Episode 17 // Eschaton

In 'Time and Narrative', Paul Ricoeur recalls Aristotle's claim that 'being good at metaphors is equivalent to being perceptive of resemblances.' He additionally poses the question, "what is it to be perceptive of resemblance if not to inaugurate the similarity by bringing together terms that at first seem "distant," then suddenly "close"? It is this change of distance in logical space that is the work of productive imagination... The plot of narrative is comparable... It "grasps together" and integrates into one whole and complete story multiple and scattered events," [1]

This further begs the question, does the 'eschaton' itself, as an 'event', belong within the context of actualized 'narrative', or beyond and outside its temporal limits, as Judith Butler suggests in her use of Levinas and Walter Benjamin -- or is it dialectically within and outside of 'narrative' simultaneously as Paul Tillich suggests: "Inherent in anticipation is a temporal image of a perfect consummation that is coming. This temporal image is a symbolic form essential to all eschatological thinking; it cannot be dispensed with, although its directness can be broken." [2]

Reflecting on 'end' often pushes the human imagination to limits -- of 'pleasure' or 'pain' (as experienced individually or collectively, in notions of 'heaven' and 'hell') -- but also tends to push imagination toward an alternative limit: the gaping 'nothingness' that resides between those two frequently established limits. In this way, pondering the limit of time can illuminate limits of other forms. Unsurprisingly there is a pervasive affinity within music of all kinds for eschatological themes -- a courageous willingness to explore frontiers and horizons that exist not wholly within the limits time constructs. This final episode of Leitourgia exhibits a collection of recordings that explore such contemplations of the eschaton.

Below is an image from Tarkovsky's 1975 film, 'The Mirror' -- quilted together in an oneiric sequence of memories, as experienced by what is often interpreted as a dying man in the final moments of his life -- often thought to be Tarkovsky himself, as many of the scenes resemble biographical events in his own life.

episode download: [forthcoming]


0:00:25 - promo: cfrc twitter
0:00:36 - The Postal Service - 'Such Great Heights'
0:05:00 - Belle and Sebastian - 'If You're Feeling Sinister'
0:10:17 - Pharaoh Sanders - 'Creator Has a Master Plan'
'":"":59 - talking
0:13:33 - The Browns - 'The Three Bells'
0:16:23 - Willis Earl Beal - 'Take Me Away'
0:19:19 - James Blake - 'Measurements'
0:23:34 - Colin Stetson - 'Judges'
0:28:46 - Fire Moss - 'Omega'
0:32:01 - DJ Screw - 'Lost Souls'
0:39:53 - You'll Never Get To Heaven - 'Caught in Time So Far Away'
0:43:37 - Canned Heat - 'Burning Hell'
0:47:32 - Throbbing Gristle - 'Six Six Sixties'
0:49:35 - b0ots - 'apocalypse meow'
0:50:04 - talking: Sharon Betcher and disability theology [3], death of god theology [4], [6]
0:53:21 - Prince Rama - 'So Destroyed'
0:55:55 - Wild Nothing - 'The Witching Hour'


1:00:00 - Coil - 'Paradisiac'
1:02:25 - Popol Vuh - 'Through Pains to Heaven'
1:03:14 - talking (concluded abruptly in the form of the earliest manuscripts of Mark's Gospel)
1:06:01 - station id: Shad
1:06:05 - promo: Below The Decks (radio show)
1:06:37 - Bombay Bicycle Club - 'Lamplight'
1:10:22 - Heavenly - 'C Is The Heavenly Option'
1:13:42 - 16 Horsepower - 'For Heaven's Sake'
1:18:32 - David Lynch & Peter Ivers - 'In Heaven' (Eraserhead OST)
1:20:08 - John Cage - 'Postcard From Heaven' (1982)
1:27:09 - 13th Floor Elevators - 'Kingdom of Heaven'


"For Levinas, then, messianism seems linked with this fact, that judgment does not and cannot occur in history... we cannot regard historical events, no matter how terrible or felicitous, as enacting or revealing moral judgments of some kind... If messianism is engaged with a form of waiting, a waiting for the Messiah and, indeed, a waiting for justice, it also is precisely a kind of waiting that connot be fulfilled in historical time. Messianism is distinguished from eschatology."
- Judith Butler (Parting Ways: Jewishness and the Critique of Zionism, p. 40)

"We now know that there have been several extinction events. The most devastating, when life itself came close to being extinguished, occurred about 250 million years ago. Over a mere 100,000 years about 90% of the earth’s species succumbed, with the rate and pace varying on sea and land. Why? That debate continues. Was it another asteroid? Few seem to think so. Was it a series of huge methane bursts from the sea, fouling the atmosphere and changing the climate? Perhaps. Other major evolutionary turning points are now under investigation as well, punctuated by a large series of “minor” events. One major extinction started around 450 million years ago, another around 200 million years ago, and, yes, another is rapidly underway as we speak. The last one is primarily a product of human activity, in which our modes of travel inadvertently carry bacteria, fungi, and other species into new environments, our modes of carbon extraction contribute to rapid climate change, and our break up of species migration routes block the escape of diverse species. Welcome to the Anthropocene."
- William E. Connolly & Jairus Victor Grove, [5]

"[W]hy is the universe now taken to have such a goal at all? ...Avoiding all reference to such a purpose was taken to be a necessary sign of being 'scientific'... Barrow and Tipler are exceptional in making a welcome stand against this causal drift. They do explicitly discuss theology, and they claim to give good reasons for reinstating a form of it as part of science... Since history invaded physics--since the image of the Big Bang took over and displaced Galileo's carefully timeless, reversible world--this kind of talk has gradually become quite common; clearly it causes no embarrassment... But we ought, I think, to do more than that...
We should not just notice it as evidence of an irresistible, senseless urge. We need to take it seriously and see what it means. If theology has again become a legitimate way of thinking--legitimate enough to be used, even in last chapters--then it can't be confined arbitrarily to those uncriticized contexts. Rules have to be worked out again for its proper use. We need to develop further distinctions which Aristotle began to sketch, between good and bad teleology, between different uses of it, between right and wrong contexts in which to use it. If we stop vetoing it altogether, what we need next is to understand its function."
- Mary Midgley (Science as Salvation, p. 66-67)

"Since the middle of the 20th century, we have become a world that lives with the reality of possible annihilation everyday. While the proverbial shoe waiting to drop has been identified with everything from the atomic bomb to climate disaster, from viral pandemic contagion to asteroid, a form of literature has been proliferating not so interested in that event of apocalypse as what comes after -- a genre known as 'post-apocalyptic'... This narrative genre visits humanity sifting through the ruins, distilling how we will redefine ourselves as societies.
Ironically, disability has within this genre moved from modernity's locus of sick, bad, laid out on a pallet before the 'divine healer' to 'lead character', moved from modernity's locus of 'sore on the eye' to pervasive condition within sociality. The clean slate of an apocalyptically washed world staring over is not, but within post-apocalyptic frames, 'wasteland' -- bodies 'crip/t and crump/t' among the ruins. As Clare Barker puts it, while speaking of disability in those other post-apocalyptic or postcolonial zones, the reconstruction of civil imagining is undertaken not just through mobilizing the trope of disability, but through privileging of disability subjectivities. Figures like the post-apocalyptic 'crip', as also earlier modernity's 'man of reason' carry the possibilities we enfold in our imagination for human life."
- Sharon Betcher (Crip/tography: Disability Theology in the Ruins of God), [3]


Further Info:
[1] 'Time and Narrative' (Volume 1) by Paul Ricouer, p. x (Google Book)
[2] 'Political Expectation' by Paul Tillich, p. 26 (Google Book)
[3] 'Crip/tography: Disability Theology in the Ruins of God' by Sharon Betcher (Video Lecture)
[4] 'The New Apocalypse' by Thomas Altizer (Google Book)
[5] Extinction Events and Human Sciences (Essay/Article)
[6] 'Apocalyptic Nihilism' by John Caputo (Video Lecture)

Episode 16 // Jesus

The meandering yet strangely particular path of history has its way of ossifying great figures of its canon in a splintering and broadly reaching spectrum of multiplicities. A Palestinian Jew living in the backwaters of the Roman Empire, known as Yeshua, remains to this day a figure whose life's historical, religious, and political significance, among many other categorial interpretations, serve as territories of immense contestation and unanimous disagreement.

