The Love There That's Sleeping: The Art and Spirituality of George Harrison - Dale C. Allison, Jr.
In this delightful book, Beatles' fan and New Testament Scholar, Dale Allison, graciously and lovingly analyzes George Harrison's religious sentiments as they surface in his songs. George "pioneered making mainstream rock a vehicle for religious convictions" (2). Whether George sings directly to his God (e.g., "My Sweet Lord") or simply conveys his convictions, his "music is his personal testimony, his witness that God has changed his life" (19). George believed in a personal God. He embraced "the Hindu philosophy known as neo-Vedanta, according to which the one divine reality goes under different names among the different faiths" (10). "The personal nature of the Deity is most evident in George's persistent association of the Transcendent with love. For him, as for the New Testament's First Epistle of John, 'God is love'" (11). This divine love is relational and invites a reciprocal response of love. According to George, "You can't understand the first thing about God unless you love Him" (12). This book adds new meaning to the line from "While My Guitar Gently Weeps": "I look at you all, see the love there that's sleeping." To George, people may be awake, but still asleep, if their eyes are closed to divine reality. Even more tragic, too often the blind lead the blind through endless escape in diversions, and empty activities. People are "diverted," "perverted," and "inverted" - "that is, they have been diverted from the path to God's love and so become perverted, their natures distorted - so much so that they are inverted, by which George means they have everything backward: they neglect what they need and pursue what they need to neglect" (70). After a stimulating systematic look at George's convictions, Allison concludes with four positive comments about George: He commends George's honesty, his infatuation with God, his God-centeredness ("we typically see the world as the foreground with God as the background whereas for George it's the other way around" 133), and his recurrent emphasis upon love. Great book for theologians and Beatles' fans alike!