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The One About George Michael
182 Plays8 months ago
In this special episode from the vault, Lisa shares an intimate reflection on George Michael's prophetic song, Praying for Time. Originally recorded 6 years ago (before there even was a Be. Make. Do podcast!), it's shocking to hear how timely and relevant this episode still is. Listen in on the very first time Lisa ever outlined her thoughts on prophetic critics and imaginative visionaries. All inspired by that guy in the short-shorts from Wham!
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Praying for Time: https://youtu.be/7EXes508wtg
And in case you're too young to remember Wham!, here you go. Welcome to the '80s!: https://youtu.be/pIgZ7gMze7A
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Transcript
Introduction and Wise Heart Series Discussion
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey Lisa. Hey Dan. This Wise Heart at One series is awesome. It is. Having such a good time with it. I want to spend a little bit more time with it. Maybe we should create something. That's a great idea. Maybe something like a study guide. A study guide? Yes. That sounds awesome. Where would I get that at? Well, actually, if you go over to soulmakers dot.org backslash BMakeDo, you can download a free Wise Hearted One study guide right now. It's got lots of great questions, some word studies and a little bit of commentary for you and maybe a group of people to go through together.
00:00:37
Speaker
That's awesome. Guess what I'm going to do right now? What are you going to do? I'm going to go to soul makers dot org backslash be make do and download your free study guide.
00:00:59
Speaker
Hello
Special Episode Introduction and Podcast Origins
00:01:00
Speaker
and welcome to Be Make Do, a Soul Makers podcast, which is produced by me, Danny BH. Today, we have a very special episode that I pulled out from the vault from over six years ago, when Lisa and I recorded our very first episode ever called the one about George Michael. In this episode, you'll hear a lot of foreshadowing of what is in our curriculum and content currently. And for the first time, Lisa lets it all out on the table in and an uncensored way about the responsibilities for artists of faith, prophetic critics and imaginative visionaries, and how the church should and could be a resource for those alike. And a little bit about George Michael.
Art, Faith, and Prophetic Vision
00:01:40
Speaker
I'm excited to take you to the beginning, well before Soul Makers and the Be Make Do podcast started. So here is the one about George Michael.
00:01:53
Speaker
um
00:01:56
Speaker
um Hey, this is Lisa Smith, and I am the pastor and artistic director of Convergence, and I'm here with Dan, our producer and community director. Welcome to The Vergecast, our very first um recording episode of our new podcast, The Vergecast, sitting at the intersection of art, faith, and the human experience having conversations that matter. And this is the one about George Michael.
00:02:30
Speaker
So um for this first podcast, I was talking with Dan. We're trying to figure out what to do. And he gave me permission to talk about something of importance to me personally. So um i I wanted to talk about an issue that pretty much is on my mind night and day for years and years and years. And that is prophetic critics and imaginative visionaries. Dun, dun, dun. um And funny enough, it's kind of the the backbone of everything that we do at Convergence, um everything from what we do at the church to what we do with the arts initiative. But it's not something that there's really much of a forum to kind of talk about on a deeper level of what we're really all about in this kind of deeper conversation. So I think this is really a cool venue to maybe just talk about stuff that we don't get to talk about very often. so
00:03:27
Speaker
That's what we're doing today. So I want to give credit for that that phrasing prophetic critics and imaginative visionaries to Deborah Haynes and her book The Vocation of the Artist and also my friend Elise Edwards who gave me a copy of that book many many many moons ago right as we were getting started with Convergence and Elise is a prophetic critic and imaginative visionary in her own right. So
George Michael's Impact and 'Praying for Time'
00:03:55
Speaker
um yeah, I think this concept and thinking about um artists in this light has been kind of the backbone of of my quest and my questioning. And so we'll get to kind of defining what in the world it is I'm talking about in a little while. But first, I just want to kind of geek out a little bit. and gosh over someone that I guess would probably okay so I was thinking at this point we're probably going to lose like the entire audience right because we'll lose the people who are like oh my gosh it's such a guilty pleasure and then on the other hand are people
00:04:35
Speaker
like within churches who, you know, George Michael is like, ooh, the devil or something like that. So, um yes, George Michael is who I'm gushing over. ah Not the George Michael from Arrested Development, although he is super cute as well, but this is the George Michael of Wham fame, the super short, white short wearing wake me up before you go go George Michael. the George Michael ah of faith. And when I was in high school, I guess, in the late 80s, George Michael was very, very popular. and But I think at that time his his album was like faith, which so like the main
00:05:21
Speaker
songs that were out there were, I want your sex and father figure and faith. And so I remember in youth group them telling us like we should not listen to George Michael or Prince, by the way, those were not on the approved list because of the high sexual content in there. And at the time, really, the yeah from my experience, what I saw, a lot of churches were kind of engaged in what was called the culture wars. So, I guess reacting against and rebelling against the current culture of music and and movies and and the way that they were going about it was was by boycotting and um kind of speaking out against, but not much kind of cultural creation.
