3 Keys to a No. 1 Single: Lionel Richie Speaks

This year's summer double issue of Entertainment Weekly (or EW) includes an interview with Lionel Richie, who's about to launch a North American tour to showcase all of his many hit songs. He'll be stopping, among other places, at the Bonnaroo Festival, one of the bellwethers of hipness in the new millennium. Not bad for a 64-year-old. The interviewer, Dan Snierson, was a little too cheeky for my tastes; Richie is the winner of the Gershwin Award, America's top honor for a musician, and he's half the way there to an EGOT. He cowrote "We Are the World," for the love of Pete. So maybe rein it in on the puns, buddy.

During the interview Snierson asked Richie for advice on writing a number-one single - an appropriate question, given that Richie is a record holder for the most number-one hits in a row, and given that he's sold 100 million records in his career, and that he once had chart success for three different musical genres simultaneously - adult contemporary, R&B and country - for the same song: "Stuck on You" (1983).

So when Lionel Richie offers tips for songwriting, you'd be wise to pay attention. Here's what he said:

All right, No. 1 can't-miss tip: Make sure it's about love. Don't go political, okay? Make it anything that has to do with love. Love falls in a couple of categories - I want you, I need you, I lost you, you know?

No. 2: Somewhere in the line, use the word forever. That's No. 2. Forever is a great word, right?

And then thirdly, make sure it can apply to a wedding or an engagement or something like that. Got it?

Now, you got those three down, you're at least going to have something that's going to last for a while. For example, don't do a title with "2014" in it. Because it's dead. As soon as 2015 comes, you're over.

Free advice from a living legend. Take it to heart, all you songwriters. It'll take you a lot further than anything you'll get out of Paris Hilton, Brooke Hogan or Taylor Hicks, I can tell you that.

TWEET THIS: Make sure it's about love. @LionelRichie

The Difference Between Law & Order

When Richard Nixon set off on his quest to become President of the United States in 1968, he campaigned on a vision of "law and order." It worked well for him; he won by a wide margin and settled into the first of his two (albeit incomplete) terms as President.

"Law and order" were, at the time, cultural itches demanding to be scratched. The 1960s were characterized by lawlessness, with at least four national figures assassinated in five years: John F. Kennedy (1963), Malcolm X (1965), and Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy (1968). Public bombings and riots were regularly reported on the national news. Public safety was no longer something people felt confident about.

Bundled up in the lawlessness, however, was the legitimate protest against institutionalized wrong-doing. The American war in Vietnam had stretched on tragically and interminably, with dubious legitimacy; the object of preventing the spread of communism in Southeast Asia hardly compared to the effort to end genocide in Germany, for example. Meanwhile, back in the States, the Civil Rights Movement continued to face strong resistance from local and state governments, and federal representatives in Congress made slow and inconsistent progress in guaranteeing the basic human rights of people of color. As protesters became more organized and more visible, governments became more panicked and reactionary. By 1968 so regal an exercise as the Democratic National Convention devolved into chaos, as backroom politicians outmaneuvered the more popular pro-peace candidates for the Democratic nomination and instead nominated the pro-war Hubert Humphrey, while hippies protesting in the streets were shown on television being brutally suppressed by the police. Even news reporters like Mike Wallace and Dan Rather got roughed up by the cops, leaving America to wonder who the police were actually sworn to "serve and protect."

"Anti-War March," by David Wilson,
Flickr, Creative Commons

Chicago Mayor and political kingmaker Richard Daley defended the actions of the police during the convention with a now-famous slip of the tongue: "Gentlemen, let's get this thing straight, once and for all. The policeman is not here to create disorder. The policeman is here to preserve disorder."

He meant, we presume, "to preserve order."

There is, I'd like to propose, a distinction between "law" and "order" as significant as the distinction between "order" and "disorder." They are fundamentally different things, law and order. A law is a codification of the rights of people; it provides a means by which to assert and protect our rights, and to punish those who violate those rights. A law, for example, makes it possible to punish a person for assault, and simultaneously to prevent future assaults out of fear of punishment. A law is judged on its merits: if its enforcement supports people's basic rights, it is just; if a law serves to inhibit people in the exercise of their rights, it is unjust. As Martin Luther King Jr. put it in his letter from a Birmingham jail:

One may well ask: "How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?" The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that "an unjust law is no law at all."

Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.

Unlike a legal code, "order" is ambiguous. It is established and secured at the discretion of those in power. Crowd control, for example, is not a matter of law but of order, and it is most efficiently executed by people with the demonstrable power of the state behind it. Police control crowds much more effectively than librarians, for example, because police have badges and flak jackets and guns and the full authority of the state.

There is a place for order; we all benefit from the administration of order. But because it is discretionary, it is subject to mishandling and even abuse. And when it is artificially codified into law, it can become a tool of of suppression, of oppression, and ultimately of tyranny.

I raise this because I think, after twenty-four years of Law & Order TV franchises, in near-constant broadcast thanks to reruns, we've tended to conflate the concepts of law and order into one irreducibly complex idea. It's this conflation that provides the rationale for preemptive military strikes, for a government sending robots into other nations to kill people, for widespread wire-tapping without warrants.

