{"id":3681,"date":"2024-05-23T07:40:07","date_gmt":"2024-05-23T11:40:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=3681"},"modified":"2024-05-23T07:41:02","modified_gmt":"2024-05-23T11:41:02","slug":"get-into-the-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2024\/05\/23\/get-into-the-game\/","title":{"rendered":"Get Into the Game"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, <\/em>click here<\/a>

A lot of rock stars try to be cool and rebellious.

Not many aspire to forge partnerships with business, religious, and political leaders in order to eradicate AIDS, poverty, and malaria in Africa. 

Bono, the lead singer and chief creative force of the Irish super group U2, somehow manages to do both.

Underneath it all is a radical trust in God that was born of heartbreak.

Born in Dublin as Paul David Hewson, he lost his mother when he was 14 years old. She collapsed at the funeral of her own father and died three days later. In grief, Hewson began to act out. His teachers and fellow students even named him \u201cAntichrist.\u201d

He received little support from his father, whose unspoken message to his children was \u201cto dream is to be disappointed.\u201d

The kid with the incredible ability to link words and music decided to dream anyway. 

Bono (short for Bono Vox, or \u201cgood voice,\u201d a nickname bestowed by his guitar-playing friends) was somehow drawn to the Bible, especially the Psalms. He later reflected: \u201cFirst of all, David [the author of about half the Psalms] is a musician, so I\u2019m gonna like him\u2026 And what\u2019s so powerful about the Psalms are, as well as there being Gospel and songs of praise, they are also the Blues.\u201d

In the Psalms, Bono found a spiritual basis for crying, pleading, protesting, rebelling, and hoping against hope \u2013 all of which he has incorporated into U2\u2019s playlist over the past four-and-a-half decades. He and the group have won 22 Grammys, and were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame during their first year of eligibility.  

Bono is the great rock enigma. 

On the one hand, he\u2019s cool. He played himself on an episode of The Simpsons. <\/em>It doesn\u2019t get much cooler than that.

But his signature \u201clook\u201d of wearing sunglasses 24\/7 isn\u2019t a fashion statement. It\u2019s actually a strategy to cope with glaucoma. 

Against all odds, he\u2019s been married to the same woman, Alison, for 42 years. Together they\u2019ve raised two sons and two daughters. \u201cA is for Ali. If her name were Zena, I\u2019d start the alphabet with her anyway. Everything for me starts with her. Marriage is a grand madness. It\u2019s like jumping off a very tall building and discovering you can fly.\u201d

Not many rock stars say things like that.

Bono writes and performs the vast majority of U2\u2019s songs. They defy easy categorization, shifting seamlessly from protest to praise, exasperation to joy. No one disagrees that he is one of the world\u2019s most impassioned singers. As Spin<\/em> magazine put it, he has mastered \u201cthe full whisper-to-shout range of blues mannerisms.\u201d 

Check out the band\u2019s contagious energy in Vertigo<\/a>, a song that topped the global charts in 2005, the same year that Bono was named one of Time<\/em> magazine\u2019s Persons of the Year.

The song is a cry of the heart, one in which (according to Bono), \u201cyou\u2019re just looking around and you see big, fat Capitalism at the top of its mountain, just about to topple.  [Vertigo] is that woozy, sick feeling of realizing that here we are, drinking, eating, polluting, robbing ourselves to death\u2026\u201d 

What\u2019s the remedy for vertigo? The character in the song sees a girl wearing a cross (she has \u201cJesus \u2018round her neck\u201d), and according to Bono he \u201cjust stares at the cross in order to steady himself.\u201d

Bono has been staring at the cross for a very long time. In a 2013 interview he declared that Christ was either who he claimed to be or he was \u201ca complete and utter nutcase.\u201d His decision to enroll as a disciple of Jesus has given him both the courage and the motivation to address the soul-crushing challenges of the African continent. 

A few critics carp that he\u2019s just another rock star trying to get attention by throwing his celebrity weight around.

Bono replies, \u201cYou can talk if you want. Or you can get into the game.\u201d 

It\u2019s not an exaggeration to say that he\u2019s become one of the world\u2019s few transforming players when it comes to justice issues, putting an end to Developing World debt, battling AIDS, and breaking the cycles of generational poverty.

But that\u2019s what happens when someone tells you that to dream is to be disappointed.

And you decide to dream anyways.
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To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here A lot of rock stars try to be cool and rebellious. Not many aspire to forge partnerships with business, religious, and political leaders in order to eradicate AIDS, poverty, and malaria in Africa.  Bono, the lead singer and chief creative force of the Irish super group U2, somehow manages to do… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3682,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[740,738,739],"class_list":["post-3681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-africa","tag-bono","tag-rock-stars"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3681"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3681\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3684,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3681\/revisions\/3684"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3682"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}