Reflections
Ruminations and the processing of observations, questions, and the origins or absence of their answers
Overcome
11/28/21
Over death,
it's a different view
from above
We often think it is something
to go through
to pass through
encompassed
on all sides
In truth,
we are encompassed by one only:
Christ
In-dwelt by one:
His holy spirit
Ruled over by one:
His Heavenly Father
And in Christ we overcome
Over
Above
Traversing as a mere threshold
that which must be crossed
but from above
not from within
Look up
rise up
and overcome
"Therefore confess your sings to each other and pray for each other that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective."
James 5:16
I wonder if we took seriously what James said that things might be different?
If our dialogues contained more confessions and questions,
More 'I don't know's and 'That's a good question's, that we might understand-
The holes in the whole of human logic, rather than that of the 'them's and 'those'
We might see humans, instead of 'Dems', 'Pubs', and 'Libs'
And that all of these have gone astray, whether to the Left or the Right
And we might understand what it means to be
One nation under God
One nation in utter need of God (1)
I have confidence, then, that if this was the way
We might be more ready to pray
For one another, for each other, together
To forgive one another, each other, together (2)
And build the kingdom of God with one another, with each other, together
Perhaps our leaders would not be so quick
To twist Christ's words into knots
And take his name in vein
To garnish the sins for which he died
And we would cease to follow-suit ourselves
Cease to enable the wolves in sheep's clothing to remain as such (3)
And so falsify our faith to our children (4)
Cease to seek justice where it is absent (5, 6)
Cease to turn a blind eye to the wrongs of our society (7)
Cease to drag Jesus through the mud of our hatred
Cease to throw him as salt upon the wounds we deal (8)
And instead let him season us as salt of the earth (9)
Maybe then, we would want different things
Righteousness over the perception of being 'right'
The salvation of our enemies rather than their condemnation (10)
To play a role in their redemption rather than their undoing (11)
To tell the truth when we say we love God,
'For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen' (12)
That the work of God would be seen in us,
As lights in the darkness, (13)
By their warmth, as Jesus said, "if you love one another," (14)
And not by their political party colors
Maybe then, we would be as he so prayed, "that they may all be one" (15)
___
To the young nation of America
Of independent condition
I am grateful for your freedoms
But not your contradictions
I believe that you are meant to be
A union more perfect still
Let’s examine what now stays our steps
From ascending that noble hill
“Liberty” is the song you sing
With ringing chimes and tolls to aid
Such virtue calls for stronger stuff than that
From which your cracked bell was made
With words you list so many things
That are quite worthy pursuits
Yet in practice these words of yours
Do not match the things you do
Your Declaration claims as equal
All, with rights are imbued (1)
Then ought life, liberty, and happiness exist
For migrants and their children too? (2)
“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses”
Is engraved on the sentry at our shores (3)
Who lifts a lamp to guide those masses
Unto the lock and chains that bar our doors
And what is to be done, Land of the Free,
With regards to your ever-persistent delay
To make good upon your proclamation
To break the chains of the slave? (4a)(4b)
What good is it to loose the stocks
Whilst forging bars of steel?
Rebar for the stones of bondage
Roads for wrongful judicial wheels? (5)
The God you name as your Sovereign
Has spoken today and so long ago
Of many things you practice proudly
That shamefully ought not be so
“Have no other God’s before me”
To guide where our worship is due (6)
Where we should bow most humbly before the altar
We erect idols red, white, and blue
“Love your neighbor as yourself”
Is the second highest command (7)
Yet to be selective about our neighbors
Is upheld by law throughout our land (8)
To laud the wicked and condemn the righteous
“are both an abomination to the LORD” (9)
We acquit Barnabas and crucify Christ
From our seat beneath Damocles’ sword
Oh prodigal nation, now repent
And turn from your unjust ways
From stolen land to bloodstained hands (10)
Promises broken, freedoms stayed
Now take heart- your sins cannot outnumber
The mercies of God whom you have oft' forsaken
Clear the thrones of your hearts and courts
Of the idols his place have taken
Make right the wrongs as he so guides
In the ways of life everlasting (11)
Learn the meaning and so enact
The fruits of true righteous fasting (12)
No one is perfect, this much is true
But we must do better still
If we claim to be one nation under God
Then we must learn and do his will
Love the Lord with your heart and soul
And the world entire of neighbors as yourself
The love of God above all things
O’er power, status, and wealth
Forsake the things that contradict
True freedom leaves no room for hate
Until the former is known by all
America is not yet great
___
Recommended viewing/reading:
1) Text of the US Declaration of Independence:
2) TIME magazine updates on family separation:
3) "The New Colossus" by Emma Lazarus:
4a) "An Introduction to Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow" (length: 3:30):
4b) "Slavery to Mass Incarceration"(length: 5:50):
5) "The State of American Prison System" (length: 3:22):
6) Exodus 20:3
7) Mark 12:28-31:
8) Wikipedia summary on recent immigration policies:
9) Proverbs 17:15
10) VOX ("16 maps that Americans don't like to talk about"):
11) Psalm 139:24
12) Isaiah 58:6-14
Teach me, Daniel
Belteshazzar
A name does not define
The whole of who you are
Lead me, Daniel
In paths narrow or broad
That the feet of the faithful
Before me have trod
Comfort me, Daniel
Through the pain of withdrawal
You know the way
To lose some for all
It is hard, Daniel
Yet must we still
Stand against man’s idols
And bow to God’s will
Show me, Daniel
How faith is done
From cells to thrones to lion's den
Thus hearts of kings are won
Thank you, Daniel
For spreading the fire
God’s spark in one's heart
Alights the world entire
Last year, inspired by my brother-in-law's year-end tradition of composing a "Best of" playlist to musically reflect on the previous year, I decided to make a list of my own. Now, while standing in the doorway of 2019 while scratching my head in wonder as to where 2018 went, it's the perfect time to compile a new list. This list generally represents songs that I've encountered over the past year, although there are a few exceptions (rediscoveries, etc). As with last year, the songs on this list generally stand out to me due to one or a combination of the following:
Groove
Lyrical content
Overall song craftsmanship
Catchy hooks and melodies
Unique story-telling
Any other unexplainable quality that makes the song resonate
This years playlist contains 49 songs that meet the above criteria in some way. The 10 highlights below are extractions from that list and are a great place to start. Feel free to listen to the linked videos while you read and find links to the complete song list at the bottom of this post.
1. Another Man's Shoes - Drew Holcomb and the Neighbors
This song speaks for itself. Drew Holcomb manages to invite the listener to the porch rocking chair to humbly contemplate life's complexities while the groove drifts by like a lillypad on a lazy river. The lyrics simply yet precisely articulate a truth that I've felt for sometime now but haven't known how to convey; that everyone has "their own set of blues" and perhaps one of the greatest acts of lightening the load and bridging the differences that otherwise separate us is to "walk a mile in another man's shoes."
2. Glory - Bastille (Young Bombs remix)
Bastille made their debut (as far as I know) in 2013 with Pompeii, a driving, chanting, pounding epic. While I appreciated that song, I didn't do a deep dive into their other offerings. Along the way, I encountered Young Bombs, who seem to specialize in Electronic Dance Music (EDM) covers of pop songs. I'm very easily sold on catchy, dance-able hooks and this song has quite a few. By listening to this one, I've grown to appreciate the smooth and unique qualities of Bastille's lead singer's voice. He has a way of adding a relaxed quality to the vocals that pairs well with the contrasting, high-energy, danceability of this song.
3. Kings & Queens - Mat Kearney
Mat Kearney is an anomaly. I first discovered his music in college around 2008/09 and was struck by his cross-genre stylings of acoustic singer-songwriter meets low-key hip-hop ninja. His early songs like All I Need and Girl America adequately reflect his dual-citizenship on either end of this spectrum. To me, Kings & Queens is the result of a gradual and successful merge of both genres. The outcome is a beautiful blend of steady grooves, catchy hooks, and rhythmic flows.
Cory Wong is quite the character. His music seems to be the audible manifestation of his personality, both bursting with an infectious and vibrant passion. He has a history with the band Vulfpeck, a collaborative of super funky dudes, which seems to double as the launch-base for the solo careers of some of its past/present members. Cory's music is the work of an artist who loves his craft and is fearless to plunge its boundaries and explore what lies beyond. One of Cory's notable feats is harnessing the power of social media to gain a recording session with his smooth jazz hero, Dave Coz, on his song "The Optimist" (click here for the story and song). Clouds is a unique song that lives up to its name. Playful guitars dance through the atmospheric vocals and piano, at times swelling to orchestral proportions over the terra firma of a solid bass/drum groove. One of our favorite family past-times is to have spontaneous dance parties to a shuffling playlist. My toddler daughter, a great dance partner, has requested many times to listen to "the clouds", when referring to this track.
5. For the Cause - Keith & Kristyn Getty Kids
Keith and Kristyn Getty are a husband-wife duo whose worship songs are characterized by a multitude of unique qualities. Hailing from Ireland, their music bears the playful/yearning/partying melodies of uilleann pipes and tin whistles merged with a traditional, hymn-based songwriting style. Many other cross-cultural sounds are often found in their musical palette as well, as is the case with For the Cause. They also produce kids albums which contain updated versions of songs from their catalogue as a duo with a choir of children's voices and some revised instrumentation and arrangements. I admire these efforts for their validation of a child's capacity for musical appreciation and am thusly grateful that my daughter frequently requests to listen to them in the car. I highly prefer the kids' version of For the Cause to the original- there is something about a choir of children's voices that evokes the both the power and the innocence of a child-like faith that simply and humbly proclaims, "For the cause of Christ we go, with joy to reap, with faith to sow..."
One weekend in June, I took a bus to NYC to visit my very great friend, Marc. This trip to see an old friend in the middle of a hectic year nourished me in a manner reminiscent of Gandalf's anticipated retreat to see Tom Bombadil after the War of the Ring:
"I am going to have a long talk with Bombadil...I have been a stone doomed to rolling. But my rolling days are ending, and now we shall have much to say to one another"- JRR Tolkien, The Return of the King
Though time, distance, and life demands have reduced our once-spontaneous college hangouts in Boston to sporadic phone calls and email exchanges, little has changed between Marc and I. Regardless of the verbal or digital format, our conversations have examined the heights and depths of anything under the sun from theology and philosophy to the benefits of mixing peanut butter with oatmeal (trust me, it's totally worth it). One staple we inevitably return to is new music that we've been listening to, and Evergreen was one such referral that I received from Marc during the trip. YEBBA ('Abbey' spelled backwards) weaves her powerful vocal finesse through a minimal yet technical groove that throws some slick time-signature changes into the mix. My two-day visit with Marc was brief but has been captured in the soundwaves of this and many other songs that served as the backing tracks to our journey through the close-quarters of Brooklyn and the furious, unceasing streets of Manhattan.
7. Holiday at Sea - Steve Moakler
With a rhythm that rocks and sways like the tossing of the waves, this song can serve as a lighthouse beacon for ships adrift in the lonely night and the tumultuous day-to-day. The song strikes a sweet balance between anthemic folk and lilting lullaby, leaving the listener to receive it in either manner for which they have need. His poetic lyrics are rich with imagery and convey ideas that are much larger than the minimal and precise words in which they are packaged:
When I get to Heaven, I won't say 'I love you',
I'll just look at you with my father's eyes and you'll know that I do
- Steve Moakler, Holiday at Sea
This is a song for the weary, those worn down by the burdens of this world and/or those fatigued from their own failures. It is an invitation to set our sights at what lays beyond the veil of this present life; to daydream about Heaven and all the Heavenly things those in Christ will do as well as all the Earthly things we can let go of when we are with Jesus face-to-face.
Ben Rector has the distinction of having appeared on both of my "Best Of" lists so far. Ironically, I honestly haven't heard more than a handful of his songs. Yet every one of those few whets the palette with such rich musical nourishment as to leave a lingering thirst for more. Each of these samplings spring from a thoughtful songwriter who proves himself to be a conscious and grateful observer of the miraculous and remarkable buried wtihin the normalcy of everyday life. Last year, I added his song, "The Men That Drive Me Places" to my list for his endearing reflection on, quite literally, the men that drive him places. That song is a reminder to be thankful for the shoulders of the quiet giants who you stand on and an offering to sing for the unsung, everyday heroes in our lives. Similarly, "Old Friends" is a call to gratitude for those whose shoulders are on an equal plane with yours, walking side-by-side with you. Ben reminds us that "no one knows you like they know you and no one probably ever will...you can't make old friends." How privileged are those friends from long bygone days that know, for better or for worse, the person you once were at a time when you "weren't scared of getting older." It seems to me that this is a recurring cycle. We all change as we age. I marvel at how quickly my friends from college have already passed into old friend territory. forming a new layer of aged friendship over those previous. They too have privileged knowledge of a version of myself that existed for a time and has since changed thanks, in part, to their presence in my life. Be thankful for your old friends. As we've learned from Ben, you can't make them.
