Cathedral Heart

Music has been helping me.   

With winter.
With change.
With feeling life from all sides.

And I will tell you that these days, like never before, I am waking up with a song that stays with me all day long.  I think God is talking to me through sounds and telling me to be quiet and listen.  I don't read too much into it but I used to.  Now I am letting it come exactly as its supposed to. 

This listening, in a fresh way, is brightening my world.  It is making things softer than they were before, and I so welcome this because naturally, I tend to love talk.  Listening to the world, really like you're supposed to, is learned behavior for sure, and an intentional habit that opens me up again to things I love best.  Words and conversation and new stories fill me up and if I'm not careful, there I go.  Away, distinctly, in the direction of a thousand thoughts all my own.  

But lately, reverie and listening and a certain song for a certain day.  

Write to Write

Sometimes, I am learning, you write to write.  That's it.  Because that's all of what you can do.  My life today is not so glamorous.  In fact, I'm kind of broken.  When you feel broken, what do you say?  What do you do?  Sometimes you just breathe and blink and forge on.  People like me think about Psalms and humanity and God who is good throughout all the ages.  But later, when everything isn't public, pen and paper draw me back to another self.  I write sometimes because it's like the heartbeat I have, and because it's the thing that makes the most sense, and because it reminds me of God looking over my shoulder, which is comforting. 

Today God IS looking over my shoulder, whispering things into my ear that are falling onto pages that are in front of me. 

Dot Dot Dot, Deep Down Happy

The happiest place for me in a soul weary state is the bookstore.  Yesterday I felt worn out, stale and burnt out, and I knew I needed permission to go somewhere and get lost.  I wanted book reading and it wanted me.  

Hello, bookstore. 

When I go into a place like HalfPrice Books, I sense the subculture.  I feel it as soon as I open the door.  There's Doctor Who stuff everywhere, and notecards with all kinds of Zen sayings on them.   I am not drawn to those things at all, but it's comforting to know that every time, every time, I go there, someone is asking about these things.  'Where are the Doctor Who magnets?'  (Somehow this is always very pressing.) 

Sometimes I like being among things that really aren't like me.  I think it has the power to level out the thinker's heart.

Who

Well, this is a week of songs. 
That's all I know to say. 
This is a pretty good one.

Who wrote the rain?

Who wrote the sun in?

Who calls your name?

Where are you running?

Happy

Return

I've been coming back to old things lately.  Things of my life from a long time ago which have been life giving this whole time, even in newness.  I actively return to them (and write about them) because sometimes, quote often actually, I forget.

Hello, frail heart.

One big example of this for me is the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  I am seeing again in a fresh way how saturating and singular in my heart this gospel is really supposed to be.  You're not supposed to live with one foot on one side of a line, one foot on the other.  You're all in. 

The sweetness of the Gospel though is that the word 'supposed to' is not the word that rings first in the Christian's ears.  Grace brings you to 'Amazingly, I get to'.  For me, that is why hymns are so powerful. I think that people who wrote hymns were doing this amazing thing of blending what grace compelled them to understand about their changed selves and how to express it to a broken and suffering world.

Yes, That Is All

Buoyancy and Song



Life isn't so serious like it was last week. 

I think that when you pray about taking life less seriously, God enjoys finding ways to show you what He's keeping in its place.  Then He opens up the rest of the world to be funny.  I am finding it in small places all around me.  In general though, things are more buoyant. 

Doesn't it also help a little to think of the day sticking around longer and longer as spring and summer come to us?  I say yes.