Bob Dylan – Azkena Rock Festival. Creative Commons.

Bob Dylan has always been a bit of an enigma — a genius cloaked in many shades of mystery. His recent interview with the Wall Street Journal is regarding his recent book “The Philosophy of Modern Song.” The discussion can be found HERE.

Dylan fires missiles like this: “You need a solar X-ray detector just to find somebody’s heart, see if they still have one. What’s the gold standard for a song these days? What song will walk off with the trophy? ‘Paint it Black’ is black as black can be, black as a crow’s head, a galvanizing song. ‘Paperback Writer’ sounds good, too. The biographer, the ghost writer, doing it long hand. I can visualize that song; see it in my mind’s eye. ‘Strangers in the Night,’ that, too. A couple of people who don’t know each other on the dark side of things. I don’t know which one I’d vote for. I have sympathies for them all.”

Dylan on entertainment and faith: “I’ve binge watched Coronation Street, Father Brown, and some early Twilight Zones. I know they’re old-fashioned shows, but they make me feel at home. I’m not a fan of packaged programs, or news shows, so I don’t watch them. I never watch anything foul smelling or evil. Nothing disgusting … I’m a religious person. I read the scriptures a lot, meditate and pray, light candles in church. I believe in damnation and salvation, as well as predestination. The Five Books of Moses, Pauline Epistles, Invocation of the Saints, all of it.” Continue reading →

Faith, Hope, and Carnage is a fascinating conversation between singer Nick Cave and journalist Sean O’Hagan. Among numerous subjects, it deals most compellingly with grief, song writing, and faith.

Sean O’Hagan: So, back in your younger, wilder days, when you drew on biblical imagery as a source for your songwriting, was that also a reflection of a deeper interest in the divine?

Nick Cave: Well, I was surrounded by people who displayed zero interest in spiritual or religious matters, or if they did, it was because they were fiercely anti-religious. I was operating in a Godless world, to say the least, so there was no real nurturing of these ideas. But I was always struggling with the notion of God and simultaneously feeling a need to believe in something. Continue reading →

Mr & Mrs Hudson. Wednesday 14 August 1974. Seacroft Green, Leeds © Peter Mitchell

I have grown to simply love the photography of Peter Mitchell, a veteran lensman with a keen eye. His work in Leeds, England, tells tremendous stories. You can read a wonderful portrait of him here. Early on, he had a difficult time selling his work to galleries. “‘Our arty stuff is black and white. How will we sell your stuff? It doesn’t come under nudes, it doesn’t come under landscape, it’s not pure documentary. It’s not totally aesthetic,’” he was told. “I wasn’t a part of one of those small groups,” he told the Financial Times. “I was always quite solitary but that suited me anyway. And I still feel like that.” You can check out his books here.

Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth greets employees on her walk from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center mission control to a reception in the center’s main auditorium in Greenbelt, Maryland, 2007. Photo: NASA.

By Steve Beard

There is an intriguing scene in Season 2 of the wildly successful historical drama, The Crown, on Netflix. For the uninitiated, the award-winning series revolves around the reign of Queen Elizabeth II, the now 91-year-old sovereign of the United Kingdom.

At the beginning of episode six, Elizabeth (played by Clare Foy) is studiously watching Billy Graham preach on television in 1955 while sitting with her mother in Buckingham Palace. The Queen Mother (played by Victoria Hamilton) finds Graham to be more than an acquired taste for the upper class British religious sensibilities. She appears perturbed that the public is captivated by a man who learned his trade “selling brushes door-to-door in North Carolina” and that British subjects turned “out in droves for an American zealot.”

“He is not a zealot,” Elizabeth responds.

“He’s shouting, darling,” her mother replies. “Only zealots shout.” Continue reading →

Stamp of Albania

By Steve Beard, 1997

Even weeks after the fact, people are still talking about it. After all, within five days the world lost its two most beloved women. Mother Teresa died at age 87 of a heart ailment. Princess Diana died in a car crash in Paris. She was 36.

The comparisons were inevitable. Of course, they could not have appeared more different in appearance or lifestyle. Princess Diana lived in a London palace and was a jet-setter among the richest of the rich. Mother Teresa’s vow of poverty took her to the poorest of the poor in a Calcutta slum. Nevertheless, the two shared a common care for the less fortunate, although they used drastically different approaches.

As perhaps the most photographed woman in the history of the world, Princess Diana successfully used her dynamic charm and beauty to campaign for righteous causes such as extending compassion to AIDS patients, banning land mines, and comforting the poor. Continue reading →

“We are together” by Kateryna Shadrina in Lviv, Ukraine. Used by permission of the artist.

By Steve Beard

It was standing-room-only for the noon Ash Wednesday service at my local church. Ushers were pulling folding chairs out of a closet and people were sitting in the hallway outside the sanctuary. Parishioners were literally standing against the back and side walls. It was probably a fire hazard. 

We were all squeezed in to be reminded of our mortality. “Remember that you are dust,” the pastor said as the sign of the cross was smudged on my forehead, “and to dust you shall return.” Stark and sobering.

Six thousand miles away, there were believers in Ukrainian bomb shelters. At the time, the brutal invasion had only been a week old. “We survived yet another horrible night,” reported the archbishop of the Cathedral of the Resurrection in Kyiv on the first Sunday of Lent – the introspective season of denial leading up to Easter. 

“But after night, there comes day, there is morning,” he said. “After darkness, there comes light, just as after death there comes resurrection, which we all today radiantly celebrate!” Continue reading →