Welcome to the A.M.P. 2013!

A reflection as we spiral into the quiet of Advent: 

The A.M.P. has traditionally not featured many traditional Christmas and Advent hymns in our posts, not because we don't love them (we do!) but because they feel obvious: yes, Lo, How a Rose E're Blooming is one of our favorites, too. 

Yet hymns are also an integral part of how we mark the Advent and Christmas season as Christians, so this year we also wanted to start a conversation about some of your favorites (and favorite versions). Watch for these posts on the weekends, but here's one of my (Anna's) favorites to start:

  

This song is always haunting and powerful, but I love it that this version by Bifrost Arts feels a little bit messy and off-kilter, too. The singer's voice isn't trying to be polished, and the music drags a little bit along with her voice. 

This version feels earthy, and honest, like it's being sung by someone who might actually be inviting Jesus to come back and break in from the "realms of endless day" in ways that feel both terrifying and much-needed, in ways that bring both justice and total transformation. This is a song sung by someone willing to be flipped upside-down by the grace of God.

But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.  

                                              - Matthew 19:30

And an intro to this year's A.M.P. from both of us:

Before the Advent Music Project had a name, it was a series of Advent “mixtapes” we made in seminary for ourselves and a few friends. Those early collections were in response to our hunger for music that felt as meaningful as the hymns we sang on Sunday, but that mined the music on the radio for inspiration. We wanted to find strains of Advent in everyday life, and we found it everywhere.

So why do we keep doing this? After seminary, we realized that the hunger to look for Advent in the corners of the everyday didn’t leave us. We also realized that despite all the songs we’d already collected, Advent was still all around us, just waiting to be named. We’ve probably collected over 100 songs at this point, and we find more each year.

While we do this project for ourselves, we also wanted to share with others and start a conversation… thus the Advent Music Project was born, and each year it keeps expanding beyond our expectations. This year, our theme, “Shine On,” pushes against our tendencies to favor meditative, sometimes even mournful songs (in the vein of the hymn above or "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel”) with a theme that emphatically invites celebration and joy-filled waiting. This year we’ll also occasionally expand beyond music, featuring short art videos or other media, and we’ll be crowdsourcing some posts that could use a whole chorus of voices (like yours!).

As usual, the heart of our devotions are music spanning from New Wave to Psychedelic Pop, Geechee to Hip Hop, and reflections that cast all these songs in the light of Advent. We aren’t shy about what we consider to be “Advent” music around here, so if you’re looking for your daily dose of angelic choirs, you may be in for a surprise. But if you’re looking to be upended by a song you’ve heard on the radio a thousand times, or introduced to an artist you’d never heard of or considered “Advent-y” this might be the place for you.

We’ll be posting regularly on A.M.P. Monday through Friday, with additional activity like the hymn project I mentioned above throughout the week and the weekend on Facebook. Follow us there for all the updates: https://www.facebook.com/adventmusicproject

May you find your way in this season filled with light. Shine On.

-- Lindsey and Anna

On your marks...

~ Welcome to the Advent Music Project 2012 ~

If you're new to our project, we mark the days from Advent to the New Year with a song-a-day advent calendar. We'll share our thoughts and also feature song ideas from readers. We hope to open up good conversations in the comments about what the words, songs, and symbols of this season mean to us both online and wherever you are. Read more about why we started this project HERE.

You'll notice that while many of the songs we choose are Christmas oriented, many more are not. Some may even surprise a little. We like treating our radios and playlists like treasure boxes that hold echoes of Advent in many places. So take a listen -- and tell us where you hear the sounds of mystery, grace, redemption, wonder, longing, and good news of great hope.

At the verge of the Advent season, we invite you to journey with us. 

Come in, come in!

a new rendition of a very old Advent song, by Rosie Thomas.

- Lindsey and Anna

Tues Dec. 27 - Time Is on Our Side (Free Energy)

We'll never get any other life...

So together we make this whole.
                      - Free Energy

It may seem strange to put a pop dance song in a Christmas lineup.  There are no 'silver bells' here, but there is plenty of cowbell.  This song is basically about liberation through a great beat, singable lyrics and a will to survive - and if this theme seems a little thin to you, just hold on for a minute.

One of the reasons the A.M. Project came into existence is because I know in my own journey how many times a good song has "saved" my life.  Sometimes prayer or meditation works, sometimes worship works, sometimes a talk with a friend does the trick, but sometimes when we're lost in the circles of our own thoughts, a good song on the radio can resuscitate us back to reality.  This is no insult to more "certified holy" forms of rejuvenation; it merely acknowledges what many of us already know: music moves us.

