June 2019
[Verse 1]
They say the road is paved with good intentions
But really it’s just our voices in their ears
So Wormwood listen up and listen close now
And bring to life their deepest, darkest fears
In light of my previous post lamenting the state of contemporary Christian music, I thought it best to offer an alternative. This post will hopefully be the first of multiple to show different Christian artists that I believe are using their gifts to create new and unique sounds and worshipping God through that creativity.
So, first up: Josh Garrels.
How Belief in a Creative God Should Influence Our Music
I have a problem with Christian music. Specifically, contemporary Christian music. As in, the modern contemporary Christian music that is frequently played over radio stations to be used as a banner for Christians to rally around and listen to exclusively.
But I suppose before I continue down this path and inevitably become bombarded with questions and possible accusations of heresy or not being a Christian, I should clarify myself.
Yellow to green, skip red, then on to brown
Nothing seems to work right in this town!
Seasons come and go, then come again
And as the leaves on the trees begin to look thin
They are revived, a second, third and fourth fall
Will winter ever come? Is this all
A half-hearted, false-started farce?
March 2018
Written by John and Madelynne Jones
Wasting time in your living room
Time flies by; will the sun come up soon?
Another book read, it’s a quarter after 10
Nowhere to go, I’m just glad I have a friend
The Need for the Sabbath
He who wants to enter the holiness of the day must first lay down the profanity of clattering commerce, of being yoked to toil. He must go away from the screech of dissonant days, from the nervousness and fury of acquisitiveness and the betrayal in embezzling his own life… Six days a week we wrestle with the world, wringing profit from the earth; on the Sabbath we especially care for the seed of eternity planted in the soul. The world has our hands, but our soul belongs to Someone Else. Six days a week we seek to dominate the world, on the seventh day we try to dominate the self.
abraham joshua heschel, The sabbath
Christian Wiman is a fantastic poet whose poetry has been the first in a while to make me stop and want to reread a poem to really internalize it. And then reread it again. And again. And again. His poem Every Riven Thing is a beautifully written poem (which you can read here) in which the line “God goes belonging to every riven thing he’s made” is repeated throughout, but the syntactic structure changes each time, changing the meaning of the phrase and building upon itself in a linguistic and poetic crescendo. I highly recommend reading Every Riven Thing before reading on.
February 2017
Inspired by Paul Coehlo’s The Alchemist, and written with Madelynne Jones
When I was young I wanted all that I have now
When I was you I knew this truth,
That I’d get here somehow
This is better than any place I’ve been before
Is there a need for brighter shores?