AMAZING THINGS A LOT PEOPLE DON’T SEEM TO REALIZE ARE AMAZING

 There are many amazing things depending on you to realize they are amazing. In other words, if your eyes aren’t open to how amazing things are then nothing will seem amazing to you, which reveals, unfortunately, unfortunate things about your desire to learn and grow. It can reveal how much we take for granted. It can reveal arrogance and closed mindedness. I personally find a mind that can’t be amazed any more to be a little scary.

Consider: What does it take to amaze you? Do things have to explode? Does the world have to be a brand new circus everyday, putting on a show just for you in order to get some kind of response? Perhaps you aren’t seeing things that are right in front of you.

I certainly hope this is not the case. For anyone.

If you don’t know what I mean, I hope you figure it out. And to help people along, here are just a few examples of some amazing things a lot of people don’t seem to realize are amazing. Feel free to share some of yours if you are so inclined...

1. Bass players who sing lead vocals and play bass at the same time.

Guys like Sting and Geddy Lee. Paul McCartney. I seem to remember the guy from Thin Lizzy doing this as well. But it is fairly rare to see someone sing and play bass at the same time. Even more rare is the lead singer/bass player. You know why? Because it’s, like, stinkin’ impossible, that’s why. I have tried it. I can’t really play bass, but I definitely can’t sing lead vocals and play bass at the same time. Some players get away with it by basically playing root notes, plunk plunk plunk. Like Gene Simmons of Kiss. Not the same thing. I’m talking about guys who actually, really, genuinely play complex bass parts, peddling through the chords, while singing at the same time. I don’t know why it’s so impossible, but it is. More impossible than playing drums and singing, or playing accordion and singing, which is also very difficult, or so I’m told. But I’m telling you, if you see someone playing bass and singing lead vocals at the same time, be amazed. It is amazing. Probably the only thing more amazing would be a person playing a wind instrument and singing at the same time. I’ve honestly never seen that. I assume it's impossible, but what do I know? Still, if you see this kind of thing, bass guitars or otherwise, whether you realize it or not, you are witnessing something amazing.

2. Everyone’s kids.

Everyone thinks their own kids are amazing. And yet, to other people, they are just normal kids. Therefore, the inclination is to believe that the people with kids are biased and their kids are not actually amazing. But, in fact, the kids are amazing. All of them. Every single one. And if you don’t think so, it’s because you don’t get it. But that’s okay. You’re still amazing too.

3. Empty space.

Sure, seems boring, because it’s nothing. But if it’s nothing, then how is it still “there” in any way that makes sense? And if it wasn’t “there” what would be the difference between here and the “there” beyond the "there" of empty space? Some physicists argue, like Einstein did, that there is really no such thing as “empty” space because fields, such as gravity, fill all so-called “space,” including a vacuum, which is the ultimate empty space, I suppose. And I get what they are saying.

Kind of.

But that “space” is still there, isn’t it? In other words, the space is not, itself, the gravitational field that is “in” the space, right? Even if that empty space couldn’t exist without the forces acting on it and within it, what exactly is that thing that the gravitational field is occupying? Maybe it’s not technically empty, but it’s practically empty. And it’s space.

Perhaps we should call it empty space/time?

Okay. I seriously have no idea what I’m talking about anymore.

But I still think it’s amazing.


Peace to you.



© LW Publishing 2012

What You See On the Side of the Road

So, last week, I was in the foothills of the North Carolina side of the Smoky Mountains. We were driving, following my brother in law on a road that basically takes you along the edge of the mountains, and we were a little confused about where we were, so we stopped for a minute on the side of the road to get our bearings. Maps were consulted, GPSes were explored, but they seemed more confused than we were.

(Side note: we found this funny thing with our new GPS on this trip. When it gets confused it starts mispronouncing road names, sort of blurring them, as if to avoid making any commitments that might get it into trouble. It sounds like Bill Murray in Caddyshack.)

So, anyway, we were sitting there and, just outside my window on the driver's side, I noticed that a spider had somehow gotten up onto the mirror. Not sure how it got there, but it was furiously making a web. And I do mean furiously. I’ve never seen a spider move so fast. It spun a web out from the rear view mirror to the corner of the window, then in another direction, then it cut back across, really fast. As I watched, I was wondering what I was going to do about this spider, if anything. But it didn’t care about me. It made a kind of triangle and filled it in very fast. It was amazing.

