Categotry Archives: moments of truth

This week, I’ve been compelled to start a list I call “Things I Never Thought I’d Do.”

This list goes back to Election Day, but most have occurred within the past week. Here’s what’s on the list so far:

• Voted for a Democrat
• Began posting politically on social media
• Attended not one, but two major protests
• Got into an Uber with a stranger on the way to one of the two protests (when they shut down the airport trains)
• Found out the publishing house I’m writing music for plans to allow the ACLU full access to their library (including my music) for free–and I was actually okay with that

I made a mistake this morning. Or maybe not.

On Sundays, I take it fairly easy. I try not to write for work, but I’ll often go to a coffee shop and surf the Internet, maybe blog a little if I feel inspired. While doing that this morning, I opened up Spotify and saw a Praise and Worship playlist. Curious, I thought I’d see what was playing.

Oops.

Not what you think, though.

I have a confession to make. It’s not something I’ve been hiding, except perhaps from myself–it’s just something I realized this weekend. For many years now, I’ve been processing my thoughts about leaving the evangelical church (more specifically, the institutional church). Yet all along, there has been this underlying subtext of guilt. I felt guilty about it.

After all, you’re not supposed to leave. Right?

I love the creative way God reveals things to us sometimes, how sometimes He orders our steps in an unusual way so that the day reveals something significant to you. One way I know God is creative and artistic–I mean, apart from creating the heavens and the earth and the trees and the vast expanse of the universe and stuff–is that He seems to have a flair for the dramatic. For those of you who are tracking our personal journey here, I’d like to share the events of such a day–one that happened just a few days ago.

The film Chariots of Fire is one of those movies it seemed everyone wanted to see when it came out, but nowadays no one wants to admit it. 🙂 Not because it’s a bad movie (it won four Oscars, after all), but because it feels so slow and dated. Same with the synthesized soundtrack by Vangelis. It sold like a bazillion copies when it first came out, but now it carries a stigma not unlike when disco first went out of vogue.

This weekend, I encountered a significant moment of mission.

This weekend, I was able to have a meaningful conversation with a local musician. His band has been doing very well, and gaining a lot of traction, but recently something went wrong that apparently caused a derailment.

That might not seem like much to the average onlooker, but for someone who has invested their very life and livelihood into a band, it can be extremely disastrous and painful. Bands become families, and any kind of crisis affects all involved. So when I saw this band member, I approached him from the standpoint of, “You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to–I’m just here.”