9. Good 2 B Back - Brian Reith
Brian Reith is another anomaly that has long held a corner in the hybrid space between the pop, hip-hop, and worship genres. His music waivers between all three, usually zested with humor, social consciousness, or contemplative reverence. Under his former moniker of "B.Reith", many of his former songs alluded to the inevitable mispronunciations of his name. Thus "Good 2 B Back" appears to be a sort of re-branding to utilize his full name (notice how intentionally he enunciates it at 1:15). I've always appreciated the production behind Reith's songs; great effort has been made in the quality of sound via real instruments and/or extremely authentic samples. In an era when digitized music rules the airwaves, it can be very refreshing to harken back to its archetypes.
10. We'll All Be Free - William Matthews, Lisa Gungor
This year has seen me both blessed and pressed; so much to be grateful for yet also a breadth of trials, some of which I have yet to fully comprehend. Furthermore, our social era is a bitter and divisive one and seems similarly confused. At a time when mankind boasts of such vast resourcefulness and global connectivity which no previous age has yet known, we still struggle so deeply to understand ourselves and one another, prone toward the trails of fear, bigotry, and war that haunted our predecessors. This song comes as salve on those old wounds, pleading with us "Oh God, grant us peace." May we remember, as Jesus taught us in Matthew 5:14 to be the light of the world that he made us to be and, as the song implores, to "let the light in, keep it shining, let it break into the darkness."
Full list: For the full, 49-song playlist, you can listen via Spotify (click here) or YouTube (click here). Enjoy and remember to stay tuned next week for details on the new home for this blog. Happy New Year!
Your mind will be full of numbers
And your mouth of foreign words
Pythagoras and algebra,
Nouns, adjectives and verbs
Your eyes will scale the volumes
Of human knowledge and intellect
Your hands will know the weariness
Of assayed essays to inspect
Your feet may know the tempo
Of the clock and it's demands
Your back, the weight of pressures
And industry's circumstance
In all these things, remember
Let your heart remain unchanged
Save for the things the Lord himself
Undertakes to rearrange
Your value was predetermined
And cannot be added to
Resumes and accolades
Are not the sum of you
Things like these do have their use
This much must be conceded
As a spade in the farmer's hands
Has use to till the land that's seeded
But spades and rakes cannot suffice
When a meal is in demand
The eternal soul can ne'er feast
On scraps from finite lands
Our devices are often thought to be
The ends and not the means
We idolize the hills we climb
And the accomplishments so gleaned
Yet wonder is a mighty force
We all possess at birth
Unto a world that trades for trinkets
Such things of priceless worth
"I count it all as loss" 'twas said
About that once thought as gain
By one who had much more than most
And had nothing all the same
"that I may gain Christ", he said
Who saw the truth behind
The veil that shimmers in the winds
Of shifting trades and trends and times
We once were told to be like these,
The children in our midst
They who see with sight unshielded
Those things aged eyes have missed:
The face of God, the form of Heaven
The Holy waiting in the wings
A world that is not bound by time
And countless, wondrous other things
The thought of it is daunting:
The learning we now possess
Though strive we might to grasp it
Will fail us nonetheless
The thought of it is humbling:
The wisest teachers you may meet
Are they who hear the voice of God
While blowing bubbles at your feet
For the past few years, my brother-in-law has been creating playlists of favorite songs that he's collected throughout the years. Inspired to do the same now that 2018 is in its infancy, I've created my own 'Best of 2017' playlist. I've always cherished the opportunity to share meaningful music with others although doing so comes with a dash of risk under the radar; sometimes the music drifting out of the speakers reveals much about the stirrings inside of the listener.
So with a moderate amount of further ado, I present to you a collection of favorites that I've collected over the past year. Songs on this list met at least one of my personal criteria for a replay-able song:
Groove (typically the first thing that stands out to me)
Lyrical content
Overall song craftsmanship
Catchy hooks and melodies
Unique story-telling
Any other unexplainable quality that makes a song resonate with me
Full list: You can listen to the entire 40+ song playlist via Spotify (click here) or YouTube (click here) at the links below. Note that a few songs existed on one platform and not the other, so there are minor discrepancies between the playlist versions below.
The playlist isn't ordered in any particular fashion so please feel free to enjoy them on shuffle. If you need a place to start, below are 10 of my highlights.
Note: Click on the title of the song to watch/listen directly on YouTube if the embedded player doesn't work.
We spent Christmas and New Year's with my wife's side of the family, with whom an expansive variety of artistic interests and talents are represented. Among them is a multi-colored palette of musical tastes, including the Celtic stylings of Lunasa. Songs from one of their albums (The Story So Far) frequently danced throughout the house over the holidays and Morning Nightcap is the first track, whose heroic melodies caught my ears and would not let go.
2. Non-Stop - Lin-Manuel Miranda (from the "Hamilton" soundtrack)
There isn't much music from theater productions in my library but I've been blown away by the genius of songwriting throughout the Hamilton soundtrack. Non-Stop is sufficiently representative of the craftiness with which Lin-Manuel Miranda compiled multiple styles and musical motifs for each representative character into one song. The entire soundtrack is a mind-bogglingly interconnected web of songs, each containing subtle references to the others yet functioning independently (for example: check out Hamilton's soliloquy at the 1:42 mark in The World Was Wide Enough which stealthily incorporates titles and lyrics from many other songs in the soundtrack). Technical details aside, the song describes Hamilton's historically documented, fast-paced life-style of learning, composing, and developing ideas born out of high intellect and beliefs that would eventually shape and defend the US Constitution and lay the groundwork for the nation's financial system.
My oh my...I often find myself considering whether this is the best song I've ever heard or not. This is neither a break-up song nor a love song. It seems to stem from that place in between, where both individuals have come to the end of themselves and with helpless glances to the losses behind and the uncertainty ahead, plead "Jesus come and save us from our sins". Buddy and Julie Miller have managed to craft a song whose lyrics and instrumental components are so accurately married to the overall emotional contour of the story; flickering embers that illuminate that devastatingly sacred place where the strength of humanity is emptied and can only depend upon the deliverance of God.
Andy Mineo is one of my favorite rappers who blends style, flow, and saavy story-telling in every song. Hear My Heart is a beautiful tribute and apology to his deaf sister Grace, with whom he had a distant relationship as a child. Having not bothered to learn sign language when he was younger, Andy and Grace could hardly communicate, resulting in the gap between them that Andy now seeks to bridge. Notice in the music video that Andy accompanies all of his lyrics with sign language and that all of the colorful images give visualization to the music; truly a thoughtful, intimate conveyance of love and reconciliation across the gap between the separate audible and visual languages he and his sister speak.
5. Ants Marching / Ode to Joy - The Piano Guys
Over the past year, my daughter and I have spent a lot of time dancing to music together. She sits on my shoulders while we bounce around to a wide variety of music. This song holds a special place for me as one of the earlier entries on a playlist my wife and I have created to feed her musical palette. The Piano Guys have been making their mark on the music scene for a while now with their creative piano and cello duet covers of pop songs and original compositions, often paired with beautiful music videos such as this one, shot on a spinning stage with a drone-mounted camera. The track itself is a beautiful combination of Dave Matthew's Ants Marching with segments of Beethoven's Ode to Joy; a counter-intuitive yet effective pairing.
6. Double Beat - Santa Clara Vanguard (composed by Murray Gusseck)
Ah, the drumline. Nothing packs a punch quite like a group of coordinated percussionists who wield the power of their instruments with flair, finesse, and musicality. I recently rediscovered this song and video but since first hearing it back in 2007, it's catchy rhythmic groove has never left me. I often find myself subconsciously tapping it out on my knees and tabletops. Give several listens to this song and try to listen to each of the three sections of the drumline individually: the snare drums, tenors (the multi-drum units), and the bass line. There's a lot going on there but it all works together so well. The bass line is particularly impressive with its low melodic movements underneath the snares and tenors. In my estimation, being a bass drum player on a drumline is one of the greatest challenges a percussionist can face. Check out the descending bass line from 0:17 - 0:19 to hear how each member of the bass line seamlessly passes the melody down to the next, requiring the utmost coordination. Also, watch out for the serious beat drop at 1:09.
7. Hound of Heaven - Brettan Cox
The groove is strong with this one. Particularly noteworthy are the drums, guitar-picking, and bass lines. They function as a singular voice, a great example of playing "in the pocket", and provide the overall song with its characteristically flowing vibe, as though cruising along the top of a rolling wave. My favorite moment is from 2:38 - 2:41 where the bass and guitar follow each other in a surprising melodic riff, ending in some percussive punctuation, to make the last chorus pop. Lyrically, Brettan has taken a rather odd image pairing (hound and heaven) and beautifully highlighted one of the enigmatic qualities of God who, with hound-like accuracy and love beyond reason, is never far from us even despite our best efforts to the contrary ("I could make my bed in the deepest sea, in a desert storm you'd find me - In the streets of New York, with a million people, you're always right behind me").
8. Pennies from Heaven - Louis Prima
This one's a lot of fun. Louis Prima and his band seem to have been a whirlwind of an entity in their day, taking classic jazz songs and wrangling them into a hootenanny of shouting, clapping, and conversant solos between the instruments. Louis also provided the voice of King Louie in the original Jungle Book movie as well as the well-known song I Wanna Be Like You. What I enjoy about Pennies from Heaven is it exemplifies much of what likely draws most folks to music in the first place: its fun! The background vocals make me smile (I mean come on now, it doesn't get any better than "shoobeedoobee") and the vocal/saxophone duel solos starting at 0:44 are hilarious. Whatever else this song may be, it's a reminder to enjoy what you do.
9. The Men That Drive Me Places - Ben Rector
There's a refreshing message to be heard here and you may want to read along with the lyrics while you listen (which you can find by clicking here). Ben Rector breaks the mold by writing a genuine song about the underdogs working behind the scenes in his career. With a unique mixture of both reason and humility, Ben acknowledges that he works hard in his publicly celebrated position yet is awed by the feats of those in the woodwork whose quiet and often thankless contributions are made in the midst of challenging circumstances. This is an endearing and practical reminder of many things: the importance of being grateful, working diligently, and going out of your way to thank the silent giants upon whose shoulders you stand.
10. When I Get There - Kirk FranklinMake sure you are in a safe, unobstructed place with close proximity to a chiropractor before listening to this one. Grooves as hard as this could prompt all sorts of involuntary limb flailings and neck gyrations (known as ‘dancing’ in some circles) that will surely require follow-up with a medical professional. Kirk Franklin is a seriously gifted composer and arranger whose masterful work on this track grounds us in the terra firma of a rock-solid groove while directing our thoughts Heaven-ward. Written after the death of a close friend, Kirk uses the song to remind us all that this life is not the end but that we have the assurance of salvation in Christ for life after death in Heaven. Far from removing us from the responsibility to engage with the troubles of our present times, we are to bring the news of this promise and invitation as a light into the darkness. Whatever 2018 holds for us, let us remember that Jesus told us: "You are the light of the world..." (Matthew 5:14) and "Surely I am with you always, even to the end of the age" (Matthew 28:20).
Every now and then a song, book, poem or life event comes along and plunges the deep waters of a spiritual truth and returns to give you a sip of understanding and insight. "Oh Joe" by Flannel Graph is a retelling of the account of Joseph; a man from the book of Genesis who was greatly misunderstood by many in his life. Although a familiar Sunday-school character who has been ushered into pop-culture fame by a Broadway musical, perhaps we have misunderstood him as well.
Along with the other biblical titans, Joseph and his life of incomprehensible Old Testament turmoil and faith can seem distant and inaccessible to us; a toga-clad, Romanesque colossus, starting coldly down from the tall pillar of history to the cell-phone-thumbing populace of the 21st century milling around his feet. And given Joseph's remarkable life, such a pedestaled view might be understandable. Favored by his father and hated by his envious brothers who sold him into slavery, Joseph slogged through years of bondage, imprisonment, and obscurity before his God-given gift of interpreting dreams caught the eye of the Pharaoh who effectively gave him the vice-executive authority over all Egypt, arguably the greatest world power at the time.
Yet despite all of this, in the course of a three-and-a-half minute song, Flannel Graph manages to gently lift the grand statue of Joseph off his pedestal and chisel away the marble to reveal a flesh-and-bone man underneath. A man who dealt with jealous siblings, unfair circumstances, pendulum swings between bold strokes and self-doubt, and who was, at the core of a manically-contoured life, just like you and me.
Oh Joe, watch it all unfold
Oh Joe, you're not alone
We are all at the center of our own small story and the periphery of a much larger, collective epic. 'Joe' lived a day-to-day life; he woke up, went to work, ate food, went to the bathroom, slept, and did the same thing the next day. But he knew that God had given him this mysterious gift of interpreting dreams. Why? There were years in which his daily life had nothing to do with what he seemed gifted for, passionate for, destined for.
Sound familiar?
