It Takes A Long Time

It takes a long time to kill a man

55 years at least

until he breaks down 

starts to look underground

and go off and get him some peace.”

I want to die a lot quicker than that

if it’s my only way out.

I’ve been counting up the cost

getting up on that cross

I want to know what this is all about.

A friend of mine, Peter, talked to me about this song during my sophomore year of college.  It’s Jon Foreman (Switchfoot) “Resurrect me.”  He’s talking about the mid-life crisis.  I personally don’t have a lot of experience with these sorts of crises but I’m trying to have mine sooner rather than later.  My perspective is that we have the dreams, goals, ideas, things we live for, that we spend a lot of our resources chasing after.  Maybe we get there and maybe we don’t.  We spend more time chasing though than developing the goals well in the first place.  Then after a while of chasing, we start to wonder why we were chasing what we were chasing in the first place.  A new set of priorities moves in and replaces the old set.

I have definitely had those goals and been chasing them quite systematically.  My senior project, my major, my university, learning Germany, studying abroad were all steps leading up to my goal of developing athletic shoes.  As an intern now at PUMA, I find my goal drawing rather close.  As college draws to a close, I will have some big decisions to make.  I could take a job at PUMA and reach my goal.  I mean, who doesn’t like achieving goals?  Or I could re-evaluate my goal.  Even now I am beginning to step back again and look again at where I am going.  I don’t want to get 20 years down the road working at PUMA and then notice that there are more important things I could have and should have been doing.

I realize this is pretty vague, but that gives you an overview anyway of what’s in my head.  I’m not at all sure where the thought process will lead yet but you can expect to hear more about it over the coming year.

Musik!

I had a lot of fun with this so I hope you enjoy. I had a classical guitar on hand and that's what happened. Also, I do not recommend to anyone else the use of iMovie for stop motion video.

Holidays part 1 (Weihnachten/Christmas)

Despite the tremendous amount of time recently available to me the desire to blog vanished over vacation so now it's time to elaborate a bit on what happened with all that free time. So I'll sit here in bed (before midnight I might add), sipping hot milk with honey, and listening to Philipp Poisel who you can check out on Grooveshark for some really laid back German music.

So here’s a recap of my Christmas. We could say it started at about 1pm on Friday the 24th. I began the trek towards the church on the far side of town (small town mind you) with Flugelhorn in hand, Christmas music playing, snow gently falling, and a good dose of optimism in my heart. I decided against the bus because it was nice to just be out in the snow. Upon arriving we practiced for an hour for the service and then just spent time talking and being jovial, drinking tea and the like. We made it to the service, which went off with out a hitch. Some regular worship, along with some Christmas songs and a teaching. After lots of hugs and Merry Christmas’ we all ran off to our houses to celebrate. I went back with the Bösling family who include Charlotte and Lars (pictured below) as well as some more siblings. We got to their house in their big redvan, and then waited up stairs for a bit. When we heard the bell we all ran into the living room only moments after the Christ child had escaped out the open window (they have a lot of open windows here). We just stood there for an awkward few minutes staring at the Christmas tree with lit candles instead of a string of lights. Finally we dove into the presents. I got a scrap book from the 6 friends at church who are roughly my age with a lovely picture of them all on the first page. Their 10 year old, Mirko, got a remote control helicopter which has provided loads of entertainment. We were starving by that point so we sat down to dinner which was Raclette. We pile potatoes, peppers, mushrooms, Raclette cheese, and probably other stuff too on these little metal trays that you put into the Raclette grill (google image search it). Then we cooked little pieces of chicken and shrimp on the top of it. It’s like the dinner table version of roasting hot dogs around a fire. Afterwards we sat in the living room and chatted and had a good time. I learned a lot about the family, the church, and Germany in general. The next day was Christmas, which isn’t quite as significant in Germany as the previous day. I went over the Böslings again around noon to make apple crisp. I didn’t have any measuring cups to work with but it turned out to be delicious anyway, but I’m getting ahead of myself. Desert is after lunch. So it got to be 2:30 and a handful of relatives and roommates etc. made it the Böslings house to partake. We started with the most delicious tomato soup I’ve ever tasted. Then we moved on to the red sauerkraut, potatoes, turkey, gravy and...stuffing cornbread pudge balls? or something like that. Anyways, it was all rather delicious (lecker in german). Once we had made it through the apple crisp and coffee and recovered a bit we went to see Narnia in theatres in 3D, in German... The voice overs they used were pretty convincing with the exception of the snobby cousin Eustace. They definitely gave him a snobby voice but sounded more like a cartoon than a real person. Here’s the trailer in German. Anyways, went back the Böslings and talked lot’s with Mr. and Mrs. and had a great time and more coffee. Sunday the 26th was the final day, it involved venison, lot’s of guitar, small children, and more spending time with people. There it is, that’s Christmas in Germany. New Years post to come soon.