Alasdair MacIntyre says, "Consider the remarkable contrasts between the Jesus of whom we can know very little of Renan and his 20th century followers, the Jewish Jesus of Géza Vermes, the egalitarian peasant Jesus of J.D. Crossan, the eschatological Jesus of Schweitzer, and the Jesus who emerges from N.T. Wright's magisterial trilogy. In which Jesus are we to believe?" Additionally, where does that leave the thoughts of those who do not or cannot believe? Great intellectuals like Altizer and Zizek -- or even 'agnostics' like Bart Ehrman. These are but an exiguous portion of the great many who, across the expanse of two millennia, have had much to say about this one truly elusive human life. This Easter Monday episode reflects that persisting diversity as expressed within the universe of music.

Below is an oil painting by Georges Rouault called 'Christ and the Apostles', completed in 1938 and now currently a part of The Met's collection.

episode download: [forthcoming]


0:00:00 - psa: Noam Chomsky on community radio
0:00:25 - station id
0:00:31 - promo: cfrc twitter
0:00:43 - P.S. Eliot - 'Jesus Christ'
0:03:06 - Wilco - 'Jesus, Etc.'
0:06:56 - The Byrds - 'Jesus is Just Alright'
0:09:11 - John Fahey - 'In Christ There Is No East or West'
0:09:""' - talking on: jesus
0:11:56 - Pete Seeger - 'Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring' (Bach)
0:12:57 - Tim Eriksen - 'Garden Hymn'
0:15:26 - The Louvin Brothers - 'The Kneeling Drunkard's Plea'
0:18:20 - Gavin Bryars & Tom Waits - 'Jesus Blood Never Failed Me Yet'
0:22:18 - Neutral Milk Hotel - 'The King of Carrot Flowers (Parts Two & Three)'
0:25:25 - Kurt Vile - 'Jesus Fever'
0:29:10 - psa: caring campus project mental health survey
0:29:47 - promo: Below The Decks (radio show)
0:30:19 - psa: Loving Spoonful (local food security initiative)
0:31:04 - Leftover Crack - 'Jesus Has A Place For Me (Rock The 40 oz.)'
0:34:07 - Sky Ferreira - 'Omanko'
0:38:44 - "Jesus Christ." (the indie band) - 'Is This Really What You Want?'
0:43:41 - The Flaming Lips - 'Shine on Sweet Jesus'
0:48:09 - The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - 'A Teenager In Love'
0:51:32 - Arvo Part - 'The Beatitudes'
0:51:""' - talking
0:54:27 - Spiritualized - 'Life Is A Problem'
0:58:29 - station id: Amy Goodman (of Democracy Now!)
0:58:44 - The Velvet Underground - 'Jesus'


1:02:10 - Teen Daze - 'Saviour'
1:06:08 - Das Racist - 'Nutmeg'
1:11:56 - Dom - 'Jesus'
1:14:00 - Pslaters - 'All Yeshua'
1:19:28 - Charles Gayle - 'Glory & Jesus'
'":"":55 - talking: the historical jesus, death of god theology
1:22:44 - Tom Waits - 'Chocolate Jesus'
1:26:42 - Wingnut Dishwashers Union - 'Jesus Does the Dishes'


"Nothing has been more revolutionary in New Testament scholarship than the unveiling of the original historical Jesus as an apocalyptic prophet... At no point is the language of Jesus more clearly original than in its primary centering upon the Kingdom of God, and just as Jesus was the first prophet to proclaim and enact the actual advent or dawning of the Kingdom of God, that is an advent that here and here alone in biblical language is an ultimate and eschatological enactment... The Jesus of Christian orthodoxy is surely not a revolutionary, or not as a truly human "son of man." But the Jesus of Christian heresy has commonly been a revolutionary, and the deeper the heresy, the deeper the apprehension of the revolutionary Jesus, and if a total Christian heresy has been realized only in full modernity, nowhere else is a vision of a revolutionary Jesus more fully or more totally at hand."
- Thomas J. J. Altizer

"Jesus did not make the family the central value of human life, but the solidarity of those deprived of their rights. The most important norms of the Moral Majority are not contained in Christian faith, as we can see from the many critical remarks against the family that appear in the gospels. It is characteristic of Christofascism that it cuts off all the roots that Christianity has in the Old Testament, in the Jewish Bible. No word about justice, no mention of the poor, whom God comes to aid, very little about guilt and suffering. No hope for the messianic reign. Hope is completely individualized and reduced to personal success. Jesus, cut loose from the Old Testament, becomes a sentimental figure. The empty repetition of his name works like a drug: it changes nothing and nobody. Therefore, since not everybody can be successful, beautiful, male, and rich, there have to be hate objects who can take the disappointment on themselves. Jesus, who suffered hunger and poverty, who practiced solidarity with the oppressed, has nothing to do with this religion."
- Dorothee Soelle


Further Info:
[1] 'What Jesus Did' by Garry Wills
[2] 'Why Jesus?' by Peter Rollins
[3] Historical Jesus
[4] Quests for the Historical Jesus
[5] Death of God Theology

The Ironic Theft of Easter: A Good Friday Reflection

In Samuel Beckett's absurdist theatrical work, "Waiting for Godot", salvation plays out its dubious paradox over the sparse nothingness of the play's entire duration. The ever absent Godot seems like the salvific figure that will finally free Vladimir and Estragon from their unbearably confining reality of the present, yet the two remain confined to the barren unchanging stage by the very fact they are waiting for Godot. Yet, why they are waiting for Godot and who Godot is remains hauntingly uncertain. This theme of salvation recapitulates in a number of biblical allusions, one of them being the boy messenger who "minds the goats", while his brother, who Godot supposedly beats and mistreats, "minds the sheep" -- a strangely unexpected reference to Matthew's gospel (25:31-46) where the 'Son of Man' separates the sheep from the goats. The sheep being those who see Divinity in the hungry, thirsty, estranged, naked, sick and imprisoned, and respond by providing for them -- and consequently are "blessed by [the] Father, [and] inherit the Kingdom". The goats are those who do nothing and consequently are sent away for "eternal punishment". It seems paradoxically purposeful that Beckett has the goat-herding boy claim that Godot beats his sheep-herding brother. No one knows if it's true, but it seems true. Similarly, in the second act, Estragon calls the abusive-seeming Pozzo by the name Abel, and refers to Lucky, the indentured servant, by the name Cain. Abel being the primal brother favoured by God, because he sacrificed the 'right' thing, and Cain the primal brother rejected by God, and moved by spiritual despair and envy to kill his own brother.

The most memorable biblical allusion for me however, was when Vladimir says to Estragon, "the two thieves. Do you remember the story? ...how is it that of the four Evangelists only one speaks of a thief being saved. The four of them were there –or thereabouts– and only one speaks of a thief being saved... One out of four. Of the other three, two don't mention any thieves at all and the third says that both of them abused him."

