(insert record scratch)

For me this story appears to serve no purpose. I have already suspended a lot disbelief, I’ve gone along with the miracles and enigmatic statements, but this story is beyond belief.

Peter, the only disciple inspired to say something, is like, “uhhhh…should we build some shelters for these guys?” Peter seems to think one of two things: either he is spectacularly practical and he believes that perhaps weather will come upon them and they will need shelter, or perhaps Jesus will stay there forever with Moses and Elijah and perhaps people will want to come see them…sort of like a sight seeing exhibit…only with lightning.

Its at this point that a cloud shows up, a voice speaks about Jesus being God’s son, and then its over.

The hilarious moment in this story is the disciples reaction. At first it sounds like an act of humility: “The disciples kept this to themselves and did not tell anyone at that time what they had seen,” however, I would argue that they kept it to themselves because people would ask them what kind of drugs they were on…probably assuming they were good ones.

Its interesting that the story describes Jesus’ appearance as “lightning.”

Lightning is fast.

Lightning moves at the speed of light.

Between 1907 and 1915 Einstein developed the theory of relativity. Up to this point people thought that speed could be measured, the universe functioned according to very linear systems. Einstein starts saying stuff like space is curved and starts to offer brand new ideas about the paradoxes of the universe.

Unlike a car, or a person walking, you cannot “measure” the speed of light in a conventional way, because light always moves at the speed of light. No matter how fast you move or whatever, light will always be coming at you at the same speed: the speed of light. Whether it’s the lamp in a room, or the light emitted by dead stars a few galaxies over, light moves at a constant speed, and it is relentless.

Perhaps I fail to understand the nuances of light, but light and the way it functions blows a huge hole in the way one understands the universe. It is nearly impossible to understand in terms of conventional language.

As crazy as light is, maybe it tells us more about the universe than Einstein intended it to: the difference between chronos and kairos.

Every bit of life is divided into sequences of time: chronos. It’s seconds, minutes, hours, days…millennia etc. Chronos may be intangible, but we can feel it. The pressure of a deadline, or when someone you love only has a few moments left. So much stress and anxiety is directly the result of the intangible yet ever present chronos. And yet, this measure of time is inadequate.

There is another greek term for time: kairos. Kairos is not about quantity, it is about a quality of time. Kairos happens when you lose track of time. It happens when you get lost in a conversation with a dear friend, or with someone you love, kairos sneaks up on you when you get lost in nature, or in your passion for life or art, or family.

Kairos is God’s time.

It is a kind of time that transcends time. It not a time that measure how long you have been a live, it measures whether or not you have really lived.

It would be absurd to ask questions like, “what speed is that painting?” because art does not exist in the realm of chronos, it is in the reality of kairos.

How long were your child’s first steps?

How deep is a sunset?

What speed does love or grace move at?

The answer is kairos.

On the mountain with Jesus, the disciples do not know what they saw. Maybe it happened in a flash and it was over, or maybe it lasted for a while, but what they saw appeared as lightning, or was it the speed of light…or was it that for a brief moment they stepped out of chronos and into kairos and into the realm of God.

Perhaps it is no wonder they didn’t tell anyone, and perhaps it wasn’t fear, or ignorance, but awareness that whatever they just saw it was to be treasured.

It is interesting to me that one of the ways the Bible talks about sin is business. There are a lot of verbs about sin. Maybe a way to understand this is that sin is moving so fast that we fail to slow down long enough to touch, taste, hear, or feel the kairos that is around us all the time. Maybe sin is not engaging in some activity we shouldn’t, but rather, missing out on the miracles that are perpetually happening right under our nose.

Is it possible that the life God has for us is not busy but present?

Is it possible that instead of measuring, quantifying, and planning the life God has for us is one of wonder?

I wonder, if I can learn to see the world in this way, a world filled with kairos, if I will be forced to stand in awe and see the lightning and declare, “that just happened…wow!”

I am filled with a number of impulses when I hear about a tragic news story. The first is shock. The second is denial.

I am shocked at the depravity of the world. I find myself speechless that people are capable of such evil and such violence towards each other. Language has no claims in the land of grief. Words seem too light and too insensitive to begin to address the heart ache that grips me in the face of tragedy. There is no kernel of wisdom or rationale that can makes sense of what has happened. Whenever I stand near a casket, or learn of a fatal illness, or hear about a mass shooting I am filled with static and unable to move forward. I sit motionless glued to sources of information that wash over me with the incessant message that an unspeakable evil has just happened…it really happened…it really happened. I once lived in a world where this tragic event had not just happened, and now I live in a world where it has and I simply cannot imagine that I will learn to accept that such evil is possible, and so I sit and listen to the news reports as they try to convince me that tragedy has truly just happened, but I am overwhelmed with horror and grief and shock that moves towards denial.

