Today my essay “The Cannibal and the Eucharist” is available to read at IMAGE’s “Good Letters”  blog.

It describes my none-too-brave encounter with singer-songwriter Michael Knott’s song “Kitty” as a sophomore in high school. “The Cannibal and the Eucharist” is my first essay for IMAGE. I hope to write many more for them if they will have me. 

Read it here.

SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL

That a man who has released over 40 albums remains unknown to the general public is a musical crime even more unforgivable than the recent release of Lulu–Lou Reed’s collaborative album with Metallica.

As anyone who has heard Lulu knows, this is no small claim.

I first became acquainted with the music of this man at the age of 15.

Based on the recommendation of underground independent magazine True Tunes News alone–without ever hearing it–I bought Lifesavers Underground’s (L. S. U.) Shaded Pain album for my sister Alyssa for Christmas in 1993. It painted the blackest picture of the Christian life I had ever come across in all my seemingly infinite fifteen years on planet Earth, but it was not without hope. It was funeral of a record–a ceremony held in the church to commemorate the death of something, but with the hope of a life unseen just beyond death’s thick black curtain.

My cousin Erin, who listened to (gasp) secular music, said it sounded like gothic rockers Bauhaus, and I trusted her judgment. That year, Alyssa and I decked the halls of our “haus” with the chrome cassette tape of a Christian goth album.

Shaded Pain introduced Alyssa and me to L. S. U.’s frontman Michael Knott. The album sounds like the work of a man possessed, with Knott’s demons commandeering the microphone throughout. Out of all the albums he has released in his lifetime thus far, it remains one of his best. It is by far his most harrowing.

Christian radio rejected Shaded Pain upon its initial release on Frontline Records in 1987, but it went on to become an underground classic and was reissued through Metro One Music the year I bought it for Alyssa.

When Knott signed with Word Records for his Rocket and a Bomb album, I wondered if he had staged a coup and seized control of the company. Word Records, after all, was home to Amy Grant, Michael W. Smith, and Rich Mullins. I wore the print off of my cassette of Michael W. Smith’s Go West Young Man, so I was hardly immune to the charms of these Christian artists who were household names in Christian households.

But Word Records artists were–to borrow a Captain Beefheart album title–“safe as milk.” Milk was downright dangerous, in fact, when compared with the Gaither Vocal Band. Why would Word sign Michael Knott, who once performed in drag at a Christian festival and, at another, sang Shaded Pain’s titular piano ballad as a bloated clown, resembling none other than John Wayne Gacy?

Either Michael Knott had abandoned all integrity as an artist and issued a radio-friendly record, or he had chloroformed the execs at Word and locked them in the custodial closet so he could call the shots. At the local Christian bookstore, a place called The Lord’s Library, I sampled the record in the “demo booth,” which looked for all the world like a repurposed refrigerator with a car stereo installed inside.

As it turned out, this was not an album that would feature guest appearances by the likes of Amy Grant, Michael W. Smith, or Rich Mullins. The lyrics painted Picasso-esque pictures of people I had never known the likes of, and probably would never meet in my hometown of Rolla, MO. I bought the album after hearing a excerpts from it, only to discover a soul-strangling song called “Kitty” upon listening to the entire record in the privacy of my bedroom. That song prompted an epic struggle in my mind, and that struggle is chronicled in “The Cannibal and the Eucharist.“

It is worth mentioning that when Knott’s secular band The Aunt Bettys signed to Elektra Records after being courted by none other than music mogul Seymour Stein himself, the resulting album featured an electric version of “Kitty” titled “Kitty Courtesy.” After Stein left Elektra, the Aunt Bettys were unceremoniously dismissed by the label, their lone album doomed to a short shelf-life and a slightly longer residency in the clearance bins. “Kitty Courtesy” ended up as something like kitty litter in rock’s refuse bins.

Read my article, listen to the song below, and go and buy the recommended albums listed below. Your trembling soul with thank you someday.

Michael Knott on the Web

Although Rocket and a Bomb is currently out of print, a limited number of copies of the album are available for purchase here.

Other indispensable Knott releases have been reissued and are available digitally. The three records below, along with Rocket and a Bomb, are classics. No serious collector of alternative music should be without these albums:

Lifesavers Underground “Shaded Pain”

Lifesavers Underground “The Grape Prophet”

Michael Knott “Screaming Brittle Siren”

Like a phantom whose name (somehow) happens to be listed in the phone-book, Michael Knott happens to be fairly active on Facebook.

If you like his artwork and are interested in buying one of his paintings, they are available here.  Oddly, the painting portion of his web site appears to be the only part that is regularly updated. All art on this page by Mr. Knott.

Listen to “Kitty” below. 

If, like me, you are a creator of things, I want to know how you deal with criticism. What strategies do you employ? Read my thoughts below, and offer your own insights. I am most curious about your insights.

Anyone who knows me well knows I am awful at accepting criticism. If I could genetically alter my DNA, in fact, I would probably attempt to splice the chemical codes of rubber into my genetic makeup so I could be more resilient. I want to bounce like a bad check and be a good writer, plain and simple.

In therapy for my Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, I learned long ago the value of running a “program” when certain events arise. When I am anxious, that is, there are certain strategies I inevitably employ in order to overcome my fears, and they are generally very effective in disarming my inner alarm system. Without those “programs,” my anxiety would run unchecked, and have a decidedly more destructive impact on my life.

When it comes to encountering criticism, at least as it pertains to my personal creative pursuits, I have no “program” to run. The little voice of criticism, like a virus, infects the whole of my being and clouds my creative vision.

That being said, I want to challenge my own assumptions about the nature of criticism. Because criticism is not to be equated with rejection, and it should therefore not impact a person emotionally in the same manner as rejection. (Rejection is another matter altogether, and perhaps another topic for another blog entry.)

My friend Tim, who is wise enough to know he’s a fool, told me shortly before Evie was born that I needed to be resilient when it came to parenthood. I would take a backseat to the baby in my wife’s eyes, he said, and I would need to choose a loving attitude toward my wife and child even when I felt fundamentally unloved. But I am not writing about parenthood. I am writing about resilience as it pertains to being a creator of things. Because I think Tim’s advice applies here too. A creator of things must likewise be resilient, and not allow criticism to land an immobilizing blow.

It would be nice if writers had exoskeletons so criticism would not cause so much internal bleeding. It would be nice, because writers are sensitive enough to the nuances of both the craft and the life that fuels it, that the notion of “developing a thicker skin” to withstand criticism seems like an invitation to disable the very instruments that make the writing life both pleasurable and possible. But perhaps having a thicker skin does not mean shutting out criticism as much as it means protecting one’s most vulnerable organs of insight. Perhaps a “thicker skin” functions like a rib cage in this regard.

Which brings me back to the “program” I mentioned earlier. A thinking strategy for processing criticism with resilience should should challenge faulty thinking and redirect a person to more productive pursuits. Criticism should not land a crippling blow. Rather, it should teach a person how to walk better – how to be more upright, to be less pigeon-toed or duck-footed, etc. It should be corrective, and not destructive. Criticism should be seen for what it is, and not for what it is not.

A few things come to mind for me when I think of resilience in the face of criticism, and I hope you (my five readers) will help me think of some more go-to’s I can consider when I am feeling especially discouraged about my work.

First things first, criticism of a work is not an indicator that the work is fatally flawed. This is indisputably true. One of my favorite films is Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia, and yet I find fault with it on a number of levels. There are elements that are unexplained, and still others that seem beyond the realm of possibility (and I am not referring to the rain of frogs at the end of the film, which I love). But do these criticisms mean the film is fatally flawed? By no means, at least in my book. It remains one of my favorite films, and it could spawn a lengthy and meaningful essay if I chose to sit down and write one.