Ever had a job that seemed meaningless? Ever harnessed a passion that seemed entirely unappreciated or even invisible to the people around you? Ever felt that you were made for something greater? Joe did. And so have many others before and after him; a number that very likely includes yourself.
But there is more to Joe's story:
I was forgotten in my chains
But there was something greater running through my veins
At just the right moment, Joe's life intersected with those of two fellow prisoners who had strange dreams and needed help figuring them out. Joe saw the moment and went to work: "Do not interpretations belong to God? Please tell them to me" (Genesis 40:8). After the interpretations came to pass, word began to spread (albeit slowly) and Joe eventually had audience with the Pharaoh himself, similarly haunted by some strange dreams.
Oh Joe, pulled from jail below
Tell the King my words
Joe, be bold
Such are the words that God has spoken (or may yet speak) to all of us at certain spotlight moments in our lives. After hearing Pharaoh's dreams, Joe foretells a seven-year, multi-national famine that threatened to wither all of Egypt. Both frightened at this grim prospect and stunned at this glimpse into Joe's God-given potential, Pharaoh bestows managerial authority of Egypt's resources to his former prisoner. Joe blossoms fully in this new position, wisely storing up one-fifth of harvests during their abundance, a move that that sustains the nation throughout the famine and saves countless lives from starvation.
What a remarkable finish to an epic story. But before his rise to power, what kept him going when he was imprisoned and trudging through the trenches of obscurity? He knew that God made him for a greater narrative. He persistently framed his turning points through God's lens. When resisting the temptation to become involved in a scandal with his employer's wife, he reasoned "How can I do this great wickedness and sin against God?" (Genesis 39:9). When explaining to Pharaoh the source of his dream's interpretation, he said, "It is not in me; God will give Pharaoh a favorable answer" (Genesis 41:16). And in a beautiful moment of reconciliation with his long-lost brothers who helped kickstart his story with violence and force, he declared to them, "...do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you" (Genesis 45:5).
So what about us? Sure Joe's circumstances might not resemble our own but we, like him, are meant to live a great story. In many ways, he was a regular guy but his life left an irregular impact on the world. And all of us are meant to do so, from the kings and queens of our age with all of their grandeur down to the everyday average Joe.
All quoted lyrics from "Oh Joe" by Flannel Graph.
To my Grandfather,
whom I’ve always loved but never knew:
You are a distant star to me.
A mysterious diamond shines in the night-sky back of my mind
whose light is just now reaching me…
When I see your picture, you look back at me most intently
as if to tell me
that although I never knew you, still you knew me.
As though to ensure that I’ve received a message you sent back then,
back when I could barely talk that is just now being delivered to me.
To tell me that you cared for me.
And like a star dies,
you shone across a universe of time that preceded me,
casting rays that stretch into days that you would never see.
Your messenger knocks at today’s front door,
sent from a source that isn’t there any more.
And here’s the rub:
This one way communication that passes without hesitation
From twenty-seven years past,
this signal reception brings back
your face and a million questions that I can’t ask
But had I the chance…
If, in a dream, I could return to my oldest memory:
You’re looking back to me, fixing the TV
so I could see the fans on the screen
while I swam in your chair; a sea of faded upholstery.
If God gave the opportunity to me
to take a single question to you in this scene
I know just what it would be.
No need to scour my tomes of question marks,
I know just the one that captures the sum of its parts:
“How did you do it?”
How did you do it?
And in that moment I hope you’d see
the countless questions inside of me,
that I’ve bundled within the one
the root from which the others grow from:
How did you grow up poor yet live such a rich life?
How did you capture the life-long respect of four sisters?
What was it like seeing both World Wars, Vietnam, the Depression?
How did you circumnavigate the country as a teenager,
sleeping under your car at night,
scraping concrete off of bricks to pay your way
for food along the route,
and making auto-repairs when you broke down
with no one there to show you how,
like patching your radiator with oatmeal for crying out loud?
Can you tell me how?
Can the life you lived then teach me now?
How do you make it through when so much is required of you?
How do you know you’ve done all that you can do?
How do you raise a family that will carry-on long after you’re gone?
How do you keep them safe in your heart while the world tears itself apart?
How does a father love a daughter into the kind of woman you taught my mother to be?
How does a father love a son into a man that he can be proud to be?
How does a husband treat his wife with honor and humility?
How do you nourish the family tree
with roots that drink deeply
from a well of strength and integrity
that won’t run dry when all that’s left of you is your memory?
Grampy please,
how did you do it?
Now let me expose the reason for those questions I pose,
to explain why I plead for answers to these,
for by now it should be plain to see:
These queries that I ask of thee,
Are the same that are being asked of me
It seems…
It seems to be that I’m on your journey,
overwhelmed and understudied but I’m learning
I’ve got so much to lose and I’m confused a bit.
I’ve been given a commission but need a clue what to do with it.
Made a few false-starts in life but trying to follow-through and be true with it.
It’s hard to live a good life in a world that is crude but somehow you did it.
So I might follow your footsteps but these shoes are too huge to fit.
But if you stood in mine now,
could you please tell me how
you wore yours so well?
If you could see my circumstance
if I had the chance
to tell you my plans,
would you applaud my stance?
What would you say to me
as I scrape the ground with my hands to the plow
trying to carve a small nest for my seeds to rest,
where they can settle in, where their roots can dig in
and sprout their first leaves on this family tree?
How can I do for them what you did for me?
To place a star in their sky?
Though all the world be shrouded in night,
give a bright, guiding light?
Is this something you can teach me to do?
You are someone I look up to
my methods and strategies are few
so I wonder: “How did you?”
This is no idol worship.
I’m sure you made mistakes, no man is perfect.
But there are those God leads,
like threads in a weave,
in and out of our lives for times of need.
Or to provide lessons to learn.
A foundation to stand on
when life calls us forth for our turn.
One more thing I need to mention:
I’m told, in some ways, that I’m your reflection
Same lips and nose and facial bones, I know
But there must be something deeper than those.
Is it true?
Are there things of me that are of you too?
Do I do some things the way you used to do?
And what of me? This ever-itching mystery:
Though you I never knew,
what did you know of me?
But like the moment we shared when I was two:
You, looking across the room to me and I, lost in your chair
looking back up to you -
This is all the recollection I’m due.
Of my one and only remembrance of you.
I can only pose questions to you.
And they echo within me still.
But I’ll hang on to this image.
For that was the moment - just months before you left.
Though your heart gave out it feels like theft,
Yet somehow you live on despite your death
Right there -
In my youth, you gave me my oldest memory
To a toddler who could hardly speak
You deposited to my life’s treasury
And with a single glance, conveyed your legacy...
That star in the distance,
winks and casts its rays
from history to this day.
A shine that is lasting,
I'm searching and asking.
Always asking:
Grampy,
how did you do it?
I recently started reading the first book of the "Redwall" series by Brian Jacques. I had never read it before but have always been drawn to books in which animals are the characters. I decided to take a break from portrait drawings and do an illustration based on my mental image of the story.
This moment in the illustration follows the attack of Redwall Abbey, led by the legendary Cluny the Scourge. Cluny's spy has recently stolen something from the Abbey which serves as a source of inspiration and identity-orientation for all within the Abbey. At this moment in the drawing, Matthias, a self-effacing yet fiercely loyal monk from the Abbey, is venturing to St. Ninian's Church where Cluny's army has setup camp to confront him. Along the way, he encounters Basil Stag Hare, a proud and elusive hare who offers his support.
I was first attracted to Jacque's description of Basil Stag as a "patchwork" animal. I'm not quite sure what was meant by that word but it gave me the image of a somewhat rugged creature. I wanted to use this drawing as an attempt to draw some animals and portray the two figures from two different perspectives (head-on for Basil Stag and from behind for Matthias). I've also been spending more time adding background details to my drawings so this one provided many different elements for practice, including a distant figure of St. Ninian's church, a dirt path descending over a foreground horizon line and continuing on into the distance, and various bits of forestry.
Amazing things happen to people in the presence of a child. Though this phenomenon is difficult to describe, you can't miss it with your eyes.
My brother-in-law is a man of adventure whose world travels from the frozen mountains of Iceland to the hills of Florence to the vast wilds of Yosemite will someday make for an enthralling novel. A seasoned software engineer and mountain climber, he bears a broad and balanced palette of expertise in technology, wilderness, and culture.
He became an Uncle for the first time when my daughter was born. This is a sketch of the moment when, after months of anticipation and a long cross-country flight, he held her for the first time.
In getting to know these two as individuals, it strikes me that they both have a a knack for discovering what's "out there." My daughter will climb, burrow, and tumble through any physical space that's available to her to quench her thirst for exploration. Hans could not be a better Uncle with whom to share that thirst. I can't wait to see the adventures they'll have together.
Until then, may their bond continue to blossom in that special kind of tenderness that exists between Uncle and Niece; the kind that begins at first sight.
My wife and I went to visit my parents this past weekend. Shortly after the busyness of arriving, unpacking, and settling in, there was a brief period where there was a quiet stillness in which most of the house occupants were running errands. The only sounds in the house were those of my father calmly strolling around with my daughter in his arms, the baritone of his voice resonating through the tranquil rooms in response to the lilting syllables she sings in manners of curiosity and wonder. I quietly followed them on their tour of the house and snapped a picture of this tender moment, which served as the reference for the sketch. I felt fairly satisfied with how the hair came out on both figures. I also practiced some reserve in regards to detail and shading this time around. I am amazed at how little needs to be added in order to convey crucial detail as well as how dangerously easy it can be to overdo it. For example, a tiny curve and dot (like a sideways apostrophe) serve as my father's eye and a previous attempt to lightly detail his mouth blacked-out half of the feature. Oddly enough, the hardest part of the drawing was my dad's smile. I couldn't figure out how to convey the side-profile perspective of a smile and it took at least 5 or 6 sketches with pencil before I was comfortable committing it to ink.
Drawing this one out allowed me to appreciate some very true qualities of both my father and daughter that were captured on camera at this particular moment: her, with gloriously tousled hair, looking off into the distance and pointing wherever her wonder leads. And he, a tirelessly diligent man whose strong, mechanical-engineer arms and stiff-upper-lip work ethic are both completely disarmed by, and protectively surrounding, his Granddaughter. To me, this picture is a look into that place where the two are uniquely themselves in a beautifully contrasting way: The strongest yet gentlest of bear-hugs, a small and feather-weight hand resting on a muscular shoulder, and a squint-eyed smile of pure delight cast toward a child lost in wondrous exploration. Such things need no words. Such things comprise the hidden language shared between a Grandfather and his Granddaughter.
Story and song are in love with each other. After all, they are a married couple. Look throughout history and you will scarce find a party or funeral that they haven't been invited to. These two romantics will use any available vessel to tell their love story, from ancient cave paintings, to the bards of medieval lore, to all forms of contemporary yarn-spinners. You will often find them together; lyrics and lullabies wrap around each other in a beautiful embrace. Else, where it seems there is only one, the other is hidden close at-hand; an epic tale will beckon his wife near, emerging as a song on the lips or in the mind of the listener. A distant melody will sing fondly of her husband, illuminating long-forgotten memories and inspiring pens to fill their blank paper canvases.
I was reminded of this love narrative at a cousin's wedding. Just outside of Philadelphia on an oasis of a beautiful day amid a soggy week, the bride and groom were married on the tracks of an old train station that had been transformed into a magnificent garden. With vows promised and rings mounted, the pair began their journey into married life, song leading them by the hand down the aisle in her dancing steps. The song she sang at this particular moment has no words. The melody lilts between a trio of string instruments and the vast soundscapes of their harmonies, as a kestrel dashing through valleys and mountains. The central theme, beginning with the rapid fire bowing of the fiddle, passes through several frames that speak of beauty, courage, humor, loss, and redemption. Give a listen to the song in the video above and you'll see what I mean. Relying purely on instrumental content absent of any disclosing lyrics, this particular song invites the listener to seek her partner, to figure out the story he is telling. And the story he tells you may be uniquely yours, spun just for you. Here is mine:
Early American settlers of the Appalachian region, whose music and culture inspired this album, are often held up as iconic pioneers. They are remembered for venturing the seas to an uncharted land and braving the untamed wilderness of the western world to lay the foundation for a new nation. Life was no prairie dance for these families. The sweeping beauty of the mountains and valleys they settled were starkly contrasted with disease, poverty, and hunger. Although history often paints a glamorous view of settlement and westward expansion, we must remember that it yielded the genocide of the Native American people, a new market for the slave trade, and countless other sins that still haunt the nation to this day. Nonetheless, this era and these people are remembered for chasing an enigmatic entity known as "The American Dream."
But what is it?
In writing, America is founded on noble principles. The Constitution outlines the lawful methods through which "We the people" would pursue a "more perfect union." The Declaration of Independence lays the foundational presumption that God created all men equal and gave them the right to strive for "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."
