Attachment and Loss

Got a blog, gotta blog, finally, but first, let's see how this semi-ASCII horse looks here:

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This blog-title reminds me of our discussion of Water Buffalo Theology a couple years back on the old UCC online forums. Kosuke Koyama wrote WBT as a threefold offering: Christian-Buddhist dialogue, ecological theology and liberation theology. Even before I finally made the connection, such passionate attachments and devastating losses so have been informing the thinking, feeling, journaling and more formal writing I've lately been doing.

Blog

The early church always...always baptized
The 21st century church always baptizes
The early church baptized in the river’s flowing waters
River runs high and river runs low river runs through the land from source to destination
Rivers of baptism's bountiful streams ripple through our lives from source in Christ to destination in Christ
You know how I love paradox, and I love polyvalent images (and symbols) almost as much!

Like high summer's blush of fresh new love's blazing intensities and obsessive near-trances I was passionately in love with The Church; I still love the Church passionately--despite these past more than a dozen years.

The church had given me life! Oh yes, of course the sacraments, but when I say life I don't mean baptism and I'm not referring to the Bread of Life and Cup of Salvation.

Hospitality, hospital – hospitality industry! God's industrious hospitality in cross and sacrament. Sacraments, cross? But how about community--the church as the exhibition of the Reign of Heaven? The sacraments depend on the church for their existence.

Hospital=healing place

Cross=healing place, healing grace, healing embrace, hospitality place

The Cross is God's "been there, done that, have (bought) the scars as proof." But is not the church, born at the cross and energized at Pentecost--the community bought, purchased at the cross proof of God's being and doing, as well?

Here's some of Fred Pratt Green's song we sang last Sunday to Cyril Taylor's tune, Abbot's Leigh, which always sounds so Anglican to me:

God is here! As we your people meet to offer praise and prayer...
Here are table, font and pulpit; here the cross has central place.

Those words remind me of Marty Haugen, "Gather us in":

Here we will take the wine and the water;
here we will take the bread of new birth;
here you shall call your sons and your daughters,
call us anew to be salt for the earth.

From a newer favorite I've posted at least a couple of places:

I, the Lord of font and cup, covenant to lift you up; splash the water, break the bread; pour out your lives!

Time to prepare for tomorrow...

Reach Out of the Darkness

Feelin' nostalgic:

Friend & Lover: Reach Out Of The Darkness, summer, 1968

I think it's so groovy now
That people are finally getting together
I thinks it's so wonderful and how
That people are finally getting together
Reach out in the darkness
Reach out in the darkness
Reach out in the darkness
And you may find a friend

I knew a man that I did not care for
And then one day this man gave me a call
We sat and talked about things on our mind
And now this man he is a friend of mine
Don't be afraid of love
Don't be afraid, don't be afraid to love
Everybody needs a little love
Everybody needs somebody
That they can be thinking of

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Interesting:

With its captivating bass line, anthemic chorus, male-female vocal interplay, and lyrics entirely in tune with the swell of cooperative spirit engulfing American youth in the late 1960s, Friend & Lover's "Reach Out of the Darkness" became a Top Ten hit in the summer of 1968...[and] would be Friend & Lover's sole album, though the male half of the duo, Jim Post, went on to a long and ongoing career in folk, children's music, and the theater...Like hundreds if not thousands of fellow American folk musicians of the '60s, the pair would soon move into rock music as Friend & Lover, Post (who wrote their material) being the "Friend" and [Cathy] Conn the "Lover." ...

Post's composition "Reach Out of the Darkness" was recorded in Nashville, the production credited to Joe South--not long before South, already an established session musician, songwriter, and producer on the Southern recording scene, would himself become a star artist--and Bill Lowery...Ray Stevens" --also a busy session musician, in addition to recording hit records under his own name-- "played all the keyboards, and arranged the strings."

The single took a long time to take off, adds Post, as initially, "the only place that played 'Reach Out of the Darkness' was [the small Northern California town] Chico. It sold about twice as many as the #1 song normally sells in a little town." Nationwide, however, "the record just sat there, I don't know, six, seven months, and didn't do anything. We figured the record was gone and dead. But they had a Selective Service sit-in in California, because there was a hearing on Selective Service or something like that, and they arrested 3,000 people. They took them out to Kezar field [then used as the San Francisco 49ers' football stadium, in Golden Gate Park]." As Jim remembers, it was at that point where a promo man who "had had faith in 'Reach Out' for a long time sent copies to every radio station in the Bay Area with a letter. Then he grabbed a sound truck, went out to Kezar field, and started playing the music on the sound truck. About six o'clock that afternoon, they were playing it almost back-to-back in San Francisco, and that's what started it."