And then, I am not kidding you, or joshing you, or making any of this up: it carefully cut the web loose from the car and rode it like a kite on the wind away from the car toward some trees on the other side of the road. It was so small and almost transparent that I lost sight of it after a few yards, but it was headed in the right direction.

It was a flying spider.

Now. I don’t know about you but, to me, that is one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen. It was no accident. It happened fast and it happened on purpose. This spider knew EXACTLY what it was doing. I found a description online from an entomologist. They call this behavior “ballooning.” But they don’t seem amazed by it at all. As if spiders creating flying vehicles is just, you know, something akin to taking a pee or something.

To me, flying spiders are amazing. Pure and simple.

I think this is God’s way of laughing at our unbelief.



Peace to you.


© LW Publishing 2011

How To Avoid Exploding

Suddenly I’m feeling creative. Not that I have time for it. The reality is that you make time, or your head might explode.

I’ve been writing some new songs, and I’ve got some story ideas. I’ve had an idea for a screenplay for quite a while that I’ll probably never get done. Who knows. I have a friend who has written a screenplay. I told him about the idea and he seems to think it’s a good one.

There is this weird energy that I feel when I’ve got the creative going on. My head buzzes with thoughts which it always does, but instead of having it all bottled up inside, causing distress, it’s like someone turns on the faucet, and you get to fill those glasses with nice, cool, clean water.

I realize that when I start to use these similies and metaphors, it can make some people scratch their heads in wonder. One time I was at a pastors meeting and I was trying to describe the process of getting ideas down on paper and I remember describing it as being like “bees buzzing around your head, and you’re trying to grab one.” That, to me, is actually a perfect image, but they just stared at me like I was crazy, and I get that. If I wasn’t me, I’d think I was a little nuts.

But what is creativity if it isn’t going a little nuts?

I’m a firm believer that everyone is creative. Some people have had it beaten down so they suppress it. Some people decided that someone else was better at something they liked to do, so they gave up on it. You see that a lot. Some kid decides that they like to draw. They draw everything in sight. Their parents and family notice and tell them how good they can draw. But then they get to school and some kid in their class can draw “better,” so they give up the idea of drawing because someone else is “better.” Which is extremely sad in every way.

There is competition in life, but life is not a competition.

Most people who say they “can’t” draw or paint or sing or write, simply won’t. It's not that they "can't." They spend too much time judging themselves, condemning their own efforts. Somewhere along the line someone made fun of them or they realized they weren’t the “best” singer in the room and they gave up on it altogether. Some people sing out of key, so they don't sing. Not even in the car by themselves. And that’s just sad. I’m not saying you should do it professionally, whatever it is, singing, dancing, drawing, basket weaving. Whatever. But why abandon it completely? Why not just enjoy your own experience. Stop worrying about how “good” it is and just enjoy the experience of doing that thing.

If you don’t your head might explode. And you’ll never catch one of those bees.


Peace to you.


© LW Publishing 2011

Massively Massive

From what I’ve read, the amount of atoms in one molecule of DNA is pretty close to the same as the number of stars in a typical galaxy.

Is there any way at all to actually understand that reality? I don’t think so.

Creation is massive, both in the macro and the micro sense. Massive, massive, massive. Mind bogglingly massive.

There’s something about the scale of the Universe that messes with my mind. And it keeps messing with my mind. Not just that it’s so big or so small, but that it’s so big AND so small. Like, on any beach, there are countless grains of sand, but there are also these single grains of sand that make up the whole thing. The single grain has its complexities, and the whole beach has it’s complexities. It seems to me that being human isn’t much different in some ways. It’s estimated that there are nearly 7 billion people on the earth. I am 1 of 7 billion.

Seven. Billion.

And how many mosquitoes are there? And how many ants? And how many birds? And leaves? And flowers?

In my front yard there is some grass. It’s not the nicest grass in the neighborhood. That award would go to my next door neighbor, Jerry. But it is a marvelous layer of grass, nevertheless, simply because it is massive in it’s way. How many blades of grass are there out there? A million? Who knows. And yet, each blade has it’s own beauty and complexity. The whole thing boggles the mind. At least it boggles my mind.