Denial, at first glance, is manifest in my desire to pull the covers over my head and plug my ears and pretend that the evil in the world is not real. This, however, is quickly replaced by deeper self reflection. As I listen to the news reports I want to join in and disassociate and externalize evil. Evil is out there, it’s a lone gunman, it is in a foreign land, it looks different than me, speaks a different language, and it operates without rationale and is one dimensionally bent against all of us, the good people. I want to blame parents, and video games, or the internet…but I have to wonder if these are just tools of denial. Tools that help me deny the violence within my own heart. They deny the violent world and culture that I participate in every day. I want to point to the evil out there, because I don’t want to point to the evil in here. I can scapegoat everything that influences people, because I want to deny that evil is in the posture of the human heart.

Who has not stood back and looked at their own actions and been shocked by the destructive potential they hold in their hands?

Who has not spoken unbelievable evil towards their enemies?

In the midst of tragedy, which I cannot control, I reflect on what I can control. Myself. Are there ways where I am contributing to the fear and violence mongering that floods the world? How are my own hands and heart stained with evil? I am moved to repent.

In the season of Advent, when light comes in to the world, I cannot help but stop and notice the profound darkness in the world and in myself. I cannot help but recognize the perpetual need for the saving light and love and justice of Jesus that I need and that we all need.

God, forgive me for neglecting love and choosing fear and violence. Save us from the pain we continue to inflict upon each other. Comfort those who are hurting, and fill us with a hope that is deeply aware of brokenness and yet anticipates healing. Amen.

Growing up queer[1] involves growing up with fear. These fears can and do vary depending on one’s nationality, social status, cultural group, and individual personality. But fear is always there. The vast majority of queer people hide their identities for at least some part of their lives for a variety of different concerns. People fear that they will not be accepted by their friends and family. They fear that they will be subject to taunting, teasing, and slurs based upon popular stereotypes. They fear what will happen to their previous identities if they attach themselves to groups that have developed their own dominant cultures. These fears are not relegated to those who have yet to come out. Violence against queers is still a very real danger in most parts of the world, by no means excluding the decidedly more progressive “West.”[2] The torture and murder of Matthew Shepard, a young man targeted for his sexuality, in Wyoming in 1998 is but one of the best known cases of violence against homosexuals in the United States. In many other countries homosexuality is illegal, punishable by fines, incarceration, public forms of humiliation, and execution. Queers fear other forms of legal discrimination throughout the world, notably in the realm of family rights and economic status. Homosexual marriage and the adoption of children by homosexual couples is not recognized in most parts of the world and sexual orientation is one of the few categories of discrimination not protected by labor laws in many U.S. states. Even those most steeled against concerns for themselves are certainly fearful of the way these legal discriminations can affect their loved ones, whether through workplace discrimination, the denial of hospital visitation rights, or the discrimination that their children might inherit for having a queer parent. Fear is part of queer life.

            Yet fear is not the unique possession of queer people subject to discrimination. The term used for discrimination against queers is homophobia. Deriving from the Greek word phóbos, the term describes hatred and aversion but also intense fear. In fact, most other modern uses of the term phobia derive from a psychological understanding of intense (and sometimes irrational) fears, such as claustrophobia (a fear of confined spaces) or agoraphobia (a fear of the outside world). This dominant psychological connotation on our language makes the choice of the term homophobia appear to be an odd one. And yet at the heart of this ambiguity between hatred and fear lies clarity; hate and fear are linked, they feed each other, and they provoke each other.

            A gay character on the web series The Outs states the apparent contradiction well when he says “You know, homophobia gets a bad rap, but what it means is people being afraid of homos. And I know I would feel a lot safer walking home alone at night in Charlotte, North Carolina if more people were afraid of me.”[3] While in the grips of one’s own fears it is difficult to see how he or she could provoke fear in someone else. Yet queer relationships, actions, and comportments can be anxiety inducing for many heterosexual people throughout the world. One of the main reasons for this is that queer behavior stands outside of the traditional, binary divide between genders. Most human cultures make gender distinctions between members of the two sexes and relegate them to well defined roles that prescribe set occupations, modes of dress, leisure preferences, mental capacities, language usage, vocal quality, etc. These roles, while distinct in different cultures, can be rigid and viewed as an essential aspect of group formation and identity. But queer behavior, often by the nature of its existence, draws this strict binary in to question. If men are supposed to be naturally assertive or aggressive to their passive partner, how can a gay couple hope to have both partners meet that ideal? Since a strict gender binary does not allow them to do so, one is forced to loosen the binary to include them, eliminate the binary, or exclude them. Since this gender construction creates a sense of order and comfort, challenges to that order can be disquieting for some.

