Monday Morning Quarterback

Note: Monday Morning Quarterback is a weekly post reviewing Sunday, the busiest, most stressful, most gratifying day in the week of a pastor/parent/spouse/citizen.

Song of The Day:

http://rd.io/x/QEq_K15upQ

6:00. Alarm. Up. Gotta preach. Not ready. Omigod. Getup! Getup! Getup!

7:02. Hit the Starbucks for coffee. Pay with mobile app. P’sha.

7:05. Crank Tegan and Sara en route to the church, hoping for inspiration.

8:11. Print sign up sheets for summer camps on neon-bright paper. Because if someone’s on the fence about summer camp, neon paper can only help.

9:00. Greeted by an angry adult education attendee. Last week he came with his own coffee, and I told him he didn’t need to, since we have a guy who brings coffee from the same place. Today he came without the coffee, and our guy didn’t bring any. Angry adult ed attendee leaves.

9:17. More perturbed grown ups who expected coffee. Send them into the high school Sunday school class for cocoa and donuts. There’s no students in there anyway.

9:33. Listening to junior high Sunday school teacher tell students stories of his drag racing, school bus driving, school bus drag racing days. Imagine conversation with parent: “What is my kid learning in Sunday school?” “Drift, baby. Drift.”

9:47. Congratulate the one high school student who came to Sunday school for allowing six grown ups to hang with him and eat his donuts.

10:04. Watching the acolyte leap up and down trying to light that last chancel candle. Who says kids don’t exercise enough?

10:35. Check time on my phone (which, as I said, I will never be without during church again) and decide to scrap an entire section of my sermon in the interest of time. The jazz band leading worship is doing their thing, and jazz waits for no sermon.

10:43. Replace two pages of sermon content with, “Well . . . ”

11:06. On the 13th chorus of jazz band-led, “Just A Closer Walk with Thee,” spy a junior high and a high school student in the front pew, zombie like. They’re clapping, but their shoulders are hunched over and their eyes have rolled back into their heads.

11:42. Our experimental “Dimanche Gras” celebration is rockin’. Gabe and Karen the interns have outdone themselves. There’s gumbo, dirty rice and beans, the jazz band, and local artisans teaching kids to make a message in a bottle. Experiments are fun.

12.39. Starbucks drive-thru on my way to Pasadena to attend a worship service at the Mideast Evangelical Church. Already planning my Starbucks stop on the way back.

1:42. Fiddling with the translation headset the church provides to non-Arabic speaking guests. It’s awesome. I feel like I’m at the U.N.

1:51. Worship is led by a man with an accordion. Seriously. An accordian. Could this get any better?

1:52. Switch off the translation headset and just listen to the music. Trying to understand this is ruining it.

2:12. Pastor apologizes for the 6th time about the length of the service, since he knows Americans don’t worship as long. Don’t worry about that. I just wish there were some video games.

4:06. Purchasing snacks for evening youth groups when I realize I don’t have my debit card. The card slot in my wallet is empty. Leave my bags at checkout to re-trace my steps through the store. Nothing. Feeling wobbly.

4:10. Reasoning that I must have left the card at the dinner theater the day before, call the theater and leave a calm, reasoned message: “I’ve lost my card! Omigod! Omigod! Help me pleeeeeeasse!!!”

4:23. Still wobbly from the anxiety, get my bearings by inhaling 13 handfuls of the banana chips I bought for the youth groups.

4:49. Decide with the junior high youth group volunteer and the one Junior high student who’s come to youth group that we’re pressing ahead. The three of us, today, are the youth group.

5:50. Compose a poem in my head about the failures of a youth pastor who’s debit card gets used by thieves to buy paddle boats in Aruba. Also, he doesn’t understand the rules governing use of “who’s” and “whose.”

6:12. The manager of the dinner theater returns my call to say they’ve found my card and I can come pick it up anytime. Unspeakably relieved, but decide to keep working on the poem.

