Mahalia Jackson singing the song Amazing Grace (post continued below video):

Her performance doesn’t really require comment. But I have been reflecting a bit on the song today.

The Gospel reading in many Christian churches this morning would have been from John, chapter 9, about a man, a beggar, blind from birth, who is given sight for the first time by Jesus. Some of the local Pharisees are both skeptical and critical of the event, as they are skeptical and critical of Jesus. They interrogate the man, who can claim to know very little about the person who healed him. They call on the man’s parents, to ensure that he really was blind from birth as he claims. Then they call the formerly blind man back again for more questions. As the ESV has it:

So for the second time they called the man who had been blind and said to him, “Give glory to God. We know that this man is a sinner.” He answered, “Whether he is a sinner I do not know. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.”

I was blind, but now I see. I’m certain I’m not the first person to pick up on [Read more →]

Possibly related posts:

• Congrats to Jerry Lee Lewis and bride
• Dreaming with Tears in My Eyes

From section: Commentary, Faith by Sean Curnyn

Today is Ash Wednesday on the calendar of many Christians; perhaps a wise day to put aside the slings, arrows and even entertainments of mundane existence, at least for a moment. And I think certainly part of the value of making the observance is that it’s darned near impossible to be distracted by petty things during the moment that the minister or priest makes the sign of the cross in ashes on one’s forehead, and says the words that brook no debate: Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

In my own little church in the wildwood, congregants were encouraged to read Psalm 90 to themselves in their pews while waiting for the line of ash-recipients to dwindle. (It’s a notable fact that quite a few people come to receive ashes who are not otherwise regular attendees at the church. I guess whenever you’re giving away something free …) [Read more →]

Possibly related posts:

• None currently found

From section: Commentary, Faith by Sean Curnyn

A study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology is said to show that virtually everyone feels anger towards God at various points in their lives, especially after the loss through death of a loved one, or a diagnosis with a serious illness. The interesting thing is that this includes self-professed unbelievers in God. In fact, according to this study, they get angrier [Read more →]

Possibly related posts:

• God’s problem with Bob Dylan (and with us)
• Man at last seeks God [particles]

From section: Commentary, Faith by Sean Curnyn

President Obama was asked yesterday about his Christianity, and the full exchange is transcribed at Touchtone‘s Mere Comments blog:

Q One of them is basically — Mother Teresa answered it in an article and I was going to ask you the same because I loved her answer. The first one is: Why are you a Christian? [Read more →]

Possibly related posts:

• Ron Rosenbaum on Bob Dylan, Judaism, Christianity etc
• Breivik: Neither Jesus nor Robert Spencer inspired his bloodlust

From section: Commentary, Faith, Politics by The Cinch Review

In a previous post I mentioned the writer Christopher Hitchens, who is suffering from some serious cancer, and posted a clip of an interview with him which was bookended by Bob Dylan’s song “Gates of Eden.” Thanks to Sue who responded with a note titled “The Two Christophers”: [Read more →]

Possibly related posts:

• Misremembering Hitchens
• Monterrey, music and murder

From section: Commentary, Dylanosophy, Faith by Sean Curnyn

That’s it. The end. For real and forever. Now that you know, how does it make you feel, exactly? As published in the journal Science, and summarized below by the BBC:

Astronomers used the way that light from distant stars was distorted by a huge galactic cluster known as Abell 1689 to work out the amount of dark energy in the cosmos.

Dark energy is a mysterious force that speeds up the expansion of the Universe.

Understanding the distribution of this force revealed that the likely fate of the Universe was to keep on expanding.

[...]

Eventually it will become a cold, dead wasteland with a temperature approaching what scientists term “absolute zero”.

Professor Priyamvada Natarajan of Yale University, a leading cosmologist and co-author of this study, said that the findings finally proved “exactly what the fate of the Universe will be”.

Hmmm. And how does Professor Natarajan feel about that, I wonder? She seems happy enough to be the messenger, and I suppose it is quite the feather in her cap.

You would think that this news about the ultimate fate of the Universe and everything that it has ever contained — including all of our lives, legacies and dreams — would be getting more attention, and indeed perhaps it will once it filters out through the rest of what’s going on in the headlines today, like the baseball player Roger Clemens being indicted for perjury and the salmonella-induced recall of 340 million eggs in the United States. [Read more →]

Possibly related posts:

• Earl Scruggs dies at 88
• In memory of Whitney Houston, please party on

From section: Commentary, Faith, News by Sean Curnyn

Jeffery Goldberg of The Atlantic conducted an interview with Christopher Hitchens — the well known writer who is suffering from some very serious cancer — and some of it is posted at this link, and embedded here below. This part of their discussion, which also has some contributions from the writer Martin Amis, deals with the cancer itself as well has the notion of deathbed conversion and belief in God generally. It’s interesting, and it also happens to be book-ended by audio clips of Bob Dylan singing “Gates Of Eden.”

