As Seen On TV: Prayer Cross

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Here's a pretty funny spoof:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vq-SQLRbm00

Hitchens interviews for Portland (last)Monthly

I'm a bit late on bringing this to you. Perhaps you've already noticed (like I did while standing in line at Freddie's) that Portland Monthly recently interviewed Christopher Hitchens. I meant to let you know sooner, just like I meant to let you know about Hitchen's appearance at Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall early last month. What can I say, I'll try and do better.

This isn't the nightly news, after all. That is, you won't catch me saying "Depend on me!" or "These are the stories that matter to you!" No, despite the confidence you may have instilled in me, reading this blog will not help keep your family safe (actually, that's debatable), or give you any guiding light to follow.

If you miss an entry—or even if you don't, apparently—the worst that will happen is you miss Christopher Hitchens when he comes to town—which, mind you, I view to be a stinging consequences of my neglect.

Christopher Hitchens is a name which I would like to begin to take for granted on this forum. That is, it no longer feels natural to supply him with any sort of introduction. Suffice it to say, he's the best public defender of atheism that I've observed, and has done much to combat the intractable and cumbersome meme of Religion in an age that, until recently (thanks to Hitchen's and other outspoken atheists), had become much too accommodating.

The interview—billed by Portland Monthly as "an encounter more befitting the Rose City: a conversation with a liberal believer..."—aimed to pair Hitchens not with yet another fundamentalist Christian (a format that I imagine becomes tiring), but instead with a retired minister from one of the more evolved tentacles of the Christian faith—the First Unitarian Church of Portland.

Too say that it's evolved is simply to say that it has followed the trend of becoming increasingly watered down. Interviewer and former church minister, Marilyn Sewell, while seeming like a cool enough lady—and clearly one who has pressed up against the boundaries of faiths constraints—in turn represents the vague and vaporous future of religion as it evolves into nothing in particular.

Listen to the full interview at PortlandMonthly.com

Prince writes fight song with epic evocations

Prince symbol in ice cavern
By: jamesNpatti

God (if he's listening at all) knows I love Prince. And Prince, in all his serial-privacy and symbol-hood, yields as great a question mark as any of the venerable riddles I try and fail to solve on this blog. Perhaps I don't set out to solve, only to articulate the cause for dissolution.

One thing I've always admired about Prince is his broad-minded way of framing things. Sure he's written songs about small red Corvettes and raspberry colored headgear—both vivid images that the mind readily latches onto—but often these frivolties betray a greater depth of insight.

I don't want to qualify that, it's just a feeling I get.

On the other hand, Prince is at times less narrative and more explicit. Take one of my all-time favorite songs Controversy for example. In this 3mins and 30secs of ecstasy, a brief but impactful intro gives way to a light and bouncy verse, which then transitions miraculously into one of the most slyly-epic and dark choruses of all time. It's in these sweeping passages that Prince opens the veins of all humanity, crying "Do I believe in God? Do I believe in Peace? Some people wanna die so they can be free. Life is just a game, we're all just the same."

Dark as these lyrics might seem, the song maintains an amazingly light feel throughout, satisfying all criteria for danceability, and making Controversy a resounding testament to Prince's genius.

Still—though I am a fan and incline toward exaltation—I am not the sort of fan who wishes to support the objects of my interest in their every effort, indiscriminately. That is not to undercut Prince's most recent submission—which hilariously is a fight song for the Minnesota Vikings. I mean only to say—and I think it will be clear upon hearing it—that "Purple and Gold" (as it's called) is not representative of the entities best work. It's kind of meandering actually. And not that catchy. It is, however, wholly endearing and makes me want to cheer for the Vikings and ever-harder for Prince, whose many talents include not giving a shit.

Listen to Purple and Gold:



Purple and Gold Lyrics:

the veil of the sky draws open
the roar of the chariots touch down
we r the ones who have now come again
and walk upon water like solid ground
as we approach the throne we won't bow down
this time we won't b denied

raise every voice and let it b known
in the name of the purple and gold

we come in the name of the purple and gold
all of the odds r in r favor
no prediction 2 bold
we r the truth if the truth can b told
long reign the purple and gold

the eyes say ready 4 battle
no need 4 sword in hand
we r all amped up like a rock n roll band
ready 2 celebrate every score
ready 2 fight the elegant war
ready 2 hear the crowd roar

that's what we came 4
and so much more
in the name of the purple and gold

r spirits may b tired
r bodies may b worn
but since this day is r destiny
r history – that's y we must b
4ever strong as the wind that blows the Vikings' horn
in the name of the purple and gold

CHORUS

---

Read more from the source that broke the news:

http://www.myfoxtwincities.com/dpp/sports/prince-reveals-song-for-vikings-saints-game