7:23. Seminary intern visiting the high school youth group turns to me and observes, “They’re funny.” Beaming.

8:02. Student volunteers to give the meditation at the Ash Wednesday service we’re planning. Pick my jaw up off the floor an offer to help.

8:34. Playing that game where everybody writes the names of three movies on strips of paper, places them in a cup, then goes around trying to get their team to guess the movie’s titles by using only single words, then by acting them out without any words, then by using only one word. You know that game? Yeah, me neither.

9:04. Chasing students out of the youth room, taking their reluctance to leave as a good sign.

10:12. Composing thank-you cards for interns. They’ve really outdone themselves. Thinking about next Sunday . . .

The Multiplicity of Narrative (Or: “Dude! That’s My Chin in A Lumineers Video!”)

I wrote an essay for the last issue of PLGRM Magazine about an afternoon my daughter and I spent as extras on the set of a Lumineers
music video in Los Angeles. It was a fun experience that wore on for much longer than I thought it would and that presented something of a crisis of professional integrity, as remaining on the set into the early evening caused me to be rather late for a wedding rehearsal for which I was the officiant.

Well, the video was released yesterday, and you can view it here (sorry for the ads, but it’s not on YouTube yet).

I’m having a strange reaction to it. I’ve never been an extra for anything before, but I never suffered under any delusions of grandeur about this. So the one second grainy appearance the side of my torso makes at 2:56 is a bonus. More than I expected, really.

The more interesting thing I’m thinking about now is the role we play in stories about which we know next to nothing. If I thought the shoot we participated in was the whole video, boy was I wrong; despite the five hours spent on that set, that shot makes only a passing appearance in the more than four minute production. And if I thought the precocious little girl who got to ride in the car from which the crew was filming was just an extra special extra, I was even more wrong still.

It turns out, the video is something of a tear-jerker story about a girl who’s parents are splitting up. They leave the girl’s dad in the rain during the video’s opening shots, and he never appears again. For the duration of the short film, she watches the world go by out her car window as she and her mom relocate to Los Angeles. It’s sad, sad stuff.

Then the sun comes out, a smile breaks over the girl’s face, he hair blows in the wind, and the whole thing turns into a little resurrection allegory. Who knew?

A video production only makes explicit the reality of our everyday lives and the constant reel of scenes that never get filmed. We’re all part of other peoples’ stories. The people who make passing appearances in your story, the story about an afternoon spent with your daughter brushing elbows with a folk band, those people are actually the centerpiece of a bigger story you’ve never heard.

Making Paper Cranes: Collision and Fragmentation

Note: Making Paper Cranes is a weekly engagement with Mihee Kim Kort’s New book . . . uh, . . . Making Paper Cranes: Towards An Asian American Feminist Theology. Mihee handles complicated things gently. Also, her fastball touches the low 90’s.

The fifth chapter of Making Paper Cranes spins out the vivid metaphors of “Collision” and “Fragmentation” that have been maneuvering behind everything the book’s been doing up to this point. “I use collision,” Mihee explains, “as a metaphor to mean the ongoing encounter of stereotypes, expectations, standards, and conflicting realities that lead to fragmentation.”

In order for Mihee’s Asian American Feminist theology to move the needle, theologically, culturally, or ecclesially, she’s convinced that it must involve the risk of uncomfortable–even painful–collisions that move people’s real, physical bodies, to transformative action.

The result of these collisions is the fragmentation of the body involved, a gritty (if not violent) image. But it’s also creative and constructive. For Mihee, this fragmentation involves “a continuous recognition of the numerous sources of my identity, deconstruction of these influences, and then, most important, a work of intentional reconstruction.”

The sources of identity for a woman of Asian ethnicity living in the United States are multiple. Being an Asian American Woman in a church context adds yet another source. Making Paper Cranes spends a lot of time tracing these identity sources and unfolding them for the reader’s examination. As a white American man working alongside Mihee in that same church context, there’s tremendous value in listening to her description of the collisions she undergoes. But also, as she describes the strain and the promise of “reconstruction,” I’m given new eyes to behold the value that my Asian American brothers and sisters in the church are contributing to our common life, value I was ignorant of before.

