Looking For The Long Ride

In re-reading my last entry I noticed a couple of words my typing fingers had messed up. Most of us can fill in the blanks but it does tend to break the flow and I apologize.

I could tell you that my daughter needed to finish her school paper and was anxious to get on the computer and I felt a little rushed—the fact is I really have to pay a little more attention to the final text. In reality, my mind pushes my fingers beyond their comfort level and unto the wrong keys all the time and I have to back up and make corrections more than I like to admit.

I will admit that I am a rather tactile kind of guy—when I journal I like to use a fountain pen and write on good paper. Of course I have the same problem—journaling is not like drafting—but writing as fast as the thoughts come. Sometimes I can’t even read what I wrote just fifteen minutes later. But I still like the feel of the pen as the nib flows across the texture of the paper. There is something calming in the process—like setting your life in order—I normally feel better after the first couple of pages.

I picked up the fountain pen habit from a poet I met in the mid-seventies named Kenneth Rexroth. I think we met at a poetry reading and I convinced him to let me publish a “broadside” of one of his poems. I owned an old letter press at the time and would hand-set the type and then print stuff on real thick art paper—ala Gutenburg. It was real artsy type stuff and in the process had sent some broadsides to him to sign before the next poetry thing. I noticed the big bold letters that he used to make his name and asked him what kind of pen he used. It was called an Osmoroid and is still made as far as I know.

I went out and bought one after this and still have it stuck away in a drawer somewhere. It was the type of pen that you filled from an ink bottle by lifting a little lever on the side. It was a little messy but for a time seemed to connect me with a world that was quickly moving towards 3-part forms and 10 cent bic ball point pens for everything.

Rexroth died in 1982 at the age of 76 and is considered to be a major San Francisco poet and translator.

Here is one of his poems.

From THE HEART’S
GARDEN,
THE GARDEN’S HEART

Water is always the same —
Obedient to the laws
That move the sun and the other
Stars. In Japan as in
California it falls
Through the steep mountain valleys
Towards the sea. Waterfalls drop
Long musical ribbons from
The high rocks where temples perch.
Ayu in the current poise
And shift between the stones
At the edge of the bubbles.
White dwarf iris heavy with
Perfume hang over the brink.
Cedars and cypresses climb
The hillsides. Something else climbs.
Something moves reciprocally
To the tumbling water.
It ascends the rapids,
The torrents, the waterfalls,
To the last high springs.
It disperses and climbs the rain.
You cannot see it or feel it.
But if you sit by the pool
Below the waterfall, full
Of calling voices all chanting
The turmoil of peace,
It communicates itself.
It speaks in the molecules
Of your blood, in the pauses
Between your breathing. Water
Flows around and over all
Obstacles, always seeking
The lowest place. Equal and
Opposite, action and reaction,
An invisible light swarms
Upward without effort. But
Nothing can stop it. No one
Can see it. Over and around
Whatever stands in the way,
Blazing infinitesimals —
Up and out — a radiation
Into the empty darkness
Between the stars.

Copyright 2003 Copper Canyon Press.

In Blog-Land there is tsunami brewing about what is loosely called simple or organic church. So much so a person could spend literally days checking out all the blogs about it and links leading one to an fro and so forth.

And I am not kidding when I say that it is much bigger than Luther posting that paper on the door of his local church.

Much of what is being said is just stuff that most of us have felt, off and on, for the past several years. This is not to minimize the importance and relevance of what is being written about, but to affirm that what a lot of us have been feeling in relation to how we do church in America.

Check it out when you have time.

A good place to start is by visiting a blog by Steve Senseinig called theologicalmusingsblog

You will find a lot of food for thought and maybe run into some peope you know.

Another blog I visit often is called achievable ends by Bill Kinnon. He is an interesting writer and one that challenges everything you think you know.

So, enjoy your ride and I will mine.

It is not my wish to beat something into the ground, but I think I have maybe the third and last (for now) part of what I began two entries ago.

Much of my thinking time occurs in my car driving between home and work, work and lunch and home again. This is the time that I plug in the Ipod and click around to whatever song seems to me at the moment, relevant. Like you, I go through cycles—today was a secular music day with yesterday being a mix between secular and praise and worship (otherwise known as sacred).

