Eliot's line from 'East Coker', "Old men ought to be explorers", never gets... old. It is inspiring, counter-intuitive, awesome, and, yes, within our reach. And everyone's -- not just that of "old men".

But I never understood it -- really -- until I met Los Straitjackets: their music, I mean.

How did Los Straitjackets "shine a light" (CCR) on Thomas Stearns Eliot?

Well, they did so because it doesn't take many listens to realize that Los Straitjackets are often at their best in the last 40 seconds of each track. At first you hear a fairly predictable riff on a familiar song, but then, in the last verse -- sometimes in the last 28 seconds -- they explode, and the song goes through the roof. Listen to "Christmas Weekend", which begins this cast; or "Linus & Lucy", or "Fury", or "Tempest" (which ends the cast), or "Yeah, Yeah, Yeah", or "Rudolph the Red-Nose Reindeer (!), or... About 70% percent of their songs catch fire at the very end.

Now, if I want to be a T. S. Eliot kind of a man -- and play my life like Los Straitjackets play their songs -- what do I do? What makes this happen in one life, such as yours or mine?

The answer to the question comes in -- are you ready? -- the last third of this podcast.

The images are (1) putting your life on the right foot (i.e., death/resurrection) rather than on the wrong foot (i.e., action/consequence); and (2) assimilating the negativities of your "Voyage of Life" (Thomas Cole, 1842), which can only really happen if you are in the presence of the Compassionate Christ (Bertel Thorwaldsen/Church of the Advent, Birmingham, 1966). Without God's Mercy (as in "The Green Pastures", 1930) it can't happen. Within God's Mercy, it can happen. In the blink of an eye.

I never met T.S. Eliot. Would sure love to have. But I did meet Los Straitjackets! Really did. They all autographed my copy of their single, "The Sox Are Rockin'". One's still speechless. Wouldn't you be?

Mockingbirder Joey Goodall recently composed a public note of praise for 'PZ's Podcast', and his very act motivated this caster to record a new one. Joey's approbation instantly created within me the desire to put some fresh thoughts out there. Instantly!

That's the way love works -- which is to say, "We love" (i.e., embody the fruit of outreach to others) "because He first loved us" (i.e., embodied one-way Love in our direction). Herr Goodall's endorsement instantly and spontaneously birthed the effect of my immediate response.

Today's cast begins as an appreciation of a Joe Meek track from the days (in 1957) when he was not a record producer but just a lowly engineer. Yet even then, Joe was so possessed and inspired by Genius that his hand is all over this track. (You'll hear what I'm talking about. It comes in the last 30 seconds.)

But my Joe Meek appreciation is just a set-up to what I really wish to say, for the cast is really about Prior Love (Stevie Winwood, 1986)! The cast concerns the Center of Christianity, God's one-way love for us confused and seduced racketeers. Oh, and that is not one of three or four key affirmations. No, it is The Center of everything. It stimulates other ideas and other principles and other consanguine affirmations. But it is the Center.

Moreover, it is uniquely presented by -- are you ready? -- by the clumsy character named 'Ginnie Moorehead' in the movie Some Came Running (1958). Shirley MacLaine plays her. And 'Ginnie' oddly but perfectly embodies the sure and true character of One-Way Love. Which is anchored in Christ's Love. It's not a stretch.

Today's podcast is dedicated to David Babikow.

I often think about persisting impasses and persistent patterns in life.

How can you "live with" -- handle -- habitual defeats, whether from outward circumstance or inward personality, without wanting to throw yourself overboard; or, as Herr Moltmann used to say, without wanting to turn in your train ticket and get your money back. Seems there is almost always one thing, one situation, one frailty, which just won't go away.

St. Paul talks about this in Second Corinthians 12 when he invokes his own "thorn in the flesh", which even a three-times repeated prayer for release has failed to take away. Then he hears the Lord say, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in your weakness." Paul therefore concludes: "When I am weak, then I am strong."

I believe this. And not because one has come to idealize or enshrine persistent weakness for its own sake. But rather because I have seen God come in, time and time again, when I have given up, or rather, been forced by circumstance to give up.