Choir Singing (with live Orchestra accompaniment)

I found it rather amusing how long it took for the choir to stand up. You think they are all standing and then another person pops up for a good 30 seconds. They did sing beautifully though.

Church Adventure part II

Today was church in Andreas Gemeinde. I believe it is a baptist church, although I admittedly have hardly any idea what that means both here in Germany and back in the states. I didn't understand much of the teaching but it was a good time to think and journal. We started with hymns with a piano, and then moved to a band and more contemporary although somewhat muted music. We did "A Mighty Fortress is Our God" in German, which I assume was the language it was written in though I'm not certain. Interestingly enough the latter half of each of the verses have less syllables and so they switch to a 3/4 time signature (like a waltz). There are a number of college students that attend there and every week they go back to an apartment for lunch, very reminiscent of the brunch at Ozzy's last year. It was a great time to connect with German students and they helped teach me German. I have one more church I'd like to visit next week before I pick a place.

Also today I finally went for a run along the river that passes through town (it's a pretty week river), but came across some beautiful spots where I'm looking forward to relaxing, reading, and picturing.

k later

Church Adventure

So today I visited Lebensquelle Gemeinde for church (Spring of Life Congregation roughly translated). When I arrived the worship team was very green. Fortunately they were just doing a light check and fixed it before the service. The gentleman who opened the service was translated into German. But with the chaos of people finding seats and such I couldn’t tell much more than that.

For worship, I knew some of the songs and some of them not. Most were in German but some were in Russian. As a note, Russian doesn’t use our alphabet so I couldn’t read it but the German translation was below. They did, “Here I am to Worship” in German, as well as “Dancing Generation”, and “Hosanna” by Hillsong in Russian (all very well done I might add).

So it turns out that 80% of the church is Russian, so the translation was for the small number of us outsiders... The craziness of Russian and German together when I hardly speak German was a little more than I could follow, so I’ll probably look for another place next week. I had asked someone to recommend a very charismatic church to me and that’s what I got. It was definitely a really cool one time experience, it just won’t be home.

12 bar blues - ukulele

¿What's Your Favorite Kind of Music?

So I'm not usually good at questions about favorites with very few exceptions (favorite color? - Green). Anyways, for how much I like music, I realized how poorly I can categorize what I like.

For a while I thought I liked music that I would love to be able to play (I like a lot of acoustic guitar music), but then I realized it's the other way around. I love to learn to play music that I appreciate, so I'm back to starts on what I like.

So I realized as to style it's this. I love when music could be played by one person in a field, or a group of friends sitting around a fire. Maybe the album adds more but the essence of the song can be fully captured in that simple arrangement and setting, because that perfect screaming guitar solo, or that blazing kick drum doesn't really make a song good, they are just signs of gifted musicians, not gifted artists. The appreciation of the simple is in large because what I appreciate in content.

In the content there has to be something about the song that catches my attention. The words should have a real connection to the ponderings of the artist. Ideally it's either something I've been thinking about, or it challenges me to think about.

Secondly, I like when songs paint a picture and use the music and the lyrics together to make you feel just what it's showing you.

Look at these lyrics in Cannons by Phil Wickham:

The chorus goes like this:

Singing you are holy, great and mighty,

the moon and the starts declare who you are.

I'm so unworthy, but still you love me,

Forever my heart will sing of how great you are.

