Reason and God
A couple of books worthy of note. I met Tim Keller at a dinner earlier this year, a charming and gracious person. He's also a very savvy communicator, and has written several books that have hit the spot in quite a big way. This is one of them: an account of why it is reasonable to believe in God. I recommend it. Another book on a similar theme, but with a different approach, is by Dallas Willard: I like this one very much. Can you know that God exists? Is faith the same thing as knowledge?
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Maggi has kept a blog since September 2003, writing about theology and faith, the arts and literature, and a little about life and random nonsense...
In an increasingly secularised society few people have a good working knowledge of the Bible. Yet a great deal of our culture is built on stories or ideas that come from the Bible. Literature, art, music, language and even the fabric of our society - such as our justice system - are built on Christian concepts and biblical references. The Writing on the Wall provides a fascinating introduction to the Bible's best-known, and most influential, stories. Each chapter gives some background to the text of the Bible, and shows how the stories have become enmeshed in Western culture. Adam and Eve, the ten plagues of Egypt, The Prodigal Son and Mary Magdalene all feature - along with how the Bible has influenced everyone from Shakespeare to Monty Python, and Caravaggio to Banksy. 
Giving It Up explores the Lenten idea of 'giving up', taking it beyond the traditional idea of simply abstaining from something, and suggesting instead that what we need to give up is our existing ideas about God. With a daily readings for each day of Lent, from Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday, it follows the heroes of the Bible who had to give up their own too-small ideas about God.
This is Maggi’s bestselling book of daily readings for each day of Advent, Christmas and Epiphany. Advent is the beginning of the Church year, and marks the anticipation of the coming Messiah. These readings explore how beginnings and endings in our own lives are illuminated by the different Gospel narratives of Christ's coming.
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Brass bands make me cry. As do big song and dance musical numbers. I have no idea why.
What makes me dance is any early Rolling Stones, and a track called Dismal Swamp by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, who describe their music as ‘progressive bluegrass’.
Oh, and ‘Hit me with your rhythm stick’ makes me wave my arms about madly (but that counts as dancing, for me).
Funnily enough 2 songs on the one album lay me down and lift me up everytime although this may be associational to my youth as much as anything, Van Morrison’s Evening Medidation takes me low and then cheery up stuff arrives a few tracks laters in Boffyflow and Spike. (on A Sense of Wonder). Another lay me down one from Van is his version of Motherless Child on Poetic Champions, that and Christy Moore’s Back Home in Derry. But I suspect alot of this folk melancholia has to do with me living away from Ireland.
If we’re going classical then Beethoven Kyrie from C Maj Mass Op 86 always gets to me, as does Rachmaninov Vocalise E min Op 34 and i am wont to sniffle at any part of Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder.
And again for more associational reasons John Adams Because I Could not Stop for Death, will get to me, as does Bruch’s Kol Nidrei. Oh and one very melancholy album is Lisa Gerard and Patrick Cassidy Imoortal Memory.
Enough of all this, my i pod tells me i have 35.5 days of music stored on it, (so this coudl go on for some time) but I’ve never got around to making sad and happy playlists.
By the way for Funerals / times of grieving John Bell and Graham Maules song, The Last Journey, says all i ever need to say.
Feelin’ so real by Moby and I’m gonna be (500 miles) by the Proclaimers make me happy.
until the End of the world by U2 makes my eyes water (it is the story of grace that does it). ‘Turn me tender’ by Martyn Joseph came out at a painful time for me- that does it every time. Plus I met him a year ago and told him about it. Then I saw the picture to accompany the reworking of that song on ‘Evolved’ and gasped at how it linked with my situation…
The choral section of the fourth movement of Beethovens Ninth Symphony. Except if I’m in the office, when I’d look a bit of a Charlie.
I just heard this – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgvJg7D6Qck
Definitely brought a tear to my eye…
Interesting that you should post this, as I was just working on a silly post about “The Saddest Song Ever”. My votes for weepy songs:
1. “The Living Years” by Mike and the Mechanics wins hands down, I think. It actually has the power to make me cry.
2. “Tomorrow is a Long Time” – Bob Dylan. Doesn’t make me cry, but still very sad.
3. Same for Sufjan Stevens’ “John Wayne Gacy, Jr.” Deeply moving song.
As far as uplifting songs go:
1. For some reason, Jackie Wilson’s “Your Love Keeps Lifting Me (Higher and Higher)” does just that: lifts me higher and higher. I sometimes feel like I’m going to burst when I hear that song, it fills me with such joy. It brings a different kind of tears.
2. “Fisherman’s Blues” – The Waterboys
3. The live version of U2’s “Bad”, as found on “Wide Awake in America”. As a young man, when I was down, I would lay on the floor in my bedroom, with my head between the stereo speakers, and turn “Bad” way up. It made everything OK.
4. The live version of “Fix You” by Coldplay (on LeftRightLeftRightLeft), when an audience of tens of thousands sings the chorus with gusto. I’m getting chills just thinking about it. Again, another sort of tears. (I’m a sucker for crowds singing joyfully in unison.)
(I would put “Graceland” in there, too, but you already mentioned it)
Solveig’s Song, from Peer Gynt. Listen to a vocal version and it won’t matter a bit that the words are in Norwegian, it’s my candidate for the Saddest Song Ever Written.
With you on the Bach also parts of Faure and Mozart’s Requiems.