{"id":4507,"date":"2015-03-24T16:51:15","date_gmt":"2015-03-24T20:51:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/badcatholic\/?p=4507"},"modified":"2015-03-30T13:45:55","modified_gmt":"2015-03-30T17:45:55","slug":"the-art-of-dying","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/badcatholic\/2015\/03\/the-art-of-dying.html","title":{"rendered":"The Art of Dying"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

There is a difference between Christian music and music flushed with a theological project. The former has arrived at Christianity, and sings about it. The latter is on the way, and singing.\u00a0The Collection<\/a> are the latter.<\/p>\n

<\/iframe><\/p>\nNorth Carolinian, 7+-membered, horn-fattened, string-glazed indie rock. Their newish album:\u00a0Ars Moriendi.<\/em>\u00a0The whole thing rich with that holy-s*%*-I-believe-in-Jesus-what-should-I-do-now-probably-not-just-play-Xbox kind of lyricism. Written as a meditation on the suicide of a friend (and on the problem of death as a whole) the album ends up as a christocentric, doubt-tinged Q&A with an often unanswering Godhead. The main question:<\/p>\n<blockquote>Is this the end? Are we in? \nDo I watch all my friends just take dives off of cliffs \n\u2018cause their heads are full of questions they can\u2019t know now?<\/p><\/blockquote>\nThe album cover is the first giveaway that the Collection are chewing tougher gristle than most mainstream artists. A skull-faced woman sinks into a bed of flowers, surrounded by photographs and Mexican-section-of-the-grocery-store candles. (Always a pleasant surprise, when reaching for the\u00a0enchilada sauce, to run into the tender-faced Christ holding his eviscerated, burning heart out to shoppers.)<\/p>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.thecollectionband.com\/\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-4510\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/80\/2015\/03\/arsmoriendi.jpg\" alt=\"arsmoriendi\" width=\"592\" height=\"358\"><\/a><\/p>\nThe album takes its aesthetic from\u00a0D\u00eda de Muertos,<\/span><\/em>\u00a0the Day of the Dead, and both The Collection and the Mexican-Catholic tradition seem to understand this: Death cannot be obscured into something unproblematic, as if, for the Christian, kicking the bucket is just another step into an inevitable Heaven. Death is the<\/em> problem.\u00a0<\/span>The human ape is that type of ape who knows he is going to die, the only thing in the physical universe with an expectation of The End. <\/span><\/p>\nWhich is why, in The Collection\u2019s song, \u201cThe Borrowers,\u201d\u00a0the herons, hares, birds and trees, ask and even condemn the man who walks among them: \u201c<\/span>Son of man, when will you go? Son of man, is it your choice?\u201d Man, alone in the\u00a0scalae natura, can wonder, \u201cWhat if the plan is just to live till you die?\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n So it\u2019s no good ignoring the phenomenon that makes humanity unique, giving us terrifying, prophetic responsibility to know and speak about our death in a mute Cosmos that has utterly no idea it\u2019s coming. Dress up like a skeleton, sleep on graves, bless dead bodies with holy water,\u00a0light\u00a0those candles. Practice an Art of Dying, a Habit of Fading, a meaningful relation towards\u00a0death \u2013live as the\u00a0towards-death type of creature you are. \u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nThe Collection, for their part, place their relation to death pretty fiercely in the person of Christ. It\u2019s not an easy way:<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote>a cross hangs around your neck so loose\u00a0<\/span> and though it brings you life, sometimes it feels just like a noose\u00a0<\/span> but god is not disappointed in you<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\nBut it enables the possibility of joy over death, because in Christ, we are saved from death:<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote>I am roaming, and you are calling me back home. I have never felt that call so strong before\u00a0<\/span> and though my feet walk very slow, and there is death between my bones, I\u2019ll make it home!\u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\nIt works like this: If Christ cannot die, and if we may enter into such a union with Christ as to become one<\/em> with him, then neither will we die. The premises are controversial, but the syllogism is valid. Being one with the one who rises from the grave means rising from the grave. The Collection\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=6MbH6K5RuYw\" target=\"_blank\" class=\" decorated-link\" rel=\"nofollow\">note as much<\/a>: Christ is \u201cgrowing us collectively into His wife.\u201d So we become one with Christ by the becoming-one of love, as husband and wife become one marriage. He loves us (makes us one with Himself) that we might not die (having been made one with the Deathless One) but have eternal life. This, the numinous logic of salvation. \u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nFor the Christian, the fear of death is changed from a trembling in the face of an unavoidable doom to a trembling over the possibility of not being in loving-unitive relation with the one who does not die. All things considered, I prefer the Christian trembling. No one may choose not to be annihilated by the unavoidable doom of death. We may certainly choose whether to love Jesus or not. Christianity, then, moves the fear of death into the sphere of freedom, which is only a fancy way of saying that Christianity gives us the possibility of doing<\/em> something about death. We may choose to live.<\/p>\nDo yourselves a favor: Listen to\u00a0The Collection. Let them drag you into a theological project with that way-too-big-band sound. And let me know what you think. And tell them thank you <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/theCollectionMusic\" target=\"_blank\" class=\" decorated-link\" rel=\"nofollow\">on their page<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/p><center><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border: 0; width: 600px; height: 600px;\" src=\"http:\/\/bandcamp.com\/EmbeddedPlayer\/album=3658571573\/size=large\/bgcol=ffffff\/linkcol=0687f5\/minimal=true\/transparent=true\/\" width=\"300\" height=\"150\" seamless=\"\"><a href=\"http:\/\/thecollection.bandcamp.com\/album\/ars-moriendi\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">Ars Moriendi by the Collection<\/a><\/iframe><\/center>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There is a difference between Christian music and music flushed with a theological project. The former has arrived at Christianity, and sings about it. The latter is on the way, and singing.\u00a0The Collection are the latter. North Carolinian, 7+-membered, horn-fattened, string-glazed indie rock. Their newish album:\u00a0Ars Moriendi.\u00a0The whole thing rich with that holy-s*%*-I-believe-in-Jesus-what-should-I-do-now-probably-not-just-play-Xbox kind of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,81],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-beauty","category-music-2"],"yoast_head":"\n<title>The Art of Dying<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"There is a difference between Christian music and music flushed with a theological project. 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