Another excerpt from Letters to a Young Doubter, William Sloan Coffin:
…a sentimentalized Christmas is so much worse than a commercialized one.
The obvious answer is that the latter never pretends to be anything else. Sentimentality, however, does not arise from the truth; it’s what’s poured on top, blurring and distorting the truth…
Now consider the Christmas crèche. The baby lies in the manger because no one in the inn would make room for a pregnant woman. The ox and the ass are not picturesque guests who just had to come and see; this is their home. The Christmas truth is that he who was to be the bread of life for human beings is laid in the feed box of animals.
At the beginning as at the end of Christ’s life, God comes off wonderfully. We do not. The inhumanity, as we used to say, “of man to man” is exceeded only by man’s inhumanity to God. That’s why I think God is not too hard to believe in, just too good to believe in, we being strangers to such goodness.
Thursday, April 20, 2006
Tuesday, April 18, 2006
Steve Howe
Steve Howe @ Northern Lights, Clifton Park, NY
Andrew, Alex and I traveled to Northern Lights after the Maunday Thursday service. We got there in the middle of his first set. Northern Lights is a large bar with a corner stage, a few tables scattered around the front. We stood at the back of the crowd for the first set, the clatter of pool tables behind us, the bar to our right. After intermission, we wandered to the fringe of the tables and had a clear view of the stage for the second set.
Howe is 59, rather scrawny and gaunt with brownish blonde hair that is seriously thinning and pushed back over his balding pate. His glasses and thin face make him look rather professorial. When he sits, he leans over his instrument as if trying to see its bottom half, and his right foot taps alternately between his heel and toes to keep a pulse. He chatted frequently between songs, although the sound system unfortunately blurred his words. He succumbed to techno backup only once, using a recorded acoustic strumming to back his singing and steel guitar on “Soon.” It didn’t seem intrusive.
He is still a nimble player. Most of his purely acoustic numbers could be combined into one long song and most people wouldn’t know the difference. The tone, cadence, and use of alternating strumming and glissandos sound much the same on songs like “Clap,” “Mood for a Day”, and “Masquerade”. This is not to take away from his technique; both Andrew and Alex said that Howe was a great technician and player, and I’ll take their word for it, since Andrew has played a little and Alex is a trained musician. Howe has always been considered one of the best guitarists in progressive music circles…
The highlights of the show were many. Some of them were in smaller moments, like his explanation of the nuances of a new electric guitar; it made sounds Howe had never heard before, just because he turned a dial the wrong way. He did an abridged rendering of “To Be Over” on a 12-string acoustic guitar that was both subtle and powerful. His steel guitar filled the venue with incredible piercing sounds, which segued into a wonderful version of “Soon.”
The crowd brought him back for an encore, and he invited us to sing along to a song he was sure we knew. Usually, I cringe when Yes uses “Your Move” as an encore, because they can do it in their sleep and it can lack energy after so many years. But Steve broke the song into its simplest components – a strumming guitar and melodic words, even throwing in the counterpart “All we are saying is give peace a chance” to go along with the audience’s chorus.
And of course, he ended with “Clap.” Nearly all the audience did just that.
Andrew, Alex and I traveled to Northern Lights after the Maunday Thursday service. We got there in the middle of his first set. Northern Lights is a large bar with a corner stage, a few tables scattered around the front. We stood at the back of the crowd for the first set, the clatter of pool tables behind us, the bar to our right. After intermission, we wandered to the fringe of the tables and had a clear view of the stage for the second set.
Howe is 59, rather scrawny and gaunt with brownish blonde hair that is seriously thinning and pushed back over his balding pate. His glasses and thin face make him look rather professorial. When he sits, he leans over his instrument as if trying to see its bottom half, and his right foot taps alternately between his heel and toes to keep a pulse. He chatted frequently between songs, although the sound system unfortunately blurred his words. He succumbed to techno backup only once, using a recorded acoustic strumming to back his singing and steel guitar on “Soon.” It didn’t seem intrusive.
