To A Stranger
by Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

Passing stranger! you do not know
How longingly I look upon you,
You must be he I was seeking,
Or she I was seeking
(It comes to me as a dream)

I have somewhere surely
Lived a life of joy with you,
All is recall'd as we flit by each other,
Fluid, affectionate, chaste, matured,

You grew up with me,
Were a boy with me or a girl with me,
I ate with you and slept with you, your body has become
not yours only nor left my body mine only,

You give me the pleasure of your eyes,
face, flesh as we pass,
You take of my beard, breast, hands,
in return,

I am not to speak to you, I am to think of you
when I sit alone or wake at night, alone
I am to wait, I do not doubt I am to meet you again
I am to see to it that I do not lose you.

"To say that real, big things should be considered as metaphors shows some doubt in their realness, a will to dematerialize; the moment a thing becomes a mere figure of speech, its bright noon is past. Miracles become metaphors when we no longer really believe in saints. Now that tall buildings are for the first time fragile in our memory and imagination, susceptible to a morning's doom, we fill them with feelings, and accept that they are representations of our hopes, rather than wrappers of our necessities. The new tall building books and shows in New York are, therefore, however outwardly optimistic, surely inwardly elegiac."

-----Adam Gopnik, "Higher and Higher: What Tall Buildings Do", from the New Yorker.

God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God's work from beginning to end. So I concluded that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to enjoy themselves as long as they can. ...Whatever exists today and whatever will exist in the future has already existed in the past.

-----ecclesiastes 3

"Now---here is my secret:
I tell it to you with an openness of heart that I doubt I shall ever achieve again, so I pray that you are in a quiet room as you hear these words. My secret is that I need God---that I am sick and can no longer make it alone. I need God to help me give, because I no longer seem to be capable of giving; to help me be kind, as I no longer seem capable of kindness; to help me love, as I seem beyond being able to love."

-----Douglas Coupland, "Life After God"

orthodoxy affects orthopraxis . . .

"Every action is the bearer and expression of more or less theory-laden beliefs and concepts; every piece of theorising and every expression of belief is a political and moral action."

-----Alasdair MacIntyre, "After Virtue"

"I am a democrat because I believe that no man or group of men is good enough to be trusted with uncontrolled power over others. And the higher the pretentions of such power, the more dangerous I think it both to the rulers and to the subjects. Hence Theocracy is the worst of all governments. If we must have a tyrant a robber baron is far better than an inquisitor. The baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity at some point be sated; and since he dimly knows he is doing wrong he may possibly repent. But the inquisitor who mistakes his own cruelty and lust of power and fear for the voice of Heaven will torment us infinitely because he torments us with the approval of his own conscience and his better impulses appear to him as temptations. And since Theocracy is the worst, the nearer any government appraoches to Theocracy the worse it will be. A metaphysic, held by the rulers with the force of a religion, is a bad sign. It forbids them, like the inquisitor, to admit any grain of truth or good in their opponents, it abrogates the ordinary rules of morality, and it gives a seemingly high, super-personal sanction to all the very ordiary human passions by which like other men, the rulers will frequently be actuated. In a word, it forbids wholesome doubt. A political porgramme can never in reality be more than probably right. We never know all the facts about the present and we can only guess the future. To attach to a party programme---whose highest real claim is to reasonable prudence----the sort of assent which should reserve for demonstrable theorems, is a kind of intoxication."

-----C.S. Lewis, excerpt from "A Reply to Professor Haldane" in "Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories"

"Athletes, by and large, are people who are happy to let their actions speak for them, happy to be what they do. As a result, when you talk to an athlete, as I do all the time in locker rooms, in hotel coffee shops and hallways, standing beside expensive automobiles---even if he's paying no attention to you at all, which is very often the case---he's never likely to feel the least bit divided, or alienated, or one ounce of existential dread. He may be thinking about a case of beer, or a barbecue, or some man-made lake in Oklahoma he wishes he was waterskiing on, or some girl or a new Chevy shortbed, or a discotheque he owns as a tax shelter, or just simply himself. But you can bet he isn't worried one bit about you and what you're thinking. His is a rare selfishness that means he isn't looking around the sides of his emotions to wonder about alternatives for what he's saying or thinking about. In fact, athletes at the height of their powers make literalness into a mystery all its own simply by becoming absorbed in what they're doing."

-----Richard Ford, "The Sportswriter"

"My wish was to have been present with those who loved Christ and were with him at his passion so that I, with my own eyes, might have seen the passion which our Lord suffered for me, and so that I might have suffered with him as the others did who loved him. I never desired any other sight or revelation of God."

