There is Love for You

to every lost and broken soul
that only can dream of being whole
for every dream that has vanished from your sight
to every heart weeping in the night

please try to wait just a little bit more
the dawn will change the view
each day is new
and there is love for you

to those beaten down who have no hope
who live at the end of the rope
to every heart that is breaking fresh each day
for hundreds of tries but there's no way

please try to wait just a little bit more
the dawn will change the view
each day is new
and there is love for you

Wilderness Solitude

Strangely familiar
looks back at me
question eyes, what do they see?
two roads diverged in a wood
far down one before me stood
a man who had been set apart
is this the end or just the start?

wilderness solitude
wilderness solitude

deep or shallow
trash or prize
the scope is hard to recognize
ambiguous his state of mind
sorting too little and too late
hidden path is hard to find
a time has come to stop and wait

wilderness solitude
wilderness solitude

Desert Road

Along a dry desert road
one long dry desert day
my feet were hurting I had to stop
and sit me down on the way
It took a while to take off my boots
and pour out the pebble and the sand
that were tearing me apart

a dark and quiet bedroll
none nearby to console
little left you can control
a season stuck in a hole
it takes a while to knock the edges off my soul
keep breaking me apart and taking more away
until I'm whole

Perfect Day

Bono sang of a beautiful day
that was his and far away
I walk outside and have to say
I wish this one was here to stay

Hung between the sun and space
we occupy a special place
orbit, spin, and tilt precise
for temperature that's really mighty nice

So many things come into play
to give us all a pleasant day
we could burn or we could freeze
but days like this were meant to please

so easily blown away
instead we breathe and smile and play
listen close, you might hear me pray
thank you for giving to us
a perfect day

Rich Man Music

A brand new Jag flew past my car
made my old ride look a bit sub-par
Then overhead a private jet
I knew I'd never join that set

Bummed about my meager worth
and the vicissitudes of birth
but then I thought of the whole earth
and felt ashamed of thoughts of dearth

Two legs still walk me around
two ears still hear glorious sound
two hands can work and play guitar
a mind to think, and a running car
two eyes to drink a sunset in
and watch a red tail soar
to gaze upon a loving smile
how dare can I feel poor?

Old guy at the corner stuck
holding a cardboard sign
amazing how an extra buck
made that sad face shine

forgive me God for feeling sans
and doubting my place in your plans
so little can't and so much can
I can't deny that I'm a rich man

Thank you for a sunny day
a cool breeze, and by the way
I don't need to live like a czar
and I really do love my old car

To want what I have, not have what I want
is a real good place to start
but what I'd like to have and keep
Is a truly thankful heart

Two legs still walk me around
two ears still hear glorious sound
two hands can work and play guitar
a mind to think, and a running car
two eyes to drink a sunset in
and watch a red tail soar
to gaze upon a loving smile
how dare can I feel poor?

A brand new Jag flew past my car

Suffering

It's Easter. I've been thinking about contrast. There is none more stark than the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. The darkest hour of all known existence when God the Son took on all of the sin of every human to ever live, being engulfed by it and because of it being separated from God the Father, and the wondrous opposite when Christ conquered all of that evil and rose from the grave. It's something I've been told of countless times and known all of my life. But sometimes things you think you know all about suddenly open your heart with new depths of meaning.

My grandmother had a story of my father when he was a wee lad. With great amusement she would tell of him coming home from school one day with a revelation to share with her. “Mother! Have you ever heard of the solar system?!!” When I have a profound thought, I often wonder if I'm the last person to get it. I think back on things I've heard or read of people expressing one thing or another about God or the life of faith and wonder how they could be so excited about it. Then with eyes newly opened to something I think, “Aha! That's what that guy was trying to tell me.” But we have to have ears that are ready to hear. That's what contrast often does for us.

In the “My Utmost...” reading for today, Oswald Chambers says, “Our Lords cross is the gateway into his life... He rose to a life that had never been before...” A while back while ruminating on what might be the meaning of the concept of “sharing in the sufferings of Christ,” I wondered if it might be the taking on of the risk and cost of loving. In order for God the Father to love us, he had to pay a dear price to redeem us from the sin we were born into and reconcile us to himself. The Father/Son relationship is our best hope of understanding this, but it really can't come close to plumbing the depths of the reality of that great price. In order for God the Son to accomplish the great provision of our salvation, he had to allow himself to be touched by evil. To take on sin. It's bad enough to be enmeshed in the black slime of evil when we choose to get ourselves there. But to know it's filth and stench through no fault of his own but to get it on him and over him and to drown in it and die by it as an act of choice for the sake of another is to know only the lowest of the downside. Without even the pleasure of “sin for a season.” There was no counterfeit thrill for Jesus. He knew exactly how bad it was going into it.

