Monthly Archives: April 2015

Comments on the Concept of Evil (by Bob Griffith)

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Prologue: In a post entitled “God’s Disclaimer” I took it upon myself to speak for the Supreme Being, distancing the Deity from the remarks of a Colorado State Representative and internet televangelist named Gordon Klingenschmitt. In March of 2015 a pregnant woman was attacked in Longmont, Colorado and her unborn child was cut from her womb and died. Mr. Klingenschmitt used that tragedy as a platform to condemn the practice of abortion (which had nothing to with the event) stating, “This is the curse of God for the sin of not protecting our innocent children in the womb.” My friend Bob Griffith commented on that post and began a discussion relating to concepts of good and evil – mostly considerations of evil in our world – that deserves serious consideration. What follows is an edited combination of several of the points Bob made in his comments which are significant beyond the immediate context of Klingenschmitt’s remark.

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COMMENTS ON THE CONCEPT OF EVILBob Griffith

There is a form of self-aware evil in human beings which is embraced by choice and practiced consciously, but Klingenschmitt doesn’t strike me as a focused and committed over-achiever who is evil by choice and is in conscious pursuit of his own ends by any means. His evil is of the common- as-dirt variety. He’s ignorant. Ignorant of his own evil, and ignorant of his real and true nature. When it comes to which is the worst kind of evil I couldn’t say. Consciously evil people in pursuit of their own selfish ends have done a lot of damage down through history. But the evil which is not aware of its own nature and considers itself to be righteous, true and good has done just as much, if not more.

Evil has its amateurs and its professionals. Mr. Klingenschmitt may be an amateur, but he’s a well-educated monkey. He’s learned to cloak his ignorance of God with an assertive projection implying scholarship, study, evaluation, and correct conclusions. Yet what he says belies the presence of any of that.

It is telling that while folks like him characterize themselves as part of a religion that has the name of Christ in it, they embrace the ways and means and practices of the Old Testament, which Christ sorted out, clarified, and healed.

It is equally telling that they claim to be cleansed and sanctified by the sublime compassion and heroic sacrifice of a being who offered himself willingly as the final Divine sacrificial scapegoat. All sins were taken with Him when He was killed. They were removed, expiated, which is the function of a scapegoat. Fear, punishment, all the vices and sins and negative aspects of humanity were removed, and the admonition of the act was explicit: If you remember me, you will remember that I have shown you how to remove those things from yourselves. Remember me. Do it. Go and sin no more. And when you do, remember – no scapegoat is necessary. That act is over, it is finished. Embrace the forgiveness of yourself and others which I have shown you, and carry on the best you know how. Be compassionate, be connected, serve others, love one another.

Yet rather than partake of the meaning of that sacrifice and remember that it was to be the last blood sacrifice necessary for their own salvation, there are people who remain ignorant of what Christ taught and did, and instead continue to make scapegoats of others. They remain ignorantly entrapped within that ancient human archetypal motif which Christ transcended. Such activity is hardly “Christian.” Continue reading →

SONG OF THE WEEK – NEEDLESS TO SAY

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A few days ago, I was part of a group of friends discussing The Way of Mastery, as we do most Thursdays.  The focus of the discussion was on “needs.”  I won’t rehash that here.  I will just mention that as we talked I was reminded of the song “Needless To Say” by Loudon Wainwright III.

Today, Wainwright is probably best known as the father of singer-songwriter-musicians Rufus Wainwright, Martha Wainwright and Lucy Wainwright Roche, but there was a time in the late 1960s and early 1970s when he was heralded as the “Next Bob Dylan.”

His father, Loudon Wainwright, Jr., was a successful columnist and editor for  Life Magazine.  It would be nice to use this as an example of the way in which good writing can be fostered from generation to generation when one has a supportive family.  However, Wainwright’s family life – at all levels – seems to have been quite dysfunctional; or at least that is the impression given by a long article in Vanity Fair a few years back.

