What are you looking for?

After seeing some of these responses, I’ve decided to edit my approach and see what you think of the video objectively. Like I said, the band is Sigur Ros, and the song is called “Glosoli.” Enjoy. Or not. https://youtube.com/watch?v=okLCurB1lJw

Mother knows best. As a narrow-minded teen-ager, I jostled with my mom over the radio dial. If it was country, I didn’t want to touch it, didn’t want to hear it, didn’t want to be associated with it. With a friend in the car, I protested even more vigorously. At the first sign of a musical drawl from Merle Haggard or George Jones, I reached for the dial, in one motion hoping to change the station and avoid my mother’s semi-playful hand slap. With a knowing smile, she always told me, “Someday you’re going to like this music.” Mother’s intuition gave her the vision to see right through me. As a matter of fact, a few years later, I was hired as the evening disc jockey for Great Country Stereo KSO in Des Moines, Iowa, playing country music for six hours every night. The thing is, I didn’t really change; at least that’s the logic I used in attempting to save face with mom. Verbally backpedaling, I tried to explain to her that the music embraced by the public and radio as country music is what changed. The late 70s and 80s brought an evolution in country music which sliced the western portion of country/western right off the radio dial, making it palatable to even my image conscious ears. Ironically, some of the artists played on my preferred Top 40 stations in the 70s were artists that were precursors–indeed pioneers–to country rock, country pop, and the modern version of what passes for country today. England Dan and John Ford Coley, The Eagles, Bellamy Brothers, Olivia Newton-John, John Denver, Pure Prairie League, Poco, Neil Young, The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, The Marshall Tucker Band, The Ozark Mountain Daredevils, and Firefall are all examples of 70s and 80s country pop or country rock that today would carry the label country. When I started playing country music for public consumption, I embraced such artists as Steve Wariner, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Larry Gatlin, Emmylou Harris, Ronnie Milsap, Paul Overstreet, Dan Seals (of England Dan and John Ford Coley fame), and Don Williams, artists that had their formative roots planted firmly in folk, pop, or rock–or on some level–reflected that sound. With egg running down my face, I’m not sure mom bought my explanation–that such artists would have come close to fitting right in to the Top 40 music I favored back in the 70s, when music and program directors favored the song, not some overly homogenized sound. Diversity allowed for a country flavored song to make it on the playlist of Top 40 radio, as long as the artist didn’t have a history as a country artist. All this noted, because I’m about to recommend a project that must unavoidably and inevitably be classified as country. And if you shun the endorsement based on such a nebulous label, it would be a crying shame. No, Greg Adkins’s Chase the Western Sky doesn’t contain lyrical twists on trains, dogs, prison, momma, pick em’ up trucks or beer, but it’s country nonetheless. And it’s not only the kind of country I embrace, but the kind of country that worms its way into the cranny of my brain responsible for looping songs randomly: when waking, in the shower, at the mall, or at a basketball game. And unlike, “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer,” “Who Let the Dogs Out,” “Achy Breaky Heart,” or “The Meow Mix jingle (Meow meow meow meow, meow meow meow meow…), these are songs I’m truly happy to have occupying my empty head space. Greg Adkins brings at least two striking characteristics that boost his latest effort above that of many independent artists; his voice and his songwriting. First, the voice. It’s an instrument that belies its age and experience. Velvet soft, it’s a relaxed, mature sound which strikes me as comfortable, even homey. Dan Seals or Steve Wariner might be the beginning of a vocal comparison. If one can discern sincerity, honesty, kindness, and transparency from the color of a human voice, they are all to be found in Greg Adkins vocal timbre. About the songwriting; one hesitation I have in tagging Adkins collection of songs as country is the misimpression some might have about the songs’ IQ. We know that country can be smart (Lyle Lovett), but it’s probably fair to say that intelligence isn’t the first thing that comes to mind when one thinks about country music. To the contrary, Greg Adkins is a smart songwriter. He adroitly meshes folk music’s inclination to say something meaningful, maybe even profound, with country music’s honest simplicity. Expressing deep, emotional thoughts in a palatable, accessible way surely takes significant brain power. I’m betting that Adkins can write songs and chew gum at the same time. The songs from Chase the Western Sky seem to be written with a plan, complete with outline. Like other songwriters I admire, the songs from this project seem determined to take me somewhere. As a listener, I feel the confidence. Many folkish songwriters meander on the path of winding roads which are known to few but the songwriter. I love mystery and ambiguity in song, but want assurance that if searching, I’ll find something beneath the musical riddle. I don’t want to invest time if there isn’t something like a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. There are too many musical choices to spend inordinate time listening to a songwriter chase the tail of his own confusion (that’s confusion as a songwriter, not confusion about life, which we all share sometimes). Clarity. That might be the right word. The songs on this collection make sense. As narratives and emotionally, they resonate. They are simple, but not simple minded. They are clean and lucid, not pretentious and cluttered. Indian filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan has become known for narrative twists that are both surprising and satisfying, which isn’t easy. Some endings are surprising, but hokey. Some are satisfying, but not surprising; we see them coming from the concession stand. Adkins swiped a page from the Shyamalan playbook with songs like “On the Train Back Home” and “The End of You and Me,” which are unexpected and agreeable. With such an ending, I’m not just joyful; I’m joyfully moved. “The End of You and Me” is a song which takes a lump in the throat twist which won’t be revealed here. It’s so good that to reveal it would be to deprive you of experiencing the wonder of hearing it yourself. Like a telephoto lens slowly twisted into focus, each line reveals a little more of the puzzle. Soon the listener realizes that his first impression was quite mistaken, but in a good way. At once, the denouement is satisfying and fulfilling, lending perspective and meaning to the song that is far more eloquent and consequential than one might have imagined from his first impression. With superb vision, the musically lighthearted “Someday” anticipates the growth and development of a baby boy. With a distinctive harmonica introduction, the lyrics compare and contrast the questions of a boy and his father. I’ve always believed that art which effectively compresses the emotion of many years into one moment–a two hour movie, beautiful oil painting, short poem, or three minute song–is potent, concentrated medicine. Done well, such a song harvests years of emotion as if were being squeezed from a family photo album. Hearing such work, one is prone to flashes of emotion which can leave even the most hardened man wailing like a baby. Only the carefree melody of this song keeps it from being such a full blown weeper. “Further Up and Further In” is Adkins’s obvious nod to C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia and might be the least country of all the songs on the album. In another era, “Old Radio”–given aggressive record label promotion–could have been a hit record on mainstream country radio. “My Own Worst Enemy” is confessional in nature with the kind of personal candor that would make most of us squirm. The only cover is Julie Miller’s “By Way of Sorrow.” My friend Sharon says that literally every song on this project is good. Though it’s rare to find such a CD, I’m right with Sharon on that point. It’s the kind of disc in which skipping songs rarely happens. Every song is standout good. Adkins doesn’t seem to mind experimenting with a variety of musical flavors. Besides an array of the usual guitars and pianos, producer Chris Rosser recruited players sporting fiddle, upright bass, harmonica, dobro, banjo, glockenspiel, tambourine and a range of other unconventional percussion and instruments that might be found at a bluegrass festival or Fan Fair (known now as the CMA Music Festival). There exist a number of Christian artists that paved the way for an album such as Chase the Western Sky. And though it’s an effort that comes early in the career of Greg Adkins, its quality is on par with many of those that preceded it. Some are known, some are not. Some lean closer to folk, others closer to country: Ron David Moore, Paul Overstreet, Bruce Carroll, Dave Potts (who sings harmony on several Chase the Western Sky cuts and toured briefly with Adkins), Lenny LeBlanc (in pre-Christian days, the late 70s, had a Top 40 hit called “Falling” with partner Pete Carr), Brian Barrett, Buddy Greene, Dan Seals, Love Song, The Way, Dogwood (not the 90s punk-rock outfit), and let’s be honest–at times, Caedmon’s Call, Mark Heard, and Andrew Peterson (2004 Peterson’s song “Family Man”, from the album Love and Thunder, was nominated in the category “Country Recorded Song of the Year” for the 35th Annual Dove Awards). Over the last twenty years, I’ve personally collected music from all of these artists, including the music of Greg Adkins. It’s a definite niche. To one extent or another, they play and sing country music. And I like it. I like it a lot. Maybe. But if you see my mom, let’s keep that between us.

Forgiveness, like love, like our identity in Christ, is not a feeling. It is not rooted in our feelings, our soul-life. Forgiveness, like love and living from our identity, is a choice – a choice made because we know we have the Forgiving One living within us who is our Life. I don’t have make myself feel like a king, a priest, holy, blameless, not condemned; it is my place to choose to faithe (exercise faith, rely, actively believe and act in faith on what I believe – faith as a verb instead of a noun). Sometimes we have to choose again and again. In the mid nineties I had an identity crash, and had been so bound up in false identities that I had to choose again and again to believe in my real identity in Christ. This revelation doesn’t come to us and get through to us without opposition – we have a very real, a very hateful enemy that deeply desires to quell the rising expression of Christ’s life, love, and power in us. A mature Christian, one who relies totally on Christ, is very dangerous to the darkness – he sheds light wherever he goes, because he relies totally on Christ’s light within himself – and faith puts God into action. So – we have forgiveness issues. People have done wrong things to us, and very rightly we are bothered and angered by the injustice. We feel angry, and we feel we want to avoid them. These feelings are neither right or wrong – they are just feelings. Our feelings follow our thinking, our choices of faith. What we must remember is we are containers. Cups. Vessels. Branches. We are not meant to “forgive others” in our human effort. All we do is affirm that the One who hung on the Cross and said of his executioners, “Father, forgive them – they don’t know what they are doing,” lives in us. He is our forgiveness for others. All we do is thank Him for being our indwelling, faith-accessible Forgiveness. So, as with our identity in Christ, we choose – a naked choice that is not dependent on feelings, because it is driven by something so much deeper. “Lord, because you are Love in me, I choose to access your Love; what belongs to You belongs to me, because we are married, because we are in union, because we are ‘one spirit,’ not two. You laid down Your rights; You had done no wrong, and yet You were wronged – and You forgave. You are my indwelling source, my power to forgive ________. I totally and completely absolve them of any wrong, and ask that you would bring them to know you deeply. And furthermore, since You “work all things after the counsel of Your own will,” I say in faith with Joseph that You “meant evil for good” and You ordained that these people should wrong me in this way; You purposed to use their wrong to show me the power of Your forgiveness in me, and to show them the power and love of God.” That’s the naked choice – trust God no matter what we feel, think, see, hear, experience. God said it; we rely on it. I woke up on our band bus one morning a few years ago, anxious, fretting. I prayed through my identity in Christ. I asked God to work in my life. I prayed and prayed as I laid there. And after awhile a still, small Voice said calmly, You’re just trying to change how you feel. I laughed out loud, said, “You’re right,” and got up. Once I stopped centering on the feelings, they slowly dissipated as I went about my day. In forgiveness, as with other aspects of the Christian life, we often center on feelings, and since we’re trying to change them they won’t cooperate; it’s like trying not to be nervous. Taking our attention from feelings, putting it on Christ, will cause the feelings to dissipate as we continually choose to trust. We recognize and rely on God’s Facts – and God works through us.

