Figuring It Out

I'm circling back around to this blog in case I figure out what I need to say about Race in America.

In the meantime...

• I made a record.  Here it is.  A couple of the song demos from earlier in this blog's life found their way onto the album.  I'm sporadically blogging about those songs here.
• I missed my quota of one post per year last year.  Alas.

Everything's pretty messy.  We'll see if I figure out what to say here.  Or this might be my post for 2016.

Song of the Month: July

This month's prompt was "finish a song"--i.e. take something that's been sitting around unfinished for some time and just get it done.

I had been hoping to possibly figure out a couple other seeds that I'd been unsuccessfully chipping away at, but then Psalm 46 came up in another context, which got me back to a setting of it that I had started a while ago.  I had put it away since it felt too derivative at the time, but I decided to go with that direction and then even attempted to write a chorus that was "Hillsong"-ish (which is not my go-to style).

The Psalm has a refrain that happens a couple times:

The LORD of hosts is with us;
   the God of Jacob is our fortress.

And it also points to the new Jerusalem in Revelation 22.

Demo here.

Song of the Month: June

The prompt for last month's group was "three chords and fear."

Demo here.

There Was A Time

A songwriter at my church recently started a songwriting group for anyone interested.  Writing is (at best) maybe 4th on my list of things I do musically, but I do enjoy it sometimes.  We had our first meeting last month, and we left off with an optional writing prompt for this month's meeting:  Freedom.

Since I tend to focus on the brokenness and struggle of the Christian life, I ended up writing something more about the absence of freedom and lack of growth in my life.

Rough, one mic, no click track, demo here.

Next month's prompt:  three chords and Fear.  Not sure if I'll finish anything, but we'll see.

15

My father passed away fifteen years ago today.  It was a Tuesday.  I was a freshman in college, a few hours away by car.  I had gotten a call in the middle of the night on Sunday and got picked up Monday morning by some family friends, so I was able to get home and go to the hospital and everything.

Soon it will be more than half my life without him than with him.  In terms of my conscious life of memories, it's already reached that threshold, I suppose.  I don't really know what to think of all that.  I sort of don't even know what I'm missing--who I've become and who he would have been and what our relationship would have been like as I became more of an independent adult.  Whatever milestones he's missed (hard to see those things from here).

Both my grandfathers had already passed away before I was born, and both my grandmothers since then.  I think about death fairly freely.  My own.  My mother or brother's.  Family friends.  It's not so much "frequently" as much as it is a regular undercurrent, a perspective that I have on life.  I don't think that it's too morbid.  (Maybe it is.)

In light of that, I try not to assume my life and the steady steps of numbered days.  Sometimes it helps color my interactions with loved ones--not taking them for granted and not assuming that I'll see them or talk to them again.  And I think that's a good thing.  Heartbeats and breaths--smooth muscle cells that I can't control, after all.

----------

Lately I feel like life has been more disappointment than joy.  More fear than freedom.  I feel like I've lost touch with the transformative power of the Gospel working itself out in real ways in my real life.  It's easier for me to dwell on the broken and the unsatisfying than on the restoration and redemption of those sad, disappointing, frustrating, tiresome, heavy things.

Prayer of a certain kind comes easy--the immediate, the conversational, the pleading and crying out and thanking.  The community around me (whatever that means) is good, I think.  But I want a magic bullet.  I want the easy.  I want what I want.  And when I don't get what I want, my brain is able to be rational and grateful to God for keeping me from what he would not have me have.  But the rest of me is just wondering when it's all gonna change and when I'm going to be satisfied, content, happy, at peace in Christ.

Which I suppose isn't the point, looking to some future time.  Today is the day and right now is the moment.  Repentance and returning.  Resisting and rejecting.  Rejoicing and...resting.

Jesus, What a Friend for Sinners

Time for the 2nd Annual January New Song post.  This might be it for the year, who knows.

Sometimes we write new music to old hymns that have fallen out of common practice as a way to bring them back into circulation and remind us of the truths that they express in a particular way.

I've decided to take a well-known hymn with a well-known melody and set it to new music to perhaps let the words resonate in a new way.  Familiarity can sometimes bring its own obscurity.  It won't be for everybody.  It might just be for me.