As the verbs “collide,” and “fragment” indicate, this value emerges from mess. It has to. It’s produced by flesh-and-blood experience in real time. It grows in particular, real, places:

For collision and fragmentation to resonate as metaphors, theology must be rooted in the physical and flesh-and-blood—in the mess and chaos of humanity. This theology of embodiment is grounded in the reality of God in Christ Jesus. It finds its roots in a doctrine of the incarnation of Christ that highlights the importance of apprehending Jesus Christ in a particular human, social context. This, then, becomes the basis for validating our own social histories and situations. We are able to view our own lives as the center and subject of stories rather than in relation or association to what is considered normative. The emphasis is placed on human experience in the body more than on abstract ideas of the mind as the starting point for understanding God, so body experiences are positively viewed as occasions of revelation.

And so it is that I realize the errors of how I’ve been approaching this book, looking for analogies to my own experience instead of listening for the “social histories and situations” unfolded in its pages. Making Paper Cranes and its Asian American Feminist theology is not an abstract exercise in metaphysics or cultural anthropology. It’s one human beings testament of God from where she is, as who she is.

New Music Tuesday: I Love Chad Andrew Herring Edition

Note: New Music Tuesday highlights something I’ve been listening to regularly during the week prior. I like it. I include critical comments both positive and negative to demonstrate my independent ignorance of musical convention.

Chad Andrew Herring is magic. He sneezes rainbow sprinkles. He sweats cologne. He burps laughing gas.

I love Chad Andrew Herring.

And Chad Andrew Herring loves the twin sister idie rock band Tegan and Sara. Therefore, I love Tegan and Sarah. That’s called a syllogism.

Album: Heartthrob

Artist: Tegan and Sara

Label: Vapor/Warner Brothers

Release Date: January 29, 2013

Where I Found It: (Do I have to say it?) Chad Andrew Herring

What The Critics Are Saying:

On “Heartthrob” (Vapor/Warner Bros.), the Quins’ seventh album, they let their inner dance-pop divas loose. Instead of Cat Power teamed with Ani DiFranco, they now sound like Kelly Clarkson paired with Gwen Stefani. And, in a bigger surprise, they sound pretty great doing it. (Glen Gamboa)

The album’s electro trappings may feel odd at first, but that sensation quickly fades thanks to the smooth, inviting textures — the Quins never sound like anyone but themselves. Whether sharing close harmonies or trading lead vocals, the sisters retain the engaging conversational style that values down-to-earth expressiveness over showy theatrics. (Jon Young)

With Heartthrob it sounds like the sisters have made a conscious effort to be more understandable, while maintaining some aspects of their signature poetic repetitious style. They’ve grown up in almost every aspect of music production. (Enio Chiola)

Seriously, at times listening to “Heartthrob” feels like nothing as much as Olivia Newton-John. Witness the opening track, “Closer”:

http://rd.io/x/QEq_K0LJgBc

This is perfect pop candy. Echo, reverb, synthesizers. And staccato repetition lyrics like, “And it drove me, and it drove me, and it drove me . . . wild.”

http://rd.io/x/QEq_K0LJgCo

It might feel a bit regressive for an aspiring music curator to really dig this record, but giving in is a sweet reward.

http://rd.io/x/QEq_K0LJgMI

Chad Andrew Herring’s everywhere agree: Tegan and Sara are super cool!

Monday Morning Quarterback

Song of The Day:

http://rd.io/x/QEq_K0JsgJ4

5:58. Wake up, exactly two minutes before alarm is set to ring. Reset alarm for 6:30.

6:28. Wake up. What the?!

