Musician. Composer. Recovering perfectionist. Minister-in-transition. Lover of puns. Hijacker of rock song references. Questioner of the status quo. I'm not really a rebel. Just a sincere Christ-follower with a thirst for significance that gets me into trouble. My quest has taken me over the fence of institutional Christianity. Here are some of my random thoughts along the way. Read along, join in the conversation. Just be nice.
Categories: food for thought
I know I must have written about this before, because this isn’t the first time I’ve caught myself doing this–but I’m noticing that it’s one of those times where I’ve been so bogged down in my day-to-day activities that I have to purposely come up for air. To stop and take an inventory of what is around me.
Categories: Rantings
In catching up on reading/scanning some of the blogs I follow, I came across one from last week by nakedpastor talking about the dialogue between Christians and atheists, and how quick one group is to mock the other sometimes. Within that conversation he made one statement that resonated within me far beyond the topic of discussion:
“When someone thinks they are superior to another, they also feel no need to understand the other.”
True dat.
Categories: Meanderings (look it up)
I’m still pondering some of the things I wrote about in the last post, about being guided by the God-given desires of our hearts to find a sense of direction. The past couple of days, I’ve identified one of those deep desires in a fresh way. Those who know me would probably roll their eyes back and say, “DUH!”, but I suppose that even though I’ve known this about myself, it has come to me as sort of a fresh revelation:
I thrive on creativity.
Categories: food for thought
I mentioned a couple of posts ago that as my stack of questions gets bigger and my stack of answers gets smaller, my blog gets less focused on opinion and more focused on reflection and observation. That’s not to say I won’t ever utter an opinion again (you should be so lucky)–just that I hold my own opinions more loosely than I used to, so things come out more as observation.
Categories: Meanderings (look it up)
…He is risen indeed.
It’s a bit surreal for me this morning. Even though I have not associated myself with institutional Christianity for a number of years, I realized this morning that this is the first Easter (Resurrection Sunday, for the purists) in decades that I have not actually been involved in a structured church gathering. When I lived in Tulsa, we celebrated in house church. Even since coming here, I managed to find myself in congregation on Easter Sunday for the past few years because I was helping out with worship. Last Easter was my last day to lead worship at my friends’ church plant, as I sort of broke in their new worship leader they’d hired. So this is literally the first time I’ve had an Easter Sunday with no responsibilities since I was probably in my early teens. Kind of nice, kind of relaxing, but kind of surreal, also.
Categories: Meanderings (look it up)
Someone said once (or many times, but maybe I just heard it once) that a sign of maturity is when the stack of questions in your mind begins to get larger than your stack of answers. If that’s true–I must be growing up fast.
When I started off this journey of faith as a youngster, I admittedly had a lot more answers than questions. Knowledge puffs up, but presumed knowledge can be even worse. I had a lot of passion, but not a lot of wisdom, and somehow I thought my passion would overcome my lack in other areas. I did some good things, but I also hurt people along the way.
I’m a little hesitant to write this post, mostly because I’m concerned it will sound a bit narcissistic. But please understand that I’m just writing it to process some thoughts, and to let others in on it just in case others feel the same way, and perhaps can relate it to their own story.
Categories: moments of truth
In pondering my own journey over the past 10-15 years now, I’m coming to a moment of truth. This isn’t merely a journey of re-thinking faith, or church, or theology. Lots of people do that several times through the course of their lives, and it doesn’t entail the monumental shake-up (or shake-down) that occurred in my own life. No, this has to be something more, and I think I know what it is.
This is a journey of finding out who I really am.
Categories: Things that are too good to keep
For those who have been tracking with me lately on my musical journey…I wanted to share this with you: the soundtrack I composed for “Jeune Fille”, The Director’s short film.
This film project was over a year in the making, with the soundtrack being composed, recorded and mixed since about November. The final mix was finished literally days before we premiered the film. The premiere went extremely well, and the next step is to get the film entered into film festivals.
And that’s where this shameless plug comes in.
Categories: General
When I have the opportunity to share with a new friend about our family’s journey into creativity–particularly, how we left everything behind in one place and went to a new place with no guaranteed income, determined to try and make a place for ourselves by doing what we love–a common response is, “Wow. You guys are so brave!”
I generally chuckle under my breath. Bull crap, I think to myself.