On meeting Peter Buck of R.E.M.

About a week and a half ago I was able to meet one of my high school and college rock idols, Peter Buck of R.E.M., as one of his side projects played at a small rock club here in Toronto. Little did I know that our brief meeting would give me the opportunity for a little reflection on the role of secular “spiritual directors” and the way they can sometimes prepare us for hearing the gospel in new ways. I blogged about it over at Rock and Theology. Here’s an excerpt:

R.E.M. isn’t simply a band that is “political” merely in an “issues” kind of way. Sure, there are “issues” that the band has always cared about: eco-justice, human rights, etc. But their music, at least throughout the first part of their career, had more of a vague mysticism going on. Not that they made (m)any overt references to religion per se. “Losing My Religion” is not really about religion, after all, and only a couple of their songs seem to be directly “about” religion. But R.E.M. nevertheless demonstrated a “secular” mysticism that blended a deep sense of compassion and solidarity with a kind of “catholicity” that was place-based (rooted as it was in the American South generally, and in their hometown of Athens, Georgia specifically) without being place-bound, seeing themselves as deeply connected with diverse peoples and with creation.