Harmonies, Sound Waves, and Human Emotion.

(Photos courtesy of Jeremy Hohengarten)

Last night I went to a show.  The show was put on by a couple close friends who started a really amazing folk band called Ivory Owl.   If I had to sum up the evening and their performance in one word I would call it inspiring.  Their music was an artistic expression of harmonies and deeply emotional, captivating stories.  It was beautiful.  

As I was sitting, enjoying, and listening I got to thinking and questioning.  Why does music stir our spirits so incredibly much?  Isn't Music just random sound waves flying through the air that follow patterns of vibration  resonating with other waves that are faster or slower?  Isn't music pretty much just the by-product of things hitting other things?  Like a guitar pic hitting the strings or a piano hitting its chords? Who made the rules for this invisible structure of sound waves?  Why does it even exist?  Why can it pull at my soul like its typing on specific inner buttons intrinsic to all humans.  Its like we all have a gears inside of us that can only be powered up and turned when music has awoken them.  What is the purpose of this biological response to these invisible matter-less sound waves? And what does their existence imply about life and reality?   Music is such a mystery to me.

The songs that were preformed last night told stories of people and characters that were in life moments so epic and profound that endless poetry, literature, and artwork could not fully depict the depth of imagination, emotion, and discourse that was sung about.  The only describable way to explain it is by calling it indescribable.

One song told the story of  an astronaut husband who was trapped in orbit around Earth and kept alive by his space suit.  Josh sang of the mans deep longing to see his wife in the midst of his everlasting state of limbo.  Every-time the astronauts orbit passed over North America, specifically California the man would remember his beloved.  As his hair grew in front of his face and his will to live faded away his loneliness grew exponentially as the days, months, and years passed by like leaves falling from a tree in the fall.  After Josh made the case for the astronaut Erin sung of the women left to her lonesome back home on Earth.  If this sounds trite hear me out, the pure raw love belted out in this symphony of acoustic guitar and vocals immersed the audience in a tidal wave of the couples depravity.  As Josh and Erin played they brought the astronaut and his wife to life in my heart in a very sincere way.  I've only experienced this kind shared emotion through music.  And this it my question: Why can some things only be communicated in song? 

To me music speaks about the mystery of the eternal, the divine, and the spiritual pursuit.  I can think of no other explanation of why music exists other than to give us a language and form of expression from which to communicate the things that are impossible to communicate.  I get excited when I hear Heaven described as a place of endless song because to me the most grand and honest moments in life are when I'm captivated by the emotion and revelation of a reality that my soul can only understand in song.   Every human being has a sense of real emotions, like the death of a loved one, the joy of a newborn child, and the awe of standing before nature.  In my experience I can never do those emotions justice when I'm attempting to verbally communicate them to another.  When I try to describe the feelings I've felt when I lost a loved one I've always fallen short.  Its like trying to detail for some one the vastness of an ocean when all you have is a cup of water.  My everyday language skills are stunted and frustrated when it comes to describing the truths inside my heart of hearts.  I think that's where music comes into play.  The emotion of certain songs seems to scratch away some the veneer of our souls.  Music is a language and its a mystery. I'm beyond thankful to have the privilege of knowing some amazing musicians who can carry me away on the vessel of their art and to have had the experience that I had last night, an inspiring and spiritual session of pure art.

Take time to enjoy and ponder the mystery of music.  Ponder the mystery of why certain words put to a certain chords bring joy, reverence, or sentiment.  Enjoy the illogical response your body has when a song breaks into the chorus because the things that are being evoked in your soul go beyond words and can awaken the eternal within, the part of humanity than can only be explained as spirituality.

If you want to check out Ivory Owl go here:  www.myspace.com/ivoryowlmusic

What do Will Ferrel, Tila Tequila, and Jim Carrey have in common?

They have all contributed their fame to furthering the cause of the Burmese citizens.  

