I love the idea of historical people and events that co-exist at the same time, unexpectedly. The one I always think of is that C.S. Lewis, who wrote the Narnia Chronicles, died in November of 1963. But the X-Men comic books came out in September 1963. Is it possible that the guy who wrote The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe was in a train station one day and thumbed through an X-Men comic book? We’ll never know. But what an idea!

Music is, perhaps, the place where this kind of overlap happens most often. Igor Stravinsky died in 1971. How much of The Beatles had he listened to? Did he ever hear of the name Led Zepplin?

Music is so often a form of resistance, retort and navigating power. Workers protest songs address it directly. But more culturally diffuse genres like blues and jazz are just as powerful, even though it might not be as obviously resisting. Louis Armstrong is a good example of a more quiet, but still powerful form of musical resistance. He build a career pushing through racial barriers based on his immense talent, and in the process he often phrased tunes and music from majority white popular culture into his Orleans-inflected Jazz sensibility.

Punk, by contrast, was founded in protest. It was brash and confrontational, eschewing musicality for volume and tempo. When I think of Louis Armstrong I think of the 1930’s. When I think about punk, I think about the very late 1960’s through 1980’s. When I think of Louis Armstrong I think of tuxedos and adoring crowds in New York or Paris, as one of the greatest musicians of all time brought a helping and a half of musical beauty to all kinds of audiences. When I think of punk I think of alley’s and broken bottles and CBGBs and Doc Martin’s. They don’t overlap much, even though I appreciate how they are aligned in some remarkable ways.

But then there’s this picture! Look at it! There they are! Armstrong is old. And the punk movement is brand new. But there it is. Two vastly different genres meeting in two people in a historical moment. The effect of the music each represents is truly as divergent as Aslan is from X-Men’s The Beast.

We’ve become preoccupied lately about generational difference, sometimes for good reason. This picture reminds me that there is a way for our forces to align, even when our paradigms are very, very different.

Sometimes it is hard to tap into our spiritual selves or find time to nurture our creativity and intellectual curiosity. Here is a section that reflects on some nourishing materials from around the web and related media channels in order to get us thinking, get us feeling, and get us reflecting on the lives we are living in this big world. **Some Adult/Mature Themes May Appear in Links and Other Attached Material**

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Allan T. Georgia, MDiv, MTS, PhD