Bring Back the Buffalo (I)

This last weekend I had the great privilege to participate in a special encounter trip to a Pelican Lake First Nations Reserve, an indigenous community in northern Saskatchewan. We were there to witness and celebrate the establishment of a new herd of buffalo, as part of an act of reconciliation with Canada's First Peoples. "Bring Back the Buffalo" is an initiative led a asocial development organization called Loko Koa, in partnership with Tearfund Canada, a Christian relief ministry. The goal is to build relationships and help indigenous peoples rebuild their cultural identity by working to re-establish self-sustaining herds of buffalo among Canada's First Nations. To date, Loko Koa has planted 9 herds of buffalo on 9 different reserves, and, like I say, we were there this weekend to celebrate the 9th herd-- 20 females, 2 males, and 18 calves-- planted on the land of the Pelican Lake First Nation. Our church was one of the donor organizations for this particular herd, and we were graciously invited to send a delegation to celebrate their release.

I hope to share more about this experience in the coming days, as it was a formative experience on many levels: we received rich learning about indigenous culture, the role that the buffalo traditionally have played in it, and the importance of indigenous cultural traditions as an essential piece of cultural identity; we were challenged to think through the implications of our own identity as settlers and treaty people, and we were challenged to think through aspects of our own faith and relationship with the Lord, to understand how the Christian Gospel relates to traditional indigenous spirituality, and vice versa. 

In the weeks to come, I hope to share more about all of these aspects of the experience, from the way it stretched me theologically to the rich learning and faith-shaping encounters I had, from the deeper insight I had into to the mission of Jesus, to the clear the call to reconciliation and right relationship that it left ringing in my spiritual ears. It will take me a day or two to collect my thoughts and process my feelings about all that, however, so in the meantime, here are just a few photos from the trip, as a hint of what's to come.

You were Talking About the End of the World: Christian Reflections on the Music of U2 (IX)

One of the distinctive qualities of the music of U2 is their characteristic use of unresolved suspended chords to create tension and atmosphere. In musical theory, a major chord is made up of the first, third and fifth notes in a major scale, played simultaneously and in various combinations. A C major chord, for instance, is formed (“spelled”) by the notes C, E, and G, with C being the first note in a C scale, E the third, and G the fifth.

A major chord becomes “suspended” when the third note is raised by a half-step, or lowered by a full step, so that it becomes either the fourth or the second note in the scale, instead of the third. In our previous example, if we move the E note up to an F (increasing it a half step), the chord becomes Csus4, spelled C, F, and G. Similarly, if we drop the E to D, the chord becomes Csus2, spelled C, D, and G.

Suspended chords have an airy, dissonant quality to them. In musical terms, they create musical tension, and need their related major chord for resolution. In other words, a Csus4 chord is kind of “waiting” for a C major chord to “finish it,” and without the C major chord, it feels “unresolved.”

I doubt U2 was the first band to ever use unresolved suspended chords in their music, but they are probably one of the first to make them part of their signature sound. Early on in their career, they became notorious for playing suspended second and suspended fourth chords without playing the related major chord to resolve it, allowing the tension of the suspended notes to create an ethereal, uncentred atmosphere in the music. This was helped along by the Edge’s use of elaborate guitar effects which allowed him to have unresolved second and fourth scale degrees echoing distantly and repeatedly over major chord structures. 1984’s “Bad” was probably their first global hit to make successful use of this compositional technique, but you can hear hints of it as far back as 1980s “I Will Follow.”

I don’t have hard evidence for this, but my hunch is that this is another musical innovation that the band lent to Contemporary Christian Music. At least, the use of unresolved suspended chords are ubiquitous in the genre. Some of this is simply a function of musical skill. Most CCM is played primarily on guitar, and in many musical keys (E, D, and G, especially) suspended chord voicings tend to be easier to play than their major counterparts. But even if the compositional technique was not borrowed directly from U2, the fact that modern ears so readily “accept” the sound of the unresolved suspended chord is probably owing to the fact that we’ve become familiar with it, through the music of contemporary rock bands like U2.