You can read the words here.

You can listen to a rough demo here.

I Dislike Change

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

Why Are You Cast Down?

Just to make sure that I hit my quota of at least one post per year and get that out of the way early, here's a relatively recent new song from a few months ago.  It's an adaptation of Psalms 42 & 43, which have a common refrain running through them both:

Why are you cast down, O my soul,
    and why are you in turmoil within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,
    my salvation and my God.

I don't have too much to add to that.  Here's a rough garage band demo of the song.



Why Are You Cast Down?

I remember how I marched up with the multitude
Shouts of praise to the house of God
Now I’m thirsty in the desert, longing for you
When will I see? What can I do?

    They say, they say to me, “Where is your God?”
    I cry, “It’s been so long, so long, so…”

    Why are you cast down, oh my soul, oh my soul?
    Why are you so troubled, oh my soul, oh my soul?
    Hope in God, praise Him again
    Praise the God of salvation

I remember how you led me through the lands of old
You sang your love to me night and day
Now I’m drowning in the deep, deep waters alone
Forgotten, grieving a heart grown cold

    They say, they say to me, “Where is your God?”
    I cry, “It’s been so long, so long, so…”

    Why are you cast down, oh my soul, oh my soul?
    Why are you so troubled, oh my soul, oh my soul?
    Hope in God, praise Him again
    Praise the God of salvation

Defend, deliver me, send out your light, your truth
Lead me into your joy, my God, my refuge

    Why are you cast down, oh my soul, oh my soul?
    Why are you so troubled, oh my soul, oh my soul?
    Hope in God, praise Him again
    Praise the God of salvation

The Long Haul

Our pastor asked us in the congregation to submit a paragraph or a page on the theme of transformational communities--I suppose testimonies of how we’ve experienced transformation in our lives individually and corporately. I have no idea if this is the kind of thing he was looking for, but this is what I wrote.

----------

I’ve been a part of the community called City Church of East Nashville for just over five years now. From my medium-term perspective, I feel like I’ve seen as many things not change as change.

I’ve seen my own heart, calcified with bitterness and anger, be softened overnight--some miracle of God’s mercy that I certainly didn’t instigate.

I’ve seen a covenant community share life with a family in poverty, to some degree of mutuality, and the difference that can make in one girl’s life as she grows up in the church.

I’ve seen people (myself included, I hope) grow in knowing their sin and their Savior all the more. Grow in prayer and repentance as a community. Grow in love and service and interdependence. Grow as a Gospel community.

I’ve also seen the dividing boundaries of us and them persist.

And I’ve seen the racial diversity of the church more or less stay the same as when I first came, attracted as I was by the mission statement that I saw online about “reconciling the diversity of East Nashville.”

Marriages and divorces. Births and deaths. People coming in and moving on. Pretty much everything in Ecclesiastes 3.

I think we do well as a community in weeping with one another as well as rejoicing with one another. In pointing each other to look to Jesus in order to glorify the Savior together.

And while so many things look the same as they did five years ago, I don’t lament that terribly right now. So much heart change isn’t necessarily evident at first glance. Seeds planted that may not show yet. Some sow, others reap, and we enter into each other’s labors.

Sara Groves has a song called “The Long Defeat”:

I have joined the long defeat

that falling set in motion

and all my strength and energy

are raindrops in the ocean

I can't just fight when I think I'll win

that's the end of all belief

and nothing has provoked it more

than a possible defeat

and I pray for a vision

and a way I cannot see

it's too heavy to carry

and impossible to leave

I guess that’s part of what I feel about being in it for the long haul. Praying and laboring the unseen kingdom into the here and now of our daily lives.

In the meantime, in the waiting and in the working, as I wrestle with all the false gods and idols that maybe, just maybe, might fix my life this time (not true, thank God), I find myself in a community that reminds me that Jesus is real. He is my portion. He is the Lover that I long for. To Him be all glory, in this place and all places, forever and ever.

On Twilight

A few months ago I resolved to read the first Twilight book, to see for myself what all the fuss was about.