I guess, then, it could be genetic.

In reality, Loudon Wainwright III was not cut out to be a superstar.  In a career spanning six decades he has had exactly one song that made it as a top-20 hit.  That was “Dead Skunk (in the Middle of the Road)” from his 1972 album that was cleverly titled “Album III.”  I have read that after the song made it up to Number 16, Wainwirght began wearing a fake beard out in public because he was afraid that someone might recognize him.

The “B” side of the “Dead Skunk” single was “Needless To Say.”  On Album III, there is a song called “B Side,” but it is about bees and was not actually a “B” side of a single; and that is just a part of Wainwright’s slightly twisted sense of humor.

“Dead Skunk” is also an example of that humor, as are many of his other songs.  Even his most recent, 2014’s Haven’t Got the Blues (Yet), keeps pace with lyrics like  “When I wake up in the morning, life seems so unfair/ Although my woman hasn’t left me yet, and there’s a cleaning lady there.”

At first blush, “Needless To Say” sounds like a play on words seasoned with a bit of sarcasm; but there is more to it.  If you really listen to it, and perhaps read the lyrics, you will find some insightful comments on the human condition.

No, Loudon Wainwright III was never a superstar, and never will be.  His music seems to fit much better in a coffee house than a stadium.  But it is more fun to listen to than most of the songs that are meant to be performed in stadiums.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nR_BStQZQDQ

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SONG OF THE WEEK – MOTHER EARTH

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This is a week in which there are so many possible songs for the week that it is difficult to pick just one.  Monday (the 20th) is my wife’s birthday; Tuesday (the 21st) is my friend Annette’s birthday; Wednesday (the 22nd) is the 45th Earth Day; Thursday (the 23rd) is the anniversary of the release of “We Are the World” (which could be someone’s song of the week); Friday (the 24th) is traditionally recognized was the date of the fall of Troy.

With so many choices, I would like to say, “Happy Birthday, Cathy.  Happy Birthday, Annette.  Happy Earth Day, everyone”  Let us stop there.*  Earth Day seems important enough to focus on for a few minutes.

The first Earth Day, back in 1970, was, as much as anything, a demonstration. The Baby Boomers had recently recognized that the thousands of people losing their lives and homelands in Southeast Asia were victims of a greedy military-industrial complex, and they had become good at organizing mass protests as a step toward changing what was perceived as a flawed social and economic system.

It was also apparent that the same social and economic system was causing tremendous ecological damage to the entire planet – poisoning the water and the air and destroying many irreplaceable natural resources.  Many of the same people who had been protesting the war in Vietnam extended the civil protest model to bring attention to what was an even more serious threat to the lives and homelands of everyone on the planet.

In many ways, the Earth Day movement and consciousness has been successful.  Hundreds of thousands came together across the entire United Stares on that first Earth Day.  Forty-five years later, more than a billion people throughout the world will be participating in activities designed to improve the environment.

Less than a year after the first Earth Day, the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency was established and two years later Congress passed the Clean Water Act of 1972, and the Endangered Species Act was passed in 1973  The percentage of water in the United States that is safe for drinking and swimming has more than doubled and the level of emissions of many major air pollutants has been reduced to less than half of what it was.

On a personal level, most Americans now know the advantages to recycling, reusable shopping bags, fuel efficiency and the “green” lifestyle.

Yes, there have been very clear movement in positive directions since the first Earth Day.  However, it is still necessary to recognize that the darned old greedy military-industrial complex is still there.

Few people do that better than Neil Young, who has been socially conscious throughout his career, with songs such as “Ohio,” about students killed by National Guard troops during an anti-war protest at Kent State University; “After the Gold Rush,” with its dream vision of a future environmental disaster; and “Rockin’ in the Free World,” presenting a harsh look at societal problems.  His Living with War album was one of the strongest artistic protests of American involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Young focuses again on both social and environmental issues in this week’s Song of the Week, “Mother Earth.”  The video below is a live performance for an “Honour the Treaties” concert meant to bring attention to the plight of some of Canada’s native population.  It includes scenes of land where the devastation of the strip mining by the Canadian tar sands industry is eye-opening and appalling.