"Foot Soldiers of the Civil Rights Movement,"
by Dawn Pennington, Flickr, Creative Commons

We want an orderly world, by any means necessary, and if we have the wherewithal to impose order, we will. This conflation makes the notion of legitimate protest more ambiguous; because protests can be disruptive to the normal flow of a day, it is tempting to restore order by any means necessary. The worst, most tragic outcomes of such a mindset are the deaths of people like Jordan Davis, shot to death because his music was too loud for Michael Dunn's taste and because he looked somehow menacing in his car. Michael Dunn wanted the world to be ordered according to his preferences; the "Stand Your Ground" law that gave Dunn's sense of order legal force ironically legalized the death of Jordan Davis.

TWEET THIS: We want an orderly world, by any means necessary. http://ctt.ec/yetjb+

Law and order are tricky subjects, and we are fortunate to have a system of government that is committed to both the rule of law and the value of order. It's up to us, however, to regularly and rightly differentiate between the two: sometimes laws are enacted and enforced to privilege order over basic human rights; sometimes disorder actually serves the cause of justice. Sometimes we're so eager for order that we violate the law to achieve it; sometimes a good law upsets our equilibrium, and it's up to us to adjust to the new reality it creates.

Nothing in the news really precipitated this post for me. Just a general sense of category confusion, and a perennial concern that we not lose sight of how easily we can be manipulated, by appeals to nice-sounding concepts like law and order, into accepting acts and systems of injustice and oppression.

So, yeah, just a casual post today.

Mass Backwards: The Missed Opportunity of Mass Mobs

In principle, I love this:

I love it because I love flash mobs - those seemingly spontaneous but actually choreographed public demonstrations. Some of them are violent or criminal, but most of them are enormously creative, a bit subversive and even, when the stars align just right, redemptive.

So in principle, I love the idea of a "mass mob," in which the liturgy of the church is presented to a far larger congregation than is normally the case. And yet the more I think about it, the more I think the organizers missed the point almost entirely. Here's a description of the movement by Clarissa Aljentera, coordinator of adult faith formation and social media resources for the Office for Catechesis and Youth Ministry in the Archdiocese of Chicago.

Mass mobs were created to intentionally invite strangers to attend Mass at a designated church. ... Some may have attended elementary school there. Others have relatives who were married in that parish. A few are drawn to church architecture that marks a different era when some Catholic churches were constructed in the Gothic style. Mass mobs might be encouragement for former neighborhood residents or even former parishioners to make a visit to a place they once considered home.

It's a nice sentiment, but it strikes me as a bit ... sentimental. It's not so much a flash mob applied to church as it is an e-vite that assumes everyone is a lapsed Catholic. (I suppose, in a sense, everyone is.) The mass becomes something we don't participate in but merely observe - an artifact we pass by, take note of and move on from. It's a nostalgic experience, even a melancholy one, as we remember auld acquaintances we forgot when we took our leave of this old place, as we return to a neighborhood that's seen better days, as we reinforce our mild suspicion that the church is an institution of a bygone era rather than a living, breathing and culture-shaping movement of today.

Mass mobs, as they're currently conceived, remind me of "cash mobs," another thing I like. Some friends of mine and I cash-mobbed our way through the Christmas season last year. I blogged about it here. Cash mobs are organized outings to places of business that have suffered the move of the economy into virtual space or that have been shoved to the margins by franchises and mega-malls. There's a nostalgia to cash mobs as well, but the act of participating at least maintains some subversiveness: with at least this transaction, with at least these few dollars, we'll stand with the little guy against the big guy. We will privilege the real world over the virtual one. We will link our fate to that of our local place.

Mass mobs, at least as currently conceived, lack this stand-taking. Participants will likely throw a few shekels in the offering basket, but that's not what church is about, is it?

What I would like to see is a priest, an altar boy or girl, some lectors, some ministers of the eucharist and a healthy bunch of pew-sitters take to the streets. I'd like to see the body and blood of Christ blessed and distributed outside the walls of the church. I'd like to see confessionals on the corner, the sign of the cross next to the stop sign. I'd like to see peace passed to passers by. I'd like to see a mass mob in reverse.

Do you miss passing the peace? I do. Read why here.

The thing about the church is that it's not dying; it's living, because it follows in the footsteps of the living God. The mass is the visualization of Jesus' empowering mandate given to his followers:

All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.

If all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Jesus, then all ground is sacred, the domain of the mass. As such, the mass has always had a subversive, mobby quality to it - at least in theory. It is the public declaration that Jesus is Lord and Caesar, or Napoleon, or the President, or whoever, is not. Somewhere along the way this mob took their mass inside, and they, and it, got just a wee bit domesticated. And now they have to beg people to mob them. It's sad in the way most nostalgia is sad. It's a look behind by people who have to be reminded to care. It's mass backwards, as my sainted grandmother might have put it.

TWEET THIS: The church is not dying; it's living, because it follows in the footsteps of the living God. http://ctt.ec/vA85V+

If a mass mob comes anywhere near me, I may go, simply because I'm as nostalgic as the next guy, and in principle I like stuff like this. But a mass mob so conceived is a missed opportunity, and I hope someone somewhere has the eyes to see it and the moxie to flip it around. A mass mob so conceived will be creative, subversive, even redemptive; it will be worth the name and worth the God out in front of it.

