Traveling with Caedmon’s Call and the Third Guild Album

Posted on July 20, 2015 by awtraughber

Caedmon's CallOver the last few months I’ve spent a lot of quality time listening to Caedmon’s Call and filling in some gaps in my music collection. Just before heading out on my recent trip to Tennessee, I found and ordered a copy of their third “Guild” album. The Guild albums were for their committed fans and often included live cuts, instrumentals, and songs that never quite made it to a studio album. When I found the album (from the year 2000), I ordered it and had it sent to Tennessee, where it waited for me to make my trek west to see some friends in Kentucky. While the collection has a number of anticipated moments and tracks (“Hope to Carry On” and “God of Wonders”), there were also a number of really nice surprised. My five favorite moments from the album:

  1. I wasn’t expecting to find a piano-infused rendition of “Standing Up for Nothing.” The song has long been a favorite (what a bridge!), and the piano coming in at the first chorus gave it a nice distinction from the album version. Also interesting: this version goes with the more grammatically pleasant “I’m not” instead of “I ain’t.” It’s the little things.
  1. There are two snippets of childhood performances by band members. The best involved an organ-y take on “The Lord is in His Holy Temple” that includes the most hilarious “shush” I’ve ever heard recorded. Ah, childhood musicals.
  1. Two tracks include vocal performances by fans that I wasn’t expecting. The first is a medley of Caedmon’s songs (a selection from a 45-minute piece) that weaves the words and keys of some of the band’s most popular songs together seamlessly. The second is an a capella version of “This World,” which isn’t something you’d expect to find at all ever.
  1. It’s always interesting when musicians make nods to other (often more popular) songs in their set. One totally unexpected moment from the album involves Derek Webb, Bebo Norman, and “I Want It That Way” by the Backstreet Boys. It’s the total opposite of the time I heard The Normals segue into U2’s “Wake Up Dead Man” and Mark Heard’s “Nod Over Coffee.”
  1. Near the end of the album is an excerpt from a video shoot with Rich Mullins. You hear his song “You Did Not Have a Home” being played while people are talking. After more than a verse and chorus of the song, it stops and then you hear Rich talking. Not sure what I was expecting, but it wasn’t that. What a nice moment of a kind of grace.

Honorable Mentions: an early and acoustic version of “Can’t Lose You” and a (much) shorter rendition of “There’s a Stirring,” which I’ve had on my mind a lot since Texas days.

It’s an odd but encouraging thing to revisit music from this particular band at this particular place in their career. It reminds me of a more thoughtful, literate, and engaging approach to the Christian faith. It was both a simpler but more complicated time, where you often “just didn’t want coffee.” I played the album throughout the rest of my visit home and am really glad to add it to my collection. It’s also spurring on some good thoughts for me, thoughts that I hope to play with over the next few weeks and days here in this short space between summer break and the fall semester of teaching.

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Soonish from Sherlock

Posted on July 9, 2015 by awtraughber

And here’s a clip from what most of us are assuming will be a Sherlock Christmas special.  Again with the moustache, Mr. Watson.

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The Return of the Doctor

Posted on July 9, 2015 by awtraughber

Turns out that we’ve got just over two months before the return of the Doctor.  Here’s the trailer for the new season.

 

I was talking to a friend recently about spoilers and my attempt to avoid them.  The beauty of the best trailers (at least when it comes to a well-known property) is that it can give you all kinds of images and sensations, but they don’t really make sense until you see them in context.  Some familiar faces in the trailer, but definitely more unknown things than known.

Doctor Who series nine drops in mid-September.

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Restlessness

Posted on June 11, 2015 by awtraughber

Whether you sing it or you say it, Augustine’s thought rings true in life as you live it.

Great are You, O Lord, and greatly to be praised; great is Your power, and of Your wisdom there is no end. And man, being a part of Your creation, desires to praise You, man, who bears about with him his mortality, the witness of his sin, even the witness that You “resist the proud,” — yet man, this part of Your creation, desires to praise You. You move us to delight in praising You; for You have formed us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless till they find rest in You.

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No Room for Dry Eyes

Posted on June 9, 2015 by awtraughber

Here’s a video compilation put together by a fan of Pixar movies in anticipation of next week’s Inside Out.

 

It definitely hit some of the company’s high notes (though I would’ve liked more from Brave and Toy Story 2).  Regardless, it’s a great example of putting things together.

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Receiving the Martian Signal

Posted on June 8, 2015 by awtraughber

Seriously: go read the book first.  Then come back and watch the trailer.

 

I’m a little surprised at how much this trailer actually gives away.  When I was reading the book (which was an enthralling experience), I was assuming one narrative direction.  Then things changed.  Makes me glad I read the book first.  You should, too.