He is still a nimble player. Most of his purely acoustic numbers could be combined into one long song and most people wouldn’t know the difference. The tone, cadence, and use of alternating strumming and glissandos sound much the same on songs like “Clap,” “Mood for a Day”, and “Masquerade”. This is not to take away from his technique; both Andrew and Alex said that Howe was a great technician and player, and I’ll take their word for it, since Andrew has played a little and Alex is a trained musician. Howe has always been considered one of the best guitarists in progressive music circles…
The highlights of the show were many. Some of them were in smaller moments, like his explanation of the nuances of a new electric guitar; it made sounds Howe had never heard before, just because he turned a dial the wrong way. He did an abridged rendering of “To Be Over” on a 12-string acoustic guitar that was both subtle and powerful. His steel guitar filled the venue with incredible piercing sounds, which segued into a wonderful version of “Soon.”
The crowd brought him back for an encore, and he invited us to sing along to a song he was sure we knew. Usually, I cringe when Yes uses “Your Move” as an encore, because they can do it in their sleep and it can lack energy after so many years. But Steve broke the song into its simplest components – a strumming guitar and melodic words, even throwing in the counterpart “All we are saying is give peace a chance” to go along with the audience’s chorus.
And of course, he ended with “Clap.” Nearly all the audience did just that.
Monday, April 17, 2006
William Sloane Coffin
William Sloane Coffin died last week. The former Yale chaplain and pastor at Riverside Church in New York City was a leader in two major social movements during the 1960s, the fight for civil rights by African-Americans, and the anti-Vietnam War actions later in the same decade.
Certainly, he was more than just a man who translated belief into social action. He was also a theologian who encouraged his followers to discuss their beliefs, to study and ask questions about faith, to treat it as a journey, not a set of inflexible dogma.
Here’s an excerpt from Letters to a Young Doubter, one of his last books, published in 2005:
I think self-righteousness is the bane of human relations, of all of them – interpersonal, international, and interfaith. I’m sure it was self-righteousness that prompted Pascal to say, “Human beings never do evil so cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.” Self-righteousness blocks out our capacity for self-criticism, destroys humility, and undermines the sense of oneness that should bind us all.
Self-righteousness inspired the Christian Crusades against Muslims and, centuries later, the Easter pogroms of Eastern Europe, the sermon-induced slaughter of Jews after the morning celebration of the resurrected rabbi. Today this same self-righteousness encourages some American Christians to cheer President Bush’s messianic militarism, a divinely ordained form of cleansing violence, and all in the name of a Jesus Christ who is the mirror opposite of the Jesus of the four Gospels.
Self-righteousness makes believers of all faiths doctrinaire, dogmatic, and mindlessly militant.
Certainly, he was more than just a man who translated belief into social action. He was also a theologian who encouraged his followers to discuss their beliefs, to study and ask questions about faith, to treat it as a journey, not a set of inflexible dogma.
Here’s an excerpt from Letters to a Young Doubter, one of his last books, published in 2005:
I think self-righteousness is the bane of human relations, of all of them – interpersonal, international, and interfaith. I’m sure it was self-righteousness that prompted Pascal to say, “Human beings never do evil so cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.” Self-righteousness blocks out our capacity for self-criticism, destroys humility, and undermines the sense of oneness that should bind us all.
Self-righteousness inspired the Christian Crusades against Muslims and, centuries later, the Easter pogroms of Eastern Europe, the sermon-induced slaughter of Jews after the morning celebration of the resurrected rabbi. Today this same self-righteousness encourages some American Christians to cheer President Bush’s messianic militarism, a divinely ordained form of cleansing violence, and all in the name of a Jesus Christ who is the mirror opposite of the Jesus of the four Gospels.
Self-righteousness makes believers of all faiths doctrinaire, dogmatic, and mindlessly militant.
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