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Reverend Billy and the Church of Life After Shopping Gospel Choir http://www.lovevolv.org/2009/03/reverend-billy-and-church-of-life-after.html

The first time I saw Reverend Billy, was in St. Mark’s Church in the East Village. It was a romp, a revival of spirituality that was both over the top spiritual drag and humbly resonant testament to the divine. It was choir and call and response, a gospel of people before Trademark. The Church of Stop Shopping was cathartic and the sun coming in through the antique windows definitely brought in the transcendence.

Reverend Billy offered a journey that felt familiar and novel.

Years later I no longer go by St. Mark’s as much as I used to, in fact hardly ever. I travel. I sit in my grandfather’s house. I work more than I pray because I try and make those two the same thing.

Vocation

Reverend Bill and the Church of Stop Shopping were a revelation that first time. They became even more powerful over time. Out on the West Side, right on the Hudson River, to call attention to the apocalypse happening in our seas. The ceremony doesn’t come to me in detail but I remember my friends and I being a smaller group of three. The first time we were at least five, probably seven or eight of us housemates and sundry partners. Some of us were sick or dead, some were just busy.

The somber way that the ritual/event/action unfolded, something had changed in the Reverend. He was in fact considered persona non grata in a famous coffee house. He had felt pushback, probably not for the first time or the last; but perhaps more strongly than in the past. Perhaps.

The weight of the times weighed on The Reverend and I felt that same shadow in my heart that day. I had grief that things had gotten so bad — that in current events we acted like manatees or people had no right to live or die nicely. The songs of the service felt more like Good Friday than anything like that clear, warm light in the early autumn. I was just as glad to be there, among a surprisingly decent crowd on what was a cold and windy evening.

There was a lot of wind. And the wind felt stronger than it used to.

So we learn that living is a vocation, at least that’s what came to me that day. Vocation: We realize that everything is practice for astral diving out to God one day, and leaving the body. With that vision in mind, dedication to the process and mystery of living becomes a guiding force. Sometimes the light will seem to all but fade. Have hope. Stay the course. Let it become. This is the rest of our lives.

Repairing the Earth is all there is.

Torches will pass. Names will burn to their ends. Energies will circulate. This time will go on well after us. The Great Regeneration is Here. In tired backs and baby giggles. In the camps and on the seas, and even in the mountains: The Great Healing is hitting mass. SpaceshipEarth in reboot. On the menu: nobility for all, including creatures great and small.