Som Sabadell from Onidea on Vimeo.

From 2012 and still wonderful–watch and listen to it all.

It’s the perfect match: a major Orthodox cultural figure celebrated by a pre-eminent Orthodox institution. But the Arvo Pärt Project also opens up a more complicated issue: What does it mean to speak specifically about the religion of a composer whose music’s spirituality has been interpreted so broadly for so long?

“There’s this kind of universally accessible spirituality going on, and yet it evidently has some particular sources in the context that he locates his own prayer life,” said Peter Bouteneff, a professor of theology at the seminary. “It’s where he goes to church, it’s the texts that he reads, the ancient Greek fathers,” he added. “This is what feeds his soul, and therefore: Is there some connection between this universally perceived and universally accessible spirituality, and the particular foundations in Eastern Orthodoxy?”

It is a question that Mr. Pärt is not quite comfortable answering, though he will receive an honorary doctorate from the seminary. When asked about the religious content of his music, he responded: “I am actually writing music for myself, based on my own cognition. Because of that, it reflects values that are important to me.”

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If you’re like me and you have young kids, you may have first discovered the band Rascal Flatts when they were featured in the kid-classic movie “Cars.” Their song, “Life is a Highway” played on an endless loop in our house as my son watched that movie over”¦ and over”¦ and over again.

The kids at Children’s Hospital know that song, too. So when Rascal Flatts comes to visit, they sing along to the words. Zoey is too little to mouth the words, but she danced in her mom Tori’s lap.

And, the thing is, Rascal Flatts comes by often. They give impromptu concerts for the children not because they have to, but because they want to. Read it all and please take the time to see the [short] video also.

Listen to it all.

…along the way, the brothers’ healthy competition morphed, turned bitter and self-absorbed, and nearly destroyed their musical relationship – and their bond as brothers.

After releasing four studio albums and reaching enviable success, the Rinehart brothers, those scribes of lyrics about faith and love and purpose, barely spoke to one another.

Yet, a song lingering in their tomorrows, one called “Wasteland,” later would tell the struggle of grown men finding their ways as husbands, musicians – and brothers.

I’m the first one in line to die

When the cavalry comes

Yeah it feels like the great divide

Has already come

Yeah I’m wasting my way through days

losing youth along the way.Read it all and you may find more on their website here.

Watch it all from ESPN’s E-60.

Listen to it all.

Watch and listen to it all.

Watch it all and I recommended Kleenex.

Enjoy it all.

On a crowded dance floor, a group of 50 women are swaying, stomping, lunging, and gyrating to singer Jason Derulo’s “Talk Dirty,” Pitbull’s “Don’t Stop The Party,” and other popular numbers blasting over loudspeakers.

It could be any trendy New York club, except here the dirty words and sexually explicit lyrics are missing from the raps, and no men are allowed.

Ever.

The occasion is a weekly all-female Zumba class geared to a distinctive clientele: Orthodox Jewish women from nearby religious communities. With lives guided by Do’s and Don’ts, few of these women are Livin’ La Vida Loca””though in class they do at least get to dance to it.

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…there have been losses and disappointments along the way. Sirman highlighted the three biggest:

Artists and creators have lost their collective voice, the Canadian Conference of Arts. It predated the Massey Commission by four years. In its heyday it spoke for 400,000 artists and creators. Two years ago, it closed its doors. “It would be unfathomable (to Massey) that Canada’s cultural well-being is not sufficiently supported to sustain a national advocacy organization,” [Robert] Sirman said.

The second is Ottawa has lost interest in nurturing and showcasing Canadian culture. “We are living through an era of Own the Podium, not welcome the world,” he noted sadly.

The third is that Canadians don’t seem to care. “Canada has become a materialistic society.” The desire for a balance between what Massey called spiritual assets and economic assets no longer exists.

Read it all (my emphasis).

In the Night | Andrew Peterson, Buddy Greene, Jeff Taylor, Andy Gullahorn from Laity Lodge on Vimeo.

Listen to it all–it is just wonderful.

