What Music Feeds Your Soul?

Great to hear from some of you. Thanks for saying hello. I dig it!

My last month since rushing to the emergency room has been a bit interesting to say the least. To be blunt, I almost died. And this, of course, has affected my thought life considerably.

I’m not 100% better. I still have some exhaustion that is worse than usual since I still don’t have full use of my lungs. My biggest issue is the shortness of breath that creates a strange sense of restless anxiety. The Apostle Paul urges us to take every thought captive. Well, I’ve been working to take every breath captive. Perhaps you’ve seen me taking slow, deliberate breaths—‘cleansing’ breaths. I take off my glasses, rub my face and stretch my neck to the left and right rolling it around gently. This slower pace keeps me mindful of the fragility of life, of how serious it was. Shortness of breath. Shortness of life. The strange gift of sickness. Breathing never felt so good—especially breathing outside. A few full breaths of Autumn air are the best of cleansing breaths.

Here is one alarming experience post ER: I’ve found it hard to enjoy much of my favorite music. In the past four or five years my musical interests have moved further into the obscure. It is obscure to most of my faith community anyways, an emphasis on sounds over lyrics, musical explorations rather than musical statements, music as experience first and communication second. I’ve found myself stuck in the progress of my own side project. It's the place where I experiment with all that I can’t use in corporate worship music. Developing a taste for this has caused me to lose my taste for other things. It is difficult to carry on a conversation with several different voices. If you are interested in one conversation, no doubt you will need to turn away from other conversations. And right now, I’m finding that the conversation that I’ve given my attention to is not “doing it” for me.

I am the last person to make heavy handed secular/sacred distinctions. I don’t choose not to listen to a particular kind of music because it is “worldly.” I do not want to live out an oversimplified, naive or a fearful posture toward society. I write in these blogs to describe a redemptive enthusiasm for the world. This is a fundamental reason why I’ve been interested in paying attention to bands like Animal Collective, Broken Social Scene, Sunset Rubdown etc. I want to find the good, even the beautiful in these parts of our world, to discover an artistic integrity somewhere in the murky waters of popular culture.

Yet, right now, for this season at least, I’m in search of music that explicitly and gladly names Jesus. Other than a bit of Jazz, I’m turning to worship music. I dug my old 100-disc binder of CDs out of the closet this morning. I haven’t listened to or look at these CDs in years. What does my soul good: Fernando Ortega and John Michael Talbot. Both have voices that are sincere, fragile but still full and strong. Integrity. I trust them. Two of my favorite worship CDs are John Michael Talbot’s “Come Worship the Lord” Volumes one and two. They are live recordings of him leading the Brothers and Sisters of Charity at Little Portion Hermitage in Eureka Springs Arkansas. A nylon string guitar, an upright bass, some tambourines, a synth playing trumpet-like leads and a congregation of voices, that is all that is needed to create a holy, spirit-filled raucous.

Why has it been so long since I’ve found other CDs like this? It is no doubt a result of my own musical direction and interests, but I do believe that there is a vacuum of good Christian music available. I actually believe part of my movement toward the obscurity of independent music is a result of the disappearance of Christian music that has any integrity.

I’ve been hacking away at these questions and have almost a fully completed essay on this topic, but I don’t think it’s best to dump the whole thing here on the blog all at once. So, I’ll be posting a portion of it at a time. I still want to work out a few things and I invite any of you readers to offer your own thoughts on this. What do you listen to? What feeds your soul and encourages you?

My LIttle Secret Made Public

I'd love to hear from you.

If you are reading this, its nice to know every once in a while who is reading. Such a weird way to keep in touch with people. I'm here in West Michigan so far from so many beautiful people.

Oh, and I've also decided that I need to get a new design for the layout. I don't know what possessed me to go with something so...creepy.

I can feel another blog coming on.

The Book is Coming! The Book is Coming!

I just saw over at David's blog that he is posting excerpts from the book over the next six months in anticipation of the books final release. You can read a little bit by Eugene Peterson HERE.

The book is called For the Beauty of the Church. I'm the no-name rookie author who got a chapter included by the skin of his teeth.

Rosie Thomas Film

I got out of the house for the first time Friday night to celebrate Susanna's birthday. It was a bit of a gamble considering how exhausted I still am. Recovering from blood clots in your lungs has been deceptive. Most of the pain is gone. I can't see much else that is in process of being healed. It is all internal of course, but my body must be working hard at something.

