THE SONGS I WROTE IN 2020 A few things to start: This has been a hard year. This week as we look towards 2021 I’ve been thinking about the songs I wrote in 2020. I process my walk with God through music most of the time and I guess God and I had a lot to talk about this year. Pretty much all of this is connected in some way to life at the Village. I’ll try to do this in order but the middle of the...
Read More »Every year at The Village we observe fallow month in December. “Fallow” is a farming term which means to leave a field unplanted. This gives the field a chance to rest and replenish nutrients. We practice fallow month to give us space to rest. We try not to fill up the month with events, but rather we take time off from our pilgrim groups, monastic communities and other events. The intent is to gi...
Read More »Tonight (Wednesday, July 15th) at 8:30 I’m going to join Eric, Sue, and Michael for a time of worship at the church. You can find a link on the front page of the website. I grew up around midweek services. We had a Friday service when I was in elementary and middle school. I would play with my friends outside while my parents were in the service. When I was pastoring in Texas, our church had 3 mid...
Read More »Preaching on a whole book of the Bible in one sermon is so hard. Inevitably there are threads that come up during study that can’t be explored. My basic outline for my sermon on Ecclesiastes was, smoke/vapor, wealth, work, party, wisdom, root into God. The reality is that each of those pieces could have been their own sermon, but that’s not the point of this series. So, here’s a few other passages...
Read More »At the beginning of quarantine, social distancing, and stay-at-home orders I set out on project to fight against the anxiety, depression, and weariness that comes with having to stay home all the time. I began to write lyrics out of our new community rhythms, Wednesday morning zoom prayer, Rod’s Monday prayer time, and livestreaming church. I’m still working on new songs, but three songs come out ...
Read More »Digital Hospitality I’ve been watching a series of videos lately on YouTube by Malcolm Guite. He is a poet and an Anglican priest. In the past I’ve enjoyed his lectures on literature, especially surrounding Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings, as well as C.S. Lewis and The Chronicles of Narnia. Since the UK went into lockdown, he’s been recording short videos in which he invites the viewer into his ...
Read More »My mother started teaching me violin when I was about 3 years old. I didn’t stick with it, but it led to other things, piano in 1st grade, trumpet in 3rd grade, guitar in 7th grade and others. One of my first memories is of my father playing hymns on the piano as we were going to bed. I grew up with music. Not so much listening to it, although we did have it playing in the background a lot, but ra...
Read More »My grandma is turning 90 on Valentine’s Day. This weekend I am headed to Michigan with some of my family to celebrate with a party on Saturday. There’s something very familiar about all this. When I was growing up we would visit my family in Michigan. We would stay with my mom’s sister in Ann Arbor, where we are staying this weekend. I played and watched sports with my cousin Ben, with whom I will...
Read More »I love the band Jars of Clay. My aunt gave me their album If I Left The Zoo when it came out, but I didn’t really listen to it for a couple years. When I did actually listen to it, I loved it. The melodies are catchy, and it was different from any other Christian band I had listened to before. I have listened to everything they’ve done since on repeat for two decades. I can’t decide if I like best...
Read More »For Christmas my daughter got a set of wooden cookies from her aunt and uncle. They have cookie bases with frosting tops that connect with Velcro. The cookies came with a cookie sheet, an oven mitt, a knife, and a spatula. All together it was a wonderful gift for a two-year-old girl who loves to help her mama bake. I’m not sure when I first heard about the Blue Cookie, but I know I fully became aw...
Read More »Here is a song I wrote around Easter. It’s been in the back of my mind since then so I recorded it. Here’s the lyrics: Way down by the water Stood a man I did not know Stood a man who called my name He said, “Come. Come to the water and I’ll give you life.” Way up in the hills Is where I went to hide away Is where I went in fear and shame Way out in the desert I dug a well to find my o...
Read More »When I was fired from my job in March, Layne and I found ourselves in an uncomfortable position. How were we going to replace that income in a way that would still allow Layne to spend time with our daughter, Saoirse, and allow me to continue doing the work that God has called me to at the Village? That first day we both felt God saying, “Wait.” We weren’t clear what that meant but we waited. Wait...
Read More »So much of my walk with God and His Word the last few years has been discovering the ways that the people I grew up thinking of as heroes of the Bible were actually broken, sinful people. They often did amazing things with God by their side, but they were nonetheless broken, sometimes following up those amazing acts with incredible acts of fear and sin. Another theme has been reading about how God...
Read More »In a dry and weary land, Where there are no running streams, We have dug one thousand wells And parched our tongues with broken dreams. You, oh Lord, have said, “Return To me, the spring that quenches thirst. Stop, remember I have called You to me, who loved you first. “You have wandered far from me. Yet I am ever close behind. Leave the empty cracked cisterns, For at my ...
Read More »I was listening to a podcast recently, when the host talked about having “outrage fatigue.” He said he felt like every morning he woke up and checked Twitter, almost as if he was trying to figure out what he was supposed to be angry about that day. There was a weariness to the persistent anger and despair of the world. That idea of “outrage fatigue” resonated with me. In our culture of a constant ...
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