7:01. Researching Super Bowl party games for later in the day. Decide on commercial bingo and that pseudo gambling game, you know, the one where Christian youth are encouraged to wager their allowance for a chance at some Skittles?

7:22. Reading submissions for the PLGRM Magazine digital edition. There’s good stuff here.

7:44. Enjoy breakfast of one banana walnut muffin, made by daughter and I two days before.

9:07. Throwing together a quick script for the high school students to use in making a Souper Bowl of Caring announcement. Forgot to do it earlier in the week. This after telling students explicitly that I would have it for them. Fail.

9:15. No matter. Students have created their own script. I’m not permitted to see it.

9:39. Compassionately ask church member how his wife’s foot is, since I read on our pastoral care bulletin board that she’d broken it. It’s not his wife. It’s his sister. Oops.

9:59. Wrestling with the candle lighters for acolytes. Should have done this an hour ago. “If the wick runs out before you get the chancel candles lit, act confused and run.”

10:07. High school students’ announcement is a smash. Laughter. Rejoicing. They pay me for this?

10:18. Notice the first Scripture reading is listed in the bulletin as “Jeremiah 4.” Scan Jeremiah 4. Something’s not right. Should have checked this before.

10:22. Whisper across the chancel during the Children’s Time to Boss, “Am I doing the first reading?” Nod. “The whole chapter?” Surprised look. Then, effortlessly, she taps the screen of the iPhone laying next to her on the chancel pew. A moment later, she’s walking it over to me, revealing the lectionary listing as “Jeremiah 1:4-19.” Resolve to always have my phone with me in worship from now on.

11:37. Use my Associate Pastor’s report during the annual congregational meeting to inform the congregation that daughter will be entering kindergarten next fall. Say a bunch of other stuff too, including a pitch for PLGRM Magazine.

1:15. Leave wife and daughter at lunch to go buy sodas, pens, and game prizes for Super Bowl party.

2:13. Stop by friend’s house to pick up 30 tacos they’ve made for our Super Bowl party. 15 chicken, 15 carne asada. Resolve not to eat them all before the party.

2:30. Collect daughter from home to take her along to the Super Bowl party. She’s got her baby doll wrapped around her with mom’s scarf.

2:24. Pick up two 3 foot-long sub sandwiches for party. They’re propped up on the front seat like an extra passenger. A tasty extra passenger.

2:41. Return home to pick up the baby doll’s diaper bag. Daughter has discovered she’s missing it and is threatening pre-halftime show pyrotechnics if it’s not retrieved.

3:57. With a house full of junior high students and the television blaring, notice that Daughter has fallen asleep on the couch next to me. Decide to let her sleep. It’s not like the Broncos are playing or something.

5:55. 30 minutes into the now infamous Beyoncee Blackout, go all curmudgeon and declare to the room that I don’t want to hear anymore prognosticating about modern peoples’ inability to listen to a 20 minute sermon in light of the fact that the entire nation has sat raptured now for half an hour on a power outage.

6:38. Break the contemplative silence after this commercial by declaring, “That’s terrible.” Half the room turns and looks at me stunned, like I just belched The Satanic Verses.

7:30. Realizing I’m completely full, eat another section of the 3 foot sub. Burp.

9:03. Put Daughter in the bath, then scan the blog reader for the first time all weekend. Find this. Hastily leave a comment. Regret it almost instantly.

11:00. Trying to fall asleep, plotting out the coming week. Trying to remember who won the Super Bowl game.

New Music Tuesday: If You Give An Angry Bear A Fifth of Jim Beam And A Tin of Sucrets Edition

If you do as the title of this post suggests, the sound produced might be something like the voice of Chris Senseney, the golden gravel voice behind the husband-and-wife duo Big Harp.

