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.
.

[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)

Episode 5 // Lunar New Year

This week's episode explores a variety of Lunar New Year festivities, including Tet (in Vietnam), Losar (in Tibet), Spring Festival (in China), Seollal (in Korea), and Tsagaan Sar (in Mongolia) -- featuring Chinese lute music from the acclaimed pipa player Wu Man, a film score by avant-garde/kosmiche German band Popol Vuh, a 5000-year-old circle-dance tradition from Korea, and some Mongolian throat-singing.

This week's episode also makes nods to the Shēngxiào's Year of the Horse. It's been difficult to trace the origins of the Shēngxiào (translated literally as 'birth likeness', sometimes known in English as the Chinese Zodiac), but groups of twelve animals began appearing in the Zhan Guo Period (Warring States Period), and a fixed list of twelve animals emerged by the Han Dynasty. Traditions related to associating birth years with the twelve zodiac signs were popularized during the North Zhou Dynasty (557-581 C.E.). Below is an image of Ai Wei Wei's 'Circle of Animals / Zodiac Heads' exhibit -- based on traditional zodiac sculptures from the fountain clock of Yuan Ming Yuan (Old Summer Palace), before they were looted by the French and British in 1860 during the Second Opium War. (Image Source: Ding Musa at LACMA)




0:00:51 - psa: Noam Chomsky on community radio
0:01:37 - station id: Amy Goodman
0:01:52 - promo: Brother Brian's Bluegrass (radio show)
0:02:40 - Beach Fossils - 'The Horse'
0:05:26 - Yao Min & Yao Li - 'Gong Xi, Gong Xi (Congratulations)'
0:08:21 - Popol Vuh - 'Kailash' (film score)
0:0":""' - talking: on Losar (Tibetan Lunar New Year), pilgrimage to Mount Kailash, [1], [2]
0:12:57 - Traditional (Smithsonian Folkways) - 'Dropa (Two Shepherd Songs)'
0:15:01 - Techung - 'Losar'
0:20:03 - promo: CFRC Funding Drive Poetry Event
0:20:34 - promo: CFRC Funding Drive Teaser
0:21:08 - Doan Ca Hue - 'Long Ngam (Dragon Recitation)'
0:23:04 - Dinh Dung, Thu Hang, Doan Ca Kich Hue - 'Ho Gia Gao (Chant of Pounding Rice)'
0:27:54 - Doan Ca Kich Hue, Hien Luong - 'Doan Xuan (Spring Unity)'
0:29:00 - Popol Vuh - 'Kailash' (film score)
0:"":""' - talking: on Tet (Vietnamnese Lunar New Year), pipa player Wu Man
0:31:49 - Wu Man - 'White Snow in a Sunny Spring'
0:35:08 - The Shins - 'Mine's Not a High Horse'
0:38:28 - The Heliocentrics & Mulatu Astatke - 'Chinese New Year'
0:42:15 - St. Vincent - 'Year of the Tiger'
0:45:43 - Popol Vuh - 'Kailash' (film score)
0:"":""' - talking: on Chinese zodiac, Jim Jarmusch's documentary on Neil Young, tweets by @horse_ebooks, [3], [4]
0:48:36 - Sufjan Stevens - 'Year of the Horse'
1:01:50 - ad: reelout queer film festival
1:02:50 - station id: Yo La Tengo
1:03:00 - psa: media co-op
1:03:30 - Okkyung Lee - 'One Hundred Years Old Rain (The Same River Twice)'
1:09:40 - Kuktan Arirang - 'Kang-Kang-Soo-Wol-Nae'
1:12:51 - Popol Vuh - 'Kailash' (film score)
1:"":"" - talking: on Seollal (Korean Lunar New Year), tteokguk tradition, [5]
1:14:59 - MeryMos - '까치까치설날은 (Korean New Year's Day Song)'
1:16:01 - Baterdene & Khongorzul - 'The River Herlen' (Mongolian long song)
1:20:01 - Popol Vuh - 'Kailash' (film score)
1:"":""' - talking: on Tsagaan Sar (Mongolian Lunar New Year), Mongolian long song and throat singing (overtone singing), [6], [7]
1:21:59 - White Moon - 'Altain Magtaal' (Mongolian throat singing)
1:26:05 - Timbre Timbre - 'Beat the Dead Horse'
1:30:58 - Bishop Allen - 'Dimmer'