Episode 15 // Sacred Geometry & The Prophetic Gaze

This week's episode is divided into three segments, and explores themes of geometry, propheticism, and vision. The first 'geometric' section focuses on the spiritually pervasive motif of labyrinths as well as scriptural fragments in their physical form -- two topics related to the strangely particular and winding path of history. The second 'prophetic' section explores the impassioned homiletics of oracular voices and fringe radio preachers -- related to the urgency and immediacy of the present which connects past actions or experiences to some future eschatological form -- demise or otherwise. Finally, the third 'ocular' section extends the second section into a penetrating prophetic gaze -- accentuating the dynamic between the uncertain future and unrelenting anxiety of the present community. Below is an image of a Robert Morris installation entitled 'Untitled (Philadelphia Labyrinth)'. Morris was a prominent theorist on 'Minimalism' and a contributor to what became known as 'Process Art'. [1]

episode download: [forthcoming]


0:00:00 - promo: cfrc twitter
0:00:11 - Roomful of Teeth - 'Amid the Minotaurs' (composed by William Brittelle)
0:07:52 - Morton Feldman - 'Turfan Fragments'
0:0":""' - talking on: gnostic gospel of Mani [2], history of labyrinths [3]
0:11:51 - Byungki Hwang - 'The Labyrinth'
0:27:45 - Aaron Roche - 'Etude'
0:32:50 - psa: vegetarianism
0:33:09 - pro: caring campus project: mental health survey
0:33:45 - Ricky Eat Acid - 'In rural virginia watching glowing lights crawl from the dark corners of the room'
0:40:56 - The KLF - 'Wichita Lineman Was a Song I Once Heard'
0:46:53 - Kate Bush - 'Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)'
0:51:52 - Philip Glass - 'Prophecies'
0:"":""' - talking on: Walter Brueggemann on the Mosaic archetype as alternative


1:00:39 - station id: Amy Goodman
1:00:56 - psa: Noam Chomsky on community radio
1:01:42 - ad: Gordon Lightfoot ticket auction
1:02:27 - Dean Blunt - 'Seven Seals of Affirmation'
1:04:41 - Godspeed You! Black Emperor - 'Chart #3'
1:07:30 - Julia Holter - 'Goddess Eyes'
1:10:55 - Egyptrixx - 'Bible Eyes'
1:''":""' - talking on: Terrence Malick, Fatima's Hand, Zizek and the Lacanian gaze
1:17:11 - Explosions In The Sky - 'Have You Passed Through This Night'
1:24:17 - Josephine Foster - 'There Are Eyes Above'
1:28:08 - Muslimgauze - 'Hand Of Fatima'
1:29:53 - station id: Stereolab
1:30:05 - psa: Loving Spoonful

"There are three kinds of patriots, two bad, one good. The bad ones are the uncritical lovers and the loveless critics. Good patriots carry on a lover's quarrel with their country, a reflection of God's lover's quarrel with all the world."
- William Sloane Coffin

"We are gathered into community, but the community and its accumulated wisdom is always under challenge from the prophet at the door. Whenever the community, the church, becomes sedimented, whenever it becomes a moral arbiter, the knock at the door comes from the one excluded... Perhaps the process of qu(e)erying is the prophetic process? Perhaps it is another form of exegesis that needs to become the ongoing work of the church? Truth claims need to be shown as the slippery fears that they might be. In scripture there is only one truth, the truth that walked among us as Jesus Christ. In a sense the process of deconstruction is the closest the secular has come to that. Because deconstruction pushes at the weakness of truths as they vainly attempt to bolster themselves against suspicion, it has pointed some Christians back to their own text in a more faithful way. Queer theory has pointed some Christians to a more faithful understanding of evangelism, conversion, and church itself."
- Cheri DiNovo (Qu(e)erying Evangelism), [4]

"Show not what has been done, but what can be. How beautiful the world would be if there were a procedure for moving through labyrinths."
- Umberto Eco

Further Info:
[1] Labyrinth - fragments (RIHA Journal)
[2] Gospel of Mani
[3] History of Labyrinths
[4] 'Qu(e)erying Evangelism' by Cheri DiNovo

Episode 14 // Mysticism

Though I have experienced basically all of life through the lens of 'religion', my first engaged encounter with 'mysticism' was through the work of Karen Armstrong, who I deeply admired for her great reverence for 'God', which paradoxically was expressed by emphasizing the unknowability of the Divine. This inevitably shattered the superstructure of doctrine that I had so presumptuously identified and essentially equated with 'Christian faith' my entire life. It was the intellectual/activist, Simone Weil, who so succinctly expressed, "In the Church, considered as a social organism, the mysteries inevitably degenerate into beliefs."

The intrigue of mysticism for me is rather far removed from any sort of internalism or self-discovery, even from spiritual ecstasy to a certain extent, but rather as a form of humility when discoursing on the Divine, or anything of significance for that matter. Music was actually one of the first territories in my life where I found the ability to break free from hegemony, and it established for me a form after which I could reorient something in my life as significant as 'religion'.

Below is a portrait of the Christian mystic, Meister Eckhart, whose 'negative theology' Jacques Derrida cites as an influence for his notion of 'différance', [1]. Derrida, on belief and religious mystics, states that "...in order to be authentic – this is a word I almost never use – but in order to be authentic, belief in God must be exposed to the absolute doubt. And I know that the great mystics are experiencing this. They are experiencing the death of God, or the disappearance of God, or the non-existence of God, or God as being called as non-existent: “I pray to Someone who does not exist in the strict metaphysical meaning of ‘existence’ that is ‘to be present as an essence or substance’ or ousia.” ...If I believe in what is beyond Being, then I believe as an atheist, in a certain way. Believing implies some atheism, however paradoxical it may seem. I’m sure that the true believers know this better than others, that they experience atheism all the time – and this is part of their belief. In this epoche, this suspension of belief - suspension of the position, the existence of God – it is in this epoche that faith appears. The only possibility is faith in this epoche."

episode download: [forthcoming]


0:00:47 - station id: Jack Layton
0:00:57 - promo: cfrc twitter
0:01:10 - Kim Jung Mi - 'Yearnin' To Him Irrespective Of My Will'
0:03:33 - Television - 'Guiding Light'
0:09:09 - The Rapture - 'In The Grace Of Your Love'
0:14:48 - Terry Riley - 'Persian Surgery Dervishes' (Performance One)
0:"":""' - talking on: mysticism of exams
0:18:20 - Father John Misty - 'O I Long To Feel Your Arms Around Me'
0:20:41 - Teen Suicide - 'Give Me Back To The Sky'
0:22:53 - Mazzy Star - 'Fade Into You'
0:27:46 - promo: public policy event
0:28:26 - psa: Anishinaabe & Haudenosaunee land
0:28:37 - Mandy Woo - 'Searching For God Knows What'
0:40:38 - Roscoe Mitchell - 'Out There'
0:44:37 - The Haxan Cloak - 'Dieu'
0:49:50 - Simone Weil - 'Preparing For The Presence Of God'
":50:00 - talking on: Jean-Luc Marion and Simone Weil, [2]
0:53:57 - Dirty Beaches - 'Lord Knows Best'
0:57:21 - promo: bikes & boards in jduc
0:57:48 - promo: Below The Decks (show)
0:58:21 - psa: Noam Chomsky on community radio
0:59:06 - station id: Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!
0:59:21 - Albert Ayler - 'Our Prayer/Spirits Rejoice'


1:05:35 - Richard Skelton - 'Voice Of The Book'
":"7:17 - talking on: Henri de Lubac, Julian of Norwich, Martin Buber, Heschel, [3], [4], [5], [6]
1:12:57 - Homeshake - 'Dynamic Meditation'
1:20:43 - Nap Eyes - 'Tribal Thoughts'
1:23:18 - Robert Ashley - 'In Sara, Mencken, Christ and Beethoven...'