Album: Chain Letters

Artist: Big Harp

Label: Saddle Creek (Bright Eyes, Azure Ray, The Mynabirds)

Release Date: January 22, 2013

Where I Found It: Pause and Play weekly email newsletter

What The Critics Are Saying:

“The opening track, ‘You Can’t Save ‘Em All’ sounds like mix of an old school country tune and a Cormac McCarthy book. Its dark, brooding and has this grinding lick to it. But weirdly enough it bounces along with lovely harmonies from Stefanie – has a kicking guitar solo in it as well.” (Hearya.com)

http://rd.io/x/QEq_K0Ihj2U

“Mr. Senseney’s underrated vocals are still achingly phenomenal, spanning the range of guttural Gospel wailings at the fuzzed out crescendo of ‘It’s Easy to Be Strange’ to the low and raspy march in ‘Call Out The Cavalry, Strike Up The Band’. (indierockreviews.com)

http://rd.io/x/QEq_K0Ihj3k

http://rd.io/x/QEq_K0Ihj3s

“The sound of Chain Letters is built around Stefanie’s bass; it’s the glue on this album.” (Thom Jurek, Rdio)

Apparently there was a stunning debut record a couple of years ago, but I missed it, so I have no basis for comparison. This, though, is so good it makes me want to cuss. In particular, “Bar All The Doors” is a mental massage–with tree bark (“If you bar all of the doors/and curl up easy on your hardwood floor/they’ll just come through the window.”)

http://rd.io/x/QEq_K0Ihj24

Monday Morning Quarterback

Note: Monday Morning Quarterback is a weekly post reviewing Sunday, the busiest, most stressful, most gratifying day in the week of a pastor/parent/spouse/citizen

Song of The Day:

http://rd.io/x/QEq_K0LNvqc

6:00. Up. Snoozing is for suckers.

6:02. Hobble down the stairs, the pinky toes on both feet aching from having clipped them, alternately, barefoot, on the same chair leg the day before. Had to put the chair down.

6:41. Put the finishing (and beginning) touches on the Junior High Youth Group outline for that afternoon, and email it to volunteers, assigning the easiest parts to myself.

6:42. Breakfast of bran flakes with fiber pellets on top of shredded wheat. Whinney.

7:14. Decide against the turquoise blue tie I picked out the night before. That’s a more confident man’s tie.

8:07. Stop at the grocery store to pick up snacks for the high school Sunday school class, because the teacher who normally gets them texted yesterday that she’s sick.

8:10. Mini bran muffins and rice milk in my cart, confident this is cook kid food these days.

8:59. The other Sunday school teacher arrives, and he’s carting a box of donuts. Yeah, cool. Whatever. Those muffins were for decoration anyway.

9:22. Snap a picture from the back of the adult Sunday school class as the speaker explains, “I’ve often thought that the greatest moment in my career was writing that speech for Martin.” Measuring my life’s accomplishments in light of the awareness that “Martin” is Martin Luther King, Jr., I die a little inside and slink out the back door.

9:41. Stroll past the the church’s newly emerging coffee klatch of parents milling outside the Godly Play room. “Hey guys. I see you’re drinking some coffee. Some java. Heyyy. Drinkin’ coffeeeee.”

10:06. Giggle with the visiting Rabbi during worship announcements about the time, two years ago, when he brought a Megilah scroll to show the children and I assisted him by unrolling it so far as to nearly break it. Realize he’s not giggling.

10:08. Acolyte struggling to light the middle chancel candle. Heroically leap from my seat between the visiting Rabbi and Head Pastor, striding towards the struggling child to bring light into the wo—-oh, wait. It’s lit. I’m just gonna sit down now. I’m sure nobody noticed.

10:16. As it is our annual exchange Sunday with the local synagogue, pronounce, “The peace of GOD be with you” to a congregation conditioned to receive “The peace of Christ.” Mentally rehearse my explanation for this while I shake peoples’ hands.

10:19. Introduce the Rabbi to the children. “Children I want to introduce you to my friend Rabbi Jonathan. Uhhh, this is Rabbi Jonathan.”