I find it interesting, on a theological level, that contemporary Christian music has a bit of a penchant for unresolved suspended chords, insofar as one of the musical effects of the suspended chord is to create a sense of anticipation. As I said earlier, a suspended fourth note musically “points” towards the major chord to resolve the tension (with a 3rd note in the triad instead of a 2nd or 4th). Until that chord is heard, the listener is left with a sense of something left unfinished, or something still to come. And this is fascinating to me only because the Christian message itself is one that points continually to something still to come.

“He will come again to judge the living and the dead,” is how we say it in the Apostle’s Creed. Because along with the proclamation that Christ came, and the announcement that Christ is come, the Christian Gospel has always included the hopeful expectation that Christ will come again.

In theological terms we call this “eschatology,” the Christian conviction that the final word has not yet been spoken, nor will it be until the Lord returns in glory and all things are set right. And in musical terms, we might say, unresolved suspended chords are wonderfully fitted for making music in response to a distinctly eschatological message.

Put more simply: the fact that unresolved chords create a sense of tension and anticipation make them well suited for singing about the Christian message, which is itself filled with the tension and the anticipation of the Second Coming.

This is not to say that there’s something innately “spiritual” about an unresolved major chord, or even preferable to other musical forms as a medium for Christian music. Every form of musical expression, I think, has qualities that reflect some aspect of the Christian message. This is why we are enjoined always to sing a “new song” to the Lord, and to make music “skillfully” in response to him.

There is something to be said, though, for music that leaves us unsatisfied, yearning, even, possibly, uncentred in our worship of the God who has assured us that all is not yet as it will be, and there is still more, unimaginably more, to come. In his book Theology, Music and Time, musician and theologian Jeremy Begbie discusses this in terms of “delayed gratification” in music—the way music, when it is intentionally crafted to do so, can leave the audience emotionally aching for more. He suggests, on the one hand, that more Christian music ought to explore ways of doing this, given the delayed gratification built into our eschatology, and he laments, on the other hand, that so much modern Christian music fails to make us wait for much of anything.

It is worth noting in passing that much of the music currently employed in Christian worship deploys remarkably little in the way of delayed gratification. Admittedly, a congregation must be able to grasp quickly new hymns and songs if music is to enable and release their worship, but . . . rather too often goals are reached directly and predictably with a minimum of the kind of delay of which we have been speaking. Could we be witnessing here a musical articulation of the tendency in some quarters of the Church to insist on immediate rewards and not to come to terms with (potentially positive) realities of frustration and disappointment?

Begbie is writing about mainstream Christian hymnody there, I think, more than he is about Contemporary Christian Music, per se. What’s more, his words were penned back in 2000, a good two decades before the explosion the musical juggernaut that is today’s Contemporary Christian Music industry. Even so, I sometimes wonder if all the musical tension of all those unresolved suspended chords, chiming out in the anthems of todays most popular CCM hits, isn’t a reflection—if only a subconscious reflection—of the unresolved tension of our message itself: “Behold, he comes quickly, and his reward is with him.”

If there are any connections between all these dots—from the music of U2, to the songwriting of CCM, to the hope of Christian eschatology—it might be just one more way the band has helped the contemporary church find some new wineskins for its age old message message. And even if its only coincidence, I can't help but notice how apt it is to the message of the song, whenever I hear the unresolved tension of the Fsus2 in U2's “Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For.” And in my more echatological moments I can't help but think: “Nor will you, until He comes again.”

His Song a Weapon in the Hands of Love: Christian Reflections on the Music of U2 (VIII)

Eugene Peterson once pointed it out, that the first Christian ever to have been formally called a “theologian” was John of Patmos. It’s true: the Greek term they gave him was theologos—one who speaks “God-words.” And Peterson humbly points it out that, as a theologos, John’s great contribution to the life of the church was that fascinating piece of unparalleled, theological poetry, the Book of Revelation. And despite the centuries-old tendency to read the book of Revelation as though it were simply God’s survival manual for the apocalypse, at its heart it is exactly that: a poem. It’s a marvelously, majestically, mysteriously theological poem, to be sure, but still for all that, a poem.

I have always found it both sobering and inspiring to think that, whatever else he was, the first Christian theologian was a poet. Sobering, because so little of the work I do in the discharge of my daily duties as a pastor is actually poetic. There are plenty of God words to be spoken, of course, but most of them are of the practical or the pedantic kind. I preach; I propound; I pray. But very seldom does the moment seem to call for an unequivocal, unapologetic poem, per se.