I've long wondered about what the Bible refers to as “the power of the resurrection.” At first glance this would seem to be about the supernatural ability of Jesus to come back to life after he was killed. That is obviously it on one level, I suppose. So to know this power, as is longed for by some of the New Testament writers, might mean to hope for one's own resurrection. That's a big deal. A very big deal. But I think there may be more to it for the here and now. That never before possible life that Oswald Chambers spoke of happened because Christ was touched by sin. He became sin for us. His love for me came through suffering. Suffering was the price for it and also provided the context and contrast for being able to appreciate it.

I spent an evening long ago with some guys who were involved in some ministry activities that were dynamic and exciting. They were thrilled with how things were going and kept talking about God's blessing and how wonderful it was. It must have been one of my braver moments, or maybe just a spurt of negativity, but I said something about those who are called to suffer. Like someone with an illness who would spend their whole life in bed and in pain. It was a wet blanket moment. They looked at me like I was nuts. Their view of God's blessing didn't involve pain. I had an inkling that it did. It is an inconvenient truth that Jesus talked about suffering quite a bit. And Paul did too. A Sunday School teacher I sat under when I was coming of age used to tell us “... it never said it was gonna be easy.”

I've done a lot of living since those days. I've known a lot of pain. I've known some wonderful love as well. I've come to believe that the way of love is the way of suffering. Love without suffering is of little or no value. Ignorant beauty has charm in it's naiveté, but beauty in the context of contrast is so much more rich. It's like the savor of a fine meal compared to a piece of candy. Love that comes from the backdrop of suffering, that has been touched by pain, that has been forced through the cracks of brokenness, is love that has power. It has the power to know. It has the power to understand. It has the power to care deeply. To empathize. Even the creator God of the universe somehow subjected himself to this law. The touch of the cross was necessary for the great love of Christ to come to full fruition. The power of the resurrection was only possible through suffering. So, I choose to embrace my own suffering. It is dark and dirty and uncomfortable, but it is the fertile soil for growing a harvest of abounding love.

By the way, have you ever heard of the solar system?

Contrast

A daily devotional I read for today contained this:

“...Teach me the value of my thorns. Show me how I have climbed to You through the path of pain. Show me it is through my tears I have seen my rainbows.”

“Alas for him who never sees
the stars shine through the cypress trees.”

I just had an email exchange with an old friend who had a big role in getting me involved with photography back when we were in high school. Among other things we were discussing picture contrast. I was talking about how much I love snappy, contrasty images and how much I like digital photography because it gives such good control of it. Ansel Adams was a master of exposure and contrast control using very large format cameras and his exacting “zone system” in his darkroom. His Yosemite images are the quintessential examples of photography as art. The contrast they display is a big part of that. Its difficult to get good contrast in landscape. Moisture and particulate matter in the air, like dust, tend to diffuse the light over great distances and flatten everything out. From far away, lots of contrast looks good. Early morning or late afternoon sun causes longer shadows and increases contrast in these situations. On the other hand, close images, especially of faces, have the exact opposite needs. Flatter light is much more pleasing, more subtle, and shows more detail in a face.

Well I could go on about photographic contrast, but I'm afraid the metaphor will just get more obscure. Contrast is what gives meaning. Hardship, suffering, trauma, disaster, loss, heartache, and pain are not things I like to think of as “good.” But the fact is that nothing in life that is good has much meaning without the context of the contrast with them. White next to very light grey is quite uninteresting. But white against dark black is striking. We could get into the whole eastern yin yang thing, but you don't need to go all the way there to see that there is good in what is bad. Isaiah 61 speaks of “beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair.” Then it contrasts those who experience these things with the sinful, fallen creatures that they are; “They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the LORD for the display of his splendor.” This has been said so many times it's like I'm busy here manning the wag's “department of redundancy department.” But it's the bad stuff that gives the good stuff it's value. It's the agony of what has gone on before that gives the relief its richness. The trick isn't in appreciating the good after the bad is over. That is natural. One can look back and be thankful for the dark before the dawn and benefit from the contrast in terms of being able to appreciate the good. The big challenge is to appreciate the hard times while they are still going on, looking forward to the good that will be in such stark contrast to the present. That is called hope. The assurance that it will happen is what is called faith. They are fruits of the work of the Holy Spirit of God that are brilliantly spectacular against a backdrop of black. They are of most value when the contrast is cranked up.

