August Christmas Lights.

Leaving the Christmas lights up year round provides an ongoing illusion of cheer and seasonal togetherness. I like the way that feels. As if tomorrow morning we’ll all come down the stairs in our pajamas to a glowing room full of things our parents bought for us without any expectation of repayment. But its August the 7th, and my parents live in a different town now. Maybe they would like the lights if they visited for some reason, but came at night so the braided green wires didn’t just look tacky draped around the room.

I dont ever want to miss a day with God. I always think of it. See our relationship is something precious and bright, and it isn’t an illusion of joy like Christmas lights in summer.

Once a day here at my job in college, at a $7-a-plate restaurant across an intersection from the University, the sun suddenly suspends itself right over the awning for a while and shoots through the window for about ten minutes in brilliant orange. Before it disappears behind the building across the street, it colors the whole restaurant and illuminates every dust particle on its way across the dining room and into my squinty eyes. When I had glasses, if they weren’t really clean when that time of day came around, all the fingerprints and scratches would come out in the direct sunlight. I would usually just take them off at this point.

He is more like that light to me. Whenever he comes around I am blinded and mesmerized by him. See he could become just something I come home to, something I’m not shocked to see like the summer Christmas lights in my living room that lost thier novelty in the spring. I need to keep making the most of every moment I have with him, and not grow into grown-up complacency. For he is a very constant friend to me and a failproof companion I cannot see but know very well as my rock and salvation.

That resturant will be gone someday, but as long as God holds back his wrath on the Earth, the sun will return to that place every evening, whether veiled by clouds or not. I want to see him like that everyday, blaring into my dark, wicked life with his brilliant light, making me cover my face and eyes in shame and unspeakable joy to see that I’m not half as bad as he is good!

I pray all the time that he will brightly blind the eyes of my generation in the same way so they can be as overwhelmed with his glory and goodness as I am.

My Exit, Unfair.

I’ve been enjoying the blog “Stuff Christians Like” quite a bit lately.  Its a cleverly satirical, unchurchy analysis of Christians and how we live.  It’s moving and hilarious.  This most recent post, however, wasn’t as funny as it was convicting to me.  

 

You see, “Stuff Christians Like”  has become a lot more popular than the writer ever expected, with thousands and thousands of people reading it everyday.  The author, a man named Jon, is always trying to deny that God is doing something through his blog, much like I deny that God is actually doing something through me, my music, my day job, or my relationships.  Anyway, he quoted a section of  The War Of Art by Steven Pressfield, talking about the struggle that artists of various types have with making their work their life and fully using their gifts.  This was convicting to me:

 

The Artist’s Life
Are you a born writer? Were you put on earth to be a painter, a scientist, an apostle of peace? In the end the question can only be answered by action.

Do it or don’t do it.

It may help to think of it this way. If you were meant to cure cancer or write a symphony or crack cold fusion and you don’t do it, you not only hurt yourself, even destroy yourself. You hurt your children. You hurt me. You hurt the planet.

You shame the angels who watch over you and you spite the Almighty, who created you and only you with your unique gifts, for the sole purpose of nudging the human race one millimeter farther along its path back to God.

(This part spoke to me the most…)

Creative work is not a selfish act or a bid for attention on the part of the actor. It’s a gift to the world and every being in it. Don’t cheat us of your contribution.

Give us what you’ve got.

 

 

I Love it.  Tell me what you think.

Love Is Only For Poets.

My blogging has been lacking at best lately.  All I’ve got for you tonight is a list of fantastic music I’ve been listening to lately.  The list is album, band. 

 

1. “On Your Side” by Magnet
2. “Oracular Spectacular” by MGMT
3. “Your Love Never Fails” by Chris Quilala, Kim Walker, and Melissa How 
4. “Catch For Us The Foxes” by mewithoutYou
5. “Close To Paradise” by Patrick Watson
6. “Fall” EP by Jon Foreman

 

This is the music that’s provided the soundtrack to the last couple weeks.  ”Your Love Never Fails” might be one of the most sincere, moving, and most creative worship albums I’ve heard.  Kim Walker is amazing and her music gives me chills.

We don’t want our beliefs.

“You strike the match – why not be utterly changed by fire?
To sacrifice the shadow and the mist of a brief life you never much liked – So if you’d care to come along we’re gonna curb all our never-ending, clever complaining (as who’s ever heard of a singer criticized by his song?)
We hunger, but though all that we eat brings us little relief we don’t know quite what else to do, 
We have all our beliefs but we don’t want our beliefs,
God of peace, we want you.”

