Closer To Me

I seldom remember my dreams. But when I do, it usually has a significant impact on my life somehow. More than a year ago, I had a dream that I suddenly died and was separated from my children. I was trying hard to reach them, contact them, to let them know that I was okay and to have one last chance to communicate my heart for them as their father. But, I couldn’t get through to them. When I woke, I felt really disturbed. From that experience came a song.

“Closer to me,” is written from an imaginary place after death. Between the lines of the song, there’s a basic message from me that says, “I miss you! I wish I could be right there beside you in every situation you face.” Over the span of my life, I’ve lost a lot of loved ones. Some died suddenly, tragically. Others were more expected because of age or a terminal illness. One thing I’ve learned about how best to cope with these experiences is to get some alone time, quiet time, in nature to just listen and reflect. I first tune in to my thoughts, memories, emotions, and physical feelings in my body that I’m experiencing related to the loss of the person I love. I then tune into my surroundings and try to imagine that there are messages for me from the person I lost carried in the sound of the wind, rushing water, or the waves. It's a soothing, meditative practice that helps me feel more connected somehow to that person I lost.

When I die, I want my children to imagine that I left messages of love and comfort for them as well—in the sounds of the wind and the waves. I want them to get alone someplace and just listen. And even though it isn’t real, it’s only pretend—I want them to hear my voice again and know that I’m grieving, too. I guess now they can. In the form of a song.

South of the Clouds

A few hours outside of Shangri-La in Yunnan province, China, there’s a trail going from a small Kham Tibetan village up to a high altitude plateau. I’ve hiked that trail 6 times since 2010, only missing one year in 2012 because my second daughter was born that summer. This trail has become so familiar to me and it is my favorite place in all of China. Following this trail from village to plateau, you ascend more than 4,000 vertical feet, ending at an altitude of about 14,200 ft. It is a very rigorous hike when you live at sea level year round. But, it is on this trail each year that I’ve gained an ability to experience my physical and spiritual existence as a single existence—one in the same. I don’t separate the two when I’m hiking this trail. And despite being such a rigorous and challenging environment, it is also the place where I’ve felt more alive—more aware of and in tune with my heart, soul, mind, and body. And in that annual surrounding, I commune with God in ways I just don’t or can’t when living in the big city.

South of the Clouds is a song documenting my internal dialogue as I hiked that trail—the battle against my self-sabotaging phrases, self-limiting beliefs, paralyzing self-doubts and insecurities—the mountains of shame and guilt I know I need to climb in order to be free to continue this journey I’m on.

So, when I just need to start over, be reminded of who I truly am, and rekindle the fire in my soul . . . I go to Yunnan . . . south of the clouds.

Author of Life

“We are not human beings having a spiritual experience.

We are spiritual beings having a human experience.”

-Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

 

This is a powerful thought. It could transform the way you live your life. Personally, I agree with it. I think that first and foremost, we ARE souls and our bodies are the temporary home for that soul. The physical world we live in gets in our way a lot, keeping us from seeing and understanding our true identity and grasping the extent of our true potential.

Within the last couple years I’ve determined the whole human experience to be an unfolding romance with an extravagantly loving, eternally generous, creator. "Author of Life" is a simple song acknowledging two things: 1) where this whole idea for Shakes The Wilderness and writing and recording songs came from and 2) that I still battle against my flesh and my fears in my struggle to buy into the idea I just proposed! Deep down I’m just trying to know the worth of my life like everyone else, right? So, I sometimes turn to worthless or unhealthy things for comfort, affirmation, validation, or significance. Even though I have found the only truly satisfying spiritual sustenance to be Christ Himself—the Creator God, I struggle to surrender my will to that daily. Even in my reckless abandonment to that belief, which frees me to follow a lifelong dream, my flesh pulls me in the other direction, telling me either I can do it on my own strength or I’m not good enough to do it; I don’t have what it takes. So, I decided to solidify my belief through song and simply say that I believe God is the author of my life in its totality—the biological “alive” ness and the spiritual “alive” ness which includes a purpose to discover and fulfill. I know He created me, He gave me a gift to receive and open and a dream to live. I believe He has the same plan, with a different expression of that plan, for everyone.

Grievers

Continuing with the theme of noticeable rhythms of grief, “Grievers” is the song that helped me process the loss of many of our friends moving away last year. That year, six couples of the eight or so in our inner circle of friends, left China. The reality of that loss and the intensity of the change we were about to experience hit me one night and so I sat down at the piano to just play something to sooth the heaviness in my heart. Two hours later at about 2am I had a completed song.

Meaning behind the lyrics:

Verse One: my first look at things through the lens of grief. I look around and see it everywhere—it feels like the rhythm to our pace of life here. Even the best of memories can generate sadness.

Verse two: the lens of grief creates a cynical view of relationships—that there are no good endings and every friendship ends with loss or change. Those thoughts stem from unresolved losses, hurts and fears.

Verse three: Sometimes it just feels good to feel sad. But, grief can be deceiving. It doesn’t always bring the release or the resolve I’m seeking. I don’t want to stuff my emotions, but at some point I have to orient my mind toward adaptation and pressing on. The music around me may sound sad, but I can still sing!

Bridge: The last lyrics are me saying, “someday I hope I’m well enough and whole enough to be able to say that I’m not a griever.” Of course, I’ll always be sad to a degree when I look back at these years and know that I won’t see most of these friends again or live together in the same community doing life together. But, I hope to keep processing, growing, and healing until the grief isn’t as intense or as debilitating.

This was the hardest and easiest song I’ve written so far. It was hard emotionally—there were times where I had to just stop singing because I was crying. But, it was also easy because the words were just coming out and fitting perfectly in place. I didn’t have to work at it like I have with other songs. That was a powerful experience because I discovered that song writing for me can essentially be a form of prayer—singing my burdens out loud because I know my Creator listens, knowing I’m free to process my emotions transparently and not hide anything. Writing this song with that mindset didn’t change my situation, but it did change me. It gave me peace and unlocked a new form of communication—a language that wasn't foreign and felt so natural rolling off my tongue, called, “songwriting.”

Leaves

Jon and I were summer camp friends for several years, college roommates our freshman year, and close friends until the day he died in early March of 2005. In Indiana, March is the season when leaves are beginning to return to the trees, not fall to the ground as the chorus of the song depicts. But now, more than a decade later, I actually discovered a rhythm to my grief and it begins each year in the fall. In fact, if grief had a peak season for me, it would be September through March. I don’t know why, but every year in the fall, the memories of Jon hit me, they tend to flutter away during the festive holidays but then return with greater heaviness as I approach March. This past fall, as I was writing songs more, the annual dark season returned, and as I watched the leaves turning color and falling to the ground here in Tianjin, China, the words and melody of the chorus came to me. I remember those final months—particularly the fall before Jon died when I saw him more often—his ability to make us all laugh and enjoy life, despite his physical condition. There were a lot of sweet moments during that time and I didn’t know it then, but somehow those brightly colored moments were preparing me for our separation. In nature, we see the leaves turn the most beautiful, vivid colors right before they die. And I guess that’s the metaphor that makes sense to me when I think of my final days with Jon. He was beautiful. He was bright. He was made of vivid colors. He was a brightly colored leaf falling softly, delicately to the ground.