In this episode I invoke a movie from 1942, entitled The Big Street (starring Lucille Ball and Henry Fonda, and based on a story by Damon Runyan). The Big Street is an almost perfect instantiation of St. Paul. A character goes down to the lowest possible point of weakness and then discovers a kind of triumph (within one-way love) that not only moves the viewer, but elates the viewer. You are literally weeping and exulting at the same time! There's even a secondary character at the end who puts our bi-focal reaction into timeless words. (See The Big Street.)

If "I must decrease", as it says in John 3, Verse 30, then at the exact same time, "He must increase". Personally, that has proved consistently true in my own life. "Let me take you there, 'cause I'm going... to... Strawberry Fields". One now sees the tragic element within one's life ... optimistically.

This cast is dedicated to Brent White, man of God and true original.

John Zahl recently said that God seems to be interested not so much in preventing our suffering as in redeeming us from it. (I might add, through it, even.)

My long friendship with the theologian Jurgen Moltmann, who died June 3rd at the age of 98, began with a somewhat dramatic "happening" that lines up with JAZ's statement. This new cast describes what happened.

When I went to Tubingen in early 1992 to begin doctoral studies in theology there -- with the warmest sacrificial encouragement of Mary, our three sons being "in tow" -- I got there only to find out that the actual man with whom I had hoped to study was pretty cool about the whole thing. He was perfectly nice, but it turned out his English was not up to his own standard. So he was (moderately) happy to help overseas students who came from other universities but was reluctant to take on a foreign student "full time" on his own ground. He was just cool -- in temperament, I mean. I did not know where I stood.

In any event, Herr Moltmann observed this; and one day, during a kind of barbecue in his garden, when he saw that I was wrung dry from studying Hebrew durch Deutsch and was also receiving little encouragement from the other Great Man, he piped up and said this: "Paul" -- addressing yours truly by his first name was a wonder in itself within that setting at that time --"Paul, I like you. He won't help you. Forget about him. I will take you on, and yes, it will be about Justification!" Herr Moltmann added the last sentence because he knew that I was not "about" his own celebrated specialty, the Theology of Liberation. He knew that I was really not "about" any _of his principal interests. But that didn't seem to matter. Apparently _I mattered.

Jurgen -- as he wanted me to call him forever and ever, amen -- never stopped helping me. And helping Mary, and helping John, and helping David, and helping Simeon. In fact, we made it! Our whole family made it.

Herr Moltmann (Jurgen!) was the subject of Glenda's "Run to Me", and I was the object. One is beyond thankful. Forever.

p.s. You can respond to the fundraising appeal by clicking here.

Now "here's a howdy-do" (The Mikado, Gilbert & Sullivan). How does Joe Meek shed light on that ascendant movement -- and it still is ascendant -- within New Testament scholarship and interpretation?

Let me say how.

Admirers of Joe Meek's amazing productions like to say that he was way ahead of his time in terms of technology and recording innovation BUT that the songs themselves, almost all of them, in their many hundreds, are sentimental, corny and juvenile.

But they're not! They may sound that way, but just listen to the words. They're about "guys and gals", the denizens of Grease and also of To Sir, with Love, and -- wait for it -- everybody. None of Joe's songs -- not a single one, except maybe, at the very end, one, entitled "It's Hard to Believe It" -- are about issues or groups or themes. Every song Joe ever chose to produce is about love: love gone wrong, love gone right, love fulfilled, love disappointed, love obstructed, love enabled. The evidence for this preoccupation is in the lyrics -- and oh, about 99.999 % of them.

The same is true in relation to the New Perspective on Paul. The evidence that that movement is founded on an imposed "story" or paradigm, is overwhelming. That is, if you actually read the Letters of St. Paul. Or the Book of Hebrews, from start to finish. Christ came to give us a New Covenant, not a sort-of "expanded" version of the Old. The Old is passed away, behold the New is come. For years and years, I have tried to say this. (One is instantly accused of "supercessionism" if one says it. And that seems to end the argument. But the accusatory term is arbitrary, linguistic, and freighted.) The evidence of the New Testament is in fact overwhelmingly contrary to the evisceration of Grace that has been dynamized by the New Perspective.

