by Matthew Raley At some point last September -- maybe it was the collapse of Wachovia or the meltdown of the Dow Jones average, or it could've been the suspension of the McCain campaign -- I said to myself, "You are one brilliant pastor."

I said, "Other pastors take the obvious route. They raise money for buildings when the economy is roaring, when retirees are flush with dividends, and when re-fi's and 0% credit card offers just keep on coming. But you," I said, "you go all counter-intuitive. You decide to raise money during Great Depression II."

And, as the autumn degenerated into the disasterous Christmas retail season, I used more vituperative language.

Granted, we would rather have timed this campaign to coincide with a Gipper-scale expansion of GDP. But consider some items that have helped restore my own sense of proportion.

1. The economy has not been strong in Orland for decades, yet the church has expanded ministry.

Good economic news nationally and statewide has rarely translated into good news for Orland or Glenn county. Indeed, good news elsewhere has done little but raise the cost of living here. The bubble in housing prices was great if you were about to retire in San Jose, but it priced young families out of the market locally. Add the oil price shocks and rising food prices of the last couple of years to already tightening household income, and we've been in quite a squeeze.

But for three years in a row beginning in 2004, we raised the general budget of the church by 20% per year, and met budget every time. Even in 2008, bloody though it was, December saw more than $60,000 come in above the monthly average, bringing us closer to ending the year on budget. Furthermore, congregational giving over this period has been broad-based, not the generosity of a few.

God's character has proved to be more relevant to us than the leading economic indicators.

2. Past economic distress has brought us opportunities.

Several years ago, before the real estate bubble really inflated here, one of our deacons found a 10-acre parcel with curb, gutter, sidewalk, and city sewer and water connections. The investor who had made those improvements was not able to develop the land further. So the church bought it for less than $200,000 as a future site for WestHaven, our assisted living facility.

Only a short time later, we sold most of the acreage to a Bay Area developer for more than twice what we paid for the entire parcel. The sale helped finance the construction of WestHaven's first phase, and the facility opened within a couple of years.

God has shown us that he has plans in the midst of distress.

3. The current downturn has already been a huge opportunity for North Valley Christian Schools.

The campus of NVCS sits on a corner of the 20 acres it owns on Highway 32. There is an adjacent parcel to the east with another 20 acres, and still another 20-acre parcel bordering the north. These two properties were tied up by housing developers, who were hoping to outlast the mortgage crisis and continue with their plans. But last year they gave up their options on the land, and generous donors have purchased both parcels for NVCS and the church.

60 acres, debt-free. God has again shown that what disrupts men's plans can materially benefit His.

4. There are more reasons for us to proceed with this project.

The cost of construction in some key materials is falling, especially steel. While such things are volatile, it is safe to say that it will rarely be cheaper to build than during a deep recession.

I do not believe that our faith in God's provision should make us blind to economic realities. But we have seen hard times before, and there are good reasons for trusting God to provide what we need now.

by Matthew Raley [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBFrEJK7oAg&feature=related]

The cello suites by Johann Sebastian Bach are not light fare, by anyone's standard. The six pieces retain the characteristic rhythms and patterns of emphasis of old dances. But I doubt anyone ever danced to them. Bach used the dances as structures for his more abstract compositions.

This movement, the Saraband from the Suite No. 5, could be considered the most abstract of the entire set. Some moments are so chromatic that one could lose track of the harmonic progressions, which in themselves are linear and implied, not vertical and literal.

And yet, for me, this is one of the most emotionally compelling movements in all the cello suites.

by Matthew Raley

The drama of painting seems to begin with the brevity of drawing, in which every monochromatic gesture implies not only shape, but color, light, and texture. I just happened across this marvel in red chalk today.

I was delighted to hear that the staff at The Suspense Zone included my novel Fallen in their "Reviewers Choice" list for 2008. Anyone interested in Christian suspense fiction should check out their site, and watch for Susan Sleeman's forthcoming Nipped in the Bud.

by Matthew Raley When organizations ask individuals and families to put the Kingdom of Christ first in their time and finances in order to support the ministry, the response is often justifiable cynicism. Aren't you really asking me to put you first? Is this really about the Kingdom?

