Diana Krall vindicates the Presbyterian Curmudgeon

In an interview with NPR this morning, Diana Krall said, "If I had my choice now, I'd sing 'Girl from Ipanema,'" thereby confirming my sound judgment.

An Almost-Chosen People

To Mrs. Curmudgeon's bemusement, I am an obsessive listener of the EconTalk podcast, and have picked up the phrase "deep insight" from host Russ Roberts. Paul Johnson's lecture "An Almost-Chosen People," published in the June/July 2006 issue of First Things, is littered with them. Just one paragraph (get ye and read the rest):

"Since religious establishments were popular rather than hieratic, a distinctive American religious tradition began to emerge. There was never any sense of division in law between laity and clergy, between those with spiritual privileges and those without—no jealous confrontation between a secular and an ecclesiastical world. America was born Protestant and did not have to become so through revolt and struggle. It was not built on the remains of a Catholic Church or an establishment; it had no clericalism or anticlericalism. In all these respects it differed profoundly from the old world, which had been shaped by Augustinian principles and violent reaction to them. The word secular never had the same significance in America as in Europe because the word clerical had never conveyed an image of intolerance and privilege. America had a traditionless tradition, making a fresh start with a set of Protestant assumptions, taken for granted, self-evident, as the basis for a common national creed."

A Perverted Sacrament

"For they eat the bread of wickedness,
and drink the wine of violence." - Proverbs 4:17

Strictly applied, the canons of grammatical-historical exegesis forbid us to find in Proverbs 4:17 any allusion to the Lord's Supper because the original writer and readers could not have found it. However, we ought also read all of Scripture as part of the Christian canon and, because of the Bible's unitary Spiritual authorship, can find intertextual references which look forward as well as back.

Proverbs 4:17, then, describes a perverted sacrament. The wicked's religion is not faith in the Cross and does not include the faith-filled act of receiving and participating in the benefits of Christ's death and resurrection. Instead, their religion is worship of self, to whom they sacrifice the lives (literally and figuratively) of those around them.

The righteous receive the blood of Christ by faith and through the Spirit. The wicked shed the blood of others and would, if they could, crucify the Lord of glory.

Up

In one of his magazines or comic books, Thing One discovered a flyer from the Cartoon Network a couple months ago. It advertised a contest in which one of the top prizes was a toy lightsaber. Very excited (my brother-in-law bequeathed the curmudgelings his old Xbox, and "Star Wars Lego" has been their favorite), he asked me to enter him in the online drawing. I warned him he ought not expect to win anything, but he was nonetheless determined not to miss out on this opportunity. So I entered him for the inevitable disappointment, figuring this would be a chance to learn a Very Important Life Lesson.

You can see where this is going.

While he didn't win a lightsaber, he did get a free ticket to the movie of his choice. Said choice being Pixar's Up, I took him to see it yesterday afternoon. For what it's worth, this may be Pixar's best to date. While the computer animation is of course state-of-the-art, what continues to impress me about the studio's work is that it would be equally good using the old hand-drawn method. These films are memorable because they stick to what works: visual humor, solid plots, and excellent character development. They produce films of consistently high quality which are more remarkable for their humanity than for any computer-generated wowie factor.

In this case, Up is primarily a sustained meditation on the obligatory nature of family relationships in general and the nature and significance of marriage in particular. Its message is simply and eloquently stated: it matters less what we do than with whom and for whom we do it.

Up's run is coming to its end, and you should be able to find it at the dollar theatres soon (I think any movie is better seen at a theatre than on a TV of any size). The Disney marketing machine hardly needs my help, but here it is anyway: go see Up. Tell them the Curmudgeon sent you.

Common grace & the common curse

A lovely quote from Ken Myers, in an interview in the online edition of the PCA magazine byFaith: "Well, I don’t think everything that happens is evidence of common grace. I have a high view of the common curse, too."

Separation & Inspiration

"After three months we put out to sea in a ship that had wintered in the island. It was an Alexandrian ship with the figurehead of the twin gods Castor and Pollux." (Acts 28:11)

A philosophy known as "separation" is prevalent in certain fundamentalist circles. The idea is that the Christian must entirely separate himself from all sin and false worship. For example, not only ought one not attend the Roman Catholic mass, one ought have no Roman Catholic friends. The truly committed separated brethren will go the next step and refuse to associate with fellow fundamentalists who have failed to similarly separate themselves from Roman Catholicism.

Against all this stands Acts 28:11. When Paul's company left Malta, they did so in a ship whose figurehead represented religious worship and trust in Castor and Pollux, Greek gods who were thought to protect sailors. I think we can take for granted that the Apostle to the Gentiles did not share their idolatrous beliefs; nonetheless, he was willing to sail in a ship given over to idolatry.

Too bad Paul didn't have the advantage of sitting under fundamentalist teaching before he took up his missionary work.

