Weekend Soundtrack
We Are Nowhere and It's Now
Michael Raphael
MAY 10, 2008
- Sara Quigley
- (Courtesy Sara Quigley)
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More From Michael Raphael
When you want to get into a space that's all your own, what song do you keep going back to? Your answers have made for fantastic stories -- and a formidable mixed tape...
Our latest story comes from Sara Quigley, who listens to us in Morning Sun, Iowa. She told us the soundtrack to her weekend is "We are Nowhere and It's Now" by Bright Eyes:
Bill Radke: Sara, why is this your Weekend Soundtrack?
Sara Quigley: I have been displaced since graduating from the seminary and I have ended up in rural Iowa while I wait to be appointed a call or given a church as a pastor. Listening to this song really speaks to my feeling of being displaced, being nowhere.
How does this Bright Eyes song relate to your work as a pastor?
I don't listen to a lot of the Christian Top 40 -- I listen to musicians like Bright Eyes, Elliot Smith, Aimee Mann. People that sing about the issues of the world around us and not just the secluded world of the church. And certainly not the same people you'd expect to see sitting in the church pews on Sunday morning.
The speaker is talking about the person who's drinking, who's punishing themselves. And it's very dystopic: 'Why are you continuing to hurt yourself and not live the promise that you could be living?' But then, later at the end of the song, he brings in this yellow bird which is this promise, this hope, this brighter future. And since I feel really disconnected with my calling to be a pastor and kind of lost out here in rural America, I need that little yellow bird, that glimmer of hope.
Faith -- and more specifically for myself, Christianity -- has a gift to give to the world. We can be melodic, we can dance, we can mosh, we can do all of these things, but we don't have to kill ourselves doing it. It should be a sign of our freedom as children of God versus the culture of drugs and violence.
Sara, good luck with your ordination and being somewhere and now. Thank you for sharing your Weekend Soundtrack.
Thank you very much, it's been a pleasure.
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- Music Bridge:
- Enivrez-Vous
- Artist: Strereolab
- CD: Peng! (Too Pure!)
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