Ask any American to explain that title and you will be given countless definitions. However, it is highly likely that the vast majority can be traced back to those three end-goals: Life, liberty, and happiness. It's worth noting that these are not uniquely American ideas. You don't have to be a citizen to identify with these things. Everyone from every nation wants them and, in some way, orients their lives to strive toward them. But for various reasons, America has identified these pursuits as its principle cause. When anyone refers to "The American Dream", they are likely speaking of this trinity of timeless values.
Yet something is awry.
Life, liberty, and happiness seem beyond the grasp of so many. Death, captivity, and tragedy are still here. We still get caught in the ripples affects of our nation's historical vices. The American Revolution, the Civil War, the Civil Rights Movement; these changed the methods of tyranny, segregation, and poverty but did not end them. Any liberty that guarantees the life and happiness of the few while diminishing those of others is merely another form of oppression*.
I am not the greatest patriot so perhaps I am biased. Among the liberties that I receive with gratitude in this country, I find a measure of shame in the mix. Shame for our past crimes and the hesitant pace of our repentance. Though there is much to be thankful for in this country, we are still a far cry from the "more perfect union" that we strive to be.
But that's the point, isn't it?
A "more perfect union" is one that is not yet perfect but is trying to be. And though we are imperfect people, we the people (you and I) have a role to play in the outcome of this union. Moreover, this union has a role to play in the outcome of this world. And if we want our world to improve, then our own nation is the best place to start.
If want our three-fold dream for a perfect union, we must chase it as a unified people.
To strive toward a higher standard. To reorient when we are drifting off-course. To seek the life, liberty, and happiness of others, not just our own. And to invite the perfect God who created us all equally, in all races, all languages, all nations, to show us how to become more perfect.
* I believe I am paraphrasing Martin Luther King here but am unsure. If you are aware of the source, please let me know!
I held the bowl in my hands, feeling its organic weight as I turned it over. The glossy surface was a marbled array of amber and blonde ribbons swirling about each other. Occasionally, the warm-toned hues wrapped around a dark streak or mark that interrupted their flow; stubborn rocks in the midst of a tranquil stream.
"This is where the tree was tapped for syrup," said the craftsman, pointing to a conspicuous, cone-shaped scar.
He was a wood turner, specializing in bowls made from various hardwoods. The particular specimen in question was a large maple vessel whose masterfully stained surface glowed like a campfire in my hands.
I ran my fingers over the rings of grain and the anomalies hidden within them; years of life, from sapling to felled lumber, wrapped around each other. Successive stories echoing outward from a singular core of origin, shaped by those that came before it.
Time and memory. Life and legacy.
We like to think that life behaves linearly: you wake up, go about your day, then go to sleep - you're born young, live life, then you grow old. The thought is that we go from point A to B to C in a straight line, each stage having little to do with those of the past.
Not so.
Our existence is a concentric one, like the maple tree. Whether from intrinsic growth or external influence, each of our layers have specific contours and marks. People, places, and events are continually shaping us and consciously or not, we all circle back to them. Memories drift to the surface or we reenact old behaviors and choices when something from our present reminds us of something from our past. For better or worse, with each successive pass over those old layers, we either preserve their shape and carry it forward or try to cover it up, smooth it out, and move on. Like the tree, our current layer reflects the shape of those under the surface and in the past. Life is not a straight line.
I was reminded of this principle recently when a friend from college, Albert Keever, released his debut album. Aside from his incredible songwriting, the album also features the production and instrumental contributions of several other friends, including my former roommate. These people all played significant roles in my life at one time or another. Reading their names on the album roster and hearing the expressive work they produced together awoke some tucked-away college memories. Thus, began another pass over one of the richest and significantly impactful layers of my life to date.
I began college a decade ago. A decade. Whether or not that time-frame seems significant to you, the existential shivers it drizzles down my spine sure are to me.
I went to school in Boston where I now live and work. From my freshman to senior year at Berklee, the setting of my story encompassed the Back Bay neighborhood. At the time, the primary building on campus was 150 Massachusetts Avenue whose developers endeavored to convert the city block's former hotel and bank buildings into a unified dormitory/classroom/cafeteria/library/storage/studio/performance space for students while preserving the original floor plans. The resulting compound is an MC Escher-inspired maze of whimsy, mystery, and music. Outside of summer breaks and an out-of-state internship, such settings were my home during those years.
The people I met there were just as unique as the architecture. Everyone from teachers to classmates and strangers to roommates bore wildly diverse talents and personalities. It was here where I would meet many long-term friends and share life. These are the friends with whom I would make music, eat cafeteria food, watch The Lord of the Rings into the morning hours, wrestle physically and spiritually, pray countless prayers with each other and with people on the streets through both jubilee and agony, and see God do mighty things we once thought were impossible. Bright as these moments are, these years are also marked by some of my darkest nights. In these buildings, rooms, and streets, I would face the coldest loneliness I have ever known, be haunted by an invasive compulsive disorder, and attempt to navigate a fear-based spiritual insecurity rooted in certain false teachings and my own misinterpretations.
This is an incredibly dense layer of my life and it was created almost exclusively within a small radius of Boston’s Back Bay neighborhood. It is truly amazing how one can climb the highest heights and plunge the lowest depths in such a small span of space and time. But it happened.
And after graduation, another confounding thing happened: I could never go back. In some undefinable yet indelible way, those same places where I learned and laughed and wept and strove seemed suddenly off limits. I pass near those same places during my daily commute. I can see the familiar buildings in the distance. I could bike to campus and revisit those same rooms if I wanted to. But I know there would be nothing there and I don’t know why.
My life is different now; marked with a little more routine and stability. Cafeteria food has been replaced by home-cooked meals, my wife and I spend the occasional all-nighter helping our beautiful daughter fall asleep, and frantic spiritual wrestling is tempered with wise counsel and the faith that God is indeed a good God. At times, I can’t quite reconcile how life then and life now fit together. The contrast between the two is so sharp that it can seem as though my memories of the past belong to someone else.
Maybe it’s because the people with whom those places resembled a shared significance have moved away. Maybe it's because that’s just what happens as you grow older. And its not just true for college. Think of a house you used to live in, a significant period of your history, or a person you used to know but have fallen out of touch with. Whatever the objects are, they represent different layers of your life. Perhaps those layers are smooth and beautiful. Or they could be riddled with scars that persist to this day. In either case, there’s a reason you find yourself face-to-face with them from time to time. Maybe there are unanswered questions or simply memories that are worth savoring again and again.
We can never live in the past, nor should we try. When God puts our lives into motion, they orbit upward and outward, like the concentric veins of the maple wood bowl. Each layer is built on the foundation of those beneath, but is a different one altogether. It need not bear the same old contours and scars. We are shaped by the past but don't need to be defined by it. There are many things in my past that I don’t understand yet. They still cross my mind now and then and I wonder what brought them into view. Maybe someday it will all come full-circle.
**Please visit the following page to sample and purchase (please!) Albert's album: https://albertkeever.bandcamp.com/
Check out the song above while reading below. Thanks!
Punk rock. Or “punk rawk” as I used to spell it during the time when the genre frequented my ears. In those days of anger and questing betwixt 12-13 years of age, I had spiked hair, a skateboard, a thick chain necklace, and would have rallied around a ‘fight the system’ mentality without even being able to tell you what that meant or which system it was that I wanted to fight. At this stage, my developing sense of music appreciation resonated almost exclusively with the immediate sound of a song. My rave musical reviews probably consisted of statements like, “That drummer is awesome” or “When the guitars do that middly-middly thing at the end…it’s really good”. Nothing unusual there. There are many songs to this day that I appreciate for similar reasons. Essentially, if it gave me goosebumps, I was hooked.
It was only until later that I started noticing and weighing a song’s value based on its meaning. Although there are fabulous composers out there who can convey volumes of meaning through sound alone, lyrics are often a direct revelation of the songwriter’s intent.
Piebald’s “American Hearts” is one of those songs that I had heard a few times back in those early teen years. When I stumbled across this song via a Spotify rabbit-trail last week, listening to it was akin to plugging a pair of headphones into my 15-years-younger subconscious. I heard the anthemic voclas and the aggressive wall of guitars and drums. I saw my over-gelled and spiked hair, heard the calamity of my high school hallways, and felt the mysterious, unwieldy angst of youth in my chest. But I heard something new this time around: a message. My history was lecturing to me. It was as though a “you’ll-understand-this-when-you’re-older” concept from some long-forgotten lesson that fell on my youthfully deaf ears had decided I was ready to catch its meaning:
“Hey! You’re part of it.”
Who? Me?
“Yeah! You’re part of it.”
Part of what? I don’t understand.
“This country is unequal still”
Yes, I have heard that. It’s tragic. But why are you telling me?
“History continues itself…”
But surely our current problems are different than those of our ancestors? Haven’t we come such a long way as a society?
“History continues itself…”
OK maybe so. The human race continues to destroy itself while clambering for money, status, and power. Slavery is illegal but racism is still alive in midst. We remember the genocides of history but the hatred that fueled them still lingers in the shadows of our society. Someone should really do something about that and fix our community.
“Hey! You're part of it.”
And here's the rub: You’re part of it. I’m part of it. All of us are parts of a community, a country, and a global human race. There are problems and graces to be found at each level and to greater or lesser degrees, we’re part of those as well by our awareness and advocacy or lack thereof. The state of the whole is determined by the state of its component parts.
And so at this present age, when I have much to say about the conditions of my community, this relic from my youth returns to shake me by the collar to remind me that there is no convenient middle ground of detached neutrality. With its refraining question, I am called to account for how I have utilized my sphere of influence and whether I am satisfied with how my decisions, compounded with similar ones made by billions of others, have impacted society.
Be encouraged. You have far more influence than you think you do. Use it effectively and others will be notice. Eventually, you may be emulated and that influence will spread. May we never fail to include ourselves on the grand list of items that, if changed even just a little, could make the world a better place. After all, you’re part of it.
If a big change in the world is due, the world needs a little change in you
"It is...the task of Christian preaching to say: here is the church, where Jew and German stand together under the Word of God; here is the proof whether a church is still the church or not."- Dietrich Bonhoeffer
These words were penned by Dietrich in the middle of the 20th century, when the social tides in Germany were swelling with a tragic hatred stemmed from a manipulative sect that targeted the Jewish people and attempted to cast them as objects of national fear and spite. Bonhoeffer saw the crucial need for the church to remain undefined by such pressures which had begun to invade the nation's congregations and distort their teachings. Far from being a dusty chapter in church history, this need is one that we are faced with today. Allow me to borrow and modify his phrase to reflect the present scenario:
It is...the task of Christian preaching to say: here is the church, where native and foreigner stand together under the Word of God; here is the proof whether a church is still the church or not.
What do you think? Christians, what do you believe? Are we the church or are we not? Is the church the hands and feet of Jesus Christ who gave his life for all and spent it with not only the immigrant and the foreigner, but also the poor, the criminal, the prostitute, the unchurched, the politically-opposite? Or is it not? Are we a part of the church Jesus founded and is continuing to build or are we not?
Today is the day we must face the fact that "faith without works is dead." These are not the cold words of some ancient proverb. Read the fuller context and see how inescapably relevant these words are to us today: "If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, 'Go in peace, be warmed and filled,' without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works is dead"
This is the day when we come face to face with the refugee and the immigrant. We gaze over their bent shoulders to a tattered past and the war-ravaged lands from which they seek asylum for their children. We behold the dreams that they, just like you, are trying to achieve and the crippling memory of a home and a history that was stolen from them. These precious people are before us today and we must make a decision.
Now is when we find ourselves echoing the question that Jesus told us we would all ask of him at the end of all things: "Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?" And it is now, right now on our very doorsteps, when his response to that very question takes on present-tense bodily form and refuses to be just some faraway prophecy for a faraway time in the faraway reaches of our theology: "whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.'"
With the recollection that we too have personal or family histories of crossed borders and foreign roots, we must endeavor to give substance to the words engraved on the doormat of our nation:
"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the door"- Emma Lazarus, "The New Colossus"
What do we preach? Forget words for a moment. What do we preach with our actions? Much of the world already knows our Sunday school lessons and can recite them just as well. There are too many empty words out there; society is glutted with phrases and proverbs but starved of the actions to back them up.
The words of Jesus matched the doings of Jesus. Do ours?
There are far too many opportunities to engage, love, and serve out there for us to keep making excuses. Give food, time, money, shelter. Buy someone a meal, donate to a relevant cause, join hands with people that are ethically and righteously standing against injustice. No act is too small. Break chains with every word you write, shatter darkness with your art, lead the way with your voice. Do something lovely because you can and because this is what you were made for. Open your home, your hands, your heart. Do not let silence close your lips when the oppressed are bullied or mocked in your presence. Do not let fear filter your eyes such that the dark crimes of a select few stain the innocence of the masses. Do not let your mind become a warehouse of false propaganda. Your whole body is an extension of God's home, refuse to let anyone else live in it: "Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own"
Jesus calls us into the messiness of the world to bring something into it that wasn't there before. Lights in the darkness, water in a dry land. With our words, we boast of a faith in God and his love, forgiveness, protection, and trust. Do we attempt the impossible task of reconciling this with our lives of silent distance and neglect? Or do we join him in this work for which we were made? Are we not his church?