Precious Facebook comment

Terwilliger "Mystery" Mural Inquiry (Part Two: No mystery technology can't solve)

Mural at St. Mark Presbyterian Church, Portland, OR
Photo: God, LLC

One discouraging aspect of this modern life is the complete lack of mystery. I don't mean those age old mysteries—why are we here? who made the world? who made the guy who made the world? why does stuff come wrapped in that inpenetrable hard plastic that cuts the consumer when he tries to open it with scissors? No, I'm referring instead to those little curiosities, those "mysteries" the solving of which, in a pre-google, pre-smartphone world, required a phone call, an appointment, an interview—a brush with fellow man wherein a lead was captured demanding that you shimmy down that rabbit's hole into the very den of secrets where your little mystery was kept. Or at least a trip to the library was in order.

But alas, the problem with the direction of technology is that we are soon to inhabit a world scrubbed of all mystery. A world where information flows like water—actually quite unlike water, or anything else for that matter. Sure to be evermore accessible, evermore complete, we will soon find ourselves merged with it—we will interface with it—control it with our eye movements, or quite possibly with our very minds.

We've all by now experienced the humble beginnings of this likely future—among friends, or around the dinner table perhaps. In the course of conversation you've run into a snag because you can't remember what it's called when you trim shrubs into nifty shapes for ornament, and all you can do is say, "You know, like Edward Scissorhands," but no one is quite on your page, so you have the thought to google it, and sure enough, the word you couldn't think of was "topiary."

Talk about outboard memory potential.

With these luddite views of mine in tow, I set out to discover the meaning of the St. Mark's Presbyterian Church mural—the old fashioned way, without the help of Google's search engine.

I embarked the first day on foot, wrapped in a scarf, with my Rite Aid Ray-Ban's and some fingerless gloves (I was otherwise presentable, as these were all accessories I could shed before I made my introduction). For all my romantic talk of the pursuit of mystery, my plan was dumbly simple: walk to the church and see if anyone there could answer my questions about the mural. I had a pocket-sized spiral notebook and a good pen.

Strike one came in the form of a daycare volunteer. She apparently was merely a volunteer at the daycare that resides below the church, and really knew nothing about the mural, despite its towering dominion just feet above her place of volenteerdom. I then was reminded that the church complex was home to two organizations, St. Mark's Presbyterian Church and P'nai Or of Portland, a Jewish community center. The daycare, I believe, is associated with P'nai Or, though I'm not sure of that.

Regardless, the gal at the daycare new nothing and suggested I talk with the people upstairs. Aha! My first lead.

This should have been helpful, but there were no other cars in the parking lot, and indeed, no other church personel to flag down. I headed back to my house, a touch deflated that "things hadn't just worked out." I nonetheless enjoyed the walk and the fresh air.

Strike two came two days later in the form of another dumb-headed wishful jaunt back to the church. This "detective work," you may have noticed, is part sleuthing, part exercise—and this is exactly what I'm talking about here! The chance to get out in the world and mix yourself with it. Smell the smells, and touch the plants. Notice the progress on the gutting and polishing of that salvaged Airstream trailer you've been coveting seven houses down. Maybe that's just me.

Regardless, the mission was only a success in the above outlined "tangential" sense. My spiral notebook remained un-jotted as the parking lot was, this time, completely empty.

At this point you might be, in your mind, criticizing my methods. Why didn't I just do the legwork to see when someone was gonna be around—look into the church's hours, you know? To my critics, I have no great answer. I'm a shitty detective, is that what you want to hear? Ok. I'm a shitty detective.

And I only proved shittier when on a third day—today in fact—I tried yet again, this time in a drive-by effort, before and after a trip to the bank. I'm starting to wonder when the fuck these people get together anyhow. I'll happily adopt one of their offices if they're not going to use it 3-out-of-5 days of the working week. Anyways, that's all the worked up I got.

Maybe you see where this is headed.

In my defense, I got sick twice this week—that put a slight damper on my motivation and potential to devise better plans. By the time I made today's last-ditch drive-by effort, I had already resigned myself to poking Google if things didn't work out again at the church. Sure enough, when they didn't, I came home and was reminded where my true detective skills lie—in my ability to sniff stuff out online. It wasn't perfectly straight forward, I'll have you know. It took me four or five search formulations and some elementary problem solving to make the discovery (one of the more exhilarating web searches of resent memory!).

