Reading vs. Living

Before our kids went back to school a couple of weeks ago, my wife told me, “We need a theme for our family this year.” A theme? Immediately I was imagining colors, a theme song, a catch phrase, a logo, maybe some team shirts we could all wear… My wife stood there patiently waiting until I was finished chasing shiny things in my mind and explained.

“I want us to be more than we are settling for,” she said. She pulled out Joshua 1:9 and we read, “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go.” And then she said the thing that has been ringing in my ears ever since… “I want us to stop reading about adventures and start living them.”

Now, my sons and I are avid readers of fantasy stories… if it has a quest or a dragon, a knight, a journey, an adventure… we love it! And to be dared to not just read about such things but to actually step out and do them? That thought is both invigorating and terrifying.

Invigorating because I ask myself “where do we find these adventures?” I am learning they are everywhere… in bike rides, shooting off model rockets, teaching my kids skills, exploring our hometown, our state, listening to the dreams of my family, trying something new, starting a tradition, not saying “we’ll do it later”, asking my kids what their opinions are, trying to do things for my wife before she has to ask, not being reluctant to be a Christ-follower in plain view, turning off the computer, turning off the TV,  ignoring what is “important” and focusing on who is important.

And terrifying because if I don’t seek out these adventures, I will miss them. If I don’t seek out my family, I will miss them. If I don’t seek out Christ, I will miss Him. There is only so much time and only so many days.

Now, adventures in the real world may not involve dragons and giants, may not involve life or death situations, may not be world changing events… but then again, maybe they do! But, the good news here is that no matter what the adventure, no matter what the situation or how long we have waited to face it – God is there already. Joshua says it clearly, God is with us wherever we go. In bike rides, model rockets, hospitals, around Christmas trees, in everything we face ‘from womb to tomb’ (to quote Westside Story).

So, no more excuses… time to stop just reading about adventures and time to start living them!

Oh… and we did get a theme song… remember that old MWS tune “Strong and Corageous”?

Slide Shows, Moving Boxes, and Time Travel

The older I get, the more often I have wished I could re-visit my past. Not so much in the sense that I have regrets or things I wish I could change (although I have a few), but more in the sense that I would like to re-experience moments, seasons, episodes of my life and really soak in them.

Recently, my family visited my parents and I showed my sons slides of me when I was their age. We especially enjoyed the pictures of Christmas seeing what toys I was playing with compared to what they are playing with now. Now, there is a time I would love to re-experience… the lead up to Christmas, the anxious waiting, the never ending night before and the long luxurious week of visiting relatives afterward…

While at my parents, they mentioned that there were two moving boxes with my name on them. This was stuff that had been moved around a couple of times and never unpacked, and basically forgotten. Before we left, I grabbed the boxes and brought them home. Imagine my surprise when I opened them and discovered a time machine…

The year I graduated from college, I spent about a month at home before moving to Dallas to start a 3 year stint with the band Watermark (no, the other Watermark). My folks moved not long after that, so these two boxes contained the contents of my room from that specific moment in time.

As I spent time looking through letters, notes, lyrics, books I had at the time… seeing some pictures, little odds and ends, trinkets that meant something at that point… I was transported back to those moments. It was like putting on my 22 year old self, with all of its emotions and dreams, with all of the fears and struggles… and for a few minutes, I was really there.

The best part, though, was discovering that I am no longer that 22 year old. These days the emotions and dreams are different, the fears and struggles have changed, but I am happy to be who I am, to be where I am, to be Whose I am. It was a gas to re-visit a pecific moment in my life, to actually feel I was in it again… but the best part of any vacation (whether traveling through time or across the country) is coming home again.

The Most Important Concert Ever!

I don’t know if you are aware of this, but I can hold conversations with myself while doing most anything. While mowing the lawn, watching TV, talking to other people, pretty much any time. Typical of most males, I can’t multi-task very effectively, but I can converse with myself… go figure.

Recently, I was having a conversation with myself while I was playing a gig. It was a new town, a small mainstream book store/coffee shop type of place and the conversation went something like this…

“This is a nice place, small town, but a cool coffee place. I hope the coffee is good… gotta make sure I get a cup after the set.”

“I wonder how I got here… I know they called me, but where did they find me? I don’t know anybody here, I have never played this town before…”

“Do they know I am a Christian artist? I noticed I was the only ‘Christian’ artist on their calendar… Ooops, well they know now… I just sang about Jesus…”

“How many people are here? 1,2,3… hmmm, about 20… What are they thinking? Do they like me? Are they wondering what they have gotten themselves into?  Does this gig matter at all? Why am I here?”

Believe it or not, that whole conversation happened within the first song and a half!