"...Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter- when you see the naked, to clothe them, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?"- Isaiah 58:6-7
I wonder sometimes, if there's a thing I can do
To best hold on to my memory of you
For the lives we live seem to differ in pace
You are growing so fast while I'm frozen in place
Was it a month, a week, or an hour ago
That your very first tooth had begun to show?
Now with three others where I thought there were none,
You've already arrived when I've only begun
I wonder sometimes, what it must be like
To see as brand new what I thought was common in life
All things are miraculous and more mysterious than not
Such things are the things that, somehow, I forgot
You are a master, by nature, of a most precious art
To love like a child and to be childlike at heart
May you never lose one single grain of this craft
It will lead you to truth when simple days have gone past
I wonder sometimes, what great changes you'll make
In this mad, spinning world that seems to orbit 'round hate
Children, they say, are a God-send indeed
And God sends what can mend this shattered world's need
In your short time you've made quite the start
For you've melted the ice of this calloused heart
May it never be said that you have nothing to share
You have strengths that will come when their time is prepared
I wonder sometimes, if God gave me you
To teach me the miracles that he can do
To make known the manner of love he conveys
Through the lamb and the lion in which he's portrayed
For a lamb I will be, by your side as you grow
A friend and a guide, the most gentle you'll know
But should any fool dare to wish you harm or disgrace
'till death or Time's end, I'll be the lion they face
I wonder sometimes, if I'm doing things right
To figure by day and to ponder by night
What can be done to preserve what has past?
How best can I make this memory last?
Can I save you from worry by keeping you small?
If I could, would I notice you growing at all?
Can this be the reason that it seems to be
You've acquired your age so suddenly?
I wonder sometimes, how the sum of times wondered
Renders the remainder of days that are numbered?
Alas, it is true that no effort can add
One single minute or second of life to be had
So teach me once more, my child my dear
To be unprepared for right now and right here
To give each day the patience and marvel it's due
That I may cherish each moment with the wonder of you
Forgive me for stating the obvious when I say that Martin Luther King Jr. was a man of integrity. As a man of moral steadfastness whose riveting words were supported by bold action, the word seems fitting.
But, to draw out the point, what I mean is that he is man whose many parts were integrated*. Until recently, I had only a public school knowledge of his life. I never actually knew what it was that he did for a living. Was he a politician? A preacher? An activist? Yes...but no.
Occupationally-speaking, he was a preacher at a church in Atlanta. But while he was at it, he travelled the country to pioneer the civil rights movement. He rubbed elbows with dignitaries and pop stars. He was invited (several times) to appear at the White House. He ran fundraising campaigns. He led protest marches. His thunderous voice rang from countless stages to address the issues of the times: poverty, rights for the black community, the war in Vietnam.
Why such cross-platform involvement? Isn't it dangerous to mix faith and politics? Yes, it most certainly is. But as we'll soon see, there was no "mixing" in the life of Dr. King.
So why did he do it? He had to. He knew that to be a follower of the person of Jesus would cause him to be a doer of the things of Jesus. In other words, there was no distinction between the faith and the politics of Dr. King. His political actions were the outward expression of his faith.
Take a listen to the video at the top of this post. Here we have Dr. King preaching at his church, where many people would have liked to have kept him. But the subject of the sermon is Shadrach, Meeshach, and Abednego; three figures who resolved to trust and act on their faith in God, even when doing so yielded death threats and attempts from the ruling authorities. As the sermon progresses, one cannot help but see the common threads between biblical account and that of Dr. King:
These men were saying that 'Our faith is so deep. We found something so dear and so precious that nothing can turn us away from it'...
[18:41] You may be 38 years old as I happen to be...and one day some great opportunity stands before you and calls upon you to stand upon some great principle...You refuse to do it because you are afraid...because you want to live longer...you're afraid that you would lose your job...be criticized...lose your popularity...that someone would stab you or shoot at you or bomb your house. So you refuse to take a stand. Well you may go on and live until you are 90 but you are just as dead at 38 as you would be at 90...You died when you refused to stand up for right...when you refused to stand up for truth...
In this is revealed the heart of Dr. King's mission. Just as Shadrach, Meeshach, and Abednego knew that their lives were found in standing literally and figuratively for God, so Martin Luther King knew he would only live when his life was laid down for the oppressed. Tyranny's greatest weakness is the life of even one spent in servitude to its victims.
Too often, we attempt to dis-integrate ourselves. We would like to think that our lives are a series of boxes where each item is granted its own, unique space that is entirely separate and disconnected from the others. Our work life stays in the "work" box, our home life stays in the "home" box and so on. This is merely the recipe for living two or more separate lives. We are meant to be whole people, integrated people. To me, Dr. King is someone who allowed the contents of the boxes to be compiled into a cohesive whole. And this is exactly why we are still feeling the affects of his life so many decades after his death.
Our words and our actions will outlive us. Future generations will ride the crests of the ripples we now cast throughout the ocean of life. So it was with Martin Luther King, so it is with us, so it shall be for our children.
* I am grateful to Sarah Arthur from whom I first gained this insightful description of integrity as a character quality from her book Walking with Frodo: A Devotional Journey Through Lord of the Rings.
Quick preface: Every now and then you may discover a song, poem, image, movie, quote, or some form of media that speaks a message to you. I encourage you to listen to the song linked above while reading this post. You may be interested in the background of the composer and his monthly film-score album release project and more on The Endurance expedition.
"She's going, boys" is the alarm call that was proclaimed among Ernest Shackleton's crew as their ship, The Endurance, began to submerge into the depths of the Weddell Sea off the coast of Antarctica after being crushed and splintered by pack ice. Can you imagine? You, as a crew member, are stranded on an ice floe in sub-zero temperatures, miles away from civilization, and the only thing visible through your cloud of frozen breath is your home, slipping away beneath the surface. And there isn't a thing you can do about it. What do you do now? This is the moment that inspired this song.
And what a song it is. How does it manage to convey such a tragedy so beautifully? And why does it seem so oddly relatable? Thankfully, I have never been involved in a shipwreck or been stranded anywhere where help wasn't readily available. So why have I mentally latched onto this song saying, "I know what you mean"? Here's my theory:
I feel that the chief purpose of a song is to tell a story. How this is done is a great mystery. Think about it: The right combination of sounds (they need not be lyrical) produced by wooden, metallic, nylon, and wind-based instruments will cause your mind to create images and emotions that perhaps you've never seen or felt before. The right song will even dust-off ancient memories of yours that have been tucked away for ages or elicit an emotion that you have felt come alive in a variety of other contexts. That is exactly what Adam Young has accomplished through this song. This is why we can relate to a story about a shipwreck.
None of us were there when the crew initially abandoned The Endurance when it became trapped in the ice and, later, when those jagged walls relented and she faded away into the sea. We don't know the extent of that story. But we have all experienced loss in some form; the drifting apart of friends, the death of a loved one, moving away from home. The loss of anything that represented security and familiarity. We do know that story quite well.
It is notable that The Endurance was held afloat by the pack ice for nearly a month after it was crushed and swamped. During that time, the crew camped and drifted on the ice floes, frequently returning to the site of the wreckage until she finally sank. How often have we camped and lingered near the shadows of things that are no longer there? Do we try so fervently to resurrect things from our past that we blind ourselves to the present and the future ahead?
But here is the beauty: Only after The Endurance sank did the crew truly abandon ship, forsake their navigation by incidental ice drifting, and begin their long and intentional journey home. Likewise for us, we must learn how to part well with the wreckage. Loss is a vast sea and the grief that comes with it is a ship that can carry us only so far until we are ready to set out on foot again. There are things in our past that we must make peace with so they can finally sink out of our waking lives without us onboard.
In a few days, 2017 will be here and we will embark on the journey of a brand new year. 2016 may have been a rough year for you. There was a lot of good to be found in the year but there was also some tragedy. My family and I welcomed a beautiful child into a conflicted and violent world. This past year found us celebrating at times and lamenting at others. I don't know what next year will hold for us. But I do know that remaining adrift on the ice floes of 2016 is not going to help us get our bearings for 2017.
As the song fades out to the hauntingly beautiful sounds of The Endurance descending to rest beneath the sea, may the debris of our past do the same. After all, we have a long journey ahead of us. It's a brand new year out there.
"But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus."
- Philippians 3:13-14 (NIV)
I began a 10-day experiment on October 30th. For 10 days, I am:
Setting a timer for 15 minutes
Writing what I can during that time
Stopping when the time is up
Posting what is written without any final editing
For additional context, check out the first post in this series by clicking here.
START
It will be a time when words cease. The lion will lift its paw and every tongue will give pause, as an orchestra before the conductor's suspended baton. It will be as though one was looking for a country and, having dashed for miles through hill and valley to find someone to point him in the right direction, suddenly comes to understand that the very terrain he's traversed in frantic longing is the very soil he has search for all along.
The greats of every age will take their place among the humble and the humble among the great. For all will be instilled with the simple knowledge that there is nothing left to say and nothing left to do. As a once busy mind, weary from sorting through the archives of yesterday, today, tomorrow, and a thousand days more, finally slows to a still sleep, so shall the infinite neurons of our souls fold their hands and take their seat to watch eternity unfold.
Things that could not formerly give pause will be further stilled. Stars may cease their relentless consuming and mountains, their solemn humming. It will be as though a translucent sheet were dropped from view. Things once invisible will now be made plain. Things once in the forefront of focus now obscured in the midst of larger, grander light and colors, or things as impossibly small yet undeniable as the bending of a grass blade in the wind.
STOP
I wrote these words on the train this evening. Recently, my commutes have been split between reading books and listening to podcasts. The material I've filled the time with has ranged from philosophies that are way over my head to thought-provoking commentaries on racial tensions to comedic banter.
Today was different. Receiving much media input can make one bloated so I felt the need to produce some output to balance my equilibrium. Before I left work, I ripped a few pages out of a spiral notebook and folded them into my pocket.
After entering the subway station, an announcement on the PA system indicated that the incoming train would not be taking any passengers. Moments later it rolled up to the platform with empty passenger cars and closed doors. It remained at the platform for about 10 minutes while the air became so thick with a foul exhaust that I had to cover my nose with my pulled-over-the-shoulder sweatshirt hood. Some component of train machinery pierced the air with intermittent, staccato splutters of steam. We waited as the digitized voices on the PA system announced the delays. The train eventually rolled out of the station and was followed by the one that would take me home. I found a seat, set my timer, held the papers taught against my leg to form a writing surface and wrote about the end of the world.
That may sound morbid but it's the truth, and I wasn't approaching the subject from a morbid perspective. If you've ever read The Last Battle by C.S. Lewis, you'll recall that the end of the book (the last in the seven-book Narnia series) tells of the sweeping destruction and renewal of Narnia. If you're familiar with the last book of the bible, Revelation, you'll see some parallels between the events described by both C.S. Lewis and the apostle John. In both accounts, the events that take place are beyond words. There is chaos and order, fury and silence, tragedy and jubilee. The last image we are left with is a deep peace and joy. For the past few days, I've had it in my mind to put some thoughts on paper on this subject and to highlight some of the stillness and beauty that have been touched on by these authors.
In the bible, John has a vision of what 'the end' will be like. Human language is apparently inadequate to describe all of it. "And the one who sat there had the appearance of jasper and ruby" (Rev. 4:3). Jasper and ruby must be the closest equivalents in our language to what he saw. I think that's awesome. I'd like to think he was so perplexed by what he saw that he was helplessly grasping at words to try to convey the image. As John discovered, sometimes glimpses of God and eternity are hidden in the marvelous shimmer of a ruby. Other times, they are depicted through a sweeping C.S. Lewis epic. Or sometimes a simple train delay at the end of the day. May our attempts to capture those glimpses in our words, images, and memories always fail just enough to keep us looking.
Don't panic. Fear is our enemy. Not a policy, not a political party, not any one particular person. Fear is.
Fear ties the hands of those who would use them to do right. Fear binds people to their seats when it is time to stand up. Fear closes the mouths of those who would speak the truth. Fear turns the eyes and minds of the valiant away from the reality of "what is?" to the uncertainty of "what if?"
Fear plays on both sides.
Fear whips the passive bystander into active aggressor. Fear clenches the fists of those who have by telling them they have not. Fear uses one hand to stab in the back and the other to point an accusing finger at "those people."
What great movement has ever been accomplished by anyone who chose fear over action? What memorable words have ever been penned or declared by those who squelched the fire in their belly with the safety of silence and indifference? This has never happened and it never will.
