As we come to the end of this year I hope you can find some time to reflect.    I am giving you these questions early so you can let them bounce around in your head for awhile.  Take some time once the holiday rush is over and you or the family has packed up the car and headed home.  Find a quiet space in the morning or once the kids are in bed to reflect.   Light a candle or sit by the fire and invite these questions in. 

~ what were you grateful for this past year in your life?

~ what was the hardest time for you this year?  What lesson did you learn from it?

~ Take some quiet moments to reflect on the word “longing.”  Search your heart to see if you have any longings.  What do you long for?  Ask your heart not your head.

~ Finally ask your heart when was a moment you felt at peace?  Let the moment come to you.  Don’t try and search through your memories like a card file.  Just let it come.  Don’t think, just breathe.  When the moment comes hold on to it and look and feel it closely.  How can you have more of those moments in the coming year?  How can you carry that feeling with you always.

As we approach Christmas I hope it finds you healthy and happy in your life.  I hope that in your life you have felt and heard the gentle and sweet call of God whispering your name and if you have not, know that it is there.  If something came to you from these questions that you would like to share please add them to the comments.  I would love to hear them.

Big love to you all and Merry Christmas.

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Things are stressful right now for most of us aren’t they?  Money is tight, the economy is scary, more and more of the wealthy are bailed out while us in the middle class seem to get more and more money taken from us to feed the rich.  The government has not done its job of protecting us from scams, abuse, fraud and mismanagement instead it seems to be more concerned with helping out cronies.   All of this hanging over our heads as we enter the holiday season and yet there is much to be grateful for.  It is in these times that we need most to look towards the simplicity and wonders of life.  It is in these times that we are given the opportunity…..yes opportunity to see our difficulties not as something to carry on our backs but as something to learn from, challenge us and overcome.  Maybe the financial struggle that you are having right now can be a wake up call.  Maybe the things that you pay so much for are really not needed.  Maybe we have all grown too fat on credit instead of substance and have forgotten that what we need, we already have.  Take these times, these stresses and turn them into opportunities to learn and challenge your soul to grow.  Your soul does not crave money and things.  You soul craves attention, nurturing and room in your life to be fully ALIVE and for that one only needs to push aside the clutter and look within.

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I am in the studio late tonight and my wife sends me this update.  My son Wilder is 5 and Easton is 2:

Tonight we were all sitting in front of the fire drinking hot apple cidar when Wilder spilled on his pj bottoms.  I told him to take them off and we’d put on a new pair.  As I headed down the hall I heard Easton tell Wilder, ‘Wilder when you spill on your leg you say “shit”.’  I told him that we don’t use that word which led to a discussion in which Easton casually used shit about 20 times while I kept saying, “Let’s not keep saying that word.”  And Easton kept calmly explaining that, “I just told Wilder that you say shit when you spill.”  I finally walked out and got those pjs thinking that I may be fueling the fire.  Of course Easton made sure he got the last word.  When I got back he told Wilder and I, “Only daddy says shit when he spills on his pants.”  “Yes.”  I agreed, “only daddy says shit.” 

It would seem my rock n roll lifestyle is seeping a bit into my home life……woooops.

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I am with the band in the woods outside of Forestville, Ca.  we are recording a couple new tracks that will probably be added to the album Raise the Sun.  I will try and post some pics and updates when I get a moment.  So far we have the drum tracks done for both Now and Weightless.  We will be moving on to bass soon.

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I was watching a documentary called Rivers and Tides this weekend.  The documentary focuses on sculptor Andy Goldsworthy and his work in nature.  Really beautiful documentary and his work is amazing.  If you have some quiet moments check it out.  I think it will inspire you.