Though I disagree with him on many if not most things these days, I like Christoper Hitchens as a writer and personality quite a lot — and who doesn’t? (Alright, Dr. Kissinger: please don’t bother writing in.) [Read more →]

Possibly related posts:

• None currently found

From section: Commentary, Faith by Sean Curnyn

Those attending Christian churches this morning following the most common Lectionaries would, I think, have heard from the Gospel of Luke, chapter 11 (KJV):

And it came to pass, that, as he was praying in a certain place, when he ceased, one of his disciples said unto him, Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples.

And he said unto them, When ye pray, say, Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in heaven, so in earth.

Give us day by day our daily bread.

And forgive us our sins; for we also forgive every one that is indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil.

[Read more →]

Possibly related posts:

• Nobody Knows the Trouble
• The Two Bob Cohens

From section: Commentary, Faith by Sean Curnyn

Tom Jones’ new album is called Praise & Blame,and has a distinct tilt towards songs of faith, like What Good Am I?, Didn’t It Rain, and Lord Help the Poor and Needy. Now, an e-mail from the vice-president of Island Records, David Sharpe, has been leaked by someone, and it indicates some extreme displeasure with the Tom’s latest musical direction. From WalesOnline:

Mr Sharpe fumed to colleagues: “I have just listened to the album and want to know if this is some sick joke?”

[...]

[The e-mail] stated: “We did not invest a fortune in an established artist for him to deliver 12 tracks from the common book of prayer.

“This is certainly not what we paid for.”

Jones is not happy about this and is making his feelings clear.

“In the press it says that I’ve gone off and made something that the record company didn’t pay me for and that they don’t like it.

“People tell me that all publicity is good publicity, that’s what I’ve been told.

“People say to me ‘well it’s being talked about’, but to me it’s being talked about in a negative way.

“Hopefully, if there’s any good that comes out of it, it’s that people will wonder about [the new album]. But it isn’t the way I would handle it by going and making a stupid statement. That’s not going to help it.

“They’ve apologised, they can’t apologise enough – and they’ve said ‘we’ll make good on this’.”

Some people, perhaps including Tom Jones, are not entirely sure if this e-mail reflected Sharpe’s real opinions or if the leaking of it is in fact a kind of publicity stunt. However, I think we may mislead ourselves by assuming too much deviousness, when in fact Sharpe’s scathing response to Tom Jones’ gospel music is pretty much par for the course amongst record executives when one of their secular artists makes this kind of move.

It’s well established history how the execs at Columbia hated Bob Dylan’s gospel stuff, and went out of their way to bury Saved.(Some conspiracy theorists even suspect they sabotaged the mix on that record.) I’ve written in a different venue on how Paddy McAloon’s masterpiece Let’s Change the World With Musicwas dismissed, if not suppressed, by those in control of the purse strings at Sony in the U.K. back in 1992, reportedly because of discomfort with numerous references to the divine in the songs’ lyrics.

The only thing I wonder is this: In these cases, do the record company executives oppose songs of faith because they genuinely believe that kind of music won’t sell (in which case I think they’re grossly mistaken) or does the attitude come from a deep antipathy towards the very concept of belief in God?

Motivations tend to be messy, so what’s going on is probably a combination of the two, but I would not at all underestimate the latter cause.

I do note that it’s quite sad that an Englishman would refer to the venerable old Book of Common Prayer as the “common book of prayer.”

Possibly related posts:

• Swing Low, Sweet Chariot
• 80-voice choir to perform Bob Dylan’s gospel songs in Australia

From section: Commentary, Faith by Sean Curnyn

Above is just another breathtaking image from the Hubble Space Telescope, recently released. It is of a region called N11 of the Large Magellanic Cloud. The sciences of physics and astronomy tell us that what we’re looking at is a nursery of stars. (More images and more details are at this link.) Gases are being compressed and compacted here and nuclear fusion is sparking and bringing forth bright new spheres of light and energy which will shine for billions of years, like our own Sun. What planets might they light, what frozen or perhaps boiling vistas on strange and beautiful worlds that human eyes will never see?

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers
the moon and stars, which you have set in place,
what is man that you are mindful of him,
and the son of man that you care for him?

When I was younger, there was a very difficult-to-resolve conflict here. [Read more →]

Possibly related posts:

• No God, but New York City public school students have “KARMA”
• More Abraham Joshua Heschel: on the law, God’s timing and man’s readiness

From section: Commentary, Faith by Sean Curnyn