"We are born at a given moment, in a given place and, like vintage years of wine, we have the qualities of the year and of the season of which we are born. Astrology does not lay claim to anything more." - Carl Jung

Further Info:
[1] 'Wheel of Time' by Werner Herzog (documentary film)
[2] 'Kailash: Pilgrimage to the Throne of Gods' by Florian Fricke (film art)
[3] Jim Jarmusch talking to Neil Young about the Bible (video clip)
[4] The Now Defunct @horse_ebooks (twitter page)
[5] Vegan Tteokguk Recipe (recipe)
[6] Mongolian Long Song (wikipedia article)
[7] Mongolian Throat Singing (Overtone Singing) (wikipedia article)

Episode 4 // Invocations

This week's episode explores the theme of invocations and prayers. I find it very easy sometimes to perceive music recordings as prayers, maybe because I grew up within this linguistic universe that so frequently turned to words like 'prayer' in everyday conversation. When I was younger, prayer took on the form of nearly paraphrased recitations that were very devotional in nature, something I felt unsettled not engaging in before I slept. They took on this very specific form every night, divided thematically, and often unintentionally served as a liminal space between waking awareness and sleep. In recent years, prayer has sometimes been, for me, my purest expression of anguish, ecstasy, fatigue, futility, doubt, faith, terror, vexation, sadness, compassion, and many other vague abstractions that do not find adequate corporeal channels otherwise.

I often feel like I am praying when I listen to music as well. In fact, many other 'mundane' activities, like washing dishes or eating food, also sometimes will channel through this sacramental lens inside my mind and become acts of prayer in and of themselves. Anyways, that was just a personal context for this episode. Below is a beautiful prayer by Julian of Norwich, a celebrated Christian mystic, considered a significant influence in Feminist theology, and by some, a proto-universalist.

"In you, Father all-mighty, we have our preservation and our bliss.

In you, Christ, we have our restoring and our saving.

You are our Mother, Brother, and Saviour.

In you, our Lord the Holy Spirit, is marvellous and plenteous grace.

You are our clothing; for love you wrap us and embrace us.

You are our maker, our lover, our keeper.

Teach us to believe that by your grace all shall be well,

and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.

Amen." - Julian of Norwich

The image below was taken at the Freer Gallery located in Washington, DC's Smithsonian complex. It is a glazed large-tile mihrab panel dating back to early 14th century Iran -- an example of 'arabesque' design from the Il-Khanid period. A mihrab is often an ornamental niche that serves as the focal point in  Islamic Mosques, marking the direction of Mecca to which Muslims face when reciting prayers. A verse of the Koran is inscribed in this mihrab from sura 11, verse 114: "In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate. Perform prayer morning and evening, and in the watchesof the night. Behold, good works and drive away evil.", [1]

download: [forthcoming]