(If you EVER get a chance to get near New York and see this play DO NOT MISS IT! We saw it last year and rolled in the aisles–KSH).

Jefferson Mays, leading man of “A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder”, has died 1,000 times on stage — faster than any lead actor in Broadway history. His fellow actors marked that deadly landmark outside the stage door at the Walter Kerr Theatre on West 48th Street.

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They call themselves the Rectors of Rock. The Fathers of Funk. The Collar Studs.

It’s all cheeky fun, but believe it or not, these four Episcopal priests live up to the billing.

Fathers Drew Bunting, Andrew Jones, David Simmons and Don Fleischman are the fab four of Monstrance, a rock, blues and country band more interested in fun than fame, whose members lend their considerable talents to worthy causes throughout the Milwaukee diocese.

“We’re not in this to make money. We know we’re never going on tour,” said Bunting, priest-in-charge at St. James Episcopal Church in Milwaukee, who sings lead vocals and plays bass in the band. “We just want to have a good time. We know we have these gifts, and we want to use them in service of the greater good.”

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A disgraced composer once hailed as Japan’s Beethoven apologized Friday for lying about his career but stood by his claim that he was partly deaf.

In his first public appearance since the scandal broke in early February, Mamoru Samuragochi said at a packed news conference in Tokyo that “I am truly sorry for the trouble I caused with my lies.”

The 50-year-old had been known for penning highly acclaimed symphonies, and the story of a composer who remained dedicated to his art even after losing his hearing had captivated media.

But his elaborate facade came tumbling down after another man came forward in early February to say that he had actually composed most of Mr. Samuragochi’s works. The ghostwriter, Takashi Niigaki, also claimed that in their meetings over an 18-year period, Mr. Samuragochi appeared to have no problems with his hearing.

Read it all.

Listen to it all.

I do not come to bury our culture (for it may well bury itself). Rather, I write to understand it. And there are few topics that we need to understand more than how our culture is viewing sex. Some of what I say may be familiar. I’m not striving to be creative, really, so much as I am seeking to speak a true word so as to be able to engage folks around me.

Nowhere are modern sexual mores more evident than in pop music. Pop music today is not singularly occupied by sex, but nearly so. And not just sex generally, but increasingly sexual acts. I think it’s important for Christians who want to engage the culture well to know that this development is not merely owing to an aberrant way of life, but to a different worldview. I commend Peter Jones’s The God of Sex, a prescient and underappreciated work from a few years back. Jones helped me to see that many people today have, wittingly or unwittingly, adopted a pagan outlook on life. In our modern neo-pagan world, the body is paramount, sex is cathartic and even gives meaning to life, and there is no telos or purpose for sex and relationships.

I cannot help but think of these matters when I listen, as I infrequently do, to secular rap and R&B.

Read it all.

Watch and listen to it all. Lyrics:

Through trials, troubles and care
I know Jesus my savior is there
Giving me faith through darkest days
Keeping me on the narrow way

Jesus savior, help me each day
Fill me with hope, fill me with faith
Darkness retreats at the touch of Your hand
Jesus savior, help me to stand
esus lived through darkest pain
Rejected by men, despising the shame
Man of sorrows, acquainted with grief
He gave his life so we may be free

Jesus savior, help me each day
Fill me with hope, fill me with faith
Darkness retreats at the touch of Your hand
Jesus savior, help me to stand

I know that Jesus died for me
Cancelled my debt at Calvary
Rose from the dead, unlocked Heaven’s door
Trust in his love and live evermore

Jesus savior, help me each day
Fill me with hope, fill me with faith
Darkness retreats at the touch of Your hand
Jesus savior, help me to stand

There will be ample of obituaries and elegiac biographies of Pete Seeger, who died yesterday at age 94. Happily he enjoyed considerable honors over the past decade, before and after his 90th birthday in 2009. I’d rather let the music do the job. Here are some carefully selected clips with a bit of context….

Read it all.

