Greetings, friends. Thought you might be interested in my new venture: creating a clearinghouse for a lot of my old unreleased music demos on the old trusty Facebook. I have a lot of these demos that come from 15 years of songwriting and being a rock star on the long slow climb to the middle. Years and years of joy and heartache, always on the verge, repeatedly train-wrecked, usually by me, sometimes by others.
But I have these fragments of recordings – some nearly done, most just guitar/voice scratch recordings or funny band rehearsals. The time has come (after a few years away from performing) to admit that these recordings are never going anywhere. The are just relics. Cave-paintings. And I have decided that part of my continuing journey toward being my full-authentic-self-before-people means letting all this go so something newer and truer might emerge.
Disclaimer: I am a Micheal Jackson freak of a creative perfectionist, so I am quite terrified for anyone to hear these less-than-finished tracks, unmixed, out of tune, etc…. But aren’t we all afraid (of something)? I’m done with it trying to be done with it. This music is now for you, for me.
So here’s number one of a lot more I hope to share, if I don’t freak out and get plastic surgery instead. I hope you might enjoy it:
“When You Come Down (Demo)” http://twt.fm/189912
You can get future releases by becoming a ‘fan’ of my Facebook site: http://www.facebook.com/rustinsmithmusic
Also – I had this idea while mowing my lawn yesterday. I have so many ridiculously disastrous stories from years in the music world. I thought it might make for an entertaining (and therapeutic) blog series. Would anyone being interested in reading these if I could make time to write them? If so, I’d like to hear a ‘heck yeah’ and a suggestion for a good blog-series title. Come on back.
Summer is here. Well, its not technically here until June 21. That is the summer solstice in the Northern hemisphere that marks the official beginning of summer. And yet summer is already here and everyone knows it. Students are on summer break. It was nearly 90 degrees Sunday. The yard needs mowing.
In theological terms, this time is what life in the Kingdom of God is like. The Kingdom is here. Whenever we see God’s purposes for our world being lived out, we can say, “the Kingdom is here!” At the same time we all know there’s a lot of work to be done for our world to resemble God’s intentions for it. The Kingdom is not ‘officially’ here, even if it is breaking through in all sorts of ways. The Kingdom of God has what some have called an “already-but-not-yet” quality. It is already here in that it is accessible to anyone starting now. But it is not yet here it the way it will be one day.
In between that future time and now, the church is the community that lives “as if” it were already so. We go on loving our neighbors, praying for our enemies, forgiving offenses, bearing witness to injustices, and proclaiming that God’s Kingdom has invaded earth in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Sometimes it seems crazy to do so, but that’s only because we are aligning ourselves with a future that isn’t fully here…yet.
So go ahead and live “as if” summer were here. For us it already is.
I’m a fan of what Peter Rollins does with his Ikon ‘community’ in Belfast. This section (below) of a recent interview caught my attention.
I have seen too many people I love get upset at ‘the church’ because, after they withdrew from involvement and disappeared for weeks, ‘the church’ didn’t call them. I could write all day about the consumeristic assumptions behind those kinds of sentiments that I simply don’t share. But more simply, that view lets ourselves off the hook for building authentic relationships and puts all the accountability on others.
The fact is (rightly understood) we teach others how to treat us. We actively receive care and concern from others. We communicate that we aren’t interested in receiving concern and care when we don’t participate, don’t show up, don’t take responsibility, and don’t ourselves call to show concern about others. How others treat us is often an accurate reflection of our own commitment (or lack thereof) to the community.
Here’s Peter Rollins:
Paradoxically, I say, “Ikon doesn’t care about you. Ikon doesn’t give a crap if you are going through a divorce. The only person who cares is the person sitting beside you, and if that person doesn’t care, you’re stuffed.” People will say, “I left the church because they didn’t phone me when my dad died, and that was really hurtful.” But the problem is not that the church didn’t phone but that it promised to phone. I say, “Ikon ain’t ever gonna phone ya.” Pete Rollins might. But if he does, it will be as Pete Rollins and not as a representative of Ikon. Ikon will never notice if you don’t come. But if you’ve made a connection with the person sitting next to you, that person might.
Ikon is like the people who run a pub. It’s not their responsibility to help the patrons become friends. But they create a space in which people can actually encounter each other.
“The only way to overcome evil is to let it run itself to a standstill because it does not find the resistance it is looking for. Resistance merely creates further evil and adds fuel to the flames. But when evil meets no opposition and encounters no obstacle but only patient endurance, its sting is drawn, and at last it meets an opponent which is more than its match.”
–Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship
(from Listen: a prayer book, Noonday Meditation)
“You think that you can draw a neat line between fiction and non-fiction and it simply doesn’t work that way.”
- Walter Brueggemann
“Art, like morality, consists of draw the line somewhere.”
- G.K. Chesterton
“You’re only gonna be as big as your own concept of God. Remember the famous line of the French philosopher Blaise Pascal? “God made man in his own image, and man returned the compliment.” We often make God in our own image, and He winds up to be as fussy, rude, narrow-minded, legalistic, judgmental, unforgiving, unloving as we are.”
-Brennan Manning
A re-post by request. My request.
“Words are the real work of the world — prayer words with God, parable words with men and women. The behind-the-scenes work of creativity by word and sacrament, by parable and prayer, subverts the seduced world. The pastor’s real work is what Ivan Illich calls “shadow work” — the work nobody gets paid for and few notice but that makes the world of salvation: meaning and value and purpose, a world of love and hope and faith — in short, the kingdom of God.”
- Eugene Peterson, The Contemplative Pastor (37)
“If we maintain the open-mindedness of children, we challenge fixed ideas and established structures, including our own. We listen to people in other denominations and religions. We don’t find demons in those with whom we disagree. We don’t cozy up to people who mouth our jargon. If we are open, we rarely resort to either-or: either creation or evolution, liberty or law, sacred or secular, Beethoven or Madonna. We focus on both-and, fully aware that God’s truth cannot be imprisoned in a small definition.”
I’m heading out to join my family this evening to celebrate my parents’ fortieth wedding anniversary. It’s hard to believe it has been forty years, but it seems so natural at the same time. As time goes by, we see less of this kind of enduring commitment – especially like my parents who actually still like one another, and who are a joy to be with.
I just saw a story about a couple I remember from my home town, Troy, Kansas. Can you believe someone from Troy made the national news? And for such beautiful reason: love. Have a look.
David Clark continues to assemble and edit an online daily prayer book for the Vox Dei Community (and beyond). During the season of Easter, the daily rhythms are switching up to include noonday meditations from Dietrich Bonhoeffer as well as some other guides toward living into the new creation inaugurated by the resurrection of Jesus.
All are welcome to join us in this daily rhythm. Heres the link: Listen: a prayer book.
(yes)