Second, my creative heroes have all been roundly criticized, and I look up to them for weathering these critical storms and continuing despite them. Whether Lars von Trier is a good man or not is not for me to know. I only know I am continually impressed with and challenged by his films. Dogville, in particular, has been a favorite film of mine for years. I know people who despise it, and have read reviews of the film that lambasted it for being contrived, overlong, and unjustly critical of Americans. But I see something of real merit in this film in the way it explores human nature, and also in the way it foregrounds film’s theatrical roots. I appreciate Lars von Trier as a creator of things, and hope he continues to create, even if his works repel me. Jesus repelled people enough that they killed Him, after all. So why should I expect my work to be embraced by everyone? I tend to appreciate those people who create challenging works, and who remain undeterred by criticism in doing so. Is it not in my best interest, then, to aspire to be such a creator of things myself? To recognize criticism as an inevitable response to my work, and to choose to create confidently in light of this? It is better to assume that, for every critical voice, there will be another voice that says, “I am glad you made this.”

Third, criticism is directly toward redemptive ends, at least when the work is still in process and under the microscope of peer review. People offer criticism because they believe the work is worth redeeming. A work that is beyond redemption, or has no hope of ever being potent, is not worth criticizing. But when people criticize a work in progress, they are responding to a potential they see that has yet to be fully realized. The initial sting of criticism completely eclipses the end to which criticism is directed in this instance: Criticism is a way of saying, “I believe you can make this better,” which is a way of saying “I believe in your potential as a creator of things, and I want to see you reach that potential.”

I want to keep these things in mind as I receive criticism in the future as a writer. Because really, writing at its best is a transcendent thing that should never be cast aside simply because of insecurities. A writer’s voice should never be muted simply because of fear or failure (or fear of failure).

I want to be resilient like my friend Tim wants me to be, and not just in parenthood. I want to be a resilient receptor of criticism as a writer. I want to bounce like a rubber ball from word to word, and lead my readers to sing along with me as I conduct my word symphonies.

My first collaborative artwork with DJG. My doodles. His wizardry.

Chad Thomas Johnston is an author, sonuva’ preacha’ man, PhD-dropout, singer/songwriter, daydreaming doodler, publicist, PUN-isher, mixtape maker, & pop-culture junkie. He is represented by Seattle, WA-based literary agent Jenée Arthur, who is currently shopping his manuscript, The Stained-Glass Kaleidoscope: Essays at Play in the Churchyard of the Mind, to major publishing houses. Chad lives in Lawrence, KS with his wife, Rebekah Christine, their diaper-destroying daughter Baby Evie, and five felines.

Chad’s semi-illustrious writing career began in 1987 in his elementary school days. He wrote and bound books by hand with Christmas wrapping paper, and regularly lent the resulting tomes to his peers as if he had his own private library. Titillating titles such as Blood Tales and Robocop (which surprisingly did not result in the filing of a plagiarism suit) were celebrated by his classmates en masse, but somehow failed to crack the New York Times Bestseller list.

During Chad’s senior year in high school, he submitted a number of music review samples to six magazines and ended up writing for three of them. His reviews were published in True Tunes Tunes, a now-defunct Wheaton, IL-based publication that celebrated the crème de la crème of the Christian music underground (He is not making this up) and boasted a circulation of over 25,000 rabid readers. He also wrote one lone review for a now-defunct (Do you sense a theme here?) magazine called Shout!, which clumsily encompassed a variety of incompatible genres, including country, rap, alternative rock, and electronic music. Reading it was not unlike eating country-fried steak and sushi at the same time, with just a dab of mint chutney. This is probably why the publication failed as a commercial enterprise, come to think of it. For five years, Chad also wrote a regular music column for Essential Connection magazine, which had over 120,000 readers. Chad recently resumed writing music reviews after a ten year hiatus from them. Now he is a bi-monthly columnist for the Prime Parents’ Club. Read his work here.

Chad’s first full-length book, The Stained Glass Kaleidoscope: Essays at Play in the Churchyard of the Mind, is an essay-driven creative memoir in which he explores life through the heartfelt and humorous tri-fold lens of theology, pop culture, and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. He is currently writing a work of Young Adult supernatural fiction with Virginia-based collaborator Amanda Lynch.

Chad recently illustrated the cover of Washington, D. C.-based author Dwain Smith’s most recent book, Bullheaded. He is in the planning and development stages of creating art for a children’s book for Prime Parents’ Club’s brainchild Jacqueline Wilson. He can be hired for a small fortune to draw other pretty pictures as well.

As a singer-songwriter, Chad enjoys playing stadium-sized arenas in his imagination. He has amassed a sizable lot of recordings over the years – 31 of which can be downloaded for free at http://chadthomasjohnston.bandcamp.com/. He once spent months holed up in a basement with a 6’ ceiling, recording track after track for a Christmas album titled All is Calm, All is Bright. The resulting LP features syrupy layers of EBows, the codeine-infused, Mazzy Star-inspired “I’ll Be Droned for Christmas,” and a shoegazer version of “The First Noel,” among other inside-out versions of Christmas classics. Johnston sings and plays guitar, bass, and drums. Although he played trumpet for seven years, he sold his bratty brass instrument to a child years ago because he could no longer stand the sight or sound of it with all of its blatting and its “look-at-me” theatrics. It always insisted on carrying on like a brass Tony Bennett.

Chad bills his Web site, http://chadthomasjohnston.com/, as “The Playground for Your Mind,” and rightly so. It features multimedia content that includes “vlogs,” free MP3s, interviews, deliriously unhinged writings (including regular features such as “Preggersville,” “Nightmarriage,” and “Laughing in the Faith of Death”), and plenty of drawings that are born out of long meetings at work, during which Chad must doodle to survive.

Chad teaches a monthly film course at his church called Sanctuary of the Cinema. The course applies a Christian interpretive lens to a variety of critically acclaimed secular films – including David Lynch’s The Straight Story, Elia Kazan’s Face in the Crowd, and Jessica Yu’s In the Realms of the Unreal: The Mystery of Henry Darger, in an effort to develop a well-integrated view of Christian spirituality.

Chad received Bachelor of Science and Master of Arts degrees in Communication Studies from Missouri State University, where he also taught public speaking and a variety of intersession courses (including Intercultural Communication in China: The Films of Zhang Yimou, Asian Voices: Exploring Interpersonal Communication in Asian Films, and The Rhetoric of Evil: Exploring Nazi Germany Through Film) for several years. As an Adjunct Online Instructor for Drury University, he also taught Communication Ethics, Introduction to Intercultural Communication, and A Survey of Intercultural Communication through Film, which he proposed and developed for the university.

Visit Chad at his subterranean, subcutaneous, submarine Interweb lair: http://chadthomasjohnston.com/

Visit Chad’s bio at the Jenée Arthur Agency LLC: http://jeneearthuragency.com/arthurs-authors/chad-thomas-johnston/.

Contact Chad at chad1978@gmail.com.

Follow Chad on Twitter at @Saint_Upid.