As soon as I ask myself whether or not a gig matters, I start to think about what constitutes a “good” gig… big audiences, big sales, sweet solos, big money, screams and adoration, oh yeah – lots of ministry too… Funny thing though, even if I got to play that idea of a “good” gig, once it’s over, it’s over. Moments in time are funny that way. No matter how good a moment is, it is a moment only for a moment and then a memory forever. And while memories are precious, they aren’t sustaining by themselves.

Jesus said, “Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” (Matthew 6:34) I can’t feed forever on memories, I can’t survive on the unknowns of the future… I can only do this moment. I can only effect this point in time. I can only choose good in the present task. I can only serve, act and worship in the now.

Which leads me to the conclusion that good gig or not, this is the most important concert I will ever play, because it is the only one I can play at this moment.

So, as the third song began that night in that small town, I had a completely new attitude… and I believe it showed!

Ditching Parents on the Way to School

I have two kids, one in Jr Hi and one in Elementary… and this year something interesting has happened. We live close to their schools and when the weather permits, we like to walk. And for various reasons, they have both ditched me on the way to school.

Now, I expect this from the Jr Hi kid, because he is at that age where everything I do embarrasses him. And to be fair, I do my best to embarrass him – it is so much fun… so, about a half block from the school, when we start to see other students, he slowly disengages and walks faster than me, heading at an angle to cross the street and enter school ‘alone’ while I veer the other direction and head home. We’ve been doing this for quite a while so I am used to it. But last week, my younger son asked me to hang back so his buddies wouldn’t see me and I will admit, this stung a little.

Now, I know that in the larger picture this doesn’t mean much. It doesn’t mean that my kids don’t love me. It doesn’t mean that they want to move out at the first opportunity… but I was surprised at my own reaction. It bugged me. It saddened me. It hurt.

I don’t recall ever doing this to my folks when I was a kid, mainly because we rode the bus. But as a ’spiritual kid’ I have often ditched my Father outside of school. Sometimes as literally as putting God aside before entering a room of people… sometimes ditching Him outside of a conversation… sometimes turning my eyes away when I had a decision to make… a person I should love… a stand I should take… sometimes I ditch Jesus in the areas of where I spend my money, how I spend my time… and based on my own experiences, I bet it bugs Him, I bet it hurts.

Beyond the obvious lesson of not ditching Christ in the everyday moments of life, I learned something deep about the character of God on that morning outside of the Elementary school… my gut reaction was to be mad all day, maybe a little snippy when my kids got home – let them know that they had hurt my feelings. But when has God ever treated me like that? When has He ever been snippy with me? Every time that I can recall ditching Him, He has loved me anyway. Even hurt by my decisions, my choices, He has loved me anyway. So on that day when both my kids ditched me on the way to school, I got to aim higher and love them anyway.

And isn’t that the Gospel in a nutshell? Jesus loves us anyway.

The Gift or the Giver?

This past Sunday was, of course, Mother’s Day. My two sons and I put together a little grab bag of gifts for my wife and I discovered the answer to an age old question… which is really the more important? the gift or the giver? The answer? It is totally the giver!

I know this because of a neon green t-shirt. Among the home made cards, coupons for good behavior, a candle, and other things… there was a neon green t-shirt. Now, for some back story – my wife is a beautiful woman and looks wonderful in anything she wears, but she has definite ideas about what she likes and what colors/styles she will wear. And while she does like the occasional t-shirt… well, let’s just say there is not a single neon green item in her closet. So, as she pulled this shirt out of the grab bag… she looked at me. No, I mean she LOOKED at me… husbands – you know the look. It was that “what were you thinking?” look. It was that “we have been married how many years and this is what you get me?” look. She didn’t say anything in front of the kids, she just looked. I must admit that I was a little befuddled by the look because I didn’t give her the shirt.

She went on through the bag and after she had finished it, our youngest son proclaimed loudly how many of the gifts were ones he had made or purchased (with his AWANA bucks at the AWANA store). When it became clear that he was the giver of the neon green t-shirt and not me, my wife’s entire demeanor changed. Suddenly the shirt was wonderful, the color was perfect, and the probability that she would wear the shirt went from “a snowball’s chance in Texas” to “this summer, for sure!” The gift, itself, was almost irrelevant -  the whole story was about the giver.

We are offered so many things in our lives. People will offer us ‘love’, governments will offer us ’security’, items will offer us ‘wholeness’… and we often look only at the gift being offered. I know I do. I focus on the thing and not the one offering it. And usually, the item offered doesn’t live up to the hype. The gift falls short. I wonder if I were more focused on the givers, would I accept those gifts so readily? Or if the giver was the important thing, would those gifts increase in their value and meaning?

I have been offered the gift of ‘a better life’ on several occasions… from people who wanted me to vacate myself to get it, from governmental systems on both sides of the aisle, from an industry that chews artists up, and finally from a God who sacrificed Himself instead of me. If I am focused on the gift only, then I might accept any of these several versions of ‘a better life’ without realizing that they do not all mean the same thing. In fact, it is the giver in each instance that defines what the gift really means. And in the end, it is the giver that is important, the gift becoming a side issue (even if it is a neon green t-shirt).

