is it that our pride of intellect is humbled by the healing attention that Jesus pays to the mentally cracked. Our is it that our pride of wealth is exposed by Jesus' gift of time, food and presence to the poor?

What if Jesus is simply reminding us that we will not always have money? Health will not always patron our bodies. Soundness will not always enjoy its stay in our brains. And then what?

Can the good life be had when money, health and power are gone? Will it only arrive when making contests and giving trophies on the basis of one's color, culture or competence have ceased?

What if amid the chants of "we're number one, we're number one" that bellow and clank in the world, there is an ordinary moment on a mundane street, in which one neighbor brings to another a half-finished container of caramel apples from Schnuck's grocery? Then, whether rich or poor, black or white, insane or sane, whole or damaged, something of heaven is glimpsed. Love whispers presence. A good life remains possible.

Maybe according to Jesus, a good life begins by asking in Him, "Who is my neighbor?" If so, maybe through Him we can learn to set our resume on the table for a moment, walk out onto our porch, take a moment to breath a prayer, and have a look. Maybe the good life begins on our porches.

Why I love our church

If you are ambivalent about Christianity and Jesus (which I was for 26 years) you don't need to read any further. Okay, but fair warning it's about God.

I have been thinking lately about how crazy scary the world we live in is. I don't ever watch the news because it makes me cry but I overhear people talking or I switch on the radio and there is a news report or my husband Sam will ask me if I have heard about the latest horrifying incident. Before becoming a Christian I would literally shut down with fear, with hopelessness. I didn't know God so how could I have any shred of relief? It all seemed to pointless and so unbearably sad. Somehow the Lord pursued our family and I ended up nine months pregnant with our first daughter in a church and I experienced a little tiny bit of hope. I didn't even know Jesus yet but I found comfort there. I liked they way the people I met were living there lives, not without trials but with faith, with hope. Today as a parent I cling to Jesus, to heaven, to church. It's my safety in an unsafe world. Being part of a community that knows me, knows my children and cares for us is just a part of it. Knowing that God loves me and my family gives me the strength and hope to keep parenting, keep living, keep pursuing goodness even when I fail miserably. Yes, there are things I don't like about our church, sometimes the sermons are boring, I'm not a huge fan of the donut holes they have there that make my children crazy with sugar. There are mornings when the thought of getting three ornery kids into somewhat weather appropriate clothes with teeth and hair brushed seems like an overwhelming task. However, none of it matters one single little bit because I love my church more than those things, more than anything really because it keeps me grounded. It is a safe welcoming place for my family. It is where we learn more about the Lord and his love for us. It is where we go to hope.

A couple of weeks ago at church Sadie our oldest received a children's bible for graduating into the Kindergarten class. From the moment she got it she has insisted that she sleep with it and that we read it every night. When she is afraid we pray. When we see something beautiful we thank God. Yesterday Sadie told me that, "God is our father even daddy's because we are all his kids". Ruby says the same prayer every night,"Thank you for the whole family even baby Charlie in mommy's tummy, I LOVE YOU GOD!" Poppy just looks at us, she is still not talking, but any day now she is going shock us all by saying Amen! All of this we learned and experienced because of our church. So church, rain or shine, staff changes, members leaving, members joining, messy human interactions, donut holes and all, that is why I love you.

-Greta Coalier

Parenting Page: Linking Up

There is no original parenting page this week. Instead, check out the Leopard Man and the new post on our parenting blog

Optimism

My favorite band is Radiohead – yes, I am one of those...I am sorry. A song on their year 2000 release, Kid A, called “Optimistic” has been on my mind lately. The song is somewhat abrasive, consisting of a driving beat and an Eastern music influenced minor scale. You can listen to them play it live in the video above. The lyrics drip with sarcasm and the chorus states mockingly…

“You can try the best you can,
you can try the best you can.
The best you can is good enough”.

I am a man who deeply desires to do the best I can, and who is ashamed that the best I can is not enough. That is, simply, pride. I must daily take the time to pause, think, and accept that because I am fallen, because I am not perfect the best that I can do will never be enough. It won’t be enough for my wife, for my children, for my employer, for my friends, for doing the dishes, for anything, but I so desperately want it to be.
This desire can seem good or productive, and includes some earthly rewards, but it concludes the same every single time - frustration - my best is not enough. But now for the Good News. God is more than enough. Though we are incomplete he is doing a great work in us. It isn’t because we try hard, or do our best, it is because of his benevolent love for us which he has freely given.
So I confess that I am a prideful, broken, and in end not even a good man. However, God is completing me and someday, due to his perfection and sacrifice, my best will be enough.
Think of where you are broken, confess to God where you are broken, and rejoice in the fact that you are a chosen child of Him, that you are loved more deeply than you can imagine, and that one day you will be complete.