Favorite Music: The Innocence Mission, Elliott Smith, Björk, Mark Kozelek/Red House Painters/Sun Kil Moon, Radiohead, U2, Belle & Sebastian, Arthur Lee/Love, Lou Reed/The Velvet Underground, Stereolab, Suzanne Vega, Aimee Mann, Michael Penn, Sufjan Stevens, Sam Phillips, Echo & the Bunnymen, The Magnetic Fields, Big Star, Bob Dylan, The Jesus & Mary Chain, XTC, Joanna Newsom, Iron & Wine, The Flaming Lips, The Smiths/Morrissey, T. Rex, The Beatles, Slowdive/Mojave 3, Mazzy Star, Marissa Nadler, Nirvana, The Pixies, Autolux, The National, Michael Knott/L. S. U., The Prayer Chain, Doves, John Denver, Denison Witmer, Luxury/Lee Bozeman, Nick Drake, Portishead, Pearl Jam, The Cure, The Clientele, The Zombies, PJ Harvey, Cat Stevens, Neko Case, M. Ward, Luna, Low, Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, Jeff Buckley, Deerhoof, Deerhunter, David Bowie, Blonde Redhead, The Autumns, Vashti Bunyan, Grizzly Bear, Damien Jurado, Let’s Active, King’s X, The Smashing Pumpkins, Heatmiser, Stephanie Dosen, The Shins, Of Montreal, Judee Sill, Simon & Garfunkel/Paul Simon, The Elevator Division, Starflyer 59, & Larry Norman.

Favorite Films: There Will Be Blood, Exit Through the Gift Shop, Frozen River, Taxi Driver, Magnolia, Punch-Drunk Love, Palindromes, Bubble, Grizzly Man, Stroszek, Kill Bill, Rushmore, The Color of Paradise, Blood Simple, Pi, The Celebration, Sunset Boulevard, Red Sorghum, Ju Dou, Hero, Schindler’s List, Do the Right Thing, Dogville, Mallrats, Inception, Paper Moon, Mary & Max, Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, Vertigo, Rear Window, Inland Empire, In the Realms of the Unreal, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, The Fantastic Mr. Fox, Picnic at Hanging Rock, The Last Wave, Gran Torino, The Wicker Man (original), Dear Zachary, Onibaba, Coraline, The Nightmare Before Christmas, The Virgin Spring, Safe, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, Good Bye Lenin!, Micmacs, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Roman Holiday, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, A Serious Man, The Devil’s Backbone.

Favorite Books: C.S. Lewis’ “The Great Divorce,” Jon Krakauer’s “Under the Banner of Heaven,” Orson Scott Card’s “Ender’s Game,” C.S. Lewis’ “Perelandra,” Flannery O’Connor (Everything!), Anne Lamott’s “Traveling Mercies,” Donald Miller’s “Blue Like Jazz,” Jeannette Walls’ “The Glass Castle,” D.T. Max’s “The Family That Couldn’t Sleep,” Mary Roach’s “Stiff,” Stephen King’s “On Writing,” Annie Dillard’s “The Writing Life.”

I grew up in the Southern Baptist church, where traditions such as Lent are wholly absent. As a child (and perhaps as an adult, too), whenever I heard Catholics mention Lent, I immediately thought of bellybutton lint or dryer lint. It certainly did not prompt much in the way of spiritual contemplation. When I was in my early 20s and I had not yet been diagnosed with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, my dad referred to my obsessive introspection as “navel gazing,” so I suppose the bellybutton lint reference and the Lenten focus on introspection have more in common than I thought.

On that note, I would like to write a series of posts over the Lenten season that will focus exclusively on The Innocence Mission’s Birds of My Neighborhood record. It has long been a favorite album of mine, and I feel it has much to offer in the way of Lenten meditation.

This is the kind of meditation I need right now. Life as a new parent is proving to be frantic, fragmented in focus, and inwardly exhausting. But it is also a source of very real joy, which makes all of the aforementioned ailments worthwhile. My wife and I have taken turns being sick from sleep deprivation, and little Evie has had multiple colds too. Somehow though, our hearts remain hearty.

All that being said, I think I need a quiet space this Lenten season. Life is too loud, too jarring, to savor if there is no introspection or inward celebration to undergird it. So I am going to do my best to look at my favorite Innocence Mission album, Birds of My Neighborhood, and see what I can learn about Lent from it.

When we think of Lent, we tend to think of what we will choose to “give up” during this season’s 40 day span. When I hear this Innocence Mission record, I read Karen Peris’s lyrics and see how she and her husband Don felt like giving up on having children. The Catholic couple had been trying without success to have a child, which naturally directs my thoughts to my own 3-month-old daughter, Evangeline Sofia. Having a child is a miracle, as far as I am concerned. The way a baby is woven in the womb with only a genetic blueprint to guide its formation; the way the placenta springs into existence to nourish the child; the way the body’s blood supply increases by 60% to accommodate the indwelling child’s presence. To long for this miracle and go without it must be incredibly discouraging.

Karen and Don Peris wrote Birds of My Neighborhood record out of their own barrenness. But somewhere during the songwriting process, Karen found out she was pregnant. (If I am getting this story wrong, by the way, I would love for the Perises to chime in and correct me.) It was like a little Easter in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where the Perises live in musical quietude. A branch of spring flowering in Karen’s womb. A resurrection of buried hope.

I cannot help but think we know very little about the value of quietude anymore in American society. Meditation on soul-nourishing matters is foreign in our fast-food culture, most likely because inward renewal is more of a crock-pot experience than a microwaved matter of instant gratification. So I would like to look at Lenten scriptures, and also this Innocence Mission record, which is as spare and gorgeous and heartfelt as any record I have ever heard. It is an audio artifact, but it is a quiet one. It is a collection of songs spun by souls who clearly value the kind of meditation that offers renewal.

I need renewal and recharging because life is proving to be fast and furious, and I can hardly keep up these days. I want to savor my daughter. I want to enjoy my wife. I want to nurture an inward attitude of gratitude toward God for the blessings He has placed in my life.

My agent continues to shop my book to potential publishers, and I hope it comes out at some point. My new friend Anne Jackson, who is a Christian author worth knowing and reading, has said she would not want to release a book in the current market because everyone is releasing books now. It is easy for books to be lost in such a setting, and I understand her thoughts on this matter. I was just reading Eric Metaxas’ book Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy, and Bonhoeffer’s first book came out without any kind of fanfare at all. No one noticed it. I am not comparing myself to Bonhoeffer, of course. But I take comfort in knowing that, if my book comes out and no one notices or cares, it is okay. When can an author write and release books, but while his heart is willing, and his typing fingers are nimble and able? If my book is published and anyone discovers it, it is my hope that they will carry it with them in their hearts and share it with others. It may find its way over the years, even on a small scale. As it is, I pass out electronic copies of it to people I meet, and I never hear back from most of them. But I know a few people believe in my work and have professed to enjoying the book, which is comforting.

Anymore, I am realizing that, in a world where anyone can be an author and self-publish an eBook on Amazon.com in five minutes, each writer is essentially a drop of water in an endless literary ocean. Maybe all of our stories are worth hearing. On the other hand, as Flannery O’Connor asserted, perhaps too many of us believe we are writers, and we would do better not to force yet another unneeded manuscript upon the world. It is humbling to know that so many writers are driven to publish, and that I am just one of many. I hope my book sees the light of day, and I hope it is something someone, somewhere can cherish inwardly. The Innocence Mission’s Birds of My Neighborhood definitely influenced the book’s writing process, especially in the way it grew like a tree rooted in my heart, its shoots and branches growing outward in a hundred different directions, with each essay blowing in the wind like a limb a child could climb.

Perhaps this Lenten season I can write about this album and eventually weave those writings together into a larger essay that can be published in a future book. I have a few unpublished essays that are waiting to find a home in a book, and I suspect there will be more. I do not want to give up on writing or creating or delving deep into the inner life where all of these things begin and end.

My exploration of this record will probably proceed on a song-by-song basis. I would like to study this album as work of musical literature, and do so in conjunction with Lenten scriptures. I may even craft a prayer or two along the way. I need this kind of quiet. Right now, the white noise from our furnace is overwhelming the quiet in the basement here as I write this, and it is a welcome sound. Baby Evie is sleeping in her swing next to me, keeping quiet as only sleeping babies can. I am thankful for her, and for this life, short and surreal though it is.