So, the first thing to allow is that my thought processes are somewhat determined or directed by what I am currently listening to. And what I am listening to is what I have programed into my music player. In other words if I was listening to your music I would be thinking different kinds of thoughts (albeit filtered through my head) than I would be by listening to my songs.

Stay with me—I am getting closer to what I originally planned to say in the first place.

I remember making the statement a year or so after I was born again that Fleetwood Mac would make an awesome Christian group. And this is the pea under my pillow pushing me to think these thoughts these past few days.

What did I really mean by that statement about Fleetwood Mac and how does it apply to being more artistically arosed by the secular singer songwriter than I am by what I have experienced in the contemporary Christian vein. And what is the difference between the two groups.

However, this is not an easy thing to explain or communicate because at some level I really don’t fully understand all that I am reaching for—but like a good researcher I am trying to loose the earth around the prize that is buried somewhere in my head.

So let me just say it: Is there really a divide between the secular and the sacred.

Many secular artists’ explain the world around us and the things that we work through on an everyday basis much better than their Christian peers. I guess this is why we have to wait ten years between overtly Christian movies that are of the “End of the Spear” or “The Passion of Christ” caliber. Yet when I view movies like “Elizabethtown” I am captured by the finesse in which the director guides us through the movies story line. Yes, I ache for the characters and wish they had Christ in their lives to give them the fullfilment that they are trying for in the worldly arena. Yet their lives and stories are not fake—they are real people dealing with the same types of issues that I deal with.

And ultimately I guess that is what I am really saying and believing—either we shape our culture or our culture will shape us. Yet we need role models that will stand up and take the Christian model to the streets. Prime time certainly isn’t interested in portraying us any more than the record companies are in signing up new Christian talent—whatever that looks like.

Have I said it all—probably not. Have I said enough—yes, for the time being.

Enjoy your ride.

A Note: A friend of mine Rodney Morris just began blogging a week or so ago. His blog can be found at:

http://hotrodsblog.blogspot.com

In my last entry I attempted to convey a sense of passion that I find many times in secular music but lacking in contemporary Christian music. And since I don’t think I fully explained myself, I will take another shot at it.

Passion, the noun, is defined as: any powerful or compelling emotion or feeling, such as love or hate.

It has been my experience that, as far as passion goes, there seems to be a lot more to find in the world than in my Christian experience. And before you go to far with that, let me say that I have been around the block a time or two.

I was born again, set free from a life long addiction to cigarettes and baptized in the Holy Spirit all in one fell swoop during a home church meeting in a friends house in early 1979. I subsequently threw away all my “men’s” magazines and began to live the Christian life as a dialog with a living Lord. In the process, I became a pharisee, threw away all my secular books and sold my collection of over 500 albums. Not that that was a bad thing—as new Christians we need a time of not being pulled this way and that—a time to get into the word and find out about what we had just signed up for.

But when it becomes a part of what you think that makes you holy, then it is time to re-evaluate.

For the next several years, I only listened to Christian music (Amy Grant, Steve Green, White Heart, Barry McGuire and 2nd Chapter of Acts) and read the bible. Then we morphed into an end-time church and I even got rid of all that. Talk about jumping from the frying pan into the fire.

Sandi didn’t wear pants because women were not supposed to dress like men. Swimmng was out: where could one find a “modest” bathing suit. We didn’t do Christmas trees, eggs on Easter or Halloween.

One day we “woke up” and realized that we had drifted away from the freedom we had been born again into and began our slow journey into main stream Christianity—albeit with a charismatic twist.

Hopefully you can now make the leap with me into 2007.

For a long time I didn’t listen to contemporary Christian music at all. Most of it seemed miles away from where I lived. It was “rose garden” stuff with just enough rhythm to keep me coming back but not really challenging artistically. Then I read some of John Eldridge’s books and I was convinced that we could correspond with our culture and not be consumed by it. He quoted Crosby, Stills and Nash and told stories about Greek mythology. I began to use Bob Dylan quotes when I was given the opportunity to speak at church.

