Mrs. Robinson

Over the Rainbow from The Wizard of Oz

Streets of Philadelphia from Philadelphia

Hallelujah from Shrek

Eye of the Tiger from Rocky II

What do all of these movie theme songs have in common, other than making their composers supernaturally wealthy?

Each of these songs expressed the mood and the message of a film in a way that elevated our experience of watching it from great to transcendent. They captured the hearts of a nation and ensured that these films would live in our collective unconscious forever.

If the last 12 months of your life were made into a major motion picture, what song would you pick to be played as the final credits were rolling? What song captures the mood and themes of your life in 2011 like no other?

Your answer can be serious or tongue in cheek; the only thing that matters is that you are completely honest.

Here’s mine.

Books.

Don’t worry, the kids will get other goodies this year (like healthcare and school tuition, for example) but nothing trumps books.

My family also knows I probably bought their books from one of the indie booksellers near our home. Indie booksellers provide knowledgeable and personalized customer service, benefit local economies, contribute to protecting the environment, and foster community in ways big-box chains do not.

Indie bookstores also provide the natural climate in which people are most apt to ‘linger’, a re-humanizing spiritual practice in a world obsessed with efficiency and productivity. Indies get my support for that alone.

“But Ian, the header on your website has pornographically large buttons linking people to Amazon and B&N!”

Of course it does. I’m a scant known author who needs to sell books to feed his family. The sales of Jesus, My Father, the CIA, and Me: A Memoir…of Sorts didn’t suffer when Barnes & Noble named it a featured title in its Discover Great New Writers program. Trust me, I’m grateful to B&N for recognizing and honoring my work. I’m hoping big-box chains and indie booksellers will find a way to co-exist as each has their niche. Time will tell if I’m a naive idealist. In the meantime I’ll try to advance the cause of indie booksellers whenever or however I can either by purchasing my books through them or talking them up.

On that note, here’s a list of some of my favorite indie booksellers. Check them out for yourself and feel free to add the name of your favorite indie bookseller to my list. It’s not too late to visit one for Christmas.

 Diane’s Bookstore-Greenwich, CT  www.dianesbooks.com

Landmark Booksellers-Franklin, TN  www.landmarkbooksellers.com

Yeoman in the Fork-Leiper’s Fork, TN  www.yeomansinthefork.com

Parnassus Bookstore-Nashville, TN   www.parnassusbooks.net

Northshire Bookstore-Manchester, VT  www.northshire.com

Eighth Day Books-Wichita, KS www.eighthdaybooks.com

Hearts and Minds Books-Dallastown, PA  www.heartsandmindsbooks.com

The Tattered Cover-Denver, CO   www.tatteredcover.com

St Mark’s Bookshop-New York, NY  www.stmarksbookshop.com

Powells Bookstore-Portland, OR   www.powells.com

To find an indie bookseller near you, go to www.indiebound.org

A year ago Rob and I were sitting in a Starbucks in Connecticut, drinking lattes and catching up when he turned his gaze toward the ceiling.

“Do you hear that?” Rob said, his expression darkening.

“Hear what?” I said.

“Listen,” he said, glaring at the white speaker grilles above our heads. “Do you know that song?”

I closed my eyes and strained to hear the music over the hiss and gurgle of milk being steamed for someone’s cappuccino.

I shrugged. “Nope,” I said. “I can’t make it out.”

Rob threw his hands up in the air. “That’s a cut off Miles Davis’ record Kind of Blue,” he said, his voice rising with indignation.

“Alright,” I said. “Apparently this bothers you.”

“It’s MILES DAVIS!” he said, slapping the tabletop with his hand.

I’ve known Rob for 30 years. He’s talented. He’s smart. He’s not afraid to speak his mind.

“When brilliant compositions are used for background music it desensitizes people to their genius,” he continued.

I paused. “You mean familiarity breeds contempt?” I said.

“Precisely. If an amazing piece of music is constantly playing in the background your admiration for it doesn’t increase, it diminishes. It becomes no big deal,” Rob said, imitating someone trying to speak and yawn at the same time.

At the time I thought Rob’s remarks were insightful but overstated, and yet something about them rang true. They stuck with me.

Last week I was sitting in another Starbucks, this one two blocks from my home in Franklin, TN reading Max Picard’s The World of Silence and drinking coffee when I made a connection between what Rob had said and the world I live in.

Is Jesus becoming background music in my life?

No matter where I go someone is talking, singing, arguing, writing a book, blogging, putting on a conference, or making a record about…Jesus.

