Someone I don't agree with is given a national podium? Scandal!

I've pretty much been working, watching amazing volleyball or attending Christmas parties for the last 48 hours, so I was blissfully unaware of a number of happenings around the world during that time. (But you say, 'Wait a second ... isn't knowing what's going on in the world exactly what your work is?' To which I respond, 'Yup. I could tell you most everything important that's happened in Nebraska during that time. Which is, well, not much.')

So I fired up the ol' computer this morning to find out Deep Throat had died ... two days ago. (And Paul Weyrich, too. If there was ever a most underrated 20th-century conservative, it would be him.)

I also found out that Rick Warren has been chosen to give the prayer at Barack Obama's inauguration next month. It's prompted the standard roll-your-eyes responses, as well as an interesting discussion at Slate's XX Factor. (To start at the beginning of their discussion, scroll to the bottom and read your way up.)

It's fascinating to see views I find completely normal, like anti-abortionism and the idea that there's eternal importance in sharing one's religious views with the rest of the world, elicit such panic and repulsion from people who've rarely encountered them beyond a ideological-bogeyman level. Ummmm ... you do realize that about a third of Americans hold each of those views? They can't possibly be as extreme and ultra-ultra-conservative as you make them out to be.

I think the Warren pick was a fine one politically on both sides. (Though I do agree with several of the XX bloggers that Jim Wallis would have done just as well for Obama while avoiding the ire from the left.) But I know, as one of those bloggers notes, that there are many conservative Christians who have long seen Warren as a sellout for taking the kind of stands on things like creation care that made him even plausible as an Obama choice. It reminds me of a classic Calvin and Hobbes quote: A good compromise leaves everybody mad.

So what do you think?

Get ready to get pensive

A few weeks ago at our "college/young adult church group"--what an awkward name to say every time I'm trying to explain it to people--Matt asked us what were our favorite songs for rainy days--those songs that just put us in thoughtful, pensive, wistful moods. Ideas were pouring out, and I exposed myself as a shameless nerd when I told him (and the group) that I had so many songs I'd just have to make a blog post it.

Well, I couldn't go out and look that nerdy with at least following through with it, so here's my treat of a pensive playlist. If, by the end of this playlist, you find yourself staring into space and pondering the meaning of life, don't blame me. OK, yes, blame me.

--Joni Mitchell, "Both Sides Now." Of course, we have to start with Joni Mitchell, the mother of the moody masterpiece. There's a few other versions of this song, but nothing's as perfect as the good ol' acoustic guitar. (You'll notice it shows up a lot on this list.)

--Paul Simon, "Graceland." Paul has kind of overdone the whole pensive thing throughout his career, but here I think he nails it. There's something about the line "They say losing love is like a window in your heart/Everybody sees you're blown apart/Everybody sees the wind blow." That gets me every time, even though I've never lost love. Unless eighth-grade girlfriends count.

--Sufjan Stevens, "Chicago." Ditto for Sufjan on the whole overdoing it thing--his ponderousness can get pretty cloying at times. But wow--I've been stopped in my tracks quite a few times by this song's chorus and its steady build to the end. It's also great to run to, so it's got that going for it, which is nice.

--U2, "40." These fellas, on the other hand, do that whole thoughtful thing really well. They kind of created that wide-open, epic-sounding feel that pretty much all modern worship music is trying to capture. And why are they doing that? Because to a whole generation, that sound defines profundity. It's the only way they know how to communicate, "Hey, this is really important music." (I'm sure James has written papers on this.) This song was chosen over others like "Where the Streets Have No Name," "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For," "Bad," and "Grace" mostly because, well, it's short, and we have some longer songs coming later.

--Coldplay, "Careful Where You Stand." Since Coldplay's post-"Parachutes" stuff is trying reeaally hard to sound moving now that they've decided to become The Greatest Band in the World™, I really prefer their earlier stuff in that department. Like this song from 2000--beautiful melody, sung well, and aside from a stupid chorus, the coziest lyrics you could imagine.