Definitely true and good, but also very cliché. Ordinarily this would bore me (unless God had just been speaking to me about my unworthiness or something of the like, suddenly making the song personal). What Phil does though that makes me appreciate the song is he paints a picture through the verse that leads into the chorus and makes it many times more powerful. Here it is:

(verse 2, though verse 1 is good too)

Beautiful and free, the song of galaxies,

Reaching far beyond the Milky Way.

Let's join in with the sound,

Come on, Let's sing it out,

As the music of the universe plays

and then continue up to the chorus.

...Find the song here.

That's cool, thats what I like. It's so much bigger. I can visualize a symphonic roar filling the galaxy, all excited about God. The illustration is verse 1 is beautiful as well. There are so many songs especially on Christian radio in particular that speak vague truth in a vague impersonal way. It's like they thought of a tune they liked and had to fill it with some words. Art shouldn't be about being catchy, it's about expressing.

Now I just need to find more music that fits. Feel free to recommend. I'm bad at searching out music. (and these posts are getting long)

Amazing Worship -::- Amazing Music

What's the difference?

The first is clearly more "spiritual" than the latter, but what does that genuine spiritual experience look like in our lives, especially when everything we experience gets filtered through our physical bodies. Also, to clarify I'm using a very narrow definition of worship here, referring to praising God through song whether it be as a church or individually. Worship entails significantly more than that but that was the aspect of worship providing the confusion for me.

There have been plenty of times I can point to in the past 10 years where as worship concluded I had this feeling that worship was awesome, but then I realized that that "awesome worship" feeling came at times when I just heard music I loved and the mix was perfect and the mood was set just right. Not that worship can't happen in those places, but I began to wonder if my worship experience was really just manipulating my mind and emotions through music, a beautiful tool that ties so closely into our hearts that it carries a lot of power, regardless of "spiritual" content.

The last few months have been a battle to get to the bottom of this. How do I know when I'm enjoying God's presence or deep and worship versus just enjoying an awesome groove??? As soon as a that uncertainty in my worship surfaced my worship dried up, and I could hardly participate in worship or music at all.

Frustrating to not know the difference between God and music. Were all those times just resting in the presence of God, really just times of being massaged by a rhythm that hit the spot?

So here's what I'm thinking. Worship can manifest in any time, any place, and can be expressed through so many mediums. One of the most awesome settings is in a community of people who have devoted all they are to Jesus Christ. So we gather and use music, as a powerful mode of expression to worship our Lord. A great idea in principle but here's where I started messing it up.

I roll in Sunday morning and I "arrive at worship," or I pull out my guitar to do a worship song. As I waltz into that worship setting I enjoy some music and then it's done and I wonder if I really encountered God or not. Now here's what needs to change.

I need to go through my days recognizing God everywhere. There are times when I see him inspire people to awesome things. There are times when he opens up opportunities for me to represent him clearly. He gives revelations of how good he is, and how he's blessed me. I need to think on those things, to dwell on those things, and to let those things build up. When the goodness of God begins to overwhelm me (which should really happen on a much more regular basis), I can use music, in my room or corporately, to express that joy, and that passion, and that thanksgiving. The music just becomes the best medium for expressing the emotions within, and not a medium for attempting to manipulate them into feeling like God is good. God makes himself good. The music doesn't do that. Music just happens because God IS Good.

Why

Here it is. I love music. I love expressing myself through it vocally and musically but it's always been with someone else's lyrics. I started working on this during Urbana '09 and it continued to develop as life went along up until this past week when I recorded it. It came out of a lot of frustration with sin. Not the sin like lying and murder, but the effects of sin that manifest in life being totally unfair. Everyone trying to do the right thing and hurting each other deeply in the process. I expect that in the world, but in the church? Christian to Christian? brother to brother? brother to sister? None of its right and it's all a confused mess. Everyone is hurting everyone. Here's the thing though, just because I don't understand what's going on or don't like what I see, just because I find myself mad at God doesn't change whether he exists or not. It doesn't change his character. He is still good. I still must live my life for him. God sees the world very differently than I do and all I can do is trust that he's making better decisions than I would make. Even the "undeserved" sicknesses, war, and starvation are the results of the fall, and while a lifetime of those things seems like forever, they are really only a drop next to the life after death. Obviously how I see different situations varies a lot over the course of 5 months. New things come up and other things fade so in the song we have some of those variations squeezed together in 5 minutes. In short, no I don't get it, yes I'm frustrated but there are things that I do know and I need to stand on those things even when I don't have the whole picture. I didn't realize that was ok until this year. God has come through again and again though. He cuts through the chaos and makes the right thing happen. It's just tough to not know the ending. The lyrics are below. I don't think there is much there that isn't straight forward and just saying clearly what I mean but hopefully this background gives you a better (though definitely not complete) picture of where this is coming from. By the way is a low quality video upload. The mp3 is much clearer (though still recorded by an amateur). Also the pic at the beginning of the video is from a church rooftop in Argentina. If I ever made a real album that would be the cover I'm thinking.