And the irony of the Christian faith, is that in Christ, the Giver is the Gift.

Just Start…

This blog entry was started in the mid 80’s… 86 or 87, somewhere around there… in a meeting room of the Forum (the student union building) at Grinnell College… I don’t remember the guy’s name, he was the friend of a friend who had come to our guys Bible study that day, but he was in a world of hurt over a girl he loved but had lost due to some bad choices on his part. He made a point of telling us that he wasn’t normally ‘religious’ but in his anguish he had pulled out his Bible and come across one of the episodes in Elijah’s life… 19th chapter of 1 Kings… Elijah is on the run from Jezebel, who has vowed to kill him, and he is finally worn out and drops in the desert and cries out to die.. God sends an angel to his side and… this is the part that had lit this guy’s eyes up… the angel said only “Get up and eat.” (1 Kings 19:5) I remember thinking that this was pretty mundane as far as pronouncements from angels go but this guy was fired up about it. Apparently, he had been pretty much lying in the dark for a couple of days, just hoping to fade away, when these angel’s words spoke to him… get up… eat something… life goes on, continue living, get up, eat something, just start…

How many times have I had a dream or a plan or a New Years Resolution or a goal but decided that I could never achieve it, so I quit before I really even started? From the starting line, the finish looks so far away… and for some reason, I always feel that I must start the race by finishing it, does that make sense? But you can’t finish the race without taking those first steps… you can’t finish until you start…

If I am daunted by the economy and how the income looks, I can be overwhelmed with the need to book 120 gigs for the coming year. But to book 120, I start at 1. I can be daunted when I am considering a new CD project, the songs needed, the budget required, etc… but a finished CD starts with me picking up a guitar tonight. My sons can be freaked out when facing the looming years of Jr Hi, Sr Hi, College and possibly grad school beyond that… but that all starts with school on Monday. A long lasting marriage is a huge goal, but it starts with a kind word and servant’s heart towards my wife today. A life lived in the shadow of Christ isn’t necessarily attainable by lunch time, but it starts with a choice to act like Jesus now. Just start…

Regardless of what the car commercials say about 0 to 60, people can’t live that way. We don’t go from start to finish that fast. Whatever the trials you face, whatever the goals you are looking at, whatever the road you are walking… you don’t begin at the finish line. Maybe you are in the middle of the darkness, you have lost a loved one, or given something up that you never should have treated carelessly, maybe like Elijah you are at the end of your rope… remember the words of the angel “Get up and eat”… To finish the race, the first thing you must do is just start…

Out-of-Touch or Old Code?

I often have the following conversation:

Them: What do you do?
Me: I’m a musician.
Them: Oh! That’s cool! What kind of music do you play?
Me: Christian rock…
Them: oh… that’s… interesting. Hm.

Often, at this point, the person gets a somewhat glassy-eyed look and tries to figure out a way to disentangle themselves from the conversation.

On occasion I have even been told outright that as a Christian I am just simply out of touch with reality, with the real world, with our very modern and enlightened world. And truth be told, there are probably many more who think it but are too polite to voice it. Out of touch… Hmm… I wonder…

Anyone remember the movie ‘Dragonheart’? I loved that movie, the fantasy of it, the adventure, the voice of Sean Connery as Draco the dragon… there is a moment in the movie when Dennis Quaid, as the hero Bowen, tells the young prince Einon that they are knights of the Old Code and strives to impress upon the boy those ideals. As the movie progresses we discover that Einon is not interested in the Old Code at all and they have, in essence, the conversation I started this post with. Bowen is old fashioned, Bowen is foolish, Bowen is naive and simple minded, that both Bowen and the Old Code are out of touch… the conclusion of the movie, in part, centers on Bowen’s personal struggle to answer this accusation.

I am also reminded of the fourth book in the Chronicles of Narnia, “The Silver Chair”, by CS Lewis. Again we have a young prince, this time taken prisoner by an evil sorceress who hopes to use him to ensnare the land of Narnia. Puddleglum, a marshwiggle, acts as a guide and protector for the two English children that Aslan has called to rescue the prince. At a crucial point, the heroes are facing down the villains in their underground kingdom, with the fate of the Prince and Narnia in the balance, and the sorceress tells them that all of their talk of Narnia and Aslan are just fanciful dreams that children create based on the ‘real world’ around them… for example, their comments about a ’sun’ in the sky are just dreams that are based on the light in the corner of the room… the sun is fantasy while the light in the corner is the reality… Puddleglum, when faced with this accusation tells the sorceress,

“One word, Ma’am, one word. All you’ve been saying is quite right, I shouldn’t wonder. I’m a chap who always liked to know the worst and then put the best face I can on it. So I won’t deny any of what you said. But there’s one thing more to be said, even so. Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things – trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that’s a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We’re just babies making up a game, if you’re right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow. That’s why I’m going to stand by the play world. I’m on Aslan’s side even if there isn’t any Aslan to lead it. I’m going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn’t any Narnia.”

