Showing posts with label Holy Week. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Holy Week. Show all posts

Thursday, March 29, 2018

3 Chords & the Truth: Time to just . . . be


As we sit here in the thick of Holy Week, we sit here in darkness.

We dread what is to come, yet we know this present darkness will give way to a great light.

This week on 3 Chords & the Truth, we find ourselves in something like limbo. We need to just . . . be. We need to contemplate some things.

Not to put too fine a point on it, we need to chill.

NOT TO put too fine a point on it, that's exactly what the Big Show is all about this week -- this holiest and most solemn of weeks on the Christian calendar. This week, the music asks us what time it is.

The music invites us to sit, to think . . . to just be.

And we will. We are. We invite you to, too.

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.

Saturday, April 12, 2014

3 Chords & the Truth: Awaiting hope

We've all been crucified, and we all need a resurrection, don't we?

Outside, we want people to think we're Disneyland. Inside, we're an abandoned warehouse district. You probably don't want to know what's inside the warehouse now.

It's coming up on Holy Week, the most stark, dark, horrifying and awe-inspiring week on the Christian calendar. That's the context of this week's episode of 3 Chords & the Truth.

WE ALL get crucified. We're all as good as dead. We all need a resurrection. Or a Resurrection . . . which is where this week leads. And we're exploring the subject, in a manner of speaking, on the Big Show.

It's something to think about. Music to reflect by. Time to put on the brakes and consider the point of the journey.

Maybe this edition of 3 Chords & the Truth will succeed in that and still manage to be plenty entertaining. Maybe not . . . but my money's on entertaining. Trust me -- I once worked in Catholic radio. If nothing else, I've learned how not to do this stuff.

SO JOIN ME this week in stopping, listening and considering. And have a blessed Holy Week and a joyous Easter.

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.


Thursday, April 09, 2009

Oops! Zorry about that

Life in America is just one big movie. Unfortunately, now playing at the Bijou is Full Metal Jacket, and on the second screen . . . Zorro.

The latest American craziness -- this one closer to farce than atrocity on the tragic continuum -- come from Indianapolis, where a 77-year old grandma got herself killed trying to break up a sword fight. Really.

I MEAN, The Associated Press said it, so it can't be totally made up, right?

Anyway, here's the deal: Franziska Stegbauer was trying to break up a sword duel between her grandson and her brother-in-law. It didn't work out.

According to an investigating officer quoted in the AP dispatch: "We're unsure yet who started this fight, how the swordplay got involved. We're not sure who it was who stabbed the woman. We'll have to do some testing on the swords and figure out who had which sword, whose blood is on which sword."

The grandson -- who apparently won the fight -- is being held by police in a secure hospital ward, while the sliced-and-diced brother-in-law is in critical condition.

Sigh. Maybe the proportion of crazy people has gotten high enough in American society that we now need some sort of sword-control legislation.

IF THE COPS can't figure out who killed grandma, maybe -- after everybody is all healed up -- they can just let the warring parties settle things with pistols at 50 paces.

Today, meanwhile, is Holy Thursday. Tonight at my church, we will commemorate the Last Supper, and the Eucharist will be placed upon an altar of repose, where the Body and Blood of Christ will remain until the Good Friday service.

I call these three solemn, holy days -- Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Vigil, known by Catholics as the Triduum -- our yearly attitude adjustment. Three days during which we get to reflect upon exactly how each of us has managed to kill God. How our manifest sins sent Him to the cross.

This year, it seems like, our inherent meanness and insanity is particularly apparent. Or maybe not.

Some people actually thought a sword fight to the death was a good problem-solving mechanism. And look what happened to grandma.

Friday, March 21, 2008

Psalm 22 . . . a prophecy of the Passion

EDITOR'S NOTE: A psalm for today, Good Friday, when we commemorate our crucified Savior. Have a blessed end to Holy Week.

To the chief Musician upon Aijeleth Shahar, A Psalm of David.

