A Secular Palm Sunday

“I will make three booths here”: U2 Fordham Update

by Tom Beaudoin

This morning, some hundred or so workers are milling around the Keating Hall steps and Edwards Parade, unloading crates full of electronics and cables, men with “Good Morning America / U2″ badges trying to keep some order in the setup as trucks back in, beeping, with more gear. Lots of sites of work are now happening at once, the controlled chaos that characterizes liturgy the practice of making a multipurpose “space” into an identifiably rockish concert “place.”....

And in the Blue Chapel, down the hall from the Graduate School of Religion offices here at third floor Keating, workers are in the hallway right now readying lights to shine through the stained glass onto the assembled tomorrow morning. In this gorgeous stone-and-wood refuge, this friendly space into which I daily escape for an attempt to recollect what I should be doing as a theologian, a father, a husband, and a musician, stand stained glass images of, from left to right, St. Anna, St. John, the “Mother of Sorrows,” the “Ecce Homo” (Jesus bound), St. Mary Magdalene, and Saint Simeon. It looks as though these compatriots are going to illuminatively join the gathering tomorrow, coming in light to join the inevitable light that the students and band will seek, and perhaps taste with new awareness.

Read the full piece (here)

Blogger note: I like U2, however I worked ten years in the "Pagan" rock concert promotion business, watching U2 is not a religious experience.