(Yes, I’m aware I’m guilty of doing this right now.)

Not a day goes by when I don’t see tee shirts with Bible verses printed on them or a tattoo of Jesus’ crucifixion inked on someone’s arm. Billboards with warnings about hell dot the highway. I can’t turn on the radio or television without someone talking at me about Jesus; he’s quoted (or misquoted) on bumper stickers, and recently while standing at a urinal in the men’s room at a restaurant I looked up and discovered a framed print of John 3:16 hanging on the wall in front of me. Some people don’t do subtle.

If Rob is right my experience of constant exposure to all things Jesus isn’t increasing my admiration or devotion for him, it’s diminishing it.

In Max Picard’s, The World of Silence he writes,

Today, when there is only noise in and around man, it is difficult to approach the mystery. When the layer of silence is missing, the extraordinary easily becomes connected with the ordinary, with the routine flow of things, and man reduces the extraordinary to a mere part of the mechanical routine.

How do we prevent over-exposure to Jesus and the trappings of Christianity from reducing him to “a mere part of the mechanical routine? “ Is it possible?

“I commissioned a local artist to paint an oil of the quarry on a typical summer’s day, brimming with people of seemingly every tribe and nation. If you look closely in the left-hand corner of the canvas, there are three kids in midair, holding hands. They have just leaped off the Forty. These are my children…“

Jesus, My Father, the CIA, and Me: A Memoir…Of Sorts came out June 7th and since then I’ve received a number of emails from folks asking if I would post a picture of the painting. I recently gave a reading of that story at a Barnes & Noble and several attendees told me they’d like to see it as well.

The painting hangs over the fireplace and is the centerpiece not only of our living room but of the whole house. I zoomed in on the left corner so you can see my kids in flight, but you still get a sense of the painting as a whole.

Thomas Torak is the artist.

The contemporary American composer Morten Lauridsen wrote the musical setting. The English translation of the Latin text is:

O great mystery
and wondrous sacrament,
that animals should see the newborn Lord
lying in their manger.

Blessed is the Virgin whose womb was worthy
to bear the Lord Jesus Christ. Alleluia!

My question: Can contemporary worship arouse the same sense of transcendence, awe, and mystery I feel when I watch this video? Have you been to a church that pulls it off?

I’ve never been to one. Anywhere. Ever.

One critique of worship services found in newer, start-up churches (and I founded and led one) is they over-emphasize authenticity and informality, sometimes to the point of silliness. Worship services at “hipster churches”, as a friend of mine calls them, are sometimes faulted for lacking dignity and gravity; people depart entertained by catchy choruses and earnest prayers but insufficiently convinced of God’s unspeakable majesty and their creatureliness.

Traditional, high church worship services (like that found in the video) that strive for reverence, decorum, poise and yes, even a little pageantry, are criticized for being culturally out of touch, aloof, pretentious or just plain dead. Which they often are!

Does this have to be an either/or proposition?

What do you think? What would a both/and approach to worship look like; one where a premium was placed on both authenticity and dignity?

I definitely have an opinion but I would love to hear about your experiences and your wisdom on this one.

Just about everyone I meet these days.

This year I’ve led several retreats for worship leaders from highly innovative, non-denominational churches. At each, the same question came up over and over:

Can you tell us about the liturgy and the Eucharist?

Maybe folks ask me this question because they’ve read one of my books. They know the story of my Roman Catholic childhood, my founding and leading a non-denominational church for ten years, and how my hunger for a richer sacramental life led me down the Canterbury Trail and to the Episcopal priesthood.

Maybe people ask me about the liturgy and Eucharist because they know I’m not an either/or guy. I appreciate both contemporary and ancient expressions of church and I love to explore how old-yet-evergreen practices might be retooled to create transformational worship.

I hear a variety of answers when I ask retreatants why they’re interested in the liturgy and the Eucharist, but I don’t want to tell you what they say. I’d like to hear your thoughts about why non-denominational or historically non-liturgical churches are fascinated by the Eucharist and the liturgy now more than ever?

The growing interest among non-denominational churches in the liturgy and the Eucharist really came home to me when I was invited to Willow Creek to lead a liturgical prayer element at their three weekend services. We modified the Prayers of the People from the Book of Common Prayer, adding a sung Kyrie (“Lord, have mercy) a la Sigur Ros. It was one of the highlights of my year.

Here’s how Willow’s brilliant worship leader and songwriter Aaron Niequist set the experience up.

Can’t wait to hear your thoughts!

