I wrote a column for City Pages this week, but it got killed because there wasn't space for it. It should run next week, but given the way the newspaper biz is going, I'm putting it here to make sure it doesn't get stale and/or before City Pages is filled with Village Voice Media wire copy.

Date To Church
By Jim Walsh

In a recent op-ed piece for the New York Times, Mark C. Taylor, a religion and humanities professor at Williams College and the author of the philosophy-photography collage-poem Mystic Bones wrote about the prevailing "religious correctness" on college campuses.

"More college students seem to be practicing traditional forms of religion today than at any time in my 30 years of teaching," writes Taylor. "For years, I have begun my classes by telling students that if they are not more confused and uncertain at the end of the course than they were at the beginning, I will have failed. A growing number of religiously correct students consider this challenge a direct assault on their faith. Yet the task of thinking and teaching, especially in an age of emergent fundamentalisms, is to cultivate a faith in doubt that calls into question every certainty."

I was raised Catholic, but I stopped going to church when I was 14 years old; I'd heard and had enough. I have largely stayed away, because of the narrowness and lack of mystery Taylor gets at, and because I can't stand the taste of wine when it gets turned into Kool-Aid.

These days I go to church when I feel like it, and, as it turns out, I felt like it on Christmas Eve. I was in the mood for the stained glass, the music, the incense, words like "begotten not made," and the meditative sight of two candles on the altar, separated by a chasm of hosts, wine, and the Bible, but still somehow sharing the same flame.

And then, much to my skeptic-ass surprise, I had an experience with mystery that calls into question every certainty about what I expected to find that night in the little church in South Minneapolis that my mom, wife, and kids go to much more frequently than I.

A few days earlier on my blog, I'd written about Rickie Lee Jones's magnificent new album, Sermon On Exposition Boulevard. She made the record by improvising to her collaborator Lee Cantelon's book, The Words -- a collection of Christ's unfiltered, unadulterated, unexplained words. Sermon is a mystical masterpiece that works in service to the miracle and purity of beauty; it worships beats as much as language, and arrives late to the pop-cult party with the sort of nuances and musical/vocal black magic that, I'm afraid, only the spiritual refuge-seeking and otherwise quietly damaged will hear when it comes out February 6 on New West Records.

"We're falling up," sings Rickie Lee Christ early on, giving wings to the notions that "music is love" (Jeff Tweedy), "Jesus is love" (bumpersticker), and "blessed is the season which engages the whole world in a conspiracy of love" (Hamilton Wright Mabie, on Christmastime). I especially like that last one, for it's idea of love as something subversive -- "a conspiracy of love," in the face of haters and the cold, cruel world -- but the beauty of the Jesus-Jones record is that it will play all year, and every year after that, and doesn’t relegate its love to a couple weeks in December. I concluded my blog entry like this:

"'I tell you what, you gotta take it back from them,'" she/he instructs; talking here about faith and love and weathering the storm, staying strong, and reclaiming all the good stuff from the creeps who have co-opted it. In the end, that's the main point of this sprawling Sermon, which suggests that love has much more to do with you and I than with a toy baby in a manger or some dead guy on a cross."

Straight away I got an email from someone who cited the last sentence as more of the same Christian-bashing that she's grown so tired of. And here I thought I was testifying or something. I sighed and replied and got ready for church.

It's a tiny Catholic church, on the corner of S. 38th St. and W. 4th Ave. in Minneapolis, land of Lutherans and Somalis. Across the street is a Baptist church that often sounds like it's coming off its moorings, given all the singing and rejoicing that erupts from inside. A few blocks up the street is St. Joan Of Arc's, the socially conscious mega-church that the Archdiocese reassigned our former pastor, Father Jim, to last year. When Christ's CEO (Archbishop Harry Flynn) did that, he basically ripped the heart out of an entire community, because we'd all -- and I include myself and a few other non-joiners here -- been nourished by his easy message of love one another and look out for each other. When that was replaced by a revolving door of cookie-cutter preachers and drive-by theologians, attendance dropped dramatically.

On Christmas Eve, I put it all aside and put the family in the station wagon and put the Christmas music station on the radio, and then grooved to the warm handshakes and candles and lights and basked in the singing and old-school neighborhood city church community. Then I sat down in that pew and girded for another uninspired sermon that would surely bring the whole thing down; another non-epiphany in a place where a mini-epiphany or two had become the standard.

Father Jules, the new priest, from the congo, was the headliner. His sidekick was a South Korean missionary by the name of Father Peter, who, when he hit the altar, bowed three times to the congregation, in keeping with his Eastern "I bow to the divinity in you" namastic roots.

Because his African accent is so thick, an actress friend of ours is teaching Father Jules diction, but he made Father Peter, the Korean, sound like Hugh Grant in comparison: Whenever Father Peter pronounced the Lord's name, it sounded like "gee-whiz," much to the delight of my 11-year-old son-squirrel.

The two men stood at the altar. As the Asian man stammered his way through a reading from the Bible, the African man put his hand on his back, turned the pages, kept his place, and encouraged him.

