As I was thinking I should look for His face, I raised my eyes, and I couldn't have been more surprised by what I saw. Sometimes it is playing gospel standards like “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” or “Amazing Grace” with vanishingly low interest in whether the performers or fractions of the audience have any piety worth mentioning, in whatever senses this may be relevant. I was at that moment kneeling on a throw rug by my bed, my torso leaning on the bed, propped up on my elbows.

For that we should leave the part of where the angels say “peace to all those with whom God is pleased” (not including Herod), or at least stipulate that this caveat is redundant because God is pleased with everyone. I realize now that it was like that because the vision was conveying spiritual reality, which is a different world than the visible, material world. He was looking at me — as he had looked at Peter after Peter denied him — with eyes that saw right into my soul and knew all my sins and struggles.Some of the technologies we use are necessary for critical functions like security and site integrity, account authentication, security and privacy preferences, internal site usage and maintenance data, and to make the site work correctly for browsing and transactions.

But if you were in the meat market with me for those three months when I was 21 years old you would not have laughed — you would’ve cried for me. She is bringing back some of the most innovative and commendable parts of the music scene from back in the 1980’s—a critical moment in music’s digestion of second-wave feminism. Recently I have argued that Kanye’s version of a Trumpian “I’ve got mine jack” prosperity gospel— for which he prepared a full-scale Christmas opera complete with the well-known Christmas angels proclaiming “peace of earth”—might think harder about showering grace indiscriminately on everyone, including King Herod and Trump. The other thing that God seemed to say to me was to direct me to read 1 Peter, which I learned was a letter to disciples of Jesus who were being persecuted for following him.

There was knowledge in the feelings that I understood easily and clearly as it was transferred into my mind. As I thought about these things, I felt a deep wrenching pain in my heart -- even physical pain as though my heart was being squeezed tight in my chest. This rough and ready binary screens out or distorts far too much: Madonna, Prince, Johnny Cash, Bob Marley, the list goes on. Miley deserves a longer reflection than what follows, focused more on her key recent work including “Zombie. It is fascinating to hear her blend her (mainly) pop and (partly) country voice with a reinvention of styles by pioneering female rockers like Joan Jett and Debbie Harry.