Jesus, can you take the time to throw a drowning man a line?

Like many of you, I have teetered on both sides of the threshold of tears since Friday. I was listening to music on shuffle mode this morning when U2's Peace on Earth came on. I was struck with how fitting the lyrics are to how I am feeling. That the song was published in 2000, unfortunately, means that we have heard this story before. 

In its original form, the song gives voice to feelings frustration and sorrow in the wake of lives lost to terrorism in Northern Ireland. I can identify with the conflicting emotions Bono sings of as he struggles to find optimism when there seems to be little reason for it. Ultimately though, I choose to hear the songs hopeful possibility. Finding peace in one's heart may seem unlikely in these days, but good in the world vastly outnumbers the bad. We have to believe that if we are to be part of the solution.

So here are the lyrics to U2's Peace on Earth. I have replaced the five names from the original lyrics, names of people who died in Northern Ireland, with  five names from Sandy Hook Elementary. I hope that doesn't offend. 

Heaven on Earth
We need it now
I'm sick of all of this
Hanging around

Sick of sorrow
I'm sick of the pain
I'm sick of hearing
Again and again
That there's gonna be
Peace on Earth

Where I grew up
There weren't many trees
Where there was we'd tear them down
And use them on our enemies

They say that what you mock
Will surely overtake you
And you become a monster
So the monster will not break you

And it's already gone too far
You said that if you go in hard
You won't get hurt

Jesus can you take the time
To throw a drowning man a line
Peace on Earth

Tell the ones who hear no sound
Whose sons are living in the ground
Peace on Earth

No who's or why's
No one cries like a mother cries
For peace on Earth

She never got to say goodbye
To see the color in his eyes
Now he's in the dirt
Peace on Earth

They're reading names out
Over the radio
All the folks the rest of us
Won't get to know

Jack and Emilie
Grace, Anne, and Olivia*
Their lives are bigger than
Any big idea

Jesus can you take the time
To throw a drowning man a line
Peace on Earth

To tell the ones who hear no sound
Whose sons are living in the ground
Peace on Earth

Jesus in the song you wrote
The words are sticking in my throat
Peace on Earth

Hear it every Christmas time
But hope and history won't rhyme
So what's it worth

This peace on Earth
Peace on Earth
Peace on Earth
Peace on Earth

* Names used in U2 lyrics replaced with five Sandy Hook Elementary Shooting Victims. The complete list of victims are listed here:

- Charlotte Bacon, 2/22/06, female
- Daniel Barden, 9/25/05, male
- Rachel Davino, 7/17/83, female.
- Olivia Engel, 7/18/06, female
- Josephine Gay, 12/11/05, female
- Ana M. Marquez-Greene, 04/04/06, female
- Dylan Hockley, 3/8/06, male
- Dawn Hochsprung, 06/28/65, female
- Madeleine F. Hsu, 7/10/06, female
- Catherine V. Hubbard, 6/08/06, female
- Chase Kowalski, 10/31/05, male
- Jesse Lewis, 6/30/06, male
- James Mattioli , 3/22/06, male
- Grace McDonnell, 12/04/05, female
- Anne Marie Murphy, 07/25/60, female
- Emilie Parker, 5/12/06, female
- Jack Pinto, 5/06/06, male
- Noah Pozner, 11/20/06, male
- Caroline Previdi, 9/07/06, female
- Jessica Rekos, 5/10/06, female
- Avielle Richman, 10/17/06, female
- Lauren Rousseau, 6/1982, female (full date of birth not specified)
- Mary Sherlach, 2/11/56, female
- Victoria Soto, 11/04/85, female
- Benjamin Wheeler, 9/12/06, male
- Allison N. Wyatt, 7/03/06, female

As I was about to close this post, I realized that I was moved by a similar song in church services this past Sunday. We sang "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day" as our rest hymn between speakers. The words were written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The third and fourth verses describe the dispair and hope I have been feeling.

