Hope is a Vector?

July 2010 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 7 times the waves broke over top of me ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I came up cleansed from my infirmity -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Froze heart stop beating ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------d--- seared soul brought nigh ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- New and breathing blood beating ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Alive ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Come through death to the other side ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- White washed red sea in ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Walked out dry. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Flung alive to the pitching waves ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- And they closed over my head ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I said "I am lost" unto the flood ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Can leviathan ressurect? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- November 2012 -----------------------------------------------------------------!-------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- They say -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- That time heals wounds -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- But isn't it rather -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- the slow steady current -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- which bends this water -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- cold about us? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Healing to which -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Time is but catalyst? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- And this ebbing tide -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Chorus life -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Comes over and out -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Faithful. no means to prove. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Though does it --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Healing Yielding sometimes storming -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- placid mornings -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- consistent as --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- moon on its wake -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Stand then as long -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- in salty swelling blust -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 'till your wounds, first made acute -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- by its drug, healing touch --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- release you at will --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Return again, brinks and bluffs --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- barnacled shorelines --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- for ten thousand waves washing --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- might not wash your soul off --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Set you out ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------11-- scars as memories --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- time as grace ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Soul +Art+ Destiny?

I've noticed that many people, although availed with all the terrible overproduced stereo systems on the market from future shop to value village, still choose to listen to, what i consider rather tinny music from tiny speakers that their technology plug into. Even earbuds don't often sound that great. Somewhere it seems that compact got a little too compact. I'm just saying this because i was just sitting on my futon in the dark, excepting some Christmas lights with FM radio (which i also think is under-rated: you can get an excellent fm signal with a half decent receiver) coming through my solid state amplifier into two front facing mid-range wide load Yamaha cabinets and two more heavy magnets behind me, and well, the song was "full circle" by Half Moon Run. Some songs were just meant to be played like that i think. Or live. I recently went and saw Patrick Watson live at the most beautiful acoustic venue in town. And, you know, WOW. There comes this moment, you know it maybe, when you realize that this is who we are- with the beautiful wholeness that music can manifest. And I want to be that. I want it to be me. My vices seem like trash. My shallow ambitions like tricks. I know, somehow, that we were meant for this. We meant for beauty. If music can do that, if it can point to who we are meant to be, if it can show us that we are more, even that we are created and that that makes us so much more and not less, and that this world that we know is temporal against beauty we catch at glimpses, and that that should give us joy, well, then i'd say its about completed. And by this, i believe we Glorify God.

Art and Heart

On the way to school i listened to a song by the Weakerthans. It was a nice song. It reminded me of the older stuff by death cab for cutie- you know, the stuff that was a little more raw, but which connected to me more than what they've put out since. Then that made me think about this song i used to listen to by Switchfoot, way back before they hit it big with their album “The beautiful letdown”. I thought about how the stuff they have put out over the past few years was actually fantastic, but that it didn't mean that i disliked the bit-rate garage rock teenage angst song that i used to listen to. What is all this to say? Well, as i was thinking about this, i was also thinking about music in my life, about how its like a beautiful gift and a tease at the same time. Nothing seems to make more sense then when something about a musical work all lines up the right way in my brain and drops past the pin swipes and straight into my soul. But i know that most of the time its not like that. Most of the time its realizing my inadequacy on a keyboard line, my inability on interpreting a guitar rift, my stupification on a vocal inflection. Half the time i end up pounding on piano keys from frustration and not knowing how to end a half-hour of repetitive improv. Much of the time I listen to my own recordings and mock them in my mind. Even what i admit is better is never adequate. Its always works in progress, and though once in a blue moon these sessions and let-downs accumulate to a moment of completion- and that is a beautiful reflection and metaphor indeed- often times its just a veiled hope. Even as I write all this, however, I recognize the parallels to relationship, to those truly good things in life. They take work to maintain, but are worth it and resonate deeply when the hammer meets the gong. Its not something i can just opt out of. It is a beautiful journey in which my inadequacies and attempts are like a child feebly, clumsily, uselessly trying to imitate the strength of his Father. This makes me laugh. It liberates me. It doesn't need to be perfect. You don't need to be perfect. Who do you think you are? It won't be perfect until He completes it. Until then, keep playing, keep singing, keep laughing. This is a gift.

