A spirituality of rock and roll on the road...

Tomorrow Di and I take our "spirituality of rock and roll" presentation on the road to the local community college: Berkshire Community College. It is a big old concrete, neo-Stalinesque place with about 2,300 students. We'll have a chance to play some tunes, give an overview of our ideas about integrating music with spiritual growth and see where it takes us all. The heart of our conversation goes something like this:

+ Our ordinary, everyday life is NOT separate from the sacred - and using the music of popular culture can help us get grounded in a spirituality that takes our real lives seriously!

+ Not all rock music is healthy - there is some that is self-destructive and trapped in the pain of living - but there are lots of other types of music besides the slave/prisoner archetype and we'll do a quick survey of how the hero, the orphan, the trickster and the prophet play out in rock and roll.

+ Rock and roll can help connect us to a love and grace larger than ourselves - which is essential for health and hope - in ways that many churches cannot.

The tunes and examples will include:

+ Springsteen/U2 as the obvious hero archetype - and we'll do "Reason to Believe."

+ Radiohead, Coldplay and the Eels are the orphan archetype and we'll do "Things the Grandchildren Should Know" to make this point.

+ For the trickster we have to start with Dylan's "Subterranean Homesick Blues" and make the connection with Chuck Berry, Ginsberg and Eminem.

+ And we'll wrap things up with something prophetic from Joan Osborne - our theme song - "One of Us."

We will also do our take on Collective Soul's "Shine" and share a little from NIN's "Closer" and U2's "Put on Your Sexy Boots." It should be a lot of fun - already some of the staff is getting excited about seeing how this will all shake out - and it will give us another context to do our funky outreach for the cause of compassion and grace.