We don’t listen anymore. 

 Everyone is so focused on being heard, on making a statement, of having their questions answered and problems noted that we have forgotten how to listen.  The preachers call out “Oh Lord Hear us.” Our prayers are all about God listening to us: God, please give me more money, better job, a happier wife, a bigger home, health, time, success, fame, …etc.  We spell it out for God and at the end of our prayer we say, “amen” to end the one way conversation. 

We don’t listen anymore.

A good friend of mine was lost in her life.  She was lonely and afraid so she latched on to a bad man.  He took advantage of her.  He lied to her.  He made her smaller, always smaller in front of others.  She told me she didn’t know what to do.  That she prayed to God every night for an answer.  I met with her and told her she should leave him.  I would help her.  She declined.  Her friends and I got together and met with her again and pleaded with her to leave him.  We all offered her help in moving, getting set up in a new town with her children.  She still prayed to God asking him to change the man.  He cheated on her repeatedly and took up drinking.  She prayed.  All the while friend after loving friend came to her door pleading with her to leave for the sake of her children but she stayed.  Praying for God to hear her prayer but never listening to the answer.

we don’t listen anymore.

God sent help.  God gave her an answer, it was time to go.  Person after person, opportunity after opportunity arrived at her door step but she looked right past each one and kept crying out.  If she ever would have been silent and still she would have heard God’s reply.  Maybe it would have given her strength, the strength to admit her mistakes and weaknesses and leave but God could not be heard over the sound of her own voice calling out but never listening for the response.  Recently I played a show in my hometown of Yreka and she was still there sad, broken and lost.   Still waiting,  and talking to God with mouth open and hands on her ears.

We don’t listen anymore.

For the past year I try to remember to pray what I am grateful and thankful for.  I ask for help with being patient and kind and with anger and depression but most of all I try to make a point of praying, “I am here.  I am listening.”  If we do not create a silence for God to speak, how will we ever learn his language? 

I want to learn how to listen again

Uncategorized, christianity, life, music, religion, spirituality | 1 Comment »

We are all profoundly alone and profoundly connected to everything.  It is a truth that is like one of the great Zen Koans.  I can make a decision on my own and decide to push and then watch as the dominos begin to fall affecting everyone around me.  I am not alone but then again I am.  The decision to do something is my own but the action spirals outward like a rock dropping into a still pond.  I wrote a post a while back about Pace e Bene and Father Vitale.   Father Vitale is a priest and founder of Pace e Bene and was recently jailed for 5 months for protesting torture at a military facility and our governments roll in it.    The post was short because I expected to write more but I was shocked to get emails from readers somewhat offended by my comments.  They claimed I was being political and should get back to sticking to what I normally would write about.  The military school that Father Vitale was protesting has been implicated over and over with training military officers from all over to torture.  Their Central American graduates are responsible for the deaths and torture of thousands including priests and this is what Father Vitale was arrested for protesting?   Something is wrong here.  If I claim to be a child of God, if I claim to be a person of conscious, if I claim to believe in the words of Jesus than why would I not write about this?  Why would I not take a stand?  I am not the one who made it “political.”  It is beyond politics, it is about basic human rights.  It is about being “bigger” than those that espouse violence and hatred.  Certainly this is something we should be writing about, thinking about, speaking out about?  Right?

The thing is, too many of us are saying nothing.  Too many of us in churches and synagogues and monasteries are silent when it comes to talking about peace.  I know it isn’t cool.  I know it sounds “soooo hippie 60’s” but we have forgotten that “blessed are the peacemakers.”  We are all so jacked up on fear and patriotism that we have forgotten the horrors of war and violence, our soldiers coming back dead, wounded, traumatized and some mentally unstable after war.  The suicide rate of soldiers has gone up dramatically as politicians scream about Supporting the Troops but then do little to actually give them the health care or support they need after returning from battle.   For them, the soldiers are a wedge issue but for us these men are our brothers and sisters, our sons and daughters, our friends and loved ones.