-----Julian of Norwich May 13, 1373

Looks like Mel Gibson is answering Julian's prayer.

"In the Christian faith, the term [conversion] takes special significance only in the new direction of a person's change. A believer shifts from loyalties that are essentially selfish to loyalties that are directed toward Christ. A Christian is converted from a self-driven life to a Christ-driven life. That is the important point."

-----Bruce L. Shelley

My father was a relentlessly self-improving boulangerie owner from Belgium with low-grade narcolepsy and a penchant for buggery. My mother was a 15 year old French prostitute named Chloe with webbed feet. My father would womanize, he would drink, he would make outrageous claims, like he invented the question mark. Sometimes, he would accuse chestnuts of being lazy - the sort of general malaise that only the genius possess and the insane lament. My childhood was typical: summers in Rangoon, luge lessons. In the spring, we'd make meat helmets. When I was insolent, I was placed in a burlap bag and beaten with reeds. Pretty standard, really.

"There are three kinds of pipe. There is what you have, which is garbage and you can see where that's gotten you. There is brass, which is very good as long as nothing goes wrong. . . . and something always goes wrong. And then there's copper, which is the only pipe I use. It costs money. It costs money because it saves you money."


-----Cosmo, from "Moonstruck"

"I may not always wear the right trousers but I can play that steel guitar and make you cry."


-----Daniel Lanois

Quotation for Tuesday, April 22, 2003:

"No amount of falls will really undo us if we keep on picking ourselves up each time. We shall of course be very muddy and tattered children by the time we reach home, but the bathrooms are all ready, the towels put out, and the clean clothes in the airing cupboard. The only fatal thing is to lose one's temper and give it up. It is when we notice the dirt that God is most present in us: it is the very sign of His presence."

-----C.S. Lewis, "The Problem of Pain"

"The next moment is as much beyond our grasp, and as much in God's care, as that a hundred years away. Care for the next minute is just as foolish as care for a day in the next thousand years. In neither can we do anything, in both God is doing everything." --C.S. Lewis

"It has been well said that no [individual] ever sank under the burden of the day. It is when tomorrow's burden is added to the burden of today that the weight is more than a [person] can bear. Never load yourselves so, my friends. If you find yourselves so loaded, at least remember this: it is your own doing, not God's. He begs you to leave the future to Him and mind the present." --George MacDonald

THE WAY WE LIVE NOW

I Am Iraq
By MICHAEL IGNATIEFF

Back in the 60's, when I marched against the war in Vietnam, I learned that it is a mistake to judge a cause by the company it makes you keep. I slogged through the streets with Trotskyites who thought America was an evil empire, and I chanted slogans under banners that called for socialist revolution in Brooklyn. I stood arm in arm with pacifists, who made me wonder whether they would have fought Hitler. Since I was anti-Communist, I actually had more in common with the liberal hawks who thought they were defending South Vietnam against advancing Communist tyranny. But I believed nothing could save the weak and corrupt South Vietnamese government. This time, over Iraq, I don't like the company I am keeping, but I think they're right on the issue. I much prefer the company on the other side, but I believe they're mistaken.

I don't like the president's domestic policies. He should be helping state and local governments maintain jobs and services, especially for the poor. His attack on affirmative action turns back decades of racial progress. The tax breaks for the rich are unjust. His deficits are mortgaging the future. It's wrong to lock up so-called unlawful combatants on Guantanamo and in military brigs, denying them due process. The president's attorney general is dangerously cavalier about the civil liberties he is supposed to protect. The bullying tone the president adopted in his diplomacy at the United Nations diminished his chances of U.N. support. But I still think the president is right when he says that Iraq and the world will be better off with Saddam disarmed, even, if necessary, through force.

A lot of my friends think that supporting the president on this issue is naive. The company you keep, they argue, matters in politics. If you can't trust him on other issues, you have no reason to trust him on this one. If he treats freedom at home so lightly, what makes you believe that he will say what he means about staying the course to create freedom in Iraq?

My friends also imply that the company I am keeping on this war is a definition of what kind of person I am. So where we all stand has become a litmus test of our moral identities. But this shouldn't be the case. Opposing the war doesn't make you an antiglobalist, an anti-Semite or an anti-American, any more than supporting the war makes you a Cheney conservative or an apologist for American imperialism.

In fact, the debate over war is not so much a clash of competing moral identities as a battle within each of us to balance competing moral arguments. Sometimes it is easier to see this in the positions of the other side than in your own.

