The end of the beginning

By Michael J.W. Stickings

How about a little music on this NFL conference championship Sunday -- as as we reflect on yesterday's votes in Nevada and South Carolina and consider what the future might hold?

**********

Thanks to the great Radio Paradise, I was introduced not too long ago to God is an Astronaut, a three-man instrumental group from Ireland. See here (Wikipedia) and here (MySpace) for more.

GIAA's music is simply awesome -- combining, and often building from, "serene ambiance" to "searing intensity," as Wikipedia puts it. It is music for the mind, and even without lyrics it is immensely powerful, a haunting stimulant of thought and feeling.

The album with which I'm most familiar is their second, All is Violent, All is Bright, and I recommend it highly. The video below is for "From Dust to the Beyond" from their first, The End of the Beginning.

And what a brutally powerful video it is, a montage of war and violence, of what human beings not just are capable of doing to each other but actually have done and still do to each other, with a beautiful final image that offers context and perspective, as well as a message of hope.