In case you haven't heard about Burma and the plight of its people check out these videos.  They are put out by the U.S. Campaign for Burma.  

www.youtube.com/user/uscampaignforburma

You need to know.  Don't waste time living naively like this stuff isn't happening.  As surprising as it may be to our commercially driven-consumeristic-happy-go-lucky society, our world is filled with devastation and suffering.  What will we do about this stuff?   Will we change anything?  Check it out, especially if you have free time.  I can't think of a better way to spend 20 minutes than making yourself aware of this crisis.

www.uscampaignforburma.com

My House in Cities

No matter who you are I'd bet you have some sort of home.  I'd also bet that within that home are different rooms that each have their own unique personality, character, and sentimental value.  For me the family room, kitchen, front porch, and bedrooms all have different identities that relate to me in specific ways.  The Family Room is for entertainment, fun, and gathering.  The Study is for contemplation, work, and intellect.  My Bedroom symbolizes my personality, hobbies, and history.  Each room in a house can describe a different component of who I am.  What if we took this metaphor and applied it to larger spaces in the world like cities?  Could different cities portray certain elements of my being?  Just for fun I'd like to analyze a few of the most important cities to me through the metaphor of a house.    See, I've always loved cities for all their historical, cultural, and demographic uniqueness and every time I enter the space of a new population I'm constantly sifting through the atmosphere to better understand the specific personality of that city.  This is my attempt to categorize the cities that make up my home.

San Francisco The Front Porch

The city by the bay has always been a place form coming and going.  Historically it was the gateway to the west with its grand GoldenGate Bridge beckoning travelers inside like the welcome matt you read as you enter the house.  The scenery of The City with its towering buildings, stringed and ornate bridges, and relaxing piers and ports reminds me of a big southern home with a large front patio that calls for me to step under its over-hang and relax in a rocking chair behind the fence and support beams that hold up the second floor.  

Along with being the point of embarkment for America, San Francisco is also the place of constant coming and going.  I've never been to a city more transient than SF.  Immigrants come and go, natives enter for a time to work, and tourists just come to see the bridges, cable cars, and liberalism.  San Francisco is in affect is like one big porch that welcomes travelers with romantic history and dramatic scenery but lacks the homeliness of the other parts of a house making it a city of visitors not inhabitants. 

 

Seattle The Study

Few cities posses the coziness that Seattle does.  At least that I've been to.  Seattle is a town filled with spaces to sit, read, think, and avoid the rain.  Coffee shops have made this city famous, but behind the caffeine veil is one the most intellectual cities in America.  Over fifty-one percent of residents in the Emerald City have bachelors degrees ranking it the mosteducated major city in the States.  Every time I visit this northwestern city I'm so captivated by the bays, bridges, mountains, vegetation, sky, and skyscrapers that I long to sit in a coffee house and ponder the mysteries of humanity while wearing a warm sweatshirt and drinking a mocha.  Seattle is the study of my house beckoning me to learn, question, and create.  

Berkeley The Kitchen

Every house has a kitchen, a place where ingredients, flavors, and smells mix together. Each recipe is a unique combination of different elements that create an appealing edible masterpiece. Berkeley is the epitome of cultural meshing and mixing.  A walk down Telegraph will fill your senses with hundreds of dialects, a tidal wave of different cooking aromas, and a near-uncomfortable level of different ideals.   For me Berkley has it all; ethic food, American food, cheap food, not-so-cheap food, great coffee (Peet's), and more than enough restaurants to keep you busy for years.  Berkley feels like a comfortable kitchen from which to retrieve a wide range of food and culture.  If my house was made up of cities, Berkley would be my kitchen.