And in despair I bowed my head
“There is no peace on earth,” I said,
“For hate is strong and mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good will to men.”

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
“God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The wrong shall fail, the right prevail
With peace on earth, good will to men.”


In their respective conclusions, Longfellow's passage is more optimistic than Bono's. I think I need that.

Peace on Earth!

Merry Christmas to me (with my boy!)

Rock and Roll Tourism: U2's Dublin

The wife and I spent four days in Dublin last month. She slept in one day while I stumbled upon Tony, the best cab driver in Dublin, and he drove me around to several U2 sites. Here are some photos:

The raised platform in the car park where U2 played their first gig (the Principal of Mt. Temple was amazingly accommodating!)

The now-famous board where Larry posted his call for band members

Mt. Temple's "Next U2" The Kapitals!

All Saints Church where Bono and Ali were married in 1982 - A beautiful building.

Another view of All Saints Church

My smiling wife

Until the End of The World

The good people at @U2.com have a fun feature called Like a Song where their staff writers share what various U2 songs mean to them. This inspired me to write down my thoughts about Until the End of the World.

My two year old daughter surprised me recently by pointing to a poster hanging on my bedroom wall showing Bono and Edge reaching out to each other from the catwalk of the U2 360 stage. “Edge is reaching out to Bono,” she said. It seems my wife has been training her well. This is surprising because my wife would prefer we leave our teenage years behind and not cover our walls with rock and roll images. Perhaps she has come to accept that this reach image, from the Until the End of the World (UTEOTW) portion of the set, has a profoundly deep meaning for me.

It is very satisfying to gradually discover additional sonic and poetic layers of U2 music. I remember talking to a friend about Achtung Baby! not long after the album was released. “Did you know that UTEOTW is an imagined conversation between Jesus and Judas in the hereafter?” Yes, I had heard that. But it took me 18 years to grasp the message of the song: that Love, capital “L” Love, aka compassion, has the ability to reconcile and heal. At least that’s what I get out of it now.

I can trace my UTEOTW awakening to the U2 Conference in North Carolina in October 2009. As I entered the building, I walked by the table of books for sale and I promised myself I would not buy any. I had read enough books about U2, Thank you very much. I especially was NOT going to buy that book about Achtung Baby! by Stephen Cantanzarite. I wasn’t about to let someone else tell me how I should think about that album, thinking I had already figured it out.

By the end of the weekend, I had purchased no less than five U2 books. I even bought Stephen’s Achtung Baby! book. After speaking with him in the hallway for a few minutes, I realized what a bright guy he is. I sensed that he might actually be able to enhance my understanding about the album, and perhaps about other things.

So I bought the book and I read it in one sitting on a cross country flight from Philadelphia to Los Angeles a few weeks later. I listened to the album as I read. Song by song. Over and over. I dove deep into the connected narrative of songs I had previously experienced in siloed isolation. The story had me follow a couple through a decaying relationship, corroded by an unwillingness to truly communicate with each other. This was heavy stuff.

The chapter that really got me was the one focused on UTEOTW. The narrative augments the post mortal Jesus-Judas exchange told by the song, juxtaposing Judas’s glib tone with Jesus’s soft, persistant focus on Love. I found myself in tears as I pondered this concept of forgiveness. It isn’t at all rare for a U2 parable/song to bring me to an emotional state, but this was something else. A rock and roll-inspired religious experience at 30,000 feet.  

I have been a spiritual, religious person my whole life, devoted to the same belief system that I was raised on. But in the months leading up to October 2009, I was beginning to wonder if there wasn’t something more out there that could better inspire me. I wasn’t losing my religion, but I was bored with it.

The congregation I was attending at the time met in the Philadelphia suburbs and I found our worship services to be painfully repetitive. I remember sitting in church one Sunday reflecting on the fact that there we were, listening again from soft, padded pews to a sermon on living a Christ-centered life.

