Stoner Rock

If you use iTunes you may be familiar with one of its features called "Genius" (I love the bold humility of the Apple Corp.). What Genius does is take your iTunes library and create categories, lumping together artists that the software thinks have a similar style of music. Why did Apple do this? I don't know, because they could? Besides, if you are in a metal mood you don't want your musical vibe interrupted with Pat Boone (who did...sorry, I'm laughing so hard it's difficult to see the keyboard, make an album of metal covers. Seriously.)
My "Genius" page has twelve categories, including Metal (sans Pat Boone. And how did Nine Inch Nails become a metal band?), Alternative; Adult Alternative (I have no idea what the difference is); Indi/Lo-Fi; Soul, and Modern Blues (when did Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker become modern?). It also has one called Hard Rock and Stoner Rock. Yes, that's right, Stoner Rock.
When I first saw this category I did not know what it meant. Does Stoner Rock mean the members of the band were/are stoned? Is it implying that I, as the listener, have a drug problem? Or is it referring to the music as being "stoner?" I opted not to question the software, after all it is called "Genius." Then, while I was listening to my new found Hard Rock and Stoner playlist, out through the speakers came Huey Lewis and the News. OK, the song "I Want A New Drug" but still, come on, Huey Lewis? Hard Rock? Not on a good day. Stoner Rock? Now I am really confused as to what that means.
When I grow up I want a job naming things. My first choice to to work for a developer coming up with names for shopping centers and subdivisions. Someone, I kid you not, got paid to call a subdivision Rolling Meadows when the landscape was neither rolling nor contained anything resembling a meadow. I want that person's job. Bad. Think about it. All you have to do is come up with names that sound pretty. They do not have to have any basis in reality. I would create a Wheel-O-Subdivisions, with all sorts of cool sounding words like hills, lake, and farms. When my boss needed a name for a new project I would just give the Wheel-O-Subdivision a spin or two and shazam, my job would be done.
I am flexible. If I can't get on with a developer then perhaps a paint manufacturer. Heaven knows only a frustrated poet could come up with the names given to most paints. If all else fails I guess I could try to get a job at Apple. After all, I have a genius level IQ.
Our loose use of language breeds a healthy skepticism. Many of us are slow to believe that "Happy Acres" is really all that happy (especially when you just paid $200,000 for a three bedroom/two bath on a quarter acre lot). Our distrust spills over into faith communities who use words like hope, compassion, life, community, forgiveness, grace, and love. How do we know that these are not just hollow words that get strung together in empty phrases?
We don't. At least not until we give the community the opportunity to show that they are more than just words. After all, compassion is not a label, it is something you experience. Sure, there are more than a few instances in which churches have failed to live up to their own vocabulary. But there are a million times more instances in which words could not even come close to capturing what the faith community is capable of sharing. I know this to be true (and not just because I am a genius). I have lived it, felt it, had my life transformed by communities of faith. I wish the same for life changing experiences for you and hope that Tree of Life can be a part of it. Unless your life changing experience includes Pat Boone in leather and chains singing a cover version of Enter Sandman. Then you are on your own. So on your own.