00:00:50 - station id: Amy Goodman
00:01:06 - psa: Noam Chomsky on community radio
00:01:52 - promo: Brother Brian's Bluegrass (radio show)
00:02:40 - Phosphorescent - 'Sun, Arise! (An Invocation, An Introduction)'
00:05:48 - Pete Namlook - 'Spiritual Invocation'
00:"":""' - talking: on theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, [2]
00:09:02 - Xiu Xiu - 'Dear God, I Hate Myself'
00:12:10 - Rilo Kiley - 'Hail To Whatever You Found In The Sunlight That Surrounds You'
00:15:33 - Bifrost Arts (feat. Molly Parden) - 'Bonhoeffer's Prayer'
00:17:56 - Charley Patton - 'Prayer of Death, Part 1 & 2'
00:22:56 - Harry Partch - 'Pray For Me'
00:26:32 - Archie Shepp - 'A Prayer'
00:"":""' - talking: on musicians Harry Partch, Archie Shepp, and Jason Pierce
00:33:00 - Pedro the Lion - 'I am Always the One Who Calls'
00:36:44 - Spacemen 3 - 'Lord, Can You Hear Me?'
00:41:18 - Blind Willie Johnson - 'Lord, I Just Can't Keep From Crying'
00:44:22 - psa: the media co-op
00:44:51 - promo: Below The Decks (radio show)
00:45:22 - Pavement - 'Here'
00:49:19 - Burial - 'Come Down To Us'
01:02:26 - station id: by Yo La Tengo
01:02:35 - promo: Suspended Particulate (radio show)
01:03:08 - psa: vegetarianism
01:03:27 - Panda Bear - 'Untitled 08'
01:06:15 - Lisa Gerrard & Patrick Cassidy - 'Amergin's Invocation'
01:"":""' - talking: on Jacques Derrida and theologian John Caputo, [3], [4]
01:12:38 - Jeff Buckley - 'New Year's Prayer'
01:17:27 - Kid Cudi - 'The Prayer'
01:21:08 - How To Dress Well - 'Lover's Start'
01:23:56 - Bill Callahan -  'Invocation of Ratiocination'
01:"":""' - talking: on various musicians and Southern English Gypsy songs
01:26:37 - The Beach Boys - 'Our Prayer'
01:27:48 - Sheila Smith - 'Dear Father, Build Me a Boat'

"On the one hand, a prayer has to be a mixture of something that is absolutely singular and secret -- idiomatic, untranslatable -- and, on the other hand, a ritual that involves the body in coded gestures and that uses a common, intelligible language. That is the way I pray, if I pray. And I pray all the time, even now. But there is a problem. My way of praying, if I pray, has more than one edge at the time. There is somethiing very childish here, and when one prays one is always a child. If I gather images from my childhood, I find images of God as a Father -- a severe, just Father with a beard -- and also, at the same time, images of a Mother who thinks I am innocent, who is ready to forgive me. This is the childish layer of my prayers, those I perform once a day, for instance, before I go to bed, or a prayer that I might pray right now. There is another layer, of course, which involves my culture, my philosophical experience, my experience of a critique of religion that goes from Feuerbach to Nietzsche. This is the experience of a nonbeliever, someone who is constantly suspicious of the child, someone who asks 'To whom am I praying? Whom am I addressing? Who is God?' In this layer -- this layer of a more sophisticated experience, if I can put it that way -- I find a way of meditating about the who that is praying and the who that is receiving the prayer. I know that this appears negative, but it isn't; it is a way of thinking when praying that does not simply negate prayer. It is a way of asking all the questions that we are posing at this conference, all of them. These questions are a part of my experience of prayer."
- Jacques Derrida (from interview panel, 'On Religion', in response to John Caputo), [3]


Further Info:
[1] Mihrab Panel at the Freer Gallery
[2] Stanley Hauerwas on Truth and the Theology of Bonhoeffer (Video Lecture)
[3] Jacques Derrida, 'On Religion' Conference Panel, (Audio Interview)
[4] 'The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida' by John Caputo (Google Book)

Show Corrections:
1.) Mojave 3's 'Prayer for the Paranoid' never made it to air this week.
2.) Apologies for the various mispronunciations.

Episode 3 // Martin Luther King, Jr.

For me, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was one of the greatest prophetic voices of our time -- a deeply engaging intellectual, rooted in the theological and philosophical traditions, extolling the virtues of disarmament, non-violent resistance, economic equality, civil rights, and social justice. But as Dr. Cornel West would point out, King was but one voice in a wave of many standing up for the rights of their fellow human beings -- and though one may see King as flawed in his tendencies towards notions like patriarchy and homophobia -- his legacy would paradoxically live on, and still does today in the struggles for gender and ecological justice, as many within those movements feel deeply indebted to King's courage and ethos. The image below is King (centre) marching at the Arlington National Cemetery in 1967, with Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel (two left of King), and others in CALCAV (Clergy and Laity Concerned About Vietnam), an organization Daniel Berrigan helped found, calling the US government to end its war against Vietnam.










episode download: [coming soon]