--Stevie Wonder, "Isn't She Lovely." I'm not sure if it's the paternal instinct or what, but this song always makes me feel so warm and happy inside. Maybe that's because it's one of the most unabashedly joyful songs I've ever heard. I especially love the full version, with audio of his baby daughter at bathtime.

--Rufus Wainwright, "The Art Teacher." We're quite a bit less happy now. This song's story is so-so (interesting, at least), but the melody, the mesmerizingly simple piano accompaniment and the French horn solo are all just gorgeous.

--Van Morrison, "Into the Mystic." This was on our wedding CD and played a prominent role in the DVD of our wedding, so it always makes me think of my wonderful wife. (Awwwwwww.) Also, I don't think anyone else but Van Morrison could write a song called "Into the Mystic" and pull it off without sounding a little ridiculous.

--The Beach Boys, "God Only Knows." Speaking of love songs, this one has to be included on any personal poignancy list, if only just for the section from 2:00 through the fadeout. You just wish it would never stop. Or at least go on for a couple more minutes.

--Delirious, "You Split the Earth." I'm pretty ambivalent about them now, but Delirious pretty much had the monopoly on pensive songs for me from ages 14 to 19. Maybe I'm a little too jaded to see the same thing in them now, but they still hold a special place deep down in my heart (*sniff*). The one I really wanted to include was "When All Around Has Fallen," but this was the one I could find online, so this is what you're getting.

--Led Zeppelin, "That's the Way." Didn't think Led Zeppelin had it in 'em to make this list, did you? Well, I'm not going to kid myself--the lyrics to this song are pretty stupid. But hey, it's probably a lot prettier than you thought Led Zep was capable of being.

--Jars of Clay, "Liquid." One of the few songs that's actually on this list mainly for its lyrical content. I'm not generally a lyrics guy, but this is good stuff to ponder on.

--Bob Dylan, "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right." This is actually a brutal breakup song ("You just kind of wasted my precious time, but don't think twice, it's all right.") But I think it's one of the best melodies of Dylan's acoustic work. I don't know anything about guitar playing, but he sounds pretty impressive on that, too.

--Indelible Grace, "Jesus Cast a Look on Me." I've spent more time meditating on the lyrics to this song than any other in the past year. This version is different from the one I have (a quick Google search tells me it's from Red Mountain Church in Birmingham, Ala.) and is incomplete, but it's better than nothing.

--David Gray, "Say Hello, Wave Goodbye." Another meh breakup song lyrically, but one of my favorite singalong songs ever. For some reason, this song's ridiculously long runtime (9:03) makes it so much more meaningful-sounding than if it were three minutes long. I've never really figured out why.

--Lots of choirs, "O Magnum Mysterium." A classic Nativity text set to a stunning melody. I sang this song for three days at All-State Choir camp (yes, I know--we've already established my nerdiness) in 2000, and I was hooked. I've never sung it since then, but then again, I don't think I've sung anything quite like it since then, either.

Down the road and across the street

Yesterday, the Omaha World-Herald's website had a photo gallery on the infamous grain elevator/boot shop in--where else?--Burress! I don't know if he reads this blog, but Benjamin would remember taking a few pictures there, too. Burress is about 10 miles from where I grew up and has a population of oh, about 6. We used to bike and run there every year for cross-country, when we'd buy candy bars and pop at the boot shop.

Burress is mostly known for nothing having happened there...ever. So it's good to see it get some love from the state's largest paper. The sports section also had a feature on two Husker football players (Tyler Wortman and Todd Peterson) who went to high school together at Grand Island Central Catholic, which happens to be right across the street from our duplex. These are the kind of things that happen when you live in Nebraska.

Teaching through song

On Tuesday night, Dana and I had what might be the highlight of at least our month--a concert by Matthew Smith and Indelible Grace. That's the group from Nashville who are taking the words from old (mostly forgotten) hymns and putting them to new lyrics. Dana's church in Lincoln, Grace Chapel, sang a lot of Indelible Grace songs during Sunday worship, and Dana got us hooked on them from there.