You are the answer
You are my answer
You are the one that I need
You are our answer
You are our king
you are the one that we need

I see the pain, I see the hurt, all around me
We search, we cry, we come short
This life is so unfair
We find, these broken pictures of your love,
but the distance, separating your love from the love that we see,
makes it hurt, tears our hearts, all the more

Where should we look
To whom can we turn

God this life, this confusion, is far beyond me
I give up
I give up
take my life
I won’t have it
I don’t want it anymore
but when the world was without form and void
you brought to order and you can do it again.
I need you I need you
Be my satisfaction

Towards you I will turn
To you My King I will turn

I want to, I need to understand
why God, I don’t see your plan
I cannot, go back on what I know
the pain doesn’t nullify the truth
I will live for you

Passion

Today I went to see the RIT orchestra play and enjoyed it quite a bit. If the chairs had been more comfortable for reclining I would have appreciated it but maybe it's better how it was.

Anyways so I was noticing a student playing second violin on the very end close to us. He and his dad were both in the group. It was cool to see how totally into his playing he was. Very dramatic and excited to a point that most people wouldn't see as socially impressive. The point of this isn't to make fun of him.

I was brought to thinking about how much I pay attention to my appearance and how people view me. But how appropriate is it to be so passionate about what we do that we don't heed social standards and pay no attention to what people think about us. We get so excited about our purpose (whether that be a short term or a long term purpose doesn't matter here) that we don't mind looking like a fool to other people for it.

Maybe it just depends a lot of what it is we're passionate about and what the goal of our life is. For our violin friend, I'm glad that he has found music to appreciate and really get into. If being a little awkward about it helps him enjoy it more then I suppose he should just weigh out the trade offs. Maybe he'll miss out on some friends. Maybe those aren't friends worth having though.

Now that that's thought through, it's relatively simple. What about being a Christian though? Aren't we supposed to be so in love with Christ that we'll do anything for him and we shouldn't let those around us influence the way we act? I might be misquoting but I think Paul talks about being a fool for Christ. What does that mean? I know there are plenty of people that totally live that out and praise God with no regard for the opinions of those around them. I believe that that's generally honest and not just a show. God will bless it but is that what God has for us? Aren't we also reaching out to those around us? Isn't our purpose here to share the gospel with the world. We want to see students and faculty transformed and campuses renewed. How are we supposed to do that if people just think we're weird, that we're fools, that we don't know anything? People don't listen to people they don't respect. Should we be striving to earn the respect of the world? but while living by a system totally contrary to what the world admires? How's that work? Are we supposed to find a balance somewhere? Where is it? How do we decide when we care to much about what people think? How do we realize when we're ignoring the people around us? Maybe it's impossible? Maybe that's why we need Christ to change hearts? I know it's not us that does the changing but God wants us to give our best... So does our best mean being a fool? or does it mean being able to be accepted, then to connect, and be there with people... are those two things contradictory? I guess I really don't know but I'd like to know. Is there a hard line somewhere? or is this all gray? I want to be full of excitement and passion for Christ and doing his will, I just don't know how to walk that out. I'm losing myself to rambling now but I think I've shown where my confusion lies and that's the point.

Should I be an awkward excited violinist for Christ? ...

...or smooth, but with Christ not being quite so obvious at first sight? Are those our only two options?

Amazing Grace

Each and Every passing day is becomes clearer and clearer how faulty we are. We can't even walk confidently in our good intentions without royally messing something up. The king of the Heavens cared for me and made my life worth living. There is hope and love in him alone so I will give you all of my heart, soul, and strength.