Satan, the Paraclete, and the Mission of the Church

I'm reading Bob Ekblad's 2005 book Reading the Bible with the Damned, a chronicle of his ministry of Bible study with inmates, immigrants and the impoverished. I've wanted to read this book since I first heard about it, but I finally picked it up in the bookstore at the Seattle School of Theology & Psychology during this year's Inhabit Conference, put on by the Parish Collective. That conference primes you for books like these; when we focus not on the physical plant of a church building but the work of God in a particular geographical context, we see everyone and everything differently.

I was also primed for this book by my recent experience with the homeless ministry of my church community, where I started out watching TV with the homeless (in the form of the TV miniseries The Bible, of course) and then moved on to a series of video Bible teachings on the prayers and parables of Jesus. Some of those videos were shockingly tone deaf about the perspective, even the basic human dignity, of homeless people, and I found myself distancing myself from the makers of those videos, even though I have more in common with them than I do the guys who make up our discussion group.

Anyway, I'm learning a lot about Bible interpretation from Ekblad's book - how our lived experience will allow us to draw different insights from the Scriptures, so long as the dominant culture (e.g., mine) gets out of the way and lets it happen. I'm also learning, almost as a side effect, about the mission of the church.

It turns out that the church is easily thrown off its mission. Just add some money, some power, some cultural privilege, some law and order, and suddenly the church is, as they say, "majoring in the minors." This idea came into stark relief for me with one passing line from Ekblad,tucked away on page 99, in the middle of the fifth of nine chapters:

"The voice of the Satan, accuser and tempter, too often sounds louder and more powerfully than that of the Paraclete - advocate and comforter."

The voice of the Satan in this context confronts the men taking part in these studies with their alcoholism, their drug use, their criminal acts that have landed them in jail - basically, whatever personal shortcomings preoccupy their minds about themselves. The voice of the Satan tells them they have failed too many times to merit the love and concern of good people like God, like those in authority over them, like those well-intended Bible study leaders who visit them in their distress. The voice of the Satan tells them that they may as well enjoy their vices - they will feel better for indulging them. The life available to them is not worth staying good for.

The voice of the Satan is exactly what it sounds like: evil, vindictive, subversive and wrong. In contrast is the voice of the Paraclete, which is how the Scriptures refer to the Holy Spirit. This voice of God is understood to be for those who hear it, comforting in tone even as its authority is directed toward the good of the person who hears it. The Paraclete advocates for us even and especially when we are found to be in the wrong; the Paraclete defends the defenseless and champions the cause of the lost and forgotten. The Paraclete comforts the afflicted and intercedes for them, making a better future for them.

TWEET THIS: The Paraclete advocates for us even and especially when we are found to be in the wrong. http://ctt.ec/gZERj+

It strikes me that as we take our faith into the lives of other people - an audacious act to be sure - we ought to make a concerted effort to sound less like the Satan and more like the Paraclete.

It also strikes me that, often, this is not the case.

Picture, if you will, someone engaged in the act of evangelism. Depending on your life experience, you may be picturing a bold, noble, steel-jawed champion of the faith, or you may be picturing an oily TV preacher picking someone's pocket. Or maybe your mental image lies somewhere between the two. In any case, you're probably not picturing an act of advocacy - a material effort to secure the good of another person. You're probably not picturing an act of comfort - words or actions that convey consolation and empathy. You're probably picturing one of two common strains of evangelism:

* Accusation, in which the object of the evangelist's ministry (the "evangelee") is made to appreciate the full weight of his or her sinfulness, that it results in eternal separation from God and consignment to the eternal flames of hell.

* Temptation, in which the evangelist describes heaven as the best place on earth, and entices the object of evangelism to do whatever it takes to get there.

Accusation. Temptation. These are the tools of the Satan. I'm just saying.

I don't mean in this little rant to suggest that hell is not bad and heaven is not good. Nor do I mean to suggest that we would not each be well served by coming to terms with the various ways we've failed ourselves, our loved ones, our world and our God. Nor do I mean to suggest that every evangelist, every act of evangelism, is under the control of the Satan. Most evangelists are well-intended, good people, and they're doing what they think is best for everyone.

What I mean to suggest is that there are ways we can give witness to the God we have come to know as good - ways that don't rely on the ways of the wicked. We can notice the ways in which our neighbors have been failed by the world, and we can, in the name of God, seek ways to improve their situation. We can notice where despair and shame have taken root in people's lives, and we can replace it for them with hope and consolation. We can, in short, be good neighbors to our neighbors, and we can see what God does with that.

24 Reasons We Love Jack Bauer

I get it. I really do. Ever since I was a kid I've heard the arguments about Hollywood's fetishizing of violence and the desensitization it may wreak in young, impressionable (typically male) minds. I've read some of the works of the great champions of non-violence. I've opposed state-sanctioned torture and covert acts of aggression. Some of my best friends are peace-loving hippies. I get it. I really do.

But I still like 24. A lot.