A danceable song, lyrics that seem to speak right to us, hum-able tunes... whether we more often listen to R&B, bluegrass and soul, hip hop, dance pop, classical or jazz, those of us who love music love it because of its power to stay with us, to change us - to help us.

This is all we got tonight

This is all we got tonight

We are young and still alive

And now the time is on our side

The Advent Music Project could very easily have been a collection of Christmas classics and new Christian rock favorites and indie Christian gems where the lyrics were always clearly about Jesus and God and the Christmas miracle.  Honestly, this would have made our reflection-writing task much easier!  But we didn't take on this project to find God only where God was already obvious; we wanted to find God, Jesus, Advent and Christmas in a few places no one had thought to look yet.

As with many good pop songs, the lyrics to Free Energy are both extremely literal and also open to the listener's personal experience. 'We are young and still alive' can be a rally cry for anyone from 9 to 90, and 'now the time is on our side' can speak to each of our hopes and longings.  So if we let go of our prejudgments about what "makes" Christmas music, isn't this the kind of song we could imagine the shepherds singing on the way back to their fields - the world and its possibilities suddenly opened up before them by a baby and his family camping in a manger?

What if 'this is all we got tonight' isn't a minimalist statement, but a free-wheeling confession that all we need is what we have because we've been freed from all our fears?  What if it was better-known that the angels loved a good cowbell-enhanced rock song just as well as harps and flutes?  What if we could acknowledge that at Christmas we are free to rock, free to dance, free to dare new things, because once and for all we have been shown that time is on our side, that God is bringing about astounding acts of mercy and grace, hope and love, freedom and wisdom all around us, and is urging us to just join the chorus and sing along:

The Lord is my light and my salvation -

so why should I be afraid?

The Lord is my fortress protecting me from danger -

so why should I tremble?

                                - Psalm 27:1 (NLT)

This Christmas-tide, let us not be afraid to rock, to dance, to shout with the knowledge that, despite all brokenness and waiting, in the end we have been shown in Christ's birth that time is definitely on our side.

Welcome to the Advent Music Project

Welcome to the Advent Music Project --

We'll be celebrating the 28 days of Advent (and the 12 days of Christmas) with a song a day, giving all of us five good minutes to think about the different meanings of Advent, what we bring to this season, and how we are waiting, hoping and in need of grace in our own lives.

Advent is an old tradition with new roots in the Protestant community.  For a long time Protestants considered special church seasons to be "too Catholic," but with the increasing pressurizing and commercialization of the holiday, many began to see the benefit in taking time not just to celebrate Christmas, but to figure out WHY we do it.  **Spoiler Alert**: it's not for the gifts, the mistletoe or the roasting chestnuts.  (*tear*)

So here we're trying to get back to the source of Advent: the yearning for renewal, the need for God's presence, and the promise that God, was, is and will be healing creation back into wholeness.  Advent isn't just to remember the birth of baby Jesus, but to "hope forward" for when Jesus will come again in triumph to reconcile all things.  A lot of progressive Christians don't like the phrase "Second Coming" because it's been hijacked by a very different theological mindset, but that's what we're talking about: God's promise that we are not abandoned to work out history by ourselves, that God's ultimate purpose for creation is exuberant wholeness, and that Jesus is more than just a nice idea.

This project started from our own hunger for different music to mark the season than the tin-can pop-style carols piped through the mall speakers.  We still love a good dance-off to "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree," but know that Advent is about something deeper.  So while the Advent Music Project starts with sharing music that matters to us, we're really hoping to start a conversation: so what news clips, songs, quotes, ideas, and connections are you making around these themes?  Share with one another and us!

We'll be exploring a whole range of songs and musical styles, from roots and rock to hip-hop, folk and jazz.  Many of the songs will still "feel" similar, though, with themes of brokenness and waiting, need and hope.  These are the core ideas of the season, and we'll continue to use them as touchstones even as occasionally we may veer off to explore a more upbeat thought or idea.  If you don't like the song one day, just check back tomorrow; hopefully we'll all walk away from this project with a few new thoughts, and a few new songs to add to our idea of what Mr. Stevie Wonder calls, "What Christmas Means to Me."  Blessings in this season of darkening days, and may your walk be marked by the coming Light.  Peace.

                                        - Anna and Lindsey