The leaders of Orland Evangelical Free Church (OEFC) know that the church can't ask individuals to do what the organization itself isn't willing to do. The building plan we're proposing was born out of a conviction that we need to put the Kingdom first institutionally.

As I said on Sunday morning, we are asking the congregation to invest in a building it will not own.

There are two ministries that will use this building, North Valley Christian Schools (NVCS) and OEFC. NVCS has its own board of directors, its own property, its own goals, its own staff and operations. Some leaders do serve on both the OEFC and NVCS boards, but NVCS's directors come from several churches in the area, including home churches.

Both of these ministries have visions for new facilities.

The building we are proposing was designed by a site committee, some of whose members come from other churches. It was designed not as a church that can also support school uses, but as a school that can also support church uses. The plan is that OEFC will invest in this school building, in return gaining use of office space, classrooms, and an auditorium.

The representatives from other churches see this not as a threat to their ministries, but as an opportunity for NVCS to gain a better facility than it could otherwise build. They express this confidence because area churches are developing a strong working relationship.

The facility will be both owned and managed by NVCS. The school will not only hold title but will administer scheduling and maintenance. OEFC, in other words, will have a say in facility use, but will not have control. As I said on Sunday, "We're asking the congregation to put the school in the driver's seat. That will accomplish more for the Kingdom."

A use agreement has been drafted that details both the responsibilities of the two organizations in using the building, and how their respective investments will be tracked.

The arrangement we are proposing is open-ended, but explicitly temporary. At some point in the next twenty years, the two ministries will grow so much that sharing one building will be a hindrance rather than an advantage. Then NVCS can buy out OEFC's investment, and OEFC can build a specialized church facility on its own adjacent parcel, a facility that will give the school still more space.

In effect, then, we are asking OEFC's congregation to delay the dream of having its own facility under its own control -- delay it indefinitely. Sharing facilities will involve intensive coordination, much patience, and clear accountability. But these are disciplines we should cultivate anyway.

I am proud of this congregation's unity and large spirit. I am particularly excited to see this spirit connecting us to other churches in the region. I have no doubt that as the church institutionally puts the Kingdom first, individual members will follow with joy.

Here is one of my favorites from the American master who died last week. The New York Times obituary could scarcely manage a compliment to Wyeth without copious references to how polarizing he was in the art world. For some reason, art that is unselfconsciously American has no legitimacy in those circles.

President Barack Obama's inaugural address expressed something not heard in Washington for many decades: liberalism without a guilty conscience. That the new president is liberal in his political philosophy was clear. His narrative for American history is one of expanding equality. His sketch of the economic crisis had the lines of the classic liberal model, that the prosperous few must not be coddled. His foreign policy overview stressed that we hated no one, and would strive for humility in our use of power.

While many of these values are shared across party lines, they are the specific priorities are modern liberalism.

But from the guts of this address I heard none of the cringing irony about patriotism, none of the apologetic nods to other societies, none of the moral weakness that drained liberalism of its power in the last decades of the twentieth century.

The president's speech was filled with our history, saturated with it. He presented us with an American legacy that was strong, not hypocritical. And he made an unequivocal claim that this legacy requires our loyalty:

Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends - hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism - these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history. What is demanded then is a return to these truths.

There were fighting words grounded in cultural confidence:

We will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense, and for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you.

What I heard in this speech was the tone of the old liberalism of Roosevelt, Truman, and Kennedy, the liberalism that forged the victorious cold war strategy. It is not a philosophy I can agree with, especially not in its view of the state's role in society. But it is a liberalism I can respect.

by Matthew Raley [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQpsL_kh6pE&feature=related]

Mitsuko Uchida has an endless variety of pyrotechnics to use for encores, short pieces played at the end of a concert as a kind of bonus for the audience. But here Uchida gives a quiet reading of the 2nd movement of Mozart's Piano Sonata in C, K. 545.