We are not allowed to see the families of Iraqi’s who have had loved ones blown to bits and lives ruined all because they were in the way.  The death toll of Iraqi Innocent Civilians is vague as various agencies report 75,000 to 654,000 to over a million (whatever the amount it is high and heartbreaking).  We tell ourselves they brought it on themselves.   We ignore that the son whose mother and father have been accidentally taken from them is now taking up a rifle, a bomb, a rock against us.In the midst of all this our country was found to be torturing people at Abu Garab and accused of having secret torture facilities.  We have since passed the Military Commissions act that eliminates the right of Habeas Corpus a right fundamental to the founding of this country and ignores the Geneva Convention protections.  What have we become?  Yes, I understand people want to kill us and please please do not send me a Jack Bauer 24 t.v. show scenario, but we used to stand for something higher and if we claim to be followers of a higher power we should be standing for something higher still.  How can we claim to be a Christian nation and followers of the words of Jesus and not do all we can for peace?  It starts with ourselves.  It begins inside of ourselves and works its way outward into the world but we must begin with a peaceful heart. It begins with all of us saying no to this separation between us and them, republican and democrat, pro war and anti war.  Instead let’s look to what connects us.  It starts with this nation saying No to Terrorism but at the same time working to understand its roots to prevent it.   We cannot simply think that violence against violence will work.  We have to dig deeper.

A group of teenagers at a High School in Florida wanted to wear t-shirts with peace signs on them and start a group for peace.  Seems harmless enough.  Seems like a small act.  They were met with ridicule and other students at the school wearing Confederate Flag shirts, Swatika shirts, and slogans that said, “If Peace is the Answer it must be a stupid question.”  Since when do people feel the need to combat peace?  Why did these students feel so threatened that they needed to counteract other students promoting peace?  The students wearing Confederate flags said they were doing it to support the troops…….???…???  When did promoting peace or being against torture get framed into the corner of not supporting the troops?  It is this ridiculous belief that in order to be FOR something you than have to be against something else…..like the troops.  It is a way for people who support war to say, “Yes we are harming and killing people but look you are harming these people!  You are harming our Troops!  You want them to die!”  Total and complete Bullshit and yet I have had this said to me more times than I would have ever thought.  I have had my love of this country challenged simply because I argued that if you are going to arrest someone they should know the charges against them, they should be given a trial, and they should not be tortured.  For arguing all of these things I was told I was on the side of the terrorists.

We are profoundly connected to everything.  The parents of these students influence their childs views, the parents views are influenced by our government and vice versa, our governments views influence other countries, those views than influence the lives of other governments, countries, parents, children of the world.  We are all profoundly connected.If this post upsets you, if you are angered by this, I would hope that you first ask yourself why before sending me an email about how unpatriotic I am or unchristian or pro terrorist.  I am simply promoting peace.   I am simply saying if we really want to stop the violence and acts of terrorism than we must look deeper than war against another nation.  We must look for its roots, we must look at changing the lives of people before they strap a bomb to their chest.   We must stop our participation in the cycle.  So yes, I will write and say that the fact that my country has imprisoned 75 year old Franciscan Priest and put him in solitary confinement  needs to be thoughtfully discussed.  We must look at the actions done in our name.  

Recently I met with some of the staff at Pace e Bene  wonderful people who really define what it means to practice.    I am hoping to met with Father Vitale in December.  My brother Mark and I plan on doing an interview.  I hope those of you that are upset over this stick around to read it.

Here are some suggestions from Pace e Bene.  Nonviolent living is the day-to-day process of applying the principles of creative nonviolence in our lives and in our society. Some of these principles are:

• We all matter.
• We are all connected.
• We all have a piece of the truth and the un-truth.
• We all suffer when we divide ourselves into “Us versus Them,” an attitude that fuels violence and blocks our full humanity.
• We strengthen violence when we cooperate with it.
• We are not reducible to the evil we commit.
• The means are the ends in the making — and therefore need to be consistent.
• Our power to connect and create is stronger than our power to dominate and destroy.
• We have more power than we think to create nonviolent options.
• Love is stronger than fear and destruction.

christianity, life, peace, religion, spirituality | 11 Comments »