“Love is the most universal, the most tremendous and the most mystical of cosmic forces. Love is the primal and universal psychic energy. Love is a sacred reserve of energy; it is like the blood of spiritual evolution.”
- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

"The Nazis were controlling France through the Vichy government and were bearing down on me big time. I knew I had to get out of Dodge. I was a fellow eternally concerned with questions of history and how to think about history. My two pals Brecht and Scholem were pulling me between Marxism and Jewish mysticism—two opposite directions if there ever were some. As a good Marxist, I should look at history only in terms of economics, revolution, and the class struggle... But I guess I'm just not a purist when it comes to Marxism, because I believe that "spiritual things" also matter. I have always been torn over whether to look at history from a materialist/Marxist perspective or through the lens of theology and mysticism. Why in tarnation do these two have to be so opposed?"
- Walter Benjamin

"'Oh taste and see that the Lord is good.' It is this tasting and seeing, however spiritualized it may become, that the genuine mystic desires. [Their] attitude is determined by the fundamental experience of the inner self which enters into immediate contact with God or the metaphysical Reality."
- Gershom Scholem

"In mysticism that love of truth which we saw as the beginning of all philosophy leaves the merely intellectual sphere, and takes on the assured aspect of a personal passion. Where the philosopher guesses and argues, the mystic lives and looks; and speaks, consequently, the disconcerting language of first-hand experience, not the neat dialectic of the schools. Hence whilst the Absolute of the metaphysicians remains a diagram —impersonal and unattainable—the Absolute of the mystics is lovable, attainable, alive."
- Evelyn Underhill


Further Info:
[1] Meister Eckhart's Influence on Modern Philosophy (Wikipedia Page)
[2] Jean-Luc Marion (Wikipedia Page)
[3] Henri de Lubac (Wikipedia Page)
[4] Julian of Norwich (Wikipedia Page)
[5] Martin Buber (Wikipedia Page)
[6] Abraham Joshua Heschel (Wikipedia Page)

Episode 13 // Devotional

This week's episode takes root in religious notions of the 'devotional', and draws from Kierkegaard's contemplations on 'faith' and its tension with Hegel's supposed 'rationality'. The playlist features ancient African Islamic spiritual music known as Gnawa music, a 'Toronto Blessing' section in reference to a 1994 revivalist phenomenon of the same name, and a liturgical Gregorian chant performed by Dead Can Dance and also one which has been sung nearly continuously in some churches since the medieval period.

Below is an early 19th-century painting of 'Sant Kabir with Namdeva, Raidas and Pipaji' now at the National Museum New Delhi. The teachings and thought of Kabir and other 'sants' like him, greatly influenced the 'Bhatki' movement of medieval India, which advocated for personal expressions of 'devotion' to Divinity and communal harmony among various religious groups existing at the time.

episode download: [forthcoming]


0:01:07 - station id: Jack Layton
0:01:18 - promo: cfrc twitter
0:01:31 - Yilma Hailu - 'Tewahido (Track 1)'
0:09:31 - John Tavener (performed by Anonymous 4) - 'The Lord's Prayer'
'":"":""' - talking: Ethiopian mezmur, Soren Kierkegaard's 'Fear and Trembling', [1]
0:13:29 - Tujiko Noriko - 'Let Me See Your Face'
0:18:41 - Sun Araw, M. Geddes Gengras, The Congos - 'New Binghi'
0:21:06 - Karlheinz Stockhausen - 'Gesang der Junglinge'
0:30:54 - White Fence - 'Is Growing Faith'
0:34:00 - Dead Can Dance - 'The Song of the Sibyl'
'":"":""' - talking: Karlheinz Stockhausen, Kierkegaard vs. Hegel, Song of the Sibyl, [2]
0:37:46 - Swearin - 'Divine/Mimosa'
0:40:22 - Cass McCombs - 'You Saved My Life'
0:45:46 - Old Haunt - 'Sky Burial'
0:48:01 - Loren Mazzacane & Kath Bloom - 'Religion is Something Within You'
0:50:44 - Bruce Springsteen - 'Reason to Believe'
0:54:52 - Viva Voce - 'Believer'
0:58:01 - Planet Creature - 'Hymns'


1:01:14 - station id: Amy Goodman
1:01:29 - psa: Anishinaabe & Haudenosaunee land
1:01:39 - psa: Noam Chomsky on community radio
1:02:25 - promo: Below the Decks (radio show)
1:02:56 - Deptford Goth - 'Time'
1:07:44 - Petra Glynt - 'Faithfuel'
1:11:55 - Holy Other - 'Touch'
1:16:11 - Sisyphus - 'Rhythm of Devotion'
1:22:12 - Mahmoud Guinia - 'Track 1'
'":"":""' - talking: Bruce Springsteen, Slavoj Zizek, Gnawa music, [3]

"The devotional path isn’t necessarily a straight line to enlightenment. There’s a lot of back and forth, negotiations if you will, between the ego and the soul. You look around at all the aspects of suffering, and you watch your heart close in judgment. Then you practice opening it again and loving this too, as a manifestation of the Beloved, another way the Beloved is taking form. Again your love grows vast. In Bhakti, as you contemplate, emulate, and take on the qualities of the Beloved, your heart keeps expanding until you see the whole universe as the Beloved, even the suffering."
- Ram Dass

"Von Balthasar lamented what he saw as the loss of the mystical, Marian character of the Church after the Council... he complained that it had become more than ever a male Church, if perhaps one should not say a sexless entity, in which woman may gain for herself a place to the extent that she is ready herself to become such an entity... Charlene Spretnak is an American feminist writer at the opposite end of the theological spectrum from von Balthasar, but in her book Missing Mary she appeals for a rediscovery of the Catholic Church as ‘a container and guardian of mysteries far greater than itself’. She describes what she sees as the destructive influence of rationalising modernity on Catholic devotion,"
- Tina Beattie

Further Info:
[1] 'Fear and Trembling' by Soren Kierkegaard (online book)
[2] The Song of the Sibyl
[3] 'The Interpassive Subject' by Slavoj Zizek

Episode 12 // UFOs

This week's episode explores modern expressions of religion and their intersections with the bizarre and intriguing universe of UFOs, aliens, and extraterrestrials. This week we alternate between a UFO-themed playlist featuring artists like Sun Ra and Craig Leon, and an interview with Diane Brisebois, a leader and spiritual guide in the Raelian Church -- the largest UFO religion in the world.

The image below is a cave painting from the Dogon tribe in Mali who, at points in time, worshiped extraterrestrial deities known as the Nommo, [1]. Craig Leon, first encountered sculptures of the Nommo in a Brooklyn Museum exhibition in 1973, which eventually lead him to release an album under John Fahey's Takoma record label -- a release re-imagining what music would sound like if handed down from an ancient alien species. RVNG International is reissuing his work in a compilation album this June called, 'Anthology of Interplanetary Folk Music Vol. 1: Nommos / Visiting'. [2]

episode download: [forthcoming]


0:02:06 - station id: Jack Layton
0:02:16 - promo: cfrc twitter
0:02:29 - Supergrass - 'Jesus Came From Outta Space'
0:06:37 - talking: introduction
0:07:31 - Quiet Evenings - 'Split with Sundrips'
'":"":""' - interview with Diane Brisebois: introduction, the 'elohim'
0:18:57 - Michael Hurley - 'No, No, No, I Won't Go Down No More'
0:23:06 - psa: vegetarianism
0:23:25 - ad: Tone Deaf - Allison Cameron and Kyoko Ogoda
0:24:34 - Craig Leon - 'Nommo'
0:31:30 - Pulse Emitter - 'Meditative Music 3'
'":"":""' - interview with Diane Brisebois: gender/sexual justice, Clitoraid hospital
0:35:55 - Matt Rogalsky - 'Eliane 1'
0:37:35 - Grouper - 'Alien Observer'
0:41:32 - Sufjan Stevens - 'Concerning The UFO Sighting Near Highland, Illinois'
0:44:01 - Pangea - 'Comet'
'":"":""' - interview with Diane Brisebois: sensual meditation, GMOs, act of apostasy, Raelian embassy
0:56:06 - No UFO's - '00/00/2010'

1:00:45 - psa: Noam Chomsky on community radio
1:01:31 - station id: Amy Goodman
1:01:47 - ad: The Sleepless Goat's soup program
1:02:17 - pro: cfrc programming volunteer application
1:02:53 - Acid Mothers Temple & The Melting Paraiso U.F.O. - 'God Bless AMT'
1:05:29 - Ornette Coleman - 'Space Church (Continuous Service)'
1:14:04 - Biosphere - 'Laika'
'":"":""' - interview with Diane Brisebois: controversy, connect with Raelian community
1:22:05 - The Orb - 'A Huge Eveer Growing Pulsating Brain That Rules From The Centre Of The Ultraworld
1:23:37 - talking: outro
1:24:41 - Sun Ra & His Arkestra - 'Love in Outer Space'

"If we then turn our attention to mind and realize that we have no definition of what mind is, why then is there any mystery in the fact that we have no definition of what the UFO is? The mind is present at hand in every conscious moment. It has been our constant companion for fifty thousand years, and we haven’t a clue as to what it is. So therefore, a manifestation of the other — the superego, or the extraterrestrial other like the UFO — it is not surprising that it is a mystery. I always hark back to the words of J.B.S. Haldane, the great British enzymologist, who said ‘reality is not only stranger than we suppose, it may be stranger than we can suppose."

