95 North. . . The Newspaper

Hiss Golden Messenger is the musical moniker for singer/songwriter MC Taylor. In 2010, he released a stark, acoustic based album entitled Bad Debt . The album is full of late night brooding. . . a kitchen table lit by candles and a baby sleeping in the other room. The kinda dark hours where you're soul bursts, explores some dark territory, and scans all corners of the mind, trying to map meaning. The best of the batch of songs featured on Bad Debt is represented by "Jesus Shot me in the Head". A provocative title, for sure, meant to convey the radical act and nature of an instantaneous religious conversion experience. Here, the metaphor of salvation- or dying to your old self- comes in the form of Jesus' killing off one's old self, in order to be "born again". Often, born again conversion experiences are preceded by a life lived on the low, which is accurately described here- the rough friends, the Motel 6, the drugs, the drinking. . .it's all pa...

About two weeks ago, I attended church the day directly after the Pride parade in Middletown, CT. I tend to remember bits and pieces of the sermon each week, and what stuck with me this particular Sunday was this proclamation: "shame is the number one inhibitor of joy in our lives". That message was relevant in light of the weeks festivities. First Church had a large presence on Main Street in Middletown for the Pride event, including but not limited to a booth, a float/marchers, and the handing out of stickers that read "God Loves You- and so do we". A brochure read "A little off Main St. . . in more ways than one", which represents a clever hint that weds our location (Court st, right off Main) and the church's bold open and affirming stance to all sexual and gender identities. This celebration of the full spectrum of humanity, one that inched my heart forward towards possessing a sort of general love and acceptance of all people, brought to ...

Famed North Carolina evangelist Billy Graham passed away recently. Although I didn't always agree with Graham's theological beliefs, I always admired him for his conviction and heart. A few years ago when I was living in Charlotte, NC, I even went to take a peek at his museum. Something about the guy always fascinated me.  He eschewed big money and television in favor of good ol' preaching. When he made mistakes he owned up to them.  Bob Dylan might've of put it best: "The guy was like rock n' roll personified- volatile, explosive. He had the hair, the tone, the elocution- when he spoke he brought the storm down. Clouds parted. Souls got saved. If you ever went to a Billy Graham rally, you were changed forever".  Below is a video of Graham addressing a bunch of Silicon Valley tech entrepreneurs. What he has to say is interesting:  Here's classic 70's Billy Graham- with the charisma to light up the screen and the funny way o...

I recently read Finding God in the Waves , a spiritual memoir by Mike McHargue. In Waves  McHargue explores the story of his own Christian faith, documenting his journey from good ol' Southern Baptist boy to atheism, all the way back to Christianity again.  The book is peppered with neuroscience, as McHargue attempts to square his spiritual experiences with what we know about the brain. The book is largely divided into three parts: McHargue's upbringing and comfortable evangelicalism, his subsequent (secret) conversion to atheism, and finally, his merging of science and faith, brought on by a mystical experience early in the morning on the beach. Needless to say, I recommend this book for anyone who has struggled to square religion with doubt, science, and what we know empirically about the world. My favorite quotes are below: On Prayer : "These days, my intercessory prayers are an act of surrender- a way to voice my hopes and my hopelessness, my power and ...

If you haven't heard SZA sing, run over to the record store and give her album CTRL a spin. Soon enough, you'll discover that she's created the freshest album in R&B since Solange's 2016 masterpiece A Seat at the Table , which I wrote about  here . While Solange's masterpiece focused on playing the long game, with drawn-out beats, lingering baselines, and vocal meditations that looked deep into the past, in many ways, SZA is the complete opposite. Her music is fresh. Immediate. Emotions? Raw. She's even sometimes crude. The world that makes up her songs is entirely relatable and real. She ponders work, being late to work, eating tacos, obsessing over TV shows, jealousy, emotional insecurity, carnal pleasures, sadness, joy, Las Vegas, New Jersey,  and everything else in between. In other words, it covers the same terrain the Bible does. As Cat Power once said, "and I'm not kidding". A few key songs: "Supermodel"  is drenched in ...

"Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy" (Matthew 5: 6-7).  Every single one of us could us Mary Gauthier is a Catholic who was born in Lousiana. She's had troubles with alcohol and been sober since her late 20s. She founded and cooked for a restaurant in Boston called the Dixie Kitchen. She wrote her first song at age 35. Speaking of those songs-some say she's written the saddest one of all time- a song called "Mercy Now". Maybe it's because I don't mind what is usually considered sad music, but I don't think "Mercy Now" is the harbinger of doom and gloom. Yes, there are broad brushstrokes of painful introspection, but ultimately, "Mercy Now" has a tender heart. Here, Gauthier reflects on her family and friends before zooming out and surveying the funk, pain, and name of the human condition as a whole. We cou...

The first songs I loved in life were Christian songs. Looking back, it makes sense to me that one of the first Bob Dylan songs I was blown away by was " Father of Night " off of 1970's New Morning . I later took to the music of Leonard Cohen, I'm sure in part, because of the spiritual themes embedded deep in his voice. In Cohen's songs, God is Grand Central Station. Everything runs through a spiritual understanding of the world. It's been said that Cohen never "met a religion he didn't like". I kinda feel the same way. I identify as a Christian-that is my inherited faith tradition, and the paradigm I view the world through. While I no longer label myself as an evangelical (sorry there's too much to discuss there) as I don't subscribe to the  atonement theory  or believe in hell, there's still so much in the Christian tradition that deeply resonates with me every day. Like hymns, otherwise known as songs of incredible depth and bea...

If you're at all interested in Bob Dylan's newest upcoming bootleg series release, you can listen to a sampler  here  thanks to NPR. I've long admired the music of Bob Dylan's so-called "gospel" era, and am fully ready to pay an arm n' a leg to listen to over 100 songs, view a concert film, and read a booklet with detailed liner notes. I've listened to some of these previously unheard live cuts- and I can say this: The band is a tight, loud, chugging unit that throws exclamation points on Bob's fiery furnace preaching and passionate, heartfelt singing. There'll always be an urgency in your music if you think the apocalypse is near. For an artist like Bob Dylan, that apocalypse, whether it was metaphorical or not, pushed him to new heights. The stinging lines of the guitar, the wooden floorboards, the overblown PA systems-ever song has a setting, and in the few I've heard, Bob'll take you there. My previous entries of Dylan...

A cold dark night on the Spanish stairs. Stage 5? I came across the idea a few weeks ago, and I think in many ways it has reshaped my thinking about religion and spirituality. Or perhaps it has helped set parameters and given shape to something that I felt was already there. I think this concept- developed by Scott Peck- is worth considering. I see a bit of myself scattered in all the stages. It's important to note that this idea should be seen as more of a tool for thinking about religion and spirituality, rather than something that should be taken as absolute truth. In other words, I think it enriches and adds to the conversation. It isn't to be all end all theory that everyone and everything fits neatly into.

I really like this poem by Shel Silverstein. Sure, it is a children's poem, but Shel dives into some deep water here. In reading it, I am reminded of Rabbi Harold Kushner's  insight into the Biblical Adam and Eve story. According to the Christian narrative I had long heard, the story went something like this: Adam and Eve were created by God. They were perfect, without sin, and enjoyed life in the garden of Eden. Then, one day, a snake (Satan in disguise) came along and tempted Adam to eat an apple from the tree of "knowledge". God didn't want them to eat from this tree, however, Adam and Eve did so anyway. Humans had sinned, and everyone born on earth after that point was born into "sin", and thus needed saving from it  in the form of atonement (first in the form of sacrifices and later in the form of Jesus). However, after reading some more about the Jewish tradition and it's take on the creation narrative, a few things became clear: 1) that t...

One day, after you've lived for years in another state, you'll pull down the street of your childhood home. Only after a significant time of living away are you able to perceive, for the first time, that street so clearly. You will finally make some sense out of that street. You will make sense out of something you once never thought needed to make sense of, something you just accepted, and at once point, probably criticized and belittled. The poet T.S. Eliot put this idea in a poem in a more efficient manner than I: "At the end of all our exploration/ We will arrive where we started/ And know the place for the first time" ( Little Gidding ). Replace your childhood street with your childhood religion, and you get G.K. Chesterton's great account of the Christian faith, entitled "Orthodoxy". I don't know much about G.K. Chesterton, other than he was a journalist in late Victorian era England and was sort of a generalist. He wrote plenty about ...