What I am trying to convey here is like the difference between Christian films of the 80’s and Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of Christ”. There is a world in between them. Most Christian themed cinema stuff I would categorize as movies. The Passion was a true film—worthy of a place beside any hollywood Oscar winner. And this is the essence of what I am trying to reach—like the difference between Sealtest, Bryers, and Hagen-Daz ice cream.

Does much of contemporary Christian music lack “depth” if depth is defied by me as a passionate cry that resonates in my inner being. Does it bring tears to your eyes or make you want to get up and dance around the room. Does it suggest, as Rich Mullins did in “Hold Me Jesus”, that if given our own inclination, we will put ourselves in line to be tempted by sin just to see what it feels like. Not that we will fall, mind you. But somehow we need to be challenged and in process overcome. It is a part of the “epic” that we find ourselves a part of.

Somewhere inside of me is a song that is waiting to be written. In it, I will see a portion of my salvation and be released into a realm of the spirit that will be like a waterfall—it will be intense and gentle at the same time. And it will so charge the atmosphere around me that healing will be released.

One of the sub-plots of my life has been focused around my love for poetry. And I guess one of the reasons I am attracted to poetry is because a good poem can help us see what is underneath the surface of our feelings. A good poem, with just a few good words can activate our imaginations in a way that leads to understanding and illumination.

When T. S. Elliot said in “The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock” that he “…had measured out his life with coffee spoons”, we know exactly what he is saying even though he only used words to form an image which then left the subtle interpretation up to us. And that is exactly it—each of us sees what he has alluded  poetically in a different way with our understanding filtered through our own lifes’ experiences.

My love and appreciation for poetry is by definition extended to a genre of music called the singer/songwriter genre. It is an old term but was at one time used to describe those people who wrote and performed their own songs as opposed to those who just sang other people’s stuff. For the purpose of this entry there is Christian singer/songwriter stuff and secular stuff.

Some Christian singer/songwriters that I am familiar with are Shawn McDonald, Rich Mullins and Nicole Nordman. I am sure there are many others as well.

For the purpose of this blog, I am choosing to differeniate between these more indie types and the ones like Paul Baloche, Matt Redman and those who write what I would call more popular praise and worhsip songs. I spend many hours in my car listening to these musicians.

The indie types deal with life when things are not working according to plan—as in the case of Rich Mullins on the days when we just can’t seem to find our faith—even though we know it’s kicking around inside us somewhere. In other words, they write songs that are introspective and reflective as opposed to songs that we sing to God or about our relationship with Him.

So, after having written all this, I am not sure I can get to where I thought I was headed when I began to write what I thought about in my car this morning on the way to work as I was listening to Jonantha Brooke sing a song about her daughter called “So Much Mine”.

In the song, which is very passionate and describes a mother’s relationship to her daughter who it seems has grown away and apart from her parents, Brooke sings this lyric: “Where’s the heart in me that made the one in you so cold”.

It is a verse that really makes me think and conjures up all sorts of personal scenarios about how life isn’t always so cut and dry like so many of our contemporary Christian songs seem to imply. This is just a feeling on my part and I am limited in scope by what I have listened to the past couple or years. Don’t get me wrong, I like to rock out with Delirious and some of the others and get pumped up and charge into the fast lane. I chill out with the Enter The Worship Circle stuff.

But this morning in my car, thinking about all this, I began to appreciate and understand artist’s like Rich Mullins a bit more. He didn’t sugar coat anything. On video you could see that he was a passionate man who took his faith seriously. He understood the divide between what we know and what we actually can walk out on a daily basis. You don’t quit hoping for a big break through but approach life with a certain amount of realism—knowing that you are still taking steps forward and not giving up ground to the enemy.

Enjoy today’s ride.

In light of this weeks tragedy at Virginia Tech, it seems almost criminal to ponder my own weaknesses and wonderings—trials and tribulations—safe and secure here in blog-land.

Of course our prayers go out to the families who have had loved ones taken from them—but life does go on. It is like after a big storm that has blown down trees and power lines—we rally around and try to put life back to normal as soon as possible.

Such was the case this past Saturday when several men from church went to a couple’s house, chainsaws in hand, to help them clear a path from the debris left following last weeks thunderstoms. It was reported that we lived through gusts up to 70 miles an hour or more. Some people were even without electricity for a couple of days after the storms passage.

