UC Berkeley

Love’s Soundtrack

Tripp Hudgins 4-28-2017

Here in the midst of media attention and whirling helicopter blades, I find myself in need of a soundtrack that proclaims something more generous, something more — dare I say it? — authentic to whom we are called to be with one another. A soundtrack cannot save the listener. No. But it can call us to salvation.

Mumford & Sons: Hootenanny for The Soul

Cathleen Falsani 6-20-2013

The second of three sold-out Mumford & Sons concert at UC Berkeley. Photo courtesy RNS.

“Listen to the words,” the young woman behind me stage-whispered to her chatty date. “Are you listening?”

He wasn’t. But I was and so was most of the rapt, standing-room-only crowd that crammed the Greek Theatre at UC Berkeley for the second of three sold-out Mumford & Sons concerts late last month.

This is what I had come for — not just a concert, but a shared experience with a congregation of strangers (and a few friends).

Anne Lamott's Commencement Speech at U.C. Berkely: 'You Are Not Your Bank Account ... You Are Spirit.'

Cathleen Falsani 6-08-2012

Anne Lamott at the 2010 California Hall of Fame induction ceremony. Photo by Araya Diaz/Getty Images.

Author Anne Lamott, one of our favorite Jesus-loving subversives, recently delivered the undergraduate and interdisciplinary studies commencement address at the University of California at Berkeley.

Lamott's funny, irreverent, and yes, profound, words of wisdom for the Berkeley graduates included the following, about what she thinks the "truth of their spiritual identity" might be:

Actually, I don’t have a clue.

I do know you are not what you look like, or how much you weigh, or how you did in school, and whether you get to start a job next Monday or not. Spirit isn’t what you do, it’s … well, again, I don’t actually know. They probably taught this junior year at Goucher. But I know that you feel it best when you’re not doing much — when you’re in nature, when you’ve very quiet, or, paradoxically, listening to music....