Recently, 14,000 ''writers, academics and other intellectuals'' -- many of them my friends -- published a petition against the war, at the same time condemning the Iraqi regime for its human rights violations and supporting ''efforts by the Iraqi opposition to create a democratic, multiethnic and multireligious Iraq.'' But since they say that ''the decision to wage war at this time is morally unacceptable,'' I wonder what their support for the Iraqi opposition amounts to. One colleague refused to sign the petition because he said it was guilty of confusion. The problem is not that overthrowing Saddam by force is ''morally unjustified.'' Who seriously believes 25 million Iraqis would not be better off if Saddam were overthrown? The issue is whether it is prudent to do so, whether the risks are worth running.

Evaluating risks is not the same thing as making moral choices. It is impossible to be certain that improving the human rights of 25 million people is worth the cost because no one knows what the cost will be. Besides, even if the cost could be known, what the philosophers call ''consequential'' justifications -- that 25 million people will live better -- run smack against ''deontological'' objections, namely that good consequences cannot justify killing people. I think the consequential justifications can override the deontological ones, but only if the gains in human freedom are large and the human costs are low. But let's admit it, the risks are large: the war may be bloody, the peace may be chaotic and what might be good in the long run for Iraqis might not be so good for Americans. Success in Iraq might win America friends or it might increase the anger much of the Muslim world feels toward this country.

It would be great if moral certainty made risk assessment easier, but it doesn't actually do so. What may be desirable from a moral point of view may be so risky that we would be foolish to try. So what do we do? Isaiah Berlin used to say that we just have to ''plump'' for one option or the other in the absence of moral certainty or perfect knowledge of the future. We should also try to decide for ourselves, regardless of the company we keep, and that may include our friends, our family and our loved ones.

During Vietnam, I marched with people who thought America was the incarnation of imperial wickedness, and I marched against people who thought America was the last best hope of mankind. Just as in Vietnam, the debate over Iraq has become a referendum on American power, and what you think about Saddam seems to matter much less than what you think about America. Such positions, now as then, seem hopelessly ideological and, at the same time, narcissistic. The fact is that America is neither the redeemer nation nor the evil empire. Ideology cannot help us here.

In the weeks and years ahead, the choices are not going to be about who we are or whose company we keep, or even about what we think America is or should be. The choices are about what risks are worth running when our safety depends on the answer. The real choices are going to be tougher than most of us could have ever imagined."

-----Michael Ignatieff, Harvard Professor, Human Rights Activist and NY Times Writer

MEL GIBSON'S GREAT PASSION:
Christ's Agony as You've Never Seen It

ROME, MARCH 6, 2003 (Zenit.org).- Oscar winning actor-director Mel Gibson
is in Rome these days, working on a film on the passion of Christ at the
Cinecittà studios. The movie focuses on the last hours of Christ's life
and stars Jim Caviezel ("The Thin Red Line," "Angel Eyes," "The Count of Monte
Cristo") as Jesus. Gibson granted the following exclusive interview to ZENIT.

Q: What made you decide to do this project?

Gibson: It's been slowly coming on for about 10 or 12 years now. I'm a
pretty old guy, but if you go back 12 years I was 35. That's when I
started to investigate the roots of my faith. I had always believed in God, that
he existed, and I was brought up to believe in a certain way. But in my middle years, I kind of drifted, and other things took center
stage. At that point, I realized I needed something more if I was going
to survive. A closer investigation of the Gospels, of the story, of the whole
piece, was demanded of me. That's when the idea started to percolate inside my head. I began to see
it realistically, re-creating it in my own mind so that it would make sense
for me, so I could relate to it. That's what I want to put on the screen.

Q: So many movies about the life of Christ have already been made. Why make
another one?

Gibson: I don't think other films have tapped into the real force of this
story. I mean have you seen any of the others? They are either inaccurate
in their history, or they suffer from bad music or bad hair. This film
will show the passion of Jesus Christ just the way it happened. It's like
traveling back in time and watching the events unfold exactly as they
occurred.

Q: How can you be sure that your version is so accurate?

Gibson: We've done the research. I'm telling the story as the Bible tells
it. I think the story, as it really happened, speaks for itself. The
Gospel is a complete script, and that's what we're filming.

Q: This seems like a switch from the usual Mel Gibson productions. Your
specialty is action, adventure and romance. What made you decide to do a
religious film?

Gibson: I'm doing what I've always done: telling stories I think are
important in the language I speak best: film. I think most great stories
are hero stories. People want to reach out and grab at something higher,
and vicariously live through heroism, and lift their spirit that way.
There is no greater hero story than this one -- about the greatest love one
can have, which is to lay down one's life for someone. The Passion is the
biggest adventure story of all time. I think it's the biggest love-story
of all time; God becoming man and men killing God -- if that's not action,
nothing is.