I'm on what I think is my third tour through all eight seasons of 24's first run on TV. I'm about to finish season four. I had hoped to finish all eight before this year's reboot of the series started, but I had some unanticipated travel that ate into my viewing time. Thanks, work. I know it's not the best television show that's ever aired - that title probably goes to Battlestar Galactica, although you may think otherwise - but I don't even care. In fact, part of the show's charm is the flaws so plainly on display as we breeze breathlessly from scene to scene. When the clock doesn't stop, when every second counts, there's no time to point and laugh.

So, here are 24 reasons I like Jack Bauer and the universe he inhabits.

1. The stakes are always high. Nuclear weapons. Biological weapons. Attacks on the White House. If it can cause catastrophic loss of life, Jack will inevitably have to deal with it.

2. There's a backstory to everything. We know Jack had a covert mission somewhere in his past that made an enemy out of Victor Drazen, played by Dennis Hopper. We know he had a brief romantic relationship with his coworker Nina Myers. Even though events occur in real time from season to season, events also occur offstage, before and between seasons. I would welcome a prequel, in case anyone is listening.

3. The good guys know when they're being bad. You see Jack process his moral conflicts. They show on his face when he's by himself.

TWEET THIS: When the clock doesn't stop, when every second counts, there's no time to point and laugh. http://ctt.ec/jsb9f+ #JackIsBack

4. No one is safe. Long before Game of Thrones started offing every character that kept you watching, 24 was killing everyone you care about. Even Jack dies at least once.

5. No one can be trusted, but you trust them anyway. Jack doesn't have the luxury of not trusting his allies, even though he's been betrayed over and over again.

6. The system works. I've written about this elsewhere. As much as 24 makes an ubermensch out of Jack Bauer, it also celebrates the effectiveness of collaboration and the power of a well-run organization.

7. The system always breaks down. Nevertheless, the institutions and structures we come to trust in 24 are vulnerable to breakdown - sometimes laughably so, sometimes shockingly so.

8. There is room for renegades. In fact, it's the power of the system, coupled with its vulnerability, that demonstrates the logic of a renegade like Jack. Jack knows the ins and outs of the Counter-Terrorist Unit (CTU) as well as anyone, so he knows when it serves the purposes of securing peace and order, and when it gets in the way. He respects the system even when he subverts it. And the system respects him even as it penalizes him for operating outside of it.

What does 24 teach us about checks and balances? Read more here.

9. There are some lines Jack won't cross, but you're never sure this is one of them. The very first scene of 24 I ever saw was in the opening episode of season two, in which Jack shoots a prisoner dead in his boss's office and then cuts off his head. So, that's a line Jack will cross. But will he execute a terrorist's son in order to get information? You just have to wait to find out. Remember to breathe along the way.

10. People are incredibly good at their jobs. Field agents, data analysts, division directors, White House chiefs of staff - the world of 24 is a meritocracy without question.

11. They're still people, which means they still screw up. Jack gets addicted to heroin while on undercover assignment. His colleague Tony Almeda loses his way and becomes an alcoholic who is abusive toward his live-in girlfriend. Nobody's perfect on 24.

12. Love is important. We see the value of each relationship, whether romantic or platonic.

13. Love is hard. We see how difficult it is to maintain a relationship under pressure, how challenging it is to hold our vocation and our relationships in healthy tension.

The gospel according to 24? Read the tongue-in-cheek "Devotional Journey of Jack Bauer" here.

14. Villains are people too. They have families. They have passions and convictions. They have backstories that must be respected.

15. Presidents have hard jobs. Half of each season of 24 takes place in the middle of the night. And the presidents are as wide awake as the field agents with a gun pointed at their heads. They make life-and-death decisions about other people, and they have to live with those decisions forever - and I mean forever; the weight of history as the ultimate judge of presidents is on display in each season.

16. Sometimes presidents are their own worst enemies. On this third pass through 24 I'm realizing how embarrassingly bad these presidents are at their personal lives, how much politics mucks stuff up.

17. Jack is too busy to indulge drama. Jack has as much in his personal life to deal with as anyone else - an estranged daughter, failed and failing romantic relationships, drug addiction, et cetera - but he manages to defer his problems till the crisis at hand is averted. He'll deal with it, but he'll deal with it later.

Is 24 racist? Read "24 Red Shirts" here.

18. Nerds can be heroes. Chloe and Edgar literally save the day over and over and over again, usually from their keyboard. Edgar stops a nuclear meltdown with the backspace key, for Pete's sake.

19. Nerds can be annoying. Some people are socially awkward. Those people are front and center in the universe of 24. Case in point: Chloe O'Brien, who was told by Division Director Bill Buchanan, "We don't have time for your personality disorder." Now in its ninth season, apparently 24 does have time for her.

20. There are real consequences to our actions. Presidents are run out of office. Agents are arrested and even killed. International conflicts are exacerbated. Loved ones are lost. Jack Bauer is never not aware that his decisions have real costs, to himself and others.

21. Conviction is important. Given how actions have consequences in 24, decisions are made quickly and with conviction. There's no looking back from any decision; the clock always ticks forward, never in reverse.

22. Conviction can be dangerous. Some of those decisions, however, are bad decisions. And when people cannot or will not step back from bad decisions, bad things happen. People die, sometimes a lot of them.