Joe Meek underlines this. His lyrics confirm it. A little "icky" at times they may be, but relationships that strive for mutual love can also be icky. Joe's songs mirror an odd truth: life is about individual men and women who are trying to find... belovedness, and therefore love in return.

Dear New Testament interpreters, read the Letters of St. Paul. Read the Letter to the Hebrews. Read the Gospels -- all of them. And read 'em again in the light of Joe Meek! The subject and meaning is staring you in the face. LUV U.

Consideration of these (thousands of) new "Tea Chest" tapes from Joe Meek is such a blow to old assumptions. For example, I thought I knew his music pretty well. Even dedicated a book to him once, despite his having been dead since 1967.

So now come out a Ton, a TON of new recordings by the Man Who Heard a New World. And almost all of them are fine. Many are actually spectacular. They have been sitting in cases, possibly deteriorating and entirely un-heard, for 57 years.

"Self Portrait", performed by Glenda Collins -- and this cast begins with her solo a cappella rendition of the song -- is beyond profound. It almost says the entire Bare Essentials of what it is to be a human being. I would only root the singer's vision of herself in God. Funny thing is, I think she would have, too. I am certain Joe would have. (He was a believer, and grew up in the Church of England. He is interred at the parish church of his childhood.)

We know very little, and whatever we do know -- really -- comes from outside ourselves. We know one thing, which we rarely know we know: we each need love, individual love for each one of us in our individuality. Everything else is "like the chaff which the wind blows away".

Joe Meek, the Tea Chests, and his lightning-like inspirations -- they are a part of the "staff of life". LUV U.

The new release of hundreds of Joe-Meek tapes and tape-excerpts from the "Tea Chests" of yore is a fresh flashlight into the nature of reality within this broken/fallen world.

Did any of us have any idea of how much good material is contained within these acetate tapes that were packed up in the aftermath of Joe's horrible death? Probably not. We either feared that the tapes had deteriorated over many decades of storage OR that the substance of them would disappoint us. Neither fear proved true!

The surprise-factor within almost everything Joe Meek recorded is without equal. Everything -- and I mean, everything -- he touched came off strange, oblique, jaw-dropping, unexpected, contradictory, and memorable. His artistic achievement -- maybe like Mozart's -- reveals ceaseless inspiration from outside himself. His work is Sibylline.

Now that the tea chests are giving us a chance to hear again, to hear anew, Joe's "New World" (1960), the triumph of "our" world, its flesh, and its devil over God's fire and Truth is seen through anew. All the world's "narrative"-making collapses in the light of Joe's uncommon fire. The Bible is confirmed, the New Testament is revealed, the fecklessness and "Wheel in the Sky" despair of everyday human life that is lived on its own terms -- all of that is lit and revealed anew.

And, dear listener, do not forget to listen to the next cast. It is entitled "Self-Portrait". LUV U.

It was quite arresting, decades ago, when a young artist in New York City told me that, despite appearances -- she came across as confident and hopeful -- she felt inside herself as if she were an egg that had been hurled against the wall, broken in a hundred pieces and dripping down the white paint. In other words, she was "Shattered" (Rolling Stones, 1978). But you never would have known. Not in a thousand years.

Gosh, I learned something that day.
As in, appearances can deceive.
As in, things are often felt more strongly than a person wants to let on.
As in, "in bref", things inside are considerably more serious -- let's say, wounded -- than you (or anyone else) would ever wish to let on.

This cast describes the human condition as more serious than we sometimes imagine -- maybe than we ever imagine. At least until it happens to us!

ABBA makes a fresh appearance, via the refrain to "S.O.S."; and Rudyard Kipling, too. T. S. Eliot wrote once that some of Kipling's short stories feel divinely inspired. "On the Gate" may be one of them. You decide.