I didn't know the piece, but only clicked it to hear Uchida. This bit of late Mozart is rich, and her performance froze me in my seat until the last note.

My son Dylan and I are reading through David Macaulay's fantastic series of books about buildings. We've read about the construction of castles, pyramids, and cities, and right now we're reading Cathedral.

The timing is interesting, given that our church is in the middle of fund-raising for a new facility. The morality of such construction projects is increasingly questioned by those who cite the poverty of the developing world, and the massive needs around us here at home. I find myself reading Macaulay's book and looking at his drawings through the lens of my own struggles with our project.

Why do some buildings strike me as self-indulgent and offensive, while others impress me with a message?

In the case of the medieval cathedrals, I can't help reacting to the abuses that financed them, like the display of relics and the sale of indulgences. I also react to the throne-and-altar alliances that the cathedrals incarnated: the church sanctified the kings of this world and their wars. History rightly pours scorn on these aspects of cathedrals, and highlights the fact that on Sundays most of them are now empty.

As I've watched contemporary building programs both at a distance and up close, I notice that a project's legacy is often soured by manipulative funding campaigns, or by designs that are patently self-serving. Such buildings become symbols of corruption rather than places for fostering godliness.

I recall a visit to the Crystal Cathedral in southern California years ago. Parts of the campus were beautiful. But the famous building itself was bizarre. Wherever I went around the exterior, I saw myself in a massive mirror. When I went inside, I found that all the seats faced straight ahead, not toward the pulpit, so that it was far more pleasing to watch the massive TV screens than to look at the actual preacher.

In fact, I was in a space built for cameras, for viewership rather than worship. In such places, I don't begrudge the cost so much as the message.

Consider some ways in which the medieval cathedrals transcended their often vainglorious origins:

1. The cathedrals were direct expressions of the faith of common people.

Bishops didn't build cathedrals; craftsmen did. Whole lifetimes would be spent cutting stones, carving ornaments, blowing glass, climbing scaffolding. The craftsmen remain anonymous, individual contributors to a vast conception meant to evoke the created order. That kind of devotion is worth something. It is not to be sneered at. The level of skill these laborers had is stunning even in the pages of a book for children.

2. The cathedrals united generations.

The people who dug the foundations were dead long before the cathedral was consecrated. In these projects there was a sense of continuity, of one generation receiving a charge from another, carrying on the work, and passing the charge on to their children.

This aspect of cathedral-building in a community's life is no longer seen as valuable or even desirable, a fact that speaks of a deeper corruption in us than mere materialism. In a word, it indicates decadence.

3. The cathedrals have a present-day impact on a person's soul.

They say something. They speak to even the most unlearned child. When you walk around the outside of a cathedral, it doesn't flash back your own image, but a vision of another world. When you go inside, it doesn't say, "Look at the jumbo-tron." It says, "Look up!"

The aspersions cast on buildings can also be cast on all the arts. If it is a selfish luxury to make buildings with a message, then it is also selfish to make songs, paintings, photographs, poems, and novels. All of the arts require time, devotion, and money. But we miss the balm of God-given creativity when we lower all of life to the utilitarian bottom-line.

Our building in Orland will not rise above commercial-grade design and construction, which saddens me. But I also know that our design is flexible. We can humanize it by the arts we can afford, and we will. Above all, we will have worship space that encourages participation, not viewership. We'll have large spaces for many purposes, but also very small spaces set aside for one-on-one counseling and prayer.

The cathedrals were only possible because a strong culture knew what it wanted to say and how to say it. While our building will never be an artistic marvel, it will be a clear message.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gW57vTzNCGg] Here is last movement of Franz Schubert's String Quartet in d minor, D 810. The movement is very fast (marked "Presto"), and is a tarantella, a frenzied dance to ward off the poison of a tarantula bite.

The four-movement quartet did not acquire its macabre title, "Death and the Maiden," because of this tarantella movement, but because of the slow second movement. It uses a song of the same name also composed by Schubert.

