Songs of Forever @foreversongs-blog - Tumblr Blog

It's back! I hacked and slashed my way through last year's Christmas playlist like always, but this time with a twist. I recruited my lovely wife for insight on song choices and order, and thus, a name change is in order. So here it is: a fun collection of some of my favorite Christmas songs, primarily featuring renditions you're unlikely to hear on traditional Christmas radio. I hope everybody enjoys it!

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Why should you listen to this song? Because it's lyrically brilliant. Because it's the only song I've ever heard that uses the word "eremitic." Because halfway through, it turns into a completely different song. Because it's beautiful.

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EMO OVERLOAD. But seriously. The nostalgia is strong with this one.

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I've always loved pop punk, and I've always loved the Fall air in the South. So what better way to ring in October 1st than with a little combo of all three? And what better band to do it than Yellowcard? Their last two albums are some of the best pop punk in recent memory, in large part because they've struck a satisfying balance between the musical stylings of their teenage years and lyrics that reflect their maturity as adults. I highly recommend this entire album.

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Uncertainty

In the scientific world, it's hard to be friendly with uncertainty. We don't even like to admit what we don't know. If a mechanism or process is undiscovered, we say it is "not fully understood," as if we're just seconds away from finally getting it. Uncertainty simply invites further research, because we believe at heart that everything is ultimately capable of uncovering and understanding.

And yet there are so many things that are unreachable via scientific process. And since the scientific method is considered, in our Western world, to be the only way to really "prove" something with any degree of confidence, then there are vast areas of life, faith, and philosophy that can only ever be one thing: uncertain.

This is hard. I think in our souls we all want to be okay with uncertainty, because then we wouldn't have to bear the burden of always attempting to be right about everything. But we have a hard time giving that up, because there's one question we can't answer: If we never know the full truth, will everything still be okay?

We are uncertain even about whether or not we should accept uncertainty.

I believe that God intended it to be this way. To show us that we have limits. That we can't know everything. That we are still creations, not masters. To inspire us to pursue knowledge and truth with humility, never forgetting that there are things we simply cannot know. We should be grateful for what we do.

I recently listened to a brilliant Radiolab episode about uncertainty. I strongly encourage a listen. The link is below, but be warned that it does contain some graphic material in one of the stories that is told:

Radiolab - Are You Sure?

Still a phenomenal songwriter after so many decades. This almost sounds like something you could have heard on U2's Joshua Tree. But Plant both preceded and influenced U2, of course.

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Quiz time! A hundred Internet Points to anybody who can tell me what specific thing these eleven very different songs all have in common.

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Five Iron Frenzy's new album comes out next Tuesday, but it's up on Spotify right now. And yes you should listen to it. I'll be reviewing it on JFH, but I'll go ahead and point out that "Battle Dancing Unicorns with Glitter," "We Own the Skies," "I Am Jack's Smirking Revenge," and "Blizzards and Bygones" are the big highlights of the songs we haven't already heard.

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