Anyway, I had bought tickets for us to see Rosie Thomas over at Calvin. I thought it was going to be a concert. For those of you who don't know, Rosie also does this stand-up comedy based on an awkward, neck brace wearing character she calls 'Sheila." The evening started with fifteen minutes of Sheila, then Rosie showed a film about her life focusing on her confusion about making a living as a musician. Rosie is definitely a funny, charming and interesting person. Susanna said afterwards that she wished she could be friends with her.

Yet, the film was 80 minutes long. It could have easily been trimmed to 45-50 minutes and had the same meaning. Some of the concert footage could be included on a DVD as bonus features. After the film Rosie came out and made a few disclaimers about how the film was originally supposed to be a short 15 minutes. She reasoned that the length of the film and its use of her story was a way for all of us to come to terms with our own struggles. The film wasn't so much about her as it was about her suffering and that sharing our suffering ends up being our gift. This was an important observation. I'm glad to have received. All would have been well if she'd just sat down to play some music, but she ended up doing a Q&A for the next fifteen minutes. The evening was finished with only three songs. Well, truthfully, she may have played an encore, but I was so exhausted that we left.

Susanna and I wondered if she felt the need to do Q&A in the manner of a film screening. Perhaps it was my fault in not realizing that I was going to a film screening and not a concert. I'm glad we went, but I'm sad I didn't get to hear more music. Rosie is one of the few acoustic artists I can still stomach. I'm afraid I've become jaded. I can't listen to James Taylor or Emmylou Harrris or even Patty Griffin except for a random song here or there.

The evening with Rosie Thomas was a glaring example of the many ways we search for connection in our society. Whether it is a concert or twitter, its obvious how much we want to be with each other. Perhaps it is my age. I'm less naive. It seems to be more difficult for human beings to substantially share themselves with each other.

Home from The Hospital, What the What?

A blood clot in my lung. Doctors don't know exactly where it came from. Was it the minor bike wreck three weeks ago? Do I have a blood condition that predisposes me to blood clots? I was supposed to know more by now, four days after I went into the emergency room, but it turns out my doctors are either tools or they are just extremely...inefficient. So, my whole experience at the hospital was less than good, except for my ER doc. He was the one decided to do a catscan after all the other tests looked good. He is the one who thought it'd be best to double double check things. And that was a good move because most 34 year old people who are in good health (I've lost ten pounds riding an exercise bike and drinking almost no beer since July) do have blood clots in their lungs. Perhaps he might have sent me home with some strong pain killers (the pain was both stab like and pulse like on the upper left half of my body) and told me to take a day off work, and perhaps I wouldn't be here any more!

I'm having trouble getting my head wrapped around what has transpired these last few days. But let me just say that I'm glad to be out of the hospital. It is hard to be in a hospital for many reasons. But I'm still restless. The vicodin is really frustrating. It takes away the pain, but everything is a bit fuzzy. I've talked with a few friends on the phone and right now I miss Oklahoma City almost like it was just yesterday that we left. I have had great and overwhelming love shown to me from neighbors, church members and Hope College people. Lovely people, but there is a sense that I'd like to be in touch with people who have walked a bit longer with me on this tedious, twisty turny, beautiful and strange pathway of life (cliche fully intended).

I'm so tired of watching movies that I think I'm going to do something drastic and read Dostoevsky. I just finished Jonathan Saffron's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. I picked up on the recommendation of a friend whose taste I really trust. It was a "B" at best. He seems to be the master of postmodern gimmickry. I think a person will either love his tricks or be annoyed. Unfortunately, my experience was the latter. He is definitely an extremely talented writer, and approaching a subject like 9/11 is a gargantuan challenge. But, nevertheless.... I'd be glad to hear from anyone else's experience with the book. The good thing, I guess, is that now I'm left with an appetite for something substantial in a canonical sort of a way.

The only other major topic for discussion: coffee and how I can have any of it right now. Because of my anxiety levels and this latest blood clot scare, we've decided I should stay off caffeine. I did this for Lent a few years ago and it didn't seem like such a big deal. Since then I have developed something of a love affair with lighter roasted coffees. I just bought this fun coffee maker, "The Clever Coffee Dripper" and a new grinder a month ago. So, I don't know which I want more sympathy for...blood clot or having to say goodbye to coffee (for awhile).

All Good Things Come to an End: Goodbye Summer

I'm very very pumped about school starting up. I don't think I've ever been more excited for Fall, but of course I'm pretty freaked out that the summer will be over for me in a few days. Worship team arrives on Friday. We drive up north on Saturday. Rehearsals are all next week.