As he was talking about his work in the documentary.  He spoke of a piece he had done next to the ocean (many of his pieces are).   In the film you have watched him struggle to create it.  Building it up 4 different times.   As the tide came in you watch it slowly consume it and as you watch you think to yourself “man all that work and the ocean just takes it away and it is erased.”  But then Andy speaks of viewing his work not as the ocean “taking it away” but as a gift to the ocean.  As he said this I thought of life.  We often see our lives as all this work that in the end death comes and takes away, but how we should view and live our lives is as a gift.  We are all artists and sculptors and our work is to live our lives as a gift to the world and to God.  Our lives are given, not taken.  People often see God as the sculptor of our lives but I believe it is the other way around.  God has given us the clay of our lives and we are the sculptors.  We need to look at this lump of clay and see the beautiful piece waiting to be carved out…..it is there I promise you.  The inner work we do is the process of our soul working to see the sculpture in the lump of clay trying to get out.     At the moment of our death what will our sculpture look like?  We should hold this thought close through our life so in that moment when our soul hands the sculpture of our life to God we can smile with worn fingers and clay covered arms and say, “look what I made!”

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I read an article during the week about a little 13 year old girl named Hannah who decided not to get a heart transplant.  Against doctors advice and her parents she chose something unexpected.   The little girl had Leukemia and had suffered through chemo since she was four and recently developed heart disease.  She was told she would only have 6 months to live unless she got a heart transplant but this young soul decided to say “no” to more surgeries and anti-rejection drugs and stitches and infections and pain all for the possibility of a longer life.  She had been through enough.  She decided to take life as it was and where she was in that moment instead of accepting this idea that more surgeries and life in a hospital would bring her more life.  More life does not mean better or bigger…..it just means more.  I was struck by this article because this little girl through all the pain she had gone through had come out the other side with some wisdom that you and I often don’t understand.  Longer life is not the goal, bigger life is.  Let’s take the seconds we have and dive into them as if they were a swimming pool.  Don’t get me wrong, long life is good, but I am afraid I see so many of us making choices that lead to longer life instead of making choices that leads us to a Deeper - Bigger life.  These things do not run hand in hand.  Living, truly living, is often at opposite with living a LONGER life.  I see so many of us in relationships, jobs, family connections, marriages, and communities that lead us only to more surgeries and pain but with the promise of longer time here.  So we run frantically to more “doctors” and ”experts” who tell us about more but they know nothing of Bigger, only we can know that, but my God it takes courage.  Think of this little girl and the courage it took for her to not metaphorically say “no” to longer life and enjoy the moments she was giving, but to literally chose that.  How many of us could do that?  How many of us will do that? 

How about you? 

What in your life right now is like another painful surgery with the promise of nothing that you keep going back to?  Is it your job?  Is it your relationship?  Is it your family or people around you that make you feel pain and guilt?  What choice do you make?  Will you chose the hard path of saying “no” to another surgery of the heart and chose something bigger - something more than just getting by?  Or will you return for more of the same and fill yourself with anti-rejection television drugs, conversation stitches that never end, and blood/life thinners?  What will you do?  The question is as Red says in the Shawshank Redemption will you, “get busy living, or get busy dying”? 

Somewhere in the world a brave 13 year old girl named Hannah made a choice that was bigger than what the world expects or asks of us or than we ask of ourselves.  She made the most difficult of choices and we can all give her life just a little more meaning than it already has by taking her example and making some hard choices we need to make today.  We can take a little of her courage and inspiration and do something unexpected.   Because after all, we are all dying, we just need to decide what we are going to do with the moments we have left.  My hope, my small prayer is that we choose deeper instead of surface, we choose letting go instead of desperatley holding on, and finally that we choose…as Hannah did….to live.

If you are interested in the article you can find it here.

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I know I have been a little slow on the posts lately but will have some new ones soon. I have a million running around my head that I can’t seem to find the time to get them down. For now this was a video that was filmed of Five A.M. when we were in Seattle at the Showbox. This song “Now” is new and will actually be recorded and put on the album Raise the Sun in the next few months. Not a professional recording or video job but you can get a taste.

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I drive through Napa Valley just about everyday.  At this time of year it is incredibly beautiful as the leaves turn from green to yellow and red in the vineyards.  At one point this week there was a sunset that stretched across the sky that really reminded one of the wonder of this world we live in.  As I winded through the valley I noticed a man on the side of the road rushing out to take a picture before he jumped back in his car.  A mile down the road there was a couple that jumped out of their car to snap a quick cell phone pic before getting back on the road.  This continued as the road led on.  I never saw anyone, nor did I all week, stop and just stare.  No one stopped and simply took it in….including me.  Instead people took their picture and then got back on the road.  What would the world look like if we stopped, got out of our cars, and stood still on the side of the road letting the sunset wash over us.  If instead of people rushing out to snap pictures with their cell phones there were people lined up along the freeway all quiet - not marking the moment - marking the sunset - but being in the moment, in the sunset.  This made me smile.  Wouldn’t that be something?  Wouldn’t people driving down the road pull over themselves and say, “what is everyone looking at?”  As the pull their own car over stepping out onto the dirt they would look in either direction at the faces watching the sun go down and then look themselves.  Maybe they would get it, maybe the beauty of that moment would whisper “be still” in their hearts….or maybe they would shrug and move on. 