Q: Who will want to see a film like this?

Gibson: I think everyone will. The story has inspired art, culture,
behavior, governments, kingdoms, countries -- it has influenced the world
in more ways than you can imagine. It's a pivotal event in history that has
made us what we are today. Believers and nonbelievers alike, we have all
been affected by it. So many people are searching for meaning in life,
asking themselves a lot of questions. They'll come looking for answers.
Some will find them, some won't.

Q: So this film isn't only for Christians?

Gibson: "Gandhi" was a blockbuster hit, but it wasn't just for Hindus.
This film is for everyone. For believers and nonbelievers, Jesus Christ is
undoubtedly one of the most important historical figures of all time.
Name one person who has had a greater impact on the course of history.

Q: But if this film is focused on bringing the Gospels to life, won't it be
offensive to non-Christians? For example, the role of the Jewish leaders
in Jesus' death. If you depict that, won't it be offensive?

Gibson: This isn't a story about Jews vs. Christians. Jesus himself was a
Jew, his mother was a Jew, and so were his Twelve Apostles. It's true
that, as the Bible says, "He came unto his own and his own received him not"; I
can't hide that. But that doesn't mean that the sins of the past were any
worse than the sins of the present. Christ paid the price for all our
sins. The struggle between good and evil, and the overwhelming power of love go
beyond race and culture. This film is about faith, hope, love and
forgiveness. These are things that the world could use more of,
particularly in these turbulent times. This film is meant to inspire, not
to offend.

Q: Even so, some people are going to think that you just want to "push your
beliefs on others." Is that true?

Gibson: I didn't invent this story. I do happen to believe it. It's
something that just gets inside of you and has to come out. I'm just
trying to tell it well, better than it's ever been told before. When you're
dealing with non-fiction, a director's responsibility is to make it as
accurate as possible. Open-minded people will appreciate it for what it
is.

Q: What about the violence? Won't people find some of the more graphic
scenes inappropriate?

Gibson: Some people might, but, hey, that's the way it was. There is no
gratuitous violence in this film. I don't think anyone under 12 should go
see it -- unless they're a very mature 12-year-old. It's pretty heavy.
I think we have gotten too used to seeing pretty crucifixes on the wall and
we forget what really happened. I mean, we know that Jesus was scourged,
that he carried his cross, that he had nails put through his hands and
feet, but we rarely think about what this means. Growing up I didn't realize what was involved in this. I didn't realize
how hard it was. The full horror of what Jesus suffered for our redemption
didn't really strike me. Understanding what he went through, even on a
human level, makes me feel not only compassion, but also a debt: I want to
repay him for the enormity of his sacrifice.

Q: What about the language barrier? You're filming in two dead languages --
Latin and Aramaic -- and you're not planning to use subtitles. Won't that
be a turnoff?

Gibson: Caravaggio's paintings don't have subtitles, but people get the
message. The Nutcracker Ballet doesn't have subtitles, but people get the
message. I think that the image will overcome the language barrier.
That's my hope. I'm just trying to be as real as possible. There is something
kind of startling about watching it in the original languages. The reality
comes out and hits you. Full-contact. I know we are only re-creating, but
we are doing the best we can to simulate an experience of really being
there. And I think it's almost counterproductive to say some of these things in a
modern language. It makes you want to stand up and shout out the next
line, like when you hear "To be or not to be" and you instinctively say to
yourself, "That is the question." But if you hear the words spoken as
they were spoken at the time, it can kind of stun you. I've seen that happen when we're working. It gets a
clarity to it through the acting, through the nuances of the characters,
the movement of the camera -- it's the movement, it's the timing, it's
everything. All of a sudden it's very, very clear to me. That's when I
cut and move on.

Q: When you finish this project, will it be a letdown to go back to less
sublime subject matter?

Gibson: No, it will be a relief to do something that's a little lighter.
There is a tremendous burden of responsibility in this one, not to sell
anything short. I just hope I can do justice to the story. You can't
please everybody, but then again, that's not my goal.

"Anger is the fluid that love bleeds when you cut it."

-----C.S. Lewis, "Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer"

"It is obvious that while the numerous initiatives which are now taken by the Iraqi side with a view to resolving some longstanding, open disarmament issues can be seen as active or even proactive, these initiatives three to four months into the new resolution cannot be said to constitute immediate cooperation. Nor do they necessarily cover all areas of relevance. They are, nevertheless, welcome. And UNMOVIC is responding to them in the hope of solving presently unresolved disarmament issues. "


-----Hans Blix, Cheif UN Weapons Inspector in Iraq, in a speech given to the UN security council this morning.