After the ball was rolling, continues Post, "it hit up and down the west coast, and hit in the Midwest. The first time I heard it, we were driving down the Outer Drive in Chicago and turned the radio on, and there's 'Reach Out of the Darkness.' It totally blew our minds. But New York wouldn't go on it, so it started down the charts. Then someone shot Martin Luther King, and it went back up the charts. It sold enough to be a #1 record, but hit at different parts of the country at different times. So it never got to be #1, except on certain radio stations."...Much of the album boasted full arrangements drawing from various influences in late-'60s pop-rock, soul, and psychedelia...Post hardly gave up on music itself...More information on Jim's music, concerts, and other activities can be found on his website, Jim Post dot com.

--Richie Unterberger

Here's the liner notes complete.

Word Salad

Today's Topic

Word Salad?! Maybe I'm running of blog ideas? Fat chance! However, this'll go on my testimony site rather than with my more formal theology on desert spirit's fire.

Pondering Word of Life, Bread of Life, Eschatological Feast (manna, milk, honey, wine, figs, lamb, goat, sheep, Lamb, et al.) gets me thinking about the colors, varieties, mixes and textures filling each of our lives--not only culinary events, but every aspect of each day: sound, sight, smell, tactility. But what about my expression "culinary events"? Does the local fast food emporium serve up anything qualifying either as true cuisine or viable event? Or, for another stretch, both event (measurable in time and space) and cuisine (intentionally imagined and passionately created) in a single portion?! In the Church we recognize glossolalia as one of the more demonstratively eschatological Pentecostal gifts of the Spirit, but word salad's not quite the same as glossolalia; the phrase Word Salad also has some currency in the computer world. From a clinical standpoint, word salad...do a search and find out for yourself!

As my Boston friend Nick (there's a pic of Nick's back steps and part of his garden on my blogger profile) would insist, this topic is both a stretch and a shrink, but I'm going with it anyway. Oh, by the way, Nick is a PK and the brother-in-law of a preacher, and despite the fact he doesn't read theology or even spend much apparent time reading the bible, he doesn't often miss Sunday worship and he's astute in matters of the Spirit. However...at times my theology seems far more earthbound than heaven-bound, but I'll assure you that's the Reformation influence! To continue briefly with Word Salad:

Word of Life

Jesus is the Living Word, the Word made human flesh that lives, breathes, walks, teaches and talks! Some of us even get to preach what we trust and pray will become a Word of Life. Word of life has to be something that accompanies our every breath, thought and step; it must be something that generates living! Word Salad points to the variety of interventions and the variety of venues in which the Word of Life acts.

Bread of Life

That's not only Johannine, the idea goes way back to the Hebrew scriptures and probably further back than that into prehistoric times. Close to a million times I've written about Israel receiving manna from heaven in the Exodus Desert.

Eschatological Feast

To conclude, check out my blog for Earth Day 2006.

Resurrection 2006: Easter, Tucson, Arizona

[Ava] April come she will,
When streams are ripe and swelled with rain
May, she will stay
Resting in my arms again...Paul Simon, 1965

Ava April is a 2 ½ year old Husky mix, finally adopted, and just in time for Easter! Now she lives with seven Husky and Husky mix siblings (even numbers of girls and boys), including Easter Angel, adopted four Easters ago, 2002. In nature's realm plentiful newness happens during spring every year; rivers grow beyond winter's seemingly harsh limits, increasing with water--gestation's essential and necessity of sustenance; spring of the year is when trees and flowers bud, bloom and flourish. Always replete with life, though often at least somewhat concealed, during spring desert habitats extravagantly display abundant glory.

On Easter the Church proclaims,

Love's redeeming work is done!
Where, O Death, is now thy sting!

Sadly, again this year I missed having an opportunity to participate in an Easter Vigil, but Easter morning we worshiped at Casas Adobes United Church of Christ--wonderful music, and preaching I needed to hear.

