Robie and Owen at 1 month old

I’m about a hundred pages into Tom Wolfe’s I Am Charlotte Simmons, a novel based on Wolfe’s observations and reflections from an excursion across the American University campus. The picture, so far, is a rather disquieting one. According to Wolfe, contemporary university life is more about getting laid that getting an education. The hedonistic character of our universities set forth in Simmons is striking. Striking because of the failure of the American appetite for happiness. Apparently, students are not too interested in the things of life, culture, truth, meaning, the future of humanity and the world. As C. S. Lewis put it, “They are far too easily satisfied.”

However, there is a shimmer of hope in the character of Charlotte Simmons, whose redneck roots are humiliatingly exposed by her roommate’s upper class unction. Although the first 100 pages reveals rampant decadence as a driving force in university life, they also sketch a picture of hope for the ‘down and out’ demographic in America. The subtle message might be, “If Charlotte Simmons can make it to Dupont, anybody can.” You see, Simmons is bright but poor, qualified but ‘uncultured’. Charlotte concieves of ‘eating out’ as a trip to the “Sizzlin Skillets.” Co-ed bathrooms horrify her (rightly so). She wears keds when everyone else is wearing flip-flops. The point Wolfe is getting at is that the poor, the underpriveleged go to the Harvards too. Ivy league doesn’t mean class distinction.

However, the only problem with his point is that statistics show that of the 146 select colleges, only 3% of the student body come from Charlotte’s economic bracket, which raises some interesting questions. Is poverty next to stupidity? Or does uppity flee from humility? Is Wolfe’s novel a farce, fiction, fact or the future? What’s the point here? Can anybody go to Harvard, provided they make the grades? Apparently not, since a large portion of Harvard students are admitted on clout and class, not grade and gumption. What’s the future of the American University…of students and professors alike? I guess it’s hopelessly tied up with the future of I Am Charlotte Simmons? We’ll see…

How do you begin to download one of the best concerts you’ve ever been to? The night was a double-header. Most opening acts I skip, but thanks to Mark Nelson, we showed up in time to catch aobut 10 songs by Keane. An English band, not new and incorrectly compared to Coldplay, opened for U2. Suprisingly, they possess some of the stuff of U2, not in musical similarity but in raw, emotive displays of musical talent and power. Yeah, they are excellent live. Whats crazy is they are a trio, with no guitar (keyboard, drums and vocals)! If you dont have a cd, get Hopes and Fears and sit back and chill, meditate, enjoy. Sample them at http://www.keanemusic.com/

Opening with “City of Blinding Lights,” a song I didnt care for until I heard it live in May, U2 cranked the Garden in a way that Keane probably dreams of. Bono set the tone for the night saying, “Let’s turn this Tuesday night into a Saturday night and Sunday morning.” Although there was less Sunday morning than I would have liked, it was a party from beginning to end.

Bono’s vocals were stronger than any of the five U2 shows I’ve seen. Hitting the high notes of “Still Havent Found” with ease and digging deep to belt out Pavarotti’s italian opera in “Miss Sarajevo,” which stole the night, you thought you were listening to a much younger Bono. The unexpected and inaugural acoustic “Stuck in a Moment” left you, well, stuck in a moment that you didnt want to get out of.

The typical human rights and political activism formed the center of the night with a interesting seguy out of Sunday Bloody Sunday and into Miss Sarajevo. Bono pleaded for coexistence between Muslims, Christians and Jews, a noble and rather Christian thing to do. He claimed that Sarajevo was an beautiful example of this coexistence, accounting for why evil men destroyed it.

What drives Bono’s activism is the Justice he sees in Scripture: “Holding the children to ransom for the debts of thier grandparents, that’s a justice issue. Or not lettting the poorest of te poor put thier products on our shelves whilst advertsing the free market, that’s a justice issue to me. These things are rooted in my study of the Scriptures.” (Bono in Conversation, 123)

The night ended on a spiritual note with the ancient psalm 40. How long must we sing this song? Probably for eternity.

A number of thoughts converged today painting an inviting yet repelling picture of self— yeah, me. I guess they have been swirling for some time, sourced by different influences and, like everything I ever write or think, they aren’t new or groundbreaking. Every theologian is a thief.

Instead of rambling on about the times and places in which the various detected influences emerged today, I’ll just list some sound bytes in chronological order from my internal, sometimes prayerful, dialogue which are shaping the picture I’m beginning to make out…

“…Meditate in your heart upon your bed, and be still. Selah” ~ Psalm 4.4

“I love these quiet, early Saturday mornings; they are so peaceful, so full of potential…that often goes untapped.”

Oscillating between reading Psalm 4 and staring at my son, I realize that both are important and have trouble dividing the time (something I anticipate will become much more difficult).

~ “Now if you accepted the constant promiscuous broadcasts as normalcy, there were messages in them to inflate and pet and flatter you. If you simply said this chatter was altering your life, killing your privacy or altering your ability to think in silence, there were alternative messages that whispered of humiliation, craziness and vanishing. What sort of crank needs silence? What could be more harmless than a few words of advice?” ~ Mark Greif

“Malls are so anti-contemplative.”

“I don’t want to read; I want to converse with someone in depth.”

“I think, when I spend time on my own, a few things happen. After some hours, I start to laugh out loud. I do. After a few days, I’m having a great time. I go for a walk, and I read, because its so fresh for me. Then, I’m brought back not to any new insight on the world, but to what I already knew. The noise separates me from my instincts.” ~ Bono

“I just want to walk around some isolated places.” ~ some guy on a cell phone in B&N

In a sentence, I’m starving for space, solitude, reflection but addicted to sound, stimulation, information.

Of course, space, solitude and reflection are not ultimately ends in themselves. If I am to withdraw from the mass of cultural sounds, stimulations and an addiction to information, if I am to meditate in my heart on my bed, I must meditate, think on something or someone. What I need is Someone. Too often I turn away from His invitation to the noise of nothing, the action of distraction and egotism of acquired information.

O’ to be still…Selah.