I hope everyone had a peaceful Thanksgiving.  The band is struggeling with getting our album ready to go.  We are trying to make sure the album is everything we could hope for and it needs to be.    The past few weeks have been stressful as things started to fall apart a bit.  It is amazing how quickly you can fall off the path once stress enters the picture.  Suddenly you are listening to every fear and every outside voice except your own.  I have these little panic moments at these times and all my anxiety turns inward as I begin to doubt myself, my path, the music, my friends, the kindness of others, the taste of ice cream…you name it.  I suffer from the sleep disorder Night Terrors.  I have my whole life but only found out after college there was an actual name for what was happening.  I have realized that often stress brings them out more.  The past few days there has been one after another.  While staying at my Mom’s house for Thanksgiving I woke up swinging and kicking my feet as hard as I could  into a glass coffee table as I was in the midst of one of these night terrors.  Thank God it didn’t break.   When you have a night terror your body shoots adreniline into you body as it kicks into the fight or flight response.  My night terrors are accompanyed with visions.   When I stopped I stared at the figure standing on the table.   When you have a night terror it is like you are inside a dream/vision.  I was staring at this grey ghost like figure and as I slowly came out of the dream (all of this is happening in that state between dream and reality) I realized the figure was a hideous and terrible version of myself and he was staring at me fericiouisly with sharpened teeth.  It was the perfect image of how I saw myself and how fear was running the show.   It was all my worst self esteem issues wrapped up in the personifcation of fear….terrible eyes and sharpened teeth…blackened mouth ready to tear my flesh apart.  The thing is that is what it was doing.  My self esteem issues, my doubts, my fears were tearing me to pieces and the more fearful I got the more power I gave them.  On the way home yesterday with a sore foot and blood shot eyes I started to say to my wife, “what the fuck am I doing?  serriously honey, what am I doing?  people aren’t going to buy this record.  I am just setting myself up again.  I am so stupid.  I get all excited and hopeful and then I go to the same door I always go to….the same door that every time I knock on it, it opens just far enough for someone to kick me in the teeth.  Why do I keep setting myself up for this?”  I stared hard at the road as we winded around Lake Berryessa and leaves of gold and amber rushed by our windshield.  My wife quietly looked at me, “because it is about the ride.  it always has been.”  Suddenly I felt silly.  She was right.  I had gone down the same hole I always do when I get depressed.  “Are you still loving the moments you are recording and playing music?”  Like a child who has been caught stealing I glance away “yes”.  “Well, then let all of this go and enjoy the ride.”  She was right.  I cleared out the demons in my head and went home to make the decisions I knew I had to make for the music.   I made some phone calls, emailed a few people and now we/I am back on track.  I tell you all this just to show you as much as I preach, write or rant I struggle with all of this just like you.

There is still a big video coming out on December 15th.   I will be looking to all of you with blogs to post it if  you can.  Some of our tracks from the album will be  out for digital download and an ep will all be available on the same date.  The album will get pushed back a bit to the end of December but it is going to be and sound just the way we want it.  It looks like our CD release show will be on Feb 2nd.  Mark the date and I hope to see you all there.

 I also want to invite all of you of the “morphine life community” to check out Shawna McHenry’s photo page.  It is under my blog roll.  After struggeling herself she just took the leap to pursue her passion.   If any of you out there have decided to jump towards your passion, your path, drop me a note and I will be happy to link to it.

Five A.M., Uncategorized, life, music, spirituality | No Comments »

There are moments on stage when I truly fall into the song, the music, the audience, the vibration, the dance and those moments are truly wonderful.  I will often close my eyes and just float along with these moments like a kite in a breeze until the breeze dies down and I softly settle back to earth….back to reality.  It is in those moments that everything slows down, I notice my hand on the microphone, I feel connected to everything the band is doing but most importantly I am not thinking of what is next….the next line of the song….if the crowd is enjoying the show…etc.  Instead I am just floating.  Everything feels connected.   These moments are rare but even the briefest of those moments has helped me with all the others.  So often we have removed experience from the equation when talking about Religion or Spirituality and when people do speak of experience we roll our eyes a bit.  I am not talking people who say, “so I was talking to the Lord last night and he said we need a bigger building.”  I am talking about actual experience with God.  I am speaking of when you are not following God or standing with God but actually in God and he is in you…..in the presence.  It is very rare to feel this way but when you do it is magical, it makes it easier to have faith, to trust even in bad times.   Just as it is easy to believe in Cinnamon once you have tasted it on your lips.  The next time you taste it alone or as an ingredient in something wonderful you then can even call it by name.  You can even sense it and smell in the air.