So, here is my Zen-like lesson from this summer: in order to have a good summer, you cannot want to have a good summer. After having two weird summers here, I decided last Spring that I wasn't going to think of this as a 'summer vacation' in the same idyllic sense that I have wanted it to be in the past. In the last few summers I found myself panicking as I saw June then July then August all pass by. I kept wondering if I was using my time well. If everything was happening according to expectation. So, I've worked most of the summer. In fact, I've been much more disciplined with a daily routine this summer than I have ever been in my whole entire life. I've even been exercising pretty regularly. A good day for me has been:

waking around or before 7am, time to read, write, mediate.
work on the two classes I've been taking this summer
11am exercise, shower, more reading writing
lunch
reading writing...work until a late dinner with Susanna around 7pm
Read something with her, watch a movie/TV show
to bed by 11pm at the latest

So, yeah, it has been a summer of reading and writing. Lots of Augustine, Teresa of Avila (see below for a sermon excerpt where I reference Teresa), and the history of hymnody. These were my two final courses to finish my master's at Regent. I have a comprehensive paper to write next summer, but for the most part, I'm finished! Kinda exciting and kinda sad. I'll have been slowly hacking away at this for eight years when I turning that final project next summer. It is a delight to learn. I'm very thankful for the gift. I'm considering a DMin as my next step as a way to keep me accountable to reading and writing. We'll see.

I did write two songs for the hymnody course. I'm nervously excited to show them to the worship team and see what they think. Susanna gave me some great help. She pushes me so well. Her ideas are right 9 out of 10 times. And that is a pretty good rate. Trustworthy indeed.

I called Brian Bergman today to ask him about this keyboard I'm buying for the school. It really stirred me up to talk to him even for just a few minutes. My week in Oklahoma City in June was really special. I miss so many good people so much. There is a definite cost to being here in Holland. I've been reading Rowan Williams on Christian suffering. The Apostle Paul often mentioned how much he missed various friends in distant cities. He was always so faithful to send greetings...to encourage people to greet each other with a holy kiss. For some reason I've been created to love and hold onto love for people in a deep way that does cause me pain now when I'm so far away. Rowan Williams draws out how friendship was a consitent theme for Augustine. For those of you who care, it is an interesting theme for Augustine because he has been put to task recently by the late Colin Gunton for having a trinitarian paradigm that was so horizontally oriented that it perhaps does not theologically account for our horizontal relationship--meaning that Gunto believes that Augustine didn't thoroughly draw out the theological model for friendship in a way that the Eastern fathers did.

I bring this up because friendship is such a powerful gift. I want to understand it in light of who God is and how he created it rather than how we might want to have friendship. I want to grow in an understanding of a God-designed friendship rather than a human design. A tricky puzzle that will take some time. I have a few friends who think Gunton's reading of Augustine is completely out to lunch. I need to read it all again to come to my own conclusions.

MUSIC

A few recommendations:

Sunset Rubdown Dragonslayer I'm a sucker for anything that Spencer Krug does ever since we saw him in Wolf Parade last summer. His live intensity is thrilling. I'm holding onto my excitment of loving a band exponentially more after see them live. I've had the opposite happen too many times. This record will either be a love or hate it for most people...but if you want to try out something really eclectic, this record has lots to discover.



The Field Yesterday and Today This is mind boggling electronica, well it is mind boggling if you like something created more for the sake of it's textures and layers. This is a headphones album if there ever was one.







The Besnard Lakes eponymous Again, this is another record you might need to really spend some time with. It starts and ends with a sound that is so blatantly invoking Pet Sounds that it has to be an intentional decision. But the core of the record is very different. I love records most that give me many different kinds of sounds in different ways. If you read through my music reviews, you'll see that I'm almost more interested in the soundscape of records than I am in the traditional song structure.




Fourtet Pause This an older record. Found it used at Zulu. Like what I said above about soundscape...I listen for that stuff in records because of projects like Fourtet and Boards of Canada. I don't think that Fourtet has put anything out that I don't want to own. Joyfully creative in a very detailed, particular way. Beats, noises, acoustic guitars and kids voices chanting about mosquitos (that is the song that drives Susanna mad).





