Bweinh! Soundtrack — Michael Card

May 13, 2007, 7:05 am; posted by
Filed under Mike J, Music  | 1 Comment

Every weekend, a different Bweinh!tributor will discuss a song or songwriter that inspires or interests them. Read the first six soundtrack entries here.

Those of you who know me well know that I like music that sounds authentic. It could be almost any genre, as long as it feels pure and grounded somehow. I also like a clever turn of a phrase, and informed, nuanced lyrics.

So it may be somewhat surprising that I hadn’t really listened to Michael Card before I won a cassette tape copy of his “Poiema” album from a radio show at Houghton. If I’m not mistaken, the show was hosted by Bweinh!’s very own Josh Jones and his roommate, Hubie Hostetter. (If I’m mistaken, guys, I’m sorry–it’s been 8-9 yrs.)

I fell in love right away. Now I own a lot of Card’s music, and still have a lot more to collect. Of all his work, I’ve grown to like his album with John Michael Talbot, “Brother to Brother,” the best. Here, the two perform duets of the songs that each wrote independently. Card took quite a hit in the evangelical community for this album; many canceled concerts and wrote harsh letters decrying him as one who compromised and sold out. But for Card, it was a chance to work with a musical hero as well as someone he admired in the faith. The step looks downright prophetic today, as evangelicals and Catholics continue to discover areas of common concern and ministry while still maintaining sharp differences.

My favorite Michael Card song is “In the Wilderness.” It is a meditation on how God calls his children to “wilderness times”–painful times in our lives that we cannot understand. But he believes that God calls us to those wilderness times to shape us and change us more radically than any other way can.

It is reminiscent of the idea of the “Dark Night of the Soul,” as St. John of the Cross put it: we are given times of suffering in order that we might learn to love God and not merely the things God gives us. God is so good at giving gifts that we often fall in love with the gifts and forget the Giver. When the gifts are removed, only the Giver remains and we are thus trained to love the Giver more completely and fully.


Comments

1 Comment to “Bweinh! Soundtrack — Michael Card”

  1. Josh J on May 13th, 2007 4:44 pm

    That was almost certainly a prize from the weekly trivia question on the Josh and Hubie show. We didn’t have a big prize budget, so we eventually gave away all Hubie’s old cassettes. It’s fascinating to see what one of them sparked.

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