- Terence McKenna (Aliens & Archetypes), [3]

More Info:
[1] Nommo of the Dogon Tribe of Mali
[2] Craig Leon's 'Nommos/Visiting' Release on RVNG International
[3] Terence McKenna on 'Aliens and Archetypes' (Video Interview)

Episode 11 // Water

Yesterday was International Water Day. Today, more than 760 million still do not have access to safe, clean drinking water. According to the World Health Organization, there are approximately 30,000 water-related fatalities every week. Water, though forgettably so at times, is a cornerstone of life.

In 'The Sea Around Us', Rachel Carson writes, "Each of us carries in our veins a salty stream in which the elements sodium, potassium, and calcium are combined in almost the same proportions as in sea water. This is our inheritance..."

Ancient poets and scribes saw blood as life, and they knew water to be life as well. The two have long been intertwined with our understanding of human existence. This week's episode contemplates aqueous themes in spirituality, especially within the Abrahamic tradition, and references Baal, the Canaanite deity of rain, Jesus and the wine miracle at the Marriage at Cana, as well as the textual seams in the Noahide narrative. Themes of water, blood and wine, in this week's musical selections, parallel reflections on the mystery of 'life' -- existentially, bodily, and also spiritually.

The image below depicts three ritual wine containers from the Shang dynasty, dating back to the 13th to 11th centuries BCE. The first two incorporate decorative motifs of the owl, a significant totemic animal in Shang ritual, thought by some scholars to be associated with ancestral beliefs and worship practices.

episode download: [forthcoming]


0:00:25 - station id: by Jack Layton
0:00:34 - promo: cfrc twitter
0:00:46 - Violent Femmes - 'Jesus Walking on the Water'
0:03:52 - Luke Winslow-King - 'The Coming Tide'
0:06:40 - Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - 'Jesus Met the Woman at the Well'
0:08:40 - Cabaal - 'Altar/Ascent'
":"9:08 - talking: on Elijah and the Prophets of Baal at Mount Carmel, [1]
0:14:47 - Ricky Eat Acid - 'God puts us all in the swimming pool'
0:18:22 - postmoderndisco - 'Mist'
0:23:36 - In The Guestroom feat. Bill Cassidy - 'Blood and Faith'
0:27:51 - Blondes - 'Wine'
":"8:03 - talking: on water, wine, and blood, and the marriage at Cana, [2]
0:34:48 - promo: below the decks (radio show)
0:35:19 - psa: traditional lands of the Anishinaabe & Haudenosaunee
0:35:29 - Liturgy - 'Glory Bronze'
0:42:10 - Neon Indian - 'Ephemeral Artery'
0:45:02 - Crystal Castles - 'Baptism'
0:49:14 - Evian Christ - 'Waterfall'
0:53:29 - Balam Acab - 'See Birds (Sun)'
0:57:39 - promo: AMS AGM CFRC fee increase vote
0:58:26 - promo: cfrc radio
0:58:42 - station id: by Amy Goodman
0:58:55 -  Salem - 'Water'


1:01:44 - Sleep ∞ Over - 'Romantic Streams'
1:05:31 - Linda Perhacs - 'River of God'
1:09:55 - Julian Lynch - 'The Flood'
":10:13 - talking: on textual seams of Noahide flood narrative, [3]
1:20:44 - Water Borders - 'Ararat'


"In our standard ideological tradition, the approach to Spirit is perceived as Elevation, as getting rid of the burden of weight, of the gravitating force which binds us to earth, as cutting links with material inertia and starting to “float freely”; in contrast to this, in Tarkovsky’s universe, we enter the spiritual dimension only via intense direct physical contact with the humid heaviness of earth (or stale water) —the ultimate Tarkovskian spiritual experience takes place when a subject is lying stretched on the earth’s surface, half submerged in stale water; Tarkovsky’s heroes do not pray on their knees, head turned upward, toward heaven, but while intensely listening to the silent palpitation of the humid earth."
- Slavoj Zizek (The Monstrosity of Christ, p. 243)

"The jug's gifts are water and wine, in which Heidegger finds the "marriage of sky and earth." For the rain is received from the sky and stored in the earth, and the wine is brought from the vine which is nourished by the sky. Water and wine are drinks for mortals providing nourishment and refreshment. Wine is also a consecrated drink we offer to the gods. Both together -- mortals and gods -- are found in the drink which the jug gives. Thus all four -- earth and sky, mortals and gods -- abide together in the jug."
- John Caputo (The Mystical Element in Heidegger's Thought, p. 85)


Further Info:
[1] Elijah and the Altar on Mount Carmel (Yale Video Lecture)
[2] Theology of Jesus and the Marriage at Cana (Google Book)
[3] Contradictions and Doublets in the Noahide Narrative (Yale Video Lecture)

Episode 10 // International Women's Day

Looking at the troubled religious landscape of today, one of the most significant religious tasks faith communities urgently face, in my opinion, is the eradication of gender oppression and a push for gender justice. In a religious context, gender oppression often seems to function within insulated religious logic that is carefully guarded and reinforced in interpretive frameworks of sacred texts, liturgy and religious practice. In these situations, I think, to some extent, social change can only come about when an individual or group has the courage to step into these little universes of insulated religious logic, and work with and from religious assumptions to communicate notions of 'social change' to spiritual/religious communities in a necessarily 'prophetic' way. That is why something like Feminist Theology seems so significant to me, and why I feel a denial and withdrawal from religion for the sake of 'progress' can be a problematic way to approach gender equality. [3]

This week's episode was in celebration of International Women's Day -- featuring a playlist full of brilliant women-identified artists and their musical work -- including some Top 40 Ghanian gospel, old-timey bluegrass, Korean geomungo improvisation, riot grrrl punk, theremin performance, Latin American folk, holy minimalism, devotional Thumrī, and a heavy serving of experimental / electroacoustic compositions.

Below is a sculpture entitled 'Expanded Expansion' by Eva Hesse -- an American Jewish artist mostly associated with movements like 'post-minimalism' and 'anti-form'. This particular piece is composed of cheesecloth, latex, and rope -- materials that degrade rather quickly -- a quality Hesse loved as it underscored not only the temporality of art, but also the way works of art not were not static materials devoid of physical context, but themselves 'processes' -- a notion very reminiscent of Alfred North Whitehead's process philosophy. The supporting rods beneath are composed of somewhat eternally durable fibre glass, a counterpoint Hesse took great joy in.

episode download: [forthcoming]