COFFEE

Joel Limpic (to the left here) joined me for a the classes at Regent. He'd asked around about the best rosteries. A place called 49th Parallel has now redefined 'coffee' for me. No more dark roast. No more Starbucks ever. No more burnt roasts. I'm not exaggerating when I say that after drinking that coffee for over two weeks, I returned to Michigan deeply concerned that I would not be able to complete the summer as a happy man. I've started buying my beans from JPs instead of Lemonjellos because JPs gets their beans from Michigan roasters daily and weekly. They've got all their bean in huge jars along one wall and I can go through them all, lids open, smelling away. The 49th Parallel Guatemalan bean I'd had in Vancouver made me a believer in light roast. The smell is insanely lovely. The beans at JPs aren't 49th P, but they are better than I'd expected.

I had the opportunity to preach a few weeks ago at our little bilingual Crossroads Chapel. It was a very helpful opportunity for me. I need to teach and share what I'm learning. I need to see if what I'm growing in can bear fruit for others. I've excerpted an un-edited section from that sermon here below. I didn't read the sermon verbatim, but having the text in front of me helped me stay on track. I decided to preach the lectionary, so I went with the Gospel passage from John 6 as my text.

From August 9

This summer I read the autobiography of St. Teresa of Avila. In these personal reflections she really is hard on herself, even calls herself the “chief of all sinners,” the “most wicked of God’s servants.” Yet, she has no major struggle with what we would today consider taboo sin, no drunkenness, fornication, no addiction to secret sin. But still, she does see her life long struggle with prayer as a kind of secret sin.

When considering the first twenty years as a nun, she considers herself a liar and a deceiver. She had the outward appearance of religiosity. She performed all that was required of her as a nun. She was praised by her superiors. Her confessors affirmed her prayer life and spiritual fervor, yet she confesses that she was running from God the whole time. It was one thing for her to go through the motions, to recite prayers and Scriptures, but she was not answering the invitation of Christ to let prayer become a part of the interior of her life. Those twenty years the door had been open to her to walk in the light, to walk in the Spirit, but yet she continued to live through her own strength.

Now why do we avoid prayer? Why would any of us ignore the opportunity to commune with the Creator of all the known universe? What is it that keeps us from eating eternal bread and drinking everlasting water? The answer that this passage in John chapter six gives us is that we can’t draw near to God because we are too busy grumbling.

The first part of this chapter six is the telling of the well-known story of Jesus feeding the five thousand with a little lunch of fishes and loaves. He’s been performing these kinds of signs and wonders and the crowds following him are getting bigger and bigger. Jesus is so exhausted from all his ministering, his teaching and serving that he leaves the disciples to get some time by himself then we walks across the water to catch up with the disciples as they are heading across the Sea of Galilee. In the morning it appears that the crowds have gotten into boats to chase after Jesus across the lake.

Jesus’ feeding of the five thousand, while an interesting meditation in itself, sets up his teaching on what real bread and what real life is. This chapter six can only be understood in reference to the journey of Israel in Exodus. Here we have very similar circumstances. In both the Exodus story and in this story here in John, we have a large group of people wandering in search of help. Both groups are hungry and both groups are grumbling. What are they grumbling about? Mainly they are grumbling because they don’t like the way that God is feeding them. In the Exodus account God had promised to be Israel’s savior and deliverer. But where do they find themselves? Not in the comparatively safe, predictable circumstance of slavery to the Egyptians, but wandering around in the desert. They cry out,

"If only we had died by the LORD's hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death." Ex 16

In response God sends down this strange food that they will have to go out and gather every morning and every evening. It couldn’t be stored because it would rot quickly, stink and fill with maggots. The food is so strange that when they look at and say, "manna" or “what is it?” But God had provided. And yet right after the manna fell from heaven, Israel continued to grumble and quarrel with Moses about water.

In John chapter six this multitude is grumbling and Jesus responds to them,

"I tell you the truth, you are looking for me, not because you saw miraculous signs but because you ate the loaves and had your fill. 27Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. On him God the Father has placed his seal of approval."

But the source of their grumbling was that Jesus was talking about a spiritual reality while they were talking about a physical reality. And who was this Jesus any way? Who does he think he is calling himself the bread of life? Isn’t he just the son of Mary and Joseph, those people down the street we know? How can he say he has come down from heaven? While these crowds of people wanted to receive food from Jesus and to be healed by him, they grumbled because they didn’t believe who Jesus said he was. They didn’t believe that he is the “Way the Truth and the Life,” the “eternal manna,” the final bread of life.