00:06:09
Speaker
so It's kind of an interesting thing for me to put George Michael then in this little basket of prophetic critic, knowing that um that history.
Analyzing 'Praying for Time' Lyrics
00:06:21
Speaker
But in the early 90s, I remember hearing his album, and I don't even know how I got a hold of it, um Listen Without Prejudice. So this guy who had been this super poppy poppy pop star um then comes out as a gay man through this album Listen Without Prejudice, which is a deeply thoughtful, soulful album about respecting people and about um kind of the the larger
00:06:58
Speaker
the way we interact with people um on ah on a deep, deep perspective. So he has these songs obviously about his journey and about being real, I guess, but there's this song on the album called Praying for Time. And that song has, I have never forgotten the lyrics to that song. It's so deeply prophetic. um i I felt like this was, I think one of the first times I was thinking, this song needs to be played in church. The lyrics to the song are like, okay, I'm going to pull up those lyrics.
00:07:41
Speaker
Okay, I'm building up the lyrics right now. No, I'm not. Sorry. So,
00:07:50
Speaker
They're lyrics like, the rich declare themselves poor, and most of the time and most of us are not sure if we have too much, but we'll take our chances because God stopped keeping score. And this is the part that I love. I guess somewhere along the way, he must have let us all out to play, turned his back, and all God's children crept out the back door. It's hard to love. There's so much to hate. Hanging on to hope when there is no hope to speak of. And the wounded skies above say it's much, much too late. Well, maybe we should all be praying for time. And I just felt like, whoa, this idea that
00:08:35
Speaker
I mean, even the people people in churches who are trying to to show God's love or to be good, their response is so often one of antagonism and fear and anger. And i just these lyrics even kind of speaking into right now and today that there's so much antagonism and anxiety. And the idea that God's presence is one almost like, it's it sometimes it feels like God's apt in, but what what if we're the ones who are absent? What if we're the ones who crept out the back door? And then this idea of of seeing God as the wounded skies above.
00:09:23
Speaker
and hanging on to hope when there is no hope to speak of. I guess that last line where it says, and the wounded skies above say it's much, much too late. Well, maybe we should all be praying for time. And that thing about praying for time It seems like the reaction to um kind of this dehumanized world that we're starting to live in is to grab more for myself or to be against somebody else or to try to figure out how I'm going to take care of myself in the midst of all of this and who am I going to align with and who am I not going to align with. And I i just, you know, does it occur to us to stop and say,
00:10:07
Speaker
let's pray for something different. Let's hope for something different. And in the Christian context, going back to that culture war, you know there are a lot of people who are really, um especially at that time, really concerned and consumed with end times and um you know people thinking about heaven and hell and that kind of stuff. And and I just felt like this this guy was saying, well, if we're also concerned about that, doesn't it Wouldn't it make sense took to ask God for more grace, to ask God for more time to stop this coming ah apocalypse that we think is coming, that to to band together as humanity and say, please have mercy on us give us, give us more grace and love for one another? Which is exactly
Call for Artists and Faith Communities
00:10:58
Speaker
what the prophets did.
00:11:00
Speaker
throughout the history of the Bible. um you know a A prophet is somebody who has a deep, deep heart for the desire of God, God's desire to be with his people and to to have be reconciled to his people, and then a deep, deep heart deep heart for the people that God is is wanting to call back to them. And so the prophet is kind of standing in the middle both saying to the people, come back to God, come see who you were created to be and live this way, and then turning and facing God and saying, give us more time, have grace with us, um have mercy on us. And that's a really powerful message, and it's coming from the short, short guy from WAM, you know, in such a powerful way.