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Timing is Everything

Posted on June 4, 2015 by awtraughber

Every spring in my Old Testament class I look forward to getting to the book of Ecclesiastes.  On some level, the book upends some of my students’ expectation that everything in the Bible is particularly cheery.  But I also like to see faces when they recognize Scripture having been used in popular music (in this case, “Turn! Turn! Turn!” by the Byrds).  This was the first year where the blank stares significantly outnumbered the “oh yeahs.”  That’s the passage of time for you, I suppose.

Earlier this week I heard a reading of Ecclesiastes 3:1-14 and was reminded once again of how time is both general and particular, immense and specific to each of us.  A time for everything. Everything beautiful in its time.  Eternity set in our hearts as a gift and a frustration to push us towards the God who is beyond time yet so heavily invested in it.  Here’s the passage from the English Standard Version:

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:

a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
 a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
 a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
 a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
 a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
 a time to tear, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
 a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace.

What gain has the worker from his toil?  I have seen the business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with.  He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.  I perceived that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live;  also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil—this is God’s gift to man.

I perceived that whatever God does endures forever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it. God has done it, so that people fear before him.  That which is, already has been; that which is to be, already has been; and God seeks what has been driven away.

When talking about what to “do” with the Bible, I think in three categories: application, implication, and prayer.  If you can’t apply it point for point, you look at the implications of the passage for the big picture.  And if that doesn’t work (and even if it does), you bring the words into your prayer.  This passage definitely calls for that.

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Counting Ordinary Time

Posted on June 3, 2015 by awtraughber

Time SpiralsThis past Sunday Christian churches of the more liturgical bent entered into something known as ordinary time.  Robert Webber explains:

The period between Pentecost and the beginning of Advent is called ordinary time.  By contrast the period through Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, the Great Triduum, and the Easter season ending on Pentecost Sunday is called extraordinary time.  Extraordinary time is so designated because its chief purpose is to celebrate the specific historic, supernatural acts of God in history that result in salvation of creatures and creation. . .

Does that mean that ordinary time is a lesser time and not spiritually formative? Not at all. . . The word ordinary is used in our Christian-year vocabulary because it serves the special nature of extraordinary time by way of contrast.  But ordinary time is anything but ordinary.

For those of us who grew up in or are still a part of non-liturgical traditions, it sounds interesting and, well, kind of normal.  Every day is sacred, all time is sacred, because God is God over time.  Still, I like the concept.  It’s weird to think that six month of the year is full of moments that flow around Christmas and Easter.  And then, suddenly, post-Pentecost, you are back to the everyday-ness of living.  In Ancient-Future Time, Webber argues that Sunday is the key to ordinary time:

In some communities Sunday is the day of revival, the day for the seeker, or the day to teach.  Historically, Sunday is the day of God’s recreation, the day that promises that God will renew the face of the earth.  Historically Sunday worship expresses three truths: It remembers God’s saving action in history; it experiences God’s renewing presence; and it anticipates the consummation of God’s work in the new heavens and the new earth.

While I don’t do the liturgical calendar well at all, I do love things that bring out Scripture and the narrative flow and story of the Bible.  There are a lot of times that my life only makes sense because of the Bible, really.  So I’m kind of glad that we’re settling into six months of “ordinary time.”  Sunday is the “high point,” but the moments in-between matter, too.

Over the next couple of days I’ll be posting some passages that I’ve heard or read over these first few days of ordinary time.  I’m reminded of Psalm 90:12, where the psalmist identified as Moses speaks:

So teach us to number our days
    that we may get a heart of wisdom.

Space enough, yes.  But time, too.

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Where Joy Writes the Songs (and the innocent sing them)

Posted on June 2, 2015 by awtraughber

It’s been a week since I said goodbye to my last class, but it feels like I’ve spent just as much time doing school stuff as ever.  I’ve been meaning to get a few things posted that aren’t just comics or videos, but I haven’t found that “sweet spot” yet.  I did come across this video today (via tweet from Under the Radar).  It’s one of my favorite Andrew Peterson songs (and I’ve posted another version of this song back in 2012, I believe).

I’ve been thinking a good bit lately about how easily we forget things, how today’s culture is based on an almost necessary long-term amnesia.  I’ve read before that all it takes is one generation of disuse for something significant to be forgotten.  This song (and its many wonderful biblical allusions) is a nice antidote to such thinking.

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Unintended Isolation (and the potential for friendship)

Posted on May 30, 2015 by awtraughber

Being a single guy living on one of the most remote land-masses on the planet, I know the importance of relationships.  I’m not always good at them. but I’ve always felt something significant and necessary with friendship.  You get that a lot in good literature and thinking (Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings and Lewis’ The Four Loves come to mind).  You also get it in glimpses of Scripture: the stories of David, Ruth, and even Jesus.  Philosophical theologian Samuel Kimbriel tackles the subject in a different way in his book, Friendship as Sacred Knowing.  Like James K. A. Smith, Kimbriel responds to the thinking of Charles Taylor and sees friendship as God’s solution to isolation, especially in our contemporary, “buffered” reality.  Check out the video below for some of Kimbriel’s thoughts on friendship.

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