And then there is space. Outer space. The galaxy. The Universe. It is massively massive. How many rocks are there in the universe? How many packets of light? How many stars?

Just our galaxy, the Milky Way, if you were to drive across it at around 60 MPH, it would take you about a million billion years to cross it. It is approximately 620 million billion miles across. Million billion? But the universe makes that look like a drop in the bucket. They say it’s around 90 billion trillion miles across (if “across” even makes any sense with curved space).

So. Why do I mention all this?

Just because.



Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2011

Interplay

 I’ve been listening to a lot of different music lately and have been trying to pay attention to what grabs me while I’m listening.

You’d think the words would be the thing, but the words have more potential to push me away than draw me in. As long as the words aren’t so stupid or corrupt that they drive me away from a song, I find that I’m looking for something more complex.

Even in the simplest songs that have more than one instrument, there is a combining of rhythms and tones that are crisscrossing, moving and changing. And I find that this causes a really strong response in me both emotional and, I think, physical.

It can be something classical, like Bach’s Goldberg Variations. I have a recording by Dmitry Sitkovetsky where he arranges this keyboard music for strings. It is, in my opinion, some of the best music ever recorded. Hearing it on strings is almost like hearing it move from two dimensions into three. I always go back to listening to it over and over again because the interplay in the music is endlessly compelling and profound.

But it doesn’t have to be classical. The music of James Brown or Tower of Power, Thelonius Monk or Chick Corea. The complexities of the drum programming that Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis produce. David Crowder’s melodic twists, stringing out against changing patterns. The counter melodies that some country and folk and pop artists craft between the instruments and voice.

There is a math to all of this that rises above numbers on a page or musical notes on a staff. It’s like finding the answers to questions you didn’t even know you had.

There’s an old hymn from the 1800's called “This Is My Father’s World.” And there’s a line in the song that says, "This is my Father's world, and to my list'ning ears all nature sings and round me rings the music of the spheres.”

This “music of the spheres” is a very old idea, basically that the planets and universe figuratively “sing” with their interplay throughout creation. And I find a similarity there, between how I feel when I look up at the night sky and see the stars and planets, and how I feel when I hear the interplay of music.

I don’t know if you can relate to any of this, but I felt like trying to express it. I think I have not done it very well, but some things are not done much justice with words.



Peace to you.


© LW Publishing 2011

Hands

When I woke up this morning, I was laying on my left side and my left arm was sticking out from under me, numb and tingly, as usual. But the light was coming in from the window, glowing on my hand, and I realized for a moment what an amazing piece of art it is.

Yes, my hand, but not just my hand. Any hand.

If we’re going to vote for the most amazing hand in history, I might give the award to Stevie Ray Vaughan’s left hand. I’m sure others would give the award to Michael Jordan’s right hand, or maybe both of Michael Angelo’s hands. Or how about Thomas Edison’s hands? Or, hands down, we could give the award to the hands of Jesus.

I suggest you take a moment and stare at your hands. Move them around. Stretch them. Notice the complexity. There is an elegance to the construction of a hand that defies explanation.

Watch the hands of a dancer. See how the hands move in concert with the body. Even though the hands are at the extremity of the body, somehow they inform and guide the motions of a dancer.

Now, I’m no dancer, but I do public speaking, which requires a lot of typing for outlines and drafts and editing. I also play guitar and drums and some keys. I write a lot of music, which I usually do on guitar. It’s how I figure things out. And it’s all about the hands. I often “find” songs by feeling around the progressions for the right thing.

So tomorrow, I will have one of my hands sliced open to fix it. Down the road I get to have the other one done too. It’s actually a pretty minor surgery, but people keep asking me if I’m nervous about it. And I don’t think I am. But I might be. I lie to myself all the time. Not on purpose. It’s a coping thing. But I really don’t think I’m nervous about it. It’s just that there’s a weight to this event for me. I’m learning a new appreciation, and that’s almost always a good thing.

I am thankful for my hands.


Psalm 139:14
Peace to you.



