On Being Blog
While much of the SOF staff was in D.C. last Thursday for Krista’s conversation with E.J. Dionne and David Brooks, a few of us went to “Church” at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. The “Church” I’m referring to is a performance of experimental playwright Young Jean Lee’s play, which the New York Times’ Jason Zinoman described as “an unorthodox contemporary worship service, complete with sermon, praise dancing and a gospel choir.”
It was definitely an engaging experience — at times funny, thought-provoking, stirring, even just confusing. Lee’s parents were converted evangelical Christians, but Lee struggled with her parents’ faith: “I was not a religious person. I resisted and fought through my entire childhood and adolescence.” Writing “Church” was a challenge to herself to create “the last show in the world that [I] would ever want to make,” and what resulted was an ambiguous adaptation of a church service — one that refused to be completely earnest or ironic, but fluctuated somewhere in between.
After seeing the performance, Nancy — who’s been filling in for Colleen during her maternity leave — tracked down this conversation between the creator of “Church” and playwright/director Lear Debessonet. The two women touched on how Christianity is often encountered in contemporary theater:
Ms. Lee: Most of what I’ve seen up until this point has been critiques and making fun. Christians are just not taken seriously at all, which is what my show came out of. But I have a feeling there’s going to be a big wave of theatrical stuff dealing with evangelical Christians over the next year.
Ms. Debessonet: I think the downtown artistic community is realizing we don’t really have the option of dismissing [evangelical Christianity] anymore. This is a force in our world. There are so many millions of people that do believe this, and for us not to even attempt to engage them or understand what’s driving them seems irresponsible artistically.
—Olympian Shawn Crawford
In a display of sportsmanship, the U.S. sprinter gave his Olympic silver medal to Churandy Martina, who finished ahead of Crawford in the 200-meter event but was disqualified for running outside of his lane.
—Mary Doria Russell
» download (mp3, 13:13)
A couple of weeks ago when we were taping Krista’s interview with novelist and retired paleoanthropologist Mary Doria Russell, the conversation briefly touched on some of her musical tastes. Intrigued by what I had heard, I did some further research and learned that, growing up, Mary Doria Russell was the kind of kid who “liked the Stones better than the Beatles, Beethoven better than Mozart, and orchestral music better than string quartets.” These days, she says, her “calm, well-ordered and intensely bourgeois life” apparently continues to seek refuge in large-scale, emotionally-charged, musical productions.
As someone who was coming of age in the 80’s, I was surprised to learn that Ms. Russell, who is approaching 60, is quite a fan of what she calls the “big hair” bands of those days, and even claims to have “worn the oxide” off her cassette copy of Def Leppard’s 1986 release, Hysteria. On one of the e-mail exchanges I had with her she said, “Listen, punk. Hysteria is the best rock album ever made, and don’t you forget it!”
So, I decided to give her a call, hoping that we might get a little deeper insight into the musical affections of a “well-ordered” novelist — affections that include Beethoven, Chopin, and Puccini but also Van Halen and, of course, Def Leppard.
In all seriousness, Mary Doria Russell has been very open and on record about her tastes in music. I appreciate her being such a good sport about it in this conversation.
—Illinois State Senator Randall Hultgren (R), before casting a vote to impeach Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D).
UPDATE: I’ll be posting footage to this entry over the weekend as soon as I get the session audio.
UPDATE: I apologize for these technical problems. The bandwidth at the venue came to a screeching halt and has precluded us from streaming live. I’ll post our tape as soon as I can. Thank you, and let me have it. Trent
Live Video: Krista with David Brooks and E.J. Dionne
Trent Gilliss, Online Editor
At 6:30 pm Eastern today, we will be streaming Krista’s live public interview with New York Times columnist David Brooks and Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne — all live from the campus of Georgetown University. For those of you in Washington D.C., there’s still time to attend the event in person. For those of you who can’t, the best place to watch the conversation is right here at SOF Observed.
The topic of conversation is the legacy of Reinhold Niebuhr and the future of his idea of Christian realism. I’m excited — and prepared to be surprised — to hear where Krista directs this topic as the U.S. shifts gear during a new presidential administration.
I got a preview of Niebuhr’s relevance during our morning briefing (actually, a confab with coffee and pastries). Krista has been reading one of Niebuhr’s later works, The Irony of American History. Part of his book addresses the very real threat of communism of the day. But, Niebuhr warns, that the virtuous founding principles of the United States — simplicity, rugged individualism, frugality, modesty, faith — has lead to the country’s success and great wealth. This prosperity comes at a cost of abandoning some of what made the U.S. great; the threat is to wield such power and might with humility.
I’m also opening up the chat dialog that accompanies this live feed so that you can share ideas with others who may be watching with you. Please let me know what you think of this endeavor. We really do this for the many of you who can’t attend these events in person. It’s a great honor for me and I love to get feedback, even criticism so we can serve you better.
