Slow Church Playlist: Need Your Help…

Last updated on: October 8, 2014 at 11:01 am by Christopher Smith

Slow Church Playlist: Need Your Help… 2014-10-08T11:01:54-05:00 Christopher Smith

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For awhile, I’ve been rolling around in my head the idea of a playlist to accompany a reading of Slow Church. I have a few songs that have would be essential to that list (which I will feature below), but would love your help in brainstorming songs that convey some of the major themes of the book (not just songs that have the word “slow” in them or that connect with a single idea raised at some point in the book).

Here’s a little piece I wrote a few years ago on a theology of the playlist…

A song is fundamentally a gift — and of course, some songs are better, more compelling gifts than others. We receive the gift, maybe if it is a good gift it resonates with us and sticks in our mind, perhaps we will want to share it with others. In learning to abide with a song (as I would argue with all poetry, though pop music is much more familiar a venue than other poetry), we learn what it means to abide with another, to receive and to be transformed by the gift. A wonderful reminder of the gift economy of creation.

“All I need is Everything” Over the Rhine

“Slow down, hold still
It’s not as if it’s a matter of will
Someone’s circling, someone’s moving
A little lower than the angels

And it’s got nothing to do with me
The wind blows through the trees
But if I look for it, it won’t come
I tense up, my mind goes numb
There’s nothing harder than learning how to receive

…”

Enough said.

“Your Part of the Story” Bill Mallonee / Vigilantes of Love

[ CLICK HERE TO LISTEN ]

“You get to tell your part of the story
Yeah, you get to live it for better or worse

…
sooner or later, it comes down to this
it’s all just gift that you’re living with”

“Every Hour Here” The Innocence Mission

You are like the ticket-half
I find inside the pocket of my old leaf-raking coat
there all the time, all the while forgotten.
I so often seem to leave you in churches
and other islands, and on my beads
where I can see you, I can feel you

I take the ticket-half and put it on the table, saying:
“this is God, and he’s here
through my comings and my goings
but I walk past the ticket-half
I walk past the ticket-half
I walk past the ticket-half
just as I’ve walked past the cross on our wall,”

Our self-importance grows so dazzling, we don’t see you
but gentle Jesus, aren’t you always
aren’t you every hour, here?

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