George MacDonald | 1824-1905
Between Charles Dickens's and Oscar Wilde's noted American tours came George MacDonald's. In the United States, the fantasy writer and philosopher MacDonald was received as the eminent Victorian he was in 1872, meeting with Mark Twain, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Harriet Beecher Stowe. His British literary connections were no less impressive: he numbered among his friends and confidantes John Ruskin, Matthew Arnold, Alfred Lord Tennyson, and Lewis Carroll (MacDonald's children were among the first to read the Alice books in manuscript), and his influence can be traced in C. S. Lewis and W. H. Auden. Little read now, MacDonald's fantasies for children and adults were critically and popularly well received when they were published from 1855 until the end of the century. These fantasies include the adult work Phantastes (1855) and MacDonald's stories and poems for children, Dealings with Fairies (1867), At the Back of the North Wind (1871), The Princess and the Goblin (1872), and The Princess and Curdie (1883). Like Andrew Lang, who would compile collections of fairy tales in the 1890s, MacDonald rejected realism as a viable mode of storytelling. Although realism was the dominant form of writing in the 1870s and '80s (think of the novels of George Eliot and Anthony Trollope), MacDonald rejected it, as well as the increasing Victorian reliance on science and rational experiment. For MacDonald, realism and science constrained and damaged the imagination, placing limitations on the world of the spirit and the inner life. MacDonald frequently went against the grain of prevailing Victorian belief: His career as a Congregationalist minister ended after only three years, when his sermons were found to be objectionable and lacking in sound dogma. With his insistence on the world of fantasy as the means by which to improve one's understanding of "real life," MacDonald stood as a potent ancestor of imaginative writers of children's literature including Beatrix Potter, Kenneth Grahame, and A.A. Milne.

At present, oil companies from France, Russia, and China have
contracts to help develop Iraqi oil fields. Europe depends far more upon oil
from Iraq than America (only a tiny fraction of U.S. oil comes from Iraq,
about six percent). Oil from Iraq, indeed oil from the entire Middle East,
ranks higher among European national interests than American. For some
years, the United States has been moving to draw the preponderance of its
oil from our own hemisphere, mostly from Canada, Mexico, and Venezuela, and
to cut back steadily on its use of Middle Eastern oil, to the level now of
26 percent of its annual. Europe is far more dependent on Iraqi oil, and far
more involved with the Iraqi oil industry.

Bono Interview:

Q: Does your humanitarian drive have roots in your religious upbringing, your family, your youth? What motivated you?

A: I'd say megalomania. It might start with that.

Q: You can satisfy that impulse just by being a rock star.

A: Noooo, that's just invading Poland. (Laughs) There's the rest of the world! I think I want to change the world, and I want to have fun. I don't know anyone who doesn't, by the way. Those two instincts shouldn't be mutually exclusive. Sometimes when you succeed in one area of your life, like music, you think you can apply that same momentum to other things. I suppose that's what I thought. Everything is analogous, in a way. The music industry is not that difficult to figure out. It's not rocket science. Neither is economics, as it turns out. And neither is an understanding of what is wrong with the body politic at the moment. I think it's clear we're at a real impasse.

Q: You've channeled so much of your energy toward Africa. Why do you see it as this generation's defining crisis?

A: About 2.5 million Africans are going to die next year because they can't get access to drugs that we take for granted in America and Europe. If that is acceptable then I think our age will be deemed irrelevant by history. Civilization becomes too strong a word if you can live comfortably with those kind of fatalities. I don't think you have to be that clever and smart to work that out. It's just absolutely clear. What annoys me the most is stupidity. People are dying for the most stupid of all reasons: money.

Q: How do you persuade the public that a calamity on that scale is fixable? Many people would feel overwhelmed and helpless against a tragedy that widespread.

A: It's so doable. If the political will is there, we can afford it, believe or not. Anyone who says we can't is telling lies. But people get beaten down, and people don't believe the world is as malleable as it turns out to be. People are more powerful than we think. The United States, where I look for leadership at times like this, is enjoying unparalleled economic, military, technological and cultural power. When President Kennedy said in the early '60s, "We're going to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade," he knew it wasn't going to be easy. It wasn't even on everybody's mind. He wasn't checking the pulse. It was about leadership. Right now democracy is at a crisis point. You can't have the benefits of globalization without some of the responsibilities.

Q: And what happens if the West fails to act?

