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!”

Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

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.

Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

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.

Uncategorized | 3 Comments »

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.

Uncategorized | 4 Comments »