The Internet Monk Archives

Another Look: God’s Good Creation (and a preview of things to come)

Note from CM: I am reading a wonderful book about the Genesis 1 creation account by Michael Lefebvre, a local minister here in Indiana, called The Liturgy of Creation: Understanding Calendars in Old Testament Context. I hope to share more about it next week. His study yields remarkable insights about how the first creation story joins with other important stories in the Torah in functioning as a “calendar narrative.”

I want to propose in this book that the Genesis 1:1–2:3 creation week is most fruitfully read as a “calendar narrative.” It is a special kind of historical narrative in which historical events are given the dates of a festival observance (sabbath observance in the case of the creation week), without regard for the timing of the original occurrence.

Lefebvre goes on to say

…that the creation week narrative is, transparently, not a chronological account of the original creation event. Instead, it is a structured retelling of the creation around the pattern of a Model Farmer tending his fields and livestock each day of the week until the sabbath. This form was to serve as a practical guide for the lay Israelite in his or her weekly labors and sabbath worship, and it does not even attempt to answer the curiosities of modern science regarding the processes or timing of the original creation event.

Like the story of the Passover and others in the Torah, these stories from Israel’s past were primarily designed to instruct those who lived in a much later time. These narratives told them about their identity as God’s people and the practices that would enable them to flourish in later generations.

Before we get into this book more fully (I’m still finishing it), here’s a taste of the direction in which we’re going. This is a repeat of a post from 2018, from our “Genesis: Where It All Begins” series.

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God’s Good Creation

Many students of the Bible think that Genesis 1, with its intricate structure, repetition, and the heightened character of its language, may represent an ancient liturgy confessing faith in the Creator God. If it is, then the refrain, repeated seven times, is captured in these verses:

And God saw that the light was good. (Gen 1:4)
And God saw that it was good. (Gen 1:10)
And God saw that it was good. (Gen 1:12)
And God saw that it was good. (Gen 1:18)
And God saw that it was good. (Gen 1:21)
And God saw that it was good. (Gen 1:25)
God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good. (Gen 1:31)

You simply cannot come away from reading and meditating on this text without concluding that this world and all that God made is a good creation. Here are a couple of thoughts focusing in on what that means in the context of Genesis 1.

One, the word “good” involves a word-play. It contrasts with the phrase in Gen 1:3, “The earth was formless and void.” In Hebrew, “formless and void” translates tohu wabohu, which is used elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible to refer to a wilderness that is unsuitable for human habitation. “Good” is the Hebrew word tov, and represents the opposite of that. God took that which was tohu and made it tov.

Two, “good” indicates that which is beneficial for life to flourish. The word-play mentioned above contrasts that which is uninhabitable with that which can bring forth life and sustain the life of its creatures. It is not simply that God is evaluating his work and commenting on its quality. Rather, he is evaluating it according to its fertility and ability to provide abundantly for the life of the world. The Jews would have understood this contrast very well, having been brought through the wilderness (tohu wabohu) to the Promised Land (tov).

Three, the text indicates that this “good” creation is God’s provision. The word “saw” in the refrain “God saw that it was good” is not just saying that God looked at the world he brought to order as if to observe it. The word “saw” is a Hebrew verb that can have the idea of “God saw to it that it was good.” In the story of Abraham sacrificing Isaac, the patriarch named the place “The Lord will provide” (Yahweh yireh). That is the same word. “The Lord will see (to it).” So, in Genesis 1, when it affirms that God saw that it was good, it is saying that God provided what is good for his creation, that which promotes the flourishing of life and blessing.

Now, I want to make an assertion that I fully realize goes against the grain of a long tradition of Christian theology, at least the way it has been understood on a popular level.

God has never retracted his statement that “it is good.”

Most evangelical presentations of the gospel begin like this: In the beginning, God created a world that was good (meaning perfect, unsullied by any sin or evil, a paradise). But…

Then they go on to assert that Adam and Eve’s sin introduced human sin and death into the world, and the very nature of the world itself was changed. The world itself became “not good.” It was at that point that animals as well as humans began to die. It was at that point that all the things we consider “bad” became part of the very nature of the world.

The corollary to this in a lot of popular theology is that God’s goal therefore is to abandon this creation and put a new one in its place, rather than renewing and transforming the present one.

If you want to see a complete statement of the goodness of God’s creation, in all its facets, see Psalm 104, and go back and re-read my earlier post, “Creation Is a Many-Splendored Thing: Delighting in God’s Goodness.” As I write in the post:

This reinforces [my] perspective…that creation did not change in its nature, properties, or “laws” as a result of a “fall” or “curse” in Genesis 3. It was deemed “very good” by God in the beginning, and in this poem, the psalmist affirms that it remains “very good.” This does not change the fact that God acts in both judgment and salvation in the world. But God does that because of what we read at the very end of Psalm 104 [which blames the wickedness of humans], not because creation itself has been placed under a curse that transformed it from “good” to “not good.”

Obviously, humans have introduced and continue to spread sin, evil, and corruption throughout this good world. In addition, we must face the fact of “surd evil” — evil or, from our point of view, “tragedy” or that which seems to work against life and well being that is incapable of rational explanation on our part.

However, my friends, this is our Father’s world. It remains good, God’s provision to us so that our lives and creation itself might flourish in well being and blessing.

The danger this good world faces continually is that human beings will corrupt it by “corrupting their way upon the earth” (Genesis 6:12). Humankind, given stewardship over the world, is called to represent the God of Genesis 1 and Psalm 104 in all the earth. This is the God who sustains creation by his wisdom and by the joy he takes in it. In God’s image humanity is called to the wise care and use of this amazing planet. By taking delight in its wonders and never forgetting from Whom they came, we take our rightful place here among the manifold splendors of the cosmos, helping to fulfill God’s will on earth as in heaven.

Henri Nouwen: “You must keep looking for a new order”

“You must keep looking for a new order”
By Henri Nouwen

And yet you are Christian only so long as you look forward to a new world, only so long as you constantly pose critical questions to the society in which you live, and only so long as you emphasize the need for conversion both for yourself and for the world. You are Christian only so long as you do not let yourself become established in a situation of seeming calm, only so long as you stay unsatisfied with the status quo and keep saying that a new world is yet to come. You are Christian only when you believe that you have a role to play in the realization of this new kingdom and when you urge everyone you meet with a holy unrest to make haste so that the promise might soon be fulfilled. So long as you live as a Christian, you must keep looking for a new order, a new structure, a new life.

…What does this have to do with prayer? Praying means breaking through the veil of existence and allowing yourself to be led by the vision which has become real to you. Whether we call that vision “the Unseen Reality,” “the total Other,” “the Spirit,” or “the Father,” we repeatedly assert that it is not we ourselves who possess the power to make the new creation come to pass. It is rather a spiritual power which has been given to us and which empowers us to be in the world without being of it.