 The problem today is I see rooms and rooms full of people who have never had the experience and instead have substituted tradition, routine, and ritual but those things are NOT spiritual by themselves.  They were meant to be tools to get us to those brief moments we get it….when we are floating in the presence of God….when we are One.  We have taken those things and made them the point.  You go to church because that is what you do when you are a Christian.  You kneel, pray, kneel, pray because that is what you do when you are a Catholic but somewhere along the way we forgot the point.  The ritual, the tradition, the kneeling were all supposed to be ways that would help us connect to the experience of God but instead we have replaced experience with going to church on Sunday, not cussing, and rituals.   Services can be great and we can love things about them but we cannot fall into the trap of feeling like if we do certain rituals correctly or attend Church every Sunday it will change or affect God’s view of us.  God’s love is always there.  All that is needed is for us to step into it.  These things are there to help us get connected to God not to replace that connection.  I find the people who have the least experience to be the most fanatical about Church on Sunday and crushing everybody with Christianity. 

I was recently at a Catholic service in Napa attending for a relative who had converted and I sat as people repeated and chanted, “oh glorious God you are so merciful”  “the lord is my Shepard” but all all done in this drone, monotone voice.  No passion, no love, no belief….they were just words on a page.  It literally made me sick to my stomach.  I watched as all of these rituals were done by pan-faced followers with no sense at all that they believed or understood what it was they were saying or doing.  They had no sense of experience.  I had to get up and leave and stand outside for awhile.  To be fair I had the same experience in the midst of a really wonderful time at the Zen Center.  I witnessed people so immersed in the minutia of certain rituals that they forgot what it was the ritual had been aiming to attain.

Report after report has come out recently about reasons for decline in church membership, well this is why.  Most of the time it is just another function like the PTA or Rotary.  Where is God in all of this?  After all the kneeling and standing and singing and coffee what are they actually getting?   The thing is, once you experience God you find him everywhere in the most mundane to the most dramatic.  You end up viewing the world as if everything was a miracle.  I find God in music.  I find him when I walk one of my sons back and forth in the middle of the night.  I find him in the leaves that scatter about on my lawn.  I find him in the loving gaze of my wife.  Once I had experienced God we were no longer strangers anymore and I could recognize him everywhere.  We desperately need to get back to experiencing God in our lives – our every day lives, because he does not just exist on Sundays and in Churches.   If we do not know or seek out God here and now, on a daily basis, how do we expect to know him later?  I think the good news is we don’t need the Church or religious institutions we just need an open and adventurous heart and soul that yearns for the taste of cinnamon on our lips.

Uncategorized, christianity, life, music, religion, spirituality | 3 Comments »

There was an older man at our last gig who came up to me after our show and asked if he could by me a drink.  He was there to support the opening act as the son of one of his friends was in the band.  He loved our set and wanted to say so.  He tried to shyly slip away but I began to talk to him as I sipped my drink.  10 minutes later he was telling me of his dream to live in the country and write.  We talked about writing and poetry for awhile and his excitement that someday he would pursue this life, this dream in his head.  As we talked I saw a light go off as if he realized he had been caught.  He quickly began to say that actually he was very happy living in the city and had a good job at a very promising telemarketing firm.  He said he probably wouldn’t like the country anyway.  Someone else came up to say hello and he was gone.

So many of us are afraid.  I run across many people as I travel from gig to gig….bar to bar….and once the alcohol is in, the ties loosen up and bricks begin to be removed from the walls.  Soon someone is talking to me about their life, most of the time because I ask a lot of questions.  I am always curious what brings someone to the show or why the band spoke to them enough to come up and talk to me or buy me  a drink.  As they begin to speak many of them speak of admiring my pursuit of my dream at which point I ask them about theirs.  They light up as they talk about what their BIG plan was and then just as quickly, once they realize they have let it out, they begin to backtrack and explain why it wasn’t really realistic for them to pursue.  When the backtrack begins I realize they are not really talking to me, they are talking to themselves.   All fine and good.  I have no judgement against them.  I understand many things can happen to a person in the course of their life that can lead them to settle, but it brings me back to fear.  Maybe our fear of death, maybe our fear of all the scary things in the world and the future are actually more about a realization of the fear that we have not lived.  It is not death that we are actually afraid of, it is a fear of that moment after death as we leave our bodies and the flash as our entire life shoots past us that we think…..I didn’t live……my God, I didn’t live.  I think many of us sense this.  We look around during certain moments in our lives when our mind releases us from turning endless circles and we think, “Is this it?  Is this my life?”  Our fear of death is really about the finality.  As long as we are alive we can say to ourselves, “Someday I am buying the place in the country.” or “I will quit my job and travel.”  I think many of us know we are on the wrong path but we lie to ourselves.  We tell ourselves we have no choice.  We tell ourselves this is the lot that we have been given and we must accept it and we can keep doing this as long as the clock keeps ticking.  We can keep saying, “someday”.  I must also point out that I am no guru with this, my wife and I have been struggling with and fighting over our finances for the past two months because our dog paddling that was keeping us financially afloat and pursuing our dreams is no longer working.  In all honesty it has been more like we have been dog paddling under water for 4 years.  Fear is constantly running around telling me to quit music and writing, telling me to get a better job, telling me that I have two children and they need a better bank account but fortunately my wife and I keep each other on the path, on this road less traveled.  We keep each other looking towards life and pursuing it where ever it is.  I understand it is hard, believe me I do, but what is the alternative and better yet does God give out an award for “Safe Living”?

