TWENTY YEARS AGO, U2 released Achtung Baby, the album that would surpass The Joshua Tree as the band’s best in the eyes and ears of many. Last year, Davis Guggenheim released a documentary about the period of time between those seminal albums and how the band went from being one kind of band to something completely different (and about how they almost didn’t survive the process). In the video, Bono talks about that in-between place, where you don’t quite know who you are or what you’re going to become. All you can hope is that you will become something.
The band made the cover of Q: The Music magazine at roughly the same time (where they were named “the greatest act of the last 25 years”). When asked about whether anyone “needs” a new U2 album, Bono said:
Oh look. . . U2 has been on the verge of irrelevance for 20 years. We’ve ducked and dived and dodged it. We’ve made some great albums, some great songs; laid a few eggs, not that many. Turkeys, I mean. Lots of people have U2 albums – why they would want another is a reasonable question. I don’t know if it is possible for us to make something current that is meaningful, not just to our audience but to the times we live in. But that’s kind of the job for me, and I’m not ready to give it up. I think it’s unlikely that we’ll pull it off, but then so has the last 20 years been unlikely.
I’ve not been teaching school or writing things for long, teaching just under a decade, and can’t imagine the stamina such a band would require. But I understand the struggle, the challenge. How do you speak to your time? How do you see yourself in the time you are in? The cover of the magazine asks the band’s pertinent question, which it asked before Achtung Baby and again now in this new time after No Line on the Horizon: Could we possibly begin again? That’s the way I feel this rainy February evening. I’ve blogged for almost nine years, have taken the last few months off not sure of what to say. But that is true for me as a teacher, too. At the beginning of June, I will watch my sixth group of seniors cross the stage. What’s next? What’s left? I like Bono’s sentiment: not ready to give it up. That comes from a deeper place, a deep sense of vocation. That’s worth delving for.
Can you begin again? I certainly hope so.
You can check out the Q: The Music interview here.
Space Enough, and Time 
Just found your blog and read all the posts. The last one I read was titled “Can You Begin Again?” Laurie and I are still working with newly married couples after at least ten years. We are also zeroing in on 60 years old. That combination has caused me to question if we are still believable; are twenty-somethings even going to think we can remember what it was like being newly weds; or, maybe more importantly, are they going to believe we can know what it is like being newly weds today. And those are just the questions our “church” couples may be asking. I don’t know that we can even guess what non-believing couples would be asking, how utter irrelevant they would probably view us. I have said to myself, “If you have out lived all your friends, you quit making friends too soon.” I believe that it true, but for some reason I am tempted to resist the work it will continue to take to make friends and establish mentor relationships with couples whose texts I can’t even read, much less understand. So Bono’s question of relevance is hitting close to home here in the Jackson home (as usual, Laurie is much more optimistic).