» download (mp3, 2:12)
Last week Shiraz shared a section from Krista’s energetic conversation with Mary Doria Russell discussing the meaning and influence of music in Russell’s writing. He also wrote about the Golden Record, a phonograph record that was included on the two Voyager spacecraft launched in 1977, with the hope of making contact with another alien species. Mitch, our senior producer, collected a few audio samples from the Golden Record and put together a beautiful sound collage that was included in the program, and which you can listen to above.
The Golden Record itself contains quite a range of scenes from Earth, not only in its audio recordings but also in the included 122 images (the record case includes instructions for how to play both, explained here). The audio contents of the record include greetings in 55 different languages, 27 examples of music from around the world (not available for download, but you can still listen to them here), and a selection of “The Sounds of Earth.” Also included are messages from Kurt Waldheim, the U.N. Secretary-General at the time, and U.S. President Jimmy Carter.
Carl Sagan, the director of the Golden Record project, said that “the launching of this bottle into the cosmic ocean says something very hopeful about life on this planet.” His statement hints at an understanding of this endeavor that’s not only useful for extraterrestrial species, but also as an opportunity for introspection. The contents of the Golden Record serve as a time capsule, allowing us to examine which aspects of its content still seem universally human, and which may already seem outdated or consequential.
I can’t help but wonder how this message might have changed now — and how both its form and content might be different. What new art forms might it include now? What images, or perhaps videos? Would it be a Golden DVD, a Golden Hard Drive? Let’s hear your thoughts on what might belong in a “message in a bottle” from Earth, circa 2009.
Ad Astra Per Aspera is a Latin phrase recorded in morse code on the Golden Record. It translates as “through hardships to the stars.”
We last spoke to Greg Epstein in the wake of a Pew poll on the American religious landscape, finding that 16 percent of Americans identified themselves as unaffiliated, atheist, agnostic, or nothing in particular. Greg Epstein is the humanist chaplain at Harvard University, and he has been an emerging leader in trying to unify that growing population of the non-religious — to create a community driven not by a stance against religion, but by positive ethical beliefs and actions.
So as we turned to Greg Epstein again, we wanted to know how he’s seen his community experiencing the current economic crisis. Epstein once defined humanism as “philosophy of life without supernaturalism that affirms our ability and responsibility to lead ethical lives of personal fulfillment aspiring to the greater good of humanity.” It turns out that the current economic crisis has refocused his community’s vision of what that “greater good” should look like.
When we rebroadcast our show Pagans Ancient and Modern last spring, I was struck by the fact that the natural world was never a part of my religious upbringing. All the religious rituals I’ve participated in (save for a couple outdoor weddings) were conducted in churches. Hearing about the resurgence of Pagan rituals around Europe made me jealous. How much easier would it have been to pay attention to a church service if it were held around a bonfire on a chilly night?
And I thought of that again when I read this New York Times article about a Russian Orthodox Epiphany ritual that involves immersing one’s self in freezing water. I love the idea of such a ritual reminding people of the strength they have to continue with the hardships of their lives. And when asked why he participates in the ritual, an advertising manager named Vladislav Komarov says, “We are all pagans in our souls.”
Throughout recent discussions of our current financial crisis, I have been struck at how few leaders are willing to imagine changes or alternatives to the system that has faltered. In this conversation, Mount Mercy economics professor Ayman Amer delves directly into this topic, outlining financial alternatives as they are practiced in the Islamic world. He ruminates on the shared responsibilities of government, lending bodies, communities and individuals discussing how they can they work together for mutual success. Amer uses the Islamic financial practices of no-interest banking as an example of an alternative method that could realistically be applied here in the United States.
As a scholar with an understanding of the financial structures of both the Islamic world and the United States, Amer pushes us to remember that in times of assessment and reflection it is as important to look outward as it is to reflect inward. He helps us do just this, asking how can we improve our own practices and challenging us to see examples elsewhere.
I loved the inaugural poem Elizabeth Alexander read earlier this week — with its quiet, understated beginning, and how it wound up to this:
Some live by love thy neighbor as thyself,
others by first do no harm or take no more
than you need. What if the mightiest word is love?Love beyond marital, filial, national,
love that casts a widening pool of light,
love with no need to pre-empt grievance.In today’s sharp sparkle, this winter air,
any thing can be made, any sentence begun.
On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp,praise song for walking forward in that light.
Still, I was a tad surprised to find her on The Colbert Report last night, where she showed she can hold her own with the master satirist, who’s inquiry into the nature of metaphor, by the way, becomes just slightly infected by double entendre that might offend some sensibilities.
The inaugural poem itself is going to be issued as a chapbook by her publisher Graywolf Press — a marvelous literary publisher located in, of all places, St. Paul, Minnesota where we work.
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