The praying person looks on the world with compassion, penetrates its hidden meaning, and calls it to an always deeper conversion.

…Dear God,

Give me the courage to live and work

for a new heaven and a new earth as Jesus did.

Give me the freedom to be critical where I

see evil

and to offer praises where I see goodness.

Most of all, make me faithful to the vision

you have given me,

so that wherever I go and whomever I meet,

I can be a sign of your all-renewing love.

Amen.

• Henri J. M.Nouwen, With Open Hands (pp. 103-104; 114; 119)

Thoughts on COVID-19 data and where we might be headed

Welcome to another stream of consciousness edition. I have been doing a lot of thinking this week about the COVID-19 data that I have seen to this point, what it means, and what the future might bring.

For those not familiar with who I am, I make a living doing data analysis, and am especially interested in trying to get a sense of where we are heading with this Corona virus pandemic.

For those hoping to get the third installment of “The Consummate Cockburn Collection”, all I know is that my co-writer said, and I paraphrase, “blah, blah, blah, Financials for Annual General Meeting, blah, blah, blah”. Or in other words, “You ain’t getting it ’till next week.”

The good news is that today is a holiday, so I won’t have to share my overtime pay with Peter! I don’t think Peter is too concerned. He has his Ph.D. in Mathematics and so knows that zero multiplied by anything is still zero! This is a labor of love, so be kind to me in the comments.

Here are some of my observations from the COVID-19 data that I have seen so far.

Deaths has always been a more accurate measure than cases.

There was evidence very early on that COVID-19 could possibly be transmitted asymptomatically, or that a significant number of cases would go undetected.

There is a possibility (the jury is still out on this) that people may be infecting others before they start to show symptoms. If so it will be very difficult to contain. Lancet warns that “Independent self-sustaining outbreaks in major cities globally could become inevitable because of substantial exportation of presymptomatic cases and in the absence of large-scale public health interventions.” – InternetMonk – February 7th.

This means that…

The number of cases has been significantly under reported.

How much so? In cases that have been pro-active with their testing and were testing before the virus got well established, deaths (the more accurate measure) are about one percent of cases. Russia for example at time of writing, had 281,000 cases and 2,600 deaths. The U.A.E. had 23,000 cases and 220 deaths. So we know from these numbers that the ration of deaths to cases is somewhere around 1%. (Note this is different to the fatality rate which is the current rate of deaths divided by the total of deaths plus recovered) Contrast this to the U.S.A., Canada, and the World whose number are 5.9%, 7.5%, and 6.6% respectively.

But… deaths have also been under counted.

The New York Times has been doing a good job of tracking this. When comparing death rates over the last two months with death rates from previous years, the death rate currently has been significantly higher than would be expected from the reported COVID-19 deaths. This is likely to be some combination of unreported/untested deaths due to COVID-19 in combination with increased deaths that have resulted from factors related to decreased access to hospitals, delayed surgeries, increased domestic abuse, suicides, etc. It is hard for me to determine whether the former is greater than the latter, so for arguments sake let us assume they have relatively equal impacts. The numbers are all over the place, but my best estimate is that roughly 20% of deaths caused by COVID-19 are being missed. This is partly borne out by…

Apparently we can’t count on weekends…

When you look at the graph of the daily number of cases, or the daily numbers of deaths, the reported numbers are always lower on Saturday and Sunday (as reported on Sunday and Monday). This is true both in the USA, Canada, and also seen in the World totals. There have now been several times where I have heard late on a Monday or on a Tuesday morning, “We have good news to report… We have seen the number of cases [or deaths] decline over the last couple of days.” It would be funny if it weren’t so tragic.

The real number of cases.

World wide then, it can be estimated that the real number of cases is approximately 6.6 times the reported number of cases. Or 100 times the number of deaths. We can also factor in an additional 20% as mentioned above. So, instead of the reported 4,800,000 cases world wide, the real number of cases is likely around 38,000,000.

Here is the scary part.

That 38,000,000 just mentioned is only half of one percent of the World’s population. If that number is correct, then the virus still has 99.5 percent of the population to infect. I can’t get over the number of people who I have heard say recently that “I hope/think the worst is behind us” usually accompanied by “It’s time to get back to work.” Even after multiplying the known number of cases by eight, we still don’t get to one percent of the population. The number of deaths that we have experience so far is just a drop in the bucket compared to what could be coming. (Note that I did qualify my remark with the word “could” which I will explain later.”

Negative results from testing confirms we have only just begun.

Consider this. The people most likely to be tested are those who are experiencing symptoms, or are at a higher risk of contracting the virus. Yet in spite of this the huge majority of tests are coming back negative. The U.A.E. has tested 16.2 percent of their population. 98.5% of their tests have come back negative. Canada and the U.S.A. by contrast have only tested 3.5% of their populations, and so the negative results have been significantly lower. In Canada 94% of the tests have been negative, in the U.S.A. that number has been 87%. Why are those numbers so low compared to the U.A.E? Simply because we have tested such a small percentage of our population. When you consider that the U.S.A. leads the world in the number of cases, and yet less than half of one percent in the U.S.A. have tested positive, we might have a penetration of the virus into the the U.S.A. of maybe 3 to 5%. (Taking the .5 percent of positive tests and multiplying it by 6 to 10 as referenced above.) Taking the number of deaths and multiplying that by 120 gives us a penetration of 3.3%, so let’s go with that number for our further analysis.

What is likely to happen – A worst case scenario along with some possible numbers

Let us use a U.S.A. example here. People with more experience with me in this area are thinking that we need to get to between 60% and 70% exposure to approach herd immunity. Exposure can happen one of two ways. You get the virus, or you get the yet non existent vaccine. For those thinking that the vaccine will come soon, remember we have just started human trials for the first vaccine. Stage 1 may take as long as six months and there are several stages to go through. So, worst case scenario is that the number dead in the U.S.A. is 20 times what it currently is. That is, approximately 1,800,000 people. Remember this is just the U.S.A. example. Canadians can divide by ten.

In the U.S.A. there have been 84,500 deaths over the last six weeks. That has been under close to lock down conditions. Currently we are averaging about 1,500 deaths a day. If we project that forward for a year we end up with another 550,000 deaths. So if we keep things relatively controlled and we get an available vaccine in a year, we are looking at ten times the number of deaths than we have now. While that sounds absolutely horrible, it is a lot better than the maximum number of 1,800,000. I initially called this section good news, but 634,000 dead can not be conveyed as good news.

The more things are opened up the more that that number will rise above 634,000.

You will note from the graph above, that the number of daily deaths has been declining. I expect that with opening up the economy we will see that decline stall over the next two weeks, and then start to rise again. By the end of June we are likely to be back up to 2,000 deaths a day, likely to lead to another shut down.

What about a second wave?