The first couple chapters were slow going (also, since I'm semi-resolved to only spend time reading it if I've done some devotions that day). The melodramatic inner life of an angsty teenager. But once elements of plot started to take shape, it made for somewhat easier reading.

I'm about 200 pages in now (out of about 500), and somewhere around the 150-page mark, I read a sentence that gave me a future post idea (Top Ten Worst Sentences...?):

"Desolation hit me with crippling strength." (page 145)

Every few pages there's a sentence that just makes me cringe for one reason or another. Sure, the writing style depends on lots of adjectives and adverbs. But more so it's the ideas that give me pause.

Before I started reading it, I was discussing some of these thoughts with a friend, and we had a difference of opinion as to whether this was actually a damaging influence on one's worldview or just a fun diversion. Certainly, there are things that I read for escapist fun.

But I still feel fairly strongly that there's a lot of untruth in the fantasy that the book provides. Mostly, the myth of salvation in the romantic Other. Edward has been described as "perfect" several times already, not to mention other flowery variations on that theme. Even more explicitly:

"I wanted nothing more than to be alone with my perpetual savior." (page 166)

Ugh. The book takes true things--being cared for and protected by a lover, for example--and turns them into false idols, packaged as something that we want and must have. To my eyes, Edward is a creepy, domineering stalker with no sense of boundaries. But Bella (and perhaps the reader, by proxy) gives herself over to him as her total fulfillment.

I think I rail against the myth so hard in my heart because it's a fantasy that I know I'm prone to myself. Daydreams and imaginary conversations. Idealized mates. But it's not real, and it's not something that I need to encourage in myself. People are people. Marriage can be great and true. But never a substitute for Jesus.

Anyway, I will probably finish the book at some point, at which point I might be willing to see the first movie. I do not plan on reading the rest of them.

Then I'll probably re-read Harry Potter VII to wash the taste out of my brain. Yes, it's an escapist page-turner, too. But throughout is love, sacrifice, friendship, family, loyalty, endurance through trials, a host of truth.

Blogging After Midnight

The reason I'm up so late is because I just watched "Bridesmaids" with some friends a short while ago. Before that we watched "Unknown" (so much better than "Taken," for whatever that's worth). Before that I watched "It's Kind of a Funny Story" on my own. Today was a stay at home and watch movies day because I had/have a cold and it's a good excuse.

To be brief: it's been almost three months and I still get sad about it. Still feel pangs of missing her and what we had. Even while others have passed in and out of the radar in the intervening months.

What's the deal? When will it stop catching me off guard? Breaking up was the right call, but there was so much good stuff that was lost as a result.

I've played in so many of my friends' weddings during my five years here in Nashville. Most of them I knew separately before they became a couple. I've been experiencing bits of peace lately about not ever getting married. I've felt that peace before, but not so much since I moved here. But's in sporadic, in waves.

There's plenty else going on in my life these days, but I'm hardly ever here anymore, so I guess that's all for now. Peace.

Ready or not...

Here I come. Internet. With an update.

Back in April, the uncertainties at the time had to do with:

1) Whether or not I would get involved with a new church plant that would take me to a different part of Nashville

2) Whether or not I would quit my job

3) A dating relationship

So, in order:

A) I decided to stay at my current home church and not join the church plant.

B) I did quit my job. Sort of. I became a part-time temp with a half-time schedule since May. It's made a world of difference in my life sanity quotient. I can enjoy the work that I still do there, and I can also breathe when the music work gets full, which is has this summer. A lot.

C) We stayed together. Until last night. We made it six months, and then we just couldn't keep going, for various reasons. It's pretty sad, for the both of us. I don't think I'll say much about it here. She's a wonderful woman. We just couldn't make it work.

I consoled myself by eating half a pint of this.

I've only mentioned the breakup to a handful of folks. And now to the Internet. I have a few misgivings about that, especially since some of you will learn through here and not in person, which is not the point of this post. Sorry, I'm still processing and gradually letting people know.

The reason for the post is for something else that happened tonight. I learned that a friend of mine just got engaged. She was someone that I had made a real idol of a few years ago, and my idolatry caused a lot of damage to a lot of relationships. We've reconciled as much as we can and interact fine. But once you give yourself over to an idol, there's always a part of you that remembers the scar. It was just odd timing--the weight of the breakup and the weight of this old wound, one on top of the other.