0:01:32 - station id: Jack Layton

0:01:43 - promo: cfrc twitter
0:01:55 - Esther Smith - 'Yesu Kristo Asore'
0:06:33 - Motion Sickness of Time Travel - 'Clairvoyance'
'":"":51 - talking: Brian Shimkovitz on Ghanian Gospel, clairvoyance, Johanna Beyer's legacy, Faust, [1], [2]
0:16:07 - Inga Copeland - 'faith'
0:20:28 - Johanna Beyer - 'Music of the Spheres'
0:26:24 - Else Marie Pade - 'Faust Og Mefisto'
0:33:25 - Clara Rockmore - 'Hebrew Melody (Achron)'
0:38:53 - promo: democracy now!
0:39:24 - psa: loving spoonful 
0:40:09 - Sofia Gubaidulina - 'Glorification of Death'
'":"0:48 - talking: Achron, Clara Rockmore, holy minimalism, activism of Hazel Dickens and Suni Paz, mythical figure of La Llorona
0:47:12 - Kim Jin-Hi - 'Dance of Meditation'
0:51:49 - Hazel Dickens - 'Here Today, Gone Tomorrow'
0:54:38 - Suni Paz - 'La Llorona (The Weeping Woman)'
0:58:43 - Sleater-Kinney - 'God is a Number'
1:02:30 - station id: Amy Goodman
1:02:45 - psa: vegetarianism
1:03:04 - promo: below the decks (radio show)
1:03:38 - talking: riot grrrl movement, Kesarbai Kerkar, Thumri, oracle bones, agincourt hymn 
1:08:18 - Kesarbai Kerkar - 'Bhairavi Thumri'
1:11:43 - Fifth Column - 'Ghost of a Buffalo'
0:17:39 - Pauline Oliveros - 'Oracle of Bones Mirror Dreams'
0:25:08 - Elizabeth Veldon - 'The Agincourt Carol 1'


“Women, not having recourse to a divinized feminine, have had their identities dictated to them by the rule of man, God as other/Other…as virgin mother, or as property of the male, women have played a part in the proceedings, but have not been able to claim a fully autonomous identity or subjectivity.”
- Luce Irigaray (Divine Women)

"This chapter is an effort to build an ironic political myth faithful to feminism, socialism, and materialism. Perhaps more faithful as blasphemy is faithful, than as reverent worship and identification. Blasphemy has always seemed to require taking things very seriously. I know no better stance to adopt from within the secular-religious, evangelical traditions of United States politics, including the politics of socialist feminism. Blasphemy protects one from the moral majority within, while still insisting on the need for community. Blasphemy is not apostasy. Irony is about contradictions that do not resolve into larger wholes, even dialectically, about the tension of holding incompatible things together because both or all are necessary and true. Irony is about humour and serious play. It is also a rhetorical strategy and a political method, one I would like to see more honoured within socialist-feminism. At the centre of my ironic faith, my blasphemy, is the image of the cyborg."
- Donna Haraway (A Cyborg Manifesto)


Further Info:
[1] Brian Shimkovitz Profile on RWM
[2] Esther Smith feature on Awesome Tapes of Africa
[3] Practical Feminist Theology Panel at Boston University (Video)

Episode 9 // Divine Beings

This week's episode is loosely based around the theme of 'divine beings' -- entities such as angels, demons, ghosts, nymphs, and the muses of Ancient Greece. My commentary remained rather skeletal this week, but the musical selections, I feel, do a very good job of reflecting some of the genres and outfits I've grown really attached to and have come to love immensely over my past four years here at Queen's.

The word 'angel' comes from the Greek word 'angelos' meaning 'messenger'. Theologically, they often represent a sort of mediation between humankind and the 'Divine' or 'God'. Tutelary angels (or 'guardian' angels) emerged in the religious imagination of the 5th-century C.E., largely from the work of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, who developed an elaborate 'hierarchy' of angels. (From this mysterious pseudopigrapher, we actually get the word 'hierarchy' -- hierarkhes or 'sacred ruler'.) But that aside, music in general has served, for me, as both a sort of comforting tutelary angel and a divine medium/messenger of information these past few years. So this is my personal tribute to music, my personal guardian angel, haha; hope you enjoy.

Below is an image of Damien Hirst's sculpture entitled 'Anatomy of an Angel' displayed at Tate Modern in London.

episode download: [forthcoming]

0:00:17 - id: Jack Layton
0:00:27 - promo: cfrc 
0:00:40 - Stars - 'Death to Death'
0:04:46 - Kelan Phillip Cohran & The Hypnotic Brass Ensemble - 'Apsara'
":"5:13 - talking: about Abaddon, Apsara, Gabriel, and Polyhymnia, [1]
0:14:03 - d'Eon - 'I Don't Want to Know'
0:20:43 - young family - '$$'
0:23:55 - Steve Hauschildt - 'Polyhymnia'
0:26:55 - Imperial Topaz - 'Angel of the Overpass'
0:31:56 - promo: volunteer application
0:33:15 - psa: snid (studies in national and international development)
0:34:00 - Oneohtrix Point Never - 'Boring Angel'
0:38:16 - DJ Elmoe - 'Whea Yo Ghost At, Whea Yo Dead Man'
0:40:45 - Don Cherry - 'Chenrezig'
":"4:22 - talking: on Chenrezig, developing tradition of 'Satan', and responsible interpretation, [2]
0:53:36 - Stereolab - 'Monstre Sacre'
0:57:21 - The Incredible String Band - 'Job's Tears'


1:04:04 - id: Amy Goodman
1:04:20 - psa: loving spoonful
1:05:06 - Bonnie 'Prince' Billy - 'Quail & Dumplings'
1:09:28 - The Blacktop Cadence - 'Are You My Angel'
1:14:21 - Earth - 'A Plague of Angels'
":"4:46 - talking: on feminine pronouns for G-d and Carl Jung's bird/angel archetype of the psyche, [3], [4], [5]


"Once upon a time there was a peasant woman and a very wicked woman she was. And she died and did not leave a single good deed behind. The devils caught her and plunged her into the lake of fire. So her guardian angel stood and wondered what good deed of hers he could remember to tell to God; 'She once pulled up an onion in her garden,' said he, 'and gave it to a beggar woman.' And God answered: 'You take that onion then, hold it out to her in the lake, and let her take hold and be pulled out. And if you can pull her out of the lake, let her come to Paradise, but if the onion breaks, then the woman must stay where she is.' The angel ran to the woman and held out the onion to her. 'Come,' said he, 'catch hold and I'll pull you out.' he began cautiously pulling her out. He had just pulled her right out, when the other sinners in the lake, seeing how she was being drawn out, began catching hold of her so as to be pulled out with her. But she was a very wicked woman and she began kicking them. 'I'm to be pulled out, not you. It's my onion, not yours.' As soon as she said that, the onion broke. And the woman fell into the lake and she is burning there to this day. So the angel wept and went away. So that's the story, Alyosha; I know it by heart, for I am that wicked woman myself. I boasted to Rakitin that I had given away an onion, but to you I'll say: ‘I've done nothing but give away one onion all my life, that's the only good deed I've done."

- Fyodor Dostoyevsky (The Brothers Karamazov)


Further Info:
[1] Dummy Interview with d'Eon
[2] The 'Satan' in Hebrew Scriptures (Yale Video Lecture)
[3] Feminine Conceptions of God in Hebrew Scripture
[4] Carl Jung on Divine Beings and Birds
[5] 'Angels, Spirits and the Devil' by Emil Brunner (Book Chapter)

Episode 8 // Mathematics

This week's episode explores the strange intersection of religion and mathematics, working through religious traditions of numerology and numeric typologies, fractals and their relationship to Daoism and Godel, Kepler's theological contemplations, and set theory's relationship to Schoenberg's serialism. It's a messy and cursory leap through deep oceans of provocative, nuanced and critical discourse spanning centuries of religious and intellectual thinking -- prodding the many mathematical conceptualizations of existence, meaning, and the paradoxical finitude/infinitude of the universe itself.

