Join Me

"Clair De Lune"

When Aubri and I are alone, which is almost never, I turn on the Light Classical channel for background noise. Today, I recognized my first ever composition-- Debussy's "Clair De Lune." Now, the funny part is that I recognize it because of Ocean's 11. I don't know if it's the exact same piece that plays at the end of the movie when everyone is happy because they stole a lot of money that they'll eventually be required to repay with interest, but it's definitely close. 

Worship

    I used to be able to worship to music any time. I loved it-- I looked forward to it. I asked my friends to pull out their guitars so we could worship. When I was traveling with Liberty volleyball, I would bring along my worship CD and really meet God.

   

    All of this has pretty much changed. Now I think it's the lack of songs saying what I can relate to. The best I can come up with now is reading the Bible while the music plays. I cannot relate to emotional songs like, "Into Marvelous Light I'm Running." Why? Because when I worship, I don't want to talk about myself, I want to talk to God. Tell him what I think of him, what I don't know about him, what I know about him but can't quite comprehend. Now, one or two celebratory songs in a set works, but please let's try to talk to God directly a little more often. Celebrations come from the heart, and sometimes I just need Jesus before I can get there. And I cannot get there in most services; since I am driven by words your good, strong music does not really aid me. 

    And honestly, as much as we talk about hymns, a lot of them aren't that vertically driven, either. At least not the ones we play now. And why do we keep playing the same songs over and over? There are so many new artists out there, so many new songs! Why do we have this tendency to stick with songs from CDs everyone's heard? For me, I have to work so much harder to ascribe meaning to songs I have sung a lot.

   

    I think one thing that many worship leaders forget is that we all worship in different ways. I cannot worship just because a song is upbeat and has really good musicians playing. I also cannot reach God with songs that don't say much, or just repeat themselves over and over again (I now have this trouble with most of the artists from Passion). When you play a song that does not speak directly to God, please tell me what I should be thinking about in order for me to get there. Some people are visual-- for that reason do not hesitate to show pictures of Jesus or of nature or of beauty. Others need to be free to express themselves, so please encourage us to worship with our bodies.  And please, do not neglect reading the Bible during worship-- it is God's direct revelation of Himself and exactly what we need to be responding to in worship. When we lose sight of Scripture, we end up worshipping and praying to who we think God is, or as C.S. Lewis put it in ScrewTape, to that corner in the ceiling we always look at when we pray.

    These are all things we need reminders of during worship--during the song set, during communion. Please, please, please, help us reach God in any way you can! We are getting worse and worse at it.

This Other Life

          Sometimes I get just a blurb of it-- that feeling of "this is the way it should be." When it comes, I really feel my soul open up in freedom and I lift my head and smile. I picture the feeling as light casting its glance through shuttered windows. (Doesn't this sound so disgustingly poetic?)

          And then, since it's so fleeting now and not real yet, it passes and I am disgusted with life as I know it. Usually it comes as I realize how chained I really am to myself, or when I hear or read how much Jesus's life really frees us. I know it does, because I really can see it. But then it passes and I just remember knowing the life of Jesus. I live on memories half the time, and die when the memories get sparse. But there is a whole other, engaging life that I miss since I thoroughly muddle it with my own. It's spiritual, human, pure, and altogether free of materialism, intellectualism, ignoramous, individualism, unitarianism. I wish it were mine so much!

        My posts lately have been very dry and sad. The strange thing is that I am not very dry and sad. I am not despairing or suffering "malaise", I just miss Jesus. I was in Home Depot today with Husband, in the garden section for flower bed siding, and that old song was playing-- I can't even remember who sings it or what it's called. But the song makes me think of how I treat Jesus (okay I just found the thing and I am going to put it all. It's by Vertical Horizon):   

" Somewhere there's speaking
It's already coming in
Oh, and it's rising at the back of your mind

You never could get it
Unless you were fed it
Now you're here and you don't know why

But under skinned knees
And the skid marks
Past the places where you used to learn

You howl and listen
Listen and wait for the
Echoes of angels who won't return

CHORUS:

He's everything you want
He's everything you need
He's everything inside of you
That you wish you could be
He says all the right things
At exactly the right time
But he means nothing to you
And you don't know why

You're waiting for someone
To put you together
You're waiting for someone to push you away

There's always another
Wound to discover
There's always something more you wish he'd say

CHORUS

But you'll just sit tight
And watch it unwind
It's only what you're asking for
And you'll be just fine
With all of your time
It's only what you're waiting for

How to Live

I was listening to a popular song today-- "Unwritten" by Natasha something or other. The premise of the song is to "live your life with arms wide open." and in it she claims that "We've been conditioned to not make mistakes / But I can't live that way."

    This got me thinking about what it means to live life and it brought to mind yesterday morning when my sister crawled into bed with me. We were talking about the book I was reading-- "On the Road" by Jack Keruoac-- and I was trying to describe the nomadic way of thought and life lived by the narrator. There was never any line of thought that lasted for a considerable length of time, but the narrator was purposeful in naming almost every town he passed through. I was struck by his lack of purpose, when I realized he could only commit to recording the towns he left behind him. I've also been reading about St. Francis of Assisi and thinking about him and comparing the two men. One man goes everywhere in America and only lessens life, and the other travels as well but contributes to life. (When I say life I think I mean others.) "On the Road's" narrator was part of the beat generation-- he lived for music, adventure, girls, and beer. He definitely made mistakes in my eyes, and the biggest being that he wasn't about anything. St. Francis, on the other hand, was completely sold out to something. He was about helping people, creating things, loving people. Both men were intent on sucking the life out of day to day, they just did it differently. And I think St. Francis did it well.

    I told all this to my sister-- how each man struck me so contrastingly--and ended by saying, "When you live halfway in the 'others' realm and halfway in the 'me' realm, you end up sucking life dry. Those closest to you get frustrated by your selfishness, and you end up embittered at the trip your life is on.  You can't be about God one hour and yourself the next, because you can't live."

    All there is in life is to connect-- yourself with God, and then others. Everything else is the town you have or eventually will leave behind you.