The point is this is deeper living not snap shot living.  AND most importantly for those of you that are Christian or follow some other religious belief this is how you point people to God.  It is not by jumping into the middle of the road, making them stop, directing their cars into a parking lot with attendants who then take their keys and say, “Look that way!”  This just irritates people.  If you want to point people to the way, than be one of those people who stop.  Be one of those people that stand on the side of the road smiling at the sun.  Be one of those people who as others pass, others think, “what is that person looking at?  what made them stop?”  This is how you change hearts and minds.  This is how you change the world.  Not by being the guy standing in the road trying to stop traffic with flags and signs but by being the one who simply stands quietly on the side of the road smiling at sunsets.

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If we are trying to walk a spiritual path - if we are trying to live in a loving and God affirming way then our work is in the invisible.   Our work is to witness the unseen.  There seems to be so much concern with affirmation, with recognition, with public & political proclamation that we have forgotten that God works underneath the surface not on the surface, God works behind the stage not on the stage, God works by pushing the sail not by being the sailboat.    I see too many people proclaiming their religion or spirituality but not living it.  Too many people using God/Jesus as a political weapon and divider.  Too many people who love to talk and talk and talk about the spiritual path but who plow it over at any chance they get.  I am tired of Billboard and Myspace Jesus.  What I am hungry for, what I yearn for are people who on a day to day basis love their neighbor, who have compassion when the “cameras” are turned off, Who pray for people who have no idea they are being prayed for. I love people who pray in their own way for others even though the know not who they are praying to or what praying really is because it comes from the heart – it comes from the soul – it comes from that deeper place that words and books cannot name. When I read Nancy Bloom’s comment on one of my posts I am inspired that there are people who are honest and good and who, whether they know it or not, are living a deeper path because in Nancy I see the invisible at work. And whether or not Nancy can name it or point to a book that explains it…..she gets it.

You do not see God on CNN proclaiming, “ya you know that who whole Grand Canyon thing….ya….that was me.”  But when we love and give and reach out in the invisible the visible begins to change.  When we reply lovingly to the angry and damaged child day after day after day, when we pray for them day after day after day and give them our attention we begin to notice that the visible begins to change.  Their step is lighter their smile begins to emerge.  When you feed a poor man soup and bread weeks later you see the effects.  The color comes back to their face.  You see the strength in their step.  It was not the color coming back to their face that made them whole it was the soup and bread handed to them by a stranger who noticed……who noticed….that they were hungry.  In a world that is consumed with the noticed let us smile as we walk past the glitter to continue our work un-noticed and unseen as we whisper our hearts into the soul of this world

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I have quite a few posts I need to catch up on but things have been busy….aren’t they always?  Last weekend Ondrejka and I had some friends over for a Harvest dinner.  Everyone brought something organic and grown locally and we shared a meal outside in the leaves and autumn sky.  We drank too much wine and ate too much food but in the midst of all of that we laughed, spoke from the heart, some cried as they spoke of struggles they were having, we had intense discussions and finally hugged as we said good-bye.   All of this was done as kids crashed about getting into things they were not supposed to and occasionally crying out for a helping or comforting hand.   It is good to be with friends and every once in a while enjoy the friendships you have cultivated over the year.  It is good to be with friends in the midst of the chaos and beauty of it all.

 I found this blessing/prayer that I had stored away years ago and read it before we began our meal and since that time I find myself coming back to it.  So much so that my wife framed it and put it on the wall.  I think it is the simplicity, the honesty and the real-ness of it that appeals to me. 

THE HARVEST PRAYER

(Anonymous 17th Century Sermon)

Please be gentle with yourself and others.

