As the quirky title suggests, this blog post will be about two things. The first, is issues concerns a musical artist I recently discovered, while the second thing discussing my musings on the divine order of the Bible. Completely unrelated topics, but, hey, this can be a "choose your own adventure" type of blog.
First, after hearing several pretty good reviews, I recently purchased the album "Two Suns" by Bat for Lashes. Looking at the album cover, I expected something experimental and trippy similar to a female version of antony and the johnsons, though natasha kahn (the lead singer of bat for lashes) is probably not nearly as messed up as antony. But I have thoroughly enjoyed natasha kahn and her band's album for several reasons. First, natasha's voice is simply mesmerizing. While on parts of the record it can sound almost gothic, on songs such as daniel (my personal favorite), her vocal chords warm for a beautiful pop song. Second, many times she reminds me of cat power, my favorite female vocalists. Songs like "moon and moon" and "traveling woman" have a minimalist instrumentation and vocal overlay sounding a lot like cat power. Third, her lyrics are incredible, though often dark. Like the hold steady, natasha creates a character (pearl) that carries throughout the album. In the song siren song, pearl is introduced, citing her willingness to love despite her wickedness. The song pearl's dream then carries through a vision of pearl's. Finally, as the album has an overarching theme of love and loss (and of broken relationships), pearl ultimately dies in the big sleep. I would recommend listening to her music on her website as well as reading this excellent article from spin magazine.
Second, something I've been thinking of a lot recently is the divine order of the Bible. The Bible is first meant to be read objectively and th
en subjectively. Too many times we read the Bible looking to feel a certain way about some issue or another, but that is not the case. Granted, the Bible creates feelings through being objective, but these feelings are a result of objective facts and statements. You may be saying, "nathan, you're going in circles, not making any sense" and perhaps the following quote by David Martyn Lloyd-Jones will help: "most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself." What if each and every day, despite feeling happy or sad or depressed or bubbly, we allowed the power of the cross and the wonderful nature of grace to dominate our lives??? Everything changes. I probably haven't painted a very clear picture, but I encourage you all to read "The Cross Centered Life" by C. J. Mahaney. It's a small, 86 page book, but Mahaney is a man truly humbled and broken by what Jesus did on the cross and what we did as sinners to put him there. The chapter out of which most of my ideas come is chapter 5.That's all for now. Just some of my pondering.