Reminds me of three Hebrews about to be thrown into a furnace by a king who tried to get them to deny their God… they said “O Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter. If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it, and he will rescue us from your hand, O king. But even if he does not, we want you to know, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up.” (Daniel 3:16-18)

Out of touch… babies playing games… unable to function in a modern, enlightened society…  no, I reject those characterizations outright. As a Christ follower I am a believer in a very old Code. And if faith, love, kindness, purity, integrity, self sacrifice, and Christ on the Cross are just the musings of the weak and foolish then I, along with Bowen, Puddleglum, Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego and 2,000 years worth of believers who loved their lives less than their Lord say proudly, “I’m on Jesus’ side even if there isn’t any Jesus to lead it. I’m going to live as like a citizen of Heaven as I can even if there isn’t any Heaven.”

Out of touch? No way, I’m Old Code.

Vindictive Trees

I was watching the DVD of The Two Towers last night and was struck by the scene in which Treebeard the Ent is discussing the hearts of trees with Merry and Pippin. He is telling them that the hearts of many trees are filled with anger due to the mistreatment they have suffered. Angry trees… hrum…

At my house the leaves were a little late in turning and slower in falling but I think the trees in my yard are among Treebeard’s angry trees… or if not angry, at least a little vindictive. Over the last month I have raked my yard on three occasions. And after each occasion the trees look down on the job I have done, snicker, and then let loose with another load of leaves. After the third raking, the trees let go all that they were holding back. No problem, one more raking session should take care of it. But then the rain came… and it rained and rained and then this weekend the snows came…

So thanks to vindictive trees, I took part today in a Central New York tradition… the combined final raking of leaves and first snow shoveling of the year all rolled into one. Hrum…

A New Work Ethic

OK, I titled this “a NEW work ethic”… but honestly, is anything new? Solomon certainly thought not (Ecclesiastes 1:9) and I am sure this is not universally new, but it is new to me.

As a self employed musician making a go of his art in a full time capacity, I have often struggled to marry the requirements of business with the temperament of art, not always with great success. And in the current economy where something like music might seem ‘expendable’, not something to put money into at the moment, I am having to do things in new ways and more out of the box. So, as I was pondering where to go next, having a bit of a staff meeting with myself, I came upon this thought… the best way for me to be successful (from a business point of view), the best way for me to be profitable (from a ‘make-a-living’ point of view) is encapsulated in one discipline: Make One More Call.

No matter how the day is going, Make One More Call. If booking is horrible and I can’t buy a call back – Make One More Call. If I just had a great conversation and landed a gig – Make One More Call. If I am seriously wondering whether I should be doing this at all – Make One More Call. When friends and peers question my sanity – Make One More Call. No matter what the moment has brought – Make One More Call.

And this can spread through so much of life, not just business… if I am struggling in my faith – Pray One More Prayer; if I am drowning in sadness – Breathe One More Breath; if I am losing hope – Do One More Act of Kindness; if my kids are driving me to distraction – Give Them One More Hug.

It is simple, but I am loving the implications… Make One More Call!

Without The Bells And Whistles…

Last week I was doing a quick tour swing through New Jersey and played two engagements without my usual gear. Folks who have seen me in concert know that I play acoustic guitar through a few effects on the floor and a looping pedal. These bells and whistles allow me to record on the fly, mimic the sounds of other instruments and generally expand the usual palette of simple guitar and voice.

I travelled for years as a part of a four piece band and then as a solo artist with synths, drum machines, sequencers and guitars. I was reluctant to give up all those toys back in the 90’s to move to a more organic sound, but I did. Since going totally acoustic, I have relied on the effects and looping pedal to keep the concert experience interesting for me as a musician and for the audience, as well. And, I will admit, I have become quite beholden to them. My wife calls them my ’security blanket’ and this weekend put that theory to the test.

I was playing for a small intimate worship service where the sound system required to use my effects and looper would have seriously intruded on the moment, so it was just me and my Breedlove… no bells and whistles. As I realized this was how the evening was going to go, I must admit I wondered how I could pull it off without my ‘bag of tricks’. But as I started singing the songs, in essence unplugging my already unplugged sound, it was wonderful to remember that the songs are really good. To remember that it is just plain fun to play and sing. To reconnect with the moments of grace and faith and God that birthed these songs. All before the bells and whistles got added to them…

No, I am not getting rid of the looper and the other effects, they are great tools and fun to play with; but I may seek out more opportunities to play without the bells and whistles…