We are all children of chance,

And none can say why some fields blossom

While others lay brown beneath the harvest sun.

Take hope that your season will come.

Share the joy of those whose season is at hand.

Care for those around you.

Look past your differences.

Their dreams are no less than yours,

Their choices in life no more easily made.

And give.

Give in any way you can.

Give in every way you can.

Give whatever you possess.

Give from your heart.

To give is to love.

To withhold is to wither.

Care less for the size of your harvest

than for how it is shared,

And your life will have meaning

And your heart will have peace.

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We recently had the good fortune to tour with Sister Hazel for a bit through three states down the coast.  Each night on stage as the lights shined bright in my face I could see just enough to see the first two rows of people pressed up against the stage.  If I looked out further all I could see is black.  At the beginning of the trip I focused out into the darkness.  Trying to reach the majority of people in the dark, trying to get them to listen, trying to get them to sink into our music and performance.  It is alot of energy that goes out in these moments.  Alot of energy that goes out into the darkness and most of the time impossible to know if it reached anyone or any was coming back.  As I look into the black I am worried that the crowd is not “with us” or not enjoying the show - that we are failing.  It is a nervous paniced energy because my attention is on how I can get them to come with me, come with the band.  I start thinking of other songs to play that they might like, other things I could say to bring them in instead of playing our setlist and telling the stories that need to be said.  Half way through the show in Seattle I looked down and suddenly noticed smiling intent faces staring back at me.  I was suprised for a moment.  They were Looking to connect with me - catch my eye for a moment so they could beam a smile back but I hadn’t notice because my eyes were locked on the unknown blackness.   It was then as I began to scan the crowd in front of me that the band sank into the show.  I no longer focused out into the dark I looked at what was right in front of me smiling and swaying to the music.  It was then I began to enjoy the show, enjoy my hands on my guitar, my voice floating through the air and enjoy the wonder of being able to play my songs to these smiling faces. 

It is hard not to look out into the darkness and wonder what is out there.  It is hard not to stare into the void and project all your fears and worries and then to try and prepare or change course to address them but when we do we miss often what is right in front of us….smiling….eyes watching intently.  When we miss this, we miss everything and we trade what is real for the anxiety of what could be, what should be or what we perceive could be important in the distant future.   We are all given a sliver of light to see just enough to keep going and when we turn our eyes from the darkness to the light we often find what we need - what feeds us - what makes us feel alive, smiling back at us.

5 a.m., Five A.M., God\, faith, life, music, peace, spirituality, trent yaconelli, trust, vocation | 5 Comments »

My family went to distribute my Dad’s ashes.  He died almost 5 years ago.    Dad loved the ocean, sunsets and sandcastles.  He has some stories of building sandcastles in his books and in his talks.  We all gathered on the California coast.  We had the whole family including his grandkids ages 2 on up build a giant sandcastle.  The castle had a huge mote, shell covered towers, driftwood walls and flowers all over the top.   Each grandchild and family member found their own thing to focus on in the building of the castle.  We then put my dad’s ashes in the highest castle that we had hollowed out.  We covered it up and watched the tide come in and slowly wash him out to sea.  I sat in a chair with one of my Dad’s cigars and a glass of red wine as the sun set and cryed my eyes out.  It was really quite beautiful.   We need these kind of ceremony’s in our lives.  The kind that point to the feelings and wonders beyond words.  I have said this before but I have this fundamental belief that true spirituality is an art and this was one of those moments when everything came together in one big dance and as it did, as always, I felt close to God.  We sat watching the waves come in like time washing against our own bodies, taking us out bit by bit.  Yelling when the “big ones” would come rushing in.  “Here comes a big one!” we would yell.  “get Ready!”  “this could be it!”  The waves slowly breaking down the sand until finally a big one finally did come.  When it did, it took the last vestiges of the castle and washed it out to sea until all was flat…the ashes and all that was left of my father was gone…..and all was as it was before we built the sandcastle.   In that moment all grew quiet and I said, “goodbye Dad” and then I heard my sister Jill say, “goodbye Dad” and we both began to weep.  