The image below is of a 15th-century 'thangka' painting from Tibet. It is a set of four mandalas depicting the esoteric teachings of the Vajravali cycle, often accredited to the 11th-century pandit Abhayakaragupta. It is composed of recursive numeric patterns similar to those of mathematical 'fractals'.

episode download: [forthcoming]

0:00:22 - station id: Jack Layton
0:00:33 - promo: cfrc twitter
0:00:45 - De La Soul - 'The Magic Number'
0:04:01 - Loscil - 'Triton'
0:0":""' - talking: triton, fractals and Daoism, Kepler and Pythagoras' 'music of the spheres' [1], [2], [3] 
0:10:45 - Damien Jurado - 'Magic Number'
0:13:55 - Emperor X - 'Sfearion'
0:18:14 - Laurie Spiegel - 'Kepler's Harmony of the Worlds'
0:28:53 - Boris - 'Six, Three Times'
0:31:45 - Pixies - 'Monkey Go To Heaven'
0:34:44 - ad: vapours concert at modern fuel
0:34:53 - ad: living live at modern fuel
0:36:31 - Slowdive - '40 Days'
0:39:47 - Hammock - 'God Send Us a Signal'
0:0":""' - talking: 40 as a biblical number, 666 and Nero, Bertrand Russell, Godel, [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9]
0:44:20 - Laurel Halo - 'Hour Logic'
0:53:27 - BADBADNOTGOOD - 'CS60'


1:00:18 - ad: kingston canadian film festival
1:01:25 - promo: wunderground presented by qtv and cfrc
1:02:10 - ad: a tribe called red
1:02:55 - station id: stereolab
1:03:07 - Fever Ray - 'Seven'
1:08:17 - Autre Ne Veut - 'Two Days of Rain'
1:11:07 - Sandra McCracken - '980 Anne Steele'
1:16:04 - Tony Conrad & Faust - 'From the Side of the Machines'
1:1":""' - talking: 99 and 'amen', serialism, [10], [11]
1:21:05 - Duke Ellington - 'Ninety-Nine Percent'
1:23:00 - Arnold Schoenberg - 'Psalm 130 (De Profundis, Op. 150)'
1:28:22 - Logos - 'Ex 101'


"...[N]ot by renunciation alone can we build a temple for the worship of our own ideals. Haunting foreshadowings of the temple appear in the realm of imagination, in music, in architecture, in the untroubled kingdom of reason, and in the golden sunset magic of lyrics, where beauty shines and glows, remote from the touch of sorrow, remote from the fear of change, remote from the failures and disenchantments of the world of fact. In the contemplation of these things the vision of heaven will shape itself in our hearts, giving at once a touch stone to judge the world about us, and an inspiration by which to fashion to our needs whatever is not incapable of serving as a stone in the sacred temple."
- Bertrand Russell

"Music is the pleasure the human mind experiences from counting without being aware that it is counting."
- Gottfried Leibniz

"Whatsoever is, is in God, and without God nothing can be, or be conceived."
- Baruch Spinoza

"Religion may also be developed as a philosophical system built on axioms. In our time rationalism is used in an absurdly narrow sense …. Rationalism involves not only logical concepts. Churches deviated from religion which had been founded by rational men."
- Kurt Godel

"Religion is the vision of something which stands beyond, behind and within the passing flux of immediate things; something which is real, and yet waiting to be realized; something which is a remote possibility, and yet the greatest of present facts; something that gives meaning to all that passes, and yet eludes apprehension..."
- Alfred North Whitehead


Further Info:
[1] Daoism and Fractals by James Miller (Video Lecture)
[2] Fractals and 'Godel, Escher, Bach' (MIT Video Lecture)
[3] Laurie Spiegel and Kepler's Harmony of the Worlds (New Yorker Article)
[4] Apocalyptic Literature and 666 in the Book of Revelation (Yale Video Lecture)
[5] Number 40 in Religion (Wikipedia Article)
[6] Mathematics and Religion (Video Discussion)
[7] 'Mysticism and Logic' by Bertrand Russell (Essay Collection)
[8] Godel's 'Proof of God'
[9] Godel's Incompletetness Theorem (MIT Video Lecture)
[10] Early Christian Letters and the Number 99 with AnneMarie Luijendijk (HarvardX Video Discussion)
[11] Dissertation on Schoenberg's Psalms and Serialism (PDF)

Episode 7 // Language

A theological movement that I've found very useful in my own self-study of Christianity is that of 'postliberal theology'. A great deal of its framework is based on the thinking of the great analytic philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein -- and his ideas of 'language-games'. It perceives Christianity as some 'overarching narrative', and within it, its own embedded grammar and logic, culture and practices. The movement in some sense rejects an epistemology founded on the Cartesian cogito, but instead reclaims one based on the language and culture of the particular community and its particular tradition. Paradoxically, it is rather unconcerned with an exegesis founded on historicism, and is more so taken with interpretation as an 'act of imagination' with the needs of the community at the forefront. It is similarly unconcerned with the 'objective' meanings and truths of text as well as the scholarly adventure of retrieving 'original meaning' of texts (as if such a thing exists, in light of Gadamer's hermeneutics), and is more so inclined to the non-foundationalist task of interpreting what the text means for a particular community, now. This emphasis on the particular, and the eschewing of the universal, intends to empower normative interpretations of texts that incite action; this in some sense arising as a response to the frustrating liberal inaction of the Christian church under the Nazi regime and other similar shortcomings of theological liberalism.

This is the sort of context that non-explicitly serves as a backdrop for this week's episode themed on 'language'. I find a great deal of significance in 'language' and firmly believe it to be foundational for not only spirituality, but consciousness and human existence itself. I attempted to explore the far-reaching theme of 'language' in this week's playlist with references from Saussure's pioneering work on structuralism, to the semiotics of the 'I am' statements Jesus uttered in Johannine literature, to Berio's exploration of the text's relationship to vocalization and meaning, and to the theological relationship between Pentecost and the tower of Babel. Hopefully it was relevant to your relaxing 'reading week' wherever you happened to be.

The image below is from a 12th century illuminated manuscript known as 'St. Albans Psalter' or the 'Albani Psalter'. It illustrates, in characteristically English Romanesque style, the biblical story of Pentecost and the related imagery of glossolalia (speaking in tongues).

[download forthcoming]


0:00:53 - station id: Holy Fuck
0:00:59 - promo: cfrc twitter
0:01:10 - promo: black history month, prisons, racism
0:02:19 - The Magnetic Fields - 'The Death of Ferdinand de Saussure'
0:05:28 - talking: on Saussure's signified/signifier theory, lectio divina, Johannine 'I am' statements, [1]
0:10:15 - Boredoms - 'Super You'
0:17:51 - Toro y Moi - 'Divina'
0:20:07 - Pelt - 'True Vine'
0:36:38 - promo: brother brian's bluegrass (radio show)
0:37:25 - The Golden Gate Quartet - 'He Never Said a Mumblin' Word'
0:40:42 - Luciano Berio - 'A-Ronne'
0:47:52 - talking: on Luciano Berio and nuances of meaning, text and vocalization, Resurrection Williamsburg, glossolalia, theology of Babel and Pentecost (via William Cavanaugh), [2], [3]
0:55:29 - Greg Scheer - 'Glossolalia'
0:58:27 - station id: Shad
0:58:31 - promo: below the decks (radio show)
0:59:02 - psa: Anishinabe and Haudenosaunee territory
0:59:12 - Spacetime Continuum & Terrence McKenna - 'Speaking in Tongues'
1:09:40 - Fiona Soe Paing - 'Tower of Babel'
1:12:54 - Anthony Braxton - 'Language Improvisations' (Excerpt)
1:20:11 - Matmos - 'Roses & Teeth for Ludwig Wittgenstein'
1:23:32 - talking: on Wittgenstein, [4]
1:28:49 - Jani Christou - 'Tongues of Fire: A Pentecost Oratoiro' (Excerpt)


"[A] religion can be viewed as a kind of cultural and/or linguistic framework or medium that shapes the entirety of life and thought. It functions somewhat like a Kantian a priori, although in this case the a priori is a set of acquired skills that could be different. It is not primarily an array of beliefs about the true and the good (though it may involve these) or a symbolism expressive of basic attitudes, feelings, or sentiments (those these will be generated). Rather it is similar to an idiom that makes possible the description of realities, the formulations of beliefs, and the experiencing of inner attitudes, feelings, and sentiments. Like a culture or language, it is a communal phenomenon that shapes the subjectivities of individuals rather than being primarily a manifestation of those subjectivities. It comprises a vocabulary of discursive and nondiscursive symbols together with a distinctive logic of grammar in terms of which this vocabularly can be meaningfully deployed. Lastly, just as a language (or “language game,” to use Wittgenstein’s phrase) is correlated with a form of life, and just as a culture has both cognitive and behavioral dimensions, so it is also in the case of a religious tradition. Its doctrines, cosmic stories or myths, and ethical directives are integrally related to the rituals it practices, the sentiments or experiences it evokes, the actions it recommends, and the institutional forms it develops. All this is involved in comparing a religion to a cultural-linguistic system.