Much has been said of God “allowing” bad things to happen. Almost like God uses Satan in a kind of tacit way for his ends. Steve Saint speaks these days of the death of his father and his four friends as not a tragedy that God merely allowed to happen. He looks at all that has come of that momentous event in 1956 and sees God's hand in it so powerfully, as even those of us far removed from it can also see, that he now says he believes God planned it that way from the beginning precisely for his purposes. I am coming to believe that about my own trials. I believe they are precisely what God planned for me because of the great value that will one day come from them. He loves me so much that he will not let me miss that which only suffering can enable.

myspace

My friend Roger told me I ought to put up a page on myspace. I did. Not sure what good in the world it might do but you just never know.

One More Go

The other day I was in the music store where friend Roger works and he said I ought to come out to Crush again. He would be doing his host thing there Saturday night as well as Thursday this week. I had pretty well decided not to go there again (scroll to 4th paragraph), but he told me the Saturday night crowd was a lot more subdued than Thursday. This sounded counterintuitive but he explained that there are other rowdier things going on in St. Cloud on Saturday nights so the more raucous folks tend to go to those places. On Thursdays there is nothing else going on in town so they show up at Crush. So, I doubled back on my earlier decision and decided to give it another go. I was in no hurry and took the bare minimum of gear. I got there about 10:30 last night and left my guitar in the car. I really wasn't going to bother unless it seemed right. Well, the patrons were older and indeed quieter than the other times. Most seemed to actually be listening to the music. The pick-up band playing with Roger was still pretty loud and I still didn't think my stuff would fit in very well. But Roger had a slot for me and set it up and I was on.

Well, it actually kinda worked this time. A big difference for me was that I used a headset mic. That gave me the ability to play much better because I could look at my hands when I needed to and it let me look at my lyrics cheat sheet at useful times. I hadn't really realized how restricting singing into a microphone on a stand can be. Roger has a JamMan pedal identical to mine and I was playing through his rig. With the headset I could look down and make sure I was working the device correctly. I used it on several songs to loop the chorus or whatever and play solos in the middle or at the end of a few songs. It worked exactly as I hoped it would when I dreamed of owning one of those things. The headset allows all that extra-curricular activity to go on while playing and singing whilst maintaining perfectly consistent mouth to mic distance and thus even vocal volume. And there was even a bit of time left over to actually do some expressive emoting. I'm sold. You do have to be careful about breathing onto the thing, especially through the nose, but that's a small price to pay. I figured out that I can even play the harmonica in the around-the-neck holder using it. Along with my glasses it makes for a lot of hardware hanging on my head, but it does work.

After the loud band stopped and people could hear each other speak, folks started to avail themselves of that opportunity and a number of conversations broke out all over the room. I started into my stuff and they mostly kept talking but some actually seemed to be listening. Even a few engaged in conversation would pause at the end of a song, look over, and clap a little. The first two times I tried at that place I left with my head and heart pretty much hanging low and my tail between my legs. Last night was no triumph, but I didn't make a fool of myself, I was basically pleased with my performance, and I came away feeling very encouraged. I really can do this.

Set list (chosen on the fly):

Longing (instrumental looping with JamMan)
Memories (more instrumental looping)
Make Love Stay (Fogelberg)
Memories (w/lyrics and a solo over a loop and the whole deal - even got all the words right)
Prodigal (first time ever performed anywhere by anybody - I need to record this one)
Glimmer (Shackley)
Guitar Man (Bread - used the looper and did the solos pretty much like the original recording - cool!)
Fields of Gold (Sting)
Still Can't Say Goodbye (one Chet Atkins used to do)

Heaven

Help me see through the dark mess of this earth to the light that is ahead.