1 My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?* why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring?
2 O my God, I cry in the daytime, but thou hearest not; and in the night season, and am not silent.
3 But thou art holy, O thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel.
4 Our fathers trusted in thee: they trusted, and thou didst deliver them.
5 They cried unto thee, and were delivered: they trusted in thee, and were not confounded.
6 But I am a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised of the people.
7 All they that see me laugh me to scorn: they shoot out the lip, they shake the head saying,
8 He trusted on the LORD that he would deliver him: let him deliver him, seeing he delighted in him.
9 But thou art he that took me out of the womb: thou didst make me hope when I was upon my mother’s breasts.
10 I was cast upon thee from the womb: thou art my God from my mother’s belly.
11 Be not far from me; for trouble is near; for there is none to help.
12 Many bulls have compassed me: strong bulls of Bashan have beset me round.
13 They gaped upon me with their mouths, as a ravening and a roaring lion.
14 I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint: my heart is like wax; it is melted in the midst of my bowels.
15 My strength is dried up like a potsherd; and my tongue cleaveth to my jaws; and thou hast brought me into the dust of death.
16 For dogs have compassed me: the assembly of the wicked have inclosed me: they pierced my hands and my feet.
17 I may tell all my bones: they look and stare upon me.
18 They part my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture.
19 But be not thou far from me, O LORD: O my strength, haste thee to help me.
20 Deliver my soul from the sword; my darling from the power of the dog.
21 Save me from the lion’s mouth: for thou hast heard me from the horns of the unicorns.
22 I will declare thy name unto my brethren: in the midst of the congregation will I praise thee.
23 Ye that fear the LORD, praise him; all ye the seed of Jacob, glorify him; and fear him, all ye the seed of Israel.
24 For he hath not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; neither hath he hid his face from him; but when he cried unto him, he heard.
25 My praise shall be of thee in the great congregation: I will pay my vows before them that fear him.
26 The meek shall eat and be satisfied: they shall praise the LORD that seek him: your heart shall live for ever.
27 All the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the LORD: and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before thee.
28 For the kingdom is the LORD’S: and he is the governor among the nations.
29 All they that be fat upon earth shall eat and worship: all they that go down to the dust shall bow before him: and none can keep alive his own soul.
30 A seed shall serve him; it shall be accounted to the Lord for a generation.
31 They shall come, and shall declare his righteousness unto a people that shall be born, that he hath done this.


* See Matthew 27:46

Monday, March 17, 2008

Are you not the Fed? Save yourself and us.

Our nation's financial system is teetering on the edge of something. Something most assuredly not good.

Many think the stock market is about to respond accordingly. Try to avoid walking on Wall Street sidewalks today, but if that isn't an option, wear a hard hat and keep an eye on upper-floor windows.

From Bloomberg this early a.m.:

U.S. stocks are on the brink of the broadest bear market in four decades as investors ignore the strongest buy signals in almost 20 years.

The retreat by all 10 industries in the Standard & Poor's 500 Index pushed the measure down 18 percent since its Oct. 9 record and 12 percent since the start of the decade. The plunge resembles declines in the 1970s and 1930s, the two worst periods for U.S. equities in the past 80 years. The last six times the index has fallen by 20 percent, only once -- on Black Monday in 1987 -- has the sell-off been so encompassing.

``I tend to agree with the fellow who says, `Hey, this is the greatest financial crisis since World War II,''' said Jean- Marie Eveillard, 68, who runs the $21.3 billion First Eagle Global Fund in New York. The fund, which has returned an average 15.2 percent each year this decade compared with a less than 0.1 percent annualized gain for the S&P 500, has about 25 percent in cash and gold, more than its holdings in U.S. stocks. ``Investors who take the attitude that the economy will be slow in the first half and then it will turn around, they're probably dreaming.''

The declines have left companies in the S&P 500 trading at the cheapest levels in more than 18 years to forecast profits, while valuations versus 10-year Treasuries are the lowest in at least two decades. Investors aren't acting on the traditional buy signals in the midst of the worst housing slump since the Great Depression, $200 billion in bank losses tied to mortgages and the bailout of Bear Stearns Cos. last week by the Federal Reserve and JPMorgan Chase & Co.

JPMorgan Chase agreed today to buy Bear Stearns for about $240 million, less than a 10th of its value last week.

WHAT DOES it all mean? I don't know (apart from Probably Nothing Good), being that I am not an economist, and I don't play one on TV.

But I do have a question for you.

If it all falls apart -- the American economy and America's weatlth as a nation, that is -- who are we? Who are you?

Why are we?

And if any of the answers differ from what they were when we were all tap dancing atop our economic "bubbles," what does that say about us? Or, more specifically, about what we value?

Just asking some hard questions for hard times. That all this is coming to a head during Holy Week may not be an accident, because it's just too damned appropriate.

As we begin yet another commemoration of Christ's Passion, death and resurrection this week, we were reminding members our Catholic church's youth group Sunday night of one important thing: If you don't know suffering, you don't know Jesus.

Not really, you don't.

Such an alien concept in our spoiled, crass, vapid and gilded age. Could be our operating conceptualization is in for a big recontextualization, and we're going to have a big "come to Jesus" moment.

If we're lucky.