All these birds of this neighborhood are leaving /some days we feel left behind.

I wanted Clint to speak to Christians in love, and I think he has done that. I will say upfront that I disagree with some of the things he says. But if we cannot listen to those whose viewpoints differ from ours, how will we ever learn to heed Paul’s call to be “all things to all men”? How can we profess to love our neighbor if we will not hear him out?

I originally conceived of this as a two-part series in which Clint would represent the perspective of the unbeliever speaking lovingly to believers in one essay. A second essay would feature a believer writing to unbelievers. Then I discovered Shane Claiborne’s letter to unbelievers in Esquire magazine, titled What if Jesus Really Meant All That Stuff? I think it offers an equally thoughtful, equally loving counterpoint to Clint’s essay. 

Whether you agree with Clint or disagree with him about any number of things, you should know something: I respect Clint. He is smart, culturally savvy (a movie junkie who shoots up celluloid at 24-frames-per-second every morning before he eats his Wheaties, presumably), a man with a delightful sense of humor, and also someone who is respectful of those whose views differ from his own. We once were neighbors, living across a walkway from one another at Hawks Pointe apartments here in Lawrence, Kansas. Admittedly, we talked to one another more when we were in a religious studies class together, as I am a homebody, and Clint is social to the Nth degree. But we were neighbors – two people living next to each other who held divergent worldviews, but who also shared much overlap when it came to matters of caring about people, drinking choice brews, watching classic films, and enjoying the haunting Beatle-esque melodies of Elliott Smith. 

Read Clint’s essay, and then read Shane Claiborne’s Esquire essay and offer your thoughts about them in the comment box below. I am convinced that believers and unbelievers can be friends – that dialog can win over diatribe. I believe that the public discourse between believers and unbelievers does not have to be riddled with bullets of hatred, or reduced to venomous invective. 

If you are inclined to dig even deeper, I recommend this essay by A. N. Wilson, who was a Christian, converted to “born-again atheism” and rubbed elbows with the likes of Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, and then recently returned to the Christian faith. 

Read all three essays, and enjoy the challenge.

Above the great western door in the interior of Westminster Abbey stand ten statues depicting the ten twentieth century Christian Martyrs acknowledged by the Anglican Church. They are men and women, representing every corner of the globe, and among them stand giants like Martin Luther King, Jr., Dietrich Bonhoeffer – a Lutheran minister executed near the end of World War II for his part in a conspiracy to assassinate Hitler – and Archbishop Oscar Romero, a mild-mannered Catholic who was murdered by a Salvadoran death squad for standing up to the military government and suggesting that the poor were people too. He believed one cannot legislate against or open fire upon basic human dignity without suffering the consequences. His last words were a prayer of mercy for his killers. Each of these men serves as a powerful example of a faith that spoke with the voice of justice and love. They were men whose consciences precluded them from not speaking, that insisted on getting their enemies to listen. Their voices are ones we would all do well to listen to, regardless of how we feel about the possibility of God.

As a young exchange student in Britain visiting the Abbey for the first time, I found myself mesmerized by these statues. I was still a Christian at the time, and the secrets of such an ancient holy place were multitude. A few minutes before coming to the west door, I had balked at the tomb of Henry V, whom I had never thought of as a man who lived so much as a creation of Shakespeare. I did not realize that, in walking up to view the statues of the martyrs, I had trod on the grave of one Charles Robert Darwin. He lost his faith in God after the death of his daughter, Anne, and wrote what has become the greatest challenge ever posed to the belief in a personal god controlling the universe. He was also a man of conscience, who struggled mightily with the implications his theory would have for humanity and, more personally, his own family.

He is buried in the nave under a modest floor-stone bearing only his name and the dates of his birth and death, situated only a few paces from the martyrs and within spitting distance of Sir Isaac Newton, a man of science who remained faithful to God till the very end.

This brings me around, finally, to my point. The example of Westminster Abbey is instructive because it demonstrates a fundamental point about how believers and non-believers alike should behave in their short time on this planet. To wit, we can learn together, laugh together, love together and, eventually – if I’m right, turn into to dirt together. No one complains in the Abbey about the bones of Darwin occupying space with the visage of Romero. If either man were still capable of speaking, I doubt they’d complain either. In other words, I’d like everybody to be more like Chad and me when we were neighbors. In this scenario, I am Darwin, by the way. Chad does not have a beard. (Editor’s Note: Chad has sported a full beard on more than one occasion.)

I don’t call myself an Atheist. Rather I am a hard agnostic. I believe that there probably is no God and, if there is, He has better things to do than worry about me, or about Tim Tebow’s passing game (more on that in a minute). I don’t associate myself with the New Atheism of Dawkins, Hitchens, and Harris because it seems a great deal like religion to me. Hard agnostics do not attend meetings, write blogs, or produce podcasts about what it’s like to be hard agnostics. I don’t feel oppressed by “religionists” and I don’t have an total abiding faith in science. I often turn to Patton Oswalt’s riff on scientists (“We made cancer contagious AND airborne! You’re welcome!”) to demonstrate that we need more than physical reality to tell us how to live. I also find myself less concerned with the question of how we got here (was it God or the Big Bang, or both?) than with where we are going. There seems to be little point to me in asking about the beginning when the end seems nearer each day, as our natural environment dies all around us and our governments and economies prove more and more dysfunctional – suicidal even. My mentor Anna Peterson has written about the idea of endings and beginnings in her wonderful book, Being Human. She thinks we need the end, and so do I. I’m not religious, but I also have no interest in identifying myself with a movement of unbelievers as confrontational and ugly as the New Atheism often insists on being.

I have been asked to write about how I wish Christians would behave in light of their professed faith, and I have finally come to it. I’m speaking to believers out there as an academic with a master’s degree in religious studies and the bulk of a PhD in the same subject under my belt, but also as an unbeliever who still has great sympathy for your endeavors. We are all trying to make meaning. I also understand that no two Christians are the same and that many of these points will not apply to the vast majority of you reading out there on “the Internets.” Keeping that in mind, all of these criticisms are delivered in the spirit of love (also in the form of a list, because I’m running out of steam). These items are intended both as a demonstration of how unbelievers often see Christians (in both their greatness and in their occasional hypocrisy) and as an appeal to your better angels.

1. Freedom is not a zero sum game. We live in a land of laws and rights which do not (at their best) limit themselves to chosen elites or God-fearing people. Abortion and Gay Marriage are topics abhorrent to many Christians but they stand as rights that, in my view, belong to all individuals. A man marrying another man or a woman making a choice about her body do not in anyway effect a Christian’s ability to choose not to have an abortion, not to marry a man, or be a Christian. Limiting rights only to individuals who make choices you like is anathema to the radical egalitarianism that Jesus preached. Christians at their best understand that people who are different from them, people who make choices that most Christians themselves would never make, are still worthy, deserving of tolerance, compassion, respect, and mercy. And yes, love.

2. Criticisms of your faith are not attacks on your religious freedom. This is a point on which Richard Dawkins and I agree. A great deal of deference is paid to believers for no other reason than that they believe. The first amendment is often used to conceal agendas that are anti-freedom, and those who point this out are then tarred as religious bigots. The Prop 8 debate in California was a perfect test case for this observation. The Mormon Church funneled millions of dollars into a campaign to take way rights from gays and lesbians and excused its own bigotry under the aegis of its first amendment prerogatives. It is not right to use one’s own freedoms to take away the freedoms of others. There has been quite a lot of fuss lately about whether Mitt Romney’s faith is an appropriate topic of discussion in terms of presidential politics. Of course it is. How can one have a worldview and claim that this worldview does not deeply affect their thinking? Were I to run for president, I would expect and welcome discussions of my unbelief because it shapes me so deeply as a person. We cannot discuss the potential goodness of faith without also acknowledging the darker places it sometimes takes people.