“Ian is an absolutely magnificent writer, and this memoir is a stunning work. With Miles Davis and squirrels and weddings and Red Bull and fawns and cliff diving—it’s like he has this bottomless bucket of images and metaphors and they’re all so spot-on brilliant. The prose is light and loose and free, and then there are these moments when there’s just so much soul right on the page. I literally had to put the book down several times because I began tearing up. What a gift!”

Rob’s endorsement will appear on the book in the next printing, which I hope is sooner than later.

Check out news about Rob’s Fit to Smash Ice Tour which begins on November 10 in Toronto. Thanks for the kind and encouraging words, Rob.

Eric was gentle, funny in an understated way, and confident without swaggering. He occasionally let himself be the subject of a sentence, but rarely for long. He was far more interested in knowing what was happening in your life. His syntax was selfless, his grammar self-forgetting.

My father was an alcoholic, unpredictable and demeaning. Eric was the first adult I trusted enough to talk to about the chaos and fear that made up the soundtrack of my adolescence. After Young Life Club he would drive me home and wait in my driveway until I waved from my bedroom window, our signal that my father was asleep and I was safe. He’d flash his high beams in reply. If I called at any hour he’d rush back to get me.

One night before I got out of his car Eric asked me if I wanted to pray with him to receive Christ. I would have followed Eric off a cliff, so I followed him off that one. How could I have known what the implications of that stammering prayer would be?

I’m not old but I’m of an age when memories visit me unbidden. I thought of Eric last night as I drove home from a Barnes & Noble bookstore where I had just given a reading from my new memoir. Eric’s name is just one of many found in the Acknowledgments on the last page. I thought about placing it in the front but I suspect this would have embarrassed him.

I then thought about all the youth workers who still sit with kids in idling cars and dare to ask the ancient-yet-evergreen question, “What do you think about Jesus?”

This morning I tip my hat to overworked and underpaid youth workers everywhere. The gospel writers tell us Jesus healed ten lepers but only one returned to express his gratitude. If you’re a youth worker count me among the few God inspired to come back to say thank you. I apologize it took thirty-five years.

A retreat guide is different than a weekend speaker. A retreat guide is tasked with creating the natural climate in which people are most apt to have a lived experience of God. He or she also has to discern in real time what is happening in a group and follow the promptings of the Spirit, even if it means throwing everything they planned out the window to move in a new direction. We say our prayers, call audibles, and trust God for the rest. It’s cool.

One morning I offered an optional teaching on Christian contemplative meditation. It was so well received that I offered a second session in the early evening.  At the morning session ten guys came. At the evening meeting thirty showed up. Their eagerness to learn an ancient-yet-evergreen practice that opened them to the transformational sway of the Spirit was wonderful. Each time I spoke briefly on the benefits of meditation, offered simple instructions on how to do it, and then we did a ten minute group practice.

When we finished our group meditation I asked the men what they most enjoyed about the practice.

“The silence,” they said, sounding grateful for the chance to just be still. Their answer confirmed something I have been thinking about a lot in recent days.

Protestant churches, particularly those that are contemporary and evangelical in expression, are noisy as hell. I mean that literally. We spend fortunes on sound systems and musicians. We arrive for church and the worship team is either playing or  music is playing over the sound system. Screens are lit up with images that often transition at lightning speed, which is itself a type of visual cacophony. We preach forty minute, 5000 word sermons. We provide inspiring musical beds under our prayer times, as if talking to God required a soundtrack. At the conclusion of the service the music starts up again and we are sent back out into a world that is as terrified of silence as the church we just left seems to be.

Why do we fill every second of our worship services with manically delivered “content?” Are we afraid we will be accused of not doing our jobs if we programmed a significant time of silence into our worship? Are we frightened of what will percolate up from our souls if we “listen to God’s speech in his wondrous, terrible, gentle, loving, all-embracing silence,” as Catherine de Hueck Doherty says?

Don’t get me wrong. I love celebratory worship, great music, creative visuals, and expressive praise, but what if Mother Teresa is right, that “silence is God’s first language and everything else is a bad translation.” Let me be provocative and ask, “What would happen to a church if it just shut up from time to time?”

I could say so much more on this topic but I’d love to know your thoughts instead. Speak up, just not too loudly.

From here I’m headed to Willow Creek up in Chicago to participate in their worship gatherings this weekend. Later this month I get to a be a part of a couple of retreats – a men’s retreat at GracePointe in Nashville, an artist’s retreat at Laity Lodge in Texas, and the Refuge Retreat on St. Simon’s Island. If you’re going to be at any of those lovely places, be sure and say hi.