When the Homily is about Immunology

Old School Bono. Plus, the music video generation reinvents church

Haha...perhaps some have forgot, but I haven't...the mullet used to be so cool, even Bono sported one.



As you have no doubt noted, I've been watching music videos lately. Mostly country, but the genre doesn't matter. Since the beginning "they" have capitalized on the same fast paced visual stimulation. What I noticed is that apparently too much time passes within the context of a single musical verse for us to be treated with merely one or two different visual perceptions. On the contrary, I am thinking that a different image must be presented to us about every 2-3 seconds, or else - I guess - we get bored. BAM!BAM!BAM! We are bombarded by visual stimulation...as if the music could not or does not hold its own.

I think this really has played a role in forming us and our expectations. We are not only the "fast food" generation, but we are indeed the generation in greatest need of speed with regard to many things. I wonder if road rage is not on the rise because the traffic squalor - as it worsens all over - has made it such that we aren't seeing that MTV style of ever-changing visual stimulation. No, we are sitting, looking at the same profane anti-Bush bumper sticker for multiple minutes just outside Fremont. It's agonizing...not because you like Bush, but because you are not speedily on your way and because the bumper sticker is not a multi-media extravaganza.

We cannot sit still. ADHD and ADD? Hmmmm...one does wonder if it is WAY over-diagnosed. Maybe we cannot teach patience anymore? Just yesterday as we dropped one of our van pool riders off, we delayed a person driving behind us for a full 5 seconds. I literally thought she was going to implode, and I took joy in knowing that her flailing about likely spilled her coffee - LOL, given its intensity, it surely must have. I think I ruined her day...amazing.

Stillness? Quiet? Solitude? Waiting without impulsive want or need? Are they lost for us? We expect everything, right now...fruits and vegetables that are impossibly out of season and yet we expect and get them - damn the implications to hell (and yes there are profound implications - like I said before: corporations do not sin, they simply respond to our sin. Blaming them and asking them to change is merely a convenient scapegoat.) No time to cook, thus we have all manner of ridiculously "instant" products. Hey, who the heck has 20 minutes to make regular Mac and Cheese? No problem...a microwavable version is ready in 2 minutes! And so, our time related expectations shrink even further. We're spoiled. And I won't even get into the reasons why - with so many modern conveniences - that we none-the-less find ourselves without time to cook!

Really given all this, is it any wonder we want our church services to "work" for us like our microwavable mac and cheese works for us? Or like our MTV high tech, fast paced, multi-media, sense imploding videos work for us? Like fish in the water...we long to be mesmerized by "bright and shiny things" (to quote our mullet bearing hero above).

Maybe church (by this I mean a "service") should be the antithesis of MTV. Maybe it should conform our impulses, our needs, our appetite to it, rather than the other way around? Not that it is without it share of sensuous stimulation, but it is more tended: like the steady burning flame of a lampada as opposed to the out of control roar of a forest fire. God forbid that our baptized expectations should spill over into our notions of everyday life: how we drive, how we wait in line, how we buy and prepare our food, how we live, period.

If you are attend a church that "works" for you like MTV works for you or that is doin all it can to be uber-relevant to our changing society...don't you dare criticize WalMart, its really no different. It's filling a need.

Change the need...save the world.