Then the Asian man, who took care to introduce himself as being from "South Korea," took to the pulpit. He didn't fire and brimstone it. He didn’t talk about judgement day or the miracle of gee-whiz's birth. He was gentle. He talked about universal love between all brothers, sisters, all races, no matter what, no war. When he smiled, nervously and joyfully, he looked like he was 14 years old. When he finished, he said, "That was my first homily in English."

The full house clapped.

Jim Walsh can be reached at jwalsh@citypages.com or 612.372.3775

I feel so much better.

On MTV's Nocturnal Grooves last night, there was a triple-play of Ludacris/Mary J. Blige's "Runaway Love" (a truly harrowing portrait of teen abuse/murder/runaways), The Fray's "How To Save A Life" (a truly harrowing portrait of teen suicide), and Danity Kane's "Ride For You" (a truly awful sad-girl melodrama guaranteed to be inescapable in '07, given the five babes' blow-dried looks, American Idol oversinging chops, and Spice Girls-for-Barack-nation marketability).

My question: What's with all the PSA's and bummed-out youth? So what if the/their world is completely fucked up; music becomes instantly disposable when it's this soap opera-scripted. Gimme mystery, not messages, baby, and leave the do-gooding to the milk cartons.

"But if just one runaway is found or one potential teen suicide is averted, isn't it worth it?"

Okay. But what about my pain? How am I supposed to deal with all this stuff that insults my finely honed elitist artistic sensibilities?

"Pop culture tsunami got you down? Call 1-800-MORECRAP."

MNSpeak recently had a spirited discussion about this area's history of producing good music critics. Many of them are still working today, and many of them got their start, or found their voice, at City Pages. Today's City Pages -- or at least the online version; I haven't picked up the print edition yet -- is the surest sign yet that New Times/Village Voice Media has descended on the Minneapolis/St. Paul music scene.

Most of the music bylines are not those of Tom Hallett or Dylan Hicks or Brianna Riplinger or Jon Bream or Jim Meyer or Pete Scholtes or Andrea Myers but by writers who live in other places, who write for other New Times papers: writers who don't know the magic and fucked-upedness of this place we call home, and so you will not see references to, say, Scott Seekins or STNNING or Nye's or whathaveyou.

What's more, you can't go give shit to these hacks or inspire them at your local watering hole or concert -- an in-the-flesh exchange that has been the lifeblood of alternative journalism, not just music criticism, and sorry but email and blogs ain't the same.

Nevermind. Whatever. Doesn't matter. Corporate media, corporate content, etc. I'm sure I'm the only one who cares that a section of the paper I grew up reading and writing for skims today like fucking Alternative Entertainment Weekly, and that Rob Nelson, the longtime film critic for City Pages, is quoted on the movie ads for Sweetland as being from the "Village Voice."

Which reminds me: A hilarious letter to the City Pages editor about a decade ago concluded: "When you're the Village Voice, we'll let you know." Looks like we've arrived.

Joe Henry, "Want Too Much"

You See I Want A Lot

You see, I want a lot.
Perhaps I want everything;
the darkness that comes with every infinite fall
and the shivering blaze of every step up.

So many live on and want nothing,
and are raised to the rank of prince
by the slippery ease of their light judgements.

But what you love to see are faces
that do work and feel thirst.

You love most of all those who need you
as they need a crowbar or a hoe.

You have not grown old, and it is not too late
to dive into your increasing depths
where life calmly gives out its own secret.

-Rainer Maria Rilke

Johnny Cash, "God's Gonna Cut You Down."

Thanks to the "someone" who emailed this we-are-still-the-world warning to the pricks who think they run the world (thanks, Corey). Send it to someone you love (thanks, Bridgette), just like a prayer.

Speaking of prayers, at the end of Paul Westerberg's liner notes on "The Shit Hits The Fans," he wrote "Pray for us, Paul." Well, brother Paul could use some prayers at the moment, because a week or so ago he put a screwdriver through his left hand trying to get some wax out of a candle and cut some nerves and ripped some cartilage and hurt himself pretty bad.

He's in a cast. He's seen a couple doctors who say he won't be able to play guitar for a year. I say we remember him in our prayers and get it up for him, you, and me on Global Orgasm Day For Peace this Friday.

"If you do happen to be stronger/It only means you're gonna take longer to go under/That's the trouble in this world." -- Peter Perrett of The Only Ones, "Trouble In The World."

There's an exciting new lyricist coming out of Los Angeles and here, there, and everywhere, whom everyone will be talking about in a new way in a couple of months. He's got as many pseudonyms as he does myspace pages, but you probably already know him as the son of God, the prince of peace, the reason for the season, the scapegoat for the war, etc., but with the exception of, say, The Gospel Of Thomas Aquinas, we've never heard him like we're about to hear him.

"Do you know my name?," he sings on his new record The Sermon On Exposition Boulevard, in the same sexy mofo voice that all the cannibalistic Catholic girls -- all those hot vampirellas who grew up drinking all that blood -- wet their pants over when they heard him sing in the '70's rock opera that bears his superstar name.

