I read this review of Rush's Snakes and Arrows album in Christianty today.

I find it interesting that the reviewer reads the lyrics as hopless and empty, whereas I see them as full to the brimming of hope and meaning.

The reviewer laments the struggle embodied in the lyrics.  I celebrate and embrace it.

The reviewer hopes and prays that Neil Peart and the rest of the band will eventually succumb to easy answers and the peace of simple unquestioning, faith which will take away their striving and leave them content.

I think that is the greatest tragedy that could befall them.

I have heard this from Christians all my life:  "Stop struggling".

The deep-seated irony of those words seems sometimes to be lost on everyone but me.

"Stop struggling" to me means "stop living", "give up your dignity", "give up your self-determination"...the list could continue.

Even Jesus said he came to bring us strife.

Easy answers are for pussies.  Take your easy answers (and your sanctimonious pity, for that matter), follow where they lead you, and good riddance.

Oh yeah, and by the way "Working Them Angels" only becomes "a confession of Neal Peart's reckless living" if you don't listen to any of the other lyrics besides the refrain.  good God, who would think that "driving away to the east and into the past" has anything to do with Neil's personal history?  (though by some accounts he's been a bit of a risk-taker from time-to-time) What possible entity began it's existance in the East, and moved westward as it aged?  What entity might have it's conciousness stored simultaniously in the "heart of a factory town" and the memory of an "English winter" and an "African village?"

What entity could have possibly forged it's fortune by working "angels" overtime? (not literal angels, you dolt, but many thousands of souls long past, whose actions benifitted the future)?

If you haven't figured it out by now, you probably won't.  Go pray about it.  You still won't know what I'm talking about, but you'll feel better.

sorry.

Sort of lost it there.

I can handle sanctimonous jerks OK.

And I can handle clueless people pitying others for not enjoying spiritual sloth.

And I can handle snide, talentless reviewers pontificating about something they don't understand.

All at once, and it gets to be too much for me.

Sorry again, please go about your business.

Hopefully, that business is something more productive for humanity than praying for my immortal soul.

P.S. yes, I HAVE had a bit to drink tonight, why do you ask?