spin off #2: art and soul

Sometimes I ask friends, when we are past the "where do you work, where did you grow up" part of a relationship, what really makes them tick. My theory is that this might tell me more about a person than what they actually do as a career or spend their free time on. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- My rational for being so interested in this question, I think, partially comes from my own struggle with being an artist, not trying to justify it as a monetary exploit, but as something that has deeper value which I believe is important to not overlook. I've tried to stop disclaiming my creative side, since I believe it to be a gift, and a gift is not meant to be thrown back. This perspective makes me want to tease this X-factor out of other people who might also be sneaking around with their soul hidden on the inside. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The second reason I think I'm interested in this question comes from an old friend who phrased and rephrased it enough times to make it stick to me. He was the one who first asked me, "what scenario is it that makes you feel truly alive" and then suggested that something about that scenario said something deep and integral about me. I've never really quit mulling that over. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I went to a church a while back, where this guy named Jeremy was speaking. He was a pastor at a church in Whistler- which I'm not sure is to say something about his lifestyle or the lifestyles of those he aims to pull from lives of degraded snowboarding... In any case, a friend apologized for his sermon after, saying that Jeremy had wandered around without ever getting anywhere- which is fairly true, but since I felt he was talking to artists, i think it might have made sense to those whose brains don't make sense on a strictly "sense" level. Frankly, art points to truth and truth of experience in a way that empirical data just can't. At least, that's how i feel. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- So he gets talking about how beautiful Victoria's architecture is, and how one could feel the presence of God in the Royal Conservatory building and he goes on, saying that "what's going on is that artists... can point us to the creator... have a very unique role in the church in that through [their] creativity and through what [they] create [they] have the joy and the privilege of pointing people to the Creator, And so often what happens with [the artist's] work is that they become signposts- they become guideposts, pointing the lost and the wondering to where Jesus is.” -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I thought that that was a rather beautiful idea. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jeremy made mention of Romans 1:20, which suggests that creation gives testament to God. We, he concluded, as a part of God's creation, and a part of the redemptive process of our own creativity (as inherited from God for we see that God is creative and man is "made in his image") we, humans, can also participate in this. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Interesting... -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I come back to the tree: just doing its job: standing there. Its very releasing to me to think that what i have to do, is not so complicated. Certainly one of the most moving lines in literature to me has been an oft-quoted one, but one of the few which has truly moved me emotionally. It is Gandalf to Bilbo- you probably know the one- its in the movie too. When Bilbo is feeling overwhelmed by the weight of his conditions Gandalf reminds him that he is not alone in his sentiment- but he cannot change conditions: "All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us". -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- As Jeremy asks, "What are you creating?" -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Its a simple question. Followed by the obvious next: has my creativity found its fullness in its giving Glory to God? Here is where I think the connection between discipleship and creativity is found. I think that Discipleship, in a big way, is finding wholeness through discipline in a world we consider fallen. It effects our creativity as it does the rest of our lives; optimizing its purpose, defining through discipline the inherent beauty from rough. Like art in itself. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I'm not saying that Christian disciples have a monopoly on this process, and surely not on art, creativity or beauty. But we also live in a world where all creation doesn't SEEM to point to God all the time. Poets have observed the tyger, the nymph and the spider and asked valid questions as "What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry?" Calvinists have done well to use the doctrine of "The Fall" to explain this; and i suppose i must also lean on this useful concept. However, I also want to believe that God has long been interested in redeeming the world- that it is an oft-dark canvas on which he paints his drama of light. If an artist can bear witness or play a part in this process, knowingly or not, I feel that they may find their creativity fulfilled. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If someone reading this observed me without knowing me they might cry hippocracy, since much of my art, i think, tends to the intense, the dark or possibly even the obscene. I don't know that I could apologize for this. I tease it out and try to define it in relation to God. I value honesty greatly and have reason to believe that God does more.I pray and I trust that even my honest life meanderings here on this blog have served in some simple way to point to God- not by saying "Praise, Praise!" but by being a creative creation and by living day-by-day in His grace.

spin off #1: Soul

The suggestion is that some discipline, some standards, some convictions are in place as means to a greater end, to keep sight on our greater purposes, in which is to be found greater delight. This can be hard to get a head around. The pastor at church, recently, was talking about discipleship. Basically, discipleship is a choice, not an emotional experience. It doesn't really have prerequisites as far as i can tell, other than an act of will. It sounds intimidating, but the pastor gave two examples of how making a choice happens. -------------------------------------------- First, he gave the example of this guy named Nethanael who was, although he didn't know it at the time, about to become one of Jesus' 12 disciples. Story starts when Phillip comes up to Nethaneal and basically says, you've got to check out this Jesus from Nazareth: he's the real thing. To which Nate basically replies, you said this guy was from Nazareth?... I have my doubts, but I'll come with you and check Him out if it makes you happy." When Nethanael meets Jesus, Jesus calls him "a true Israelite in whom there is nothing false". A North-American reading might see this statement laced with sarcasm, but apparently that's not accurate. Jesus saw an intelligent specimen of his society, and a skeptic at that, and seemingly was like, I can use this guy. As someone who often feels too skeptical to belong in church, this exchange evokes grace. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The other character is found in a contested bit of the bible, but skipping over schematics, here's what happened: This woman (name not given) had been caught in adultery, and the Law-elites pointed out that the Law said she should be stoned. In an attempt to trip Jesus up, these guys ask Jesus,"what do you say?" ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jesus said that anyone without sin could throw the first stone. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- At this point, the passage says, those in hearing left, one at a time, with the older ones leaving first until there was no-one there but this messed up girl and Jesus. "Jesus straightened up and asked her, 'Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you? 'No one, sir,' she said. 'Then neither do I condemn you,' Jesus declared. 'Go now and leave your life of sin.'" -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This character was given mercy for nothing and a chance at getting cleaned up offered by the only one who was actually without sin. All she needed to do was respond. All I do is realize that the One who has enough interest in me to have mercy on me has an interest in what i become. It says more about who I am and my potential than what I've done and where I screwed it up in the past. Response seems pretty natural. Its baby steps, every one taken in the strength of His grace and the care of His mercy. (Its a hard one to nail in words). ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you had asked me before my new consideration of these themes which biblical character I most related to I think I would have told you it was the man who told Jesus "I do believe, help me with my unbelief". I still like this guy, because often my belief feels weak, but I think that Gods mercy and grace has grown me a bit past this. I can't keep using unbelief as justification for not entering discipleship- not when I see He has brought me carefully into his grace of acceptance and mercy of response- not when I get a taste of the good intent and purpose of a loving Father God.