23. Everyone's story is complicated. Jack is a complicated character, but he's only one of a palette full of complicated characters. People whose motives are mixed and whose loyalties are divided. People who have secrets they wished they didn't have to keep. People who wrestle with regrets on a daily basis. These are the people who surround Jack, the people who surround each of us.

24. Life carries on and on and on. Eight seasons have come and gone. Including this new, ninth season, eighteen years have passed. Every crisis chronicled in 24 has come and gone, every character has passed from life experience to life experience. Each story told in each season is only one episode of each character's personal epic. We're reminded of mortality in 24, yes, but we're also reminded of life.

There you have it: 24 is about life. And that, above all, is why I love 24. I trust you'll let me know either why you love it, or why I'm wrong.

Bow Your Heads and Hit the Streets: International Workers' Day of Prayer

Today is May 1. Happy May Day! Workers of the world, unite!

Today is also the National Day of Prayer. Happy Pray Day! Americans, grab a hand and let's go!

May Day is always on May 1, and while its origins are associated with pagan celebrations of spring, it has in the last century come to be known more broadly as shorthand for International Workers' Day, a day to galvanize and mobilize blue-collar workers and other underclass folks to demand their rights from those who hold power over them. On May Day, the mystical meets the political as we enjoy the spring and take to the streets.

The National Day of Prayer is always the first Thursday of May, and while its origins trace back to the earliest days of the U.S. Government, it has only been formally recognized and organized since 1952, and only fixed in May since 1988. It is a day in which people gather in public places to pray for national leaders and the welfare of the nation, while public officials formally acknowledge the value of prayer and religion in the shaping of world events. On the National Day of Prayer, the political meets the mystical as we bow our heads and take to the streets.

It's entirely possible, although I haven't researched this, that the formalization of the National Day of Prayer in 1952 was related to anti-communist hysteria after the Second World War and at the dawn of the nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union. If that's the case, then International Workers' Day and the National Day of Prayer have ties even deeper and stronger than their position on the calendar and their commingling of spirituality and politics. Workers' unions were feared in the United States as a breeding ground for communism, a place where godless socialists could gain a foothold in the American consciousness. Civic leaders and faith leaders alike saw a common enemy in communism, which was formally irreligious and set against democracy and free-market capitalism. No wonder the U.S. president was calling on everyone to pray; no wonder faith leaders were interceding for those who led the nation.

But of course, in the intervening years the godless socialists did not take over the United States; instead, workers gained greater protections from the abuse of power by their companies. And while the United States, like all communist governments, remains officially irreligious, the state of American faith hasn't changed all that much. Instead, both International Workers' Day and the National Day of Prayer have become institutions, fixed points in the national calendar, ceremonial displays with little direct impact on society.

In that way both days are quintessentially American. The commingling of the mystical and political - the things of the earth and the things of the heavenlies - and the making of speeches and pronouncements and banners and websites: these things punctuate the slow, mild progress through history of the United States. We are not what we were in 1775, when the Continental Congress asked its constituents to pray on its behalf as it prepared to declare independence from the United Kingdom. We are not what we were in 1886, when police killed four people in Chicago during a demonstration demanding an eight-hour workday. We are never, in fact, what we were; we are only what we are, and we can only hope for what we will become.

We do love a parade, though, and we do love to sing. Songs of prayer and praise are many, as are songs that celebrate labor and laborers. So on this day, one of those few where International Workers' Day and the National Day of Prayer commingle, I offer you this excerpt from "Union Prayer," written by Woody Guthrie and performed by Billy Bragg. I actually think we can all get behind it, singing it and praying it even as we take it to the streets.

I hear that prayer and praying
Will change this world around
I fold my hands I bow my head
I kneel down on the ground

I prayed and prayed by nite & day
And then I prayed some more
I prayed till my tongue was dry as dust
I prayed till my knees had sores.

Will prayer change shacks to decent homes?
Will prayer change sickness into health?
Will prayer change hate to works of love?
Will prayer get me my right to vote?

Will prayer give jobs at honest pay?
Will prayer bring stomach full of food?
Will prayer make rich treat poor folks right?
Will prayer take out the Ku Klux Klan?

Will prayer cut down the hoodlum bands?
Will prayer stop the lynchbug hands?
If all of these things my prayers can do,
I’ll pray till I am black and blue.

If prayer will bring us union love,
I’ll pray and pray and pray some more.
I’ll pray all day from door to door
And fall at nite to pray some more
My prayer with a union label.

Platform for Postmoderns: People Are Not Points or Punchlines

Writers do it. Stand-up comedians do it. I suppose I do it. And it annoys me pretty much every time.

"I remember this time someone asked me ..."

The story that gets you to the point. The story that gets you to the punchline. The story that lets people know how awesome you are without coming right out and saying "I'm awesome because ..." That story annoys me pretty much every time.