3. We are all in this together. I’m speaking specifically about the natural world. I understand that some Christians hold the view that people were given dominion over the land and its non-human inhabitants to do with as we please. This arrogance is further exacerbated by apocalyptic leanings that see no point in conservation because the fire and blood will be on their way soon, heralding a new and eternal paradise for the faithful. Both tendencies are useless in my view. If you believe that God created the world and all its wonders, then it must then be viewed as a precious gift, something worthy of care and protection. If I would not throw a Vermeer on the ground after receiving it from my grandmother, why then would I passively stomach the destruction of infinitely more beautiful and valuable gifts like the Great Barrier Reef or the Rainforests of Belo Monte. Believers owe it to God to revel in all things bright and beautiful, including His natural, wild endowments to Humans as a species. The biologist E.O. Wilson provides a wonderful discussion of the Christian potential for valuing nature in his volume The Creation. I remember vividly doing fieldwork at a church for Native American Christians. During the opening prayer the minister, Brother Ken, offered thanks to God because that morning God had allowed Brother Ken to spot a bald eagle flying above the tree line. “The creation is great,” said Brother Ken. It was a wise thing to say. I do not imagine that Jesus intended a kingdom in which polar bears and blue-footed boobies and great white sharks have faded into the realm of myth. And I think that Jesus and Darwin could have talked for hours about the wonder that is the Galapagos, made by fire and populated by so many strange biological oddities.

4. The world doesn’t revolve around anybody so much as it just revolves. I’m one of the few people in Florida who doesn’t think well of Tim Tebow. His football playing is of little concern to me because I like baseball and basketball a lot, and adding another sport to the rotation is just too exhausting. What bothers me is the arrogance of this supposedly humble young man. It bothers me that he believes circumcision is a substitute for sex education and condoms in the third world. It bothers me that he was genetically fortunate to be blessed with athletic ability and beat the odds of a difficult pregnancy (which has now turned into a campaign of shaming desperate women into risking their lives in an effort to be as saintly and selfless as Mrs. Tebow) and subsequently treats these facts as Providence and not chance. Every time Tim Tebow takes a reverent knee on the field to thank God for His largesse, my blood boils. God does not care about football. And He is not challenging Tim Tebow, who is more a victim of timing and physics than any Job-like drama. If you pray, if you believe in a loving God who listens, pray about the big things. Pray for an end to war and hunger.  Pray about things that matter; do God the favor of not wasting His time. And then go out into the world and do something to change one of the big things. Jesus showed us that a single individual can move mountains with a little conviction. I will not say that your God doesn’t involve Himself in small matters, but I will argue that there is and ought to be a difference between praying for a relative to be cured of cancer and assuming that God helped you make a touchdown. Nor will I argue that Tim Tebow is not a sincere, good-hearted man who believes he is doing right by the Lord to the best of his ability; I just ask for some perspective.

5. Your creative impulses should be followed. A lot of silly arguments have been made that Handel’s Messiah would be just as beautiful if it were written about the Kuiper Belt, or some other thing. While this may be true and I would certainly be happy to listen to a symphonic ode to asteroids, I would not trade the original. Nor would I want to live in a world without Dali’s Christ of St. John, Michelangelo’s Pieta, or Kanzantzakis’/Scorsese’s Last Temptation. When Christians create things, they are making a gift to the world, one informed by powerful stories and images that make even unbelievers richer people. Such efforts translate the ineffable into objects of fragile beauty. When I saw Honthorst’s St. Sebastian at the National Gallery in London, I momentarily averted my eyes because it held such an aura of sadness and power. It seemed at the time to be the embodiment of fear and trembling. Were I to see it again, even having abandoned my Christianity, I imagine I would do much the same. That is no small thing.

6. Jesus was a smart guy, and we should listen to him. Thomas Jefferson so admired the moral philosophy of Jesus that he produced his own version of the New Testament, keeping the morality and losing the “magic.” I’m much the same way, and I often describe my relationship to Jesus via a Jackson Browne Christmas song which goes like this:

We guard our world with locks and guns
and we guard our fine possessions.
And once a year when Christmas comes
we give to our relations.
And perhaps we give a little to the poor
if the generosity should seize us.
But if any one of us should interfere
In the business of why they are poor
they get the same as the rebel Jesus.

But please forgive me if I seem
to take the tone of judgment.
For I’ve no wish to come between
this day and your enjoyment.
In this life of hardship and of earthly toil
we have need for anything that frees us.
So I bid you pleasure
and I bid you cheer
From a heathen and a pagan
on the side of the rebel Jesus.

Browne understands that Jesus was an entirely transformative figure, who demanded the best from fallen people. Jesus was building a kingdom that, if brought into fruition, would radically upset all known structures of power and influence. It’s somewhat terrifying, and his message signals the end of a world, if not The World. As one of T.S. Eliot’s Magi reflects on his journey back from Bethlehem, “Were we lead all that way for / Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly / We had evidence and no doubt. I have seen birth and death / But had thought they were different; this Birth was / Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death. / We returned to our places, these Kingdoms, / But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation, / With an alien people clutching their gods. /I should be glad of another death.”

I admire Christians most when they are fighting tooth and nail to convert this broken world into something better and more whole with the authority of God anchoring them. To return to one of our Martyrs, all Christians should speak with the conviction of Oscar Romero when he said, “In the name of God, then, and in the name of this suffering People, whose laments rise to Heaven, each day more tumultuously, I beg you, I beseech you, I order you in the name of God: Stop the repression!” God calls you not to live placidly within a system that rewards warmongers and robber barons, but to act out your faith in the possibility of the world Jesus was sent here to create. Desmond Tutu has written some lovely things about the revolutionary power of Jesus, but none so lovely as what Jesus meant to the cross: an object of torture and death became an object of hope.

7. I will learn from you if you will learn from me. Let’s return to Westminster Abbey. There is Martin Luther King in marble, the bones of Darwin lying beneath him. It is perhaps difficult to imagine that these men, separated by a century, by race, by class, would have anything in common: an aristocratic scientist in Victoria’s England and a black man navigating his way through the horrors of Jim Crow and the intrinsic violence of the Deep South. We know that King viewed all people as Children of God, all equal, all the same before their creator. And we can extrapolate from the theory of evolution that we are all kin, descended from a common ancestor, so that phenotypic differences between people truly are only skin deep. This fact makes racism, slavery, and genocide not the results of a world in which only the fit survive but rather the perverse and nihilistic outgrowths of minds that misunderstand both God and science. Arguments about social Darwinism and eugenics (both of which would have horrified Darwin) are for another day. I like to imagine that they are both alive and standing in Westminster Abbey, gawking at each other. I like to imagine that after Darwin got over the shock of talking to a black man (he was a product of his time, and I will not make the mistake of pretending that he didn’t have his own misconceptions about people outside his sphere), he might have seen King as a kindred spirit, trying desperately to be brave, to tell the truth. Believers and unbelievers can get along, and they can build a better world together.

I like to think of King and Darwin finally saying to one another, “We are not enemies. We are friends.” We go forward together or not at all, and we cannot rescue the future with a sword.