...It remains true, therefore, that the most easily pictured of the contrasts between a linguistic-cultural model of religion and an experiential-expressive one is that the former reverses the relation of the inner and the outer. Instead of deriving external features of a religion from inner experience, it is the inner experiences which are viewed as derivative."
- George Lindbeck (The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age)


Further Info:
[1] Yale New Testament Lecture on Johannine Literature (Video Lecture)
[2] Meaning in Relation to Text and Vocalization by Luciano Berio (Short Text)
[3] William Cavanaugh on Babel and Pentecost (Video Lecture)
[4] Wittgenstein His Life and Philosophy (Audio Lecture)

Episode 6 // Sanctums

This week's episode explores the spatial dimensions of spirituality and how we relate to different spiritual conceptualizations of space. I've tried to curate musical expressions that express a spectrum of ideas of what it can mean for a place to be sacred or divine. As a religious individual myself who has personally come to perceive all of planet Earth as a sanctum of sorts, my sense of 'sacred' space is deeply intertwined with notions of ecological justice -- a theme Wade Davis (a Canadian anthropologist I really admire) continually evokes in much of his public work. Davis argues:

"[A] young kid from the Andes who's raised to believe that that mountain is an Apu spirit that will direct his or her destiny will be a profoundly different human being, and have a different relationship to that resource or that place, than a young kid from Montana raised to believe that a mountain is a pile of rock ready to be mined. Whether it's the abode of a spirit or a pile of ore is irrelevant. What's interesting is the metaphor that defines the relationship between the individual and the natural world. I was raised in the forests of British Columbia to believe those forests existed to be cut. That made me a different human being than my friends amongst the Kwagiulth who believe that those forests were the abode of Huxwhukw and the Crooked Beak of Heaven and the cannibal spirits that dwelled at the north end of the world,"

The image below was taken at Temppeliaukio, a rock-hewn Lutheran church in Helsinki, beloved for its idiosyncratic architecture and exceptional acoustics. Often referred to as 'Church of the Rock', it is a monolithic church cut out from a single block of stone -- something it shares in common with 12th century churches in the Ethiopian town of Lalibela.
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[download forthcoming]


0:03:08 - promo: 'aelita: queen of mars' screening with music by Fire Moss
0:03:37 - station id: Jack Layton
0:03:48 - promo: cfrc funding drive prizes
0:04:39 - psa: four directions aboriginal center
0:05:37 - Conjunto of Cusipata (Smithsonian Folkways) - 'Chileno'
0:08:39 - Eliane Radigue - 'Kailasha' (Excerpt 1)
0:0":""' - talking: on Lord of Quyllur Rit'i Festival in Peru, Eliane Radigue and Buddhism, mountain themes in Canaanite and Hebrew religion, [1], [2]
0:12:19 - The Incredible String Band - 'The Mountain of God'
0:14:12 - Elvis Presley - 'Crying in the Chapel'
0:16:35 - Death Cab for Cutie - 'St. Peter's Cathedral'
0:21:05 - Julia Brown - 'library'
0:23:40 - Hop Along - 'Diamond Mine'
0:29:13 - Jawbreaker - 'Bivouac'
0:39:23 - The Stupid Stupid Henchmen - 'Catacombs Are COOL'
0:40:57 - Eliane Radigue - 'Kailasha' (Excerpt 2)
0:4":""' - talking: on Tao Lin, various definitions, and Lalibela, Ethiopia, [3]
0:43:42 - Jason Lescalleet - 'Friday Night in a Catholic Home'
0:45:49 - Eschaton - 'Trap Tune (Scrivel, Christ's Church)' (with funding drive plea)
0:51:52 - Sanctums - 'Brass Towers'
0:56:41 - Caribou - 'Lalibela'
0:59:05 - The Welcome Wagon - 'Unless the Lord the House Shall Build'
1:00:54 - Denison Witmer - 'Two and a Glass Rose'
1:04:16 - Eliane Radigue - 'Kailasha' (Excerpt 3)
1:0":""' - talking: on cfrc funding drive, Cibo Matto reunion, 285 Kent
1:07:35 - promo: cfrc funding drive
1:07:54 - promo: cfrc funding drive (3 choices)
1:08:09 - Cibo Matto - 'Lobby'
1:12:08 - Kitty and Pinkiepieswear - '♥♥♥285♥♥♥'
1:16:47 - Active Child - 'I'm in Your Church at Night'
'":20:05 - talking: on cfrc funding drive, Flannery O'Connor
1:21:22 - Wise Blood - 'Penthouse Suites'
1:22:53 - Purity Ring - 'Fineshrine'
1:27:22 - Vessel - 'Temples'
1:29:01 -  psa: SNID (Students in National and International Development) lectures


"The soul is feminine before God, waiting in a state of surrender for the Beloved to come. The sixteenth-century Indian princess and poet Mirabai knew this mystical truth. Mirabai was devoted to Krishna, her “Dark Lord,” and once, when she was wandering in some woodlands sacred to Krishna, a famous theologian and ascetic named Jiv Gosvami denied her access to one of her Dark Lord’s temples because she was a woman. Mirabai shamed him with the words: “Are not all souls female before God?” Jiv Gosvami bowed his head and led her into the temple.

The lover waits for her Beloved. And when He comes to us, in those moments of meeting and merging that are so intimate that one can hardly speak of them, the lover is feminine, pierced, penetrated by the tremendous bliss of His love."
- Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee


"In the monarchical model, God is distant from the world, relates only to the human world, and controls that world through domination and benevolence. On the first point: the relationship of a king to his subjects is necessarily a distant one for royalty is "untouchable." It is the distance, the difference, the otherness of God, that is underscored with this imagery. God as king is in his kingdom -- which is not of this earth -- and we remain in another place, far from his dwelling. In this picture God is worldless and the world is Godless: the world is empty of God’s presence. Whatever one does for the world is not finally important in this model, for its ruler does not inhabit it as his primary residence, and his subjects are well advised not to become too enamored of it either.

...As an alternative model I suggest considering the world as God’s body. In what ways would we think of the relationship between God and the world were we to experiment with the metaphor of the universe as God’s body, God’s palpable presence in all space and time? If the entire universe is expressive of God’s very being -- the incarnation, if you will -- do we not have the beginnings of an imaginative picture of the relationship between God and the world peculiarly appropriate as a context for interpreting the salvific love of God for our time? If what is needed in our ecological, nuclear age is an imaginative vision of the relationship between God and the world that underscores their interdependence and mutuality, empowering a sensibility of care and responsibility toward all life, how would it help to see the world as the body of God? This image, radical as it may seem (in light of the dominant metaphor of a king to his realm) for imagining the relationship between God and the world, is a very old one with roots in Stoicism and elliptically in the Hebrew Scriptures... it surfaced powerfully in Hegel as well as in twentieth-century process theologies. The mystical tradition within Christianity has carried the notion implicitly, even though the metaphor of body may not appear: "The world is charged with the grandeur of God" (Gerard Manley Hopkins). "There is communion with God, and a communion with the earth, and a communion with God through the earth" (Teilhard)."
- Sallie McFague, [4]


Further Info:
[1] Canadian Anthropologist, Wade Davis, on the Star Festival in Peru (Video Lecture Excerpt)
[2] Onomastics and Theophorics in Canaanite and Hebrew Religion (Yale Video Lecture)
[3] Lalibela, Ethiopia (UNESCO profile)
[4] 'Imaging a Theology of Nature: The World as God’s Body' by Sallie McFague (Essay)