Ever hear a song lyric that stopped you dead in your tracks, stirred something deep within you, or excited your imagination, or even made you chuckle with delight at the gift of the artist? I thought so. And now’s your chance to share it. I had the privilege of sharing a meal with 3 of my fellow Rabbit Room contributors the other day when I was in Nashville for a writing trip. Randall Goodgame, Eric Peters, Andrew Peterson, and myself partook of some comfort food at Tommy’s – I had meatloaf while the other guys all had pork, I believe (though I tried to tell them they shouldn’t since Jesus didn’t eat pork.) With writing on my mind, our conversation turned to our favorite song lyrics, and I told the fellas that we should write a post about our favorite lyrics of all time and ask others to submit theirs. I imagine most of us who visit the Rabbit Room know the pleasure of being moved by a great song lyric, and if that’s you, then it’s time for you to share it with the rest of us. We’d love to hear from you, the readers (and even the other contributors), about those moments when you heard a song and went, “Ahh! how’d they do that to me!” I think it’s best to not necessarily post a whole song, but only the portion of a song that best represents the lyric. If you have to post the whole song, do it, but I think brevity will be better here – and feel free to do multiple posts if you think of others. Speaking of brevity, I’ll stop writing about it and start doing it, giving an example of how to post: “song lyric here” — Artist “Name Of Song” Title Of Album Song Came From So like this: “Use your intuition It’s just like goin’ fishin’ You cast your line and hope you get a bite…” — Paul Simon “Father & Daughter” Surprise

When I graduated from college, I remember my english professor Fred Ashe walking at the front of the procession carrying this huge winged sphere on a pole that looked straight out of The Jetsons. I remember thinking, “What is that?” It was a mace. Evidently, once the use of heavy armor went out of style, men came up with a ceremonial use for their proud battle club. And I’ll get back to that in a minute. I, and many of my artist friends use the word “insecure” like an I.D. badge clipped onto our hip beatnik threads. I was having a conversation with a dear friend recently and he called himself “painfully insecure” with no hesitation whatsoever. At least he’s being honest, right? Our culture teaches artists that our art gives us value. But even in that twisted value system, our creations are always in the past,  sentencing us to a lifetime of self-doubt, and “chasing after the wind.” And man, that wind is hard to catch. Now, as a believer of the Christian Gospel, kinship with Jesus gives me all the value I could ever need and more, but that is often hard to remember in the face of the ever-present false value system of our culture. I propose, therefore, that we pay new attention to the word, insecure. Since that’s our self-defeating word of choice, let us put it to proper use. When the exterior doors of my house are locked, my house is relatively secure. Now, if someone really wanted to break in and screw things up, they could watch our daily habits and break in when we leave. But, I put my hope in the locks and the relative safety of the neighborhood, and drive away. Here’s what I’m saying. As an artist and a believer in Christ, when I say “I am insecure,” I am actually saying, “I have forgotten where to put my hope.” I can not say “I am a believer” and “I am insecure” and be telling the truth about both things. I am either mistaken about my faith, or confused about the word “secure.” In Jesus, I am presently and eternally secure. This is not mere semantics. If we agree that we can effortlessly idolize our gifts, and other peoples appreciation of them, then we can as easily encourage each other away from that tendency by calling it what it is. “Today, I am forgetting the power of what Christ has done in me.” “Today, I am believing a warped value system.” “Today, I have forgotten. Will you remind me?” That bears more hope than, “I am so insecure.” And, it is much more true. This brings me back to the mace. What a nasty, powerful weapon. Back in the day, if you wielded a mace, you were ready to do serious harm. Today, we carry polished and decorated imitations for show. There is no danger, there is no power, and to an onlooker, the presence of a mace is just confusing. This is what my faith is like when I claim “insecurity.” What is the point, really? This is not to say that we ought to remember Christ more. Not at all. This is just to say how much we need each other in this life of faith. For our faith to retain its age old purpose, we need to speak this language to each other as we fellowship together and perform together. As artists, we reflect the world back on itself. For us as much as anyone, it is imperative that we are not delusional. If the artist is confused about where to seek and find hope, so may become her audience.

Every Tuesday morning, I sit in a circle of other pastors and discuss and debate (and sometimes yell and point) the Bible for our weekly sermon. We call it the Teaching Pool, a fancier name than “study circle.” Still, for the last four years or more, this same group of 10 or so has taught chapter by chapter through the Bible, crafting our sermons together and challenging each other. So this week, I was the one challenged. We’re teaching through Colossians and I had studied in advance for our meeting, ready to point out the tremendous insights I had already gleaned from the text. I was discussing one of these finer points, when my friend pointed out something in the Greek text which changed everything: “That you is actually plural.” That simple five word statement changed quite a bit about what I was espousing on. My basic point: That Jesus was the fullness of God (the deity in Col. 2) and we are the fullness of Christ. I was going on and on about the value of each of us to be the fullness of Christ on earth, which is certainly true to a point. But then he said that statement. “That you is actually plural.” I sat down and shut up. Pretty soon, the theological beach ball was being tossed around by others and I didn’t want to play. What did that mean? If the you is plural, that changes a lot. I grew up with every Steven Curtis Chapman CD on repeat for a few years. “Treasure of You” is a familiar song in which he sings to his daughter of her tremendous worth in the sight of God; how she is the said “treasure.” And of course there is beautiful truth in this – that we are the pearl of great price. That each and every one of us can be redeemed, loved, adored . . . treasured. “That you is actually plural.” That phrase doesn’t shatter my “Treasure of You” theology but it sure puts a different spin on it. At the very least, it adds a lot more depth. msn games free online. I, alone, am not the fulness of Christ. And God isn’t just coming back for me. Now, we can split theological hairs on this one, but hang with me. We, together, are the fullness of Christ. We, together, are the bride of Christ. With that one statement, the slow realization that it takes all of us together to be who we are meant to be crept in. My friend Andrew said it best: “It takes all of us united together living now and all who came before us in ages past and in ages to come to equal the fulness exhibited by Jesus Christ on earth.” Now that can sound depressing almost in its scope, but I think the opposite is true. There is hope for us to be everything the Bible says that we are (and that we never seem to be able to attain), and that hope is found in each other. I need you. And you need me. And we need others. When I am united with you in love, when we are in One spirit in what we say and do, when we are connected in common mission–that’s when the body of Christ comes alive and we are the treasure, we are the Bride, we are truly the hope of the world. There’s a chasm known as individualism in our Western Christian circles. It’s the “every head bowed and every eye closed” mentality as God and I try to do this spiritual walk the best that I can. You may help teach me some things and you might listen if I ask you to, but overall it’s all about my own personal walk with God. And letting you in on it is a luxury, a privilege–not a right. But my value is not found in my own self, my own abilities or gifts, my own righteousness. I am ugly enough apart from God and even with God, I’m not that great without you. Somehow we become beautiful when we open our lives to each other, sharing life, giving life. “That you is actually plural.” And that’s actually great news–that, as Derek Webb once sang, “For the sake of the world, I thank the Lord that the truth’s not dependent on me.”