My mind wandered to my comfortable life. My comfortable car, my comfortable house, my comfortable job and my comfortable wife. My comfortable service to the youth of the church who lived in comfort with their comfortable parents and attended safe schools. Comfort is great. Everything I’d always worked for.

The mental wandering continued. Not five miles away, tens of thousands lived in poverty and not much comfort. Southwest Philadelphia feels otherworldly compared to the suburbs. Despite taking the train through that part of town nearly every day, I had never met or served anyone from that community. I never said hello or tried to get to know them. The disparity of my comfortable life relative to the third world conditions of Southwest Philadelphia seemed painfully hypocritical given my beliefs on brotherly love.

And then everything changed.

In November 2009 I was asked by my church leaders to attend services with a congregation in the city and be part of a team of three who look after the physical and spiritual needs of the congregation. This congregation is comprised largely of refugees from Liberia’s civil war. It was as if my bluff was being called. “You think compassionate thoughts,” the universe was saying. “Can you BE compassionate?” I knew right away that this was what I needed.

I initially fell into the common trap of thinking that this was a case of the needy being served by the more materially stable. I was quickly humbled. I came to know the reciprocal nature of service and love. I immediately had scores of new friends from Southwest Philadelphia and the more I tried to serve, the more I was served in return. The more I Loved, the more I was Loved in return.

This Love that I feel from fellow members of my congregation has caused me to reflect many times on the “Love Love Love” section of UTEOTW. This is the only part of the song where we hear Christ’s point of view. And what does Bono have him say? “Love Love Love...” To me this is an expression of unconditional love. An acceptance that transcends actions or external requirements. This resonates strongly with me because I need that kind of acceptance. I am a flawed human being. I am broken and I need to know that I can be fixed. And that’s why I find this song to be so beautiful. It stands as a reminder that we can be forgiven. That Love can conquer all. That, regardless our religious affiliation, or absence of affiliation, things can get better. Stay optimistic. Talk to each other. Love one another.

Behind the accusation “You, you said you would wait” is the implied response, “I did wait. I’m right here.” And so we can be right there for those we would Love and serve. As we learn in another song from Achtung Baby!, we get to carry each other. Not have to, we GET TO. For as we serve, as we wait on each other, as we Love one another, we are Loved in return. A risky proposition, to be sure and Pop religion though it may be, I have found it to be true.

Back to the poster in my room. There’s one thing I’m still trying to figure out. In the U2 360 performances of the song, at the very end, Bono and Edge, representing Judas and Jesus come ever so close to reconciliation as they reach out to each other from opposing catwalks. But just as they are about to make contact, the catwalks draw apart. Is U2 implying that in the case of Jesus and Judas, Love does not conquer all? Are they making a theological statement about whether or not what Judas did is beyond forgiveness? Or are they pointing out that too often we fail to come together in reconciliation. In my mental vision of the performance, they are able to bridge the gap. This brings hope to my ability to bridge gaps in relationships, both earthly and divine.

The poster hangs in my bedroom because my wife made me remove it from the living room where I hung it after bringing it home from the frame shop. While it might have deep spiritual meaning to me, to her it is nothing more than a rock poster. “How long will I have to wait until you see that this image has a place in our living room?” I recently asked. “Until the End of the World,” she replied.

Thank heaven for Love, Love, Love!

See you in two months Snowbird!

Loved this little video about the guys and gals who work Snow Patrol at Snowbird. Made me want to go skiing. Today. I'll be there in early March. Can't wait. Need to start working out. My knees feel a bit soft.

Never tell me the odds...Start-up edition

After reading this article about red flags that spook investors, I got an idea for a new company. It would focus on developing a proprietary integrated circuit platform that would revolutionize debt-collection for the food service industry in Somolia using a rag-tag team of newly minted undergrads. Provide the undergrads with the next Facebook, tailored specifically for this emerging $10MM/yr market. 

Who's in?

The trek home from Ikea begins

Scary face at Ikea

The kid, not the mom.