We all spend our lives working on our castle.  Some of us focus on the shinny parts - decorating the outside to make it as beautiful as possible.  Others of us concentrate on the moat and the walls making sure all is protected and defended.  But the thing is or as my Dad would say “but the reality is” it is all sand.  Where was God in all of this?  He was in the building.  He was in my hands and the grandkids hands as they rushed back and forth with more driftwood to hold back the oncoming sea.  He was in my sisters eyes as they found beauty in the shells and flowers to place on the towers.  He was in my Dad’s wife’s feet as she searched for just the right place to build and he was in my brother’s voice as he struggled to find the words to tie strings to the feelings that cannot be said.  This is life. Building that sandcastle was all that we feel in life: the enormounty of it along with the fragility and smallness.  In one day I was filled with immeasurable Joy as the sun began to shine and the wind stopped and it then dropped to the lowest of lows as the last bit of sand began its journey back home to the sea.  So what do we do?  We build our sandcastles with joy and reckless abandone.  We build because we can, because that is what we are here to do.  Yes, we struggle with the oncoming waves but always…always….building with our hands and feet caked with sand and mud and sea.  Caked with this moment, this brief fragile moment of being alive.  In the end the sea will carry us all out.  Our walls will crumble.  Our bridges will fall.  Our castles will fall to ruin.   All that we make believe is permenant will go flat.   But somewhere God is watching with cigar and glass of wine with joy in his eyes.  Taking pleasure in watching what we will create next as the waves begin to rise.   Laughing as we run and splash in the waves searching for more shells.  Until that final moment when we here him Shout, “here comes a big one!!!!  Woooo HOOO!!!”

God\, Uncategorized, peace, spirituality | 11 Comments »

Displacement - to move or put out of the usual or proper place.

What is our proper place in life and who decides it?  Do we decide our proper place?  Does something else or a combination of things?  There is somewhat a negative connotation to the word Displacement/displaced, but I don’t see it that way.  Spiritually when you look at Jesus or Buddha, both stepped out of their proper place - both ran from the usual.  Both gave up everything and stepped out of the traffic of society and from that moment forward they were displaced….no home….no 401k….no fall back plan.  Why have we all bought in to this idea of “proper place”?  Why do we applaud embracing the usual and ridicule the unusual.  How did we get to this place of seeing the norm as saving our life when it is actually slowly seeping our life away as it feeds us more and more empty food and television and mindless pap until we are both physically and mentally obese.  I understand…..I do….We don’t like feeling displaced.   I certainly don’t.   We don’t like feeling out of sorts but this leads to people always choosing the clearly marked and well paved freeway of their life over leaving car and pockets full of keys behind for the forest….for the unknown.  That is where the magic is.  That is where wonder hides.  And if I am to believe that God is an unfathomable mystery I have to know that he lives there too.  You see, you and I have this seed of light inside of us and it is fragile and small but it is ours to nurture.  And the one thing I have learned about it is it does not like concrete and flourecent lighting.   Believe me I get it: You have credit card debt, you have a safe job, you have a car payment, you have health insurance, you have new cloths to buy, you have a mortgage…..yes I get it…..believe me I do.  I have these things too but as my wife and I spoke last night about bills and bills and money we both realized what we were stressed about was all the energy expounded to staying in our proper place….to maintaining the usual.  You see, I fell into it too but how about you and I do something different.  Let’s get displaced.  Let’s give up the safe but unsatisfying relationship.  Let’s give up the safe and usual job in our safe and usual mortgage in our safe and proper neighborhood and be displaced for a while.   For me music is the one place in my life I feel totally displaced, totally uneasy about.  I am constantly looking around and saying where am I, what am I doing here, I am totally lost.  I have been doing this for years and have been wildly unsucessful but I have had more encounters with God and LIFE in a bar with 10 people in it than any church or synagouge could give me.  Let’s embrace the answer, “I don’t know.”  “But what will you do?  How will you live?  What about retirement?” Will be their questions and our answer will be “I don’t know.”  Because what they are really saying is wouldn’t you rather have a guaranteed scoop of sheep food everyday than risk everything for one bite of strawberry? Look around at your life right now and please understand, whatever it is, you are choosing it.  REALLY look at your life.  What do you choose? 

life, spirituality | 7 Comments »