This strikes me as especially curious, given the fact that such vast swaths of the Bible were written in verse. From the vivid praise of the Psalter to the visionary oracles of the prophets, from the dark debates in the Book of Jo to the sensual Song of Solomon, I mean, the authors of the Good Book seemed to think that good poetry played a central role in opening the heart to God, and in hearing from him in return. Even the Master himself, the Living Word who gave us the Beatitudes and inspired Mary’s Magnificat, seems to have been perfectly at ease among the arresting rhythms and piercing imagery of a well-turned line of poetry.

It’s not simply sobering, however, to realize how important a role good poetry played in the spiritual lives of those first Christians; it is also inspiring. Anyone who has agonized over the best way to say it precisely, what God was up to in a given moment of their lives—anyone who has stumbled unexpectedly across a metaphor so perfect it untangled a knot in their hearts they didn’t even know was there until it had opened—anyone who has had a line of verse flare suddenly in their spirits and so illuminate an otherwise impenetrably dark night of the soul—anyone, that is, who has ever had just the right words at just the right moment coalesce beautifully with something God was intimately doing in their lives, will be encouraged to know that the Christian faith has always made ample room for good poetry in its vision of the spiritual life.

Which is perhaps one of the reasons the music of U2 still holds a special place in my heart, some 40 years after first hearing them play. Despite the cliches that dog the band—their pompous self-righteousness, their predictability, their over-dependence on slick production at the expense of musicality—and to whatever degree these critiques are valid, still their music contains some of the most evocative poetry I’ve ever encountered in a rock-music context. In some ways, Bono was to the 80s and 90s what Bob Dylan was to the 60s and 70s, but the comparison falls short. I’ve always heard, in Bono’s lyrics, something both more spare and more expansive than anything I’ve encountered in a Dylan tune.

A few samples from the repository of U2 lyrics that echo regularly in my heart might prove the point:

We turn away to face the cold enduring chill
As day begs the night for mercy, love
A sun so bright it leaves no shadows
Only scars carved into stone on the face of the earth

(One Tree Hill, The Joshua Tree)

I remember, when we could sleep on stones
Now we lie together in whispers and moans
When I was all messed up and I heard opera in my head
Your love was a light bulb hanging over my bed

(Ultraviolet Baby, Achtung Baby)

And I have no compass
And I have no map
And I have no reasons
No reasons to get back

(Zooropa, Zooropa)

You gotta cry without weeping
Talk without speaking
Scream without raising your voice
You know I took the poison from the poison stream
Then I floated out of here

(Running to a Standstill, The Joshua Tree)

I realize there’s a high degree of subjectivity when it comes to things like song lyrics. What speaks to one heart is not necessarily guaranteed to speak to another. Even so, the poignancy and pathos of lines like these, I hope, need little pointing out. I can still recall hearing some of these words being sung for the first time; the sound was like that of the click of a key in a lock, opening a door into a space in my heart I had always sensed was there but didn’t know the way to. Even today, the opening line of “Where the Streets Have No Name,” or the outro of “The Fly,” and many parts of many other U2 songs still have that effect.

One of the running themes in this series on the music of U2 has been the question of the band’s faith and/or spirituality: is U2 a Christian band? I’ve explored that from a variety of angles, suggesting that, though they have always held themselves aloof to the label, in some ways they are more “Christian” than many of their explicitly, evangelically “Christian” counterparts. I won’t rehash all those arguments, but I will suggest here, that perhaps this is most evident in the poetry—the deep yearning and profound imagery—of their lyrics. There are wonderfully poetic Christian songwriters, too, to be sure. Michael Card and John Mark McMillan are Christian lyricists I think of who stand on a similar level as Bono when it comes to using words, by turns, as gemstones and slingstones both. But in my experience, artists like these are the exception, not the rule.

Perhaps, though, if we took a cue from Bono, and rediscovered or reclaimed the power of well-chosen words to minister to the heart and glorify the Creator who made it, we may be pressing into one of the most Christian endeavors of all. After all, not for nothing did the Psalmist declare: “My heart is stirred by a noble theme, as I compose my verses for the king.”

