hello Monday

Working on Sid Arthur this afternoon and getting stuck. Setting meditation sessions to music is tricky business. Rehearsals for a reading begin tomorrow, so I’m hoping this traffic jam clears up soon.Meanwhile, I’ve stumbled upon this:>There are thousands of different definitions of religion. But I like to think of three main ways of understanding it. The first way—and I think almost all of us are religious in this sense—is to define religion as concern about something of ultimate importance. This was Tillich’s broad definition: Religion is ultimate concern. Even the atheist who says that science is the only reliable road to truth, and nature is all there is, is setting up something that’s ultimate. It’s like the top stone of a pyramid that conditions everything else in the pyramid. In our own lives, we all have something like a top stone.- Theologian John Haught, in an interview with Salon.com Last week in New York was a good one: two songs that’ve been stalled since last summer finally decided that they want to be finished. Or get to the 90% mark or so, at least; I think the remainder will fall into place when we start in on production. Four or five others are coming along as well, and hopefully will be presentable by March. They’re like fiercely independent preschoolers, these songs, you want so much to just tie their shoes and spoon-feed them their cereal and get them out the door already, but no, they have to do everything themselves, discover their own methods, stumble and backtrack and try again and get their fingers all grubby, and you know it’s better this way, they’ll be stronger for it in the end, but boy is it frustrating when you’re running late for work and one of them is still in his PJs with toothpaste all over his forehead…