A: If we miss this opportunity to do what we do best, which is deliver the technology and pharmaceuticals to people in need, suddenly this great culture will get ugly. It will start to look like Pompeii or the fall of Rome. I can't get over it. We were standing on the runway at JFK sending off 6 million shoe boxes from children around the world to AIDS orphans and AIDS-suffering children in Africa. People were saying it would be the last Christmas for a lot of these children. And I just thought, "Why, by the way? Why?" These kids don't have leukemia. These children have AIDS. We have drugs. They don't have to die. My mind is bent trying to get my head around it.

Q: How do you respond to people who say the cost of treating the African AIDS crisis is too high?

A: It doesn't have to be. I'm not against the pharmaceutical companies making profits. They need to make profits to research and develop. But remember when CDs first came out and we'd see pictures of people in space suits in glass fridges carrying these high tech tablets? We were being taught that we're going to have to put our hands deep in our pockets and pull out $15. Now we know they cost 25 cents apiece.

Q: You've said that celebrity is currency in this mission. Yet you've gone beyond simply raising awareness and reaching people of influence. How did your role evolve to include negotiating?

A: I ended up in a place of arbiting and deal-making through default. It was my job to make the United States aware of the Jubilee 2000 movement that was so big in Europe. I found it difficult because you can't make a movement. You grow one. You can't buy it, but you can build it. And we didn't have time. I called on people for help, and my friend Bobby Shriver helped me start working the back roads of influence. Arnold Schwarzenegger, [Shriver's] brother-in-law, introduced me to his Republican friends - like John Kasich, who fought very hard for us and made the whole thing bipartisan. I started to meet economists and got to know the argument, because I realized the work would be done at the table, not on the street.

Q: The table doesn't quite have the mystique or excitement of the street, which is the usual forum for rock and roll rebels.

A: And I do good placard! I prefer it. It looks better. It's much more glamorous for a rock and roll star to be on the barricades with a handkerchief over his nose throwing stink bombs than it is to be in a bowler hat with a briefcase. But we didn't have time.

Q: As MusiCares Person of the Year, you join some stellar company -- Paul Simon, Elton John, Stevie Wonder, Bonnie Raitt. How do you feel about MusiCares honoring you for both your music and philanthropy?

A: MusiCares [does] such great things, it was impossible for me to turn them down. It is an excruciating experience to be given an award for one's humanitarianism because it seems to suggest that other people don't have it, which is never true. I always reckon that I just do what other people would do if they had the time and money.

Q: Are you concerned about the cynics who cast a jaded eye at superstar do-gooders?

A: We should start with the projectile vomit factor and how to prevent it. Is that possible? I expect that cynicism to be thrown at me. I'm always available for mud pies, rocks and small assault weapons.

Q: So you'd be more comfortable getting a GRAMMY than the Nobel Peace Prize?

A: I like GRAMMYs! More, please, more, more, more. It's a difficult issue. People refer to your "charitable work." As it says in the Scriptures, if your left arm knows what your right arm is doing, it is not charity. Anything people do publicly is not charity. You might be promoting an idea or yourself or both at once. But in the end, I guess you can't look at the motives. That's the position I take, anyway. I don't care what reasons people are doing things as long as they're doing things.

Q: You, along with Ashley Judd, Chris Tucker and Lance Armstrong, just completed a Heart of America tour by bus to push for AIDS relief. How did Midwesterners respond to celebrities with a political agenda?

A: The first thing I'd say at the truck stop or the town hall or the college or the church I was speaking at is: On this trip, I'm not a rock star with a cause. I've been one before, and I'll be one again, but this is an emergency, because 6,500 people are dying of AIDS in Africa every day, and they don't have to. I understand the cynicism attached to "rock star with a cause." I mean, I wince, and I am one. This is different. I'm in there going, "Can somebody shout FIRE here?" The siren of a rock and roll band is helpful in this case. We're in the business of noise. We can stir things up.

Q: Is the possibility of charity fatigue demoralizing?

A: If people have lost their compassion, they've lost their humanity, and I don't believe that's happening. People change the channel because they feel impotent and unable to affect change. So what's the point in reminding yourself of what you're not doing? Our message is exactly the opposite. You really can change things. And by the way, we're not asking for your money. We think you've given already. We're asking you to give the president of the United States and the prime minister of England your permission to spend your money saving these lives.

Q: And how is this cause more urgent than, say, community problems with crime or poverty?

A: We're talking about a holocaust and the same kind of questions you'd be asked if you were a German living at the beginning of the Third Reich. When Jews were being loaded on trains, how did you let that happen? This is like setting dogs on black people in the South in the '50s. How did you let that happen? History has a way of making ideas that once were acceptable ridiculous. I think of the '80s. What was acceptable has been made ridiculous by history -- the mullets, the shoulder pads, the silk tour jackets with radio station numbers on the back. But Live Aid didn't become ridiculous. Musicians stepped into a void left by politics and just said no.