At the Florida Sheriffs Boys Ranch, I present a new craft or art project to our eighty-two boys every month. In the past years these monthly projects have spanned the range from soapbox derby cars and tie-dying to oil painting and macramé. I love my job and I love teaching but during January one of the frustrations I deal with on a regular basis has really begun to bother me. This month I’ve been positively giddy about building rockets but out of the eighty kids I’ve offered a rocket kit to, less than twenty have followed through and actually built one. Less than twenty. The rest just don’t get it. “What’s the point,” one boy told me and asked if he could be excused to go play Halo. There is something wrong when a teenage boy doesn’t get excited about a tube full of explosives that is made to be lit on fire and shot into the sky. It bothers me. I deal with the same issue every month and it makes me sad that the imagination and sense of wonder in some of these boys has been so crushed. If we paint, they often try to throw their work in the trash when I’m not looking because it didn’t come out as photorealistic as they imagined it. If we’re building pinewood derby cars they give up and walk away because it doesn’t look just like the one on the side of the box. Where are children learning to be so critical? Boys don’t seem to know how to dream anymore. When I was a kid (ugh, I’m pretty sure starting a sentence like that qualifies me as old or something), we spent all our time outside: skateboarding, building ramps, exploring the woods, hunting bullfrogs with BB guns, planning tree-forts that we’d never build, and flattening pennies on railroad tracks. There was just no end of things to do, or plan, or get away with. But at work I see kids that are completely lost when they are told to turn off the TV and go play. I’m not exaggerating when I tell you that they don’t know what to do. The Binary Trigger works by taking advantage of an interpretation of what is considered “semi-auto”. Have you ever wanted a machine gun but can’t afford the high cost? Well, Franklin Armory’s Binary Trigger simulates full auto. The important part to understand is that as of this writing*, this is 100% ATF approved and legal. The BFSIII trigger is Franklin Armory’s latest AR-15 trigger design. The Binary Trigger works by taking advantage of an interpretation of what is considered “semi-auto”. According to the ATF, semi-auto is defined by a single manipulation of the trigger and a single round is fired. On a campus with eighty teenage boys I have never seen a game of tag. Not one. They don’t know what tag is. The only games they know are basketball and football, because they’re taught those on TV. Often when boys are asked what they want to do when they grow up, they don’t have an answer, not even a wild and crazy one like ‘be a rapper’ or ‘play in the NFL’, they just shrug.  They’ve never thought about it because they’ve been spoon fed their entertainment for the whole of their short lives and have never had to entertain themselves with their own imaginations.. If a child doesn’t learn how to imagine, how to dream, how can he ever learn how to hope? What’s going to happen twenty years down the road when life has led them to their wit’s end and they find they aren’t able to see something better down around the bend? I’m afraid our culture is in the process of stripping children of their desire to create, and imagine. When a generation without dreams inherits the earth, what possible good can be left in it? You’d be appalled if I told you how many stories I have of parents that look at their child’s creative efforts and tell them with a frown that it’s not very good and they are wasting their time. Sometimes it’s all can do not to grab people and shake them and make them see what a precious thing they’re destroying. One day, when I have children of my own, I can’t wait to foster their imaginations. I can’t wait to see a ferocious dragon in a smear of fingerpaint. I can’t wait to see the grandeur in their scribbles and swirls. I want to teach my children that the world is a place of endless possibility if only they can learn to see it. I want to show them that the untamed imagination of a boy can grow into the steadfast hope of a man. Until then, I’ll have to settle for the joy I take in seeing the creative spark ignited in those precious few who dare to build a rocket, set it all afire, and cheer it into the great blue yonder.

Thanks for all the entries, folks. Next year’s race is going to be beyond pretentious if you guys are right. I finally got around to seeing There Will Be Blood this weekend and I’m wondering if there isn’t some way to canonize Daniel Day Lewis. That guy is my hero. So after finally seeing that film, Keith gets big bonus points for making me spray tea out my nose for his suggestion of a musical version starring Robin Williams and Eddie Vedder. Who wouldn’t pay to see those two break into a song titled You Stole My Milkshake and duke it out with bowling pins? That’s just genius. (The Dude should make a cameo.) Keith gets another bonus for the title, Flee! Enemies! Another tea-spraying moment for me and that was before I even read his synopsis. Someone get Uwe Boll on the phone to direct that one, please. Other than the comedic entries, I thought a few of them really had that Best Picture ring to them: The Plains of Serengeti, The Eleventh Hour, and Victory’s Song. Unfortunately though, there can only be one winner. The envelope please… The award goes to Tina Zorn for The Plains of Serengeti. Congratulations, Tina. She gets the win because not only does it most definitely have that magic title, it’s also got a pet-cheetah-mauling scene. Just imagine the tagline: ‘On the plain, no one can hear the cheetah maul you.’ I’m crossing my fingers for Tracy Morgan to play the mauled witch-doctor. So there you have it. I’m afraid someone ran off with the solid gold statuette (probably Randy Goodgame because his Legend of Pope Joan got snubbed), but I’ll be sending you a copy of Alan Paton’s brilliant Cry, The Beloved Country. It’s worth more, believe me. It’s one of my favorite books ever and is just screaming to be a Best Picture one day. (The only movie version thus far is a stinker.) Thanks for all the entries humoring my little Oscar challenge. If anyone that enjoys this sort of thing has ideas for future contests I’d love to hear them. If you think they are stupid and I should be cheetah-mauled, I’d love to hear that too.

Ellis is one year-old now and is in a mighty good state. He must be growing something fierce because he sleeps a lot these days. 14-15 hours a day. Oh, what I would have given for him to sleep that kind of sleep those first few months of his life. Oh, what I would give to be able to sleep that much every day. How times change. He weighs nearly 20 pounds – a regular bantam featherweight boxer – and crawls around like the ground were his and his dominion alone. I suppose that is the way God intended it. Ellis adores the hand-me-down Fisher Price multi-colored rings (reminds me of a ring toss game) and has a peculiar habit of crawling here and there throughout the house with one in each hand, creating the effect of horse hooves, occasionally pausing to knock them together or to drop them to the ground, all the while watching as they twirl, sway and roll to a standstill. What can I say, the dude likes gravity. Amusement gratis, food, beverage, and burying his drooly face in our long-haired obese cat’s fur; Ellis finds joy in it all and, as a result, all of joy seems to find him. Everything is repeated ad nauseum. I am sure this repetitive nature only gets more drastic and dramatic as the months pass and my dear boy grows older. Another great thing about Ellis is the depth of laughter he has infused into this house, our cozy cottage on sleepy Russell Street. What he finds humorous, we of course are effected to confront with laughter as well. His high, free laugh is no weak medicine. The contagion of laughter has done me well, especially since it has been in short supply these days. We kneel and praise all small, forgotten miracles. Over a cup of coffee yesterday with Matthew Perryman Jones, he and I began sharing with one another our outlooks on life, career perplexities and successes, fatherhood, worries and joys. A wise man, this Mr. Jones. He spoke many great things to me, but one thought in particular gripped me, or rather had the effect of unlocking corroded, self-inflicted shackles. As we commented on our world, both macro and micro, and on the American culture we are so helplessly immersed in with all its greed, self-service, community-less-ness and overt and subtle materialism he alluded to songwriting and the pursuit of making it big, pursuing the horizon. The only problem, as he put it, is that we can pursue the horizon forever and a day, but we will never reach it. It is infinite. It is sightless. And it is ruin. We do what we do in life, we write songs for that which is in front of us, who and what is a part of our lives, who and what we can see, care for, nurture and for whom we can give our absolute best. We know what we write, therefore we write what we know. The Truth comes to us from those we know and love, and who love us for who we are. Their voices are light in our lives, laughter for the disheartened, they are grace and hope at the time when it is needed most. This, dear friends, is God alive in the world – our world – and as I can see it, this Emancipation is the way God, THE God, intends it for his Kingdom. Reveille.

I am not a fan of Civil War literature; in fact, I have always thought of it as one of those weird sub-genres for obsessive types. They’re almost like Trekkies with their re-enactments and maniacal devotion to detail. It’s just not my thing (although I’m secretly jealous that they get to dress up and shoot cannons). So for years I’ve heard The Killer Angels referenced, alluded to, and praised but I never paid much attention. Clearly, some great battle happened at Gettysburg and lots of people decided to write lots of books about it but, as I said, it has never been my thing. I vaguely remember being underwhelmed by the movie adaptation (Gettysburg) as well and that reinforced my feeling that this wasn’t a book I was in any hurry to read. At Christmas however, Andrew forced the book on me and throttled me until I promised to read it—then I beat him up (it’s what skinny, left-handed, younger brothers are good for). I few days later I found out how nice it is to be wrong. This book, The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara, shook me. It bent me over, broke me in half, and scattered me all over the ground. It is not what I imagined it would be. It is not three hundred pages of 19th century minutiae and stuffy old men arguing politics. It is not chapter after chapter of troop movements and artillery fire. It is not a novel length treatise on the glory of war or states’ rights or an essay on the evils of slavery. It is so much more, and yet it is all those things as well, and it is beautiful. California Fake ID. The entire book is suffused with an overwhelming sadness and sense of loss, a sense that the Civil War wasn’t just fought with cannonades and cavalry but was fought in men’s souls. The generals and officers, through whose eyes we see the battle, are such heartbroken, wounded, and human characters that in the midst of the incredible horror of war, they are rendered glorious simply by being alive. I can’t tell you how many pages of my copy are tear-stained. By the time I turned the last page, I wanted nothing more than to get in my truck and drive north to find the rocks and fields where these men poured themselves out, to sit alone and dig my hands into the earth and grieve. How accurate the book is historically, I don’t know, but I do know beyond any shadow of doubt that this is a true story. True in the sense that it is a revelation of the human soul. It is a document of shining heights and bloody, nightmarish depths. On a precious few occasions, I have read books that so emotionally exhaust me that I cannot pick up another for weeks, and sometimes I cannot even suffer myself to read another work by the same author for fear of spoiling something so sublime. This is one of those books. Michael Shaara has written something timeless, something so unique in the world that it cannot be duplicated or improved upon. I hope his words are still read long after his Pulitzer Prize has turned to dust. Whether or not the Civil War is your thing, this book deserves a place on your bookshelf. It needs to be read.