            Another major way that queer behavior provokes fear is its treatment by major religions. Practitioners of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have all been historically hostile to queers, citing their religious texts and the guidance of spiritual leaders as a rationale for their opposition. Even those faithful people who claim to have no personal dislike for queers often maintain that they cannot support homosexuality because their religion forbids it and views it as a shameful form of human activity.[4] Still others believe that, although perpetrated by queers, the perceived transgressions against religion includes them (and all of society) in the ultimate divine judgment of these acts. The host of the television show The 700 Club, Pat Robertson has even gone to the lengths of claiming that the practice of homosexuality in the United States (along with other perceived social ills) served as the basis for divine punishment via the September 11^th terrorist attacks. The zealot’s distaste for queers grows in to a fear of them which in turn may be extended to hatred. This hatred can lead down a path of dehumanization of, and violence against, queers. Surely the path to violence is rare and extreme, but the extreme is always possible when living with extreme emotions such as fear and hate.

            Queers, as a group, are not responsible for inciting these fears and they should not be held to higher moral standards as representatives of their community in order to assuage these fears. Queers are human beings and are just as perfect and flawed as a group as any other group of humans is capable of being. Understanding the way that homophobia is constructed and recognizing that it is rooted in fear, however, is an essential step in confronting this hatred. Certainly hatred towards queers is irrational and flawed as a position, but so have all forms of discrimination throughout history. The phantasms of fear echo through hatred of groups throughout history. Medieval Christians feared that Jews were responsible for poisoning communal drinking wells, 19^th Century Europeans feared the economic expansion of Asians as the arrival of the “yellow peril,” frontiersmen and women filled journals with their anxieties of the “savagery” of Native Americans, and 20^th century men feared what would happen if they opened the electoral franchise to supposedly emotional and irrational women. In all of these instances reactionary policies were drafted in order to maintain the binaries of their time (racial and gendered) and arguments from the Bible were used to resist seeing past superficial differences for the shared humanity within. And in all of these instances discrimination has ceased to be dominant only when love has been encouraged over fear. Interracial marriage continues to grow in the United States and women are more visible in positions of power than they have ever been in the past.

            The more that we openly love and respect those who are different from us the harder it is to maintain the misguided binaries that keep us a part. For the scant few times that the Bible supposedly castigates homosexuality, or women, or blacks, or Jews it evokes love ten times more. Love strengthens us against fear when we are in our most desperate moments, and it can be used to dissolve anger and fear to outsiders. Queers today use love and pride as a way of resisting the fear that comes with living in the society that we live in today, and it shields and comforts us. Our response to homophobia should change to fit this understanding. When confronted with a homophobic statement we should ask, “What are you afraid of?” because this fear is at the heart of the homophobe’s anger and aggression. Homophobes will likely deny being afraid of anything in the moment, but if for one instance they seriously reflect on their anger they may realize how much fear is a part of their lives as well.

Erik Meddles (25) is a Colorado native who graduated from Regis University in 2010 with a BA in French and History. He received his MA in French Studies from New York University in 2011 and is currently enrolled in a joint PhD program with New York University between French Studies and History. He is primarily interested in the histories of empires, race, and communal identity formation.

POLITE CONVERSATION

by Ryan Mahoney

Just recently I was having a conversation with a friend of mine. As he sat across the table from me I was struck with the sense that we are talking about one thing, but just beneath the surface, we are really talking about something else.

It’s that moment when you are asking questions about a “friend of yours” but the whole time you are just trying to cover up that you are really talking about yourself.

There’s the conversation, the words that people say, but then there is the real conversation, which is what is really being discussed. It is as though the words that we say have almost nothing to do with the conversation we are trying to have. Words are simply the thin covering that we use to dress up our motivations and insecurities about the things that we’re really wondering about.

In the culture I live in there are a few heated “ethical” discussions that have dominated the national conversation and polarized nearly everyone I know. These issues are so engrained in the DNA of the world I live in that saying that I am affiliated with one group or another seems to also entail a decision on one, or both of these issues.

I am talking, of course, about gay marriage and abortion.

I wonder, as I wondered at the beginning, what if gay marriage and abortion are really just the content of the conversations that people are having, while the real conversation is happening just beneath the surface. If this is true, I wonder what the real conversation is…

***

I frequently listen to a podcast called WTF, which stands for exactly what you think it stands for. The structure of the podcast is simple: comedian Marc Maron shares some stream of consciousness thoughts and then interviews a fellow comedian for about an hour. This podcast has been wildly successful, because the interviews are not celebrities sharing about their latest project; they are human beings sharing their souls. One episode featured an interview with Conan O’Brien. In the interview O’Brien points out that in the culture of constant talking heads and twitter, there is so much static that the only thing that cuts through the noise is a strong opinion. He points out that movie critics rate movies as either the greatest cinematic achievement of all time, or the worst piece of trash ever made. It’s a strong opinion that cuts through the static.