Q: Live Aid left an indelible impact on what's become known as cause rock, but some players never got past the marquee. In that same year, you and your wife did volunteer work in Ethiopia. How did that experience fuel your activism?

A: An enormous amount. It brought us in touch with the awe-inspiring beauty of that continent, the strength of the spirit of Africans and an idea of the obstacles in their way, some of which has to be said are their own doing. They replaced the colonial bullying and slave trade with their own despotism a little too quickly. But some of their problems are structural, and we in the West are part of very corrupt relationships -- debt-servicing and holding children to ransom for the deaths of their great-great-great-great-grandparents, trumpeting free trade while not letting them put their products on our shelves. You can't fix every problem, but the ones you can, you must.

Q: You co-founded DATA to address some of those issues. How much progress has been made?

A: Not enough. We've got some very smart people at DATA. Bill Gates is remarkable. He's doing more than any single person has ever done. For him, it's not just a salving of a conscience. He has become as involved in the minutiae and the small print of these problems as I'm sure he was at Microsoft. DATA is at the beginning of a steep incline. What we've got to do is glue together the different factions into a real movement. I want to get back to my day job. I think I'm much better at being in a band than I am in this. I keep waiting for people here to discover that I'm actually Irish and to throw me out of the country. I can't believe I'm getting away with this.

Q: Explain your love affair with America.

A: I'm fan and critic. I love the fact that it's not just a country; it's an idea, an idea that's supposed to be contagious. Right now, the United States can not afford to be a subcontinent behaving like an island. If you read, as I have recently, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the lines written on the Statue of Liberty, you realize what a great idea this country is and what a great tragedy it would be if the country moved away from its essence.

Q: Turning a conservative icon like Jesse Helms around on the issues of debt relief and AIDS funding requires considerable tact. Did growing up with a Protestant father and Catholic mother help you hone these diplomatic skills?

A: Ours was a house full of arguments. It was Meet the Press every morning, particularly on Sundays. There were bloody battles, and the biggest were always fought Christmas Day. Then, of course, just being in a real band is a lesson in diplomacy. You're living in each other's pockets. You have to know when to have that row or not. Or else you'll destroy the thing you've all been working on.

Q: U2 has always expressed its political stands on stage and off. But your solo forays into the political fray take you away from the band. How difficult is it to juggle these two callings?

A: It has been problematic. It has pushed the band's patience, but they are supporting me, not just in terms of the time off, but financially at times. And they take the heat. This is really unhip stuff. We're taking a big risk by saying, "Let's reach out to the churches and corporate America, let's not posture, let's not play good guys and bad guys." There are too many lives hanging in the balance. If we don't get a result here, if we really don't get this [campaign] off the ground, people are going to say that I was had. And they might be right. So I'm taking a big risk, and I just hope it doesn't look bad on the band.

Q: Looking back at U2's odyssey -- an amazingly strong rise in the '80s, an equally robust but radically different course in the '90s -- how do you account for the band's stability and durability in such a fickle and volatile business?

A: Curiosity, I think. Also, an idea that music and friendship are kind of sacraments. Maybe that's over the top, but maybe not. And the sense that we got coming out of punk rock of not turning into monsters through laziness. The gift is not enough. It's what you make with it. And we've always had a sense that we have to justify this life we've been given. It's like there's a deal in place, where we get to not worry about paying the bills or where our kids go to school and in return we mustn't, one, bend over, and two, think that turning up is enough. Every album has to justify our existence. It's some weird freaked-out Irish Catholic guilt meets punk rock.

Q: On the eve of releasing All That You Can't Leave Behind, at the 43rd GRAMMYs, you gave notice that U2 was reapplying for the job of biggest rock band in the world. Few would argue that U2 owns that title, but throwing down the gauntlet was a tad reckless, wouldn't you say?

A: I knew it would take some outrageous remarks to draw attention to us. I am the singer, so I know how to find the spotlight, and that was a way of saying, "Don't miss what we do, even if you're watching to see us fail."

Q: All That, the magnet for seven GRAMMY awards, including back-to-back wins for Record of the Year, is a hard act to follow. How is the next U2 album shaping up?

A: I just came from the studio today, and it's ridiculous what's going on. Edge is just on fire; he's making the most extraordinary things come out of his guitar. It's astonishing. We came up with a tune today called "Lead Me In The Way I Should Go," which could be a big song. Another one, provisionally titled "Full Metal Jacket," is pure chrome. I'm very excited about what we're doing, and I don't think we're facing that difficult second album syndrome.