Twelve hours ago I wanted to be right where you are now. Better yet, I just didn’t want to be where I was. I didn’t want to be what I was or even who I was. These sort of Sundays happen for me every now and then – the ones where I feel there couldn’t be a more incompetent pastor in the history of God’s calling. There were multiple points throughout my own teaching where even I was wondering what I was talking about. Then came the meetings. It took me seemingly forever to be able to leave the church only to have to meet up with more over an extended lunch. All nice people. All good intentions. Nothing over-the-top. But there’s this wall that you hit, really you know that it’s coming far before you hit it because it’s properly labeled “ENOUGH” in giant white letters across the brick facade. I came home and I couldn’t have been more done in that moment. I didn’t want to write, study or talk to anyone (which in my communal house of four married couples is an achievement unto itself). And, ultimately, I didn’t want to do it again. Aside: Now, there are numerous bad pastor jokes (they are all bad, really) where everyone quits every Monday morning. And that’s sad. I am not one of those guys. I will laugh politely when one of those guys makes that stupid joke, but I am not one. But I really didn’t want to do it again. I think my motto a few hours ago would be, “If only I could have a job from 9 to 5, where I could just clock in and clock out and not bring it home with me. I’d have weekends. My wife and I could travel. I’d actually make some money. And best of all, I’m not on the receiving end of phone calls about our budget (under), people’s complaints (over), or having to be all things to all people. But that’s a lie – a myth built on escapism. I have heard the overtures speaking in the opposite direction: “I’d love to write and be a pastor and just be self-employed like you. You’re your own boss.” True. Even from other pastors, I’ve heard: “I’d love to work in a church like yours – filled with young dreamers and creative types, much better than my own where it takes forever to get anything done.” And true again. I’m sure if I was pushing paper I would miss this gig. I would miss working wherever my laptop was conveniently located (Panera, anyone?). I would miss meaningful conversations and a feeling of inspiration and purpose – that my job actually meant something. But earlier I didn’t care for any of those explanations at all. I just wanted out. And as averse as I am to taking the quick ticket, I’m glad there wasn’t one laying around in that moment to grab. Now it’s 2 am. I’m normally asleep three or even four hours ago. It’s lame, I know, but it’s true. But tonight I can’t sleep. Visions of “this morning went horrible and I hate myself” are playing over and over, replacing the dancing sugarplums from the recently holiday season. I pull a Peretti and pierce the darkness, opening my laptop to check my inbox. And I find ‘the email.’ You know the one before I even describe. The ‘thanks’ one. The one that pulls you back into your purpose and calling and reasons for doing what you do. And of course, she even says, “I don’t know why I’m writing this now…” I do.This is what always seems to happen. As we wrestle with our calling to teach, to paint, to sing, to write, to pastor, to lead, to follow, to endure… we quit again and again, wondering why we are even doing this thing. I feel like there must be countless people better suited for my job than me and that’s a very common thought in my world. But there’s always just enough to keep me moving, to keep me insanely convinced that maybe, maybe I am just the person for this. Doubt is essential to our calling. I find myself more scared of the people uber-confident in their calling and abilities and writing books telling me that I can be the same way. I think I’m drawn to people questioning, asking “What the hell am I doing here?” My Bible is full of those kind of heroes – the shaking-at-the-knees men and women thinking there are countless people more qualified than they are and wondering why the cosmos has deferred a particular task, job, position, title or dream upon them. So I guess I don’t want to trade spaces with you. Or anyone else for that matter. When I look at the company I happen to be in, it’s not so bad after all.

Here’s another cool video, courtesy of my friends at Portland Studios. Justin Gerard illustrated the cover to my 2005 record The Far Country, as well as the illustrations for my upcoming book On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness. Portland Studios published a beautiful picture book called Beowulf: Grendel the Ghastly, which is available on Portland’s website, and will soon be available here in the Rabbit Room. The soundtrack to the video is courtesy of my friend Jeremy Casella’ new record, RCVRY.

All of us have a God-created need for love, approval, acceptance, security, worth, meaning. Many or most of us grow up in circumstances which make us feel insecure, unloved, unaccepted. Until we abide consistently in Christ, we all know we’re lacking something; we’re insecure. We attempt to fill that sense of lack with “I’m good at something” or “My dad is the CEO of Shell Oil” or “My wife or husband loves me” or “My children need me” or “If I can just win this Dove Award….” And so we give circumstances, the world system, and people the power to crush or crown. Many use alcohol, drugs, and sex as a temporary anesthesia. If we’re not of that bent, we can still see the same tendency in ourselves – excessive television, video games, directionless web surfing, and the like. And then, after a mind-numbing respite, we run back to the restless search for worldly acceptance. God says all of that world system of performance-based acceptance is a sewer. Paul considered his former life of gaining approval, acceptance, worth, security, and meaning from the praise of men as dung. Feces. Human waste. Crap. On the Damascus road God exploded the serpentine spell that had enchanted Saul’s mind, and as his rear hit the ground Paul realized he’d been trying to get Life by feeding on raw sewage. That infinite hunger in us has a big sign on it: “God Only.” “I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you…Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood remains in me, and I in him. Choosing the best cannabis seeds for your local growing conditions is vitally important. Just as the living Father sent Me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on Me will live because of Me…he who feeds on this bread will live forever.” Jesus wants us to nourish ourselves with Himself, by His Spirit, by His view of us, not by chasing after worldly approval. His Word says that His Blood-bought people are new creations, accepted, loved, that we no longer live but Christ lives in us, that we are dead to sin, dead to Law (dead to having to exert our own strength to ‘be like Christ’), alive to God, slaves of righteousness, holy, full of infinite worth because the Worthy One lives in us. The human race is hungry for what Jesus Christ alone can supply. “All the full-ness of the Deity lives in Christ in bodily form – and you are complete in Him.” One translation I have says, “And you, by your union with Him, are also filled with it.” “If a man love Me, he will keep My words, and My Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.” That’s real Food and real Water – the Triune God coming to live within a man or woman. What we’re looking for, to the last drop and crumb, is already inside us in Christ: “In Him we have everything (everything!) we need for life and godliness.” “He that believes on Me, rivers of living water shall flow from his inmost being.” When we begin to find that better way of resting in total reliance on Christ, our Kingdom life begins here and now in earnest. Power – passion – purpose – and real food and drink.

I crossed the Tennessee River at precisely 12:30am. I know this because I happened to glance at the green-glowing dashboard clock while the waters sneaked along dark and cavernous beneath the airborne pavement at that very moment. The river barely revealed its broad image in those late hours, but the moon’s astral glow made the river’s presence below the bridge visible, even if only in my mind’s eye. A small array of clouds funneled overhead, their horizon-long tendrils colored mock-orange, no doubt from the lights of nearby Huntsville, and they snubbed their proverbial noses at the clarity of night. I drove away from Birmingham after saying goodbye to some old and new friends at a surprisingly well-attended show at the church Danielle and I worshiped at during our six-year stay in the Magic City. Once meeting in a warehouse (not the cool, red brick-laden kind; imagine the drab, boring office variety), the church bought Birmingham’s only combination ice-skating rink/indoor soccer facility a couple of years ago and has slowly converted it into a surprisingly cozy, hospitable, high-ceilinged affair. Lovely and inviting with its earth tones, stained concrete floors, well-worn antique sanctuary doors, and non-traditional soft lighting, the building has a new life of its own. I was glad to see familiar faces again. I managed to remember a few names, which spared me from embarrassment. It is a good thing my old man tendencies don’t always emerge victorious. I fear that I say some very odd, nay, clumsy things from stage. I managed to fumble my way through my ill-thought-out set list, all the while hoping against hope that the words on my heart would translate from my lips clearly and humbly. On the drive down to Alabama I had hoped to communicate with my gracious (and patient) audience by being openly honest and upfront with them about my recent personal grappling(s) with God. I remember trying to equate my present story with that of Jacob’s ancient one. Instead, I’m fairly certain that I came off like a clueless child uttering words he knows nothing about. I felt like I was another son of Laughter, only wanting. Folks were nice afterwards anyway. One of the most frustrating and perplexing things about myself – to me, at least – is my inability to clearly state what is fresh on my heart and mind whenever I get the opportunity, the privilege, to be on stage and share what has been given me. I nearly always manage to get tongue-tied and stutter and stammer my way to near oblivion. I speak nonsensically. I make a mockery of the English language. I am a klutz. I become a clanging cymbal to those within earshot. I ride roughshod over beauteous language. In short, I become a fool. Do you relate to this? If only I possessed the tongue of an angel, if only words weren’t such an obstacle for my muddied mind. If only I were someone else. Do you relate to that? After staying awake by the power of sunflower seeds, I pulled into Nashville around 2:30am and the skyline was as sharp and in-focus as I’ve seen it in many months. Cityscapes are held tighter and are more visually stunning when the air is cold and the sky bereft of cloud cover. Skylines appear more confident-looking on crisp, cold fall nights when the stars are shining full throttle and the artificial downtown lights create their own sort of brilliance giving further definition to the buildings’ already impressive outlines. It is a place of integrity on nights like this. Buildings seem to stand taller, the stars fervently grind away at darkness, the cold takes your breath away, while your breath gives back to the cold air its heavy-handedness. I suppose this is akin to what the Holy Spirit manages to do with us, the well-meaning, deeply hoping children and klutzes of God. I wonder, how is it that we become the strong-frail dwellings of integrity and light now that God himself has shone his grace upon and within us? We, as a result, are held tighter, stand taller, receive a confidence and courage that is not our own, and relay a definition – an outline, if you will – that is far more becoming to us because of that outreach of grace than we must be to God in all our clumsy, wishful pseudo-articulateness. Praise be.