The Tri-Valley My Bedroom

For most people their bedroom is a personal sanctuary.  Its the space they can not only decorate and make their own, but also it's a space where they can get away from it all.  Growing up my rooms have always been a space to reminded me of the events in my life that made me who I am.   The Tri-Valley is the place I grew up and the place where I currently rest my head.   This humble abode is where the most significant events in my life have shaped and formed me.  Its where I met Jesus, where I graduated high-school, where I met most of my close friends, where I hit my first home run in little league, where I learned to play guitar, where I grew close with my family, and where most every other important detail of my live has occurred.  The Tri-Valley is like a bedroom that I have  personally decorated and adorned with a wealth of stories and friendships.  Whenever I go out for coffee or a movie I see friendly faces and recognizable scenery that remind me of meaningful occurrences.  The Valley is familiar and comfortable like the first steps taken into a welcoming bedroom after a long and stressful day.  

  

Los Angeles  The Family Room

In our culture entertainment seems to be a priority when designing a house.  Its almost as if a home is not complete without a sweet entertainment center.  If the rooms in my house were made up of cities Los Angeles would undoubtedly be my family room. LA is the home of Hollywood, Disneyland, Universal Studious, Santa Monica, the OC, Huntington Beach, USC, and countless other entertainment options that I have frequented in my lifetime.  Family rooms are often the escape-from-reality room of the house.  It's in the family room that you can relax, kick back on your lazy boy, forget about the worries of the world and watch a movie with friends.  Just like the family room, Los Angeles is the escape-from-reality city.  

Everything is facade in LA; the water is shipped in, the palm trees are transplanted, the Chinese food is American (PF Changs), the movies fictional, the people plastic or photoshopped, the theme parks designed and imagined, and the beaches swept clean.   I'm not saying LA is evil I'm just describing the reality of the city, that the point of LA is to escape reality by creating a refuge of the perfect west-coast lifestyle.  To me the family room is the place to go to get away from it all and if there was one city that had the identical function in my life it would be Los Angeles.

 

Oakland The garage

If San Francisco is the front porch of the Bay, Oakland is the garage filled with useful but not-so-glamorous buildings and structures.  This East Bay metropolis does have it's scenic spots, but for the most part its filled with buildings and neighborhoods designed for industry and practicality not beauty.  Oakland is home to the fourth busiest port in America as well as countless other where house based business.  Its also home to the Oakland A's, Golden State Warriors,  and the Oakland Raiders making it a frequented city for sports fans with a taste for hard-nosed, low cost play.  The walk over the cement bridge from Coliseum BART to the Oakland Coliseum is surrounded by aging low-income housing, polluted rivers, barbed wire fencing, abandoned auto lots, and plenty of concrete structures.  Oakland reminds me of a garage that the man of the house disappears to when he needs to lift some weights, drink a beer, and listen to the game.  Its not a pretty city but its got personality.  If Oakland was a room in my house it would absolutely be the garage filled with useful tools, car parts, a weight set, and some professional sports posters.   

Yangon, Myanmar Siblings Bedroom

Growing up the one room that was off limits was my sister's room.   To me her bedroom seemed like some foreign  land I knew little about.  What's so interesting is that my sister has impacted my life tremendously, but I didn't know much about her growing up.  Sometimes I would sneak in her room while she wasn't home and stand in awe of the bizarre objects that decorated her shelves and walls.  Just like my big sisters room was off limits, foreign, and yet incredibly important to me, the city of Yangon, Myanmar is legally restricted, culturally opposite, and crucially meaningful to me.  Myanmar is a Buddhist nation that has taken legislative action against my fellow Christian brothers and sisters.  Over the past five years I've been privileged to explore this interesting nation and meet some amazing native church leaders.  We've connected our church in America to theirs and offer our support as best as we can.  As a result my experiences in Myanmar, I have changed as a person tremendously.   I find my mind constantly occupied with latest news from Yangon, the capital city, as I eagerly await the time when I get to see my family again.  To me Yangon is like my sisters bedroom, it's foreign and off limits but still incredibly close like only family members can be.  

So thats my house in cities.  From time to time I may add another room or alternate cities depending on their significance at that moment.  Whatever city I am in I love exploring it and becoming increasingly aware of it's uniqueness.   It makes me appreciate the world and notice details about places I often take for granted.  How about you?  If your house was made up of cities which city would be your kitchen, your bedroom, your family room and why?  What rooms would you add?  Make the world your home and explore!