 

When I was in in high school I listened to a band called mewithoutYou obsessively and exclusively for about three months.  They changed the way I though about music.  Most people cannot stand mewithoutYou, for whatever reason, but I had them pinned as my favorite band for almost a year.  Today I am reconsidering putting them back in the top three.  

 

It’s not flashy, glamorous, or even catchy music and the lead “singer” yells everything and has no pitch whatsoever.  Heck, the first time I heard them i thought it was awful so I didn’t touch it again until Tyler Goerzen played it for me in the car coming home from school months later.  This was the even that started my love relationship with the band!

 

They are everything a band should be.  The drum work is creative and original.  His drums have a fantastic sound I’ve heard nowhere lese.  The guitar players are freaking genius.  They play messy and dirty, but the lines they come up with are fantastic.  So freaking genius.  The bass player’s revolutionary as well.  Fantastic pocket with the drummer at all times, great round jazz bass sound, and excellent use of fuzz, overdrive, and even delay.  Really freaking good.  Always totally playing out.  

The part that makes them more than just a good band is the lead guy.  He’s a Messianic Jew with a decent case of autism and a truly broken heart for humanity. His lyrics are poetry that sinks your heart, shakes it out of complacency, and then fills it up with hope.  I can seriously quote the band’s whole  album “Catch For Us The Foxes” from cover to cover, because all the lyrics are so freaking poignant and meaningful to me.  Bands who use lots of  ”Nah nah’s”, “La la la’s”, or other useless words should listen to mewithoutYou and be amazed at how powerful words put to music can me.  There is no time for crappy songwriting anymore.  Music is too good for that.

 

This band grew my relationship with God significantly in high school, and even today as I finish up listening through “Catch for us the Foxes” again writing this.  What other bands do that so well?  It’s not even worship music! If I, with my life, could make music half this sensational and moving, I would be complete.  Really.  To write music like this is my dream.

 

Check them out, if you hate them, it’s normal so don’t worry.  But listen to the lyrics, or at least go read them!  Thanks for doing that.

Winter Albums Are For You.

Every year I get locked in a groove of winter music.  Not Christmas music, that has it’s place, but “Winter” music.  Songs that make me think of walking under frosty trees in the oval (pictured above) coming home from class, or driving in a warm car as the world around me claws the hard-packed snowy road for traction.  Songs of joy or songs of contemplation.  Albums that seamlessly convey hopeful or thoughtful themes.  Winter music.  A wonderful part of the season.  So here’s my list of winter albums your season will be incomplete without, in no particular order:

• “Into the Blue Again” by The Album Leaf
• “As Tall As Lions” by As Tall As Lions
• “3 Rounds and a Sound” by Blind Pilot
• “Letters” by Butch Walker
• “Brothers and Sisters” by Coldplay (specifically the song “Easy to Please”, probably my all-time favorite Coldplay song)
• “Eat, Sleep, Repeat” by Copeland
• “You Are My Sunshine” by Copeland (a new addition to the list)
• “O” by Damien Rice
• “The Photo Album” by Death Cab For Cutie
• “The Last Broadcast” by Doves
• “Marvelous Things” by Eisley (no longer on iTunes apparently)
• “Fleet Foxes” by Fleet Foxes
• “Now That I’ve Found You” by Alsion Krauss
• “The Moon Is Down” by Further Seems Forever
• “The Eleventh Hour” by Jars Of Clay
• “Winter” by Jon Foreman (crazy, right?)
• “Catch For Us The Foxes” by mewithoutYou (actually perfect for all seasons)
• “Come Away With Me” by Norah Jones
• “Distorted Lullabies” by Ours (best blizzard driving music)
• “( )” by  Sigur Ros (life changing record)
• “The Eraser” by Thom Yorke of Radiohead
• “Set Yourself on Fire” by Stars
• “Sky Blue Sky” by Wilco

I guess that order turned out kind of alphabetical.  Don’t be overwhelmed if you don’t own every album listed above.  But definitely talk to me if you want a few of them, I would LOVE to hook you up.  A great place to start is “Eat, Sleep, Repeat” by Copeland.  If you don’t have that album don’t go any further till you do.  Amazing music.  Some of my favorite.

 

Seasons have a sound.  Summer sounds like Bleach.  Fall sounds like Augustana.  Spring sounds like old Mae.  But Winter cannot be named in a single band no matter how hard you try.  That’s what I think.

 

What are your favorite winter albums? Comment and tell me!