That's all. I don't have a lot to say on all that right now. Just processing. And finishing my pint of ice cream. (OK, fine, sorbet.)

Time for the next course: red wine and potato chips.

Food-Coping: Not Just for Girls.

Swimming In Uncertainties

Multiple possible life transitions on the horizon.

Some or none may actually come to pass.

Wrestling with Proverbs 3:5-6

Trust in the Lord with all your heart.
Rely not on your own understanding.
Acknowledge Him in all your ways,
And He will make straight your paths.

Can't stop thinking thinking thinking thinking thinking on my own.

I'm not feeling terribly anxious. A bit unsettled, though.

Not sure what to do with everything. Perhaps some fasting and prayer.

Sleep, at least.

I know my identity is in Jesus...

But how do you do anything with conviction without having some sense of self wrapped up in it?

Right?

What am I missing?

Passive

Realizing that my general response to change or just the conditions around me is to acquiesce and feel resigned that it can't change for the better.

Thinking mostly about my day job lately, but I'm sure it applies to other things.

That said, if God raised Jesus from the dead, then there's hope for change in any situation, right?

So...

Yup, I still need Jesus more than anything else.

----------

Also, perhaps I will get caught up here at some point. Mostly just the usual busy-ness, with an extra dose of day job crazy for the last couple months solid.

I'm doing ok overall.

All's Lost, All's Found

I don't typically write reviews of stuff for public viewing, but it's another way that I can support my friends in their art in a concrete way, so I went ahead and did it.

My friend Ben recently digitally released a solo album (physical discs coming soon with package artwork by the fabulous Jodi Hays). It's really good. I played cello on it. I'm really proud of my contributions. As in, "I can't believe I sound that good right there and that moment gives me goosebumps" proud of it. Specifically, track 7.

Anyway, I went ahead and submitted my review to amazon and iTunes. I encourage you to get this album and to listen to it thoroughly.

Here's the review:

(Full disclosure: I play cello on some of these tracks, though I have no financial stake in it.)

I've listened to this album a few times over the last few days. It rewards focused listening from start to finish. There's flow and understated beauty throughout these songs that variously put a lens on individual lives and relationships and tell stories of love, failure, loss, family, brokenness, healing, and hope. There are gorgeous sonic moments throughout.

The album is half instrumental tracks and half songs with lyrics, and all the tracks have a thoroughly crafted sensibility--fully realized with different textures and colors, building layers judiciously at just the right moments, never with too much. Some tracks groove and drive; others breathe full and slow. These are rich, acoustic soundscapes, and there are stories in all the songs, even the ones without lyrics.

The opening track, As I Mused, the Fire Burned, pulls you in like a steady tide. For You I Wait (track 5) is a study in sparseness, drawing everything it can out of a simple electric guitar groove, with the slightest support from percussion and lovely highlights from spacey, meandering clarinet lines that weave in and out. Rain On Consequence (track 7) is a personal favorite. I Lie Silenced (track 9) is an instrumental signpost that points back to the opening track; instead of the insistent piano pattern of the opener, the song presents a slowed down melodic motif, carried by a clear violin and punctuated by a stately pulse of chords underneath. The effect is somewhat reminiscent of Michael Giacchino's score work on Lost. The Wreckage (track 12) is, as the title might imply, a bit gut-wrenching. The closing track, All's Lost, All's Found, takes the thread started in the opening track and carried in I Lie Silenced and turns it into a brief, haunted epilogue, bordering on a lament, but still a reminder that beauty endures despite life's hardships.

Ben is a talented guitarist and singer and multi-instrumentalist sideman for other artists. He has a producer's exacting sensibilities, and this album is the fruit of years of labor, finally putting forth a cohesive project that reflects his own artistic voice. I'm proud to have been a part of this project, I'm excited to see what he does next, and I look forward to supporting his work in the future.

This could only be a true story.

Background details:

- In order to avoid ATM fees (I don't have a local bank here in Nashville), I typically withdraw lumps of cash at a time--$100 or so to keep at home--at a local credit union that has a reciprocal arrangement with my home credit union wherein I can withdraw cash from my account from the teller as if I were a member there.