I just got done reading a book that I honestly didn’t expect to like as much as I did. I picked it up on a whim because I had a gift card and the hardcover was only 5 bucks on the bargain table at Barnes & Noble. The book is called “Bono” and is a series of interviews by Mischka Assayas with, you guessed it, Bono: celebrity humanitarian, friend of world leaders, religious mystic, hedonist, equal parts stump preacher and traveling salesman, and of course the mercurial frontman for arguably the biggest rock band in the world: U2. That Bono is one of the more intriguing personalities in the worlds he inhabits of politics, entertainment, and spirituality is an understatement, and I expected this book to interesting, but I didn’t expect it to enthrall me the way it did. My reading discipline right now is that I read a book that I ought to read, usually of a theological nature, as part of my devotion time in the mornings, and then at night before bed I read a book that is less demanding – usually a novel, a book that I want to read before going to sleep. “Bono” was going to be my junk food read, and the first night I cracked it open I couldn’t put it down, staying up ‘til the early morning hours. It was clear that my devotional reading times were going to take a hit. I was having trouble sleeping (we were away from home) so I would take a sleep aid and the countdown would begin: I knew I had 20 minutes before I would be sleepy. But through bleary eyes I fended off sleep to read “just one more chapter”. Admittedly, I’ve been a U2 fan since high school and have had a man-crush on Bono ever since. But even if you’re not a fan, I think there is much to tickle the mind in this book. He’s lived a remarkable life and could be a case study of passion. It’s set up like an ongoing interview, where Assayas asks a question and Bono responds, back and forth, as we eavesdrop on a conversation about music, faith, politics, humanitarianism, and other big ideas (like the kind of landscape artist bassist Adam Clayton would be if he hadn’t ended up in a rock band.) Assayas clearly disagrees and challenges Bono on his humanitarian idealism and his belief in God among other things, which makes for a livelier and more interesting conversation than if he’d succumbed to hero worship and fawning. At first I found Assayas’ contrariness annoying, but in the end was grateful for the conversation it produced. The only thing I wondered is where the conversation would have gone if Assayas was more religiously minded – how much deeper would it have gone? Still, of particular interest to me was the way Bono speaks often and explicitly about his faith – seeming to almost be looking for opportunities to talk about this part of his life. I remember first seeing the U2 album “Boy” in a Christian record store in Sioux Falls, South Dakota when I was a kid and being intrigued. I passed over it at the time opting instead for Amy Grant’s “Age To Age” album because I thought she was prettier, but as I got older I was more and more taken by this Irish band whose album I would find in our local Christian bookstore but who I would also hear on the radio and on my favorite T.V. shows like “21 Jump Street” and “Miami Vice”. These guys were apparently Christian, but they were cool, too, and listening to U2 gave my burgeoning sense of Christian identity some much desired street cred. U2’s music became a sort of handshake between me and my Christian friends. They belonged to us. And of course, that’s what almost ruined everything. In the late 80’s and the 90’s most Christians I knew felt betrayed by U2 as the sincerity of their faith came into question and became a source of ongoing debate for the next 15 years. Some are still suspicious. Bono got sexier, could be spotted smoking, drinking, dressed in drag, and cussing like a sailor. It was confusing to young believers who had never been equipped to understand much beyond the black and white accoutrements of an over-simplified Christian worldview. But deep down I never lost faith. I still bought U2 albums and pored over the lyrics looking for clues. vipdubai escort in dubai. My searches were rewarded in songs like One, Until The End of The World, The Wanderer, and Wake Up Dead Man, just to name a few. These songs were soul-searing confessions and a yearning for grace with a capital G. With the release of “All That You Can’t Leave Behind” it appeared that the burning spirituality that had seemed to lie dormant for some was once again U2’s calling card. Had they ever lost faith? Or were they just trying to avoid being ghetto-ized by the evangelical subculture who wanted to make them the poster children of hip Christianity? “Bono” addresses this and offers an explanation for some of their antics in the 90’s. One of the things that I was reminded of was that though U2 is one of the most successful rock bands in the world, they’ve always defied convention. “Joshua Tree”, though one of the most successful records of the 80’s, doesn’t sound like a conventional 80’s record. They were rock stars that were always playing against type, and as Bono describes it, that’s what the 90’s were about. U2 was earnest and unpretentious when the musical zeitgeist of the 80’s was all about glam and fashion (think Culture Club & Duran Duran). But when alternative rock music went mainstream with Nirvanna, Pearl Jam, and others in the 90’s, that’s when U2 went glam and got sexy. What was more countercultural than doing a disco album in the 90’s? Bono maintains that the heart of U2 never changed, they were just looking for new ways to challenge the conventions of their time, to mock the rock star myth. These were the kinds of insights I expected from this book, and while it was all very interesting, it turned out to be the least compelling part of the book. It was rather his stories of growing up with a stern father, his married life of more than 25 years to one woman, the stories of his times in Africa and San Salvador that would lead to his advocacy for the world’s poor, his Christian philosophizing, and his relationships with some of most influential people of our times that made for long nights where I couldn’t put the book down. I loved reading how important it his to him to get the blessing of older men. He never misses the opportunity to ask for it, kneeling before men like Billy Graham, Nelson Mandela, and Pope John Paul to ask for their blessing. He shared remarkable stories like the one of Mikhail Gorbachev’s recent unexpected visit to his house for dinner one night, stuffed animals in hand as gifts for Bono’s children. (Over dinner, Bono asked Gorbachev if he believed in God, Gorbachev’s answer was no, but he believed in the universe). Of great value to me also were the insights into Bono’s creative process. For years he’s managed to write songs both accessible and artistic and it stirred my own creative juices to hear how he approaches his craft. One of the other things that really made an impression was how from the very start U2 understood what they were doing as worship. There is much talk now of Christian artists wanting to break out of the evangelical “ghetto” that stifles so much good creativity. But long before this was a common conversation, these scrappy Irish kids who could barely play their instruments were instinctively blazing a trail around the ghetto, setting the borders on fire, on their way to becoming in maybe the most important sense a truly “Christian” rock band. This was meant to be a short review (my reviews here are always too long), but I keep finding aspects of the book that seem worthy to mention. I’m going to practice some self-discipline now and say that you’ll just have to read the book. U2 is genuinely a seminal band who have inspired many imitators but no equals. Reading this book gives gives you a peek into the life of a truly passionate, intelligent, big spirited (if not big headed) artist who has the appearance of fearlessness and whose megalomania is bewilderingly matched only by a profound humility. Thank God I’m done with this book so now I can get some sleep at night and return to my less “flashier” devotional studies.

The Academy Awards nominations were announced earlier this week. Ten years ago I’d have been giddy with excitement, in fact, I actually attended Oscar parties with my film club in college (the Film Guild we called it—and we were serious). Some people wore tuxes–that’s right, wore tuxes–to the bar at the Holiday Inn in East Hartford, CT to watch the awards show on the big screen TV in the corner by the Ms. Pacman machine. It was a real classy outfit. I was the president. You’ll notice I’m not making any films lately. So these days I have to say I don’t really care too much. I take a passing interest in what gets nominated but I don’t bother watching the show anymore. Heck, I can’t rent a tux in my small town anyway. The thing I notice though, is that the films that make the Best Picture list usually sound like they were made to be there. Just look at this list of contenders and tell me they don’t all sound like their nominations were foregone conclusions the moment the screenplay rolled off the copier: There Will Be Blood No Country for Old Men Atonement Munich Brokeback Mountain The Aviator Finding Neverland You get the idea. I’m leaving out the oddballs like Michael Clayton, Juno, Million Dollar Baby, Crash, etc. for the sake of fun but you have to admit that some titles just have ‘nominate me’ written all over them before you even know whether the movie is worth watching. So here’s the deal. I want to know what’s going to win Best Picture next year. Whoever makes up the most convincing title with that Best Picture ring to it gets a free book from the Rabbit Room store. We’ll close submissions a week from the date of this post and open the envelope and cheer (snicker) at the winner. Bonus points for coming up with a compelling synopsis to go along with your title, and bonus points if it makes me laugh and spit tea out my nose. Feel free to submit as many as you like. I’ll get the ball rolling. (drum roll) (cue the guy with the movie trailer voice) Armenius – Rome’s greatest general retires to his homeland of Gaul after a lifetime of service. But when his oldest friend becomes the new Roman Emperor and leads the legions north to expand the Empire, Armenius unites the barbarian tribes of his homeland and defends Gaul against not only the man he once loved as a brother, but against the greatest army the world has ever known. (That’s pretty well a true story by the way.) Whispers in August – As a man grieves the passing of his wife of 30 years, he uncovers a treasure of unsent letters that will shatter his perception of their relationship. He may lose the rest of his family and even his own soul unless his broken heart can piece together the truth. Your turn.

The best movies are true. So true, that its characters aren’t necessarily heralded as heroes or reviled as villains. The players are neither perfect nor irreparable; somewhere in between, they walk the plank of life in synch with their audience. Though such films may sing off-key a time or two—because that’s how life goes—they are pitch perfect in terms of telling the truth. Away From Her, a movie written and directed by Sarah Polley and featuring Julie Christie, Gordon Pinsent, Olympia Dukakis, and Michael Murphy, is one such film. It did not make my list of the best of 2007, but only because I viewed it in 2008. There isn’t anything complicated about the story. It’s about an aging couple, still very much in love—that make a decision to send the wife, played by Julie Christie—to an assisted living facility. She has shown clear signs of Alzheimer’s Disease and wishes to preserve her own dignity and spare her husband the pain of care giving by entering the facility before her decision making skills vanish with the rest of her mind. Though the husband (Gordon Pinsent) intellectually understands his wife’s logic and tacitly agrees, he—of course—wishes to preserve their physical union and passively resists it. It’s easy to empathize with Grant Anderson’s hesitation. They have a dreamy existence; a rustic but cozy house in the country, time on their hands, side-by-side cross country skiing, warm coffee, interesting books, a beautiful balance of scintillating and meaningful conversation, and a weathered, mature love. It’s clear that this couple’s love—like a fractured bone that becomes stronger when broken—has evolved from the breathless excitement that comes from the first discovery of mutual attraction, when all is right with the world—to something infinitely more substantive, rich and ripe with age. With each touch, with each knowing smile, each unbridled laugh, I felt that ambiguous mixture of joy and pain. The joy of witnessing lives well lived; the pain of knowing one of them will likely end prematurely. It’s a rare family that hasn’t been faced with the repercussions of Alzheimer’s Disease or related dementias. My mother-in-law lived with vascular dementia for over six years before it took her life in March of 2007. When she was no longer able to safely care for herself, we moved her into our home. The slow, methodical horror of witnessing the insidious deterioration of a loved ones mind is torturous. It’s a dilatory death, fraught with the pain of loss. Freedom wanders off with the patients mind: first driving, then cooking, and later—when to visit the bathroom. To a large extent, life is placed on hold while the sick family member receives care. Work and play become secondary to the safe care of the ill family member. One learns to pray for patience. Expectations are lowered. A family of believers is nearly forced to place a full measure of faith and trust in God—not because they are naturally pious—but because there seems no other choice. They draw on hope that God has purpose and providence wrapped in such a perverse, painful package. When Julie Christie’s character Fiona states, “I think all we can aspire to in this situation is a little bit of grace,” any family that has walked the hazy corridors of dementia related illnesses will cry out “Amen,” in full unison. Further dramatic tension develops when Julie Christie’s character forms a relationship with another nursing home patient, Aubrey, a wheel chair-bound mute. Grant Anderson can’t help but feel jealousy and pain when Fiona favors her new friend over Grant. He visits her religiously but she leaves him sitting by himself while doting over Aubrey. He fears that she may, on some level, be punishing him for a long-ago dalliance with a beautiful student from his days as a professor. Nevertheless, he shows up every day, watching the lady that inhabits his wife’s body dispense kindness and attention to another man. In the later stages of the illness, Alzheimer’s patients forget even the most basic things, like what they are doing at the moment, what a bowel movement means, or the importance of reciprocating the phrase, “I love you,” when rendered by a family member. Consequently, caregivers spend significant time redirecting the patient, cleaning up messes, and giving of themselves when little tangible reciprocation can or will be offered. In the last few days of her life, as my mother-in-law drew her final labored breaths assisted by the noisy ventilator, my wife smiled and quietly said, “I love you, Mom.” Fully expecting to face the aching, deafening silence that she had come to expect for so many months, we were stunned and quietly ecstatic when my mother-in-law stated in a tone that sounded like she had just realized something new, “Well, I love you too, Honey.” As the cruelty of the illness evolves, Fiona remembers less and less of her former life. Still, in one of the final scenes, Fiona seems to recall her husband and the emotional depth of their relationship when she says something akin to, “You could have left me, but you didn’t. You always came back for me.” Indeed. Before I ask my wife to marry me, I ask her the silly question, that could only been crafted by an insecure 21 year-old man: “If I wrecked my car and went into a coma for two years, where would you be when I woke up?” Without hesitation, she said, “By your side.” I didn’t think I needed to ask, but I needed to hear it. Out loud. I will never forget her response. Or will I? Among the most noble of characteristics that we see from family of dementia patients are loyalty and enduring love. DC Talk sang, “Love is a verb.” And yet, how deep is the pain that might result from realizing that the only choice in the name of love is to let go: of demands, fear, expectations, and reciprocity? Away From Her is a film that sensitively addresses the odd tension between letting go and holding tight. This movie seems to exhibit Alzheimer’s disease as a metaphor for married life; what do we grasp, what do we release; what do we remember, what do we forget? And finally (and maybe most importantly), what do we forgive?