-Jason W. Wilson Esquire

Jesus and Mental Health

In his, Hunches in Bunches, Dr. Seuss describes what can happen to a mind. A mind can become, "frightfully ga-fluppted, " and "murky-mooshy." Such words for children well-describe my adult mind. Though I have known what it is to take the hand of a counselor and walk through the dark, and though I have known what it is to need medication for a season to give my thoughts a night-light in the corner, I require no disease of mind, (though many such diseases there are) or intentional amnesia through the abuse of some deceptive substance of addiction to feel that my mind is often broken. I am at times genuinely confused or frustratingly forgetful. I know what it is to have mistaken thoughts about this or that. The capacity to willfully rationalize my way into what eventually harmed me sources my regrets. "What was I thinking?" often describes the motto that fills my sighs and accompanies a shaking of my head while I look somber down in painful memory; and all of this before age has set in.

Perhaps my acquaintance with being "frightfully ga-fluppted" fuels my kindred feeling for the mentally tormented man whom Jesus ransomed from demons, restored peace, and recovered him "clothed and in his right mind." (Luke 8:35). His condition was ugly and demonic. Shackles, violence and solitary confinement formed the only help he had ever received.

It does not surprise me that torment was what the man expected from Jesus (Lk. 7:28). Ugliness gone normal has a way of suffocating hope even when God Himself enters our story. What does surprise me is how one can learn to hate beauty when routines and habits have been settled in the norms of ugliness. When Jesus sets this man in his right mind, people fear rather than celebrate. Healing, beauty, and goodness arouse resistance not gratitude. The broken minded want Jesus to leave not because He will harm them, but precisely because He can heal them (Lk. 8:37). Sometimes the most frightful thing facing a person is the prospect of their healing.

The broken-minded have our wires crossed, don't we? We welcome those patterns of thought, feeling and action which have always harmed us. But when healing pops the question, we refuse the ring. To heal means change. Change requires leaving the known and entering the unknown. Sometimes prisons feel like home. The community in this passage choose to remain safe and harmed. But the man? "Snowflakes kiss the scabs between his filthy rags." In his right mind, Jesus sends him home. The man goes to an old place in a new way. The man returns to those who hated him, mocked him or feared him. He returns to those who saw him naked, bruised and shrieking. The discomfort of health pursues them. Now that his mind is mending, their jokes will have to change. Are they willing?

Voting and Healthcare

Last Night I was talking to my mom and she called Barack Obama a socialist. We proceeded to attempt to discuss some of his policies and why it may or may not be helpful to label the president. :) I love mom. You never wonder what she is thinking.

Once, when I was visiting her and my brother she was talking about Sean Hannity, and my brother started saying, "Sean Hannity is an idiot." And my mom said, "No he isn'." And they went back and forth and back and forth. Did I mention that this was on the way to the airport to drop off my brother? It was. They kept going. Seriously. He has a PHD in Philosophy and my mom has been a small business owner for 30-some years; they are both intelligent, etc. "He is an idiot." "No, he isn't." Not yelling, but voices are getting heated. Then we pull up. "I love you Mom", "I love you too honey, have a safe flight!". End of discussion.

Tonight, at On Tap we are discussing Health Care. I know right... SO PREDICTABLE! Did you know that Town Hall meetings about this have ended in fist-fights? I would promise no fist fights tonight, but I do not know who is coming. Hopefully the moderator will be able to exert control when needed!

What if we had a mutually edifying discussion towards parties? What if people on all sides learned from one another? What if tonight's On Tap was able to offer dignity to everyone in the room's opinion, regardless of the decibel level they are able to reach? I think that that would be just as amazing, just as redemptive in some ways, as if the health care system could be "fixed". Can I encourage you to come and learn at tonight's On Tap, even if you haven't "kept up" with the issue? By the way, the world is having a mild crisis relative to the reality of 24-hour news... So, everyone probably feels a little left out! Can I encourage you to come to On Tap tonight if you know the issue well - maybe you can help people understand it better - and to do that carefully but clearly? Can I encourage you to argue with people tonight - but to do it in a respectful, even humble way? Not by saying "With all due respect", but by meaning it and at the same time clearly calling out the different perspectives in the room?

I'm finished with my "encouragements". I know I should have probably said "may", but who knows the rules of language on a blog anyway?

A couple of primers: What does it say about our culture and America that this has dominated the news the way that it has? Ought people to vote their conscience as an individual or as a citizen? (I don't mean to make those two exclusive unnecessarily). I hope you are able to join our discussion tonight at Llywellyn's in WG, at 7:00