00:00:49 - station id: Jack Layton
00:01:00 - promo: Below The Decks (radio show)
00:01:32 - psa: media co-op
00:02:01 - Ethiopian Orthodox Mezmur (Traditional) - 'Teweldenaho'
00:07:41 - speaking: on mezmur, King's dissertation on Tillich and Wieman, and theologian James Cone [1], [2]
00:10:50 - Cocteau Twins - 'Strange Fruit'
00:12:42 - Mavis Staples - 'Eyes On The Prize'
00:16:48 - Jim James - 'God's Love To Deliver'
00:20:25 - Wadada Leo Smith - 'Martin Luther King, Jr.'
'"":21:00 - talking: on the 'letter from a birmingham jail' and the 'march on washington' [3]
00:28:32 - Bob Dylan & Joan Baez - 'When The Ship Comes In'
00:31:55 - Funkadelic - 'Can You Get To That'
00:34:46 - promo: Brother Brian's Bluegrass (radio show)
00:35:33 - psa: vegetarianism
00:35:53 - Robert Hood - 'Blackness'
00:40:18 - John Coltrane - 'Alabama'
'"":40:24 - talking: on detroit, the 1963 birmingham church bombing, and tributes to King [4]
00:45:31 - Pete Seeger - 'We Shall Overcome'
00:51:32 - Otis Spann with Muddy Waters & His Band - 'Tribute to Martin Luther King'
00:56:12 - Nina Simone - 'Sunday In Savannah'

01:02:15 - station id: Amy Goodman
01:02:30 - promo: Alternative Frequency (radio show)
01:03:13 - psa: Noam Chomsky on community radio
01:04:01 - U2 - 'MLK' (prod. by Brian Eno)
01:06:32 - The Fugees - 'A Change Is Gonna Come'
01:09:14 - Times New Viking - 'Martin Luther King Day'
'"":"9:23 - talking: on Rosa Parks, Dr. Julia Yasuda, and the continuing legacy of King [5]
01:11:58 -  Public Enemy - 'By The Time I Get To Arizona'
01:16:47 -  Antony & The Johnsons - 'Free At Last' (featuring Dr. Julia Yasuda)
01:18:24 -  Big K.R.I.T. - '2000 & Beyond'
01:22:41 -  Fannie Lou Hamer - 'Go Tell It On The Mountain'
01:25:47 -  Rev. Gary Davis - 'Lord, I Just Feel Like Goin' On'
01:29:18 -  Rev. C.L. Franklin - 'I Will Trust In The Lord'

"Perhaps it is appropriate at this point to say a word concerning the general philosophical and theological orientation of Wieman and Tillich. For Wieman, God, or “creativity,” or “the creative event,” is the producer, or the production of unexpected, unpredictable good. In specifying the nature of the creative event Wieman is both eloquent and illuminating.

Throughout Wieman’s thought it is very easy to see the influence of Whitehead and Dewey. His naturalism and empiricism are quite reminiscent of Dewey. Like Dewey, he speaks of processes of creation, and also describes the production of good as issuing from a context of events. On the other hand, he goes beyond Dewey by insisting that the emergence of value is the work of God. Wieman sees a great deal of value in Whitehead’s “principle of concretion,’’ but he is generally skeptical of his metaphysical speculations. Disagreeing both with Whiteheadian metaphysics and Dewey’s humanistic naturalism, Wieman’s thought lies between these systems, containing a few features of both, and some few emphases foreign to both.

The immediate background of Tillich’s philosophy is the ontological and historical strains of nineteenth century German speculation. The later, post- Bohme philosophy of Schelling, the various mid-century reactions against the panlogism of Hegel, like Feuerbach and the early Marx, Nietzsche and the “philosophy of life,” and the more recent existentialism, especially of Heidegger- all these have contributed to Tillich’s formulation of philosophic problems.
   
There is also a monistic strain in Tillich’s thinking which is reminiscent of Plotinus, Hegel, Spinoza and Vedanta thought. In his conception of God he seems to be uniting a Spinozistic element, in which God is not a being, but the power of being, with a profound trinitarian interpretation of this, which allows for what is traditionally called transcendence."