Strong opinions, vitriolic statements, negative campaign ads, wagon circling sermons are the order of the day it seems…but why?

I would argue that the “why” behind the strong opinions, the hate speech, fundamentalism, and terrorism is fear.

Fear is driving the ship these days.

This fear is deeper than just beefing up airport security. This fear is about something deep, deep inside the human condition.

The word “insecurity” seems to shallow and incomplete to encompass the primal anxiety that is driving much of what we talk about.

Here’s a small example. Recently an evangelical pastor published a book that offered some different views on hell. The Internet was a storm of blogs and opinions, and then blogs and opinions about the initial blogs and opinions. Why? All of a sudden did God become less secure because someone asked a question? Did God cease to exist because someone had a different idea?

The reason why this was such a big deal is that it touched a nerve. The nerve of fundamentalist Christianity. The nerve of identity. Christians, as some would claim, are the people not going to hell, thus if someone questions hell, then the whole tribal construct of a group of people is in question.

Entire conversations were filled with the content of theology and hell in particular, but just below the surface a whole groups phobia that they are wrong was bubbling and spilling over.

This example is only the snowflake on the tip of the iceberg.

Several times in the Bible, angels and even God himself address people. The constant refrain at the beginning of these dialogues that the messenger has to share with the individual or group that is being addressed is, “do not be afraid…”

What is in us, that our first thought upon having an experience with the divine is fear and judgment?

It’s as though we live in a perpetual state of fear of attack. It’s the “world is out to get me” mentality run amuck.  Again and again and again in the Psalms the writers talk about fear and worry.

I wonder if the Good News about God as seen in Jesus is that we do not have to be afraid anymore. I wonder if Jesus breaking bread and eating with his disciples and whoever else was around was a way of saying, “let’s share a meal together and you can see what God is really like.” People are invited to trust Jesus, to lay aside their fears and trust. Jesus is God’s love incarnate, walking among humanity: teaching, healing, feeding, challenging, provoking, and ultimately redeeming.

The invitation of the Gospel is to accept that God really loves us, ALL OF US! It seems like a logical move from this loving encounter with God to share this love with other people, which fulfills the commands that Jesus said were the greatest: love God, and love people.

Interestingly enough, the writer of 1 John says that love actually drives out fear. This makes complete sense to me. Like everyone else, my favorite scene in the horror film The Silence of the Lambs is when everyone gives Hannibal a big hug at the end of the film. NOT. The reason why this would be such a bizarre scene is that it is impossible to love something that you are afraid of. Love and fear* are like oil and water.

I think this is why all of the belligerent dialogue and angry sentiments and the manipulation of scripture to marginalize people and rob them of the God given humanity should make Christians, and everyone for that matter, sick.

Why do we hate each other and pick groups to marginalize and oppress? The reason is two-fold. The first is that we are scared about our own security and struggle to accept the security of the love that God has extended to us, and because of this we find it easy to pick a group that is different and decide that if God really loves us it’s because we are not like those people.

Perhaps we are afraid that the Good News is not really that good of news. And so we buy in to the perpetual “us and them” categories.

If you look at the history of the Western church, as well as American and it’s adaptation of Christianity, the power base has been fairly constant: white heterosexual men. If what I have stated above is at all true, then it makes perfect sense that everything that is not white, heterosexual, or male would feel like an attack on the apparent “in-ness” of the power base of America and western Christianity.

All of the debates I can think of seem to have this common link. Perhaps this is why discussions about contextualization are dicey. Perhaps this is why racial reconciliation is not a mainstream conversation, and why human sexuality is a hot-button issue (homophobia has been the status-quo) despite the fact that way more harm has been done to the world by heterosexuality than homosexuality (see the battle of Troy). Perhaps this is why women have been second-class citizens, or why any non-western culture is treated as exotic and illegitimate, and why colonialism seemed like such a good idea.

So when I hear that the church in America is under attack, I have to wonder, is there really an attack going on, or is it that people are feeling threatened by people who are different than them? Is the church under attack, or is our world finally waking up to the beautiful diversity that God created and said, “it is good”?

***

My prayer for myself is that I can trust God enough with my fears and trust that he really loves me enough to begin to love other people. I think the world would be better off with one less stone thrower, and one more grace giver.

*Fear is also talked about in the Bible with respect to God. People are told to fear God. This is quite obviously a different use of the word, as it is not the kind of fear that leads to a hateful relationship like the ones I’m discussing in this blog post. As with everything this use of the world fear is a much larger conversation, but for now this footnote will have to suffice.

Just recently I was having a conversation with a friend of mine. As he sat across the table from me I was struck with the sense that we are talking about one thing, but just beneath the surface, we are really talking about something else.

It’s that moment when you are asking questions about a “friend of yours” but the whole time you are just trying to cover up that you are really talking about yourself.