I don’t know as much as I say that I do. Then again, I tend to say “I don’t know” a lot more than most people in my profession – at least those I’ve seen. I’m a pastor in the Midwest which, I am learning, means that I am supposed to be an expert on certain things. People want precise answers to complex problems, simple structures explaining the mystical, a box for their God. I hate that part of my job. Mostly because I’m horrible at it. The paradoxes of Scripture are numerous and there’s more than my finite mind would like to allow for. I prefer life nice and neat, wrapped up in a predictable way to keep God tidy. Problems of a good God and the suffering of the world, how God is all-knowing yet prayer can change his mind, how we are predestined yet have free will … these are things that emit an “I don’t know” every time from my end. And I think that’s the right answer. It’s really not a copout. It’s frustrating to me when others want to offer concrete answers to these sorts of things, as if they truly know. I think there’s an art to saying “I don’t know.” In fact, I think I just said it – I am an expert (in training) in the art of “I don’t know.” From the descriptions we use, let’s look closer. We are natural. God is supernatural. If I use the same prefix from a famous superhero (man vs. Superman), this implies God is above the natural, or beyond it, perhaps. We are finite. God is infinite. We are ordinary. God is extraordinary. He’s beyond us in ways that we cannot grasp. “His ways are higher than our ways. His thoughts are higher than our thoughts,” we are told in Scripture. So why is it that so many of us try so hard to figure him out, narrow him down, into a specific course of action that he must follow. And when God doesn’t follow it, then there’s something wrong with him. I’ve been reading a lot of this Vietnamese Buddhist monk and poet, Thich Nhat Hanh. He was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize and is incredibly wise and compelling in his simplicity. But he has a lot to chew on about this very subject. He writes in his book “Being Peace”: “Guarding knowledge is not a good way to understand. Understanding means to throw away your knowledge. You have to able to transcend your knowledge the way people climb a ladder. If you are on the fifth step of a ladder and think you are very high, there is no hope for you to climb to the sixth. The technique is to release.” While the goal for awareness and understanding is different for Hanh as a Buddhist than from my own self, I can take wisdom from him. Releasing the things that we think that we know is so key. Jesus again and again was telling the religious of his day, “You think you know how this is going to happen (or how this works), but I tell you…” and then he would correct their thinking. The art of “I don’t know” allows me to be me and for God to be God, and knowing those proper roles keeps humble. I can’t figure him out, I can’t place him in a box and this keeps the universe in check – with God in his greatness, his other-ness. And that seems to be the proper thing to focus upon.

A video by Stephen Delopolous , whose new record just released. The animation is by my friends at Portland Studios. What do you think?

I don’t know what’s gotten into me – I’m cleaning out my basement, four rooms and four closets. For awhile after I began, most of it looked like a deathtrap – it had looked better before I started. I’d call what’s down here “junk,” but it isn’t all junk. There’s plenty of that, but also memories, perfectly good gear (I found a stereo I can use in one of the upstairs rooms), years of photos, recordings, practice tapes, bits of songs, and some things that I probably wouldn’t ever want to hear. In fact, the basement is my life on display. Victories and embarrassments. Joys, sufferings. The births of my children. The deaths of old dreams. But within the good stuff is a lot of junk that was weighing me down and keeping me from accomplishing everything I desire. On second thought, I do know what’s gotten into me. Early last year I prayed for God to show me anything in my life that is contrary to His will, that I would forsake whatever it was. The first thing that happened was that the band I’m in, Alison Krauss and Union Station, was going to take a year off – after taking one off the year before. We’d play a summer 2007 tour and then be set free. The only trouble was I didn’t like being set free; freedom is scary. It involves choice, and risk, and faith, and I’d spent sixteen years carving out my role in that band – a role that has become comfortable and sometimes not very risky. I didn’t know all this at the time, only later. So God, answering my prayer, started dragging stuff up. A chunk of Fear. A box of Unbelief. A slimy lump of Self-Pity from the closet – things that have been hidden in there since childhood. It took awhile to take a faith stance, but once I saw the putrid, molding garbage for what it was I handed it over and let Him take it to the dump. Then we replaced Fear with Faith – I choose to believe God is sovereign, that He intentionally filters all of my circumstances, that He has thrilling and adventurous things for me to accomplish for His eternal purposes. I’m a Kingdom man. Faith takes up less space, smells good, and is actually beautiful and useful. The next thing He did was show me a serious problem in my parenting. Later in the year I repeated that prayer, and God again answered – this time with a really bad morning with my kids. There are literally thousands of different porno games to download from the archives I’ve listed, and they come in just about every different flavor of perversion you could imagine, with just as many gameplay types and artistic styles. You know that apocalypse orgy I mentioned? That’s a real game I found on HENTAI-3D.ORG , available for Windows, Mac, and Android. It’s got 3D CG art, MILFs, handjobs and oral sex, plus a patch that adds incestuous relationships. They were rebellious, defiant. What came up in me was Anger – red-hot anger. Later, I asked God what the anger was all about, because at the time I had no clue. The word came up in my mind’s eye, spelled out: “F – E – A – R.” I said, “Well, fear of what?” And into my mind’s eye appeared a couple of my relatives and their two grown sons, who are in a continuous cycle of rebellion, jail, and refusing to take responsibility. That mental furniture was the source of my fear-turned-to-anger. So again, I gave it up to the dump. “All thy children shall be taught of Yahweh, and great shall be the peace of thy children.” Fear for Faith. Junk for treasure and basement clarity. Now, don’t get me wrong. There’s plenty of useful stuff in my basement. Passion. A strong love and affection for my wife and kids. Musical talent. A desire to excel. A love of writing. Creativity, and an exploding desire to use it. And other things. But, like the stereo I found hidden behind a bunch of junk, the boxes of Fear hide the good, useful things, and so God can’t make use of us like He wants to. Sometimes when we’ve opened ourselves to God’s working we get hit with circumstances and have a knee-jerk emotional reaction. We often judge one another – and ourselves – in those times, but it is in those reactions that God is bringing up the junk so that the perfection of the House can be seen and utilized to the highest degree. It’s not the time for condemnation (self- or otherwise); if we choose faith, it’s a time for rejoicing. “For by one sacrifice He has perfected forever those who are being made holy.” The House of “I” is perfect; we just need to recognize that, to let go of old ways of thinking, and embrace being new creations. We’re transformed from glory to glory by that mind renewal. So here I am, cleaning out my basement. Except for two rooms and one closet, it looks trashed right now, but in a few more days this basement studio will be completely revamped, and I’ll be geared up for a powerful and productive year off the AKUS road.

