Jonathan Ryan's Blog, page 34

Songs as Sanctuary: Eve Alexandra on Depeche Mode’s “Blasphemous Rumours”

I was raised without music or book censorship, for the most part.  My parents were not church goers. The first time I encountered the music police was when I was 17.  My friend turned off Depeche Mode’s “Personal Jesus” and said, “I can’t listen to this one.  It’s against my religion.” Two years later I converted […]

Songs as Sanctuary: Kristen Allen on Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline”

I love music. I love all kinds of music. My mind uses music like a label on a file folder. Like so many of you, different songs or artists or sometimes genres will help me recall a specific person, event, or period of my life. The Beach Boys will never fail to remind me of […]

Songs as Sanctuary: Michael Delp on Bob Dylan’s “Ain’t Talkin”

Once, decades ago, Dylan went nuts, jumped from one universe into another and called himself a  Christian. Get this: I believe Bob is a prophet, and for proof, all you have to do is ask yourself what kind of mind writes as if he is channeling a Ouija voice, and is dipping his pen in an […]

Songs as Sanctuary: Sarah Margaret Babbs on Tupac’s “Changes”

  A few months ago, I went back to Chicago with my daughter, now 6. We were visiting her godmother, my best friend, for the weekend. Driving north from Indiana on the Dan Ryan, we drove beneath the south side overpass I travelled across every weekday from my apartment in Hyde Park to the under-resourced Marquette […]

Songs as Sanctuary: Cameron Dezen Hammon on Springsteen’s Thunder Road

Once not long ago, at my lowest point of faith, of faithlessness really, after my father died and I was deep in the trenches of “nothing matters,” I listened to a podcast. This podcast in particular talked about putting things that inspired wonder or awe in you, into a “God box” in your mind. Like […]

Songs As Sanctuary: Justin Hopper on Steely Dan and Dive Bar Gothic

This was not what you might expect for the kind of place that had people get stabbed over a game of pool: Lou Rawls and Teddy Pendergrass, the J Geils Band and Styx.

Songs as Sanctuary: Justin Hopper on Steely Dan and Divebar Gothic

I used to drink at a place called Uncle Jimmy’s in Pittsburgh, and there were two separate times I stopped by there to find it ‘closed due to stabbing’ – blood on the pool table, blood in the ice well. They played that kind of music that, in the early-1990s, was the youth-music of the […]

Dark Devotional: D’Angelo and the Thief Who Stole Heaven

Original art by Brian C. Jocks Four thoughts on this Sunday’s lectionary: ON THE PRESENCE OF GOD When I doubt God’s presence in the world or in my life, I can always find him, there, in the cacophony of my doubt. When I suspect that prayer is superstitious, when I am almost certain that I’m […]

Approaching Mystery: Playing Dead by Catherine Wiley

I am about ten years old, and I am curious about death.   I am in the living room of our family house, the old farmhouse we bought when my father managed to alienate the family who lived down the street from the more ordinary suburban house we used to live in.   I’ve decided […]

Wind River and The Death of the “Godly Man.”

(Spoilers Ahead) A few nights ago, I returned from dropping off my kids and decided I didn’t want to go home right away. It’s always a bit lonely after they leave for their mom’s place. The house is a bit too empty and quiet. I decided dinner and a good movie would help me ease […]