I am not sure exactly where the aerial scenes were filmed, but I believe it was near Fort McMurry, Alberta.  Here is a quote from Neil Young:  “The fact is, Fort McMurray looks like Hiroshima. Fort McMurray is a wasteland. The Indians up there and the native peoples are dying. The fuels all over – the fumes everywhere – you can smell it when you get to town. The closest place to Fort McMurray that is doing the tar sands work is 25 or 30 miles out of town and you can taste it when you get to Fort McMurray. People are sick. People are dying of cancer because of this. All the First Nations people up there are threatened by this.”  Al Gore has called these mining sites “an open sewer.”

On the positive side, though, the major oil companies engaged in this mining – like Shell and Sunco and Imperial Oil – do make written materials available for their shareholders in electronic form so that it will not be necessary to kill quite as many trees.**

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SONG OF THE WEEK – PLEASE DON’T PASS ME BY (A DISGRACE)

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Leonard Cohen seems to be edging into my consciousness this week.  I received a couple of emails about a new album of live performances he is releasing next month called Can’t Forget: A Souvenir of the Grand Tour.  I have heard three songs from that album so far – a reinterpretation of “I Can’t Forget,”* which was not bad; a cover of the old George Jones song, “Choices,” which I thought he did very well; and a brand new song, “Never Gave Nobody Trouble,” which is certainly not up to the quality of his best work.

Of course, he is over 80 years old now and has been writing for most of those years, so to reach the quality of his best work is difficult.

Then, when I went to church this weekend, the musicians sang a song with decidedly Christian lyrics (which would be expected in a Catholic mass) to the tune of Cohen’s “Hallelujah.”

I don’t know how most people consider the word “hallelujah” or “alleluia” today.  In our society, it seems to be most often used as a joyful song of praise to God.  In its original Hebrew form, the word is derived from the second person plural of a verb exhorting several people to praise “Jah” or “Yah” or “Yahweh.”

Leonard Cohen’s song is sort of an amalgam of his Jewish heritage and his penchant for writing certain kinds of human love songs, and his use of “hallelujah” seems an amalgam of the exhortation to praise and the praise itself.  For instance, he begins, “They say that there’s a secret chord/That David played and it pleased the Lord/But you don’t really care for music, do ya?”  Then as it goes into the chorus, repeating ‘hallelujah,” it seems that the listeners are being exhorted to follow in the footsteps of David and bring forth their own praise.  Later, when referring to human love and being in love, he says “every breath we drew was hallelujah.”  That is clearly the praise itself and is more internalized than a second person plural verb would be.

Anyway, back to the church music.  At our church the words of the songs are projected onto a screen, and usually at the bottom copyright information is given.  However, there was no such in formation for that version of “Hallelujah.”  My first thought was that it seems wrong for a Christian church to seem to brush aside a nice little Jewish man.  Then I was reminded of a song recorded live in London 45 years ago and included on Leonard’s 1973 album, Live Songs.  The song is “Please Don’t Pass Me By (A Disgrace).”

In the song, Leonard tells of walking along a street in New York and brushing against a blind man with a sign that read, “Please don’t pass me by.”  A few blocks later he walked past a school for the handicapped and was struck by the feeling that the whole town was pleading, “Please don’t pass me by.”  From that perspective he reflected on human interactions in general and concluded that at some time in life every one of us will find a need to plead, either aloud or silently, for others to see us, recognize our humanity and give us understanding.

In this song – which is really more of a narrative poem set to music – Leonard talks on for more than 13 minutes about the need for that recognition.  In the end, though, he has no interaction with any of those he sees as crying out for help and recognition.  Essentially, he has passed them all by and focused on his own moment of personal catharsis.