President Kennedy: Profile of Power, by Richard Reeves, Simon & Schuster, 1993. by Matthew Raley

Recently, anticipating an Obama administration, I reread Richard Reeves' narrative of John Kennedy's presidency, and was engrossed.

Barack Obama's ascent provided the excuse I'd been wanting to return to this book because Kennedy is the nearest analogy to the man who will be the 44th president. Just for starters, Kennedy was a barrier-breaker, as the first Catholic to occupy the White House, and he was young.

But there are more significant parallels. JFK had no executive experience, and was the last sitting U.S. senator to win the presidency. He also represented generational change, and a break with ideological passions in favor of a sophisticated pragmatism. Indeed, JFK was the last president to have the sheen of academic and writerly intellectual seriousness.

Does the Kennedy administration, I wonder, suggest anything to watch as Obama takes over?

First, a few outstanding features of Reeves' book, Obama aside.

Reeves is the master of the taut, high-impact vignette. Kennedy was pondering what to do about renewed Soviet atmospheric nuclear testing. Should the U.S. resume atmospheric testing too? He asked his science adviser, Jerome Wiesner, how radioactive fallout gets to the earth (p 227).

"The clouds are washed out by rain," answered Wiesner.

Kennedy looked out through the French doors into the garden. It was a rainy day and he asked: "You mean it's in the rain out there?"

"Yes," Wiesner said. He stood, awkwardly, waiting. Kennedy did not speak for a long time.

Reeves also conveys the private impact on national leaders of events like the Cuban missile crisis. His understated portrayal gains power from the right details at the right moments. Mike Mansfield, the Senate Majority Leader, left the White House after learning that millions could be dead within hours in a nuclear exchange (p 393). The senator

called his wife, asking her to meet him at National Airport. Mansfield wanted to go home to Montana, and he told his wife there was something he wanted to tell her involving Kennedy. When the Mansfields landed at Billings later that day, there were soldiers patrolling the runways and the terminal -- as there were at other airports all across the country.

The Kennedy assassination (which I hope never becomes a parallel between the 35th and 44th presidents) gains drama and tension as Reeves' narrative rolls on. The dates at the beginning of each chapter prompt the reader to ask, "What if JFK knew he only had this much time?"

And there are chilling moments close to the end.

On November 2, 1963, JFK sat down to a meeting to manage the coup against Ngo Dinh Diem, the South Vietnamese president. An aide walked into the meeting with a cable reporting that Diem had been killed in the coup (p 649). "[The aide] handed it to the President, who looked at it, stood up, and rushed from the room without a word, looking pale and shaken."

In Fort Worth on November 22nd, surveying the setting of a political rally he would attend before flying to Dallas, Kennedy said to an aide (p 661), "Look at that platform. With all these buildings around it, the Secret Service couldn't stop someone who really wanted to get you."

My reading raised one issue that I will be watching closely in the Obama administration.

JFK's view of military power and foreign policy was primarily political. How would the United States be perceived around the world, and how would JFK be perceived at home?

During the Bay of Pigs fiasco, Kennedy refused to send American air support to save the ex-patriot invasion force. He wanted to preserve plausible deniability of American involvement.

Reeves writes (p 157) that Kennedy, meeting Nikita Khruschev in Vienna in 1961, wanted to "talk to him politician-to-politician about the dangers of military miscalculation in a nuclear world. The political systems that produced the two leaders were different, but they were in the same business and Kennedy had no doubt they would understand each other."

But Kennedy was unprepared for the ideological strength of the Soviet leader. When asked by James Reston how the summit had gone, Kennedy replied (p 172), "Worst thing in my life. He savaged me."

The pattern Reeves shows in Kennedy's decision-making is one of trying to preserve his room for maneuver and his deniability until the last possible moment. This was his downfall in the Bay of Pigs, it persisted during the Cuban missile crisis, and remain characteristic during the coup against Diem in the last month of Kennedy's life.