10:20. Rabbi Jonathan is fumbling with the handheld microphone and the Megilah scroll he’s once again brought. Hesitate. Hesitate. Finally go to help, grabbing the microphone and holding it in front of his face like Phil Donahue.

10:46. Realize during Rabbi and Head Pastor’s sermon that this annual exchange, though sometimes clumsy, though sometimes uncomfortable and uncertain, is a good, good thing nonetheless. Wonder if anything really good is easy.

11:17. Defending the church’s openness to gays and lesbians to a church member, recalling my first job interview after seminary. The committee asked how I felt about homosexuality in the church, and I, unprepared, stuttered out some answer about The Bible not allowing it. To the committee’s great credit, they never called me back.

12:47. Lunch at a local restaurant with a new couple from church and their young daughter. Our daughters play together under the table, behind the window curtains, on top of the bar . . .

1:29. Drive home over a shrieking melody of protest from 4 year-old, who preferred to drive home with her mother.

1:43. 4 year-old still screaming, gagging on her tears.

1:56. Mommy returns with “Princess dress” from the Goodwill. Tantrum over. 4 year-old stops crying as well.

2:55. Dozing off while family watches The Rescuers Down Under, slipping into dreams of Newhart.

3:30. Head to grocery store to get youth group snacks. Forgot my wallet. Turn around.

4:44. School three consecutive junior high students in Connect Four. Can’t Touch This.

5:32. Talking to junior highers about the dangers of misrepresenting yourself online. Speak through me, St. Rushkoff

7:08. A member of the Indonesian church with which we share space hurriedly invites high school youth to join in a memorial service reception meal in the Fellowship Hall. I go. Shake a few hands, decline numerous offers of food, explaining about the youth group meeting, then leave, confident that I’ve just set relations between our churches back several steps.

8:11. Students planning for next week’s Souper Bowl of Caring. They want to perform a parody soup song in church. They’re considering “99 Bowls of Soup on The Wall,” “Five Hundred Twenty Five Thousand Six Hundred Soups,” and, my personal favorite, “Aye, Aye, Aye, Aye! Yo Quiero Sopa!” Adult volunteer’s suggestion of “Gizpacho, Gizpacho Man” goes politely unheeded.

9:39. Gleefully reading Matt Schultz’s blog post on the outrage that is Commercial Dad.

10:14. 4 year-old is still awake, crying now for the stuffed animal she left in the car (see video above).

10:21. Return to bed with stuffed animal. “Thank you, Daddy.”

I Don’t Care About Your Conviction

In the disputes dogging North American Christianity in the 21st century, it appears to me that the damage done by the warring traditionalists and progressives has almost nothing to do with the perceived differences in their views. Rather, these arguments are doing a much greater harm through a posture they both share and an aim they both seek to advance. The posture is conviction and the aim is the taking of a stand on that conviction.

I go to lots of meetings with folks who appear all too eager for an opportunity to exhibit their knowledge of controversial issues and who annotate their contributions with footnotes from the New York Times. Many of them seem animated by a need to prove to themselves that they’re on the “right” (read: left) side of gun control and marriage equality by gathering on the second Wednesday of every month with like-minded liberals over coffee and cookies. The making of statements is the paramount public action.

At the same time, I’m watching evangelicals flee my denomination out of a conviction that it has abandoned the Bible in its ordaining of gays and lesbians. They, too, wish to make their convictions known and to be observed taking a stand.

Traditional liberal stands are taken on behalf of the poor and marginalized. Traditional conservative stands are taken for the Bible and religious or cultural norms. Different as their objects may be, though, the impulse of the stand-takers is getting harder and harder for me to tell apart.

When did taking a stand become equivalent to faithfulness? When did conviction get crowned king among the virtues? What ever happened to discernment?

By “discernment” I mean the humble and prayerful searching out of the best way.

By “searching out” I mean studying your Bible and your monthly magazine subscriptions in like proportion to cultivating civil conversations with people who study their Bibles but who subscribe to different monthlies, people who may actually be gay and who may actually own a gun. And no, Facebook doesn’t count.