Live in Australia, 1959

In my iTunes library, Frank Sinatra albums are usually grouped in the "pop" genre, but Live in Australia, 1959, from a tour with the Red Norvo Quintet, is definitely in the "jazz" category. This is due in large part to a genuine collaboration with Red Norvo, one of the preeminent vibraphonists and bandleaders of his day. Sinatra is remarkably free not only with lyrics, but phrasing and timing as well.

This album has been perhaps overhyped: in my not-so-humble opinion, the performances are mostly perfunctory until "I've Got You Under My Skin," when the energy levels shoot way up. From then on out, Sinatra and the band are swinging. It's a classic, and a delight.

How to make marriage matter again

Ummm... Stop committing adultery?

The Person from Ipanema

I first heard "The Boy from Ipanema" on the Red Hot + Rio album, as sung by Crystal Waters. It struck me then, as now, as a modestly enjoyable quasi-techno experiment. The original version, "The Girl from Ipanema," a cool jazz meets bossa nova triumph, featured ethereal female vocals by Astrud Gilberto and an otherworldly sax solo by Stan Getz. A worldwide hit, it is beyond compare. As no cover version could possibly come near it for absolute perfection, it would be churlish to point out any failings (and while I am a curmudgeon, I'm no churl).

But now Diana Krall has released her own "The Boy from Ipanema" (I have ended up with five versions of this song on my iPod, all of which I've carefully considered whilst writing this post), and the time has come for me to register my objection. Yes, even to Ella Fitzgerald's rendering. The problem is not with the performances, but the lyrics.

The narrative of "the X from Ipanema" concerns a person admiring from a distance, with romantic longing of course, a person of the opposite sex walking along the Brazilian beachfront. In "The Girl," the singer describes a young man's longing in the third person. When Astrud Gilberto sings it, the tantalizing possibility emerges that she is the girl and in fact does notice her young male admirer; perhaps she is not oblivious to his affections after all.

But in "The Boy," the singer describes her own longing in the first person. All of a sudden, this lovely piece of gossamer turns into an overly intimate confessional. At the same time, the object of her affections becomes that much more distant: there is no hope whatsoever the singer's love will be reciprocated. The song is no longer romantic, just sad and, frankly, borderline depressing.

The irony, of course, is that the gender-switching of the "The Boy" version is completely unnecessary; need a point out that Astrud Gilberto was a woman? Henceforth, if the lady singers wish to take a crack at this classic, by all means have at it. But let it be "The Girl from Ipanema," and never again "The Boy."

And that's right, I really don't have anything better to think about.

Why I'm Annoyed by the Vision Forum

From their website: "Our name — The Vision Forum — points to our desire that the Lord would use this work to be a forum for communicating a vision of victory to Christian families." First of all, what's with the dashes? The humble comma would just as effectively set off "The Vision Forum" in that sentence, without all the flash and also without raising the suspicion Mr. Phillips might not know as much about punctuation as all the homeschooling propaganda would lead one to believe.

More substantively, I'm seriously concerned about the nature of the victory the Vision Forum (no, I'm not going to capitalize "the") has in mind. Victory over sin would be a good thing, of course, but flipping through their catalog, the emphasis seems to be on victory over the society and culture around us. And the way to beat the snot out of said society is to turn one's children into culture warriors through the judicious purchase and implementation of the wares hawked by the Vision Forum.

And what a great number of wares there are: 113 pages worth in the 2009 catalog. An awful lot of stuff for those who claim to be pursuing an agenda at odds with that of the world.

Only I'm not persuaded that's the case, not by a long shot. Take this sentence from the blurb for the DVD The Return of the Daughters: "This highly-controversial [again with the misused dash, hypenating what ought never be hyphenated!] documentary will take viewers into the homes of several young women who have dared to defy today's anti-family culture in pursuit of a biblical approach to daughterhood, using their in-between years to pioneer a new culture of strength and dignity and to rebuild Western Civilization, starting with the culture of the home." Let's just a take a moment to reflect on the self-congratulatory air in this ad copy (which, I admit, is a particularly egregious example, but not an uncommon representation of Vision Forum fare). Have enough people even noticed this documentary exists in order to controvert it? If that weren't enough of an overly grand sense of oneself, they're rebuilding Western Civilization.

So much for living quietly, minding one's own affairs (1 Thessalonians 4:11).

This is precisely where the presence of the Vision Forum catalog in Christian homes begins giving me, as a pastor, heartburn. There's something unnervingly worldly about the Vision Forum's anti-world vision. Again and again, one gets the impression each Christian family should be building a legacy which will endure for generations to come; not only that, they should be actively engaged in transforming the culture and reshaping it according to their liking. In other words, they are about building a name and a city for themselves and claiming a country in this world, during this age: a country which they hope, and even believe, will endure.

But this present age is passing away.

And as for me and my house, we are also seeking a country of our own, but not that country from which we came out. Rather, we desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore we are not ashamed of the Cross of Christ; for the God who became despised and nothing has called us to be likewise despised and nothing. He has invited us to live as aliens and strangers in this world. He has not invited us to build a city here because he has prepared a city for us.

But I don't suppose I'll sell much merchandise with that vision.