- Martin Luther King, Jr. (Dissertation Excerpt)


"Segregation, to use the terminology of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, substitutes an "I it" relationship for an "I thou" relationship and ends up relegating persons to the status of things. Hence segregation is not only politically, economically and sociologically unsound, it is morally wrong and sinful. Paul Tillich has said that sin is separation. Is not segregation an existential expression of man's tragic separation, his awful estrangement, his terrible sinfulness? Thus it is that I can urge men to obey the 1954 decision of the Supreme Court, for it is morally right; and I can urge them to disobey segregation ordinances, for they are morally wrong."

- Martin Luther King, Jr. (Letter From a Birmingham Jail)


Further Info:
[1] Martin Luther King, Jr.'s PhD dissertation on the conception of God in the theologies of Paul Tillich and Henry Nelson Wieman (PDF)
[2] James Cone's 'The Cross and the Lynching Tree' (Google book)
[3] HarvardX Teaching Staff for 'The Letters of the Apostle Paul' discuss King's 'Letter From a Birmingham Jail' (Video)
[4] Robert Hood interview with The Quietus
[5] James Cone and Taylor Branch on MLK's fight for economic justice (Video)

Episode 2 // Holy Days

This week is as good a time as ever to keep wishing your friends 'happy holidays!' There are a variety of spiritual festivities occurring this week in various places around the world such as Japan, India, Tibet, Pakistan, and Ethiopia. This week's episode commemorates each of these special and sacred days celebrated in the lives of so many different people around the world. Comparative religion scholar, Karen Armstrong (a recipient of an honourary degree at Queen's University) says and quotes,

"I suddenly found that I was learning a great deal from other religious traditions. From Judaism, I learned to never stop asking questions -- about anything! -- and never to imagine that I had come to the end of what I could know and say about God. Jews even refuse to speak God’s name, as a reminder that any human expression of the divine is so limited that it is potentially blasphemous. From the Eastern and the Russian Orthodox Christians, I learned that Jesus was the first human being to be totally possessed by God -- just as Buddha was the first enlightened human being in our historical era -- and that we can all be like him, even in this life. From the Quran, I learned that all religious traditions that teach justice, compassion and respect for all others have come from God. And I was enthralled to find this quotation from the great 13th-century Sufi philosopher Ibn Arabi:
Do not praise your own faith so exclusively that you disbelieve all the rest; if you do this you will miss much good. Nay, you will fail to realise the real truth of the matter. God the omnipresent and omniscient cannot be confined to any one creed, for he says in the Quran: "Wheresover ye turn, there is the face of Allah."

So hopefully this can be a week of learning and respectful sharing. Directly below is a guide to some of the spiritual festivities occurring this week:

Monday - Maghi (Sikh), Seijin-no-hi (Shinto/Japanese)
Tuesday - Mawlid-al-nabiy (Islamic), Makar Sankranti (Hindu)
Thursday - Tu B'shevat (Jewish), Mahayana New Year (Buddhist)
Friday - Baizhang Memorial (Zen Buddhist)
Saturday - Week of Prayer for Christian Unity (Christian), Hakuin Ekaku Memorial (Zen Buddhist)
Sunday - Eihei Dogen Kigen Birth date (Zen Buddhist), World Religions Day (Baha'i), Theophany (Eastern Orthodox Christian)

To keep up with the many spiritual celebrations occurring throughout the year, you can check out this Multifaith Calender. The image below is a painting of the great Sikh womyn warrior Mai Bhago from the late 19th century Punjab Plains, now in the Government Museum & Art Gallery, in Chandigarh.

episode download available: [coming soon]