We spent the bigger portion of 2 1/2 hours cutting up the trees that had fallen and clearing away all the limbs and whatnot that had been scattered all over. We then ate a great lunch and left, anxious to get back to our own lives and the stuff we all needed to do that day as well. We left behind several big pine trees that may or may not be taken away and used for lumber.

Yet in all of this, I am more a reluctant servant than a man who can hardly wait to help someone get their life back to normal. I am like the one son in scripture, who when asked by his father to go into the fields and work, declined at first but then later thought better of it and went. In contrast, the other brother said yes and then didn’t go. at all.

This has been the same way most of my Christian life. When asked to volunteer, my hand reluctantly is raised after seeing my friend’s raise theirs.

I guess I am seeing this and writing about it at this time because it is something that God is bringing to light and allowing me to work through and find my way to the other side. This is where life gets a little complicated and really the deeper subject of my last post as difficult to understand as it is.

Can we really be Christians if we are not jumping out of the boat at every opportunity to help others that arises in our lives? If we are not doing the stuff—like feeding the poor and hungry and visiting those in prison and taking care of the widows, are we fooling ourselves into believing that we are something that we are not.

It is a thorny question—and one that I currently don’t have the answer for.

When asked to help, does our mind race immediately to all the things that we have to do instead of how we can be of service. Do we see our weekends as having only so much time which is already filled up with stuff we have to get done by the time we reach Firday evening.

Our lives really are not our own but I guess I have lived mine with the thought that I would get it back sometime after all the kids have all grown up and moved out to lives of their very own.

Don’t get me wrong—sometimes I am all about the journey and find that I lose my life in what there is to lose it in. Other times, I am destination bound—the weekend is coming and I will then take time to relax and enjoy life—the rest of it (the week/our life) is just something we put up with in order to get to where we want to be. Some of us may never reach retirement age—so if we are waiting for that carrot to be reached, we may never be happy if that is what we are living life for.

Like I have said before, life is a ride: today I may go ten miles and then in a couple of days challenge myself to do 20. Today’s thoughts are a small ride that I will talk more about later. Enjoy your ride today.

I have gotten to the place in life where I realize that what passes for the thought process in my head is actually a surreal landscape of actions and images that I can sometimes see a pattern develop and actually write it down.

Most of what has passed for entries on this blog have been momentary flashes of seeing a pattern and then letting it flow out in somewhat organized fashion. And I have written what I have seen pass in front of me as if I actually understood who I am or what my purpose in life is or has been.

It is  Friday and a philisophical day.

What is trying to work it’s way out of my head today is the thought that maybe I am not who I believe I am. Part of that thought deals with how I got to where I am: DNA and upbringing and all that stuff that combines to create a personality.

When I became a Christian in the late seventies, I read in 2 Corinthians 5:17 that “…if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!”

I took this literally to mean that I was a new person—that I had been re-directed if you will—to my God-image and that life as I knew it was changed forever. I can’t seem to find the verse right this minute that talks about metamorphosis and me going from being a catepiller to a butterfly but it is there and for the purpose of this train of thought, duly noted.

But the other day I began to see that who I think I am and who other people perceive me to be can be light years apart.

Which brings me to the point of asking myself who I really am.

On a very basic level, I am a person who has learned to deal with life through a maze of filters and expectations that were formed as I was growing up. Through the dis-function of family and so forth I have learned to cope and function. Through the re-birthing process of becoming a Christian, I have been given a new lease on a life that might have been short-lived and tragic. However, there is a certain bi-polarity that I have come face to face with in recent months.

When I was born-again, all that stuff that I had set in place that allowed me to be “normal” did not evaporate overnight.

As a friend of mine says, that stuff gets smaller and smaller as the other stuff we are becoming gets bigger and bigger.

I began to write a blog several weeks ago about being on the receiving end of judgemental attitudes. It was a little to personal and close to home at that point and I never finished it for publication. I guess we all live and deal with people on an everyday basis who have less than stellar thoughts about us. People who perceive us to be something that we are not or at least haven’t been for a while. Which is why it is a little hard to take when we find oursleves in a situation where we are being painted into a corner in someone else’s mind.