By “the best way” I mean the most Biblical way. That is, the way that most vividly embodies the most prominent principles and values laid out in the Biblical narrative: honesty, compassion, fidelity, justice, and many others.

By “the best way” I mean the most lovely way, the way whose path leads toward more charity and courage in the world.

By “the best way” I mean the Godly way, pursued through prayer, worship, and service with a community with whom one is covenanted.

By “the best way” I do not mean the most secure way, the most safe way, the most poll-tested way, or the way best articulated by Mother Jones or a three point sermon.

Here’s an earnest question for you, dear reader: Where do you see people practicing discernment together? Where are the examples of people not taking public stands but publicly committing to working out contentious questions together?

Let’s hear some. Please.

Making Paper Cranes: Syncretism

Here are posts one, two, and three about the book.

Making Paper Cranes turns to theological reflection in its fourth chapter, “New Flock: Currents from Asian American Theology.” Here the reader finds expositions of Christian theological pillars like Revelation, Creation, Incarnation, Justification, Ecclesiology, and Pneumatology. Mihee’s main conversation partner in this unfolding is Reformed stalwart Shirley Guthrie (who’s Christian Doctrine was required reading for my “Basic Christian Beliefs” class in college.) Along the way she converses with a whole host of Asian American theologians you’ll probably be meeting for the first time: Boyung Lee, Anne Dondapati Allen, and Gale Yee, just to name a few.

It’s an ambitious chapter well worth the effort it takes to read it carefully.

Tucked neatly into her exploration of Pneumatology is a sparkling little defense of “syncretism,” a theological boogeyman of ages past. My seminary studies of the Christian missionary movements of the 18th and 19th centuries taught me that syncretism–the blending of the Christian gospel with elements from a “non-Christian” culture–was a crippling theological (and moral) fault. The syncretistic theologian “went native” and forgot his Christian (read: European/American) moorings.

How refreshing, then, to read Mihee’s ode to syncretism. It’s the ultimate reversal. If syncretism = doom to American male missionaries venturing into, say, Korea in 1884, then syncretism = life for the female descendent of Korean immigrants to America in 2013.

Syncretism simply means “relying on the Spirit to reveal God outside of our own contexts and limited assumptions.” Mihee leans heavily on the work of Grace Ji-Sun Kim and Chung Hyung Kyung to advocate a theological posture of openness to the Holy Spirit’s movement beyond one’s inherited cultural experience. What’s she’s after is “an intentional incorporation of other cultures with the attitude that they will help us understand our own stories even amidst conflict and differences.”

There’s an imperative to descriptive theological work here, over against prescriptive theological pronouncements. Yes please. Show us the way, Mihee. Show us the way.

New Music Tuesday: “Is That The Cranberries?” Edition

Album: Northern Lights And Southern Skies

http://rd.io/x/QEq_K0LejAI

Artist: The Capsules

Label: Vespera Records

http://rd.io/x/QEq_K0LejOA

Release Date: January 15, 2013

Where I Found It: indie rock cafe

http://rd.io/x/QEq_K0LejFY

What The Critics Are Saying:

Julie Shields’ singing is quite the acquired taste: Sounding like a cross between the Go-Gos’ Belinda Carlisle and the Cranberries’ Dolores O’Riordan, Shields is either going to charm you or annoy you greatly (Zachary Houle, PopMatters)

The simplistic beats and forgettable vocal melodies on tracks like ‘Where It All Begins’ and ‘All At Once’ leave a lot to be desired, and they bear too strong of a resemblance to all the other dime-in-a-dozen electronic popularity wave surfing bands out there. (SowingSeason, Sputnik Music)

http://rd.io/x/QEq_K0LejRY

Whatever. I’m a sucker for electronic wave surfing bands and Dolores O’Riordan will always have a place in my ears.

So then. Favorite Cranberries song: go.