Transmission

San Diego workers for Justice April 14, 2008

A friend sent me a link to this. A bunch of USCD hospital workers are struggling and demonstrating for fair compensation, and a bunch of church folk (including the Interfaith Council for Worker Justice) got together to wash their feet. Awesome.

So here’s a video chronicling the event. Observant folks will notice that the music is the track Lamentation, from my first album! It’s pretty nifty when you chance across cool people who are using your music, and this is exactly the kind of prophetic work I would want to be associated with.

Epiphany Ritual January 3, 2008

Thanks for everyone who came out last night to celebrate Epiphany a few days early. The ritual went well, and I wanted to post it in case any readers wanted to mine it for ideas for this coming Sunday, which is the actual day of Epiphany.

The idea for the ritual came from my experiences riding the subway, watching my fellow riders create privacy for themselves by listening to portable music. Music is recorded with artificial reverb, an effect which makes the music sound as if it is taking place in a large space. Different kinds of reverb create different kinds of “virtual space” for the music so that concertos sound like they’re being played in concert halls, arena rocks sounds like it’s being played in an arena, and folk music sounds like it’s being played in an intimate coffee shop. A subway is a public space and during rush hours people are packed into them as tightly as possible with no room for personal space. At the same time, however, each person listening to music bring a virtual space with them, and any given subway car will probably have at least a dozen personal, virtual spaces packed in to it.

Church is another place in which personal space and public space interact in interesting ways, and I thought it would be interesting to see how portable music would affect ritual. Epiphany, a feast day which celebrates a journey, seemed like the perfect opportunity to ritualize my commuting experience.

I set up five stations along a walking route which wound its way through four rooms. Each participant was told to bring a portable music player (i.e. an iPod, a discman, or something comparable). I created five tracks of voiceover layered on top of music and loaded them on to each person’s player, and we began the ritual. Details below:

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Yay, It’s Advent Transmission Time Again! December 3, 2007

This Wednesday, Dec 5, from 7-9 pm, come to Bowie’s place for Advent Transmission. 

* Advent “Arts & Crafts” Stations.  Make Wreaths!  Calendars!  Collage!  And More.    
* Read a part in jSnodgrass’ short skit – “Nativity Mystery: The Elephant in Question”
* Come Sing “O Come O Come Emmanuel” (beautiful, ancient, haunting hymn…)

Please email if you need directions to Bowie’s apartment. 
Cookies, drinks, dinner side dishes, and RSVPs welcome!

church tolerates homegrown worship songs November 26, 2007

As someone who writes a lot of original music for churches (including Transmission), this article is my worst nightmare! I hope folks never feel that way about my stuff…

That said, I found it highly amusing, especially lines like “If I fished with hooks that bad, I’d never get a bite.” Go peruse the site - there’s some great stuff on there…

http://larknews.com/august_2007/secondary.php?page=2

Contrapuntal Theology October 21, 2007

So for Transmission last week, we based our service on the passages in Matthew and Thomas in which Jesus asks the disciples, “Who do you say I am?” There are a variety of christologies present at Transmission - we have people who love Christianity and are proud to call themselves Christian, we have people who love Jesus and want to model their lives after him but who feel alienated or threatened by the term “Christian,” and we have people who are extremely skeptical of the ability of words, theology, and ideas to fully encompass God. With a group as diverse as this, we were more interested in asking the question than in coming up with a definitive answer.

After meditation, discussion, and prayer, we needed a song with which to end the ritual. Are there any songs about Christology that leave room for a diversity of theologies? I couldn’t think of any, so I asked j. Snodgrass to help me pen something.

We came up with a three-part chant, similar in style to Taize music. Instead of having multiple parts written in multiple languages, however, we wrote multiple parts in multiple theologies. Usually hymn lyrics assume that everyone present can agree to the same thing (or at least that they’ll temporarily sign on to the lyrics for the purposes of group singing). With this piece, on the other hand, we hoped that everyone would find a part they were comfortable singing, and that we can have a worshipful moment without making anyone sing anything that made them uncomfortable.  It was very successful.

If you like it, feel free to use it - click on the image above to download.

Sabbath Poem (Mahler 3) October 7, 2007

Last night I saw Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 3 for the second time this year! This time it was the Lucerne Festival Orchestra, conducted by Pierre Boulez, at NYC’s own Carnegie Hall. This was only my second time there! and we sat in ‘limited legroom’ seats in the balcony, with wonderful sounds of 120 orchestra players, plus 30 women and 30 boy singers reverberating off the ceiling.

The first time I heard Mahler 3 was on July 14th at Tanglewood, MA with the James Levine conducting the Boston Symphony Orchestra. During the intermission between the first movement and the last five… I got engaged! Yup, George asked me to marry him on the hillside above Ozawa Hall. So this piece has permanent special significance to me…. especially the 6th movement, “What love tells me”.