Seeger ”” with his a lanky frame, banjo and full white beard ”” was an iconic figure in folk music. He performed with the great minstrel Woody Guthrie in his younger days and marched with Occupy Wall Street protesters in his 90s, leaning on two canes. He wrote or co-wrote “If I Had a Hammer,” “Turn, Turn, Turn,” “Where Have All the Flowers Gone” and “Kisses Sweeter Than Wine.” He lent his voice against Hitler and nuclear power. A cheerful warrior, he typically delivered his broadsides with an affable air and his banjo strapped on.

“Be wary of great leaders,” he told The Associated Press two days after a 2011 Manhattan Occupy march. “Hope that there are many, many small leaders.”

With The Weavers, a quartet organized in 1948, Seeger helped set the stage for a national folk revival. The group – Seeger, Lee Hays, Ronnie Gilbert and Fred Hellerman – churned out hit recordings of “Goodnight Irene,” “Tzena, Tzena” and “On Top of Old Smokey.”

Seeger also was credited with popularizing “We Shall Overcome,” which he printed in his publication “People’s Song,” in 1948. He later said his only contribution to the anthem of the civil rights movement was changing the second word from “will” to “shall,” which he said “opens up the mouth better.”

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“Welcome. God’s Peace to All who enter this place,” reads Rev. Canon John Wilton’s message posted on a sign near the church’s front doors.

Wilton took over as interim pastor two years ago following a controversy in which the Anglican diocese removed the church’s former rector.

Its parishioners come from all walks of life. Some reside in the area and have been members of the congregation for a half-century. Others live in neighbourhoods across Toronto, Mississauga, Oakville and Stouffville. Many are former members of St. Agnes’ Long Branch, which the Diocese closed several years ago, and of Christ Church Mimico, lost in recent years to fire.

Most of the parish’s leadership are 15- to 20-year congregants.

Read it all.

[Justin Bieber is..] 19 and peeling rubber in a rented yellow Lamborghini, drag racing in Miami Beach before dawn Thursday and flunking a street-side sobriety test, according to a police report.

Are his global followers, the Beliebers, still around to read this and weep? Do they even care or have they moved on to other idols of self-expression? (Miley, anyone?) Maybe they have found Bono, who once said, as Falsani noted: “There’s nothing worse than a rock star with a cause ”¦ But celebrity is currency and we want to spend it this way.”

It’s certainly not easy to be a celebrity in popular culture and still be taken seriously as a person who practices a religion ”” Christian or any other faith ”” in word and deed.
Read it all.

At 87, the Rev. C.T. Vivian can still recall the moment, decades after the height of the civil rights movement.

As he stood to conclude a meeting in his Atlanta home, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. joined his activist colleagues in song, his eyes closed, rocking back and forth on his heels.

“There is a balm in Gilead,” they sang, “to make the wounded whole.”

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A Hollywood nod to a Christian film has come as a shock to the entertainment world, as the song “Alone Yet Not Alone” (from the movie by the same name) was nominated for an Oscar.

The song beat out Coldplay, Taylor Swift, and Lana Del Ray to join the other four nominees for best original song: Frozen’s “Let it Go”; U2’s “Ordinary Love” from Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom; Pharrell Williams’s “Happy” from Despicable Me 2; and Karen O’s “The Moon Song” from Her.

What’s more surprising, however, may be the person who performed the song in the end credits: Joni Eareckson Tada, quadriplegic Christian author and speaker, and one of CT’s “50 Women You Should Know.”

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Wonderful stuff–listen to it all.

Watch and listen to it all.

Watch it all.

RICKY MCKINNIE, vocals: The Blind Boys is a group that’s not blind, they just can’t see and that means they might have lost their sight, but they never lost their direction.

Music: I shall not be moved.

CARTER: We feel that we were called by God to do this work.

Music: When God shut Noah in the grand old ark, he put a rainbow in the clouds.

MCKINNIE: No matter what the situation is, I’ll find a way. God will find a way. Like the bible says, “If you trust in the Lord, he’ll make a way” and that’s what He’s done for the Blind Boys.

Read or watch and listen to it all.