There’s the conversation, the words that people say, but then there is the real conversation, which is what is really being discussed. It is as though the words that we say have almost nothing to do with the conversation we are trying to have. Words are simply the thin covering that we use to dress up our motivations and insecurities about the things that we’re really wondering about.

In the culture I live in there are a few heated “ethical” discussions that have dominated the national conversation and polarized nearly everyone I know. These issues are so engrained in the DNA of the world I live in that saying that I am affiliated with one group or another seems to also entail a decision on one, or both of these issues.

I am talking, of course, about gay marriage and abortion.

I wonder, as I wondered at the beginning, what if gay marriage and abortion are really just the content of the conversations that people are having, while the real conversation is happening just beneath the surface. If this is true, I wonder what the real conversation is…

Potomac by Tim Coons

Track list:

1. Twenty Three/Trouble So Hard

2. Two Rivers

3. Jaw/God’s Gonna Cut You Down

4. Sing Your Song Over Me/Do Lord Remember

5. Keep Being Found/Down By the River Side/Wade in the Water

6. Not Scared Here/Swing Low

7. Everything Is New/Battle Hymn of the Republic

8. Let Us Break Bread Together

Tim Coon’s Potomac album functions on multiple levels. At a basic level is an album of medleys that flow between original material, material from other artists, and American spirituals. The album derives its name from the Potomac River, which Coons feels is the “River Jordan” of America.

Politically this is an interesting choice for album content. In a time where Christianity has been so politically divisive, and a number of people are challenging America’s philosophical view of itself and its role in the world, this album goes back to a time when people sang their grief and their pain and their hope. Coons breathes new life into material that encapsulated the voice of whole people groups in generations past. This grounds the album historically by demonstrating the important role music has played in self understanding in the past. This may be a prophetic question to other forms of music: What identity are we shaping or reinforcing with the music that is being written now?

The arrangements and musicality of the album itself is touted as a collection of “mash-ups” a term more akin to the pop stylings of the Glee, but these mash ups are far removed from any glee club performance. Coons employs diverse instrumentation: bells, guitars, multiple melodies, drums, clarinet, and trumpet (to name a few) which make the tracks compelling. Coons uses the instruments that are traditionally used to perform the spirituals in the album, but then reinterprets them. These choices both do justice to the old tunes, but also open up room for them to grow and seem new again.

Potomac is an album that is quite aware of itself. It makes mention of the historical traditions that inform modern song writing, particularly folk music, and then weaves old songs with new choruses and melodies, which to me, highlights that the original music in this album sees itself as being written in the same vain as the music of old.

My personal experience of the album was multi-faceted. My first response was nostalgia and loss. Much of the politicking that I’ve seen in my life time, not to mention the dinner table conversations that were held around my house were about how things used to be. This created a sense in me that I had some how missed out on the days when it was good to be an American. That America used to be the land of milk and honey. It used to be a place where music and movies were clean, front doors were unlocked, everybody knew everybody and so on.

As I wondered about these feelings further, I realized they were less about longing for a time in history that I missed out on, but rather about a time in my life that I miss. A time when I was kid and the world was safe. It was a time where the world was mine to explore and at church I would attend Sunday school and sing songs about the God who had the whole world in his hands, and I actually believed that. What the album made me long for was that time of security. A feeling that seems more and more fleeting as I experience more life.

What I find powerful about this album is that it invites me to a bigger story. A story wider and deeper than any present circumstances. It’s an album about God’s faithfulness in history, and it’s an album that imagines how historians will see our time. How will we see God’s faithfulness when we look back in 50 years, 100 years? It’s also an album that I felt challenged me to trust again that my singing, praying, and thinking are heard and valued by a heavenly Father that loves all of his children deeply.

Buy Tim’s Album Here: http://timcoons.bandcamp.com/

Icons have been around for literally thousands of years. It’s no coincidence that in a largely illiterate culture images played an important role in relaying the gospel. As time progressed Iconography began to develop its own set of rules. Lighting, color use, facial expression, dimension etc were all laid out.

The rules for icons have allowed them to endure as objects firmly rooted in church tradition. They seem frozen in time and stand outside of other forms of visual art. It’s actually their otherness that makes them powerful for worship. The strangeness of the icon draws the worshipper in.

As I studied icons  I couldn’t help but wonder if there are other icons. There’s no doubt, and the endurance of icons testifies to this, that images have power. The prison images from Abu Garabe prison in Iraq shook the world. Images of children burned by napalm in Vietnam, sparked outrage. The pictures of Pope John Paul II forgiving the man that shot him, or images of Martin Luther King Jr. marching have the power to inspire and provoke. Are these images icons?

