"Is There Any Easter Music?"

That was the question posed to me recently.  Like a lot of churches, we have a 'contemporary' service and a 'traditional' service.  As a planner for the traditional, there is no shortage of congregational music that one might select for an Easter service.  Likewise, if you are looking for a song about the cross, (thinking maybe about Holy Week and not the Resurrection itself) we've got it covered.  My only problem is choosing which songs to do and which ones to leave out.  There's a deep well.

But when asked if I could think of some Easter music that would be stylistically suited for the contemporary service, I had to think about it.  I know quite a bit of 'what's out there' but I really had difficulty coming up with anything that was topical and I thought would 'fit'.  That got me thinking.

Following Up on The Hunger Games

I saw the film and finished the final book over the weekend.  Where to begin?

The book got real philosophical at the end and chalk that up as a win for the author.  One of my issues with the books was the relentless first-person medium.  It couldn't help but make you (eventually) a little tired of the protagonist and find her a bit self-centered and her self-depracations ... hmmm ... disingenuous.  Shorter version:  I sure wish I had some points-of-view described belonging to some of these other very (otherwise) well-developed characters.

Then I'm constantly reminded of the target audience.  Certainly not a ... ahem ... thirty-something male who was taught to examine the viewpoint of every author who ever wrote and insist that there is no such thing as a truly unbiased accounting even in fiction (brought to you by the fine folks at the University of Georgia's History Department at Leconte Hall).  They also taught me better sentence structure than that but I sometimes ignore that one.

The Half-Marathon Play List

No, I don't expect you to care.Yes, I do expect some snide remarks related to my choice of music, my age showing, my lack of exposure to the "right" kind of music, my lack of culture, my affinity for Simon and Garfunkel, Willie Nelson, and Dwight Yoakum, etc.  The fact is, I don't have a lot on my iPhone that might be considered 'running music'. 
Perhaps even someone who suggests this is a lot of music so let me save you the trouble.  It took me 2 hours and 57 minutes.  (The next time will be better I promise)

The song that best matched my pace was "Free Falling" and the one that I might should've left off was "A Most Peculiar Man", which came right around the mid-point and might've slowed me down a little.  It seemed hilarious to me when I put the list together to think about that song coming up in the middle of the race but there's actually very little that occurred during the race that even I could find funny.  Certainly not a slow song about a weird guy who kills himself.  Live and Learn.

Without further adieu, the half-marathon Playlist as chosen by Shuffle...