There have been warnings about a second wave, and how it could be worse than the first. The pandemic of 1918 (which killed my great-grandfather), and the SARS virus, had two waves, the second more deadly than the first. I don’t think it is that simple. If you look at the graphs of Canadian provinces, you will see that each pattern is quite distinct. Some have two peaks, some have one, some have a higher then lower peak, some a lower then higher. I think what we see in waves is really going to vary from place to place, and from region to region. Remember the first real wave was China, and now their numbers barely register in the big picture.

There is also a large part of the world that hasn’t even experienced this virus yet. We are still in the first phase. There are many many more countries who are still going to be devastated by this.

Final thoughts.

Please continue to pray. For those who are able, seek to help those who are in need. Be generous. Be kind. And be forgiving and gracious to those who may see this differently to you.

As usual your thoughts and comments are welcome.

Update: I have deleted a number of comments that were over the top in terms of rhetoric. I am invoking my updated Godwin rule here.

Brueggemann: Virus as a Summons to Faith (2)

Walter Brueggemann has published a book during this Covid-19 pandemic to encourage and challenge believers. In the second chapter, “Pestilence…Mercy? Who Knew?” he considers the strange story about David in 2 Samuel 24:1-14.

Again the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he incited David against them, saying, ‘Go, count the people of Israel and Judah.’ So the king said to Joab and the commanders of the army, who were with him, ‘Go through all the tribes of Israel, from Dan to Beer-sheba, and take a census of the people, so that I may know how many there are.’

…But afterwards, David was stricken to the heart because he had numbered the people. David said to the Lord, ‘I have sinned greatly in what I have done. But now, O Lord, I pray you, take away the guilt of your servant; for I have done very foolishly.’ When David rose in the morning, the word of the Lord came to the prophet Gad, David’s seer, saying, ‘Go and say to David: Thus says the Lord: Three things I offer you; choose one of them, and I will do it to you.’ So Gad came to David and told him; he asked him, ‘Shall three years of famine come to you on your land? Or will you flee for three months before your foes while they pursue you? Or shall there be three days’ pestilence in your land? Now consider, and decide what answer I shall return to the one who sent me.’ Then David said to Gad, ‘I am in great distress; let us fall into the hand of the Lord, for his mercy is great; but let me not fall into human hands.’ (2 Sam 24:1-2, 10-14)

The gist of the story is that the Lord incited David (in the Chronicles account it is Satan) to take a census, either for the purposes of taxation or to take stock of Israel’s military readiness. David recognizes this as a sinful act, betraying a lack of trust in the Lord’s leadership and resources. And so the prophet Gad comes with the Lord’s word to David, giving him a choice of the consequences he must face. David may choose (1) famine, (2) military defeat, or (3) pestilence. In the end, David opts for pestilence because this punishment comes directly from the Lord’s hand without human mediation. Famine would involve conflicts arising from injustices in the economic system. The sword would be brandished by enemy soldiers. So David prays, “Let us fall into the hand of the Lord, for his mercy is great; but let me not fall into human hands.”

David decides his best hope is, as Brueggemann says, that: “The God who prescribes punishment is all the while the God of mercy who may mitigate the sentence.”

I find Walter Brueggemann’s comments on this text thought-provoking and worthy of meditation.

I do not think for one moment that there is any ready transfer from this narrative to our real-life crisis with the virus. The Bible does not often easily “apply.” The Bible does, however, invite an open imagination that hopes for the best outcomes of serious scientific research. At the same time, it affirms that deeply inscrutable holy reality is in, with, under, and beyond our best science. Thus, in the calculus of David’s transactional world, he knows that foolish decisions and actions may evoke unwelcome outcomes. He knows, at the same time, that a hovering holiness could rule otherwise. So now we witness a virus that may possibly be linked to our ambitious ordering of reality. We meet, pray, sing, and hope in our exercise of faith, nonetheless, that beyond every quid pro quo there is more and other.

It is most impossible to see the virus as something like a divine blowback to the hubris that has propelled the global narrative, its indulgent use of earth’s resources, and its exploitation of the vulnerable. I note on the day that I write this that China has experienced an “unintentional consequence” of the virus, namely, a clear sky without the smog of over-loaded street traffic. Who knew? The virus may indeed amount to a curbing of our worst social habits, and invite a slow-down to the pace of creation’s reality. It may lead to gentler treatment of prisoners, and a more generous offer to the left behind. We may dare imagine with David that the final word is not pestilence; it is mercy.

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Virus as a Summons to Faith: Biblical Reflections in a Time of Loss, Grief, and Uncertainty
By Walter Brueggemann
Cascade Books, an Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers. 2020.

The IM Saturday Monks Brunch: Quarantine Reflections

The IM Saturday Monks Brunch
Quarantine Reflections

I have a new favorite band. They remind a lot of the energy and joy we enjoyed with our kids when they were young. The Clarks are putting up videos every day on YouTube during the pandemic shutdown. I have had so much fun watching these — and let me tell you, they’re good! This little girl, in particular, is going to be a star.

So may I introduce to you Colt Clark and the Quarantine Kids.

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First published on Caglecartoons.com, The Netherlands, March 13, 2020 | By Tom Janssen

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Today, I thought I’d share some folks’ personal reflections from the quarantine that have been published at various places around the web. It’s always fascinating hearing what people are doing and thinking in difficult times like these. We’ll sprinkle these throughout the Brunch.

So here is how I have been doing.

I’ve been waking up feeling paralyzed. Overwhelmed. Helpless. I’ve been going to bed disappointed by lack of productivity and optimism that day and hoping to wake up feeling different (more sanguine or bad-ass or something).

Self-care routines—not so much, honestly. I haven’t been live-streaming workouts and getting in the best shape of my life. I’ve actually been sitting on my butt all day. I’ve slacked off on my daily meditation. I have not been motivated to use the time saved not commuting to take up knitting or bread baking. I haven’t Marie Kondo’d my bedroom, or done quarintinis with friends over FaceTime. (I have been scrolling through Instagram watching other people doing these things, and wondering what’s wrong with me that I cannot.)

Instead of diligently limiting my news updates to hourly intervals or curated newsletters, I’ve been frantically flipping through the permanently open tabs on my laptop and refreshing the feeds on my phone every few minutes. (What will go to shit next?)

Work-wise, I’ve been doing what feels like more or less the bare minimum and having a hell of a time concentrating.

Food? I’m not getting creative with a can of chickpeas (despite having written this last week) or sticking to three square meals a day. I’m spooning peanut butter into my mouth at odd intervals and working alarmingly quickly through the one-pound bar of chocolate from Trader Joe’s that was supposed to last a couple of weeks.

• Carolyn L. Todd, Is Anyone Else Just Barely Functioning Right Now?