 

Punk and the Christian ethos

When I was younger I was involved in the local Bay Area punk scene. I love reminiscing about it now because my behavior, logic, and rationale at the time were so warped. And it was so fun.  We drank, smoked, and engaged in lots of other rabble rousing activities expected from teenagers with too much free time, lots of questions about the world, and an upstart-idealistic outlook on life.  We even had our own band that played some pretty famous punk venues.  Those were fun, good times.  Fun, but empty. What started as youth striving to gain a voice in the vast mundane confusion of suburbia quickly evolved into reckless destructive behavior.   In the beginning of my immersion into  the punk way of life I was concerned with things like injustice in the world, bringing down capitalist greed, lashing out against prejudices and racism, and challenging pretty much everything about the way the world works.  By the end of my punk experience my passions shifted to things like getting drunk/high, having the right punk style (hair, pins, clothes, and taste in bands), and being more punk than the hot-topic kids.  It was the meaninglessness of these aspirations that were the catalyst for me to drop the leather jackets, charged hair, and F-you attitude.  My heart longed for something truly revolutionary, some sort of counter-world explanation of why the world sucks so bad.  It was this longing that drew me into the punk ethos, and eventually away from it.  

Presently I work with kids at a church and for some reason we tend to attract youth with a similar disposition as I had when I was younger.  The disposition I'm talking about is the desire to change the world as we know it, to give the middle-finger to the system and all of its oppressive depravity, to rebel against our societies' injustice.  When I come across students with this rebellious inkling part of my heart gets really excited.   And I just realized why.  

Punk students get me excited because I believe God is punk.  I believe when God looks at our world and his church and how we his children are exploiting, raping, murdering, and oppressing one another he gets pissed off.  I believe that the idealism and punk spirit that questions our world and its institutions, including the church, is a perspective that resonates closely with Gods heart.  Jesus himself has often been called a revolutionary.  He up-rooted the very institution of established religion, He spoke out for the poor and marginalized,  and He gave his very life for his cause.  

When I encounter students who are pissed at the world part of me gets excited because I think God is pissed about many of the same things, and its these thing that sucked me into punk, and later attracted me to Jesus.   Jesus' upstart heart was passionate and boldly obsessed about bringing healing to the broken, turning greedy hearts into giving hearts, breaking the chains that hold down the oppressed and enslaved, deploying justice to those trapped in exploitation, and the downfall of pretty much everything else evil. To join in a movement like the one Jesus started a requires a certain boldness and courage.  This is boldness and courage I see in punk kids who can't wait to change the world.  And its this why I love punk kids, because they have the heart that can really shake things up.  If these students realized that they share the same punk heart as God and joined in the counter-culture movement Jesus started they would be an unstoppable force for peace, justice, and love.  

Get Uncomfortable

This is something I wrote about a year ago, and I thought it would be a good way to start my blog.  

"If God is a God fully acquainted with suffering than it is in the lives of the hurting and broken that he exists the most.  If we want to know who God is than we must take on his nature an be in the lives of the suffering too.  God is not in our deep conversations and mundane suburban days.  God is in the starving of Africa, oppressed of Asia, and broken of the West.  True searching is not a conversation but an action. 

I think most of us Christians came to belief in God because some one exhibited love to us and shared His story with us.  It made sense, it felt right, and we believed.  After that I see many of us slipping away once our faith requires something of us.  We end up spending our days in living where God is not, in comfort.  To maintain relationship with the divine I think we have to be where God is.  And He is in the lives of others, mainly the suffering.  I think most of us have spent our days trying to pass time with our best entertainment options instead of with those who may be suffering.  Please be warned that Jesus will be found in the trenches of life bleeding for the people around him.  This is where he will be found because this is who he is.  We can talk about, celebrate, and explain his truths at church, the mall, in our homes, or on the net, but I am convinced Jesus is not understood, found, or truly known unless we live our days for the lives of others..."