Jesus’ earthy parables often offended the sense of justice that had accrued over centuries to conventional wisdom and salt-of-the-earth logic. His contemporaries, like ours, managed fairly established assumptions about what a good man was like and how a bad man was likely to behave. Even for those unschooled in the legal minutiae of Israel’s long [...]
Archive for January, 2008
when all of it is privilege: Matthew 20.1-16
Posted in textures, tagged biblical reflection, Matthew, textures on January 29, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
clashing cymbals: Exodus 15-16
Posted in textures, tagged biblical reflection, Exodus, textures on January 27, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Moses and Miryam each snag space for a song in Exodus 15. Staggering forward from the violent salvation of the Yam Suf (the ‘Sea of Reeds’), the screams of drowning Egyptians still clinging to them like smoke to a survivor’s clothes, the escaped Hebrew slaves sing.
my song, for the asking: Simon and Garfunkel, Bridge Over Troubled Water
Posted in reseña, tagged music, reseña, Simon and Garfunkel on January 22, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
This masterful album can only be called succulent. And that’s just to start with. The adjectives need to wax ever stronger in order adequately to describe the movement from one classic piece to the next in this eleven-track celebration of some of the 1970s finest music. Like Seinfeld for the ears, Simon and Garfunkel’s music [...]
the reluctance of prophets: Exodus 2-4
Posted in textures, tagged biblical reflection, Exodus, textures on January 22, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Moses’ place in the story of Israel comes long before the establishment of a monarchy and the emergence of prophets as counterweight to the king. Yet the text presents Moses as the prophet par excellence. Patterns are established here that will mark the prophetic trajectory when its moment comes. One of these patterns is counter-intituitive, [...]
budget-music-be-damned, this Tchaikovsky soars: Tchaikovsky, Symphony No. 5; The Storm (Antoni Wit, Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra, Naxos)
Posted in reseña, tagged Antoni Wit, music, Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra, reseña, Tchaikovsky on January 21, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Russian romantic music performed like this in a 1992 recording by Antoni Wit and the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra is the reason the Naxos label came out of nowhere to the kind of well-deserved prominence that makes ‘budget music’ seem an irrelevant misnomer. Tchaikovsky’s great Symphony Number 5 is played with exceptional verve. The [...]
mobile bones: Genesis 50-Exodus 1
Posted in textures, tagged biblical reflection, Exodus, Genesis, textures on January 21, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Joseph in his maturity is one of the appealing characters of Israel’s patriarchal narratives. We have seen his youthful dreamery and felt a mild revulsion before it. Even the way he toys with his brothers when they come to Egypt in search of grain and do not recognize Joseph in his Egyptian finery leaves one [...]
No tengo lugar …: Yasmín Levy, La Judería
Posted in reseña, tagged music, reseña, Yasmín Levy on January 20, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Yasmín Levy’s music is a revelation. Blending and sorting influences from Ladino (Jewish-Spanish) culture, Gypsy, and Flamenco music with other Middle Eastern aural aromas, the result is stunning. Levy is the kind of interpreter who could sing about a floor mop in an exotic language and leave you paralyzed by the emotion of it. Her [...]
a strange, strong instinct: Genesis 47-49
Posted in textures, tagged biblical reflection, Genesis, textures on January 20, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
The patriarchal narratives seem almost inebriated by the destabilizing habit of placing posterity and blessing upon the shoulders of the wrong child. The first-born, time and again, sees circumstances trump his privilege. The lesser becomes the greater. Legacy draws its protagonist from the margins and stations him front and center.
Take heart, it is I, do not fear: Matthew 14
Posted in textures, tagged biblical reflection, Matthew, textures on January 18, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
As to seasick disciples on a turbulent Sea of Galilee, Jesus sometimes appears out of context, seeming very much to be a ghost. He comes at an angle from which we expect only threat and danger, messengers of an alien chaos that could only devour us. Amazingly, to his disciples cry of ‘It is a [...]
a letter to my sons on my birthday from the Flight 93 Memorial Site, Shanksville, Pennsylvania
Posted in denkschrift, paterfamilias, tagged Pennsylvania on January 12, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Dear Christopher and Johnny, These Pennsylvania mountains mean nothing to you. How could they? You’ve grown up in places we Pennsylvanians consider much more exotic, though they seem perfectly natural to you. Places like Costa Rica and England. Still, this Pennsylvania landscape that continues to evoke feelings of home in me on my infrequent visits [...]
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