We are, I think, at an awkward stage in the history of communication. Over the past fifty years we've slowly, clumsily made a transition from locating authority in our clinical expertise (for example, Dr. Spock as parenting guru) to locating authority in our street cred. We long ago tired of reading books by consultants, who present dry research and maybe occasionally buttress the claims of their findings by way of abstract illustration or clearly invented case study. We don't want to hear about how patient X complained of dysfunction Y and demonstrates the value of innovative remedy Z. We are well into the ascendancy of story, far out into the deep waters of self-disclosure. I don't want an author, or a speaker, to declare himself (it was almost always a himself) right; I want an author or a speaker to walk me through how he or she was confronted with the ways that he or she or we have been wrong.

And yet this transition has been sloppy. The clinical expert has tenure; he is hard to unseat. And from that position of power he still sets expectations for how we communicate, how we validate the points we make. So when we tell stories, we often wind up telling them on other people. We reduce them to elevate ourselves.

Chief among the offenders, I think, are the stand-up comics. They've moved past "A guy walks into a bar" jokes; these are too detached for our taste. So instead they tell a story about a time they walked into a bar, where invariably they wound up talking to someone stupid. And invariably in their story they get the better of this stupid barfly.

We, their audience, are meant to be impressed by the comic's keener sense of reality, their quicker wit. And because we are invited into this story, we are made to feel superior to the stupid people out roaming the earth. We, the audience, are better than you, the non-audience. Everybody wins - except that loser in the bar.

But falling in close behind the stand-up comics are people with points to make. Authors, consultants, motivational speakers, preachers - anyone who uses the word platform, really - is at risk for this exploitative kind of storytelling. I fall into this group; I write and speak on a fairly regular basis, but I also work in the publishing industry, which relies on this kind of communicator. We regularly encourage these folks to tell more stories, to demonstrate the embodiment of their ideas so that their readers can better imagine what a world inhabited by their ideas would look like. Many of them wind up telling stories about how they explained their ideas to someone. Blech.

"A guy came up to me after my presentation. He asked me X. I told him Y. Aren't I clever?"

For the record, that's not what we mean. Don't transcribe conversations you have with people about the themes of your book. Don't put quotation marks around your points. This is not why stories exist.

Stories are paintings using words instead of paint. Stories infuse the real world with the energy of myths and epics. Stories are meant to make a moment historic. Stories aren't meant to make a point.

TWEET THIS: Stories are meant to make a moment historic. Stories aren't meant to make a point.

That's not why people exist either, for the record. People aren't props for your messages. People aren't points, any more than they are punchlines. People are people, and they deserve better than to be used.

So tell your stories, but make sure they're real stories, with drama and tension, not just packaging for your proselytizing. And introduce us to people, but as bearers of the image of God, not as marionettes for your message.

Ten Commandments Scavenger Hunt! Part Five, Commandment Six

Well, congratulations to Dave Micksch! Like the rest of you, as a contestant in the Ten Commandments Scavenger Hunt he was charged with finding me a contemporary cultural example of adultery (the subject of the seventh commandment). His response was quick and concise: "The obvious one is Clinton." Lacking nuance, perhaps, but I'll take it. Dave is now enjoying a complimentary copy of Ten: Words of Life for an Addicted, Compulsive, Cynical, Divided and Worn-Out Culture by Sean Gladding. This week, you could be too!

**Keep reading for a chance to win a free book!**

We are now at the midway point in our scavenger hunt. I've given away five books so far, with five more to go. That's how midway points work. Ten is set in the present-day, as a group of people gather at a local coffee shop and find themselves discussing current events and modern life as it relates to the "Ten Words," Gladding's preferred language for the Ten Commandments. Thanks to the mix of people around the table, we get unique and interesting insights into what the Words mean and how they continue to relate. It's a fun read by a great storyteller.

Sean considers the commandments in reverse order, so even though we're now on round five, we're discussing the Sixth Word: "Thou shalt not kill" (Exodus 20:13 KJV). This is about murder, sure, but there are all sorts of ways that all sorts of people inflict all kinds of mortal injury on one another all the time. There are no murderers around the table in Ten, but that doesn't mean no one has blood on their hands.

Get Ten by Sean Gladding at 40% off! Click here.

So take a look at this excerpt from Ten, and get those wheels turning to provide me with an example of the Sixth Word in play in our world today. Post it anywhere, using the hashtag #10Cscavengerhunt so I can find it. I'll announce this Word's winner on the next post.

***

"OK," said John. "Let's see where we are in our discussion. So far we've talked about or mentioned murder, carrying guns to prevent murder - or gun control to do the same - capital punishment, abortion and war. Are we missing anything?"

"What a depressing list," said Carlos. "I hope we haven't missed anything."

No one added anything else, and so John continued. "I wanted to come back to the difference between 'Do not kill' and 'Do not murder.' ... It seems all kinds of killing might be in view."

"But that doesn't make any sense," said Sam. "Why would God say 'Do not kill' if the word can mean 'Do not execute'? Because then God goes on to give commandments to execute people who kill someone!"

"Yeah," said Carlos. "How does that fit in with what Jenny and Ellie said about the death penalty?"

"And," continued Sam, "what about all the times when God tells the Israelites to kill people? Is that giving them a free pass to break the commandment? Is killing OK if it's divinely sanctioned?"

"That's the terrorists' justification," said Carlos.