Yes, my brother, we know your name. Your name is Jesus, and sexy is back. In the form of you in me, us, and Rickie Lee Jones.

Jones' new album won't be released by New West Records until February 6, but I've been playing it non-stop since I received it a few days ago. It's a breathtaking work, sure to be one of the most discussed and ingested records of next year (if only by serious music listeners), but at the moment I'm happy to simply report that it melds gorgeously with all the Christmas music in the air; all those beautiful underground sentiments about Jesus and love.

"Music is love," Jeff Tweedy once said, which is what I've always believed, just as so many have believed "Jesus is love."

Jesus and music. Combine the two without the ball and chain of the Christian dope show or numbskull preaching -- as Jones and her collaborators does on every track of Sermon -- and the result is something so rare it feels historic, necessary, and distinctly of its time, the way other classic mystic-beatnik albums like Horses and Astral Weeks and Nighthawks At The Diner and Late For The Sky screamed out of the sky with something important to say.

And not to put too fine a point on it, but this Sermon is important: The lyrics to all 13 songs are Christ's words, and, as we hurl towards doomsday and another 30,000 troops in Iraq in the name of someone else's god, hell if they don't sound like Barack and Beck and the Mountain Goats riffing together.

From the press release on Rickie Lee's myspace page:

"The recording began in a painter's loft on an abandoned industrial street in mid-L.A in the summer of '05. Lee Cantelon, who can best be described as a modern renaissance man, originally conceived the project as a lo-fi, low budget undertaking, a spoken word interpretation of "The Words," his book of Christ's teachings. Cantelon had created beds of music with guitarist Peter Atanasoff ('The Velvet Underground was the name that seemed to come up most often,' recalls Rickie Lee), and Cantelon’s initial plan was to recruit friends and associates -- running the gamut from punk icon Mike Watt to a homeless man he encountered every day to Rickie Lee --and let them do the talking.

"When Rickie Lee arrived to record her spoken work track, the project was to take an unexpected turn. Instead of reciting the text, she improvised a stunning 'sermon' that was to change the undertaking in a wonderful and personal direction. 'Nobody Knows My Name' set the pace for what was to become THE SERMON ON EXPOSITION BOULEVARD -- and it appears on the record exactly as it was delivered that day. And the fact that she had not even heard 'Nobody Knows My Name' when she began to sing was no less remarkable. She found a niche by improvising off the texts to tunes she had -- and had not -- heard, and the resulting songs are truly inspired."

"How do you pray in a world like this?," sings Jesus-Jones, forlornly, but also putting into practice what a teacher of Travis's Fran Healy's once told him: "When you sing, you pray twice." God knows Jones does as much on "Where I Like It," one of the most amazing vocal performances-slash-channelings you will hear in this lifetime. Then when she sings, from the gutter and the gut, "I'm down here, too; I'm down here, too," she is both Jesus Christ weeping in the garden, and Rickie Lee Jones begging God the father not to forsake her.

"I wonder why there's so much suffering," she sings. "It hurts to be here," she sings. She's pissed at him. She's a reluctant servant. So when she goes, "Thank you, thank you, thank you," she does so with a there-but-for-the-grace-of-god-go-I sarcasm, as if she feels blessed for her life and all her gifts but she can't shake the trials and tribulations of others, and so s/he's questioning the very existence of a higher power, wonders if He even hears her/us, with all the resignation of a jilted lover who has spent way too much time throwing prayers out to the universe but never gets a callback, no, no, no, and so she sounds like she's going crazy, like we all do I suppose, like we're all just hanging on by the hair of our chinny-chin-cobwebs of hope.

"I tell you what, you gotta take it back from them," she/he instructs; talking here about faith and love and weathering the storm, staying strong, and reclaiming all the good stuff from the creeps who have co-opted it. In the end, that's the main point of this sprawling Sermon, which suggests that love has much more to do with you and I than with a toy baby in a manger or some dead guy on a cross.

Josh Rouse, "Quiet Town."

Jill Riley played this beauty on the Current the other day as I was cruising down Bryant Avenue in my car. It was one of those proverbial stop-in-your-tracks tracks, probably because things aren't so quiet around these parts these days.

But it is in the morning. I always wake up to the cockadoodle-doo of the 4 buses whirring by every ten minutes on Bryant. The sound of the MTC getting the day started always makes me glad I live in the city, but hearing this tune, especially the line about all the shows the singer is missing (but not really missing) by not living in a louder town, made me wonder how it would be to live in a place where there isn't something interesting going on every damn minute of the day and night.

Then I went to the dog park by Lake Of The Isles. I found myself alone in the heavy Indian Autumn mist, walking on a blanket of Midwestern leaves, seeing my breath under a Midwestern moon, and gazing out at the horizon of my hometown, skyscrapers reflecting off a still lake. For the moment I quit wondering how it would be to live somewhere else and remembered-decided that a town is as quiet as you make it.