We're all familiar with the paranoia and slander that has filled our airwaves and news feeds these past months. Some of it directed towards specific individuals and others towards entire people groups. Now that a larger, more powerful microphone has been given to some of the voices that have spread such toxic things, it is tempting to be afraid. Don't be. Do not be afraid.
The problems of this present age are the same as those faced by our predecessors. They are dressed differently but their methods and weaponry are still the same: fear. But know this: This is good news. If the poison hasn't changed, the antidote hasn't either.
Fear is a commodity that is bought and sold, not an inheritance that is given or received without choice. It falls apart when people refuse to buy and it trembles in the presence of of those who refuse to believe its deceptions. The power of the schoolyard bully and the political tyrant are equally hard-pressed when even one individual has the audacity to cast off the luxury of standing by and doing nothing. To say, do, or even think differently than the status-quo of hate is to heave a boulder at the glass house of fear. Do not buy into fear or its byproduct of hate, thus betraying yourself. If you must fear anything at all, fear not the enemy at your door but the enemy in your mirror.
So no matter how the politics of our country may change, it is up to you and I to resist fear. Whether you have been unfairly exempt or included in the sweeping criminalization of various people groups during this season, you have a strength to contribute to this effort. Love and be kind to others no matter what stereotypes have been forced upon them. Be unafraid of any stigma that may come your way for doing so. Speak up and speak out for the violated, stand in the gap between victim and oppressor with a love that will lift up the one and set an example for the other, reach out to those who have been shaken by our nation's volatile climate. Do not wait for anyone else to do it. The hate you may endure for doing so is no match for such compassion.
If you are a Christian, you come from a long lineage of fear-resisters; you are not alone in the struggle. Jesus told us "You are the light of the world...Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven" (Matthew 5:14-16). Though the whole house is dark, a single light will penetrate it. Jesus' entire earthly life was spent as a solitary light in a dark world. The world has never been the same since. If you want to be a light to others, you have to step into the darkness. You won't be alone when you do.
Esther was a queen who used her position of influence to dismantle one man's planned genocide of an entire people group. The words she received from a friend to help her maintain focus are just as applicable to us in our present positions of influence: "And who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?" (Esther 4:14).
What about Martin Luther King Jr? Mother Teresa? The kid in school who stood up for you when you were getting picked on? That co-worker who not only didn't laugh at the racist jokes being casually tossed around the lunch table but said something to stop them? Each of these refused to be scared into silence and inaction. What about you and what about me? Such accomplishments are within reach. We have work to do. Today is the day to overcome fear.
"Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good" (Romans 12:21)
To pray is to dip your toes in the water and ripple the ocean of Heaven.
The world is at war and we are all a part of it. Battles are sometimes fought with bullets, sometimes words, sometimes attitudes, actions, or inactions. The evidence is all over the news and current events, especially within the past few weeks. But the world has been at war for a long time:
There was a blind beggar on the side of the road. While Jesus was getting ready to restore the man's sight, his far-from-perfect disciples asked "...who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?"
There was a woman in a synagogue. She had been crippled with a bent spine for 18 years. Jesus healed her when he saw her. It was the Sabbath, a day in the week where it was illegal to do any form of work (such healing others or being healed yourself). The religious leaders took note of this crime and made a public announcement, lest anyone be led astray: "There are six days for work. So come and be healed on those days, not on the Sabbath."
Jesus was invited to the house of a religious leader named Simon to have dinner. While at the table, a woman barged in whose sinful reputation was despised by all who knew her. In a display of repentance she collapsed to the ground and kissed Jesus feet, wetting them with her tears and using her hair as a rag to clean them. The Pharisee saw this as a masquerade and said to Jesus, "If [you] were a prophet, [you] would know who is touching [you] and what kind of woman she is-that she is a sinner."
Do you hear the common thread in all of these stories? In each one, there is a collision of the following:
1. A person in pain
2. Jesus' desire and ability to heal that pain
3. Indignant onlookers who question and accuse: Who sinned?...They broke the law...She is a sinner...
These scenarios happened about 2,000 years ago. However, these three elements are still intersecting today.
Friends, there is tragedy in our midst. Within the last few weeks, lives have been taken. Bullets were fired, blood has spilled, and grief has ravaged the lives of those left in the wake. In this, we have substantial evidence of item one in the list above: our very brothers, sisters, and neighbors are in the darkest depths of pain.
When a wound is sustained, there is often a pause between the damage and the sensation of pain. In this space belongs the second item. The people of God, casting off all judgment, must enter in to fill the gap and be there for the wounded to fall back on when those crippling, relentless waves of pain inevitably rush in and knock them off their feet.
Sadly, the third item seeks to invade this holy place. Judgments and accusations have robbed the mourners of their sacred silence and thrust it upon voices that speak with mercy and grace. Those expressing their despair are decried for "playing the race card". The reputations of fallen victims are criminalized with reports or rumors of past crimes; their death presented as a just consequence.
Condolences toward affected families and friends are splattered with endless debates about gun control, racism, and the justice system.
This is not what was meant to be.
Let us consider again the first item on the list: A person in pain.
This is what we, the human race, are facing at this very moment. In our families, our schools, our jobs, our neighborhoods, our country, our world, there are people in pain. The black community watches as their friends and family are shot down in senseless violence. Law enforcement officers see some of their own killed in chaotic protest. Our children watch helplessly as the world they will inherit from us is racially divided before their very eyes.
Remember our first three scenarios? How did Jesus respond in each of them?
To the justice-minded disciples who sought to place the blame for blindness, Jesus directed their attention off of the sin and onto his intention to heal. "Neither this man nor his parents sinned..." he said as he proceed to love and heal the man. The blame-game would not help and it was not the point.
To the Pharisees, indignant that a woman had been healed from an 18-year long infirmity 'against the law', Jesus directed their attention off of the debate and onto the suffering woman and the common-sense compassion due toward her: "You hypocrites! Doesn't each of you on the Sabbath untie your ox or donkey from the stall and lead it out to give it water? Then should not this woman, a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has kept bound for eighteen long years, be set free on the Sabbath day from what bound her?"Debating the hot-button issues would not help and they were not the point.
To Simon the religious leader, Jesus directed his attention off of any gossip and onto the woman: "Do you see this woman? I came into your house. You did not give me any water for my feet, but she wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair...her many sins have been forgiven--as her great love has shown."
Attempting to justify withholding mercy from someone by digging up their past would not help and it was not the point.
Do you see it? In each instance, Jesus never wavered from his commitment to loving the people in need, regardless of whether or not they had a criminal background. He didn't waste time settling the crowd's complaints. Settling all of the debates and accusations would never alleviate the suffering of the individual nor lift the responsibility to do something about it off of the surrounding community.
What about you? In the wake of our present chaos, which characters in these stories do you most resemble? Whose words are you speaking? What lessons are you spreading to your community and children about responding to the needs of others? Are you speaking words of grace, mercy, understanding, and healing? This is what you were made to do in times like these. Your words and your actions are designed to do better, more productive things than to pollute the ears of the suffering with political banter and self-justified bitterness.
To those of us who are Christians, please remember that when we decided to follow Jesus...
1. We surrendered the right to condemn anyone: Romans 2:1-4
2. We signed-up to help those in need: Psalm 82:3-4
3. We surrendered the right to return 'fire with fire' and to hate our enemies. We agreed to love our enemies and forgive them, even those that commit the crimes: Matthew 5:43-48 & Matthew 6:14
4. We signed-up to believe that "God so loved the world" that he wants everyone to have a chance to know his love and forgiveness in Christ. This includes criminals, their victims, those who have different beliefs, politics, skin color, income, sexual preference, or citizenship status: John 3:16
5. We surrendered the right to step back and let God do the work of the above-mentioned belief while we look grudgingly on with folded hands. On the contrary, we agreed to roll up our sleeves and join him in the effort: Matthew 28:16-20
6. We signed-up to do the things Jesus did, not just talk about them: James 2:14-26
7. We know that we are only able to accomplish all of the above by getting to know God and letting him shape us, our words, and our actions: John 15:4-5
Our words matter. Our actions matter. They can destruct or they can construct. Whether through anonymous prayer, social media support, live in-person service, or speaking up for those who can't speak for themselves, we are meant to make a beautiful difference in the lives of the suffering.
It's time to do it.
There are valuable lessons to be found everywhere. Today, let's take a few from the:
Kitchen Sink
Lesson 1. A single dish left unclean invites it's friends to join the scene
That lasagna and bbq chicken was fabulous. Please send more. You can just leave it in the sink like last time; we'll take care of it.
Sincerely,
The Kitchen Mice
---
11:48pm, exhausted, and have to wake up super early tomorrow?
Time for bed!
Aaand maybe one Youtube video. Just one.
4 hours, 33 cat videos, 15 Facebook posts, and 13 Wikipedia articles later: oops.
Lesson 2. Clean it before long or the junk will stick on strong
That oatmeal I had for breakfast? It would have been a cinch to rinse it off right after I ate it. But two days later, those oats have become one with the ceramic. Forget the sponge, break out the jack-hammer.
---
Those misunderstandings I had with a friend that I never sought to resolve because I thought it would be weird and difficult in the moment? Well I finally got around to it because the years until I did so were, well, weird and difficult.
Lesson 3. A loaded sink starts to stink
There's no use crying over spilled milk. But there's no helping it over the waftings of a weeks-worth of milky cups and cereal bowls in the sink.
---
Ever put off something to tomorrow that had to be done today? I have.
I once had a car that made a creaking sound when making turns.
I thought to myself, "Probably nothing," and promptly did nothing about it.
Months later, I was told the sound was coming from the rusting, disintegrating metal joints that hold the engine in place. Turns out it was no longer safe to drive as nearly all of the joints had worn away and the engine was on the verge of dropping out of the bottom of the car.
I thought to myself, "That stinks."
Lesson 4. An empty sink is a drive-thru where cleanliness is met; not a garage where filth is collected and kept.
My hands are full. I'm holding plates and a rectangular pan, both splattered with remnants of an extra saucy casserole. The sink is empty.
For the past-week, its shimmering interior walls have been hidden from my sight beneath a mountain of dirty bowls and tupperware containers that I tossed in while passing through the kitchen. I am tired and tempted to repeat last week's habit. Doing so provided a fleeting pleasure as I bypassed the need to clean them and moved on to other things. But every time I entered the kitchen they leered at me like a stack of unpaid bills, reminding me of my mounting debt to cleanliness.
I step up to the sink and marvel once more at its spotless interior. I set the dishes down. Then I pick up the sponge.
---
Mistakes can be our greatest teachers or cruelest tormentors but the choice is ours.
The lessons we can draw from our mistakes teach us how to live better lives. Far too often I've traded those lessons for unproductive regret or the temporary relief of ignoring the issue, letting them pile up in my 'sink' and perfuming other areas of life with their stench. As you can see via the previous three lessons, all I achieved via those strategies were some sleepless nights, awkward relationships, and a dead car. No thanks.
I like the idea of confronting my mistakes as they happen (because they will), learning what I can, and then moving on for crying-out-loud. I've spent too much life trying to re-do things that have already happened. There's so much more life to live now than there is in the past.
If we confess our sins, [God] is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.
1 John 1:9
But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
Phillippians 3:13-14
This painting, entitled "Adventurer", was created by Janet Seaman. This painting has a story. And so do I.
Janet lived very full life that will be remembered for many things. As my Grandmother-in-law, I was honored to get to know her during her last three years on earth. Janet's life was spent in the service of others as a dedicated school teacher, artist, and mother of six. From what I have been told, it was hard to catch her when she wasn't deeply involved in one of those pursuits. However, she did find time for traveling the world where she observed beautiful landscapes that may have served as the inspiration for most of her paintings.
One of her many notable accomplishments involved painting the walls of the Niles-Buchanan YMCA indoor running track with a panoramic mural. The work was a historical portrayal of the cultural and industrial milestones that took place in the region of Michigan where the YMCA is located. The project covered 1/18th of a mile with colorful landscapes that changed occupants from the Native Americans to French and British colonies to modern society. Runners making their way around the track could watch history unfold in seamless transitions across the centuries.
Before her passing in December of 2014, Janet often told the stories behind her paintings and the process involved in creating them. No matter how daunting or technically difficult the task seemed to be, it was clear that those details easily gave way to the joy and love with which she accomplished them.
My wife has written, edited, and published two books that catalogue many of Janet's works and convey the stories behind them. Every piece has its own story. Every work that was made through the creative intention of someone's mind, heart, hands, and soul has its own story.
And every human has their own story too.
There are at least two ways to appreciate any work of art, whether it is a painting, a song, or piece of literature: technically and personally. Often times, one's technical appreciation goes hand-in-hand with their personal love for a work but not always. For example: Regarding jazz music, I can appreciate the fact that there is technical mastery and skill in both the instrument playing and composition. However, I do not have a personal taste for jazz; given a choice between several styles of music I would likely not choose to listen to jazz. On the other hand, my parents personally loved the finger paintings and mysteriously shaped pottery I produced in elementary school, but there was nothing technical about those masterpieces to praise.