Q: Which means you could be making another stroll to the GRAMMY podium in 2004. Is it still gratifying to get that kind of acknowledgement from your peers?

A: Very. Whereas the GRAMMYs don't often reward the most innovative or challenging music, in our case, they do! (Laughs). I love it best when rock and roll crosses the road and rubs up against hip-hop and country. I like radio stations like that. I like MTV for that reason. And that's what the GRAMMYs is. It's not in its own ghetto.

Q: All That You Can't Leave Behind came out before Sept. 11, 2001, but took on extraordinary resonance after the terror attacks, especially in the context of the Elevation Tour. How did you finesse the delicate dance between tragedy and entertainment?

A: I often feel we may have Tourette's Syndrome. The thing you're not supposed to do is the very thing we'll do. A lot of people cancelled their tours after Sept. 11. We came in. I wanted to put the names [on an overhead screen] of those who lost their lives to make the point that they were people, not statistics. People said, you can't do this. And I was convinced that we must do this. Our music is church to me; where else are we going to talk about these things?

Q: Audiences were clearly touched by the Sept. 11 references and the show's healing tone. Was the band similarly affected?

A: We were all very moved to be a small part of that [recovery process]. God was in the room. For once, I don't mean me.

Q: You've said that being relevant is harder than being successful. How does U2 hang on to relevance?

A: By trying, by failing. We're nothing if not fearless. We work well in an atmosphere of chaos. The moment you know too much about what you're doing, you're in trouble. The bankruptcy we played with in the Zoo TV tour is something I'm most proud of. The knowledge that we could lose everything kept us awake. I'm reminded of that Van Morrison lyric: "Didn't I come to bring you a sense of wonder." I do think we still have a sense of wonder and awe.

I had an amazing revelation on the way to church this morning. John Mayer is nothing more than a soft-porn version of Stephen Curtis Chapman, with a little Michael McDonald thrown in for good measure.

"The Church is a society of sinners--the only society in the world in which membership is based upon the single qualification that the candidate shall be unworthy of membership."


-----Charles S. Morrison

I was deeply moved today by the loss of the shuttle Columbia. It's ironic that events like this move me more than millions of people dying in some far off land (although that moves me too, when I engage my imagination), but there is just something about the space program tradgedies that touches a very sensitive nerve. Maybe it's that the space program encapsulates so many of our dreams, our strivings to understand who we are and our incessant desires to rise above the day to day circumstances of life. It's almost as if our hopes in some way rest with our abilities to do great things, to be transcendant, if only for a moment.

I grieve also for the struggling nation of Israel. All the strife that the Israeli's have gone through over the last two years, with the new intifada, and this was to be their one moment of hope, their one bright ray in an otherwise dismal existence. All the nation watched on TV, their hopes and pride once again being blown to pieces. It's really almost too much to think about at times.

"Talk to me about the truth of religion and I'll listen gladly. Talk to me about the duty of religion and I'll listen submissively. But don't come talking to me about the consolations of religion or I shall suspect that you don't understand."


-----C.S. Lewis, "A Grief Observed"

Okay, I finally went out and purchased Beck's new album, Sea Change. I have to admit, I think I actually like this album, but not for the reasons I expected. I figured this would be a groundbreaking piece of work, but what I discovered is that it's really OK Computer "countrified." That's right, I'm making up a new word; "countrified." I guess I shouldn't be surprised by this album. You put Nigel Godrich of Radiohead fame on the boards, and get Beck in one of his hipster-doofus country moods, and you're bound to get a quasi-masterpiece.

All in all, a good album for the range-riding-neurasthenic-somnambulists among us.

"Whenever you are asked if you can do a job, tell 'em, "Certainly, I can!" Then get busy and find out how to do it. "

-----Teddy Roosevelt

I can't tell you how many times that kind of thinking has got me promoted.

Read this article.

Link to DATA article

"It takes a lot of work to get condemned by Iran and Cuba, and North Korea has done it."

-----Ari Fleischer, on the recent nuclear events in North Korea

New Year's Resolutions from Martin Luther:

"Resolved: that every man [and woman] should live to the glory of God.

Resolved second: that whether others do this or not, I will."

"An individual Christian may see fit to give up all sorts of things for special reasons -- marriage, or meat, or beer, or cinema; but the moment he starts saying the things are bad in themselves, or looking down his nose at other people who do use them, he has taken the wrong turning."

-----C.S. Lewis, "Mere Christianity"