I was struck again by the text for the 4th and 5th movements again last night and wanted to share them as my Sabbath Poems for this week. Enjoy!

IV. “What Man Tells Me”

Text: Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
Translation: Larry Rothe

O Mensch! Gib Acht!

Oh man, take heed!
What does deep midnight say?
I slept!
I have woken from a deep dream!
The world is deep—
Deeper than the day had thought!
Deep is the pain!
Joy deeper still than heart’s sorrow!
Pain says: Vanish!
Yet all joy aspires to eternity,
To deep, deep eternity.

V. “What the Angels Tell Me”

Text: from Des Knaben Wunderhorn
Translation: Larry Rothe

Three angels sang a sweet song.
It resounded throughout heaven;
They also rejoiced
That Peter was free of sin.

For as the Lord Jesus sat down at the table
And ate the evening meal with his twelve disciples,
The Lord Jesus said, “Why are you standing here?
When I look at you, you cry.”

“And shouldn’t I cry, you kind God?”
You shouldn’t cry!
“I have broken the Ten Commandments;
I go and cry bitterly.”
You shouldn’t cry!
“Oh come, and have mercy on me!”

“If you’ve broken the Ten Commandments,
Fall on your knees and pray to God.
Just love God always,
And you will have heavenly joy.”

Heavenly joy is a blessed city,
Heavenly joy, which has no end;
Heavenly joy was prepared for Peter
By Jesus, and for everyone’s salvation.

Translation copyright © 2003 by the San Francisco Symphony

Transmission featured on Trax16 September 6, 2007

Well, ok, I’m talking about the album and not about the community, but it’s still pretty exciting. If you aren’t familiar with it, Trax16 is a monthly British podcast about alternative Christian culture. Give it a listen here: http://www.trax16.com

Transmission - the soundtrack August 30, 2007

All right, so here it is, a year in the making.  The album will be available in a few weeks on Proost, a small London-based boutique label, and in a few months on iTunes.

Proost, by the way, is well worth checking out.  For about $120, you get access to their entire catalog (about 15 CDs, several movies, and a bajillion books) along with monthly updates for a year.  Well worth the price for any church, church plant, or church goer.

Also, for our Transmissioners and loyal readers, I’m pleased to give you a couple of pre-release singles from the Album.  All songs on the album were written by me and j. Snodgrass, whose smashing profile you can see on the cover of the album.  Enjoy!

First, we have The Stranger, which is a Eucharistic prayer (kind of).  If you listen closely, you’ll hear a preface, salvation history, sanctus, memorial acclamation, and the Lord’s prayer, but I also tried to include all my soap boxes about how Jesus has been misappropriated as a tool for oppression.

Second, we have a musical rendition of the Lukan Beattitudes.  Although the Beattitudes can come across as a little touchy-feely, I think they contain an extremely radical, subversive message (woe to the rich, etc).  So I threw in some riot noises, some police sirens, and generally tried to make the Sermon on the Mount sound as much like a protest rally as possible.

Finally, we’ve got a remix of a song you’ve heard on this site before, the Canticle of the Sun, which is based on a poem written by Francis of Assisi in 1224.  Basically, there were these guys called the Cathars who were running around telling everyone that the spiritual was good and the physical was evil, so Francis wrote this poem about how he could find God in his everyday surroundings.  It appeals to my hippy side.

Enjoy!

Isaac & the “musicianhood of all believers” August 7, 2007

There’s a great interview with Isaac by Becky Garrison on emergingchurch.info.

Definitely worth checking out…

I like his bit about a “musicianhood of all believers”

Martin Luther talked about the “priesthood of all believers” and the broad, folky appeal of his hymns suggest that he believed in the “musicianhood of all believers” as well. The job of professional ministers and musicians should not be to direct liturgical and musical activity, but rather to facilitate them. A liturgical leader’s job is not merely to pray and to worship, but to get the entire congregation praying and worshiping. Similarly, my job is not just to play well, but also to get everyone in the room participating in the music; my job is to help everyone find an entry point into the ritual activity.

Naboth’s Vineyard June 18, 2007

So one of our Transmissioners, j. Snodgrass, wrote a play for a service at Sanctuary, an Episcopal church over on the east side. I’m a big fan of using arts in worship, yet I don’t know much about drama and rarely think to include it in a ritual. Kudos to Sanctuary. It’s an entertaining read - go read it on their site.

Also, in the spirit of Elijah, enjoy this song written by j. Snodgrass and myself (Isaac Everett). The extended intro features my friend, Yoel Ben Simhon, and the english-language singer is RC Laird.