Tonight I can’t sleep and think how my life is so strange.    I can’t seem to find anything to grasp on to.  I keep searching, silently calling out, pushing outwards with my heart but nothing seems to feel….well….right…or maybe I am just filled with too many doubts.   Other times I think, “yes, this is surely it.  I have found my path.” and then suddenly I am left grasping only air – only dust.   I can feel this energy inside me that I first noticed when I was 14 or 15 as I paced the floor of my room like a tiger in a cage.  Filled with light and spark and desperately wanting to do something with it and desperately afraid that I was going to let it smother before doing anything.  That was the moment I started to write music.    It seems I have traveled far but gone very little distance from those days.  I am still that same boy…..just as tonight before writing this I found myself once again pacing the floors at 2:00 a.m.  What else can one do but continue to cry out in the darkness? 

I am drawn to this quote by Simon Weil: A child does not stop crying if we suggest to it that perhaps there is no such thing as bread. It goes on crying just the same. The danger is not lest the soul should doubt whether there is bread, but lest, by a lie, it should persuade itself that it is not hungry.   I guess I am still hungry.  The Italian passionate side of me will never let me pursuade myself that I am not hungry.  I think there is alot of us who are hungry right now; Hungry for love, for intimacy, for meaning, for life and yet many continue to muddle through keeping our voice down and swallowing our cries. Many of us walk about with empty stomachs persuading ourselves that there is no bread for our spirits. I see it in our relationships as we refuse to feed each other with love, kindness, forgiveness, and compassion and instead take each other for granted, become complacent in our care for each other, and enable each other to give up on loving and living boldly for “security”.

 Maybe the first step for me and you is to pace and to cry out.  We need to cry out for the things that bring us life and do away with the lie that there is no bread, there is no Living BIG, there is no hope, there is no God here and now.  Maybe we need to cry out, “I am lost and hungry.  Show me the way” and then have faith that something will come.   It starts there.  It starts with someone crying out in the dark.    How else will we be fed if we do not?

God, Jesus, Uncategorized, faith, life | 3 Comments »

The band finished a video shoot for the song Weightless yesterday in San Francisco.  I think it is going to be cool.  Just a fun rock n roll type deal.  I got to wear sunglasses and snarl.  Here is a pic from the shoot.

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  I rarely speak about politics because I believe spirituality is above politics…..politics often just divide.  But today, you get my two cents.  I, like probably most Americans, watched the Inauguration this morning. I was struck by the sense of relief I had.  I felt that over the past 8 years we were stuck in the back seat of a car as the politicians drove saying, “shut up and sit down!”  It was wonderful to hear someone speak of our collective goals and the challenges we would face as One nation.  There was a sense that we were in this together again which I think is what it is all about.  When things go wrong on my street, in my city, in my state or in my country I want to help.  I want to reach out and pull someone up but for 8 years we were told to shop or buy a car to help.  This never felt or seemed right.  So today how wonderful it was to be inspired and to feel a part of something bigger.  As I listened to conservative radio (I often jump back and forth between the two view points) I heard them talk about that Obama really didn’t say anything.   They said we were all brain washed, we voted for him because of white guilt and his speech was “vapid and empty” of policy or concrete ideas.  It amazes me that people still do not get that humans want to be inspired, challenged, and feel they are part of the common goal to leave the country safer, better, and wiser for our children.  Today wasn’t the day for “concrete policy” discussions it is a day for vision and inspiration.  I don’t really know how Obama will do as a President….I do have hope….just as I had hope for Bush in the first days after 9/11.  President Obama now has to live into the words he spoke today and today I saw nothing but possibilities.  Not the possibilites of what He can do but the possibilities of what We can do.

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I woke up on Tuesday with the image of a woman running in a nightgown by the highway and the words to this song running through my head.  It basically wrote itself in about 15 minutes.  I don’t know where it came from but it was so sad and beautiful that I felt I should record it.  The song is called You’re Gone.

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You’re Gone

I heard your voice in the middle of the night
I took off running before there was light
I looked for you every where in sight
But you were gone

I ran along the old highway
I ran and ran until the break of day
I ran until there was nothing left to say
You were gone

I don’t want to go on like this
Just another lost soul waiting for a kiss

I heard your voice again last night
I pulled up my legs and held on tight
Nothing in this house seems right
Now that you are gone

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Here is our other track that we did recently at In the Pocket Studios with Jeff.  The song is called Now and is your basic desperate rock n roll song.  Enjoy.