- I only use cash when I have to and for tips and stuff, and otherwise I generally use my credit card as much as possible (and pay it off every month).

- I hadn't gotten cash in a little while, so I was running low--specifically, down to $10.

So, today:

I met up with my friend Charlie after work to rehearse a bit on our own before a wedding rehearsal. Due to circumstances that just happened to him over the course of the day, he really needed $10 to put into his bank account as soon as possible.

Cool, I had $10, so we went to the bank and took care of it, then went to the wedding rehearsal.

There I had a funny encounter (no one that you know) that left me feeling anxious and insecure. We went on to the rehearsal dinner (my first Monell's experience!) and had some time mingling outside over drinks, but the anxiety was definitely still weighing on me.

I had been encouraged by some things that a friend of mine shared on her blog about pouring out our crap to God and just talking with him about it--he knows it all and our hearts, but he desires to actually be in relationship with us.

So I decided to get some air and take a walk up the street for a couple blocks. I shared my insecurities to God, unburdening the ways that I was running over things in my mind and feeling anxious and fearful, then turned around and headed back toward the restaurant.

I was feeling some relief, continuing to pray that God would draw my focus from myself in all these various ways and to Jesus instead. And right then, I looked down at the pavement and saw a $10 bill folded in half on the street.

I laughed out loud and asked God something like, "Really, is this what you want to give me? I mean, I'll take it, but that's kinda funny." I got back and told Charlie that he didn't need to pay me back--that God had just given me the $10 that I had passed it on to him earlier.

Fast forward through a couple hours of fantastic food and company and toasts to the wedding couple:

I got home just as my housemate was heading out to a show at a local restaurant around the corner. He asked me, "Hey, do you have any cash? That way I won't have to go to the ATM right now."

I replied, "Sure, I got ten bucks."

I lost my cell phone today.

I think I know how it happened, too, and if that's the case, then it is GONE.

So I've decided to move on, at least in terms of looking into getting a new phone in the morning.

I feel a bit annoyed at myself. And also anxious at the missed communications from the day and my current lack of ability to contact people. It's really really really not a huge deal in the grand scheme of things, but it's the situation that I'm currently living, and it feels sufficiently weighty that I'm wrestling with knots and frustrations inside and fading in and out of trusting Jesus in the midst of it.

It will be a hassle to put all the numbers back in my phone, but that's workable. I just got home from a fun little show that my church put on, and the house is quiet, and I'm realizing something about being cut off from people. I don't know most of my friends' numbers by memory--I just look for their names in my list of contacts, of course.

Something about names and people and feeling cut off. I'm sure it'll be fine, but I just wanted to put it down in writing while I was still feeling like a silly goober.

Oh, and I also accidentally (stupidly) chipped the tip of my cello bow during a rehearsal earlier today. It should be easily repairable, and maybe I'll use it as an excuse to get my bow re-haired (it's been a while).

Today had its goodness and beauty, for sure.

But still.

Sigh.

Jesus Is My Portion

If I could fit this into a facebook status, I would, but I don't think I can, so I'll try here.

Tonight I shared the stage with some amazing musicians and people, playing cello for one song for this benefit show. I was up there with some Famous People & Real Musicians. I struggled with some deep deep insecurities, a sense that I totally didn't belong on the stage with them, as well as envy of their Talent and Success and yes, even the fact that they're all Married.

And just to be clear, they are all super gracious folks, a couple of whom I would even consider friends.

But I need to name my idols, so there you have it. All because I lose sight of the fact that Jesus is my portion. It was a real struggle, believing the lies that Satan was feeding me about my identity. So I prayed and reached out to a couple friends to pray for me, too. I worked through it and found some center and sufficiency in Jesus.

I am not my own. My gifts and talents are a gift of God's grace. It was an honor and a privilege and a joy to offer them up and be a part of the evening. I certainly couldn't have orchestrated having such a cool opportunity.

But it was a hard hard struggle inside, and I know it's not over. I know it'll happen again. Then again, I guess I know that I won't ever stop needing Jesus, either.

Oh yeah, and I got a free copy of Donald Miller's latest book out of the deal, too, so hey.