They don’t share any of the characteristics of the historic orthodox icons, nor do they explicitly say anything “Christian,” but there’s something about them that strikes a chord with everyone who sees them. Wherever one stands on the particular issue being addressed in the picture (religion, politics, forgiveness etc), one does not leave the encounter unchanged. It’s almost as if powerful images carve out a space for the person witnessing them to make a choice.

One of the letters in the New Testament, the letter called ‘James,’ says that anyone that listens to the “word,” (the gospel) and does not do what it says, is like a person that looks in a mirror, but forgets what they look like. I think this is why art is so dangerous. Once you’ve heard something, seen something, witnessed something, or encountered it, you cannot live as though it does not exist. It’s in those moments that we decide what kind of people we are and what kind of people we will become.

This Pulitzer Prize winning photo is an example:

This photo makes me uncomfortable. It challenges the story I tell myself about who I am. This child lives in such horrible conditions that she will likely be vulture food. How can I continue to sit and over consume in light of this image? Will I change and work so that pictures like this do not have to be taken? Or will I forget what I have seen about the world in this photo which is a mirror to the world humanity has created? What will I choose?

I write about this, because one of the most moving encounters that I have had with Jesus came as a result of a photograph.

In China, you cannot Google search “June 4, 1989,” or “May 35^th” (code for June 4^th), You cannot search Tiananmen Square protest. Why?

One June 4, 1989 a group of people: students, mothers, children, and factory workers poured into the square to protest their government. The square itself is an ironic choice for such a protest. The square was literally built to be so big that it would dwarf anyone standing there. It’s designed to make a person feel small in relation to the state. On June 4^th, however, the state shrunk dramatically in proportion to the protests of the Chinese people. As the nonviolent protest proceeded the government sent the military in to break it up. The initial waves of police and military did not deter the crowd and eventually tanks and artillery were called in. Subsequently the crowd of unarmed civilians was fired upon, as were the surrounding housing complexes.

The Chinese state denies that there were many casualties, but those that were there that day say that the body count was very high…

When the shooting ceased a large line of tanks decided to take a victory lap. They proceeded down a main road near the square uniformly asserting their dominance.

At that moment a man, who remains unidentified, stepped in front of them.

Shockingly the tanks stopped.

They tried to move around him, but he blocked them again.

Armed with only his groceries he walked up on one of the tanks and tried to confront the driver.

Eventually he was shooed off the street.

A photographer in a nearby hotel captured this image:

The Chinese government well aware that journalists were in the area systematically went through the hotel to confiscate film. This photographer had to hide the film in the tank of his toilet and later smuggle it out.

This image is very popular, and scholars have discussed its meaning, but there seem to be as many opinions as there are so-called experts.

To me, this picture represents Jesus.

The square has just been violently cleared of protestors. At that moment the scoreboard reads that the state has won.

Just moments later, the fate of every oppressive regime was decided. The “tank man” stepped out and said for the world to hear, “YOU WILL NOT WIN!” “You may look strong and powerful, but your power is a myth…armed with just grocery sacks and a deep conviction that oppression does not have the final word I will show the world your true colors.”

This picture has so many interpretations and so touches so many people because it resonates with something deep inside all of us. The belief that corruption and death, the Judeo-Christian word for this is sin, cannot win!

This man looks a lot like Jesus to me.

The cross is the first century weapon of mass destruction. It’s the state’s trump card.

In response Jesus says, “I see your cross, and you think that the power of the cross is to take my life, but it’s a myth…you’re not taking my life, I’m the good shepherd I know the greatest love and I’m laying down my life.” Jesus exposes the myth of sin and of the power of the Roman state.

Death is their ultimate weapon, so Jesus takes it head on, and in an entirely unexpected and brilliant moment he is resurrected. Declaring for the universe, “DEATH DOES NOT HAVE THE FINAL WORD, GOD DOES!”

Jesus stands in front of the Roman tanks armed only with love and forgiveness and in a moment of total self-sacrifice he shows the world what God’s love is really like.

I believe the world knows the power of Jesus like the Chinese government knows the power of the Tank-man. The powers that lay claim to the world want to divert attention from it. Alternate gospels like the “American Dream” are offered to inoculate the power of Jesus. Wall Street and its corrupt associates do not want the message of Jesus heard, The powerbrokers of the world, the warlords, drug cartels, and corporations want to offer counterfeit good news that is filled to the brim with empty promises specifically designed to spread inertia and keep the world exactly how it is.

But the tank-man and Jesus himself have already delivered the verdict. No matter how hard the powers of darkness try to prevail, they will not win. Their power has been shown to be false. It’s empty. It’s a sham.

Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection paint a compelling image. Like the tank-man, when someone sees Jesus they have to make a choice. Wherever you stand on the issues: Christianity, religion, the Bible, homosexuality, abortion, American exceptionalism, capitalism, socialism, fascism, the meaning of life etc…

Jesus confronts the viewer. What will I choose? Will I believe that the state has won, or will I believe that there’s a God capable of fixing this world? Will I cave to consumerism and greed, or will I be open to compassion and forgiveness? Will a fear of death drive me, or will I be driven by a love of life? Will I build with oppression and economic superiority, or will I build with mercy, and justice?

The question that the tank-man and Jesus of Nazareth are asking is…

Will I see an image called hope?

Kevin Carter’s 1994 Pulitzer photo

A few years back I was involved in a production called Seven. It was a multi-media show that was hard to explain (which is maybe why it was never easy booking shows.) People would ask “What is it?” and I’d say, “It’s kind of a concept album set to preaching with video and imagery and hope and creativity and laughter and conviction…”
After being stared at blankly I’d end with, “I promise it won’t suck.”

There was a moment while performing Seven that I had a strong realization. This is the best thing I have ever done. Creatively, artistically, impact-wise… this was my best work. And it was not mine.

I was involved. I helped write it. I created it. Produced it… but it’s just not mine. It belonged to a whole group of people. It belonged to Jeff Cook, the speaker and co-creator. It belonged to the sound engineer and the stage-designer; the people who critiqued the show after it’s rocky beginnings and our wives when they let us practice on nights we had baby-duty. It came from a community. It was born out of a host of hearts and that’s what made it incredible.

ALONE

I am a singer-songwriter based in Colorado. When I write I primarily do it alone. I get an idea and sing it into the memo app on my iPhone. Then I fiddle with lyrics and guitar lines. If the idea grows into a song and comes to fruition on an album, there’s a good chance that I’ll play most of the instruments on the recording myself (a la Bon Iver) depending on the project. When I take said project out to do shows I’ll most often play alone.

Even when my best work over the last few years, by far, has been in collaboration, my natural instinct is to go at it alone. I want to explore why this is. Why do I have a this inclination to do things by myself when I so plainly see that working with others produces far greater work? I think I have some answers. Allow me to present some things to push past.

TIME

Time is a huge barrier. I have a wife with a vibrant art career and two girls (3 year old Lucy and 10 month old Harriet. Insert “awwweee” here). Life is busy with my wife and I both working and parenting full-time. Practice takes time- to develop a chemistry and an understanding of how each person works and plays, to catch the nuances of the song you’re doing and truly telling the story beautifully. Do I have that kind of time to invest?

In June I saw a band play at a festival and they were overwhelming. They went so far beyond what the other performers were doing because it was a party onstage and every band member was a host. It went further than the songwriter singing his songs and everyone else backing him up. It was family. It was explosive. I came away thinking that I need to get together with my friends and practice. It would be worth the time.

The truth of the old African proverb comes to mind:
“You can go faster alone,
We can go further together”

In all art there is, of course, a need to stand out. Creating and presenting not just a project solo, but involving a community is something that can help us stand out. Some of the most incredible experiences I’ve had in music have not been when the sound comes from a single creative, but when it comes from a host of people working together and developing a large voice. These experience are born from sweating through the hours in order to achieve something larger than ourselves.

GUARDED

If I were asked, “what are the top traits of an artist? Someone who is creative and regularly sharing things…?”I’d have to put “guarded” into the top five.

Guarded over their work. Artists are so often afraid of being judged. The moment their creation is viewed by anyone other than their self, it’s no longer their own private thing. There is deep fear in showing others something you’ve made with your own heart. Is it worth it to show other people? Won’t that invite critique, criticism? Won’t it ultimately change how you feel about what you’ve made?

Guarded over their ideas. I’ve invited people to submit a song onto a “compilation album” before- folks who have never played that much other than their local coffee shop- and they get extremely scared. They get fearful of their song being stolen. As though the forces behind Ke$ha or Beiber are looking for the next big hook from a Colorado compilation album. (Honestly, I’d be honored if Kanye sampled my latest…)

Guarded over the return. This is closest and my most embarrassing reveal in this post for me. I have a family to take care of. If I’m sharing the spoils/ pie/ honorarium/ gig money with LOTS of people… I’m ashamed to say it but I often have to be upfront with people I play with. I need to keep the money for this… I found the show, booked it, got the people there… I can’t afford to pay you for the time I’ve put forth on this.

In many ways being guarded is the opposite of collaboration. To keep things all to yourself- the money, the ideas, the very work- is a survival instinct. But it’s an instinct that slowly kills your art; makes it a selfish, self-serving, lonely ordeal.

CONTROL

Leading rehearsals can be so hard. I fear having to tell the bass player I don’t like that riff or the drummer that a samba will not work at the bridge. What was she thinking? How do you tell the guitar player that his chosen amp and guitar sounds like it belongs on an Iron Maiden album, not on an indie-folk song…?