00:02:18 - station id: by Amy Goodman
00:02:34 - psa: vegetarianism
00:02:54 - The Caulfield Sisters - 'Phoebe's Song'
00:07:09 - talking: about holy days and Seijin-no-hi (Shinto/Japanese holiday)
00:09:47 - Kyary Pamyu Pamyu -  'Furisodeshon'
00:13:52 - Kuldeep Manak - 'Mai Bhago'
00:17:34 - Antipop Consortium vs. Matthew Shipp - 'Stream Light'
00:21:15 - ad: senior's centre
00:21:45 - promo: Below The Decks (radio show)
00:22:16 - KK, Shankar Mahadevan, Ehsaan Noorani, Damayanti Bardal - 'Kai Po Che'
00:27:18 - talking: about woman leader Mai Bhago and Maghi (Sikh holiday), Makar Sankranti (Hindu holiday)
00:29:08 - Julianna Barwick - 'Sunlight, Heaven'
00:33:01 - Abida Parveen - 'Saahib Mera Eik Hai (Naat)'
00:40:16 - Philip Glass - 'Lhasa at Night'
00:42:15 - Dorothy Carter - 'Tree of Life'
00:48:02- Merzbow - 'Kibbutz (Part 1)'
'"":"":""' - talking: naats and Mawlid-al-Nabi (Islamic holiday), Mahayana New Year (Mahayana Buddhist holiday), ecological justice and Tu B'shevat (Jewish tree new year) [1]
00:52:30 - Wild and The Fox - 'Moonlands'
00:55:30 - Shokokuji Monastery (Rec. by C.A. Kennedy for Smithsonian Folkways) - 'Hymn To Dhyana'
00:58:15 - Hakuin - 'Quiescence'
'"":"":""' - talking: about Baizhang and Hakuin Ekaku memorials (Zen Buddhist holidays), Prayer for Christian Unity

01:03:17 - station id: by yo la tengo
01:03:27 - ad: paradiso's pizza
01:04:04 - psa: Noam Chomsky on community radio
01:04:49 - The Innocence Mission - 'Prayer of St. Francis'
01:07:30 - Gillian Welch - 'I Made A Lover's Prayer'
01:12:32 - Julien Boulier - 'Dogen Keza'
01:18:17 - The Gateless Gate - 'The Realization of Dogen Zenji'
'"":"":""' - talking: about Eihei Dogen Kigen Birth date (Zen Buddhist holiday), World Religions Day (Baha'i observance)
01:24:13 - Buffy Sainte-Marie - 'God Is Alive, Magic Is Afoot'
01:29:05 - Archie Shepp - 'All God's Children Got A Home in the Universe'

"When Christ utters the precepts: "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you," he gives for a reason: "That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust." One might therefore be tempted to explain both the humility as to one's self and the charity towards others which characterize spiritual excitement, as results of the all-leveling character of theistic belief. But these affections are certainly not mere derivatives of theism. We find them in Stoicism, in Hinduism, and in Buddhism in the highest possible degree. They harmonize with paternal theism beautifully; but they harmonize with all reflection whatever upon the dependence of mankind on general clauses; and we must, I think, consider them not subordinate but coordinate parts of that great complex excitement in the study of which we are engaged. Religious rapture, moral enthusiaism, ontological wonder, cosmic emotion, are all unifying states of mind, in which the sand and grit of the selfhood inclide to disappear, and tenderness to rule."
- William James (The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature)

Further Info (if you're interested):
[1] Werner Herzog's 'Wheel of Time' (Documentary Film)
[2] Video Lecture: 'Religious Pluralism' by Marcus Borg (Video Lecture)
[3] Interview: 'The Roots of Religion' with Karen Armstrong (Video Interview)

Show Corrections
1.) The Ethiopian mezmur track, one of the tracks I was most looking forward to, didn't make it into this week's episode, but it will be opening next week's episode! So tune in next week, haha.
2.) I mispronounced everything basically. I tried really hard researching pronunciations on forvo and youtube videos and writing pronunciation side notes but I'm still a little nervous behind the mic and struggled to pronounce many thing correctly. I sincerely apologize for that though. I'm working on ways to better ensure that I don't horribly mispronounce things from unfamiliar cultures and traditions.