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During a shutdown, the things that mark our days—commuting to work, sending our kids to school, having a drink with friends—vanish and time takes on a flat, seamless quality. Without some self-imposed structure, it’s easy to feel a little untethered. A friend recently posted on Facebook: “For those who have lost track, today is Blursday the fortyteenth of Maprilay.” …

Giving shape to time is especially important now, when the future is so shapeless. We do not know whether the virus will continue to rage for weeks or months or, lord help us, on and off for years. We do not know when we will feel safe again. And so many of us, minus those who are gifted at compartmentalization or denial, remain largely captive to fear. We may stay this way if we do not create at least the illusion of movement in our lives, our long days spent with ourselves or partners or families.

• Heidi Pitlor, Days without Name: On Time in the Time of Coronavirus

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By Teresa Burns Parkhurst, with cartooncollections.com.

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[N]o matter how much Christians talk about God’s presence, I know that I have always been much more attuned to God’s absence. Mine is the type of faith known as the Apophatic way: a form of spirituality that asserts that the only way to speak of God is by negation—by saying not what God is but rather what God is not. That way of speaking has become my métier as we face a pandemic that hundreds of thousands cannot possibly survive. “Where are you?” I ask as I go through my day. I’ve never been much bothered by God’s all-too-often apparent absence. But these days, I find myself asking questions. “Are you really there, God? I mean, really there? People are dying, God. Millions of people are sick. More than two hundred thousand have died. And I fear that’s just the beginning.” Like the children of Israel so long ago, I wander in this wilderness and I cry out, “Is the Lord among us, or not?”

…Simone Weil, the French philosopher and mystic, wrote: “Two prisoners whose cells adjoin communicate with each other by knocking on the wall. The wall is the thing which separates them but is also their means of communication. It is the same with us and God. Every separation is a link.” I experience the absence of my loved ones, of my God. But without absence, can there ever really be presence? I’m not sure. Somehow, I think not. Every separation is a link. Absence creates a space where presence can be sought. And, just maybe, where presence can be discovered.

• Mark A. Jenkins, Absence

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It’s a nice illusion—nice to feel like we’re in it together, even if my real world has shrunk to one person, my husband, who sits with his laptop in the other room. It’s nice in the same way as reading those essays that reframe social distancing as solidarity. “We must begin to see the negative space as clearly as the positive, to know what we don’t do is also brilliant and full of love,” the poet Anne Boyer wrote on March 10th, the day that Massachusetts declared a state of emergency. If you squint, you could almost make sense of this quarantine as an effort to flatten, along with the curve, the distinctions we make between our bonds with others. Right now, I care for my neighbor in the same way I demonstrate love for my mother: in all instances, I stay away.

And in moments this month, I have loved strangers with an intensity that is new to me. On March 14th, the Saturday night after the end of life as we knew it, I went out with my dog and found the street silent: no lines for restaurants, no children on bicycles, no couples strolling with little cups of ice cream. It had taken the combined will of thousands of people to deliver such a sudden and complete emptiness. I felt so grateful, and so bereft.

• Nora Caplan-Bricker, Lost Illusions

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By Sam Ryser, May 15, 2020. Check out more artists at “Art in Isolation” (NY Times).

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We’ll say goodbye with an encore from the Clark family, in hopes that baseball will return soon and the strains of this song will echo through Fenway Park once again.

Christina Rossetti: A Better Resurrection

A bit of light through the window (2016)

A Better Resurrection
By Christina Rossetti

I have no wit, no words, no tears;
My heart within me like a stone
Is numb’d too much for hopes or fears;
Look right, look left, I dwell alone;
I lift mine eyes, but dimm’d with grief
No everlasting hills I see;
My life is in the falling leaf:
O Jesus, quicken me.

My life is like a faded leaf,
My harvest dwindled to a husk:
Truly my life is void and brief
And tedious in the barren dusk;
My life is like a frozen thing,
No bud nor greenness can I see:
Yet rise it shall—the sap of Spring;
O Jesus, rise in me.

My life is like a broken bowl,
A broken bowl that cannot hold
One drop of water for my soul
Or cordial in the searching cold;
Cast in the fire the perish’d thing;
Melt and remould it, till it be
A royal cup for Him, my King:
O Jesus, drink of me.

Does God Guide Evolution?

Does God Guide Evolution?

Loren Haarsma is a frequent speaker and writer for BioLogos. He is the husband of Deborah Haarsma, the current president of BioLogos. Last year he wrote an article entitled “Three Misunderstandings About God-Guided Evolution”. Loren said:

When I talk about evolutionary creation I am sometimes asked, “Why not just say, ‘God-guided evolution’?” I hesitate to use that phrase because I know, from experience, that if I did say “God guides evolution” many in my audience would misunderstand me.

The three misunderstandings he chronicles are:

Evolution is not limited to small-scale changes- by which he means that some people believe evolution can make small-scale changes or micro-evolution but for major changes or macro-evolution, God has to intervene.
God is never absent in the evolutionary process. This is the misunderstanding that God “lets things run on their own” until God needs to intervene to push evolution in a certain direction.
God didn’t need to micromanage evolution to get what God wanted. Some people would interpret the sentence “God-guided evolution” to mean something like the following. “Evolution isn’t limited to making small-scale changes. And of course God is in charge all the time so evolution never happens “on its own.” But evolution had the potential to go down many possible paths. So God acted from time to time to select, or to nudge evolution down particular paths to produce particular species and ecosystems.”

Over at the BioLogos Forum there is a discussion of Dr. Haarsma’s article where he notes the following:

When I’m asked this question in an in-person conversation, I find that I can give a better answer if I first find out more about what the person asking the question thinks about divine action in other parts of the natural world. So I might ask questions like these: What do you think God is doing when robins hunt for worms to feed their young? What do you think God is doing to make the sun shine? What is God doing to make the rain fall where it falls? Do you think God controls where every single molecule goes on every snowflake, and if so, how? What is God doing when a child grows from a single fertilized cell to a newborn infant? People could give a variety of answers to those questions, and based on their answers, I can better answer them regarding what I think God is doing in biological evolution.

When I’m answering that question in writing (rather than an in-person conversation), I might write someting like the following list:

“God designed the fundamental laws and conditions of creation. God gave existence to creation. God sustains and concurs with the natural laws he created – natural laws which include both deterministic and random processes. God might have selected the outcomes of particular random events to guide natural history down particular paths. God can do miracles, and might have performed miracles at various points in natural history, although it is unwise to look at every gap in current scientific explanations as evidence of supernatural miracles. At some point in human history, God began to give special revelation to human beings in various ways.”

Each one of those sentences is worth paragraphs of clarification, but for that clarification, I’d ask you to check out some things I’ve already written. I also highly recommend Robert Bishop’s essay at BioLogos on “Recovering the Doctrine of Creation”.

I think Haarsma is trying to organize a coherent picture of God’s Providence and I applaud his attempt. The problem, as I see it, is walking the paradoxical line between deism (or “episodic deism as he puts it) and a tinkerer God who needs to “tweak” the creation from time to time to get what he wants. Neither of those pictures of God are acceptable to my way of thinking. It’s not just evolution that this conundrum comes up, because the same questions are raised when discussing “natural” disasters like severe storms, earthquakes, and, of course, pandemics.