I as said I would a few weeks ago, I dug out my dusty old query letter and put it under the microscope. I gave it a few tweaks, tightened it up a bit, and now I feel like it’s in serviceable shape. This is the meat of a letter I’ll be sending out to literary agents to try to tempt them to read my manuscript, or at least the first few pages. Conventional wisdom (of which I’m rarely a fan) says that the letter should be a page or less and needs to convey the basic concept of the book quickly, neatly, and preferably with a taste of your writing style. Sounds easy, right? Trust me, once you’ve spent a few years and over a hundred thousand words telling a story, boiling it all down into two short paragraphs is maddening. Here it is: In the tradition of Johnny Tremain, THE FIDDLER’S GUN (100,000 words) is the story of a young woman’s fight for her own independence during the Revolutionary War. The Sisters of the Ebenezer orphanage in Georgia don’t know what to do with Phinea Button. She matches knuckles with the boys, sticks her nose up at bonnets and dresses, is determined to do anything they forbid her, and is nearly a grown woman. But when the American War of Independence threatens her tiny community, Phinea’s reckless nature spins beyond even her own control. She kills a British soldier and flees the orphanage with a price on her head. On the run, she joins the crew of a privateer ship and begins a new life on the high seas of the Revolutionary War. She can’t run forever though, the British are close behind and the home she ran away from is about to become a battlefield. So there you have it. Is it good? Heck if I know. What bothers me about it is that it’s not accurate. It doesn’t convey the romance of the book. It feels like nothing but plot when the book is (in my mind) very character driven. And then there’s the fact that the plot as outlined is scarcely complete or even accurate. Why? Because to get any more detailed requires far too much exposition for the brevity required by the letter. So here I sit. Stumped. I’ll tinker with it for another week or so while I move on to the next step: deciding whom to send it to. That brings up another problem. Most agents work with a select few genres and it’s important that I target those that deal with my type of manuscript. The trouble is that I’m not sure what genre my book fits into. Sometimes I feel like it’s Young Adult. Other times I feel like it’s Historical Fiction. Sometimes I feel it might even be Literary. A lot of advice I hear tells me to go to the bookstore and find books like mine in order to figure out where mine fits in. I’ve done that. In fact I do it all the time, and I have yet to really find any book that I think is terribly similar. I can’t even figure out what shelf it would be on. It frustrates me to no end. The only exception of note is the book that I reference in the query letter, Johnny Tremain. Though there are many similarities, I can easily place that book in Young Adult, a genre that I usually feel isn’t quite right for me. Did I mention that this is frustrating? So as I ponder these ridiculous things, I’ll be scouring the internet and the local bookstores in search of another dozen or so agents to submit my work to. Meanwhile, if anyone has any input on genre or nits to pick on the letter, I’m all ears (or eyes, this being the internet and all.)

“When a doctrinal student at Princeton asked, ‘What is there left in the world for original dissertation research?’ Albert Einstein replied, ‘Find out about prayer. Somebody must find out about prayer.’” And so begins chapter one of Phillip Yancey’s newest book, “Prayer: Does It Make A Difference?” It’s a promising way to start a book and it stirred my hopes that maybe with Yancey’s help I might get some conclusive answers about the subject. I’ll be honest with you. I’ve been in a dry spell for the better part of a year, the last several months unable to have much of anything that resembled a vibrant prayer life, sometimes not even able to pray at all. I felt much like Jayber Crow from Wendell Berry’s book of the same name who eventually found it pointless to pray if every prayer ends with “not my will, but thy will done.” What’s the use in bringing requests to God if in the end you tell Him to disregard them? I know that more than being a wish list prayer is also communion and conversation. But increasingly what I got from prayer was a numbing sense of isolation and the fear I was talking to myself. I know that prayer is also meant to be an exercise in aligning my heart and mind with the eternal instead of the gnawing temporal – like Anthony Hopkins as C.S. Lewis in the movie Shadowlands says: “I don’t pray to change God, but so that God can change me” (paraphrase from memory). And yet there’s the sticky matter of the scriptures continually encouraging us to pray for more than just perspective, that anything can be asked for in prayer and that we should pray expectantly. In fact, much of the Lord’s prayer is comprised of material requests: for food and relational dynamics, for God’s kingdom to be realized on earth as it is in heaven, for the eternal to interrupt the temporal course of things. I found that I kept adjusting my expectations of prayer as a way of self-preservation – expecting less and less so I wouldn’t be disappointed. The heart learns to protect itself. But I couldn’t help feeling this was a cop-out and a refusal to engage the tensions between what the bible says about prayer and my own experience of it. So though I refused to fall back on a half-minded theological position of lowered expectations, I also found the tension between the biblical text and real life experience too enervating. So I opted for a different kind of copout, I guess: I just quit praying. I couldn’t find a motivation for it and just felt helpless when I would try – lost in a labyrinth of speculation, half-knowledge, and experience. I would ask others to pray for me and found great comfort in that, but as for myself I had become a deaf mute. (I need to say here that my experience includes some incredible instances of answered prayer and God’s faithfulness – nearly irrefutable evidences of his involvement in our lives. Yet from the desert, those memories seem distant and somewhat torturous in that they won’t allow you the comfort of abandoning hope altogether, but lead you on in hopes that God is still listening though all evidence accuses Him otherwise. Yancey explores the difficulty of God’s seemingly selective involvement when he writes: “I keep wanting Jesus to be more systematic. I want him to solve world hunger, not just feed five thousand who happen to be listening to him one day. I want him to destroy the polio virus, not merely heal an occasional paralytic… we keep expecting God to move in immovable fixed patterns, but the bible shows a tendency for God to act in a way that seems almost arbitrary… quirky.” Yet having seen Jesus care for the one paralytic, we can’t help but hope that he cares for our ailments and we are left with the sometimes arduous work of hoping when all else would tempt us otherwise.) When I saw that Yancey had released a new book on the subject of prayer, I couldn’t wait to dig into it in hopes of finding a better understanding of prayer to help me out of my own rut. The book chronicles his own frustrating attempts at reconciling the difference between what the bible seems to promise about prayer and the way it plays out in real life. Though I hoped for something more conclusive, it quickly became apparent that Yancey’s book was offering at least as many questions as it was answers. Any answers he did posit were often unsatisfying – which to his credit is much like prayer itself. And yet, by the end of the book, a peace descended and I found that I was praying regularly again. Yancey is great at what he does. He’s not a Buechner or Nouwen but he’s a reflective and intelligent believer who is gifted at bringing big ideas to a mainstream audience and helping them wrestle with things they may not otherwise wrestle with. It was through Rich Mullins that I discovered Mark Heard – Mullins being much more accessible than Heard but plowing some of the same ground – and it’s through Yancey that a lot of people have discovered writers more exceptional than himself (like Buechner and Nouwen). I think of him as a bridge builder, building 3 way bridges between God, average people, and the kind of worthwhile rigorous faith that comes from thoughtful reflection. He serves his readership well in my opinion and gently helps people ask difficult questions, securely holding their hand through the process. His books are researched thoroughly and are filled with moving stories and quotes from a wide spectrum of sources. “Prayer” is no different. Smart, thoughtful, very moving. He asked a lot of questions I had already afflicted myself with, so there was no real sense of new revelation. And yet revelation occurred in me slowly and subtly over the course of reading this book. Maybe revolution is a better word, a slow, almost imperceptible revolution, less in my understanding and more in my soul. Thinking about it afterward, it seemed to me that reading this book was much like marriage counseling between God and myself. I realized that I’d been bottling up my frustrations and hurts and was locked in an ongoing conversation with myself. My inner dialogue sounded like the bitter complaints of a hurt lover: “What’s God’s deal anyway? Why is He ignoring me? Why the constant invalidation of my concerns? Why the cool disregard of my needs?” Also, like a disgruntled spouse, I would talk to others about my frustrations. Between going over my grievances with others and the ongoing conversation with myself, I realized I had ceased talking with God about it. We were estranged. Reading Yancey’s book became like a therapy session between God and myself with Yancey as a mediator. Through his words I was able to express my own grievances as well as hear God’s side of the story in a fresh way. We were on speaking terms again and more than gaining perspective I was re-gaining access to a relationship. Halfway through there emerged a real sense that the act of reading the book itself was an intimate time of prayer. We were talking again. As I mentioned, Yancey offers little in terms of satisfactory answers to the problems that prayer poses, but prayer has never been very well suited for finding answers – Just ask Job. Relationship has to be the ultimate goal of prayer. We need to fall in love and sense that we are loved, too. We need help in engaging the mystery of this love. And any attempt on Yancey’s part to diminish the tension and mystery inherent in prayer would render his book impotent and less than true. In the end, Yancey helps us ask the hard questions about prayer, but also confronts us with the hardest kind of answers – messy, ambiguous, and the kind that dare us to hope and to engage our heart, mind, and even soul. Whether or not you are struggling with prayer, I highly recommend this as a thoughtful book full of heart and integrity. My prayer is that, like me, you will find peace, perspective, and an opportunity to engage the God of the universe in an intimate conversation about your own deepest hopes and fears.

A few years ago while perusing the CD rack in the Wyoming Home store in downtown Cheyenne, I stumbled upon what has become one of my favorites of all time: Stampede! Western Music’s Late Golden Era. Golden, indeed. Featuring the very cream of the old crooners such as Tex Ritter, Eddy Arnold and Marty Robbins, this collection of music invariably makes me smile, sing along, and laugh heartily at the mental image of some guy in a really nice rust-colored sweater and pencil pants cracking a whip in a recording studio. At the first blast of horns and furious strings on the title track “Stampede,” I usually grab my steering wheel with a bit more gusto and tuck my chin down so that I can sing along with the low romping tune. And then I chuckle. Oh, it’s such melodramatic cowboy goodness. Have gun, will travel reads the card of a man, a knight without armor in a savage land. His fast gun for hire heeds the calling wind, a soldier of fortune is the man called….Paladin….There’s something about this song. It drives, it yearns, it jingles, it gallops…such action. It is the very plaintive essence of that Western Goodness that has, quite plainly, vanished from our far-too-advanced entertainment culture. How can one mourn something one never experienced? I do it all the time, so it must be possible. I was just a mere glimmer in my papa’s adolescent eye when all of this was going down, but it’s where I would go in a time machine, given the opportunity. Track two of the compilation, “High Noon,” boasts the rich, high-tremolo tone of Tex Ritter…wow, now there’s a voice. O to be torn ‘twixt love and duty! S’posin’ I lose my fair-haired beauty! Look at that big hand move along, nearin’ high noon..(although he pronounces it quite differently…fa-yah ha-yah’d b’yoo-tee) I don’t think there’s been a vocalist like him since. Further down the track list is another Western standard, “Cattle Call” by Eddy Arnold. His yodeling intro is altogether other-worldly, but that’s not the only yodeling you’ll hear on this record. In the spirit of high cowboy drama I’ll leave you with these lyrics from the aforementioned “Stampede” track, another one of the album’s many gems. These particular phrases are spoken in a furied bridge of the song, and usually make me wish I had a long duster coat and a pair o’ spurs… Cold black clouds like funeral shrouds roll down their icy threat, and we face to fight this raging night with odds on the side death. For a stampeding herd when its panic is stirred is a thing for a cowboy to shun. For no mortal man ever holds command when the cattle are on the run!

