From: owner-believers-digest@smoe.org (believers-digest) To: believers-digest@smoe.org Subject: believers-digest V11 #54 Reply-To: believers@smoe.org Sender: owner-believers-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-believers-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk believers-digest Saturday, May 12 2007 Volume 11 : Number 054 In Today's believer's digest: ----------------- Article on SW in Pittsburgh Tribune-Review ["Tracy J. Wells" Subject: Article on SW in Pittsburgh Tribune-Review o?< Musician Susan Werner's improvisation carries over into spiritual life By Bob Karlovits TRIBUNE-REVIEW MUSIC WRITER Thursday, May 10, 2007 Susan Werner's look at religion has the same broad blend as her music. She will be on the South Side on Saturday, sharing thoughts that mix doubt and faith with jazz, country and folk music. "I don't have any more answers, but I feel comfortable having the questions," says the singer-guitarist who was brought up as a Catholic in Iowa and is now agnostic. The songs of her faith are the material of her current album, "The Gospel Truth," which she says is the most satisfying of her seven recording projects. It is an album with songs that talk about the need to do good things for others or to understand those who are far different from ourselves. It also has a "New Revised Version" of "The Lord's Prayer" that raises questions about the organization of religion, but never doubts its need. "Americans improvise better than anyone on all they do, and now are improvising in their spiritual life," she says. She's speaking from the parking lot of a Taco Bell in Binghamton, N.Y., where she says she is continuing her life "on tour, interrupted by an album." She is enthusiastic about the recording, she says, because it gives her the chance to deal with aspects of organized religion that provide more puzzlement than support. "In America, we can have a woman president," she says of the possibility, "but no women priests. What is that?" The album stems from her attendance of the Chicago Gospel Music Festival in the summer of 2006, where she was inspired by the energy of the music. She had been planning on doing a blues-oriented album, but says she found herself tired of the "My Baby Done Me Wrong" school of song. Not only did the gospel album reflect her thinking, she says, but it allowed her to work in a musical form that is built around spontaneity and inspiration. She says reaction to the album and the shows with that music have shown her the wisdom of the decision. Conversations after concerts have been energetic and intense, she says. Meanwhile, radio broadcasts from the disc have been puzzling and tantalizing. For instance, she says, stations in conservative towns such as Salt Lake City have been playing some of the more left-leaning songs, while stations in liberal Boston are leaning to the right in their choices. She says that points to a convergence in the center that is where a true religious and political energy exists. "People are moving away from the extremes," she says. "The extremes just aren't popular anymore." She says that means some people are leaving the strictness of organized religions and finding meaning in belief that is centered on religious philosophy, but not its organization. That sort of thought brings about action by eliminating needless activity. "There are no committee meetings in disorganized religion," she says. Bob Karlovits can be reached at bkarlovits@tribweb.com or (412) 320 7852. Back to headlines HELP! owner-believers@smoe.org Send mail to believers@smoe.org Susan's CD's are available on your desktop at World Cafe CDs http://worldcafecds.com ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 11 May 2007 10:18:39 -0500 From: "Tracy J. Wells" Subject: "In an either/or culture, cheers for the middle" Check out this EXCELLENT editorial on Susan's CD from the Cleveland Plain Dealer! o?< In an either/or culture, cheers for the middle Thursday, May 10, 2007 Joanna Conners Here's the title of a new book that just hit No. 4 on the Amazon hit parade: "God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything." There was a time, not so long ago, when I would have relished that title, and applauded any author for his courage in coming out as an atheist and for boldly taking on the religious right. But I've been doing some other reading lately and talking to people, such as singer Susan Werner, who have spent a lot of time thinking about faith, and I've decided that yes, something is poisoning everything. But it isn't religion. What is poisoning us is this culture of either/or we have created in America. As in: You're either with us or against us. You're either a person of faith (my faith), or you're a godless infidel. You're either a treasonous liberal, or you're a fascistic conservative. Both sides on the religious and political spectrum play this game, as the new publishing trend of books promoting atheism and denigrating religion proves. (See: "The God Delusion," Richard Dawkins' creed against faith in God and organized religion, at No. 16 on the New York Times best-seller list.) These books, of course, are the backlash to the previous fad -- books that blamed the nonreligious for everything that's wrong with America. And so the pendulum swings -- back and forth, right and left, either and or -- defining America by clanging loudly at its outermost edges. You see what's missing here, of course. The in-between. The gray. Where is it in our public discourse? The in-between happens