While we were disappointed with the size of the crowd--less than 100, though it was in a small sanctuary, so it didn't feel quite as embarrassingly small--the concert was everything we expected from an Indelible Grace concert, which is to say, everything that a typical CCM "worship concert" isn't. It was simple and honest, with no showmanship or manipulation--just four guys playing good music and explaining a little bit of what it means to them.

Like every other modern worship concert, it also included the songs' words on a screen at the front of the sanctuary. I remember the first time I saw the words projected at a concert--it was a Sonicflood show in Lincoln back when I was in high school, when the modern worship movement was just picking up steam. At the time, I thought it was a revolutionary idea, a great way to make it explicit that the crowd is here to participate in worship, not just watch others do it. (For the record, I still think that.)

Now the words are on the screens at every single worship concert, but Tuesday night's concert seemed different. At most concerts, the purpose of the words on the screens is to assist the audience in singing along. At this show, the audience was encouraged at the outset to do just that, but the purpose of the screens seemed to be just as much to let the audience silently meditate on the lyrics. That'd be a pretty futile idea at most worship concerts--there's not much to ponder in "we're gonna dance in the river" or "yes, Lord, yes, Lord, yes, yes, Lord." But there was so much depth and richness to be mined from these lyrics that the screens were necessary to process it all.

What a refreshing change: Worship lyrics that are so potent that they challenge and even teach all by themselves, without the emotional attachment of singing them. We're used to using our sermons to teach and our worship songs to reaffirm and encourage, but couldn't we also use our songs to teach and challenge, too?

The ultimate color line is crossed.

Regardless of which guy you voted for, yesterday was a milestone in American social history. Skip Gates, one of America's leading cultural critics, has a beautifully written, moving essay on what Obama's election means for Black America. You should take a look. I'll never truly understand what yesterday meant for Gates, but I think that his piece has given me a pretty good taste.

Say what you will of Obama's politics (and let's be honest, I know that just about all the readers of this blog voted for McCain), but I'm proud to be an American today.

Cue the bellyaching on Fox News.

I don't believe in any sort of institutional liberal media bias. If one existed, I and just about everyone I know in this profession would have to be in on it, and we're all just way too stubborn and mule-headed to be herded together for any sort of ideological conspiracy. (Actually, that's not really my reason for not believing in the whole "liberal media" idea. That would take a lot longer to explain, but this is a blog, and I'm lazy.)

Still, I was a little taken aback at Slate's voluntary internal poll of its staff. Of the 57 people who chose to respond, 55 are voting for Obama. (McCain ties with Bob Barr--yes, Bob Barr--for second.) Granted, Slate is not part of the mainstream media, but...wow.

Slate's editor, David Plotz, tries to explain why. Its media critic, lone Barr voter Jack Shafer, tries to offer some better explanations. Both of them have some good thoughts, too, on the reality of what's often perceived as the "liberal media" (though Plotz's thoughts are actually Michael Kinsley's).

Though it's absurd for any publication--liberal-leaning or not--to have this kind of political uniformity among its staffers, I have to give Slate some credit: as Shafer notes, it has been a remarkably open forum for conservative, libertarian and utilitarian thought in addition to liberal ideas. Anything counterintuitive but worth consideration has a place in the marketplace of ideas, and Slate seems to be the internet's headquarters for those kinds of ideas, regardless of their political stripe.

Not sure I've ever seen that dateline in the Times before.

So I got a couple of phone calls and an e-mail today from an assistant with a national NPR show who wanted to talk to me about the relationship between Somalis and Latinos in the workplace.

First, I thought, why the heck would they want to talk to me, who had written exactly zero articles on the subject? (It was because I had once written a story on conflict between Somalis and Sudanese.)

Second, I thought, that seemed like a really random topic. I know we had our prayer dispute, but a national discussion on the relationship between Somalis and Latinos. Why those two groups?

Then I came home and saw that this was on the front page of today's New York Times. Ohhhhhh. That explains a lot.