Clint Bland loves you and wants you to be happy. He is also a teacher and PhD student in religion at the University of Florida. In his free time he acts as the town rake (in the olde timey sense) and is trying really hard to get a job in his native Texas. He would really like it if you and Alec Baldwin would follow him on Twitter @ClintBland. You can also read his film reviews at movieboozer.com

BEFORE I SHARE MY STORY, PLEASE BE SURE YOU WRITE YOUR CONGRESSMEN/WOMEN TODAY IN PROTEST OF SOPA AND PIPA. Wikipedia has made contacting your representatives easy. Click here. 

I have no idea how I forgot this story. But the other day, it surfaced in my mind like Luke Skywalker’s X-Wing from the bog on Dagobah. I have to write this down, I thought to myself.

I once had a coworker (we will call her Mae) who hated airplane bathrooms. She was in her early sixties and had a wonderful sense of humor, but she occasionally managed to shock me.

Mae hated airplane bathrooms so much that she wore Depends adult diapers whenever she traveled by air. She told people about this quite openly.

Fast-forward a few months to my 2002 flight from Chicago to Frankfurt, Germany. My final destination was Minsk International Airport in Minsk, Belarus. I spent the summer that year teaching English to children at a medical camp in the town of Kobryn.

On the flight to Frankfurt, which lasted 11 hours if I recall correctly, I was awake the entire time. I had never flown before that day. I stayed up all night watching I Am Sam, A Beautiful Mind, and Monsters, Inc. on the in-flight movie monitor affixed to the back of the seat in front of me. I was like a child in a candy store, albeit an airborne candy store.

Shortly before landing in Frankfurt, I saw a man who resembled Mae’s husband waiting outside the airplane restroom.

After he entered the restroom and emerged from it, I saw him sit down next to a woman whose hair resembled Mae’s poofy ’50s period haircut from behind.

It can’t be her though, I thought to myself. What are the odds of us both flying to Germany at the same time?

When the plane landed, the woman turned around to retrieve her baggage from the overhead compartment, and I realized it was indeed Mae.

My immediate thought: Holy crap. That lady probably just crapped her pants at 30,000 feet.

I said hello to her and her husband, and I hope she didn’t notice me eyeing her pants, trying to determine if she was wearing Depends or not.

Every time a dog makes a “deposit,” if you will, another copy of Jennifer Luitwieler’s book Run With Me: An Accidental Runner and the Power of the Poo is sold on Amazon.com.

This week Run With Me became the third best-selling sports biography on the site, following a favorable review from The Pioneer Woman blog, which holds Oprah Winfrey-like clout in the blogosphere, registering nearly 10 million site visits per month.

If you have not purchased a copy for yourself yet, please do so. You can purchase it in physical form or as an eBook here.

Synopsis

Run With Me is an essay-driven, humorous memoir that tells the story of how Jennifer began running in an attempt to deter her dog, Cooper, from “laying pipe” beneath her sewing table in the house. She believed running would change his behavior and motivate him to “take care of business” elsewhere (outside, for instance, like other dogs). But running changed Jennifer’s heart instead of Cooper’s behavior. She was surprised to find she had actually become a runner in the process of attempting to teach Cooper to do her bidding. For Jennifer, running had become a therapeutic outlet for self-discovery. Although Cooper still delights in leaving “deposits” in the same cherished spot, Jennifer is no longer standing in the same place she was when she began her journey as an “accidental runner.” Her story is proof that sports are not merely physical activities, but soul-shaping strivings that enrich us in ways that are surprising.

For the Media (and Friends of the Media)

If you or someone you know is a member of the media, Jennifer is open to interviews and can be contacted through me. I am available via email at chad1978@gmail.com, or on Twitter at @Saint_Upid.

A New Year’s Resolution-Themed Press Release is available at Pitch Engine here, or you can right-click and “Save Target as” on the image below.

A Media Kit for Run With Me can be downloaded below (Right-Click and “SaveTarget as”)

 For Press Photos, Right-Click and “Save Target as” on Each Image Below:

]]> http://chadthomasjohnston.com/2012/01/every-time-a-dog-makes-a-deposit-jennifer-luitwieler-sells-another-book/feed/ 0 http://chadthomasjohnston.com/2012/01/an-open-letter-to-everett-true-5-songs-from-the-boy-who-listened-to-nerdvana/ http://chadthomasjohnston.com/2012/01/an-open-letter-to-everett-true-5-songs-from-the-boy-who-listened-to-nerdvana/#comments Mon, 09 Jan 2012 13:27:14 +0000 Chad Thomas Johnston http://chadthomasjohnston.com/?p=3061

Dear Everett,

I grew up in an alternate dimension where Nirvana didn’t exist.

(That’s the introductory hook that’s supposed to make you want to read this, of course, since you are arguably the universe’s foremost authority on Kurt Cobain and Co.)

Now for something less striking (although I will return to this alternate dimension blather in a minute): I want to thank you for writing Nirvana: The Biography. I read it while my own child was incubating In Utero inside my wife, and your book likewise incubated in my mind for a spell after I read it.

Your book was a gift to me in so many ways. Upon reading it, I found myself wondering what I could possibly give you in return. In the age of social media, after all, readers can actually express their gratitude to authors when they are inclined to do so in the form of a bloated open letter such as this one. You see, Everett, peasants wonder what to give kings, who have everything. After reading your book I found myself likewise wondering what I could possibly give music journalism’s reigning authority (you) since you have probably heard everything.

Like the little drummer boy, I bring my gift to you: Pah-rum-pah-pum-pum …

It does indeed involve drumming, although I am not offering you free drum lessons. You would fare better if the Shaggs‘ drummer taught you, I promise.

Back to that alternate dimension blather.

When you were celebrating the Sub Pop scene in print in Melody Maker, I was celebrating an even more obscure scene in my bedroom with my air guitar. Had you been present to report on the proceedings, you might have referred to it as the “Sub Sub Pop” scene, had you been inclined to refer to it at all.

While you were covering Nirvana, I was listening to music Beavis and Butthead might have referred to as “Nerdvana.” That is to say I was listening to Christian alternative rock (I am not even kidding, Everett), and my peers were kind enough to tolerate my rabid obsession with a number of bands who are even more obscure now that they were when I was foaming at the mouth about them in the ’90s.

I know, I know. Jesus said Christians would be hated, and boy was He right when it came to His followers who spread His message with a Flying V.

It may be that in a poll, Christian rock ranks only slightly above Zamfir the pan flutist in coolness. Even the people who loathed Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music are likely to lunge for that wrecking-ball-of-a-record in a heartbeat if given the option to listen to it instead of, well, Stryper. But I am not writing about Stryper.

I might be wearing a yellow and black catsuit as a I write this, however.

(I am.)

I am writing to share music with you, Everett. I want to write about the bands that filled the “Buzz Bin” of my imagination in the ’90s. These bands were an alternative to the alternative music Nirvana was playing, as meta as that sounds.

I will admit, I knew about Nirvana (I loved them), but as the son of a minister I could hardly listen to them. I was actually one of those well-behaved minister’s kids who ate his musical vegetables at his parents’ prompting. I licked the plate clean, and eagerly.

So it was as if Nirvana did not exist in my world. My world was soundtracked by alternative music to be sure, but it was populated by an alternate cast of characters. The genre would be immediately recognizable to any outsider, but the faces would be unfamiliar.

I championed these bands in my youth, distanced myself from them in young adulthood, and then rediscovered them after a hiatus from listening to them. Somewhere in between, I bought all of Nirvana’s albums and let my obsession with them come to full fruition. This is where you come in, Mr. True.

