Record Review (Sort of)

For the last few days I've been listening to the new MC Lars record, This Gigantic Robot Kills. It's fun, and you can't go wrong with something that takes it's title from a random quote from the great Wesley Willis.

At first I was intensely amused by 35 Laurel Drive, about a drummer with the "messiest house in New Jersey."

I was next impressed by Hey There Ophelia, which makes a mash-up of the story of Hamlet over an interpolation of Screamager by Therapy?, bringing me back to fun and fresh days of alternative rock in the early nineties. How can you resist a description of an Ophelia who "rocks out to Soft Cell?" One of my brother postulants used the lyrics of a famous cover by Soft Cell to describe how he lost his vocation, but that's another story.

In the end I decided that my favorite track is No Logo, which makes a mockery of "bumper sticker activism" over an interpolation of Fugazi's Waiting Room. To hear that particular song took me right back to high school and reminded me of some intense and salutary graces.

The message of No Logo is the same angle I sometimes take when preaching to our own high school students. I tell them that their innate rebelliousness is not a defect, but a gift. They just have to be careful not to sell it out to any of the pre-packaged revolutions and rebellions that have been carefully engineered for their consumption. Instead of selling out to the fashions of revolutionary stickers and t-shirts, they must harness their rebelliousness to militate against the world's culture of death and disregard for human dignity.

A revolution is supposed to be a change that turns everything completely around. But the ideology of political revolution will never change anything except appearances. There will be violence, and power will pass from one party to another, but when the smoke clears and the bodies of all the dead men are underground, the situation will be essentially as it was before: there will be a minority of strong men in power exploiting all the others for their own ends. There will be ther same greed and cruelty and lust and ambition and avarice and hypocrisy as before.

For the revolutions of men change nothing. The only influence that can really upset the injustice and iniquity of men is the power that breathes in the Christian tradition, renewing our participation in the Life that is the Light of men. (Thomas Merton, "Tradition and Revolution" in New Seeds of Contemplation)

Thanks, Lars, for the record. Congratulations on the release.

Following the Beast

In these Easter days we read from the book of Revelation in the Office of Readings. We're in chapter 13 right now, and the great Beast has appeared. The "whole earth" follows the Beast "with wonder." They say, "who is like the Beast, and who can fight against it?"

Who is the Beast? For John the Seer's first readers it was probably the power of the Roman empire. But for us it is those same imperious forces of oppression and control, remaining with us in new forms. It is the selfishness and violence that emerges from the human heart and explodes into the great wars and occupations and genocides all around us. It is that cluster of pride, lust, and selfishness that Christian technical jargon calls the "world."

And the Beast speaks and calls his followers. He transmits his values through television, through the media, through education. And we follow because to follow the Beast seems like the only game in town. And as Revelation tells us, only those with the mark of the beast were allowed to buy and sell. Then, as now, economic security is bought at the price of accepting the values of the world.

There is another voice, however. The Word of God is spoken in the silence of the human heart. It is the very illumination of the human mind, the atmosphere of its genuine discernment. But God's voice is quiet, however, and easy to miss amid all of the noise and distraction that the Beast causes in the world. It is a humble and patient voice, compared to the proud voice of the Beast, always demanding instant action and gratification.

We've all had the experience of realizing that the loudest person in the room is not necessarily the one worth listening to.

And this is what Gil Scott-Heron meant in his famous poem The Revolution will not be Televised. It's often quoted wrongly, but if the poet is understood we realize that the real revolution couldn't possibly be televised.

The real revolution, the one that will change the world, is when "you change your mind about you look at things." And this will always be unavailable to television or to any of the Beast's voice-boxes, because it happens in the secret, inner place where God's Word meets the human person. And that's the mystery we call Jesus Christ.