Of the impending coup, JFK cabled Henry Cabot Lodge, the ambassador to South Vietnam, "We are particularly concerned about hazard that an unsuccessful coup, however carefully we avoid direct entanglement, will be laid at our door by public opinion almost everywhere."

Barack Obama is not an ideological, but a political creature. He balances, he soothes, he preserves options.

This is good in the sense that Obama will probably not turn out to be the radical leftist some fear. But in foreign policy, where uses of military power have to be concerned less with appearances than with targets and results, and where power needs to be used without a guilty conscience, Obama's penchant for equivocation could be his undoing.

After the Bay of Pigs humiliation, Dwight Eisenhower visited Kennedy at Camp David, and gave him the dressing-down of his life (pp 102-103). "How could you possibly have kept from the world any knowledge that the United States had been involved?" Ike said. "I believe there is only one thing to do when you go into this kind of thing, it must be a success."

But we don't have the equivalent of a former president Eisenhower anymore.

This picture is famous, and I think justly. Begin with the impact, lost on us now but still striking in 1877, of showing that an urban street's story is worth telling on canvas. Then observe the fine draftsmanship and the skillful effects like the water on stone, qualities that never lose impact.

I am also struck that the most dramatic effect of perspective, the vanishing-point building, is tempered not just by being in the background but by the faded colors of distance. Caillebotte is not striving to impress, but is creating a balanced design.

The story itself, for me, focuses on two pairs of eyes. The eyes of the top-hatted man look across the street at something, or someone. Hers, it seems, look at him.

By Matthew Raley As the Orland Evangelical Free Church raises funds for a new facility, I am in charge of communicating the vision. I have had many struggles with the fundraising process, most of them in the small hours of the morning.

Fundraisers, as a rule, shouldn't confess their doubts, but should project certitude. This building is God's will. They should not admit that the future holds uncertainties, or wonder aloud about communication ethics.

Furthermore, in our case, response to the vision for ministry that we've articulated has been positive. In many cases, passionately so. We're getting this response because the ministries that will be advanced by a new building are the fruit of decades of prayerful work by many, many believers in this region.

Why bother confessing pastoral struggles when the laws of fund raising forbid it and when support for the project is already strong?

Simply put, I don't feel that people should accept my certainties until they've heard my struggles. Here is one: how to show leadership when so many people are used to salesmanship.

There are similarities between the two.

Both salesmen and leaders have to present a strong case for their proposals. They have to show passion, and they have to transfer that passion to others through articulate presentations. In the final analysis, they have to move people.

But there is a crucial difference, one that goes to the heart of what a pastor is.

A salesman aims his message at people's existing priorities. The customer wants a red car. She likes red. She wants to see the red cars the salesman has. The salesman who walks her over to a yellow car and spends five minutes extolling the virtues of yellow is an idiot.

If I'm a salesman-pastor, my goal is to sell the new building. I speak to the most immediate, tangible priorities the people have, and show that the building will scratch their itch. Y'all want larger space, better lighting, no more leaks? Have we got the plan for you!

But a leader aims his message at what people's priorities must become.

The people in any church have narrow priorities. Some are devoted to their families, but not engaged with the community. Others are passionate about learning the Bible, but need to put that learning into practice. For most, the weekly grind of life forms horizons that are too near, and they need to see how the Kingdom of God calls them further.

So, if I'm a leader-pastor, my goal is to draw people out of their narrow corners to embrace new priorities. I show how scripture calls us all to personal growth, and how it calls us to be part of corporate experiences of God's power. For a leader, the building is a secondary product of this kind of spiritual growth -- an important indicator of whether something real has happened, but only an indicator.

We are living in a time of salesmanship, not leadership. Many of those who are supposed to lead -- pastors and politicians all the way to artists and intellectuals -- have given up their callings and opted for the easier course of selling.

We are now smaller, uglier, and more cynical. We expect communication to be manipulative.

But in the struggle to communicate I have two certainties.