Jim Stump, the vice-president of BioLogos, described the conundrum succinctly when he commented:

I’m one of those people who don’t like saying “God used evolution to create humans.” My motivations, which are probably different from others, stem from my suspicion of too much realism in scientific theories. I don’t think Darwin “discovered” the theory of evolution as much as he “developed” it. Scientific theories are our making. Too be sure they have to explain some independently existing reality, but I don’t think it is quite right to say evolution itself is some independently existing tool that God had sitting on a shelf and said, “Hmm… I think I’ll use this tool to create humans.” Instead, I think it is more accurate to say, “Evolution is the best scientific description we have for how H. Sapiens came to be.” Then, of course, I also want to say, “God intentionally created human beings in his image” but I don’t take that to be a scientific statement.

The Old Testament is full of descriptions of God using what we now call “natural” phenomenon as tools of judgement; Noah’s flood, plagues of Egypt, leprosy, and so on. But many Christians see a subtle shift when it comes to Jesus and the New Testament. In the pericope of the “man born blind” of John Chapter 9, Jesus answers the disciple’s question of “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” with: “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him.” In Mark Chapter 4:35f the storm on the Sea of Galilee that Jesus stilled is said to have just “come up”. In the Acts 27 account of Paul being shipwrecked on the isle of Malta, the storm is portrayed as something that happens at that time of year.

It seems to me the best explanation or resolution of the conundrum is the Incarnation itself. John Chapter One says, “1. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2. He was with God in the beginning. 3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.” And Colossians 1:16, “For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him.” This means to me that God is neither tinkerer or absent landlord, but intimate relating “Father”. John 3:16, God so loved the cosmos… He loved the cosmos, the universe, everything made in it… from single-celled algae to trilobites to tyrannosaurs… to quasars and gamma-ray bursts and black holes… all of it loved with agape’ love… self-giving love.

Bonhoeffer on “Thy Kingdom Come”

Children in Abandoned Lot in Front of Brick Wall with Sign for “Church of God”, Chicago, Illinois. Photo by Walker Evans

Bonhoeffer on “Thy Kingdom Come”

The following is from a 1932 retreat lecture given by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. In it, he critiques two inadequate and harmful understandings of God’s kingdom that believers hold.

First, he rejects the other-worldly, pietistic view of those who long for a kingdom in another realm beyond this one. This is escapist fantasy that separates believers from the real stuff of life and makes them, in fact, “hostile to the Earth.” “Christ does not lead [humans] into the otherworldliness of religious escapism. Rather, Christ returns [them] to the Earth as its true [children].”

Second, Bonhoeffer speaks critically of Christians who put too much stock in their capacity for transforming the world, whose utopian visions leave God out of the picture, who turn the church into a mere “organization of action for religious-moral reconstruction.” He warns against the illusion that Christians can “assume [God’s] role on earth in loud, boastful strength” and erect a world of justice and peace without God even while using his name.

Instead, Dietrich Bonhoeffer urges Christians to be people who live “in the affirmation of the Earth, in entering into its order, its communities, its history. The two belong completely together. For only where the Earth is fully affirmed can its curse be seriously broken through and destroyed…” In doing this, we must bind ourselves to God, who binds himself to the Earth and who alone is able to overcome its curse.

•

“Thy kingdom come”—this is not the prayer of the pious soul of the individual who wants to flee the world, nor is it the prayer of the utopian and fanatic, the stubborn world reformer. Rather, this is the prayer only of the church-community of children of the Earth, who do not set themselves apart, who have no special proposals for reforming the world to offer, who are no better than the world, but who persevere together in the midst of the world, in its depths, in the daily life and subjugation of the world. They persevere because they are, in their own curious way, true to this existence, and they steadfastly fix their gaze on that most unique place in the world where they witness, in amazement, the overcoming of the curse, the most profound yes of God to the world. Here, in the midst of the dying, torn, and thirsting world, something becomes evident to those who can believe, believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Here the absolute miracle has occurred. Here the law of death is shattered; here the kingdom of God itself comes to us, in our world; here is God’s declaration to the world, God’s blessing, which annuls the curse. This is the event that alone kindles the prayer for the kingdom. It is in this very event that the old Earth is affirmed and God is hailed as lord of the Earth; and it is again this event that overcomes, breaks through, and destroys the cursed Earth and promises the new Earth. God’s kingdom is the kingdom of resurrection on Earth.

• Clifford J. Green, The Bonhoeffer Reader

Tuesday with Michael Spencer: The God of Job’s Complaints

The end. Photo by Patrick Emerson at Flickr. Creative Commons License

Tuesday with Michael Spencer
The God of Job’s Complaints (2008)

Job 10

‘I loathe my life;
I will give free utterance to my complaint;
I will speak in the bitterness of my soul.
I will say to God, Do not condemn me;
let me know why you contend against me.
Does it seem good to you to oppress,
to despise the work of your hands
and favour the schemes of the wicked?
Do you have eyes of flesh?
Do you see as humans see?
Are your days like the days of mortals,
or your years like human years,
that you seek out my iniquity
and search for my sin,
although you know that I am not guilty,
and there is no one to deliver out of your hand?
Your hands fashioned and made me;
and now you turn and destroy me.
Remember that you fashioned me like clay;
and will you turn me to dust again?
Did you not pour me out like milk
and curdle me like cheese?
You clothed me with skin and flesh,
and knit me together with bones and sinews.
You have granted me life and steadfast love,
and your care has preserved my spirit.
Yet these things you hid in your heart;
I know that this was your purpose.
If I sin, you watch me,
and do not acquit me of my iniquity.
If I am wicked, woe to me!
If I am righteous, I cannot lift up my head,
for I am filled with disgrace
and look upon my affliction.
Bold as a lion you hunt me;
you repeat your exploits against me.
You renew your witnesses against me,
and increase your vexation towards me;
you bring fresh troops against me.

‘Why did you bring me forth from the womb?
Would that I had died before any eye had seen me,
and were as though I had not been,
carried from the womb to the grave.
Are not the days of my life few?
Let me alone, that I may find a little comfort
before I go, never to return,
to the land of gloom and deep darkness,
the land of gloom and chaos,
where light is like darkness.’

• • •

Job’s complaints against God. Pretty hot stuff for most Christians. I’d wager the vast majority of Bible-believers have absolutely no idea what Job says. Many have never set eyes on these chapters or taken a minute to understand them.

In short form, Here’s how Job feels: He complains that God is out to get him. It’s like God has set out to destroy Job with no reason. He’s ignoring Job’s call for justice. God is Job’s enemy and he is attacking Job like someone who wants to kill him. God hates Job (from Job’s point of view.) God isn’t offering forgiveness, but is pursuing Job like an animal. In these chapters, though not in all of the book, Job despairs of any vindication.