"And the crusaders, right?" added Jenny. "Not to mention the churches that allow people to carry concealed weapons into worship services. Or that ask God to bless us in the wars we're fighting. Seems like 'Do not kill' doesn't apply then, huh?"

John leaned forward. ... "Nowhere in the New Testament do you find Christians killing people. All the killing is done to them - sometimes sanctioned by the legal authorities - and it's never seen as a positive thing." He sat back. "After all, Jesus himself suffered capital punishment."

***

Heavy, I know. This book, this chapter, was being written when James Holmes entered a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, and opened fire, killing twelve and injuring dozens more. The scene shows up in this chapter because how could it not? We simply can't discuss the ancient command not to kill without grieving our world's seeming addiction to violence today.

It might be flip, then, to call for examples of contemporary acts of violence as part of a scavenger hunt, but that is our challenge this week. So let's take it seriously and approach it solemnly. Remember, use the hashtag #10Cscavengerhunt so I can find them.

Meanwhile, if you'd like to hear more about the book Ten, watch a video about Ten here:

***

Miss a scavenger hunt? See the whole series to date here.

We Will Open Our Eyes Wider

He asked her, “Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?” ...

She said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.”

Jesus said to her, “Mary."

***

And you know you'll be all right ...
This is not the end of us ...

***

He is risen. Hallelujah.

Happy Easter from Loud Time.

A Few Favorite LPs for Record Store Day

For the past few years, I've managed to find myself in Seattle for Record Store Day. I have the Parish Collective to thank for that (thanks, Parish Collective!); their annual Inhabit Conference takes place in the Emerald City, and probably by accident it seems to perennially land on the same date as the annual ode to the LP.

There are, I believe, three record stores within walking distance of the Inhabit Conference, which takes place at the Seattle School of Theology and Psychology. I am confronted by my age when I go, as most of the music is way off the grid, way past my prime. But I go anyway, because records deserve my respect.

Find a record store near you! Click here.

This year, however, Record Store Day falls on April 19, the day before Easter, so I'll be home in Illinois. But I'll still try to track down a record store. It just seems appropriate to resurrect this classic musical form.

Records were big for me when I was a kid. My brother and I shared a room, which means we shared a stereo, which means we shared records - except the records I acquired when I accidentally committed mail fraud against the entirely innocent Columbia Record and Tape Club, who had graciously offered me eight records for a penny, and who apparently never got the eight dollars and forty-nine cents in cash I mailed them to cover their shipping and handling costs, because eventually they sent a collections agency after my parents for the full value of seventy-some dollars. Mom and Dad went off on that collections agency for taking advantage of a little kid, but they also recognized my culpability and took my records away. (I got them back as a high school graduation present, by which point I was pretty much over Judas Priest and John Cougar Mellencamp.)

I would sit in my bedroom listening to albums a lot, like an emo boss. I got a lot of mileage out of Queen's Greatest Hits, for example; I would play the song "Someone to Love," and then I would pick the needle up off the record and plop it back down at the beginning of the track to hear it again. We didn't have a fancy-schmancy repeat button, but we dealt with it.

My first record, that I recall, was Freeze Frame by the J. Geils Band. My brother's first record was Pyromania by Def Leppard; my sister's was (I believe) Seven and the Ragged Tiger by Duran Duran. I remember feeling vastly superior to her because by then I was listening to INXS's Shabooh Shoobah, a vastly superior album by a vastly superior band.

The most expensive record I ever bought was Sting's live concert double-album Bring On the Night, which cost me about eighty dollars because I got a speeding ticket on the way home from buying it. I had borrowed my boss's car to go get the record, and her license plates were expired, and I wasn't wearing my seat belt, so I'm lucky I got off as cheaply as I did. By the time I went to college, my dad told me I shouldn't spend so much money on records anymore, so I started buying tapes.

The end of vinyl as the dominant music delivery system arrived almost simultaneous to my graduation from high school. Maybe that explains my nostalgic attachment to it. It's not musical snobbery: I don't have the purist's appreciation for the superior sound of vinyl, and while I do like the tactile experience of placing a needle on a disc and then flipping it from side A to side B, I also like to press shuffle on an I-Pod and let the robots do the work. But there are some albums that I appreciate as whole pieces, and even though I no longer own one of my favorites on vinyl, and even though I've only ever enjoyed another of my favorites on cassette or Spotify, I still think of those albums as LPs - "long plays" - making music at thirty-three and a third rotations per minute. Here are ten of those special cases, hurriedly assembled in an order that could change at any moment.

10. The Beatles, Let It Be. Sure, Phil Spector went a little overboard on the "sheets of sound" for a few of the tracks, but it starts ("Two of Us") and ends ("Get Back") so perfectly, and all four Beatles are firing on all cylinders. Plus Billy Preston on the keyboards. What a way to end an era.

9. David Bowie, Aladdin Sane. I had a giant Aladdin Sane poster hanging in my dorm room. This album features my favorite Bowie song, "Panic in Detroit" - and for me to call a Bowie song my favorite is saying a lot.

8. Genesis, The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. So good. I used to only listen to one of its four sides, but now I'm hooked from start to finish. Read the liner notes; total head trip.