00:11:53
Speaker
So ah it's just kind of crazy to think of, I don't know, at the time, I think I was starting to see these things that artists, whether it was movies or music or books that I was reading, that that they just sort of were inherently speaking to things in the culture and questions that they had that I wasn't hearing addressed in that way anywhere else. And I think that's where my kind of interest and love for artists began and i'm wanting to kind of connect this to my spiritual life. So, I'll say a prophetic critic is kind of as defined by Deborah Haynes as somebody who is attentive to the world around us and is able to hold a mirror up to what is, allows us to see the truth, to tell the truth about who we are and what we're how we're living in the world.
00:12:52
Speaker
And then an imaginative visionary is somebody who um helps us to envision a multiplicity of possible futures, which sounds like a big thing, but I think especially right now. That's an extremely important capacity because I think when the word profit initially comes up, people are thinking of somebody who just predicts the future or is predicting doom and gloom. But if you if you look historically at what a profit does, yeah, they do talk about what's going to happen if you don't do this. But in my mind, a lot of it is just
00:13:28
Speaker
being logical, you know, seeing the, if you continue down this path, this is what's going to happen. And what if we did something different? What if we turned at this point and chose a different path? And I think that's the conversation um for right now.
00:13:51
Speaker
um
00:13:54
Speaker
So um I'm kind of thinking, thinking, and thinking here. I guess ah guess my question here is like, what if what if churches intentionally championed these artists, encouraging them, giving them tools to to mature and to spiritually develop and encourage them to consider issues of faith and what it means to be human? What if churches were playing songs like praying for time in worship? Because obviously, I mean, as
00:14:32
Speaker
As we're all sitting here, we're at this very, very pivotal moment or what feels like a pivotal moment in history where extremely wealthy people are seriously talking about how to survive the coming apocalypse. Like this is a reality that many people are thinking is going to exist. And futurists are saying that the word digital is going to just disappear from a vocabulary within the next 10 years because it will be so ubiquitous that's just reality. And everybody's realizing that those who control the narrative control the future. So what future do we want to live in? And for me, I think the stories we tell are the stories we live. And
00:15:25
Speaker
the narrative of what it means to be human and the possibilities of our future existence and the landscape of that world, it's all up for grabs. So who will dictate that narrative? Is it going to be one that highlights a vision for humanity that reflects being made in God's image and and working towards God's kingdom, one of grace? Or is it one of futility and despair and dehumanization and the idea that man is just inherently corrupt and evil? And and the question then for the future is just how do I survive? And how do I protect myself from other people?
00:16:12
Speaker
So I guess the bottom line, the bottom line is like, I want to live in a world that's full of beauty and mystery and possibility. And I want to be challenged to live human the way that that was designed. And I'm moved by sweet voices singing in my ear and gripping stories and stirring images and immersive performances and
00:16:40
Speaker
ah So I guess I'm sounding the call to artists who would be those prophetic critics and imaginative visionaries wherever they're coming from ah to to lean deep into that point part of their their consciousness. George Michael did an interview about that song later where he just said, you know, I guess you just reach a point in your career where you know you're you're sort of done writing songs about sex and love, you know, and you start thinking about the the bigger issues and the bigger The bigger things and in some of his interviews i I just read one little line where he said that he'd been making music for for 20 years plus one and he hadn't changed anything and I think that's so sad that he how he felt because he did and I mean, to me, that song has been in my head, but more than any sermon that I've ever heard challenging me about the way that I treat other people and the way that I think about the future. And in ah in a big way is is a part of this whole quest for me to to encourage those voices, those talented, talented voices who can speak to us in surprising and deep ways and get us to change the way we think about things
00:17:55
Speaker
and to help us change that narrative to be one that's life-giving. So I'm calling on those artists and I'm calling out to the faith communities who might help them get there and just saying, we need you to create the stories that are gonna help us live human and help us have a narrative for the future that is life-giving.
00:18:23
Speaker
So I guess that's the one about George Michael. Thanks for listening. where way
00:18:35
Speaker
good
00:18:41
Speaker
drama
00:18:50
Speaker
Thanks for listening to Be Make Do, a Soul Makers podcast. If you want to go deeper, be sure to visit soulmakers dot.org and download our free Wise Heart at One study guide with questions for personal reflection or discussion with a group, plus word studies and more.