The Lord went before them in a cloud by day and fire by night. This year I missed keeping Easter's Vigil, but I have intense memories of kindling the new fire at Easter Vigils long past. Possibly you can miss a Cloud by Day, especially if you don't look upward or outward, but Fire blazing amidst night's darkness is unmistakable. Baptized with the HS and with Fire? Baptized into the fire of the cross and into the fire of the constant, unmistakable and irrevocable Divine Presence. Baptized with the Holy Spirit and with fire? Immersed in Fire and Spirit? Think about it!

Beethoven Piano Sonatas

Beethoven Sonata cycle...this far by faith!

Since online storage is so useful, I've decided to keep track of the sonatas and discrete movements I've learned. The sonatas I can play are bold indigo; if you're wondering at what level I play the Indigo Sonatas, they're either at public performance level or will be there as soon as I have them scheduled for a live gig.

[update] As it turned out, I've indigoed only the sonata number and opus number rather than going through and indigoing all the separate movements; for most of the sonatas I play all the movements, anyway.

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No. 1 in F minor, Opus 2 no 1 | 1796
Dedicated to Joseph Haydn
1.Allegro
2.Adagio
3.Menuetto & Trio : Allegretto
4.Prestissimo

No. 2 in A major, Opus 2 no 2 | 1796
Dedicated to Joseph Haydn
1.Allegro vivace
2.Largo appassionato
3.Scherzo & Trio : Allegretto
4.Rondo : Grazioso

No. 3 in C major, Opus 2 no 3 | 1796
Dedicated to Joseph Haydn
1.Allegro con brio
2.Adagio
3.Scherzo & Trio : Allegro
4.Allegro assai

No. 4 in E flat major, Opus 7 | 1797
Dedicated to Countess Babette von Keglevics
1.Allegro molto e con brio
2.Largo, con gran espressione
3.Allegro
4.Rondo : Poco allegretto e grazioso

No. 5 in C minor, Opus 10 no 1
Dedicated to Countess Anne Margarete von Browne
1.Molto allegro e con brio
2.Adagio molto
3.Finale : Prestissimo

No. 6 in F major, Opus 10 no 2
Dedicated to Countess Anne Margarete von Browne
1.Allegro
2.Allegretto
3.Presto

No. 7 in D major, Opus 10 no 3
Dedicated to Countess Anne Margarete von Browne
1.Presto
2.Largo e mesto
3.Menuetto & Trio : Allegro
4.Rondo : Allegro

No. 8 in C minor, Opus 13 | 1799 "Pathétique"
Dedicated to Prince Carl von Lichnowsky
1.Grave - Allegro di molto con brio
2.Adagio cantabile
3.Rondo : Allegro

No. 9 in E major, Opus 14 no 1
Dedicated to Baroness Josefine von Braun
1.Allegro
2.Allegretto
3.Rondo : Allegro commodo

No. 10 in G major, Opus 14 no 2
Dedicated to Baroness Josefine von Braun
1.Allegro
2.Andante
3.Scherzo : Allegro assai

No. 11 in B flat major, Opus 22 | 1800
Dedicated to Count Johann Georg von Browne
1.Allegro con brio
2.Adagio con molto espressione
3.Menuetto
4.Rondo : Allegretto

No. 12 in A flat major, Opus 26
Dedicated to Prince Carl von Lichnowsky
1.Andante con variazioni
2.Scherzo & Trio : Allegro molto
3.Marcia funebra sulla morte d'un eroe
4.Allegro

No. 13 in E flat major, Opus 27 no 1
Dedicated to Princess Josephine von Liechenstein
1.Andante - Allegro
2.Allegro molto e vivace
3.Adagio con espressione
4.Allegro vivace - Presto

No. 14 in C sharp minor, Opus 27 no 2 | 1801 "Moonlight"
Dedicated to Countess Giuletta Giucciardi
1.Adagio sostenuto
2.Allegretto & Trio
3.Presto agitato

No. 15 in D major, Opus 28 "Pastorale"
Dedicated to Joseph Edlen von Sonnenfels
1.Allegro
2.Andante
3.Scherzo & Trio : Allegro vivace
4.Rondo : Allegro ma non troppo

No. 16 in G major, Opus 31 no 1 | 1802
1.Allegro vivace
2.Adagio grazioso
3.Rondo : Allegretto

No. 17 in D minor, Opus 31 no 2 | 1802 "Tempest"
1.Largo - Allegro
2.Adagio
3.Allegretto

