Category: Music

Children, Ethics, Hope, Love, Music, Theology and Life3 Comments

Grandparents, Moneyball and the Call to Worry

Gary Furr

Watched “Moneyball” Sunday night.  I liked it.  It surprised me.  I wasn’t sure that it could be faithfully made into a film worth watching, but, as usual, I know little about the art of that.  Brad Pitt is a great actor, all of the fluff of paparrazinsanity aside, and he hit a homer again.  It’s an interesting story about baseball, change, and the resistance to new things that always comes.  It doesn’t end with exploding lights, a la, “The Natural,” but with the gentle irony that success leads Billy Bean to a fateful choice between one vision of “success” and … Continue reading Grandparents, Moneyball and the Call to Worry

Art, Christianity, Competition, Culture, Death, Fame, Hope, Love, Music, Perfectionism, Pop, Suffering2 Comments

Whitney Houston and the Biggest Devil

Gary Furr

Whitney Houston made your heart soar with that magnificent voice.  You kept hoping for her—so lovely, so achingly vulnerable, so fragile.  “Come on back, girl,” you hoped.   In the end, she didn’t.  There will be moralizing—drugs, bad choices, all the rest.  But such times are wrong for moral lessons.  There is a time to criticize, and a time to refrain from criticizing.  A time to learn a lesson, and a time to let the dead alone and mourn. The story of Whitney Houston makes me think how hard it is to care for one’s own soul when there are so … Continue reading Whitney Houston and the Biggest Devil

Art, Cancer, Christianity, Death, Folk, Gospel music, Music, Suffering, Theology and Life

“Death Gospel,” Art and Life

Gary Furr

The website “Sightings” put out an interesting piece this week.  Thanks to my good friend and blog reader Lamon Brown for forwarding this to me.  It is a piece on the music of Adam Arcuragi.  I was unfamiliar with Arcuragi, but immediately was drawn to go read the piece and the NPR interview of Arcuragi.  His album Like a Fire that Consumes All Before It, writes M. Cooper Harriss …has raised interest in the popular-musical category of “Death Gospel,” a metaphysically attuned variety of the Americana genre named by Arcuragi. Death Gospel is not sonically related to “Death Metal” (a … Continue reading “Death Gospel,” Art and Life

Art, Blues, Hope, Music, Spirituality, Suffering, Theology and Life2 Comments

Widow of Zarephath Blues

Gary Furr

A few years ago, I wrote a song as part of a sermon series on the Blues.  I was inspired by a book by Stephen J. Nichols called, Getting the Blues: What Blues Music Teaches Us About Suffering and Salvation.  We had a great time in church—using drama of great blues figures like Bessie Smith, Blind Lemon, Muddy Waters, Mississippi John Hurt and others, and blues songs to illuminate a lot of Bible stories. Oddly, to listen to the sanitized Suburbianity of today, you’d think religion was all panacea and no sorrow.  Nothing is more unbiblical than some of the … Continue reading Widow of Zarephath Blues

Gospel music, Music

Why I Prefer Ladies Over 75

Gary Furr

I thought that title might get your attention. I got word that a dear sweet woman who used to be a member passed away this weekend.  Betty McGee was an incredibly nice soul.  Her life had plenty of ups and downs.   But she was one of those hidden jewels of Baptist churches in the South.  All most non-Baptist people ever get to see are the preachers, and that’s a shame.  That’s like judging a house by the septic tank, at least when you consider the Reverends that purport to “speak for” Baptist folks.  If I was going to nominate anyone … Continue reading Why I Prefer Ladies Over 75