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