Dear Egg Hurled Against the Kitchen Wall:
I am with you. More importantly, He is with you. He doesn't turn away. (This eggman has experienced that Miracle himself!)
LOL

I keep hearing the word "nimble" these days. It comes up in relation to declining and therefore merging church institutions, in which a press release declares that the sale of a church property or the merger of two diminished churches or dioceses will now enable the Church to be more "nimble" in relation to community outreach or the desire to build bridges to the world.

What the word hides is institutional attrition. It is a way of putting a brave face on empirical defeat. (It's a little like the adjective "nuanced". Watch out.)

I saw so clearly at the recent Mockingbird Conference that the renewal of the Christian Church is not tied to a horizontal strategy or even a quality of enterprise. The renewal of the Church consists in its re-affirmation of the One-Way Love of the Gospel of God. The pain of individual experience is so widespread that all it takes is a word -- a pastoral "position", we might say -- of empathetic attentive love for the person in pain to be helped beyond measure. Because the word of empathy and compassion is the Word of God's Grace.

One saw this in almost innumerable one-to-one conversations at the Mockingbird Conference. (Didn't you?) Personally, I could not feel less "nimble" -- tho' you may remember that I was a total jock in PZ's school days!

The fact is, helping is not about nimble. It's about One-Way Love and the Divine Compassion for sufferers in all shapes and sizes. That's the ticket.

Oh, and even if Noel Coward was a committed agnostic, the scene between disconsolate mother and ghostly son in Scene Two of Coward's play "Post-Mortem" (1930) touches on the Greatest Thing in the World. I don't think he ever wrote a greater paragraph than the speech which the grieving mother makes to her ghostly son.

LUV U. (And it's not "complicated".)

Mary Zahl was recently the guest on an episode of a podcast known as "The Brothers Zahl" (out this summer). The subject of the cast was parenting, and I can think of no better illustration of a good parent.

Mary listed three core themes of enduring motherhood/fatherhood that feel utterly right to me. They are (1) complete dependability when your child is little; (2) no control or pressure when your child is growing -- let them or her pursue their own interests; and (3) try to detach from your grown child's life most of the time, tho' not always. Sometimes -- if very occasionally -- you may have to intervene.

I was awed by my wife's reflections, the mother of our three grown sons.

I also couldn't help theologizing a little, for each of her three themes has a direct relation to the Christian Gospel. (1) mirrors the One-Way Love of God's Grace. (2) suggests the continuing solution of Grace to the problem of Law. (3) connects the "Eastern"-sounding insight of non-attachment with the Christian fact of God's Incarnation -- God's personal intervention in this septic world.

This cast is also a sort of pre-op moment for the Mockingbird Conference, which begins this Thursday in Manhattan. Do join us if you can. Mary and I will be there, and hundreds of others, too. I'll speak about parenting, tho' Mary (by my side) is the best authority on that front.

This cast is dedicated to Larry Brudi and Bob Smith, and reverentially, to Dickey Betts.

I wonder if you are ever struck by the ubiquity of this phrase at the end of every checkout line in the known universe: "Do you need a receipt?". Or, in grocery stores, "Find everything you were looking for?". Or, again in every cell-phone (business) call on earth: "Is there anything else I can help you with today?"

In an earlier day, it might have been: "Paper or plastic?"; or, even earlier, "VHS or Beta?"

I believe these everyday reflexive questions are an expression of the World, the Flesh and the Devil's active desire to shut down anything that might resemble or enable a real exchange between persons.

In this cast I tell some stories of interchanges at the 'cash point' in which the reflexive words of the cashier suddenly fell apart, and the real person came through. The truth was out!

Now here's an either-or statement: Everybody all the time is sitting on a major inward issue.

I used to think that was an overstatement, and should be diluted to something like: Most people at some point in their lives find themselves sitting on an engrossing inward concern that they are reluctant to share with anyone else. But experience has taught me the further truth:

Everybody all the time is sitting on a major inward issue.

You the Listener will need to decide what you think about that. But one thing I do know and for absolute sure: The answer to life is not bound up with the question of whether I need a receipt.

LUV U!