I have always had the feeling that one source of inspiration for this piece by Leonard Cohen is the old Christian hymn, written right after the American Civil War, “Pass Me Not.”  That song begins:  “Pass me not, O Gentle Savior/Hear my humble cry/While on others Thou art calling/Do not pass me by.”  (And see Genesis 18:3)

So, while while the Catholics used a Christian version of a Jewish-influenced work, here we have the same Jewish person inspired by an old Christian hymn that was itself inspired by a Jewish scripture.  It is fairly symmetrical, if nothing else.

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SONG OF THE WEEK – BLACKBERRY WINTER (I)

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This week’s Song of the Week is a little different than previous selections.  It has no words.  What I have chosen is the first movement of a work called “Blackberry Winter” that was composed by Conni Ellisor and performed by the Nashville Chamber Orchestra.  It is a very interesting piece of music written for mountain dulcimer, Tennessee music box (a cigar box with a hole and strings) and strings.  It is very pleasant and evokes memories of the best of Aaron Copland’s compositions.

There are other songs called “Blackberry Winter.”  One, in fact, sold a million records as the the “B” side of Mitch Miller’s “Yellow Rose of Texas.”  This one sounds much better than Mitch Miller’s.

The term “Blackberry Winter” refers to a cold spell that occurs in the late Spring when trees or bushes, such as the blackberry, are already in bloom.  There was a best-selling novel of that name by Sarah Jio in 2012, and it was also the title of an autobiography by anthropologist Margaret Mead.

Conni Ellisor is an amazing, but little-known, musician and composer.  She is from Arvada, Colorado, and graduated from Arvada West High School five years after I did.  I became aware of her work when I was chairing a committee of choose the initial members of the Arvada West High School Hall of Fame.

She received her formal training at Juilliard and has been a member of the Denver Symphony Orchestra, concertmaster of the Boulder Philharmonic, first violin in the Athena Quartet and soloist in the Nashville Chamber Orchestra. She is also an in demand session violinist and arranger.  Her compositions have been performed in international venues by the London Philharmonic, the Hamburg Radio orchestra, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, the London Symphony, Denver Brass, New York Treble Singers and many other groups. Her ballet, “The Bell Witch,” was premiered by the Nashville Ballet in 2005. Her works have been featured nationally on NPR.  Conni has also been successful as a contemporary jazz recording artist. Her “Night at the Museum” album reached #13 on Billboard’s Adult Alternative chart, and all four of her albums have been critically acclaimed.  Conni has lectured at various colleges and universities and was composer-in-residence for Northwestern Louisiana State University in 2008 and for the Nashville Chamber Orchestra from 1999 through 2002.

She has written for and played with performers ranging from Don Henley to Ray Stevens.  She toured and played with Lynyrd Skynyrd – sort of.  As you probably know, three members of  Lynyrd Skynyrd were killed in a plane crash in 1977, at the height of their popularity.  The surviving members have reunited from time to time, and they did so in 2004 for the so-called Vicious Cycle Tour – which featured a rock band with a rocking string section.  Conni arranged the music, conducted the string section and played on that tour.

I wanted to bring Conni’s work to everyone’s attention now because next month – on May 9 and 10, 2015 – her latest work is going to be performed by the Colorado Symphony Orchestra.  The piece is entitled “The Bass Whisperer – Concerto for Electric Bass and Orchestra.”  It was co-written by Victor Wooten, who will appear as the soloist.

Wooten has received several Grammy Awards.  He is best known as the bass player for Béla Fleck and the Flecktones.  If you are not familiar with his work, you can click here to enjoy a really interesting version of “Amazing Grace.”

The performance by the Colorado Symphony is essentially a world premiere (though the piece has been done by the Nashville Symphony) so I can’t include any part of the new concerto here.  Ticket information for the performance is available at this link.  The Arvada West High School Foundation may be organizing a group to attend – and you can check its website by clicking here.

For the present, we have the first movement of “Blackberry Winter”:

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