No. 18 in E flat major, Opus 31 no 3 | 1802
1.Allegro
2.Scherzo : Allegretto vivace
3.Menuetto & Trio : Moderato e grazioso
4.Presto con fuoco

No. 19 in G minor, Opus 49 no 1 | 1792?
1.Andante
2.Rondo : Allegro

No. 20 in G major, Opus 49 no 2 | 1792?
1.Allegro ma non troppo
2.Tempo di menuetto

No. 21 in C major, Opus 53 | 1803 "Waldstein"
1.Allegro con brio
2.Introduzione : Molto Adagio
3.Rondo : Allegretto moderato - Prestissimo

No. 22 in F major, Opus 54 | 1804
1.In tempo d'un menuetto
2.Allegretto

No. 23 in F minor, Opus 57 | 1805 "Appassionata"
1.Allegro assai
2.Andante con moto
3.Allegro ma non troppo

No. 24 in F sharp major, Opus 78 | 1809
1.Adagio cantabile - Allegro ma non troppo
2.Allegro vivace

No. 25 in G major, Opus 79 | 1809
1.Presto alla tedesca
2.Andante
3.Vivace

No. 26 in E flat major, Opus 81a | 1809 "Les Adieux"
1.Adagio - Allegro
2.Andante espressivo
3.Vivacissimamente

No. 27 in E minor, Opus 90 | 1814
1.Mit Lebhaftigkeit und durchaus mit Empfindung und Ausdruck
2.Nicht zu geschwind und sehr singbar vorzutragen

No. 28 in A major, Opus 101 | 1816
1.Etwas lebhaft und mit der innigsten Empfindung
2.Lebhaft. Marschmaessig
3.Langsam und sehnsuchtsvoll - Geschwind, doch nicht zu sehr, und mit Entschlossenheit

No. 29 in B flat major, Opus 106 | 1818 "Hammerklavier"
1.Allegro
2.Scherzo : Assai vivace
3.Adagio sostenuto, appassionato e con molto sentimento
4.Largo - Allegro risoluto

No. 30 in E major, Opus 109
1.Vivace, ma non troppo - Adagio espressivo
2.Prestissimo
3.Andante, molto cantabile ed espressivo

No. 31 in A flat major, Opus 110
1.Moderato cantabile, molto espressivo
2.Allegro molto
3.Adagio, ma non troppo - Fuga : Allegro, ma non troppo

No. 32 in C minor, Opus 111
1.Maestoso - Allegro con brio ed appassionato
2.Arietta : Adagio molto, semplice e cantabile

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Word Image: Fire

For this assignment, we chose a word and applied styles, transforms and other tweaks so the text illustrated the word's meaning--the font originally was Braggadocio.

Valentines Day 2006

City Delights, or "Delightful City"

In the current Print Module we've started Adobe Illustrator; providentially, I'd learned some of the program last summer and did a little more in late fall, so it's not totally obscure. For the first part of this small, 20-point project, we had to trace shapes with the [scary?!] pen tool; the second phase, the one we turned in for grades, was to use the shapes to create a picture of anything but a beach scene. The shapes – which we could break apart into their separate components – were umbrella, cloud, waves, sailboat, palm tree, seashell and delivery truck. After I finished tracing, I spent a ton of time working with fills, lines, gradients, transforms and stacking orders. Then, when time got short, I designed an energetic, optimistic, happy urban paradise.

summer dreams

We did this project in ImageReady, PhotoShop's web formatting component; it's a quick comp of the splashpage of a website, something you'd prepare for a client – without spending unreal amounts of time doing something that might not fly – to give them an idea of what you had in mind. This image includes additions not required by the minimum assignment directions.

photo retouching and colorizing: Harwich House

Wednesday I turned in my second major project; these notes are from my Artist's Statement.

194 Church Street, Harwich, Massachusetts

Image source: for this assignment I chose a black and white photograph of the house my grandparents first owned and later lived in at 194 Church Street in Harwich, on the vacation peninsula of Cape Cod, Massachusetts; they probably took this shot shortly after buying the property in the early 1950s. Clapboard siding and shake shingle roofs characterize most New England farm-style houses built on the Cape during the mid-to late 19th century.

Over the past few years I've scrapbooked many of the better snapshots of this house, but this one was in close to disreputable condition, making it a great candidate for repairing and colorizing!