For Janet's work, the viewer will immediately find a broad palette of technical skill to hold their attention and awe. The depth, color, and shade that enlivens the contoured landscapes, the choice of historical or geographical content, and the time spent on the piece are a few examples.
On the personal side of things, what can this piece, as one that you have likely never seen before, do for you? As I said at the beginning, this painting has a story. But perhaps not the kind of story you may expect.
In a way, art works similarly to color. When light strikes an object, some wavelengths are absorbed by the object while others are reflected. The object obtains its distinct color according to the wavelengths that are reflected. When we are exposed to art, it can either pass right through or strike something within us that can color and lighten that which was previously invisible or unknown. This is a principle that I am certain we are all familiar with to some degree. Just think of a song you've heard or a movie you've seen that seemed to aptly put un-named emotions and memories into words.
The painting above strikes something in me that encapsulates a scenario I have repeatedly found myself in throughout life, like a recurring dream. While I have had the pleasure of being in the midst of grand mountain landscapes geographically speaking, this painting colors the figurative landscapes that I have encountered. Just like the hiker in the painting, I have found myself dwarfed by the immensity of all that surrounds me. And just as color changes based on wavelengths, my reactions and emotions to being the tiny hiker change based on the setting. At times, I am frightened to be so small in the presence of such looming mountains. At other times, I am struck with wonder at what lies ahead and the joy of being able to explore and discover. And there are those moments when both are simultaneously true.
For me, this is the story of the painting, "Adventurer", as I best understand it now: my wife and I are awaiting the arrival of our child. Once again, I am a small hiker in the presence of something greater and larger than myself. Life in all of its color is being drawn out in shimmering yet mysterious patterns as it reflects off of this new season.
I am joyful.
I am overwhelmed.
I am the adventurer.
Let's talk about pogo and Jesus. No, not the Pogo Stick craze that rocked the socks off of your childhood and no, I'm not talking about Jesus jumping on one either...although that image is pretty funny.
The pogo I'm talking about haunted my pre-adolescent waking life like a canker sore for a long time. A very long time. At-least-a-year long time (which, to a 12 year-old, is about 8-16% of their entire life-span).
Pogo was a "game" that was really a form of sociological torture, likely invented by an alpha-dog monarch who used it to stealthily sift his like-minded allies from the clueless peasantry. I was first introduced to pogo as a wee-lad in Boy Scouts where said sifting was enacted on a frequent basis. We met on Tuesday nights in a church hall that, for two-hours, became an independent nation in which we lowly younger Scouts were subjugated to the authoritarian elder Scouts and their bidding.
Such bidding sometimes involved keeping them entertained. Keeping them entertained sometimes involved pogo. And pogo always involved anguish and madness.
Here's why: Pogo was a "repeat-after-me" game in which the initiating player would draw in the dirt with a stick while saying the phrase, "Do you know pogo like I know pogo?" The observing player would then have to mimic their sequence. What made the game "fun" was that there was a secret action included in their sequence that the observing player would have to repeat in their performance in order to win. As far as I know, the gesture was always the same in every game. In my experience, gameplay typically went as follows:
Pogo Guy:
"Do you know pogo like I know pogo?"
<rhythmically chanted while drawing patterns in the dirt with a stick...hands stick to me>
Me:
<takes the stick>
"Do you know pogo like I know pogo?"
<said in the same rhythmic speech while drawing the same patterns I observed>
Pogo Guy:
<smirking>
"Nope"
<turns to another guy>
<ahem>
"Do you know pogo like I know pogo?
Another Guy:
<ahem>
"Do you know pogo like I know pogo?"
<said while sort of mimicking the patterns, but not entirely accurate>
Pogo Guy:
"You got it dude!"
Both Guys:
<hi-fives, chest bumps, and hoots of celebration>
Me:
<a year of wallowing in despair for want of forsaken knowledge>
Do you get the point? There was a secret society and I was not in it. And, technically speaking, that was really lame. On two accounts. One was the secret; the fact the I couldn't figure out the answer to the puzzle and it stuck in my head like a bad riddle. Second was the society; the feeling of exclusion from the in-crowd who was having a grand old time with their warm and cozy "in-the-know" status while I was shivering outside in the cold.
I wanted to solve the riddle and join the party. I meticulously studied the way they played the game, perfectly repeated every lilt in their voice as they spoke the words, and precisely reproduced the minutiae of every dot, dash, and swoop of the patterns they drew with the stick. I would always be crushed because I just "didn't get it." I begged them to tell me the secret. In one impassioned moment, I even shed tears while imploring for the answer. My pleas succeeded only in causing the pogo-knower before me to repeat the game louder and slower. Needless to say, that's not what I wanted.
The torment ended one day when my friend Ben decided to tell me the answer. I have no idea why he did or how he found out. Ben and I were the same age so he had no need to establish age-based dominance over me. Perhaps he was let in on the secret and wanted to share it with me in the same way a prisoner shares rumors of coming rescue with his inmates. We were on a campout and I suddenly found myself in conversation about the game with him. He happily told me the secret and when I heard it, it was as though a river of living water was poured into the parched mouth of my soul.
What was the secret? It was simple: To clear your throat.
That's right. The secret that kept me in bondage for all that miserable time was the little that preceded "Do you know pogo like I know pogo?" In the arena of pogo, once you got that little cough out into the air, you've won the game.
Everything that follows, hinged on that one little gesture.
Just like Jesus.
Uh...what?
Let me explain.
In high school, I wanted to get to know Jesus. I started reading about him, thinking about what he's like, trying to be like him, asking myself things like "what would Jesus do in this situation?" and then trying to do it. Yet I still had a hard time wrapping my mind around the concept of trying to get to know someone that I couldn't physically hang out with in the same way that I could with my friends. I could call a friend of mine on the phone, go over their house, hi-five them, hear the inflections in their voice, see what color shirt they were wearing, see their facial expressions in reaction to what they were feeling. I couldn't do the same thing with Jesus.
High school saw me changing in terms of personality, behavior, and beliefs. Yet at the same time, problems arose from a combination of confusing elements: some long-held struggles with obsessive compulsive disorder, guilt and fear over my recent understanding about sin and hell, and an apparent inability to call Jesus on the phone and talk to him directly about my worries.
Things got more confusing in college when I would find myself with people that spoke a different spiritual dialect than what I was used to. I would hear things like, "I was talking to God yesterday and he said that ____ (insert deep spiritual truth here)" or "I don't know about you, but when I ____ (insert regular spiritual practice here)." It is certainly not wrong to express one's experience this way and I'm certain that the impact those folks had on me was unintentional. But, due to the personal complications I mentioned earlier, this was the beginning of a long and difficult journey.
And this has what to do with pogo?
Alright, alright.
I felt like I was on the outside. It seemed I was perpetually on the losing side of a spiritual pogo game. Whether this was their intention or not, it seemed as though someone had just scribbled some cryptic script into the sand and chanted, "Do you know Jesus like I know Jesus?" and was now offering the stick to me. But I couldn't do it. I didn't know the secret trick. I wasn't at a point where I could confidently affirm to other people, "God told me ___" or claim to have unshakeable confidence in areas where I still had doubt. I didn't know what that meant. But I was trying. I really wanted what they had. I really wanted to talk to God, tell him how insecure I was, and have a back-and-forth dialogue serve as evidence of the fact that he cared about me and loved me. Something must be so terribly wrong with me that my time with God doesn't resemble theirs.
The more I began to feel excluded by those around me, the more I began to feel excluded by God. I started to feel like God himself was now handing me the stick, after writing the complexities of the bible and life itself into the sand, and was now expecting me to figure it out. In my mind, God became the frightening leader of a confidential club and I didn't know the secret hand-shake to be admitted. Initially, things like reading the bible, going to church, and praying were the natural result of a blossoming and relational faith. However, they were quickly becoming forced attempts to learn the trick and gain acceptance.
Eventually, this all began to change. Whereas pogo changed for me in an instant, my poisoned thoughts detoxified over time with steady doses of truth.
It's a long story and I'm sure you'll hear more about it in later posts. For now, I'll summarize:
The contrast between the God I claimed to believe in and the God that I actually believed in became increasingly obvious. Jesus said he was the one and only necessary ingredient for our sin records to be wiped out. I, however, lived as though it were up to me to clean that slate and that the single ingredient of Jesus was too simple, too elementary to apply in my case. There must be something else, like praying more, being more devoted, or helping every old lady within a 10-mile radius cross the street. Jesus blew the cover off of religious secret societies who treated God's acceptance like a trophy to be won or bought by the rich, strong, popular, and morally impeccable. He freely offered it to the poor, the weak, the nobody's, the disgraced. Yet I was living as though God was an untouchable celebrity who would never in a billion years even know who I was until I had somehow worked my way into his circle of influence.
I think Jesus came to simplify and broaden the accessibility of God to people, not to complicate and constrain it. Sure, there are spiritual complexities that are not easily clarified and there are practices like church-going and praying that are helpful. But if Jesus is only the subtle <ahem> that is quickly forgotten in the grand display of our devotion, then we're going to miss the point of it all.
And so will the watching world around us.
No games. No tricks.
Simple.
"Don't you know my name yet?...Eldest, that's what I am. Mark my words, my friends: Tom was here before the river and the trees; Tom remembers the first raindrop and the first acorn. He made paths before the Big People, and saw the little People arriving. He was here before the Kings and the graves and the Barrow-wights. When the Elves passed westward, Tom was here already, before the seas were bent. He knew the dark under the stars when it was fearless..."
- The Fellowship of the Ring, "In the House of Tom Bombadil", by J.R.R. Tolkien
____________________
The Lord of the Rings is a household term nowadays the evokes solemn, earthy images of the sweeping landscapes of J.R.R. Tolkien's literary epic. Search far and wide and you will scarcely encounter someone who has not at least heard of the tale and become familiar with its raw ingredients: hobbits, elves, Gandalf, Gollum, 'taters, and a ring whose veiled and all-consuming power is matched only by the thirst of those who scour Middle Earth to find it.
In the early 2000's Peter Jackson bore the mantle of transferring Tolkien's written volume of poems, tales, and battles into a sweeping visual landscape that, in my opinion (which comes having read the books after watching the movies...ready your grains of salt), mirrors the books quite masterfully. Surprisingly, I have yet to meet anyone that has been dissatisfied with the film renditions.
Of course there are creative liberties, additions, and omissions in the movie that are not true to the book. But a movie that repeats a book verbatim would be a serious technical challenge and would not honestly make much sense. An author has an arsenal of pages with which to create the atmosphere for the story, introduce characters, display character development, and give you the time to decide if you want to accept the invitation to enter the world unfolding before you. Not so with a film production crew. An audience sitting in a theater has already responded to that invitation and they are waiting for the party to start.
And that's what brings me to the excerpt above and the character in question: Tom Bombadil. Who (or what) is Tom Bombadil? Bear in mind this is not an easy question to answer. The most straightforward answer is:
Tom Bombadil is a yellow-booted, blue-coated, red-bearded, husky fellow who sings, dances, rescues the Hobbits from a hungry tree, a barrow-wight (nasty little creatures they), and provides them with weaponry. He is only seen once in the first book of the LOTR trilogy yet is mentioned several times throughout, including a reference by Gandalf at the end of the third.
The more complex answer is:
No one really knows.
He seems to possess great power within his territory in the Old Forest just east of the Shire where the adventure begins. With his songs and rhymes he is able to rescue the Hobbits from a living willow tree and revive Merry and Pippin from paralysis. He refers to himself as "The Master" in his songs. He claims to be "Eldest," to have seen the "first raindrop and the first acorn," and to have essentially witnessed the creation of the world and its peoples. While he is knowledgeable of the world beyond his forest, he seems oddly and humorously detached from it. When asked to see the ring for which the series is named, and for which wars have been fought, friends have been turned against each other, and noble men have been driven to paranoid madness, Frodo hands it right over to him without hesitation. Tom plays with the ring like a child as he, looks through it like a monocle, puts it on his little finger (astonishingly without becoming invisible; one of its involuntary effects on the wearer), flips it into the air, and makes it vanish like a magic trick, only to hand it back to a frozen-hearted Frodo. Tom can also still see Frodo when he wears the ring, though Frodo is invisible to everyone else. He is apparently immune to the power and allure of the ring though it stirs the world around him into chaos. He never becomes involved in the unfolding events of the series. For all we know, he remains in his forest, happily gathering water lilies for his equally mysterious wife.
And he is nowhere to be found in the movie. Nary a mention of his name.
What?
Twice saving the Hobbits from danger? Providing them with the weapons they would use throughout the series? That sounds like legitimate movie content.
Nothing. Not even a summarizing flash-back sequence or deleted-scene on the DVD set.
Why not?
