Within Orthodoxy there is room for the life of the mind and for the heart, for the intellectual and for mystery - a mystery very different from anything I'd encountered before. Then, in the Orthodox Church, I discovered Holy Tradition and a new and profoundly different way of reading the Scriptures and understanding Christ's work in Creation. The friendliness of the Holy Cross community and the beauty of the Liturgy drew me in. I can only believe that it was the work of the Holy Spirit taking pity on a lost soul. Truly, I have no real idea what brought me to the front steps of Holy Cross Church in Williamsport that first Sunday. People have asked me how I found Orthodoxy. The first choice was impossible for me and the second and third would have left me with a life devoid of hope or meaning. I could put on intellectual blinders and approach the Scriptures like a 'fundamentalist', with lots of emotion and doing my best to ignore the world of the mind, I could try to adopt the barren 'post-modern' and 'de-mythologized' faith of many of my peers, or I could abandon Christianity altogether. Moreover, having been brought up with a 'Western' mindset, it seemed as if the modern Christian was faced with a terrible, impossible choice.

Was it my own emotional immaturity, stubborn pride and lack of faith? Was this God's way of telling me that I was on the wrong path? But where was that church? And was there a place for me within it? Something always seemed to be blocking my path.

Like many young people, I flirted with Eastern religions, but I also understood on some level that these offered only an empty, nihilistic and self-absorbed experience of reality, and that I could not walk away from the church of Christ (even though I was not at all sure that He wanted anything to do with me). Increasingly, Protestantism seemed to have been co-opted by the modern culture, spiritually dead and theologically empty, at times more like a kind of social club or self-righteous political activism than faith. Unfortunately, the church of my youth was no longer a refuge. Things were complicated by a loss in my childhood and by other early challenges, things which made me distrustful of happiness and relationships, and which left me with an angry, defensive attitude toward God and Christianity. I knew that something was missing from my life but I was not even sure what I was looking for. However, being much too immature, I withdrew after one year.īy my late-20's I had lost my spiritual moorings. That led to a brief stint in a Protestant seminary. I can also recall one summer atternoon, while working in Colorado with the Forest Service, walking through the woods and thinking that perhaps I should enter the ministry, although I am not sure where this notion came from. When I was older, while working in northern New Mexico, I was drawn to the indigenous Roman Catholicism of the high desert country. In Rome I was intrigued by the ancient ruins and the Christian catacombs. My family lived in Austria for a year when I was a child and I am told that I would walk to the front of the European churches that we visited to gaze up at the altar. Moreover, I have always been drawn to places of worship and to religious books and ideas. Working against the seemingly entrenched cynicism and 'blues orthodoxy' among rock music critics, Martin demonstrates the power of Yes's romantic, utopian, 'Blakean,' ecological, multicultural, and feminist perspective, showing how this vision is developed through extended musical works.'I think this book will stand out as the most definitive study of Yes, and anyway, how could I not like a book that compares my ability to that of John Coltrane and Jimi Hendrix?'-Chris Squire Co-founder of Yes'Yes fans will flock to this paean to the world of 1960s 'art rock'.I was raised in a mainline Protestant church and am very grateful for that.

Bill Martin situates one of the most creative groups from the progressive rock period, Yes, within the utopian ideals of the sixties and the experimental trend in rock music initiated by the Beatles and taken up by groups such as King Crimson, Jethro Tull, Pink Floyd, and others. Unlike most books on rock music, Music of Yes does not focus on personalities, but instead on musical structures, lyrical vision, and cultural and historical context.

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