For those of you reading this who have a lot of fears rushing around in your head.  What is it that you are actually afraid of?  Is your fear of death or your fear of trying, in actuality, a fear of life?  Have you settled for the seemingly safe in your relationships, your church, your faith, your job, your marriage, your choices?  If so, what will be your thought when your life flashes past you?  Take a moment, this moment, to reflect on that thought.  Picture yourself leaving your body.  Will your soul be filled with regret as the thought, “I didn’t really live” consumes you or will you smile and then turn your eyes upwards?

Five A.M., life, music, religion, spirituality | 3 Comments »

I have been MIA as I have been in the studio working on our next album.  As the songs are finally reforming after being torn to pieces and re-put back together I am getting a very sincere since of gratitude.  I was driving home from San Francisco and really feeling grateful for the chance I had been given to record music…..my music and to have such a great group of people around me wanting to work on that music also.  I always feel closer to God and to life when I take the time to acknowledge the things I am grateful for.  Gratitude is something I try and hold close in my life.  When I have dinner with my wife and kids we like to pray and then go around the table as each person says what they are grateful for.  It is the absence of gratitude in our lives that leads us down a darker disconnected path.  When you are not grateful your focus becomes on what is not there, what you do not have, and finally on resentment.  When you are grateful your focus becomes on the gifts you have been given and what IS present in your life.  There is an acknowledgement of something greater and that it can all fall away.  It reminds me of children and presents.  When a child gets a present when they are very young they are astounded over the box, the wrapping, the ribbon, the bow, and the tag.  They could play with this wonder all day.  “Wow, A Shinny BOX!” they seem to say with their delight but then we begin to teach them that it is not the act of someone presenting them with a gift that actually matters, what matters is what is what is inside of the box.  Was it expensive enough?  Is it the same as everyone else’s?  Is it what everyone is wearing?  Is it what one had asked for?  You often see Parents hoovering over their children as they say, “No….no not the box…..no sweety…..open the box…no don’t play with the box sweety.  Come here and let Mommy open the box for you……no, not the tissue paper sweety…..the present inside.”  I think the child playing with the box has it right because their focus is on, “WOW, you took the time to present me with this cool and wondrous box!  Thank you!”  I love that because their soul gets it and their spirit gets it because they have no filter. 

We need to get back to appreciating what is given to us with no thought to what is inside because, to keep the metaphor going, what is inside the box is like focusing on the future.  We don’t really know what it is and have no real control over what it could be.  Could be something great.  Could be something not so great.  But what IS, what truly IS, is the gift itself.  The gift of time.  The gift of life.  The gift of food.  The gift of love.  All of these things we quickly discard and quickly move past for the allure for what could be inside.  My hope is to hang on to this feeling of gratitude for each day and for the moments when the sun shines bright on me.  It is infectious because when I hold on to it I find myself appreciating my morning cup of coffee, my sons running in circles around the table, my wife doing yoga in the backyard as the leaves fall around her, my music, the presence of friends, my slippers, the silence of Fall……….I find myself taking a cue from my sons and treating each day I draw breath as a brightly wrapped box to behold in wonder.

Trying to get back into the swing of things with writing as I emerge from the studio so I will post more soon regarding music and recording.

Five A.M., life, music, religion, spirituality | 1 Comment »