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Now

I can’t wait
The night is too late
For Judas heart’s to hesitate

I can’t lie
I’m too weak to hide
This fire burns I can’t hold it inside
So open me up with love’s deepest cut
And fill me up with your grace

I want you now
I need you now
And right about now I’m losing myself

This moment will burst
I’m going to shout
It’s all right you and I can pour it out

I can barely breathe
I can barely stand
I try and run but my legs turn to sand
So open me up with love’s deepest cut
And fill me up with your grace

I want you now
I need you now
And right about now I’m losing myself

Bridge:
Adeline can you save this heart of mine
Am I out of line, If I just lay myself at your feet

I want you now
I need you now
And right about now I’m losing myself

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I was tired the other day and feeling down.  I seem to be a seasonal depressive.  It is always around this time of year that I battle with depression but this year it has not been too bad.  My wife and kids have been wonders at getting me out of funks but on this day I couldn’t seem to shake it.  I decided to walk down and get some coffee at a bakery I like.  The smell of bread and coffee always picks me up.  I got my coffee black and to go so I could get back to my computer to work on some writing.  The writing has been going very slow lately which also brings me down a bit.  I stare and stare at my computer and yet nothing comes but this is how it goes with writing, sometimes the muse rains down, sometimes it is dry.  As I walk back I notice an amazing sunset.  A wash of an almost watercolor sky of pinks and reds and blues.  I stared at it as I moved up the block shuffling past bundled up people with their heads down against the cold air.  As I got to a point on the sidewalk where it turns and I would lose sight of the sunset I stopped.  I thought about all the times I have written about stopping, being still, taking in the light and wonder and enormous gift God has given us.  I realized I was just about to walk right past it to hurry back to “life”.  So I stopped.  I was still.  I stood with my warm coffee in my hands and head turned up towards the mountains and breathed in the last of a parting day.  As I stood there at least 4 different people stopped to see what I was looking at.  They would look towards the line of my gaze quizically and then say something like, “hmmm” and then move on looking at me as they did.  Strange that I do not do this more often because as I did and as I took my first steps back towards my office, the air seemed lighter, my shoulders less burdened, my head clearer and my heart more connected. 

As we begin the week set out with this simple mind frame: When I see beauty around me, I will stop.  I will stop and breathe it in for as long as my heart can take before I step back into the current of the world.  If you read my blog regularly and do only one thing that I suggest let it be this one.    Have a wonder-filled week.

Be Still | 3 Comments »

This song is about alot of things but it is mostly about breaking free.   We all get stuck, tired, feel trapped, or corner ourselves into believing that life is small…….but then there are these moments when love comes crashing in and we are reminded of the immense possibilities that life has to offer.  Suddenly, often in the eyes of our beloved we realize that there is no gravity that can possibly hold us.

Latest track from Five A.M.

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Weightless

It’s only whispers that keep our hearts alive
But tonight I wish you and I could drive
Then race with the satellites’ as they streak across the sky
When you’re near I’m light as air and I believe I can fly

In this moment it’s beautiful because you’re right here
In this moment, it’s like I’m tripping across the sky
And there’s no gravity that could possibly hold us
You leave me weightless

I’m tired of trading light for the dirt of this town
So Janey let’s run before this dirt pulls us down
Over this house and the street lamps that keep pushing down on me
And these lions in their cages all chained to their TV’s

In this moment it’s beautiful because you’re right here
In this moment, it’s like I’m tripping across the sky
And there’s no gravity that could possibly hold us
You leave me weightless

In this moment well it’s beautiful because you’re right here
In this moment, it’s like I’m tripping across the sky
And there’s no gravity that could possibly hold us
There’s no gravity that could possibly hold us
There’s no gravity that could possibly hold us
You leave me weightless

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What do we do as spiritual people when Israel bombs Gaza? What do we say when Hamas shots rockets into Israel? What side do we take? Much of the discussion seems to be about what side are we on, who has the most grievances against the other, how can anybody negotiate with people who do not believe they should exist…etc. I can get very caught up in these arguments but then I move beyond the arguments, beyond the past, beyond the politics and I see children dead in the streets. I see mother’s on both sides holding their dead sons and daughters and I realize once again how far we have to go as human beings. I realize how far we have to go as Christians, Jews, and Muslims. The radical message of Jesus was grace. So I must love the dying child of my enemy? The deep echo of our heart says Yes. I must love the Israeli politician who gave the order to fire? The deep echo of our heart says Yes.

If we are to truly love God than we must love Justice, true Justice, not justice with a sword and gun but with the arms of St. Francis quelling the wolf. Yes we have compassion for our brothers and sisters in Israel but at the same time we do not as a people tell them that their pain allows for them to kill the sons and daughters of someone else. Where does that end? What do you think will happen to the children whose parents were blown to bits? What will happen to the parents who lose their children to stray rockets? What will their grief and anger feed? This dark sense of Justice will continue the cycle that feeds animosity, anger, divisiveness and hatred. We have to consistently take the third way and get beyond this Black and White, wrong and right thinking.

As much as America would like Jesus to be Kick-Ass Jesus with the Kung Fu grip, he was not. His message was far more difficult than choosing the right side and then going out to destroy whatever has been deemed as evil. As weak as this sounds to some: we pray. We pray for the children and people of both sides but then we pray deeply for the politicians and soldiers of Hamas and of Israel. We pray for understanding and compassion. We pray and write to our leaders and urge them to seek out peace wherever it may be and no matter how difficult it seems. Finally we look to our own heart and we do not divide it between those whose side we are on and those we are not. Instead we reach out with it, in all of its frailty and try and try again to change the world.

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