Hoped-for outcome and rationale: because I have pictures taken after my grandparents made repairs, improvements and additions to both house and yard, I planned the colorizing to reveal what the house would have looked like when they first bought the property, before starting renovations and transformations.

Regarding the hues: always trying to avoid the temptation to imagine this project was supposed to look like a color photograph, I took some freedom with the color. I made the siding on the house creamy white, although an almost chalky white tends to be more typical of houses of that period in that geographical area. In addition, I aimed for pleasing (to me) interactivity among the roof, grass and sky colors. The original roof probably was green, but it might have been gray or brown.

images from my first print media project

Tuesday was the date to turn in our first real project in the Interactive Media Certificate Program / IMCP Print Media module! We each got to pick a sometimes cryptic phrase...from a hat? I don't know, I left class a little early for Faith, Order, Witness, so Carolyn O'Barr, our Tuesday through Friday instructor, gave me Dreams of Swans, the only one left. We could choose to design a CD, DVD or book cover; I decided on a CD. Here's the front and the back! For the CD itself, I omitted the harder-edged urban fire escape on the upper left and Rotterdam roofs lower right, faded the cannabis leaf a little more and also made the swans less opaque. In addition, I rasterized the playlist and credits so I could move them away from the CD's center hole.

from my Artists Statement:

Creative Concept

• Swans
• Images of swan pairs posed so a heart forms between their heads are common, but I chose a swan couple forming almost a heart, illustrating the often tenuous, frequently fragile, inevitably changing bonds love and relationship form.
• Dune Grass
• From summers on Cape Cod – as well as time I've spent on the Eastern Shore of Maryland and Virginia – dune grass has become one of my favorite seashore symbols. The photography I chose particularly reminds me of Nauset and Chincoteague.
• Urban Fire Escape
• The subject is dreams, and where do multitudes of dreams emerge more insistently than in the residential and commercial structures of any inner city? Escape suggests going elsewhere than the daily mundane, and I love the dual imagery of "fire" both as a danger to be quenched and a crucial aspect of creativity.
• Rotterdam Rooftops
• For me, this image is polyvalent! Rotterdam is one of my favorite cities in what's probably my favorite country. In one of my former lives, the roof of the apartment building where I lived at 39 Clark Street in Boston's North End (a block away from Old North Church, "Christ Church in the City of Boston" of Paul Revere fame) was a great place to go to dream, do homework, sunbathe, visit with friends and just plain chill. Reinforced by the song "Up on the Roof" (I consider James Taylor's the real version), rooftops evoke a cascade of nostalgic memories and the slick, contemporary ones in this photograph cleanly dovetail with my current life and style.
• Cannabis Sativa Leaf
• Pipe dreams! Not exactly renowned as a hallucinogen, nevertheless marijuana tends to induce an altered, not-quite-real state of mind and being, so I chose this image to suggest a possible new reality superimposed upon rationalized 21st-century life.

New Books, Early January 2006, and some updated personal info

Here's the list of my new books; for details, you can click on the Amazon link. Over the next couple of months I'm planning to do more reading than recently I've been doing! In addition, this coming Monday I'll begin the 12-week long (plus spring break) Print Module in the Interactive Media Certificate Program—IMCP at the San Diego Community College District's North City Campus, which is a member of the international New Media Consortium. By the way, although I tried linking to the program's course listings the link wasn't specific enough, but according to the site listing this module will include: Mac Basics, Digital Graphics, Vector Graphics, Desktop Publishing, and Portable Document Forms. According to the material we received at orientation and registration, that'll be Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Acrobat Pro and Portfolio development--the main reason this program interests me so. Since I'll be concentrating heavily on design, with 25 class hours per week, for the next near future I may try to make most of my blogs reflections on my current reading rather than my own theologizing.

Brueggemann, Walter. Texts That Linger, Words That Explode: Listening to Prophetic Voices

Walter Brueggemann, Awed to Heaven, Rooted in Earth: Prayers of Walter Brueggemann

Walter Brueggemann, Deep Memory, Exuberant Hope: Contested Truth in a Post-Christian World

Walter Brueggemann, Finally Comes the Poet: Daring Speech for Proclamation

Robert L. Millet, Kent P. Jackson, et al. Studies In Scripture, Vol. 4: 1 Kings to Malachi

Robert L. Millet et al. Studies in Scripture, Vol. 6: Acts to Revelation