Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story

by Bono

was further attracted to the God of the scriptures that they read from. I wasn’t sure I’d ever encountered such a presence in our lovely little Church of Ireland in St. Canice’s.

I’d always be first up when there was an altar call, the “come to Jesus” moment. I still am. If I was in a café right now and someone said, “Stand up if you’re ready to give your life to Jesus,” I’d be the first to my feet. I took Jesus with me everywhere and I still do. I’ve never left Jesus out of the most banal or profane actions of my life.

I’m not sure a professional psychologist would agree, but something in me understands that until we deal with our most traumatic traumas, there’s a part of us that stays at the age at which we encountered them.

There’s stuff you can learn from people who don’t tell you anything. Like how not to react when there is a crisis. Like how to stay still and maybe even unearth levity from the seriousness of a situation. Edge is the silence inside every noise. He’s the light inside the paint.

It is not an exaggeration to say U2 began to write our own songs because we couldn’t play other people’s.

On all the journeys I’ve taken, I’ve sought a guide. Even with the compass of faith I’m looking for the right company for the ride. For some spirit guide physicalized in a person. The sacrament of friendship.

discovered early that I was collaborative by nature. I began to understand that the world is not so scary if, around every significant corner, somebody is waiting to walk with you on the next part of the journey.

I had to create that fusion, to make a chemistry set of the crowd, by rubbishing the very idea they were a crowd. This was not just a nucleus of unstable atoms banging into each other; this was a gathering of sentient beings who for those few hours every night played the most important role in the drama, transporting the band and therefore themselves to some place neither had been before. Finding some moment that none of us had occupied before, or would ever again. Think about that.

I’m also deeply conscious that I can’t live up to the badge I’ve pinned to my lapel. I’m a follower of Christ who can’t keep up.

This

It’s a pumped-up person who believes they can live a life free from worldly concerns.

With crowds I was cocky, too comfortable in the big picture. Wide-screen. I knew I could love at scale, but could I survive the intimacy of the close-up?

We spent a lot of every day unpacking each other. We’ve spent our life at the same task. All of us humans weighed down with so much stuff.

There are times when I will introduce him to worlds he might not have entered and times when he will protect me from worlds I should never enter.

To “treat others as you treat yourself” is a bit of a pothole on the road to financial or even cultural dominance.

I had with me a small battery-operated Sony system that I used to record thoughts and melodies, and I busied myself making a recording of the baby’s heartbeat, a low but significant rhythm being picked up by ultrasound. Maybe I’d write a song to the heartbeat one day. A creative thought designed to hold off my growing terror.

If you’re going to be famous, sure, be funny, be irreverent. Listen to the shouters as well as the whisperers. But above all, be useful. That was his modus, it always seemed to me, a modus that became a prayer in our family. Simple. Direct. Make us useful, dear God. We’re available. How can we be useful in this world where we find ourselves?

The very idea that your private thoughts or feelings are worth sharing with anyone outside your family or friends is already a kind of arrogance. Arrogance is the exit and entry point to the humiliation that art requires.

changed by it? Yes, and why not? Saying no to change is a sad kind of stasis. To

I recall the words of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, who became the first female president in Africa. “If your dreams don’t scare you, they are not big enough.”

Ali says, “Don’t look up to me or down on me; look across for me. I’m here.”

Great relationships, like great songs, deserve better than sentimentality.

The Franciscan friar Richard Rohr put it to me like this: “It’s our strengths rather than our weaknesses that often hold us back.”

Can I take in the view without having to be in it? Can I not take that call, in favor of this other call, to stillness? Is this what vision over visibility looks like now?