There’s plenty more of this in Job. So much so that there’s a history of textual alterations of some of the most offensive phrases. Some copyists just couldn’t believe anyone could say these things and get away with it, so they seem to have made changes to be less shocking. Fortunately, the textual base for Job allows scholars to get beyond those occasional alterations and see exactly how shocking Job’s words really were.

When I finally got around to reading Job with some literary understanding, I was shocked by these chapters as well. Job is a man of faith, but he is also angry with God, confused at events, paranoid, cynical and in darkness as to God’s purposes. And he speaks up about it. The evangelicalism I absorbed as a young Christian didn’t acknowledge that these feelings existed among believers, and if they did, no Christian would ever say or write such things. A person of faith would praise the Lord, not complain and say things that seemed to doubt God.

Most Bible readers and teachers stop their reading of Job with “Blessed be the name of the Lord,” and don’t know that Job spends many verses complaining and indicting God.

Of course, the most interesting thing is God’s final assessment of Job’s words in Job 42:8 : “For you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has.”

Huh? Spoken OF GOD what is right? What Job spoke about God was most certainly wrong when compared with all the Bible teaches about God.

Imagine the words of Job taken out of the Bible and brought into the Christian community on a blog, in a worship service or a sermon.

Some people would be shocked enough to write letters, complain, even leave. Of course, such thoughts ARE common and are EXACTLY what many people think to themselves, express to their friends in private and wish they could say out loud. Are the words of Job, spoken by others in other contexts, inappropriate and incompatible with faith? Or are they part of the faith Job is reclaiming in the aftermath of his crisis.

Somehow the one who has heard millions pray, “I believe; Help my unbelief,” has become a God before whom some cannot speak doubt and struggle and still be considered a believer. That’s not the God of Jesus. He’s still with us in those moments, guiding us through the darkness to the other side.

But what if the words of Job were put, first, in the context of the book of Job and then in the context of the entire Bible? What if we see Job as a whole person?

Then we’d hear Job’s agony in Jesus’ quotation of Psalm 22 on the cross, and we’d know this is part of the journey, too.

In my own life and ministry, I intend to work toward a kind of reading and hearing of the Bible that allows Christians like Job to be human and to be persons of faith accepted in the community of faith. With religious television channels preaching the lies of Word-faith manipulation and prosperity Gospel churches working full time to convince the world that all Christians are rich, healthy and blessed with unending happiness in every area of life, there is a great need for the integrity to be honest.

That integrity will be a volatile commodity, but be patient and persistent. Reality is on your side.

Remember that your ways of expressing the truth may be limited, but the integrity to live and speak the honest complaints of Job don’t need applause to have effects.

Even after Job put his hand over his mouth, God still said what he had spoken was right. That’s because instead of whitewashing God with the theology of Job’s counselors, Job had taken God as he knew him, his life as he experienced it and told the truth where he was.

God values people who live the truth in the context of living out their mystery of faith. In the end, he stands by them.

The Consummate Cockburn Collection – Part Two

Mike: If you joined us last week, you would have read about the first five albums in our Consummate Cockburn Collection. This week we bring you albums six to ten. I am again joined by my good friend Peter Heath.

Peter: It is challenging to capture Bruce Cockburn and his work in a couple of sentences. He is definitely a man of Christian faith, but the outworking of that faith is dramatically different than in my own life. Interestingly, there isn’t a whole lot in his songs that you won’t find in the poetry of the Bible.

It seems to me that most of the time he is: (1) sure of what he believes; (2) upset and torn by what he sees; (3) trying to bring (1) and (2) together. I think that most of us shortchange one of these three things; at least Cockburn makes the effort. Then again, at other times, I have no idea what he is up to. He almost seems to revel in contradiction, in being a contrarian even towards himself.

Mike: Well with that, let us jump into our next five albums. The first of which really introduces to what you were talking about in your three points

Number 6 – The Trouble With Normal – 1983 (Mike’s #3, Peter’s #8)

Mike: It was hard for me to rank The Trouble With Normal. I initially slotted it in to my number one, but it ended up slipping down a couple of notches. Although I loved every single song on this album, the best songs on this album didn’t rise above the best songs on our composite #1 and #2 album picks. I think it was the first Cockburn album I ever bought, and I listened to it over, and over, and over again.

You will notice that five of our top six albums span the years of 1979-1984. I was aged sixteen to twenty-one during that time period, and I think that those late teen years through to University life are formative musically wise for many of us.

Peter: Definitely. Same for me.

Mike: Chronologically this one falls right before Bruce’s full throated activism in Stealing fire. I think what he sees and writes about in Trouble With Normal motivates him to taking his trip to Central America that he writes about in his subsequent album.

Many of these songs were written during the midst of the recession in 1981 where it was hard to be particularly optimistic.

The title song, Trouble With Normal, is one that has stood the test of time. Hard to believe it was written almost 40 years ago when you get lyrics like…

Strikes across the frontier and strikes for higher wage
Planet lurches to the right as ideologies engage
Suddenly it’s repression, moratorium on rights
What did they think the politics of panic would invite?
Person in the street shrugs — “Security comes first”
But the trouble with normal is it always gets worse

Callous men in business costume speak computerese
Play pinball with the Third World trying to keep it on its knees
Their single crop starvation plans put sugar in your tea
And the local Third World’s kept on reservations you don’t see
“It’ll all go back to normal if we put our nation first”
But the trouble with normal is it always gets worse

Fashionable fascism dominates the scene
When ends don’t meet it’s easier to justify the means
Tenants get the dregs and landlords get the cream
As the grinding devolution of the democratic dream
Brings us men in gas masks dancing while the shells burst
The trouble with normal is it always gets worse

For those reading this, any lines jump out at you as particularly relevant today?

This album comes across to me as Cockburn feeling discordant with the world and perhaps within himself. This really comes across in Civilization And Its Discontent where he writes:

Two forward and one back
Blind fingers groping for the right track
What’s to do when a stab and a pat on the back look like the same thing?

Civilization and its discontents
When all’s been said and all the money spent
Trying to beat the system of the world’s events
Gets you nowhere…

We see a glimpse of his Christianity, but it is a discouraging glimpse:

So many people so lost you feel sorry
But too much pathos just makes you angry
And even though I know who loves me I’m not that much less lost

The song ends with a slowing down of increasing discordant notes which aptly fit the lyrics, and you are left with the sense that there is a lot wrong in the world.

In Tropic Moon we get a sense of what is to come in Stealing Fire. Although this is written before his Central America trip, you get the sense that he has heard what is going on, and not only does he write about it, but he chooses to act on it as well.