7. U2, War. I think this was my first exposure to U2. It's the only one of their early albums I can't get enough of.

6. Stewart Copeland, The Equalizer and Other Cliffhangers. I knew a drummer in Des Moines, Iowa, who thought Sting was an idiot because he walked away from the greatest drummer in the world to pursue his solo career. Copeland's music is signature and cinematic; I often jump straight from this album to his score for the movie Rumble Fish.

Hear Stewart Copeland's "Tancred Ballet" here.

5. The Police, Ghost in the Machine. Speaking of Sting and Stewart Copeland, I first fell for the Police when I saw the video for "Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic." I decided I would totally hang out with those guys. And that's pretty tame compared to "Demolition Man" and "Hungry for You." So good.

4. Taj Mahal, The Best of Taj Mahal. My high school friend and band mate Dan Woolis gave me this album, I think as a graduation present. So much better than Judas Priest. A very folky kind of blues.

3. Squeeze, 45s and Under. This is the album I only ever had on cassette. But Squeeze immediately became my favorite new wave band. Songwriters Glenn Tilbrook and Chris Difford were often compared to John Lennon and Paul McCartney; I don't know about that, but they were crazy with the wordplay. As greatest hits collections go, this one is missing several tracks, but the ones that made the cut are awesome, and when I hear them in a different sequence, I get a little confused.

2. Led Zeppelin II. I suppose everyone has a favorite Zeppelin track off this album. For me it's "Ramble On," which I liked long before I realized it was borrowing from The Lord of the Rings. But start to finish, a great album.

1. Fleetwood Mac, Rumours. It's no surprise to me that this is the album Fleetwood Mac is known for. I actually prefer to listen to it on vinyl. Not sure why, but it feels only appropriate.

That's my list. What records make your list?

The Evolution of a Prayer

During a Holy Week service earlier this week we were led in the following prayer:

Let us pray for all who suffer and are afflicted in body or in mind;
* For the hungry and the homeless, the destitute and the oppressed
* For the sick, the wounded, and the crippled
* For those in loneliness, fear, and anguish
* For those who face temptation, doubt, and despair
* For the sorrowful and bereaved
* For prisoners and captives, and those in mortal danger
That God in his mercy will comfort and relieve them, and grant them the knowledge of his love, and stir up in us the will and patience to minister to their needs.

It's a good prayer and worth praying. But it struck me as I prayed it that folks in these circumstances are often the objects of our prayers. And to pray this prayer is not, generally, to act more practically on their behalf. It is, essentially, to outsource their cares to God, while (inadvertently, of course) taking credit for their care.

One workaround would be to pray as a larger whole of whom these folks are a part:

Let us pray for all among us who suffer and are afflicted in body or in mind;
* For the hungry and the homeless, the destitute and the oppressed among us
* For the sick, the wounded, and the crippled among us
* For those among us in loneliness, fear, and anguish
* For those among us who face temptation, doubt, and despair
* For the sorrowful and bereaved among us
* For prisoners and captives, and those in mortal danger among us
That God in his mercy will comfort and relieve them, and grant them the knowledge of his love, and stir up in us the will and patience to minister to their needs.

At the very least changing the prayer in these minor ways acknowledges our proximity to these others in need. This takes the prayer up a notch in a couple of ways, most notably that we must acknowledge that we often do not have the will and patience to minister to the needs of those among us - and even more soberly, that there are potentially people in our midst who are in some way in mortal danger, imprisoned or held captive. We often think of the church as a place of escape, but in reality it is in many ways a microcosm, a locus for all the suffering of the whole world.

A more intriguing prayer, perhaps, is to pray not for those who suffer but for those who impose suffering on others:

Let us pray for all who inflict suffering or pain in body or in mind:
* For those who hoard food or refuse shelter, and for those whose actions have left others destitute and oppressed
* For those whose actions and decisions foster illness and injury, both temporary and chronic
* For those who engender fear, anguish and loneliness in others
* For those who sow or exploit temptation, doubt, and despair
* For those whose actions and decisions increase sorrow and bereavement in the world
* For those who hold others captive, or who place others in mortal danger
That God in his mercy will confront them, and grant them the knowledge of his love, and stir up in us the will and patience to minister to their needs.

Here we are forced to acknowledge that suffering has its origins in real places, among real people. We are confronted not with the noble, distant, conceptualized poor but with the human headwaters of evil. Further, we are forced to contend with the idea that God loves even those who perpetrate evil, and that confronting evil is, in some mystical way, a ministry to those who perpetrate it.

And then, perhaps, to take the final step and acknowledge our complicity in the world's suffering:

Let us pray for all of us who have inflicted suffering or pain in body or in mind:
* For when we have hoarded food or refused shelter, and for when our actions or decisions have left others destitute and oppressed
* For when our actions and decisions have fostered illness and injury, both temporary and chronic
* For when we have engendered fear, anguish and loneliness in others
* For when we have sown or exploited temptation, doubt, and despair in others
* For when our actions and decisions have increased sorrow and bereavement in the world
* For when we have held others captive, or placed them in mortal danger, for our benefit
That God in his mercy will confront us, and grant us the knowledge of his love, and stir up in us the will and patience to repent and conform our actions and decisions to the God who died for the sins of the world and rose again to conquer death.