Monday, June 20, 2016

Bono, U2 and the Psalms

It's not too often that you find the Psalms intersecting with pop culture.

I wasn't very tuned into pop music in the 80s and 90s, and only slightly more so now that my kids  occasionally share with me a pop song that they think I might like. (Occasionally they are actually right about this, resulting in a couple of hits by Coldplay or Train or Lindey Stirling sharing space on my jogging playlist with Billy Joel, Kansas, and Orleans hits from my ancient high school days.)

So my familiarity with Irish singer Bono and his group, U2, is patchy. I know maybe two of his songs and could correctly identify his picture. I'd also heard over the years that he is a believing Catholic, has been married to the same woman for 34 years, has four children, and is a great humanitarian.

Today, I was happy to learn from this article that Bono really likes the psalms:

  “First of all, David’s a musician, so I’m gonna like him. … And what’s so powerful about the Psalms are, as well as their being Gospel and songs of praise, they are also the Blues. It’s very important for Christians to be honest with God, which often, you know, God is much more interested in who you are than who you want to be.”

Next, I enjoyed his take on the first few verses of Psalm 40, which you can listen too here. This video starts with a different song, but if you want to get right over to Psalm 40, it starts aroud 4:40.So now I'm wondering whether Bono knows about the Liturgy of the Hours, and wishing there were a way to send him a breviary with a note explaining what it is. Any ideas for how one might do that?