Away from the river
Away from the smoke of the burning
Fearful survivors
Subject of government directives
One sad guitar note
Echoes of the wall of the jungle
Seen from the air they’re just targets with nowhere to run to

Children of rape
Raised on malnutrition
Men in camouflage
Filled with a sense of mission
Light through the wire mesh
Plays on the president’s pistol
Like the gleam of a bead of sweat in the flow of a candle

Hear the cry in the tropic night
Should be the cry of love but it’s a cry of fright
Some people never see the light
Till it shines through bullet holes

Peter: The title of this album, and the title song itself, capture in a single phrase the thematic thrust of the whole collection of songs here. And as you point out, so many of Cockburn’s observations here are still relevant today. Maybe that’s because the underpinnings of Western civilization haven’t changed in 40 years, it has just continued to slide where dark hearts take it. The imagery in the lyrics is extremely strong throughout. On top of the ones you’ve mentioned, I’ll add a couple more that still stand up. “This bluegreen ball in black space, filled with beauty even now, battered and abused and lovely” from Planet of the Clowns. “Out of my throat appears this chuckle, a true 20th Century sound, a little crazed and having no tonal centre” from Hoop Dancer. “Pimping dreams of riches for everybody … Misplaced your faith and the candy man’s gone” from Candy Man’s Gone.

Mike: So,why did you rate this album down at #8, if you like so much about it?

Peter: Great question Mike and thanks for asking. It’s the musical choices: too much synth and not enough guitar. While that makes for a unique sound that works well on Trouble, Hoop Dancer and Civilization, overall it was too much for me especially when Cockburn was (and is) a true genius with the guitar. For example, I would love to hear Candy Man or Trouble reworked as a guitar song. I don’t suppose it’ll ever happen, but you can dream right?

Top Songs: Again, not a bad song on the entire original album. Mike quite liked the new vibe, Peter not so much.

Number 7 – The Charity of Night – 1997 (Peter’s #6, Mike’s #12)

Peter: Cockburn had another fine run of releases on either side of the new millenium. For me, Charity of Night is the best of that series, mostly due to the opening triptych.

Mike: Okay, you got me there, what is a triptych? Didn’t we used to get those from the Automobile Association before going on a journey? [consults google]. Ah, a piece of art in three panels or pieces. Please elaborate for us.

Peter: He starts with Night Train, which sounds like one (thank you Rob Wasserman for the fine bass work), and builds a stream of consciousness that culminates with a warning (in the absence of compassion there is cancer, whose banner waves over palaces and mean streets) and plays out with a searing guitar solo (not many truly searing solos in Cockburn’s discography). The driving stream continues on Get Up Jonah, Cockburn avoiding his own situation, finally pinning himself down under a cacophony of metaphors (“a solitary horseman – waiting. Lashed to the wheel, whipping into the storm. Get up, Jonah, it’s your time to be born”). The drive gives way to way to a more meditative sound but the introspection continues on Pacing the Cage.

Mike: If I did have a top 10 list of songs, and it sounds like I might have one by the end of this process (no promises), Pacing the Cage would be on it. Steve Bell tells how within the first couple of minutes listening to it, he was curled up on the floor clutching his stomach. I had a similar, although not quite so visceral reaction.

Sunset is an angel weeping
Holding out a bloody sword
No matter how I squint I cannot
Make out what it’s pointing toward
Sometimes you feel like you live too long
Days drip slowly on the page
You catch yourself
Pacing the cage

I found the song mesmerizing, The melody and guitar match the lyrics and imagery perfectly. I listened to this one song on repeat for maybe an hour the first time I heard it.

As a side note, this is one of many places where sunrise, sunset, or moonrise form a vivid introduction into a song.

The album as a whole was outside my top ten because I thought the album had one amazing song, a few good ones, and the rest weren’t that memorable.

Peter: It seems to me between The Falling Dark (1976) and World Of Wonders (1986), Cockburn was consistently able to fashion entire albums that were strong and engaging. After Big Circumstance (1988), his albums became more varied mixing several great songs with lesser efforts. This pattern can be seen in the way that Charity Of Night wanders widely – in the music, lyrics and dare I say even the quality and impact.

But the personal frustration is never far from the surface as it blends with more travel, another warzone, memories of old encounters and comes to a desperately uneasy final question on Strange Waters, “You’ve been leading me beside strange waters, streams of beautiful lights in the night. But where is my pastureland in these dark valleys?” Unlike most pop music/film/etc, Cockburn does not even attempt to resolve this question. No easy “it’ll all work out” of any kind. And I am OK with that. My own life is not resolved on any given Thursday night. Why does a music album have to do what I cannot?

Mike: Cockburn’s music reminds of a church billboard I once saw advertising an upcoming sermon series: “It’s not always a wonderful life.” While we have an ultimate hope, in Christ, we are never promised the journey is going to be easy. Sometimes “life is tough, and then you die”. Yesterday was Mother’s day, and I was glad that my church had an acknowledgement that, “Hey, this might be a really hard day for you, and we want to know that we want to be with you as you experience that.” Cockburn reminds me of the Psalmist David, and it is not surprising that many of his songs end up sounding like Psalms.

Top Songs:

Night Train
Get up Jonah
Pacing the Cage

Number 8 – Big Circumstance – 1988 (Mike’s #6, Peter’s #14)

Peter: This album has many wonderful moments, and the list of influences on the liner notes is amazing. But the album doesn’t quite connect with me for some reason. If a Tree Falls kicks off the album with great momentum, who knew you could build a song around an old cliche and a whammy bar? The image of cattle as “grain eaters, methane dispensers” has stayed with me. Shipwrecked At The Stable Door manages to mix a happy, dancy soundtrack with a potshot at Pierre Trudeau (well, that’s who I think it is) and a postmodern beatitude. Try that this weekend LOL

I suppose the way I feel about this album can be summarized well by two songs in particular. Tibetan Side of Town shows Bruce’s expertise with the travelogue tune. The instrumentation and arrangement hint at Asia while the lyrics carry us on the “big red Enfield Bullet” through “running winding streets” where we meet the young and old, the crushed and the innocent. It’s all fantastic, I am just kind of sad that the destination of this song is “hot millet beer.” The second song is The Gift. I love the way it recasts Jesus’ comment to Nicodemus about the movementAs and work of the Spirit. There is a rolling, moving groove to the music built with Fergus Jemison Marsh on stick (I think) and Michael Sloski on drums and percussion. Instruments join in and there is a nice lift in the chorus and yet I feel like the band stuck to the groove too much. I’m waiting for something that never quite arrives. The song is almost amazing, but not quite. So is the album.

Mike: For the most part I would agree with you, except… there are just too many songs on the album that I really appreciate. Don’t Feel Your Touch, has a great guitar riff that pulls the song together in a pensive longing way. It just happens to coincide with when I started dating my wife, so this song bring back some very positive memories as well.

The last light of day crept away like a drunkard after gin
A hint of chanted prayer now whispers from the fresh night wind
To this shattered heart and soul held together by habit and skin
And this half-gnawed bone of apprehension
Buried in my brain
As I don’t feel your touch, again.