Episode 1 // Cosmogonies

This was my first live radio show, with lots of shaky beginnings and nervous gulps, but as Archbishop Desmond Tutu would say, 'so far as I can make out, the sky is still in place'!  In the spirit of a new week beginning, a new year beginning, and this new show beginning, I felt it appropriate my first show only take on the theme of 'cosmogonies' and 'beginnings'. I tried to introduce a number of cosmogonies from various spiritual traditions, in addition to some critical reflections on the Genesis cosmogony from my own faith tradition. The image below is from a Babylonian cylinder seal relief depicting Marduk's victory over Tiamat, a mythology that shares imagery and concepts with the Hebrew cosmogony of Genesis.

episode download available: here

0:01:34 - psa: David Suzuki on eating local

0:01:54 - promo: pro-bono radio show
0:02:47 - 'Sacred Ground' by David Maracle
0:06:13 - 'Veni Creator Spiritus' by Coral Vertice
'":"":"" - (talking: about iroquoian love flute and cosmogonies)
0:09:46 - 'Instant 0' by Bernard Parmegiani
0:14:29 - 'Cosmogony' by Bjork
0:19:19 - 'First Selam' by The Mevlevi Ensemble of Turkey
'":"":"" - (talking: about the first selam and Catherine Keller) [1], [2]
0:23:40 - 'Face of the Deep' by Wayne Shorter
0:29:19 - ad: the senior's centre
0:29:51 - promo: below the decks (radio show)
0:30:23 - 'Genesis' by Toru Takemitsu
0:39:25 - 'Beautiful Things' by Gungor
0:44:34 - 'Eden' by Toro y Moi
0:49:05 - talking: about Paul Tillich's reading of Genesis, and the cosmic egg [3]

0:52:08 - 'Triangle' by Sounds from the Ground
1:02:16 - psa: Noam Chomsky on community radio
1:03:02 - promo: women's word (radio show)
1:03:22 - ad: paradiso's pizza
1:03:58 - 'I Live Inside an Egg' by James Pants
1:06:10 - talking about: 'golden egg' of the upanishads, irish mythology, and Annie Dillard
1:08:40 - 'Genesis Theme' by Ravi Shankar
1:10:02 - 'The Tides of Manunaun' by Henry Cowell
1:13:11 - 'Me To Datee' by Danielson Famile
1:16:45 - 'Songline' by David Hudson and Steve Roach
1:19:46 - talking about: 'golden egg' of the upanishads, irish mythology, and Annie Dillard
1:22:20 - 'Creation' by Iasos
1:24:02 - 'Genesis' by Grimes
1:28:17 - promo: OPIRG
1:28:58 - promo: suspended particulate (radio show)
1:29:30 - promo: civic guilt
1:30:30 - station id: Jack Layton 

"Why didn't someone hand those newly sighted people paints and brushes from the start, when they still didn't know what anything was? Then maybe we all could see color-patches too, the world unraveled from reason, Eden before Adam gave names. The scales would drop from my eyes; I'd see trees like men walking; I'd run down the road against all orders, hallooing and leaping... It is ironic that the one thing that all religions recognize as separating us from our creator--our very self-consciousness--is also the one thing that divides us from our fellow creatures. It was a bitter birthday present from evolution, cutting us off at both ends...
Self-consciousness... hinder[s] the experience of the present. It is the one instrument that unplugs all the rest. So long as I lose myself in a tree, say, I can scent its leafy breath or estimate its board feet of lumber, I can draw its fruits or boil tea on its branches, and the tree stays tree. But the second I become aware of myself at any of these activities... the tree vanishes, uprooted from the spot and flung out of sight as if it had never grown. And time, which had flowed down into the tree bearing new revelations like floating leaves at every moment, ceases. It dams, stills, stagnates. Self-consciousness is the curse... Innocence is a better world. Innocence sees that this is it, and finds it world enough,"
- Annie Dillard (Pilgrim at Tinker Creek)


Further Info (if you're interested):
[1] 'The Face of the Deep: A Theology of Becoming' by Catherine Keller
[2] Video Lecture of Mary-Jane Rubenstein on the Multiverse (with a neat introduction to Catherine Keller's reading of Genesis, and other interesting theologians and scientists inside and outside of their respective 'orthodoxies'.)
[3] 'The Eternal Now' by Paul Tillich