First, I discovered the website of the church. Then the name of the mural—"The Vigil of St. Mark." Unfortunately, the link to "Vigil of St Mark Mural" page was broken (I emailed them to fix), so I googled "Vigil of St. Mark Mural" and came up with the artist's name—ESTEBAN CAMACHO STEFFENSEN (I found this neat video of him instructing high school kids in the art of mural-making). At this point, I was close. I found a couple articles that made mention of the mural, but nothing engaging it directly, giving me the full-body analysis I was hoping for. Here and there, I was learning things, for example Esteban is from (or maybe just hails from) Costa Rica. He attended Pacific Northwest College of Art and describes the mural painting process as a sort of performance, where the artist's engagement with onlookers is a vital part of the process.

Anyhow, here's the moment you've maybe been waiting for. I'll go ahead and just link you to the source. It's the announcement of the dedication of the mural, as it appeared in Omnibus, a Presbyterian newsletter, penned by St. Mark's very own pastor, The Rev. Dr. Barbara J. Campbell (If only the good Reverend Doctor knew of my envelope-pushing impracticality in pursuit of her expertise...)

I think the final search phrase ended up being "Esteban Steffensen Camacho, Vigil of St. Mark". In fact, I know it was.

Here's the goods. You'll need to navigate to page 11 for the story.

Hooaah! Pre-battle ritual makes me wanna barf...

I'd embed the video here but I wouldn't want to tempt the BBC to come break my knees, so you'll have to visit the link if you're interested:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/newsnight/markurban/2010/01/the_dangers_of.html

The link is to a good article on what motivates a war journalist, but sandwiched in between the story text you'll find a video that gives an in-depth look into a recent US marines operation in Now Zad, a small ghost-village in Helmand Province. Don't worry there's no graphic violence, but I will give it a PG-13 rating for strong language (adjusted for inflation of course).

Inflation, as it were—more specifically inflation of language—happens to be a chief theme of this post. In the video, at about 4.22, Captian Michael Taylor (acting war chaplain) blesses the impending mission with a battle-prayer that drips with toxic dogma, and showcases the mind-bending malleability of faith-speak.

Now, to be fair (ugh! there's always a "to be fair." and a plurality of ways in which "to be fair"). None the less, to be fair it makes sense to acknowledge the malleability of language in general. That is, all things, not just faith, can be appropriated, mis-used, mis-represented, misunderstood, skewed and so forth.

But why are the faithful reminding God of anything? They credit him with being all-powerful, all-mighty, all-knowing, all-seeing, all-benevolent. Why then should he be reminded? And why then are good Christians allowed to fall at the hands of "a merciless [evil] enemy?" These are the questions that would keep a logician up at night, if he didn't have more practical things to think about.

The point (maybe) is that language continues to be the ladle stirring the contents of faith's crock-pot into an ever soupier amalgam, so that now you stare into it and you think—what the fuck's for dinner?

Not that I'm dinning at that table. It's just I've taken a special interest in these contradictions.

Moving on, however, to army culture at large (or, at least as depicted in this documentary footage)—what a horrific display. Get hyped to go blow some people away, sounds great. I see that there are clearly survival mechanics at work, but Jesus H. Christ, these are the types of individuals who get all puffed-up and unruly on the sidewalk outside of nightclubs and cause me to smack my head and ask "is there any decency?" I mean, I know we're at war and people gotta get killed or be killed, but could we at least do it with a some class? The answer, apparently, is no. Or the reality is no.

Another way to look at it is, these poor kids are out there doing battle so that I can sit here and spout off about it. At least that's what we're told. We're told by our government, by everyone it seems, to support our troops. Contradictorily, in no other arena is this sort of behavior esteemed. It's pretty clear that these personality types—some pre-existing, many born of war—are merely instrumental in our current global predicament.

Regardless, I can't support what I've just witnessed, it makes me want to hurl. My support can easily extend to those friends that have enmeshed themselves with war. But the machine that drives it makes me want to get sick. So do the forces of "God's Army," (no, the other God's army), twice over.

So there's a predicament.

"Brothers"
Courtesy of Hoofing It

Terwilliger "Mystery" Mural Inquiry (Part One: A strange allure)

St. Mark Presbyterian Church, Portland, OR
Photo: God, LLC

I've walked and driven-by this mural countless times and it hasn't ceased to puzzle me. It has a strange allure. Not only is it quite well done for what should, by all indications, be an entirely ordinary, vanilla church/daycare mural (poorly-rendered children of all races doing cartwheels comes to mind), but its vivid colors, sharp lines and triumphant winged white lion evoke a certain mysticism, and it's prompted a curiosity in me that has resulted in my first God, LLC "assignment" (self-appointed, of course).

My assignment is to discover the origin and symbolism of this most mysterious mural. How did such a special piece get slapped onto a complex that otherwise exudes only mediocrity? When was it painted and by whom? These answers and more in the coming week.

Mural at St. Mark Presbyterian Church, Portland, OR
Photo: God, LLC