© LW Publishing 2011

Mysteries of the Mind

No kidding. I’m standing on my front porch and I glance to the right and see another dead bird in the bush in front of our house. It apparently hit our front window and fell onto the bush where it lay, a big black bird with shiny feathers. I’m going to have to get out there and do something with it. I can at least bury this one.

What makes finding these birds stand out to me is that over the past few weeks I’ve become kind of obsessed with a weird question. This happens to me a lot. I come up with a weird question and I can’t figure out the answer and it gets into my mind and won’t go away, but it’s almost always something nutty.

For instance. An example that is not the question I am currently obsessed about. A long time ago I thought up a question that I still don’t have an answer to that I find satisfactory. The question is this:

Why do men have nipples?

I’m just saying. I know it’s a weird question. I know it reveals that I probably have some kind of psychological disorder. But, still, I wonder . . . why? They are pointless.

And, so, back to the birds. I have been mulling over another question the past few weeks that won’t leave me alone. And it goes something like this:

This world is FULL of animals, wildlife of all kinds, birds by the trillions, foxes, cats, mice and rats and squirrels. And on occasion you find a dead one. I found a dead squirrel in the tree in my backyard last year. And it really stood out to me because how often do you find a dead squirrel unless it has been hit by a car on the road, right? So, here are the basics of the question:

Where are all the animal bodies? Where are all the dead animals? They don’t have tremendously long life spans, and yet you just don’t see a lot of animal bodies laying all over the place. Are the animals having secret little squirrel funerals in the woods that we don’t know about? Elephants have graveyards, but what about rabbits? Where do all these animals go when they die? Is the process of decomposition so fast that they are gone within a day? Even so, why don’t we see more of them before they decompose. Is it a part of their instincts to get under a bush somewhere to die?

This world is full of things that can make us wonder, wonder, wonder. Don’t you think?







Peace to you.




© LW Publishing 2010

Bird

The family and moi were at a campground the past few days. Because I’m with them, we got a little cabin to stay in. I don’t tent. Call me a sissy if you want. I don’t care. I just laugh at you when the rain comes.

Next to our cabin one day we came across this bird on the ground, breathing his last. Literally. It’s chest was heaving, it’s head was pulled back, trying to breath, doing everything it could to stay alive, but there was no hope. I wondered what was taking the bird down. Did it run into the window on the side of the cabin? Did it just get old and have a heart attack and fall from the tree above? There’s no way to know.

It was compelling stuff. It was hard to watch, and yet we couldn’t walk away. Together, we saw how death takes over. How the fight is lost. And I think it was good for us to see. All of us.

This bird had been able to fly, which is something I can only dream of. It made it’s way out of the nest and into the world with very little help. Like all birds, it was amazing. An intricate work of art that decorated the skies.

I wasn’t sure what to do with the body. I wanted to honor it somehow, but I couldn’t think of anything. I didn’t have a shovel to bury it. I ended up putting it in a plastic cup and setting it in a garbage can.

Death is a part of things. We shouldn’t obsess over it. But it’s a reality we need to face. If you don’t, you won’t make good use of the time you have here. If you’re pretending you’re going to be here forever, then you’re likely to waste a lot of good time doing . . . stuff. You know. Stuff.






Matthew 10:29-31
Psalm 90:12
Peace to you.





© LW Publishing 2010

Are You . . . Talkin' To Me?

I was going through some of my photos and found this picture of a flower that was growing in the yard of a woman who lives a few doors down from me. And, well, uh . . . is it just me or, does this flower seem to have an attitude or what?



I can’t decide if it’s trying to get in my face or if it’s just curious. Maybe it just wants to know whus up? But it does seem clear to me that the little uptight guy to the upper right is definitely angry about something, don’t you think?

Anyway. Enough anthropomorphisms. I’m glad I caught this. This flower has flaws, but it still has beauty. Character. That’s why you won’t see one like it on a print at the mall. But I like how the sun found part of it and left the rest in shadow.

So much of creation comes and goes. You wonder if God will have it all recorded when people get to heaven so we can rewind and see some of it again? I feel, sometimes, like I could stare at a single flower for about a hundred billion years and still not fully grasp the creativity and complexity and beauty of the thing.

I might just do that.



Peace to you.





© LW Publishing 2010