I have been busy lately. Too busy really.  I am not really built for speed and noise and juggling many things at once.  I have never been good at it.  When too many things are happening at once I often frustrate easy and snap often…..I am a bit of a grump when things overwhelm me.   I had not spent much time with the kids lately so my wife and I took them to Armstrong woods.  Surrounded by enormous redwoods we tromped down the path.  Me in the lead, “come on guys!  Let’s keep moving” I called out to my wife and kids as they tottled off the path to look at moss or a rock or the way a leaf had grown out from a stump.  Every once in a while my two year old would call out to me to “wait for me!” and when I did he would hold my hand and walk me towards some other wonder just off the path.  But me, I had no patience for these detours.  I wanted to get to where we were going.  I wanted to get out my frantic energy with an exhausting hike.   I wanted to reach the top.   I wanted to see as much as possible in the time we had.  I felt a bit like a top that had been winded up but not released.  So off we went down the path me pushing ever forward my kids constantly bringing me back and my frustration building.  My son’s yelled for me to stop so I reluctantly, once again, walked back to find them both crouching by the path staring intently at a multicolored centipede.  “Isn’t it beautiful Dad?” was the question my sons asked me.  I stood for a moment watching my sons so enveloped in the moment…..not pushing…..not pulling….just being and I felt very foolish for all of my haste to get up the path.  My son Easton said, “will you walk with us Dad?”  My eyes weld up,  “of course.”  I put Easton on my shoulders and Wilder asked to hold my hand and off we went.  Suddenly I was moving at the speed of life.  Now, I felt the breeze that was always there.  I noticed the complete and utter beauty of these trees that had been here for 100’s of years watching us come and go, live and die, and foolishly run up and down the paths as they stood silent.  Now we stopped everywhere to look at leaves, the way dust had settled on a fern, the rings of a fallen tree….all was a tiny miracle….all was beautiful…and I felt the unwinding begin.  What had I been teaching my sons: RUN, Run RUN….keep moving…get to the top…keep your eyes on the destination….focus on moving towards the goal and all the while ignoring the path.  All the while ignoring where you are.  I may have been teaching them this in a way with my actions but thankfully they are too young to notice, too close to God to pay attention to this foolishness.  Instead with tiny hands they lead me back, back to the present. 

We turned a corner along the path and the boys asked if they could get out pencil and paper and draw what they had seen for awhile as we sat underneath a redwood.  I stood silently staring up at the trees watching them sway in the summer breeze.  I must of stood there for 15 minutes in the silence until I heard another family tromping up the path.  A mother and father leading their son up the path.  The mother pulling her 3 year old along saying, “we will have plenty of time to stop and look around once we get to the top, OK?  There are plenty of things to look at up there.”  The boy holding his mother’s hand moves into a trot to keep up.  “But…but…I want…I want to see that” he cries out.  There is so much to see in this world, so much, and it is not all at the end. The boy understands It is all not waiting for us once we meet our goal.  It is actually here right now and we notice when we start thinking small instead of big, slow instead of fast, quiet instead of noise, stillness instead of busyness. 

How many times must I/we LEARN this lesson?  I get the sense this will be a lesson I will learn daily, hourly and minute by minute because as many times as I suddenly “get it” I get distracted just as quickly.  The boy passes my sons sitting under the redwood tree and asks if he can stop but the mom and dad do not answer.  He walks towards me and I give him the biggest smile I can.  He smiles back just as big.  His parents lead him down the path and I watch him as he continues to reach for small things.

life, peace, spirituality, trent yaconelli | 3 Comments »

I have been going through my notebook after traveling so much lately with the band.  I realize I have alot of material that I have fogotton about.  Here are some notes as we were driving through Montana.

There are two ways of looking at spirituality.  One is to memorize a code of conduct of do’s and don’ts and to take every word of the bible literally….only at surface value….and then live by this.  Always keeping the code in front of you to reference.  The other is to take the words and swallow them whole to let them dissolve in your blood, your skin, your eyes and hair and feet.  To let them burn as fuel to the fire already present inside.  Now, instead of in FRONT of your eyes they are your eyes and now everything you do, see, encounter is spiritual - is God - is practice. 

Picture by tommy martin

spirituality | 2 Comments »