I Met a Girl Who Sang the Blues

by | Jun 11, 2008 | Don MacLean, Music

Son House

I met a girl who sang the blues
And I asked her for some happy news,
But she just smiled and turned away.
I went down to the sacred store
Where I’d heard the music years before,
But the man there said the music wouldn’t play.

— Don MacLean, “American Pie”

Yesterday we left the Mississippi Delta, and the Blues Trail we’ve been on. We found the graves of Charley Patton and Robert Johnson, and I stood at the Crossroads. But I’m thinking back a month ago when Michael Spencer asked, Can A Christian Sing The Blues? which he likens to the Biblical language of lament. So, yes, then. There’s a lot of folk who think that Christians can’t or shouldn’t express anything negative, but David did it well enough to get it into the canon, so I figure we should be able to as well. He links to Michael Card lecturing at Southern Seminary on “The Lost Language of Lament, and on “Worshiping the God Who Takes Everything Away.”  Read more…

Now Bono was a Prophet, oooh-oooh….

by | Feb 20, 2006 | Bono, Culture, Don MacLean, Music

Sorry, for those who don’t know it’s one of the Veggie-songs from The Jonah Movie from which my kids like to sing. Well, they say “Jonah” instead of “Bono.” And it includes the classic echo line, “Ah-doodily-doo…”

Anyway, there’s a discussion on about whether or not Bono/U2 is a prophet/prophetic voice. Seems Eugene Petersen said something to this effect, and from the discussion just linked comes this gem:

So I’ve used the word prophet for them. Walter Brueggemann describes prophets as “uncredentialed spokesmen for God.â€? Well, I think that fits them pretty well. They don’t have any authority in the world of faith.  Read more…