Am I a new creation: YES! Am I still selfish and little to introspective—yes again.

As I was reading a poem by Octavio Paz last night, I was reminded of how hard it really is for any of us to understand the other. How Paz’s perception of reality finds its’ way to the page and with what images he uses to illustrate his thougths and feelings is much different from the way I do. It is really a matter of translation—you speak in one language and I in an other. Somehow we have learned to translate on the fly in order to get the business of life done on a daily basis. But do we really understand one another—what motivates us—what our passions and longings are. Most of us live life as if we do and are rarely ever called to task about it.

Some feelings are so deep we need a supernatural excavation to take place in order for us to even begin to fathom their effect on our current circumstances. As our hurts and wounds come to light, we can either deal with them or ignore them and since they really can’t be ignored we avoid them with work, play and maybe one more glass of wine than we need.

So, once again, pen in hand, I begin to describe the landscape of my past, present and future. It’s all about the wind and the rain—the sand and the sea—a cup of tea and a long walk after dinner while the sun is still shining.

Enjoy your ride.

This was the entry that didn’t want to be written. While I was in the middle of it yesterday, and the creative juices were really flowing, a storm passed through our area and knocked out the internet before I had hit the save button. I know better but stuff happens. So I will try to re-construct it today.

The subject of feeling inadequate came up the other day while talking with a friend. My friend had been hit with that feeling during a rather hectic week of incidents which stirred some of these feelings. After our conversation, and while walking with my wife, I thought of several ways to approach the subject in blog-land, knowing that we all have had similar thoughts about ourselves.

It is interesting to note the many words that begin with “in” and that most cause us to focus on what we are not rather than on what we are. In addition to inadequate there is: introspective. inward, inability and indirect. And these are just a few that come to mind. I am not trying to write a thesis here, just explore some ideas.

My friend certainly doesn’t have a lock on feeling inadequate. I remember a time in my life that represents what I am aiming for in this entry.

I had an old Buick that I had bought from a friend which I drove for a couple of years. We called it “the bomb” because it was big and an ugly green color which had gone from gloss to dull mat over the years. I had noticed that the hood was a bit uneven and when I tried to fix it I ended up cracking my windshield. It was just one of those days but the feelings that rose up in relation to this event were far bigger than what you would expect. At first I thought the cracked windshield was a sure sign that my life was certainly messed up—why else would this happen to me—I felt like I was being punished. That I had done something so stupid which in turn made the “bomb” a bit more broken and me a bit more inadequate than I was already feeling by this point. It was as they say in the south a real “pity party”.

That is until I went by the church I attended the very next day. There, parked by the entrance, was the pastor’s van which lo and behold had a big crack all the way across the windshield. It was a little bit of cosmic humor. My thinking was (don’t be to hard on me) that this man was certainly more spiritual than me and if his window was cracked then that must be something that just happens and I was not singled out to be punished or inadequate to the degree that I felt when I heard the crack begin to make its way across the windshield of my “bomb”.

I guess the point is also that when we look inside ourselves we are always going to see some areas that are still under construction—areas that we are less than pleased with. If our focus remains this way—inward as opposed to outward—then we will be destined to travel around that mountain again and again.

Feelings of inadequacy begin to be planted early in our lives and we don’t really realize that they are there until much later—at times and places that are not always predictable or rational. I don’t remember my parents ever telling me that I was a blessing to them or that I was destined to be a success in whatever I laid my hand to. Just the opposite—I remember times of being told how they didn’t think I would ever amount to anything. And when you are young you can’t filter out your parents frustration and what they are feeling from what is really going on. I realize now that they didn’t get any affirmation from their folks and so really didn’t know how to give what they had not received. It is a pattern I have seen repeated in many of my friends lives as well.

However, when examined, we find that Jesus suffered on the cross for our inadequacies. That His thoughts about us are that we are “…more than conquerors through him who loved us (Romans 8:37)”.

He specializes in taking broken things and making them whole again. Our part in all of this is not getting into a wrong inward focus mode which ends up highlighting all our flaws, but rather in an outward focus mode that allows us to see ourselves as complete and forgiven even before we need it.