You can read articles about how Peter Jackson felt that Tom's character does not help to advance the greater plot at work throughout the story. Remember the constraint that is assumed for films compared to books? It was a rational decision. The story could logically still exist without Tom in it. Films are extremely expensive to produce and it isn't cost-effective to pour money into writing, rehearsing, shooting, and editing scenes that won't add layers to the plot. Audiences are still swept away by the movies without Tom.
And readers are still swept away by the books with Tom and all his mystery and unexplained nature. I believe what makes the Lord of the Ring's trilogy so captivating is that Tolkien does such a great job of conveying to the reader that Middle Earth is an immense, vast landscape that is full of knowledge and history that could be gained if one would only choose to study it further. He constructed a literary world that seems real, in a sense, because it is so diverse and richly detailed. He even created a few languages while he was at it.
To me, this setting feels much more believable because Tom is a part of it. I like the fact that he is unexplained. As Tolkien himself wrote in a letter, "...there must be some enigmas...Tom is one (intentionally)."** His enigmatic presence adds to the greater atmosphere of an already mysterious Middle Earth. Yet even Tolkien himself wasn't spared from being questioned about the character. In a separate letter, he justified Tom's existence in the book by saying, "...I kept him in, and as he was, because he represents certain things otherwise left out."** I read that to mean that there are elements that only Tom Bombadil with all his quirks, oddities, and obscure powers could bring to the story.
** Quotes from "The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, numbers 144 and 153, dated 1954. Gathered from http://www.glyphweb.com/arda/t/tombombadil.html
Don't we live lives like that? When sketching the life-trail we've followed on our maps, sometimes we look back at certain 'diversions' and wonder, "What in the world did that have to do with anything?" Fill-in-the-blank for whatever that may be in your own words. It could be a city you lived in briefly, a job you took that didn't seem to lead anywhere, a friendship that seemed to have come out of the blue, or your interest in the mysteries of quantum physics. Whatever fills your blank, it happened and you lived it. It is part of your story. What impact did it leave on you? What questions do you still have about it? Like Middle Earth, I appreciate the fact that there are things out there in this world that are majestically above my comprehension.
I remember reading an article that discussed the importance of avoiding "Tom Bombadils" in story-writing; removing elements that halted rather than progressed the progression of the plot. That's an understandable perspective from a technique standpoint. However, I think our life stories are full of Bombadils and while we shouldn't confuse them with the main plot, they each have a little something to add. After all, the Hobbits didn't stay with Tom for long. They had a mission to accomplish. Yet they begged him to travel with them but he declined and sang his way out of their story, gracefully parting as uniquely as he came, leaving them all the better for it.
If we try to edit our lives such that we forsake the Bombadils of our past and avoid them at all costs in the future, how far would we go before we realize we would be cutting out some very important material? Life is a book, not a movie. Sure there may be a few Hollywood moments, but it is largely a world where growth and development happens in elongated increments. There is room for the Bombadils. Trying to align all the details in our life with what makes 'sense' to us might steer us clear of some important relationships and life-altering experiences.
When we look at the map of our life and see those head-scratching Bombadils scattered throughout our past and even in the present, see what they have to offer. Some things are meant to be mysteries. We don't get the answer to every question we ask in this life. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try at all to find the answers. But if it turns out that all we can do in the end is wonder and be amazed at how high, deep, and wide things are in life, don't be disappointed.
____________________
"Old Tom Bombadil is a merry fellow,Bright blue his jacket is, and his boots are yellow.None has ever caught him yet, for Tom, he is the master:His songs are stronger songs, and his feet are faster"
- The Fellowship of the Ring, "Fog on the Barrow Downs" by J.R.R. Tolkien
It was Friday afternoon. I rode the school bus home, feeling the weight of a hectic week tugging at my eyelids and while the joy of the weekend glowed in my chest. When I got off at my street, I moved wearily towards my house in the distance, hunched under the yolk of my backpack, feet dragging against the gravel. Reaching the house, I lumbered through the front door, shuffled off my bag, and collapsed on the couch with a remote in my hands while the television buzzed to life. It was a hard week full of homework, projects, after-school activities, and the like. But it was no matter; I was in my sanctuary, it was Friday, and Bob Ross was on TV painting a serene river that would carry the weight of the world away.
Bob Ross might not need any introduction. His series "The Joy of Painting", signature afro, and calming voice are defining characteristics of the '80s and '90s. From what I've read, Bob used to be in the Air Force and it was there that he developed a painting technique that allowed him to quickly finish highly-detailed paintings on work-breaks. Watch any episode and you will be amazed at how suddenly the canvas comes to life, like Polaroid photo developing into focus.
I do not paint. I do not draw. I have tried. After comparing my recent artwork to those I produced in first grade and finding nary a difference, I have surmised that such skills come naturally to some and not to others.
In Middle School, I did not watch the show to be inspired by Bob's artistic mastery. Honestly, I just found the soothing combination of his voice, gentle demeanor, and the hush of paintbrushes on canvas to have the same effect as getting a back-massage. You may experience the same effect in the video above.
About a week ago, I rediscovered Bob Ross. I was on YouTube and discovered that Bob's company now posts entire episodes online. I was having trouble sleeping that night so I decided to try listening to an episode with headphones in an attempt to doze off. It didn't quite work but nonetheless I am glad to have made the rediscovery because I began to notice something:
Watching a painter at work is an exercise in trust. So is being alive.
With a small array of colors, brushes, and a knife, Bob will approach a prepared canvas and begin creating very simple shapes; a line, a blot of color, an arc. He'll work around or within that shape by tapping, pressing, or swirling the brush in a technique that blends color and creates texture. Within minutes, that simple shape has developed into a tree with aged bark, a wreath of shrubbery, or the curved bank of a river. As an example, watch the transformation of the tree from 5:34 to 9:17 in the video above.
The process will continue as more life is added to the canvas in a collection of simplicity that grows into complex detail. Just when the painting seems to be reaching the apex of its beauty, something tragic happens: a smear of mismatched color is streaked down the middle or an unsightly shape invades the portrait, obscuring the details in the background. Just begin watching the video above at 11:06 and just see if you can keep yourself from clenching your fists and shouting, "STOP! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!" as Bob calmly smears not one, not two, but four massive, thick, vertical black lines straight through the middle of a gorgeous forest scene and encourages us to "be brave" while we helplessly watch the destruction.
But don't stop there. Keep watching. By 14:57 those gargantuan obstructions begin to make sense. By 21:00, as Bob adds the final touches, the shapes have morphed into a tree grove in the foreground, framing the background detail, adding depth to the painting, and inviting the viewer to step into the canvas and explore. By the end, the painting "needs" the tree grove; without it, something very precious would be missing. Should the canvas not have endured the momentary disruption, it's beauty would have been incomplete.
As the viewer, I have to trust that Bob knows what he's going to do with the simple shapes and questionable additions he'll add as the work goes on. Something will come of it, to be sure, but the process of getting to that point can be a nerve-wracking experience as an audience member. "Be brave."
Being alive is no different. Life is a canvas on which God paints beauty in all of its colors: light, dark, and in-between. Things that start of simply explode into meaningful depth: hobbies become life-long passions, jobs become careers, acquaintances become enduring companionships. All are details that make the most sense in perspective of the whole portrait. When isolated, they might not make much sense.
What about the unformed tree groves in life? What about the big, thick, vertical lines of things that clash down like prison bars, smearing over the beauty, comfort, and sensible details of our lives? Why does life feel passion-less? Why did the business fail? Why was the friendship severed? Whatever your questions are, there are no easy answers. They might remain dark, shapeless, and colorless for days, weeks, months, years. There is no shame in feeling the pain or the sorrow that comes. But the painting is not done yet.
Don't give up.
Keep watching.
"Be brave."
Let me tell you how Eric Bibb stomped and clapped his way into my life. It was August of 2014 and I was driving around the twists and turns of Huntington Avenue in the Mission Hill neighborhood of Boston. The crush of cramped apartment buildings, summer afternoon traffic, and the above-ground portion of the subway that shares the street with the cars was bumper-to-bumper and shoulder-to-shoulder. I was picking up my wife from work and had arrived a little early so I pulled into what was probably the only parking spot available in the city at the time. It must have been previously occupied by a clown car as it was two-feet wide by three-feet long. By some dimensional miracle, I was able to fit our blue Honda within its constraints.
I was flipping through the radio and landed on a college radio station. I've always appreciated the variety of non-mainstream music that those stations tend to play. In a way, college radio is the father of Pandora. As I sat in the car, boiling in the summer sun on a crowded city street, I was suddenly pulled into the speakers by a friendly yet commanding voice that heaved and growled with the huskiness of a trail boss singing to his cattle on the trail in the 19th-century western frontier. With a guitar that played like a rodeo with an attitude, Eric Bibb had wrangled me far away from the city and into his soundscape.
I find this song captivating for a couple of reasons. The first is that it makes me feel content. There's a certain excitement about it that makes me want to join in with his infectious invitation to "come on, clap ya hands"right around the 1:50 mark. I heard a quote once that went along the lines of, "People will forget what you did but they will never forget how you made them feel." I think the same is true of music. What does this song make you feel? It's probably a feeling you've felt before although in a different context. Our emotions are important to our life experience and music is a powerful vessel with which to contain and convey them.
But this song is deeper than emotions. There's something else I find captivating about this song that I believe ties in perfectly with Eric's declaration that he is "building a new home." This song is a bit of an anomaly in that it is built on the foundation of a familiar musical principle but with a subtle yet important difference.
There are many technical nuts and bolts to music that are often neatly hidden underneath the seemingly spontaneous creativity of the craft. Just like a painting, the canvas often starts out with sketched lines and shapes that get erased, redrawn, analyzed, only then to be covered with layers of life-giving paint. As the audience, we like to deal mostly with the finished product because its beautiful, pleasing, and complete. The prototypes, rough drafts, and sketch-ups don't usually get put on display. However, a great product is usually preceded by great preparation. And in the case of this song, I think Eric Bibb prepared marvelously.
This song has the form of a "12-bar blues." A song's form is a road-map that describes the order in which you will hear the different parts of a song. In a 12-bar blues, you will typically hear a section of music that lasts for 12 segments of time, then repeats. Within this form, there are certain chords that are usually played in the same place for almost every 12-bar blues you've ever heard (it's a very common form of blues music). Those chords are represented as "I", "IV", and "V" in written form. Chords are like the scenery you see while driving along a road that prompts you to say things like, "What a nice neighborhood"; they provide context for the rest of the music (the road in the case of this analogy) that allows the listener to emotionally interpret the musical content. Usually, the "V" chord is very pivotal in the 12-bar blues.
And this is exactly where Eric Bibb comes in and messes it all up...in the best way possible. Instead of the usual chord pattern, Mr. Bibb plays the following (chords are written in parentheses to show where they occur):
(I) I'm building a new home, 'cross the county line.
(IV) I'm building a new home, 'cross the county line. (I)
(vi) Up on a high hill, (IV) where the view's so fine. (I)
Right there, during "up on a high hill" is where the magic happens. Normally, at this point in the 12-bar blues, the chord that is commonly played is "V." However, Eric breaks with convention and plays a "vi" chord instead. I don't know why he did it. Maybe its because it fit better with the melody he was singing or maybe he just plain wanted to. In either case, this little moment changes the song for me. This would have been a fine song without this change, but it wouldn't have been this song.
One small change made all the difference. That's what it means to build a "new home." It's almost an oxymoron: A home is something that is familiar; something new is unfamiliar. When you take something that is "same-old, same-old" and tweak it ever-so-slightly, you might end up with something fresh.
I think there's an important life lesson here for all of us. Some of us may have the rare opportunity to make a big splash in life by performing some grand heroic gesture or taking an absurd leap of faith. But all of us will have the opportunity to change one small thing that will lead to a lasting change. I'm confident that we have those opportunities daily and that they are so abundant that they can be easy to miss.
I take the subway to and from work. All together, that's about an hour each day when I risk falling asleep on the shoulder of the commuter next to me, drooling all over their suit. Recently, I was inspired to do some reading with that time. I'm typically a slow reader. Starting a book is like laying the foundation for a house; it's gonna be a good while before it's done. I decided to bring a book with me on the train and see what would happen. Last month, I read through three books almost exclusively during my commuting time. I felt inspired and productive with that time. I was energized for what would come next in my day. As a result of what I had been reading (a few Donald Miller books), I started this blog. Most of what you read on this blog started out as scratchings in a notebook written on morning and afternoon trips through Boston in the subway. I'm not moving mountains, I'm just changing one small aspect of my life: instead of sleeping on the train, do something else. And it has made all the difference.
I once worked at a facility for troubled youth. The professionals there abided by a central philosophy to their work: These are normal youth responding to an abnormal amount of trauma. That's a game-changer. That changes how those youth are viewed, treated, and engaged with on a day-to-day basis.
How many other "perspective shifts" are pending in our lives? How many small details are just begging to be tweaked so that we can see and do things differently? They're out there. Go and find them. Build a new home.
If a big change in the world is due, the world needs a little change in you.
What small change have you made recently?