When New Favorite came out in 2001, that was my introduction to Alison Krauss and Union Station. Talk about feeling late to the party. I had no real concept of bluegrass, assuming it was hillbilly music like dueling banjos and that was the extent of it. But when I got my hands on New Favorite, I was so moved by what I heard. And I want to try and be specific about what I heard that caught my attention. It seemed the instrumentation in that record came together like a choir–each part was its own distinct voice–and it was beautiful. Jill LaBrack at Popmatters.com went beyond worn out words by offering this description; “Her voice is beautiful and compelling and sounds as much like hope as it does the final moments before the giving up begins.” An analysis of the lyrics reveal that this is a record dealing mostly with themes of pain and loss and regret, and yet it does sound “as much like hope as the final moments before the giving up begins.” Around the time I started listening to New Favorite, a dear friend of mine lost a son to suicide. As I watched this dad grieve, as I watched him mourn, as I watched him bow himself to the providence of God and rise up in anger toward wickedness of the enemy, I wanted to help. But what could I say? What could I give? I prayed, I spent time with he and his family, but I wanted to give this man I knew to be an introvert who often processed things alone (on his touring motor bike) something that might help. There were no words, no poems, no statements to reach deep enough into his pain in those initial days of shock. But I kept returning to the same idea. I can’t give words that will make this better. It’s too ugly right now. Maybe I can give him beauty. What can I give him that’s beautiful? I gave him New Favorite, and I told him I wanted him to have it because it was beautiful, and in this ugly season, I thought a little beauty might comfort him. A couple years later he took me for a ride on his bike and as we pulled away from the house, I heard that faint intro to New Favorite and we listened as we rode. He told me it hadn’t come out of his disc changer since I gave it to him, and that it brought him much comfort–the beauty of the record. His last best memories with his son were on that bike riding through Missouri Wine country, talking about Christ. And when he misses his son, he hops on that bike and rides out to the country graveside. And when he does, he often listens to New Favorite. It is beautiful.

WARNING: What follows may be an annoyingly gushing review by a music geek who loses all sense of perspective and dignity when a new Daniel Lanois record releases… When mixing and engineer extraordinaire Todd Robbins emailed me about the new Daniel Lanois record, I couldn’t wait. It’s been 4 years since his last proper studio recording, Shine – a record that at the time restored my faith in the power of music. For those unfamiliar with Lanois, he is the famed producer of some of pop/rock music’s most important records by Bob Dylan, Peter Gabriel, Emmy Lou Harris, and U2 (including the biggest albums of their careers, The Joshua Tree and All That You Can’t Leave Behind. He’s famous for helping these great artists dig deeper and find the soul of their work. He is also the master of electric guitar tone, helping put The Edge of U2 on the path that has made him one of rock music’s most distinctive guitarists. In between these high profile gigs, Lanois also makes his own records that are uniquely his and clearly a labor of love. Lanois is always chasing down the deepest mysteries of music, what it means, where it comes from, and even it’s ultimate destination. There’s so much folklore surrounding his unorthodox approach that it’s hard to separate fact from fiction. I’ve heard rumors of him forcing an artist to go sing their vocal track in his barn to get them out of the mindset of singing in a studio. There’s the story of him ripping Dylan’s cell phone from his hands and throwing it in a lake to make the point that if they were to make a great album together, there could be no distractions and that he needed to be completely present to the process. The result was the Grammy-winning Time Out Of Mind. It’s not hard to believe these stories since Lanois’s own music reveals an artist who is much more interested in the humanity of a performance than perfection. There is plenty of atmosphere and vibey sounds to tickle the ear that could easily degrade into mere ear candy, but Lanois never loses sight of the heart of it. Lanois’ music is not so much about technical precision as it is about a gut level emotional aesthetic. There are imperfections and some of the playing is loose, but it always feels emotional and often transcendant. I guess the best way to describe it is to simply say that Lanois means every note he sings or plays. Lyrically he’s often bordered on the mystical. Consider this from my personal favorite Lanois record, Shine. They have spoken of the river Forever bending inside the fever Of the saints who walk all night with no domain In the end the thing that keeps them walking Is your shine Your shine when they wear no coat Your shine when the feeling’s low Your shine as they labor to the new day… To me his lyrics always speak to the mystery of God and ultimate meaning. For me, the above lyric rings truer than most of what I hear on CCM radio, and that’s because I think it speaks to divine mystery without trying to reduce it. What the exact nature of Lanois’s spirituality is I’m not sure, (in an interview segment with Brian Eno on this disc, Eno elaborates on his own atheism, however Lanois talks openly of God in other interviews I’ve read) but that his music is deeply religious is undeniable. Shine also features a worship song he wrote with Bono called “Falling At Your Feet” and when I saw Lanois in concert he ended the night with a beautiful little song called “Thank You For The Day”, again written with Bono. Lanois is releasing his new record, Here Is What Is, digitally 4 months before the official release in March. The much vaunted distinctive about this release is that you can download it either as mp3 files or the actual WAV files which are the larger high quality files on actual CDs. I downloaded the WAV files last night and have been listening to it over and over during my travel day across the continent from Florida to Washington. I haven’t been able to dig in to the new album a great deal lyrically, but it’s clearly classic Lanois – mystical, arcane, and sadly beautiful. His penchant for gospel music shows up throughout in tracks like “Joy,” “This May Be The Last Time,” and “Where Will I Be”, originally recorded on Emmy Lou Harris’s Wrecking Ball. Here’s a sample lyric: The heart opens wide Like it’s never seen love And addiction stays on tight like a glove Oh where will I be Oh where will I be when that trumpet sounds But it’s really the music that takes center stage here. I think listening to Lanois’s music is like learning a language. I remember when I first heard Sufjan Stevens’s record I was aware that I didn’t have the tools to understand his music – it was something entirely different from what I’d ever heard before, and I had to learn Sufjan’s musical language before I could truly appreciate it. Lanois is similar, but whereas Sufjan’s musical language seems to me to be more about arrangements and his lyrical sense of irony, Lanois’s is more of a sonic language. It’s about tones, wavelengths, soulful performances, and feeling the thing. I’ve heard that Lanois has talked at length about how the high frequencies of modern mixes – the sizzle that radio likes so much – distracts him from the spiritual energy of music. My understanding is that he feels that the lower frequencies are best suited for conveying the spiritual power of music. “The race to the extension of the high frequency part of the spectrum is choking the shadows of the bass… if you light your picture too bright you will lose your shadows” (This is an interesting analogy to me for lyric writing as well). His record “Shine” is mixed very dark and warm and it ruined my ears for other kinds of mixes! He might be onto something. My first impression of Here Is What Is is that it’s mixed a bit brighter than Shine and seems a little groovier. My good friend Todd Robbins treated us to a Daniel Lanois show in Minneapolis a couple years ago where an industrial jam band named Tortoise opened for him and then backed him up for his set. There were two drummers and the songs grooved hard. I would venture to guess that tour influenced this record, with at least one song featuring two drum tracks. The arrangements sound like what I remember from the show. From what I understand, Here Is What Is is part of a film he’s making (see trailer here) about his process of making music, so interspersed throughout are bits of conversation between Lanois and legendary producer Brian Eno (U2, The Talking Heads, Coldplay, Paul Simon, among others). The track titled “Beauty” captures this exchange between them: LANOIS: I’m trying to make a film…about beauty itself… about the source of the art rather than everything that surrounds the art… ENO: …What would really be interesting for people to see [in your film] is how beautiful things grow out of shit, because nobody ever believes that… Everybody thinks that Beethoven had his string quartets completely in his head, that it somehow appeared formed in his head… and all he had to do was write them down… But what would really be a lesson that everyone could learn is that things come out of nothing… the tiniest seed in the right situation turns into the most beautiful forest. And then the most promising seed in the wrong situation turns into nothing… and I think this would be important for people to understand because it gives people confidence in their own lives to know this is how things work… If you walk around with the idea that there are some people so gifted and have these wonderful things in their head, but you’re not one of them – you’re just a normal person who could never do anything like that – then you live a different kind of life. You could have another kind of life where you say, “Well I know that things come from nothing very much, start from unpromising beginnings, and I’m an unpromising beginning, and I could start something…” Another track called “Sacred and Secular” captured this conversation: “To think of sacred and secular being apart… it’s all just always, y’know, praise for me. I can never see [music] another way… it’s always this…” Lanois says, “The pedal steel is my favorite instrument. It takes me to a sacred place. I call it my church in a suitcase…”, and his playing does reflect something of ecstasy to me. A friend of mine joked after seeing him live that he felt like he needed to smoke a cigarette after. I remember being moved to tears numerous times when I saw him. Whatever is happening in Lanois’ music, for those who connect with it it is something sublime, emotional, intimate, and maybe even holy. Lanois calls what he does “soul-mining” and I can feel his music stir my deeper waters. Here Is What Is is at it’s best when Lanois’ playing takes center stage – whether it’s a quiet pedal steel song or a searing elecrtic guitar over a deep groove. It’s worship to me. Obviously it is for Lanois, too. From his keynote address at South by Southwest: “I practice and put my heart and soul into every note my passion becomes the same as the one i felt at 9 years old i invite everyone here this morning to ignite — re-ignite — or just plain old turn up the flame in what you believe in and get to the top of the mountain that you see invention is in your brain — and that never ending commodity is in the bottom of your heart — it’s called passion Danny lanois is going down one more time with coal dust in his eyes going down — soul mining” You can download Here Is What Is here: www.daniellanois.com For the uninitiated, you may want to go to iTunes and start to learn Lanois’ musical language from more accessible albums like Acadie and Shine as well as Emmy Lou Harris’s masterpierce Wrecking Ball and U2’s The Joshua Tree. I believe it’s well worth the money as you find yourself swimming in music that is nearly as deep and dark as the mysteries it tries to point to.