Not that we don’t deal with our stuff or look inside—but only in a redemptive way that will release us to be all that we have been created to be—not condemed to suffer for something that has already been taken care of for us.

It’s a ride we are all on—say hello as you pass by.

Blogging has been a little spotty lately and my apologies to the two of you who keep up with my adventures—life has been pressing in on all fronts and the creative urge that leads to writing fell out of my pocket and I believe is lodged between the pillows on my couch. I found my pocket knife there the other day as well.

I visited my friend Stephen Rydell last Saturday. He owns Rydell Music out on Highway 105 and is a great musician and an all around interesting fellow. The reason for my visit was to find some inspiration directly relating to my guitar playing or lach thereof.

Sandi and I had been at a church a couple of weeks ago where praise and worship was led by Jonathon Helser, one of my favorites. During the song service I saw him change capos on his guitar several times and at one point he even had two hooked up and was playing a really nice song.

So, I went to Stephen’s and told him I was in pursuit of musical inspiration and that maybe a new fangled capo might be in order. After messing around with a couple, I bought what is commonly called a “cut capo” and once I reached home, I proceeded to play the guitar for several hours. Not bad for a long shot.

What the cut capo does is simply cover only three of the six guitar strings and when placed on the second fret, allows the guitarist to play in an open tuning without having to re-tune the guitar’s strings. The difference in the sound between regular and open tuning is like night and day. Open tuning gives all your songs that airy, celtic feel because the capo creates what is called a drone effect. Much of what you hear played today in contemporary Christian music is played with a cut capo.

Anyway, that has been a real blessing—finding a whole new way to enjoy playing the guitar.

On other fronts, I purchased a book of poetry written by Octavio Paz simply entitled “The Collected Poems”. Paz is a Mexican and the winner of the 1990 Nobel Laureate in literature. He passed away in 1997 but is considered by many to be one of the greatest modern poets.

His poetry is not for everyone, but once again, I read poetry to give myself that little extra push creatively. In his poen entitled “Last Dawn” Paz writes:

Your hair is lost in the forest,
your feet touching mine.
Asleep you are bigger than the night,
but your dream fits within this room.
How much we are who are so little!
Outside a taxi passes
with its load of ghosts.
The river that runs by
                                 is always
running back.

Will tomorrow be another day?

For some, that might just be enough poetry to last a life time, but I certainly hope not. I am afraid that poetry is a lost art in America. I have seen the poetry shelves in the local bookstores dwindle down to almost nothing. It’s not even worth the time to call and see if they have any poetry by authors I have recently discovered and want to read. I called one the other day to see if they had a book by Langston Hughes, the great black american poet. The girl on the phone knew who I was talking about and said that she would be glad to order a book for me but that there really wasn’t much call for that type of thing around here.

I told her the story of my bookselling career in one of the largest bookstores in East Lansing, Michigan. We were before the internet and Borders and Barnes and Noble. We prided ourselves in the fact that we had books on our shelves that maybe would only sell one or two copies a year. You could almost always find what you wanted in that bookstore. Yes, it costs money to warehouse an item that only replaces itself once a year—but for that one person who finds what he or she wants at the very moment that it is time to find it, the value is very great.

But it is “bottom line” time is America and I guess with the internet, a local business has to remain profitable and this leads to them only stocking what they can make money on—the best sellers and the books that are used in classes at the university and so on.

I asked the girl how many copies of “Lord of the Flies” she had sold and suprisingly was told that it still was a best seller along with those other cult classics such as “1984” and “Brave New World”. So my guess is that teachers are still using those books in literature classes and if you are interested, they are in stock locally. LOL

So—as you can see—it has been just a regular sort of week in the mountains of North Carolina for me. I, along with you, am waiting for Spring to come back so I can get on with planting a garden. Our lily leaves are looking a little tattered, having barely survived the recent influx of sub-freezing temps that came our way. Hopefully we will still get some blueberries and my spinach and lettuce will start to grow again.

It’s supposed to rain the rest of the day—so for now I will close and maybe go pick up my guitar and get ready for tonight’s meeting and tomorrow’s church.

Enjoy your ride!