We're One But We're Not the Same: Christian Reflections on the Music of U2 (VII)

Although they had been around since the release of Boy back in 1980, U2 didn’t start to earn the massive global recognition it enjoys today until the mid 80s. Most rock historians agree that the moment which effectively introduced them to the world was their 20-minute-long performance as part of the storied musical event known as Live Aid, 1985. This 16-hour concert featured over 70 acts performing in two different cities and was staged as a fundraiser for famine relief in Africa. U2 was the 15th act to perform on the Wembley Stadium stage, singing two tunes: “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” and “Bad.”

It was their earnest and impassioned performance of “Bad” that is especially remembered today. Part way through the song, Bono began beckoning to a young woman in the crowd, gesturing for her to be brough up on stage; when this failed, he unexpectedly jumped down into the crowd and found his way to the woman in question. Then, while she kept her face buried against his chest, he slow-danced with her for 30 seconds or more, before returning her to the crowd with a kiss and climbing back onto the stage to finish the song.

It is one of the most iconic and quintessential scenes from the annals of U2 lore. Bono, the guileless and passionate frontman, throwing convention to the wind to connect with his audience, while The Edge keeps the chiming notes of his echoing guitar sounding out over the crowd. It would later be revealed that the woman in question was being crushed by the crowds pushing forwards, and Bono had jumped down to help her.

As Wikipedia puts it, though, “The [performance] turned out to be a breakthrough moment for the band, showing a television audience of millions the personal connection Bono could make with audiences.”

This desire to connect with the people they are performing for has always been a part of U2’s ethos, and, arguably, their appeal to their fans. In his biography of the band, Unforgettable Fire, Eamon Dumphy talks about this aspect of their live shows in the earliest iterations of the band. Even as a teen, Bono was a highly sensitive soul, and tended to launch into rambling monologues during performances, intent on connecting, not just musically, but emotionally with his audience.

A yearning for connection shows up in their songwriting as well, with lyrics that explore both the emotional landscapes of the human heart and the political landscapes of the modern world, trying sincerely to map each onto the other. "Bullet the Blue Sky"—a song ostensibly about America, but also about the thumbprint the idea of America has left on the human heart—or "Zooropa"—a song about the political upheaval of 1990s Europe, but also about the mark that upheaval has left on the modern soul—are both great examples of this (as are: "Mothers of the Disappeared," "Silver and Gold," "Pride (In the Name of Love)," and "New Years Day").

Of course, U2 is hardly the first band ever to believe that their music could do more than simply entertain or excite, that it could also, in fact, illuminate and unite. But they are probably one of the biggest bands ever to have emphasized this aspect of their art. And they got as big as they are, arguably, because of their conviction that music could connect human hearts in this way, that a song was more than just a song, it was an emotional bond between performer and audience.

Their music, and the storied career they have enjoyed performing it, is a testimony, I think, to this particular power that music possesses, and as a Christian pastor, it makes me wonder if it’s why, even though the group has been so ambivalent about their faith, still their music feels so Christian, even when they’re ”only” singing about streets with no name or Billie Holiday, the Angel of Harlem.

I say this because music-making has always been a central aspect of Christian community, one of the ways the community forms itself and expresses its collective life before God. From the New Testament witness, it seems that this goes back to the earliest days of the church. In 1 Corinthians 14:26, Paul talks about believers coming to the community’s meeting with a song to share; and from the sounds of Ephesians 5:19, the earliest believers used songs, hymns and spiritual songs as a way of communicating to one another about their love of and devotion to the Lord.

A good deal of contemporary Christian worship music places the emphasis almost entirely on the individual, with the focus almost exclusively on the way music helps the singer connect with God; but a deep dive into the Psalms will show that the Scripture is fully aware of music’s ability to connect us one to another as well. This goes beyond the framework of the traditional rock concert, of course: part of the community-forming power of music comes, not from it being performed and consumed, but from what happens when we make it together. Even so, if we wanted something to inspire us to reclaim the connection-forming power of music, and maybe imagine ways it could happen, we could do worse than to look at how the best of U2’s music forms deep bonds of connection between the band and their audience.