First, the believers in Orland are constantly striving to enlarge their Kingdom priorities. They have given more time, money, and prayer to their ministries every year. They are seeking training, giving counseling, crossing generational and cultural lines to build each other up.

I am certain they will see the need for larger kingdom priorities not as manipulation, but as encouragement. I return to this confidence as a way of keeping my tone with Christ's people respectful.

Second, I am certain that the Lord will notice his people changing their priorities, and that he will provide the facilities we need -- in the time and the manner of his choosing. We will see God move -- the greatest sight of all.

To sell a mere building would be to settle for considerably less.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CN5eoZM-vE4] Ivry Gitlis is the violin's crazy old man. Here he is as a crazy young man, gremlin face and all, tossing off Camille Saint-Seans' Rondo Capriccioso with casual brilliance and a mighty sense of fun.

What I love most about Gitlis' playing, beyond his technical mastery, is the range of his tone colors. He can be hoarse, floaty, or rich. He has a wealth of vibrato techniques (speeds at which he vibrates his finger on the string), from non vibrato to a tornado-like spin.

I'd like to be crazy like this.

By Matthew Raley

What Alfred Hitchcock might have staged, Friedlander caught.

by Matthew Raley

What attracts me to Matisse is the way he accentuates patterns by eliminating depth.

In this painting, as in so many of his works, he gives us a flat surface with a multitude of  designs vying for attention: one pattern on the floor, another on the red curtain, still another on the yellow wallpaper, more yet on the crown molding.

I don't think it's going too far to say that, without the illusion of depth, the two chairs, the railing on the balcony, and the violin case become abstracted design elements rather than representations.

They're just more patterns.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sklCKCE7zLc] My friend Dr. David Mallory, a formidable violinist, told me that one test of a violin is to perform Beethoven's Kreutzer sonata with a nine-foot grand piano. If the violin is audible it passes the test.

Here is my favorite violinist, Milstein, playing the Kreutzer's last movement. I call Milstein my favorite not because his playing was better than other virtuosi, but because his eccentricities speak to me.

He held the violin slightly lower on the shoulder than most other players, and his bowing was not particularly straight, making his appearance seem loose. But his playing always strikes me as intuitive and free, as if he were improvising. Milstein seemed to have absorbed the music into his very personality.

His use of the bow in this piece is fantastic. He goes out of his way to place accents at the tip of the bow (0:30), rather than at the frog -- where the bow is held, and where gravity urges us to place our accents. The effect is a definite nudge at the front of the note with growth as the note is sustained.

I am also struck by Milstein as a collaborator with Georges Pludermacher, his pianist. When he has running eigth-notes with the piano (5:10), Milstein drops his volume slightly, allowing his sound to blend with the sound from Pludermacher's right hand.

And, of course, the gold tone of Milstein's Strad can be heard just fine.

By Matthew Raley The eagle-eyed will already have noticed that I added the page About: Tritone Life to the sidebar. It offers two things every reader needs: an explanation of the tritone and its signficance as a metaphor for this blog, and, more importantly, some gorgeous music.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J66PUOysSOk&feature=related] Here is alto Angelika Kirchschlager singing "Bereite dich Zion." Translation of the text:

Prepare thyself, Zion, with tender desire/ the Fairest and Dearest to behold with thee soon!/ Thy cheeks/ today must shine the lovelier;/ hasten most ardently the Bridegroom to love.

Merry Christmas!

If we want models for Christian art that speaks truly and deeply, giving no concession to sentimentality, I nominate Dürer.

He not only gives us a stable, but a total wreck. I love the timbers balanced precariously above the courtyard, and the window swinging on its hinges in the room above baby Jesus. How many pigeons live in there? The plaster crumbling off the exterior and the trees growing out of the ruins in the background are also marvelous atmospheric touches.

But the thing that grabs me in this engraving is the fact that I have to hunt for Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. The figure in plain view is that of an old man preoccupied with pouring water into a too-narrow jar. In the stress of his task, he seems unaware that God is just up those neglected steps.