My eyes are burning. I have not gotten much sleep the last couple of days because I have spent many late nights listening to the new U2 CD No LIne on the Horizon. I am not sure why I am such a fan. I always have been....we go way back....to the beginning. When they started I was starting, as a human. Perhaps it is the fact that Bono and his wife Alli have been married a little longer than Dawn and me. Perhaps it is that we have just grown up together. They, u2, were always something that I could count on. Perhaps it is their ability to capture the soul of the planet and we just groove--but then again we are not alone. Many of you do too---groove together with them,that is! Perhaps it is their love for Africa that I share with them. Perhaps it is the intellectual genius that I so enjoy--even though I am a very simple man trying to dabble in deeper things. Perhaps it is their ability to collapse the material and spiritual in such a way that there really is a blurring on the horizon of those two boundaries. They are ontologically metaphysical without losing their penultimate imminence. Perhaps it is just the love of rock and roll, the violence of it that awakens us to the madness and the sheer BS of many things that we place such heavy stock in. Perhaps it is their ability to write and sing of love, angst, searching, wandering, questioning and at times finding. Perhaps it is because they have the gift of dripping us in emotion through storytelling. Perhaps they connect all of what it means to be human in a three minute convergence of creation and inspiration so that we feel it through all of our physicality. Perhaps it is that I never know if I have just listened to a rock song or worshipped-God, or both! Perhaps it is becasue they capture the tensions, paradox, and antinomy of life in such a way that i neither know if I have just experienced loneliness or joy....because through all of their melodious searchings there is always one thing....hope! They have the ability to create a playground for us to wander in, without fear, they allow us space to swim in the world of the unknown and to surrender to that sacred and primal place. It is a womblike experience in which the etheral and material simultaneously co-exist. Perhaps it is all of these things. Perhaps it is none of these things. Perhaps it is just the gravitas of grace. Perhaps.

Perhaps... you want to be let into the sound... the sound of God speaking creation into existence, the sound of the logos speaking into your life, the sound of the Spirit calling your name.
Posted by: Neil | March 05, 2009 at 01:19 PM