So, again, my confession is this: while I have claimed to be serving Jesus, have called myself a Christian, like St. Teresa I have too long ignored the practice of eating my daily bread. I have been just like this multitude that was following Jesus. I’ve wanted his provision but I haven’t wanted him. That is my confession. I’ve wanted him to lead and guide me, but practically and daily I haven’t believed that he is my food and drink. I have not allow him to satisfy my wandering heart.

E.M. Bounds Power Through Prayer “So we come to one of the crying evils of these times, maybe of all times -- little or no praying. Of these two evils, perhaps little praying is worse than no praying. Little praying is a kind of make-believe, a salvo for the conscience, a farce and a delusion.”

The invitation to a life of prayer has kept offering itself to me all these years. My testimony continues to be this: I’ve been responding to this invitation in a new way for several months now. It has become a kind of wakening from sleep. It is nothing dramatic. And it is hard. Here is the strange thing about prayer. We think that it is communion with God and we assume from the outside that since God is love and God is generous, that our relation to him should be something of paradise, something warm and cushy and light. Then we turn to prayer and it seems odd and strange like the manna: we have to go out and gather it. And so we develop a kind of resentment and we give ourselves over to grumbling.

Now here is a very important matter that I have to address before I finish this testimony: we do not pray in order to earn God’s love. Nothing we can do will earn his affection or attention. Jesus is very clear about this when he says,

"No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day. 45It is written in the Prophets: 'They will all be taught by God.'[d] Everyone who listens to the Father and learns from him comes to me.”

The story of Christianity is that God made himself known through his son Jesus. Through Jesus we have access to the Father. Yet when we pray we are not in control of how God responds to us. It truly is the daily work of gathering our bread. Prayer is not a kind of ritualism that we perform in order to conjure up God. We do not earn a week’s worth of gold stars for being faithful to daily prayer. Instead we use prayer to eat and drink eternal food and eternal drink just as deliberately as we would regularly feed our own bodies. My sense of being awakened is then a kind of realization, a daily participation in my spiritual being. It is a re-engagement in a life with God that I have tasted but have often forgotten.

He is that thing that we desire but have forgotten. He is the item that we have tucked into the back of the drawer of our memory. We sweep him under the rug or we stash him away in the attic or in the garage. We can’t come to him just when our stomach are hungry and when our bodies are failing. We come to him when our spirits are failing and we remember that he is the bread of life. He is the drink that if we drink we will never thirst again.

Here, I'll finish with a favorite picture from our time with my parents out in La Push on the Olympic Peninsula.

NEW STUFF & And June Update

NEW STUFF:

Check out some posts I just added:
Open Letter to Sam & Andy
My First Published Film Review! "Eastwood's End of Violence"
An excerpt from an essay to be published next Spring (2010), "Nurturing Artists in the Local Church"


It has been a while. I've been surprisingly busy this first half of the summer. For instance:


Lovely. I know, I know. So lovely you can't stand it. I'm not sure if it's because I broke my nose freshman year of college, or if I was born with it. I've got (had) a deviated septum, meaning that I could barely breathe through my right nostril. So, a month ago I had a surgery where they broke my nose, scraped out some of the cartilage and made it so I can fully breathe through both nostrils. Why? Well that is a long story.

In a nutshell: allergies + sleep apnea + deviated septum = a fatigued Josh Banner.

Now: flonase + CPAP + broken nose surgery = a finely tuned machine Josh Banner.

I was in bed for a week. I watched the first two seasons of the Sopranos and read most of a book on hymnody in America. Thanks to Larry and Jonny for taking the dogs out for me. Susanna was away for part of the time at a fiction writing workshop.

We just returned early Tuesday morning from Oklahoma City. I had three days of recording (two with Dustin Ragland and one with Justin Rice). We stayed at four different friends homes, had four different dinner parties with different groups of friends, took pictures of everybody's kids, played a concert, led worship and also led a discussion on the artist and the local church. Such times were so very sweet, but we were so very exhausted by it all. It's taking me most of this week to gather myself back together.

We leave for Vancouver, B.C. on the 11th of July and return August 1st. I'll be taking my final two classes to complete my MCS from Regent College. Here's some pics of our time in OKC.

Oh! And we also had a great time at the Banner Family reunion. I finally got to meet my new niece, Kesiah. It was especially nice to see my sister Annie, her husband and Kesiah's three big sisters.

Below are some favorite pictures from the last two weeks.
























Bo Walker. He was an infant when I saw him last.

Silas Bottomly with Coen trying to do hand stands




Mia is to my left in this picture. Addison is next and Bethany is doing the funny show.