to be where I live, and I bet it's where you live, too. It's where most of us Americans stumble around, slouching toward Bethlehem while we try to figure out what we believe, and in whom. That's where you can find Werner, a wonderful singer-songwriter who comes to Wilbert's in downtown Cleveland for a show at 8 p.m. Friday. She's made an entire CD about that stumbling around. "The Gospel Truth" is, she says, an agnostic gospel album, or "gospel from the secular left." It features songs like "Our Father," with the lyric, "Lord lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from those who think they're you," and "Forgiveness," which asks, "How do you love those who never will love you, who are so frightened of you they're calling for war?" Werner says the songs combine the music of faith with lyrics of doubt. "Somewhere in that middle ground, in that tension, there's a lot of truth," she says. "I'm both respectful of religion and the good that it does in American life, and also aware of the discrimination it sometimes fosters and the exclusion that it sometimes practices." The idea for "The Gospel Truth" came to Werner last summer at the Gospel Music Festival in Chicago, where she lives. The music blew her away. "Wow," said a friend who went with her. "Is there a way you can get all this joy, but without the Jesus?" Werner -- who grew up Catholic but left the church when she was old enough to realize that "women can only rise so high in this corporation" -- decided to find out. So she started going to church on Sunday mornings. Many churches. "And for a musician to get up early on Sunday morning -- that's a lot," she says. She went to churches in her neighborhood and churches in other states, attending more than 30 by the time she was finished. Of course, one of those churches had to be the Rev. Al Green's church in Memphis, Tenn., one of the highlights of her journey. "The Reverend was there and he gave the sermon," she says, "and you know, I would challenge people like Richard Dawkins to go and see the Rev. Al in action. You can't paint all churchgoers with the same brush, and to hear Rev. Al preach and bring forth the message of love in the Gospels and to hear him sing -- it felt transcendent. I felt something at work that was wonderful and inspiring and American in the best sense." At the other end of the spectrum, she also went to conservative megachurches and to Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Okla. "I found the students there uniquely untroubled, for better or worse," she says. "I'll leave it at that -- they were uniquely untroubled, which I think is something to be envied and to be deeply concerned about, both. Really, both." Going to all those churches did not convert Werner; she remains an agnostic. "If I have a religion these days, it is music itself, that desire to experience transcendence," she says. "And music and religion are both about seeking transcendence." But if she's still at that intersection of faith and doubt, her church experiences made her certain of one thing: "I really believe we're going to be OK as a country," she says. "We will, we really will. We're a fantastic society, a fantastic nation because we have all these different cultures intersecting. That stuff in the middle, where we come together: That's what gives us our energy and our spark and our creativity." I don't know about you, but that's just where I want to live. To reach Joanna Connors: jconnors@plaind.com, 216-999-4307 Previous columns online: cleveland.com/columns B) 2007 The Plain Dealer B) 2007 cleveland.com All Rights Reserved. HELP! owner-believers@smoe.org Send mail to believers@smoe.org Susan's CD's are available on your desktop at World Cafe CDs http://worldcafecds.com ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 11 May 2007 12:04:39 -0500 From: "Chuck Ellingson" Subject: RE: "In an either/or culture, cheers for the middle" So ... did anyone else have Shade of Grey running through their head the entire time they read that? ;-D Peace, Chuck Ellingson in Milwaukee "We must come to see that peace is not merely a distant goal we seek, but it is a means by which we arrive at that goal... We must pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means." Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. HELP! owner-believers@smoe.org Send mail to believers@smoe.org Susan's CD's are available on your desktop at World Cafe CDs http://worldcafecds.com ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 12 May 2007 01:29:44 +0000 From: capitoltee@comcast.net Subject: Thank you Tracy! Thank you, Tracy, for posting the wonderful editorial from the Cleveland paper. I am happy to report that the David Wilcox listers have responded to it wonderfully, and at least 2 CD's have been sold as a result. :-) I loved the part about the pendulum swinging, "defining America by clanging loudly at its outermost edges". I wish I'd written that! And Chuck, you were right on the mark, with your 'Shade of Gray' comment. Suzie Tee HELP! owner-believers@smoe.org Send mail to believers@smoe.org Susan's CD's are available on your desktop at World Cafe CDs http://worldcafecds.com ------------------------------ End of believers-digest V11 #54 ******************************* ------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------- -------------------------- This has been a posting from the Susan Werner believers-digest To unsubscribe send mail to Majordomo@smoe.org with "unsubscribe believers-digest" in the body of the message