Sting

Almost every morning for the last week I have been awakened by a bird, possibly a house wren I think, who repeatedly bangs into the window at the foot of my bed. Sometimes he'll sit on the sill and peck at it. He'll keep pecking and flying into the window for at least an hour. I don't know how he doesn't knock himself unconscious. I lay there in bed wanting to take advantage of the rest of my alloted time for sleep trying to figure out a way to kill the little devil. That would probably not be very environmentally sensitive, though it would certainly improve my environment. There must not be many of his species around these parts as it seems that his own reflection is his best hope of mating. Or maybe he's jealous and trying to run the other guy off. Either way, testosterone run amok can get a guy into some very self destructive situations.

I spent Thursday and Friday of last week working for Fox 13 Tampa at a sting set up by the Polk County Sheriff's Department. A task force of undercover officers from Polk County as well as the Florida Dept. of Law Enforcement, Plant City P.D., and the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement had been trolling in chat rooms for the last week posing as young girls and boys and had been talking to a number of sexual predators. An agent would offer the invitation to come over to the house and when the perp got there, he was greeted by a bunch of burly guys with bullet proof vests and guns. And TV cameras from five stations. They were mirandized and then offered a chance to speak to us. Most didn't. One did.

These guys were all charged with at least three different felonies the maximum sentences for which were recently increased from five years to fifteen years. Depending on what they did online, there could be many counts of each charge. Certain types of photos they might upload are one count for each. Bail would be $20,000.00 for each count. If they bond out until their trial, they are not allowed to have a computer and cannot have any contact with anyone under 18. If there are children in their house, either they or the children have to move out. The computer used in the crime is seized as evidence. A team of officers goes after it right after the arrest. I heard one officer having a phone conversation with a perp's mother about how her computer was going to be taken away. She used it for her work. Too bad. This gets very inconvenient for a lot of people. The car used to “travel” to the house has also been used in a crime and can be confiscated. This rarely happens, though, because most of the time there is a loan on the car and that makes it more trouble than it's worth.

The press was allowed inside the house the first two of the four days. The first day I had to jostle with four other camera guys but the second day I was the only camera there. By the time I left the second day they had arrested ten men. They did a similar sting a year ago and netted 20 in four days. At the end of the four days this year they had 28 arrests. They had talked to 250 people online. Last year they hit the chat rooms for four weeks before the house was ready for what they call the “travelers.” They learned that these guys were so eager they didn't need nearly that much time. This time they only started a week before the actual sting.

I didn't get to shoot the initial surprise or the take downs outside as we had to stay hidden inside. There were surveillance cameras that caught this but I don't know if FOX has taken up the Sheriff's dept. on the offer to get the footage. We were able to shoot them being brought through the front door of the house and through the living room toward us. It was kinda strange to be standing there with my camera in the face of guys who probably weren't even thinking about committing a crime when they woke up that morning. They were out for what they considered some fun and next thing they are looking at possibly the next fifteen years of their life in a federal prison where they will probably learn more about sexual deviancy than even they bargained for. The first guy busted had a wife and kids at home. One guy was nineteen. One seventeen. The oldest was fifty five. Three were Disney employees. Another worked at a Boys and Girls Club. I was glad they were off the street and no longer a danger to young kids, but I couldn't help but feel bad for the pain they must have experienced to drive them to such things. I was imagining that every one of them no doubt had a very sad story that went back a long way. And it will get far sadder in the coming days.

It seems crazy that with all the publicity about similar stings on Dateline and such these guys will still do this. At least one guy told a deputy that he expected this was going to be a sting but he came anyway. In an interview the sheriff said that they have found that these guys are so driven that all logic just goes out the window.

The shooting was interesting but the part I found the most fascinating was just hanging out with the officers and finding out about their work and how they did what they did and how they worked together. I came away extremely impressed by the professionalism and dedication of these officers, some of them very young, some veterans of more than twenty years. This team from Polk County has been recognized as the best in the state at what they do. I came away feeling very proud of all of them and grateful for their service to the community. Who can tell how many kids these folks are saving from a lifetime of trauma.

The operation went on until midnight last night so all the information and images were by agreement of all media with the sheriff embargoed until 5:00am this morning. The story may well hit FOX News nationally so if you are reading this in time, you might catch the story on TV today. It's possible one of the other networks may pick it up from another Tampa affiliate station. If so, it won't be my footage but it should all look pretty much the same.

As I've been getting this ready to post I've been watching FOX and just saw the story run.

Here is an article from today's on-line edition of the "The Ledger" from Lakeland, FL.