As someone who has been writing for Internet Monk for over 12 years now, the Gospel of Bondage holds a special meaning for me:

You read the Bible in your special ways
You’re fond of quoting certain things it says –
Mouth full of righteousness and wrath from above
But when do we hear about forgiveness and love?

Sometimes you can hear the Spirit whispering to you,
But if God stays silent, what else can you do
Except listen to the silence? if you ever did you’d surely see
That God won’t be reduced to an ideology
Such as the gospel of bondage…

This in a nutshell is what Internet Monk is all about. Helping people move beyond the forms of Christianity that have bound them in the past. It should come as no small surprise that there are a few Cockburn fans who are faithful readers of the blog.

Anything Can Happen, takes a morbid subject (death), and turns it into a fun list of reasons why he doesn’t want to say goodnight.

You could have gone off the Bloor Street viaduct
I could have been run down in the street
You could have got botulism anytime
I could have gone overboard into the sea

Anything can happen
To put out the light,
Is it any wonder
I don’t want to say goodnight?

It is a very creative song, very similar, but opposite in tone to Weird Al Yancovic’s song, One More Minute:

I’d rather have my blood sucked out by leeches
Shove an icepick under a toenail or two
I’d rather clean all the bathroom in Grand Central Station… [wait for it]
with my tongue
Than spend one more minute with you

A little bit of context here. The Bloor Street Viaduct, as it is commonly known, is a bridge that towers over the Don Valley in Toronto. It was also a suicide magnet, being the site of over 500 suicides before preventative fences was installed in 2003. In 1997 it saw a suicide on average every 22 days. Every time I drive by it (about once a year) I am reminded of this song, and the fact that life can be short and fleeting. I know that kind of casts a downer on a rather fun song, but Bruce was and is a paradox who seems to be able to hold the two in juxtaposition.

Top Songs:

Tibetan Side Of Town
The Gift
If A Tree Falls
Gospel Of Bondage
Don’t Feel Your Touch
Anything Can Happen

Number 9 – Night Vision – 1973 (Mike’s #7, Peter’s #13)

Peter: It’s 1973, Bruce records his 4th album somewhat unintentionally with a band and we get the first hint of where he is going to go in the 80s. Mind you, it starts with Foxglove, a solo acoustic instrumental. Foxglove, isn’t that your favourite Cockburn instrumental Mike?

Mike: It certainly was at one point! Although it may have been eventually edged out by Water Into Wine. Islands in a Black Sky, also on this album is also a fine instrumental piece. As a quick aside, in 2005 Cockburn released an album Speechless, which is an instrumental only collection. While it didn’t make either of our top ten lists, if you appreciate really good guitar playing, Speechless is an album worth listening to.

As for Foxglove, I believe this is the only song where Cockburn utilizes a drop C tuning. That is, the guitar is tuned in such a way that when strummed without using the left hand a C chord is produced. This allows him to get very creative on the frets with his left hand while picking with his right. I practiced this song for hours upon hours. I finally got it down, but only at about 2/3rds of the speed the Cockburn plays it at.

Peter: You Don’t Have To Play The Horses gives us banjo-driven blues. Yes, you read that right. Transported on that banjo are lasting observations like “you don’t have to play the horses, life’s a gamble all the same” and “anyone can be a soldier, it’s a prevalent disease”. There is real power in the imagery of God Bless The Children.

You know, at some point it seems repetitive to point out yet another genius lyric, but that is half of what has made Cockburn so enduringly amazing. Lots of writers can drop an adroit line or metaphor once or twice in an album. But many metaphorical lyrics age poorly and most writers have a limited supply to mine. Bruce has avoided easy slang throughout his career, and so lyrics from 50 years ago remain relevant … and 40 years ago and 30 years ago …

Mike: The other song I like on this album, other than the ones you have already mentioned, is Mama Just Want to Barrelhouse. Not sure what that means, but it is a fun rollicking song.

Top Songs:

Foxglove
You Don’t Have To Play The Horses
Mama Just Wants To Barrelhouse All Night Long
God Bless the Children
Islands in a Black Sky

Number 10 – Nothing But a Burning Light – 1991 (Mike’s #10, Peter’s #11)

Peter: The great momentum of the electric-pop-folk fusion thing from Inner City Front and Stealing Fire continued on World of Wonders but ended up feeling a bit forced on Big Circumstance, at least for me. Then came Nothing But A Burning Light, with its understated production by T-Bone Burnett and elegant organ work from Booker T Jones. It was a relief to hear Cockburn’s guitar work out front again, including some cool and apropos resonator guitar.

Kit Carson, a cautionary bit of revisionist history, calls us to think hard about the motives of those in power, as well as the wisdom of our own choices. And how about this line from Mighty Trucks Of Midnight: “I believe it’s a sin to try and make things last forever. Everything that exists in time runs out of time some day.” How many of us live out our lives trapped in an earthbound existence, even when we claim to believe in eternity?

I love the convention-shattering portrait of Jesus spun up in Blind Willie Johnson’s Soul of a Man (“teaching the lawyers and the doctors how to raise a man from the grave”). Bruce puts the first days of Jesus into painfully contemporary terms with Herod’s paranoia and death squads in Cry of a Tiny Babe. And it all wraps up with his declaration that despite his age, he’ll be a child of the wind, till the end of his days. And in lots of ways, that should be enough for any of us, to be a child of the Wind, wherever He takes us.

Mike: “Redemption rips through the surface of time in the cry of a Tiny Babe.” What a lyric! What powerful words. The Incarnation was an event like nothing ever seen before, and Bruce seems to have captured its essence in this one short phrase.

There are other powerful songs on this album too. It is hard to believe that Mighty Trucks of Midnight was written nearly 30 years ago, as it expresses some of the anger that Trump was able to harness in the last election.

Used to have a town but the factory moved away
Down to Mexico where they work for hardly any pay
Used to have a country but they sold it down the river
Like a repossessed farm auctioned off to the highest bidder
Mighty trucks of midnight
Moving on
Moving on

The song, One of the Best Ones, is a sweet expression of friendship.

Guess I’d get along without you
If I had no choice
But please never make it so I have to

So with that I want to say thanks to Peter for his many years of comradeship and friendship. A couple of weeks ago I talked about Mitch, and how meaningful he is to me. Peter falls into that category as well. We have been close friends for 38 years now and it has been an amazing run. Peter is indeed “One of the Best Ones”.

Top Songs (With this many it is surprising it didn’t make it higher in our list):

A Dream Like Mine.
Mighty Trucks Of Midnight
One Of The Best Ones
Cry Of A Tiny Babe…
Kit Carson
Child of the Wind

Well that is it for our top ten album list. In part three next week we will talk about some of our favourite songs that weren’t part of the top ten album list, and maybe introduce a couple of other surprises as well.

As usual your thoughts and comments are welcome.

P.S. No jazzy images of the albums this week, I plumb ran out of time. All albums can be purchased at BruceCockburn.com