People of the Open Hand “What kind of ancestor do you want to be?” That question remains as striking to me today, as it did when I first heard it posed.
“Make a way” … for sorrow and hope This album will catch your tears even as it catches your breath. It will give voice to your lament, hold you in its beauty, and gently, ever so gently, make a way in and through the sorrow.
Revoicing the Psalms: Psalm 3 A day is coming // and that day has surely come // when the beat of the accusers // will be drowned out by // the rhythm of love.
Revoicing the Psalms: Psalm 2 The God who has died a thousand deaths / will die a thousand more / each time embracing the grave / as one more chance to love. // Revoicing Psalm 2
Revoicing the Psalms: Psalm 1 Happy are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked, who refuse to deny God’s invitation to shalom.
Prayer in Troubled Times We said to ourselves, “We believe in Jesus plus white supremacy; Jesus plus comfortability.” We preached this in churches. We obscured Your teachings; there is no longer any prophet, and there is no one among us who knows how long.
Jesus, Dylan and the Signs of the Times In the midst of the storm, while the bombs are blowing up all around us, while the thunder rolls over us, caught in the middle of this cataclysm, Dylan has the audacious imagination to hear and see nothing less than the chimes of freedom flashing.
Psalm 98: Joy, Judgment and Advent Psalm 98 is an invitation to a victory party … against the evidence, in the face of the empire.
Advent, Psalm 145 and a “Fantastic” Vision “There is a time and place in the ceaseless human endeavor to change the world, when alternative visions, no matter how fantastic, provide the grist for shaping powerful political forces for change.
Psalm 2: Which Son Shall We Kiss? You can't make the ideological rhetoric of Psalm 2 palatable simply by painting it with Jesus. At least, not unless you turn it on its head. Which is exactly what happens.
Thanksgiving and Lament: Psalm 42-43 Where is your God? Where is that God who was so close in your worship leader days? Where is that God who was on your lips in praise?
Leonard Cohen, Psalmist Has Leonard strained to hear that voice whispering through all of creation? Has he had an ear for that voice without words? Might he have the gift of translating such creational glossalia?
From Trust to Lament to Trust Again We must be a community in which such songs of lament, such abrasive crying out to God, such pain at the depths of our souls, can have free voice. You see, without such lament, without such wrestling with God, individually and communally, we can never sing praise with integrity.
Psalm 137, Exile and Rocket Launchers Songs of home, songs of hope, songs that keep a faith alive, are defiled and profaned when they become the trivial entertainment of voyeuristic oppressors.