There is a loss of control over the vision/project/art the moment you let others in on the process. I’ve read about some control freaks and how working with them may be lucrative, and how it’s soul-crushingly boring. Because said leader dictates and micro-manages every moment of the creation, allowing for no other voices.

Anymore, when rehearsing for a large project or a church event or any show that’s going to involve more people, here’s what I look for: I push through those moments of explaining vision and guiding the sound to the moment when someone does something that surprises me.

It surprises me in the way of, “That’s not what I had imagined for this song… It’s better. It somehow becomes MORE now.” Call it chemistry or playing naturally together, but those are the moments I LOVE. When the song isn’t just the leader’s anymore but it’s OURS. A unique sound has been born because all of us showed up here, in this time.

SICK OF ME

This post is about myself as a musician but I also feel like it has a lot to do with the Kingdom of God. Life is about going beyond the self so you can be part of a bigger story, a bigger purpose, and something that holds far more gravity than our own unique and self-important little lives. I long to invest the time, push past where I’m so guarded, and let go of control when it comes to the big picture of life. I want my art to do the same.

Tim Coons
potomac.timcoons.com
Check out Tim’s newest project “Potomac: Capturing American Spirituality” online, where photographers were invited to post pictures in response to his newest music, for the sake of collaboration and better art.

When Ryan asked me to contribute a guest post on his blog, I felt very honored. I met Ryan when we both were attending the same church and school for our Bachelor’s and it’s been great to watch him journey towards the place that he is at right now. However, we couldn’t have been down two separate paths. Ryan took the philosophy/seminary route and I just graduated with my Master’s in English.

However, there is one thing that we share in common, and the thing Ryan asked me to blog on; that’s writing.

I’ve been a semi-active blogger since 2006, when I started my first blog, read only by a few close friends. In that time I’ve also managed to create a fairly successful music blog and am on the path towards building a new personal blog to house my present career as a writer.

And I’ve been writing since I was 12.

All this to say, writing is something that I love to do. It’s something that I feel gifted to do. It’s the space where I feel the most creative and fertile. And it’s a completely selfish act.

Right?

Not entirely. There is certainly a selfish action involved in writing, especially with blogging. If you didn’t think you had something valuable to say, you wouldn’t say it. This can definitely lead to the sort of, “I’m hot stuff, you all should listen to me” syndrome that a lot of bloggers seemingly possess. However, I think there is another angle to look at this, one that’s far more fertile and useful. Writing might have a selfish dimension to it, but it also can be a beautiful expression of our inner voice and, like all art, can be a wonderfully creative act that showcases our status as image bearing human beings.

The realms I typically write in, literary criticism and creative nonfiction have very different goals. In literary criticism, it’s about being robust, clear, and inventive. New ideas communicated academically are cherished. In the far more comfortable for me sphere of creative nonfiction (or CNF), the goal is to communicate stories and as evidenced by the name, communicate them creatively. It’s here that I’d like to draw an interesting parallel; I think much of the Bible is written as a CNF piece.

Heresy is probably what most of you are thinking. How could the Bible be something that is creative? It has to be literally true! While I never heard this refrain specifically growing up, I think this idea was present in the church culture I grew up in. The Bible needed to be true and it needed to be factually true. Otherwise, it wasn’t reliable. However, CNF doesn’t have this problem, per se. The goal in CNF is to communicate a life experience of some sort (whether that be an event one attended, a season in your life, or one specific day) and the value and reliability comes in the act of being privy to this person’s inner voice. Likewise, there is an inherent assumption that this is being communicated as best as the person can remember the event. None of us have a perfect memory and this is a facet of knowledge that is at the heart of the genre. It’s here that I think the parallel comes in.

What is the Bible, really? In part it is a collection of stories of one group of humanity’s interaction with God. It is their story and I think most Christians would assume that the largest portion of that is nonfiction. And I think it’s written in a very creative fashion. There were liberties taken with what stories to include and what not. The books read in a narrative flow, not as a history textbook. Think of the book of Jonah. It could or could not be “literally true” but it’s an engaging story about one person’s life that is meant to tap into our common experience. Jonah gets mad at God, like we all do, and God uses that experience to teach him something. We make the assumption that this story is true, because that’s powerful to us. Likewise, we allow ourselves to believe a great fish ate him. But what if that is a bit of creative license? Or what if the dialogue isn’t exactly how it happened? This still shouldn’t be a problem, because ultimately it’s about the connection and tapping into our shared human experience. This is what creative nonfiction does at it’s best. It’s a specific story that taps into our shared human experience.

This is why I write. I think this is why many of us write; to tap into our shared connection. More so than that, I think this allows us to tap into our relationship with God even more, because it’s here in this creative realm that we can explore, play with, and argue with our life and with our God. David used the Psalms to this end. I think writing can and should be used in the same way.