I want to tell you about a few of these bands, and here is how I want to frame this experience for you: You must first jettison from your mind any preconceived notions you might already have about so-called “Christian music,” and be open to listening to these songs as stand-alone artifacts from a sub-culture that should be taken on its own terms. Yes, Beavis and Butthead would have been inclined to deconstruct this music with a series of burps and farts sounding something like Morse code. That is, it is easy to ridicule Christian music. But it may be far more interesting to listen to it for the sake of listening to something you have never heard before. I would urge you to discover these songs as you might discover arrowheads in the soil in your own backyard. Consider them cultural artifacts.

If nothing else, consider these songs curiosities to behold. You may dismiss them outright, or you may find them to be interesting enough on their own merit. Either way, this letter and these songs constitute a thank you. My gratitude may be the grating kind, but I hope you will at least appreciate the spirit in which the gift is given.

In case you are wondering who I am, I am a 33-year-old resident of Lawrence, KS who works a day job, but spends his free time as a husband and father who also happens to write. My literary agent is based in Seattle, of all places, although I have no other connections with the grunge capital of the world. In the book my agent is currently shopping to major publishing houses – a memoir titled The Stained-Glass Kaleidoscope: Essays at Play in the Churchyard of the Mind – I write about how I was obsessed with Nirvana during my teenage years, but could not listen to the band’s songs in good conscience. I mean, there was a baby penis on the cover of Nevermind. (I honestly was not horrified by this, but others were.) As I write in the book, “penises have never flown too well in Christian circles.” It’s true. To this day, I still have yet to see a flying penis at church, and I doubt I ever will.

If you are interested in reading my book or merely my chapter on Nirvana, let me know. I will send it your way.

To those of you who are not Everett True but are reading this nonetheless, please buy Mr. True’s book. It’s 600+ pages of goodness about his involvement with Nirvana in the ’90s. Mr. True does a superb job of providing context for the reader’s understanding of the music scenes that were developing in both Olympia and Seattle in the late ’80s and early ’90s. The result is a personal work that is chock full of details and remembrances, providing an intimate in-depth account of what happened behind the Flannel Curtain in Seattle and beyond.

Without further ado, here are a few songs from the alternate dimension I inhabited in the ’90s.

1. Starflyer 59 “A Housewife Love Song” (from the Gold LP, Tooth and Nail Records)

Starflyer 59 (known to its fans as SF59) began as a shoegazer outfit – the first of its kind in Christian indie-music history, or “Chrindie” history, as author Joel Heng Hartse puts it in his book Sects, Love, and Rock & Roll.

This particular song is from the band’s second outing, Gold, in which SF59 frontman Jason Martin decides to marry his syrupy shoegazer music to the sludgy stylings of Black Sabbath. The flat snare drums are an intentional homage to the ’70s, and guitars hang black and billowy overhead, like smoke in a house on fire. The result? A dreamy dirge, and an ode to domesticity.

Everett, notice the words “Ever True” on the dishcloth near the beginning of this video. Loving tribute or mere coincidence?

2. L. S. U. (Lifesavers Underground) “Ellis in the Orchard” (from the Grape Prophet LP, Blonde Vinyl Records)

This is the opening song from L. S. U.’s rock opera The Grape Prophet (which is not the album cover featured to the left).

Really, Everett, you should go to the band’s Bandcamp page and download this record in its entirety. Naysayers will make Jane’s Addiction comparisons, and they will not be wrong. But there is so much more to frontman Michael Knott and this record, which is as combustible and bizarre as any truly remarkable alternative record from the ’90s.

Knott’s first band Lifesavers wrote friendly enough radio fare for the Christian market, but he always saved his darkest ruminations for his alter-ego, Lifesavers Underground. The band’s debut, Shaded Pain, remains a classic in Christian music history. Of course, it caused Christian DJ’s to double over in pain, as this album is Bauhaus black in tone. Rolling Stone‘s J. Edward Keyes gives it 4.5 stars in his All Music Guide review, and he awards The Grape Prophet the same score. Rightly so, in my estimation.

I could tell you about Michael Knott’s other 40 albums, or about Blonde Vinyl, the record label he fronted, which crashed to the ground like a musical Hindenburg, leaving Knott over $100,000 in debt in an industry where artists never go gold, let alone aluminum. I could tell you about Knott’s band The Aunt Bettys, who signed to Elektra’s EastWest division with Seymour Stein’s personal endorsement in 1996, but who were dismissed when Stein left the label. I could tell you about Knott’s paintings, or the time he played a show at the church my dad pastors in Rolla, Missouri.

But instead, I will simply urge you to listen to the song below. There is no official video. Even if there was one, would MTV have played it? Probably not. On a related note, Synconation provides an excellent overview of The Grape Prophet here, classifying it as one of “The Best Albums You’ve Never Heard.”

3. Poor Old Lu “My World Falls Down” (from the Sin LP, Alarma Records)

You mention John Goodmanson in your book, and if you look at his recording résumé, you will see this band’s Sin album as his 20th credit. It is a gem from beginning to end, albeit a rough, unpolished one. Scott Hunter’s asthmatic rasp remains one of the most unique voices I have heard in rock ‘n’ roll to this day.

You will note that this is the first of the three songs I have shown you that actually mentions God by name. These bands were not trying to sell Jesus. They were not out to pad Pat Robertson’s bank accounts with bills bearing Benjamin Franklin’s face and flowing hair (even though we Christians like to imagine Jesus with flowing hair). These songwriters were making meaning out of their experiences as human beings, and singing about them just as any other artist does. Their messages, whether cloaked in allegorical garb like L. S. U.’s Grape Prophet, or expressed more explicitly in this case, are religious only because the band members found hope and meaning in the person of Jesus Christ. It is what these songwriters meant to convey that matters to me, which is why it is important to listen to these songs with biases checked at the door.

4. The Prayer Chain “Grylliade” (from the Mercury LP, Rode Dog/Reunion Records)

Here’s where I put all my cards on the table:  When I was 16, the Prayer Chain was my favorite band in the world, period. I wore the band’s T-shirts to school and sported the band’s Neverland Sessions LP sticker on my trumpet case in band (Yes, another reason why I was a nerd in high school). People inevitably asked me who the band was, and I had to out myself as a Christian, a Christian music junkie, and … well, basically, a complete and total weirdo.

I used to write the band on a regular basis, and eventually the band’s bassist Eric Campuzano wrote me back. He sent me a handwritten letter, guitar picks (I had the audacity to ask for them), a copy of the band’s then out-of-print independent debut, and the aforementioned sticker. I have no idea how I did not soil my pants the day I received that package in the mail, Everett.

It was the songs that slew me, Everett. It was the way the band blended tribal elements with more traditional rock elements, and made a sound that was both earthy and spiritual all at once. It was, for me, an ode to the human being as a creation of God. An acknowledgment of our physical mortality and our spiritual immortality, all summarized in a song.

The song below is from the band’s final record, Mercury. It is a bitter pill to swallow because it is essentially a document of the band turning on itself – a record of one band member drawing blood from another. There is an undeniable darkness about the Psalms in the Bible, and the members of the Prayer Chain knew that, and were not afraid to acknowledge the darker elements of their humanity in songs.

The story of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is well known, but the story of Mercury is not. When the band pitched Mercury to the higher-ups at their record label, the suits were mortified. The band was essentially forced to return to the studio and make a record that would not send tears of terror streaming down the faces of Christian record buyers everywhere. The record as it was originally intended to be heard can be purchased at Bandcamp for a cool $5.99. As with The Grape Prophet, Rolling Stone’s J. Edward Keyes awards Mercury 4.5 out of 5 stars in his All Music Guide review, stating simply, “The record feels like a horror film.”

5. Scaterd Few “Kill the Sarx” (from the Sin Disease LP, Alarma Records)

In a just universe, this record would be a punk rock classic. Scaterd Few toured with Bad Brains, and rightly so. The punk-metal-reggae connection is there. But this record is not a Bad Brains ripoff. It is, however, a dizzying record that threatens to liquefy the brain like Lye soap when introduced through the ear canal.

I am going to quote J. Edward Keyes again. I am quoting him for a reason, in fact. He used to write Christian music reviews because he used to be a Christian. He is an atheist now, but even as someone who no longer believes, he recognizes that there were bombproof records even in the Christian industry. Keyes is a world-class writer, a music fanatic, and someone whose opinion I respect 100% when it comes to music.

Sin Disease gets a 4.5 star review in his All Music Guide write-up. His description? “Merciless, brutal, neurotic, Tourettic, and consistently stunning, Scaterd Few‘s debut didn’t push the boundaries of rock – it annihilated them.” I could not agree more.

Everett, I hope you’ve heard something new today. I hope I’ve shown you something, just as you showed me wonders heretofore untold in your illuminating Nirvana biography. The world needs more people who are as rabid about music as you are, and I thank you again for your contributions to the field of music journalism. You remain The Legend!

Most Sincerely,

Chad Thomas Johnston

Upon sighting said sock-monkey wine-bottle cover, Becki and I had the following conversation:

Chad: Oh look! A sock-monkey wine-bottle cover! Amazing!

Becki: Uh huh.

Chad: I think that’d be an AWESOME giveaway on my blog!

Becki: Uh huh.

Chad: Look! It slides over the bottle and covers it like a sock! See?

Becki: Uh huh.

Chad: (Removing the item from the shelf to hold and caress it) Can I get it and give it away on my blog? Can I –

Becki: PUT THAT BACK!!! (Spoken with force and volume enough to cause the sock-monkey wine-bottle cover to screech, leap out of my hands, and return to its home in the footwear forest.)

Chad: (Makes whimpering sound, cowers beneath display case of Pastasaurus pasta servers.)

Becki: Oh sorry. I think that was pregnancy hormones.

Chad: (Whimpers some more.)

I think I moped about that spontaneous scolding for about an hour. Because I am soft like an overripe avocado, and I have a wooden pit for a brain when it comes to processing startling events such as these.

Since Evie’s arrival, Becki and I have both had our share of overly emotional outbursts. On the surface, they are as absurd as the aforementioned sock-monkey wine-bottle cover incident. As any psychologist will tell you, after all, words are not everything in an argument.

My dad, who counsels people all the time as a pastor, once taught me about the “two-car crash” rule. That is, sometimes when a person spouts off, they are not actually mad about what they think they are mad about. It may be that something else happened earlier in the day, or some other underlying factor is contributing stress to the situation. Yes, you are having an interpersonal car-crash with your spouse, but someone or something else may have crashed into your spouse unbeknownst to you before you ever joined the pile-up.

Last night, I picked Evie up from daycare, and she cried all the way home, as she was hungry. All I had at home were frozen bags of milk that needed to be defrosted and then warmed in a bottle. My pectorals, while formidable in a skirmish, do not produce milk. Therefore, I am “udderly” useless in situations such as these until I can thaw milk for my daughter. (Were my daughter to attempt to nurse at my bosom, she would end up with a mouthful of chest hair, and my white chest would blind her, giving her nickname “Evie Wonder” even more credence.) Since I value my daughter’s well-being, I am slowly becoming skilled in the art of thawing frozen milk.

After contending with our caterwauling baby and lulling her into a quieter state, I cooked dinner, cleaned the kitchen, cleaned the cat litter pans, and took care of both the garbage and the recycling. When Becki and I sat down to eat, then, I was already feeling sorry for myself because I had not stopped doing housework since I walked in the door. I was primed for martyr mode. I was ready to apply for sainthood in the Catholic church even though I am Protestant.

By the time we sat down on the couch to eat in the living room, I was already feeling overwhelmed. (Yes, we vegetate while eating dinner. We “turnip” the volume on the TV and shout “Lettuce rest!” to the world around us.) When I got up to get water for my wife and came back to find her changing Evie’s diaper in the exact spot where I had been sitting and eating my dinner, it was another car crashing into the pile-up that was already happening in my mind.

Indignant, I sat down on the floor next to the baby swing. After eating, I then proceeded to stomp around the house and do more housework. I’ll show my wife, I thought to myself. She’ll never take my seat again!

It took Becki much longer than I thought it would to notice my behavior, which meant I ended up doing more housework than I planned. Eventually, she asked if I was okay, and I loudly exclaimed, ”YOU TOOK MY SEAT! YOU CHANGED EVIE’S DIAPER RIGHT WHERE I WAS SITTING!!!  IT WAS MY SEAT! I WAS SITTING THERE!!!”

(I am 33-years-old, by the way, despite the fact that I sound like a 3-year-old here.)

I wanted to say, “Oh sorry. It was the pregnancy hormones.” It felt honest even though it was physiologically impossible. My wife no longer carries Evie inside her.Now we carry Evie together each day, and outwardly. Now our lives are pregnant with her existence – with her smiles, her cries, her feedings. Our lives are fuller than they once were – on the verge of bursting, in fact. No wonder we both lose our minds from time to time.

I apologized to Becki for my attitude, and she said she knew I was not simply reacting to her swiping my spot on the couch. It was the pregnancy hormones. She knew it. I knew it.

By the day’s end, all was fine in the Johnston household. After fighting, we usually continue swinging on the mood swing-set until we are content to be playground playmates again. We continue to play until one of us suspects the other has a sudden appetite for sand, and then we blame the outcome on the pregnancy hormones.

From CTJ: I found Caleb Wilde on Twitter a few months ago and was immediately fascinated. My dad had given me a copy of Thomas Lynch’s excellent The Undertaking a few years ago for Christmas – a funereal present at a festive time – and it left an indelible mark on my soul. “What do funeral directors think about death?” you ask. “What about funeral directors who subscribe to some form of faith? What do they believe? What do they doubt?” Caleb Wilde dares to answer these very questions. I am impressed with Caleb’s thoughtful blog, with his observations about his vocation, and with his dedication to serving humanity. Read Caleb’s post below, visit his blog, and follow him on Twitter. 

Most people think it’s the dead people – the embalming, the blood, the smells, etc. – that make a funeral director’s job slightly odd and difficult. And yes, that is part of it. But, from my perspective, what makes this job difficult – what changes you into someone “different,” alters you – is watching what Death does to those who are still alive.

We funeral directors work alongside four of the principal tyrants known to the souls of men – Death, Mystery, Fear and Religion. We have a twisted, mutualistic relationship with these Powers, as they provide us with a living and then they take us in the end.

This symbiosis affords us a lucid perspective of these Powers and their effects on humanity that few are willing and able to observe.  By definition, we are paid to stand in the visage of Death and not let our emotions flinch. We are paid to face death objectively so we can be stable as we stand amidst unstable souls.

As a paid observer of the effects of Death and a director of those it leaves behind, I’ve noticed that paradoxically, Death and its associate Suffering allow those their cold fingers touch to be human again.

We try so hard to escape our humanity – to feel self-reliant, independent, painless, almost indestructible and god-like – that we fail to remember just how fragile and childlike we are.

Death changes that. It makes us accept what we have been denying. It makes us like frightened children who look for the comfort and the “it’s-going-to-be-okay” embrace of our parents.

And yet, during death, when we look for the embrace from our heavenly Parent, we often receive only silence. We’ve been trained all our lives to speak about God, and then the great silencer takes our words away.

I live at the crossroads of silence between this world and the next.

In some sense, I live the life of Holy Saturday.[1]  I live in the silence and doubt between this world and the next, where faith is either extinguished or enlivened by mystery.

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