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| This last week some friends and I saw this Icelandic singer perform at the Paradiso, a venue here in Amsterdam. We enjoyed every minute of the show and we all left thinking, "We need to practice!" Take a listen to her new album and her last one. They are very different from eachother yet have Emiliana's dark sense of calm and longing for love.
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| So, my brother and I have been listening to this band Ra Ra Riot and really enjoy it. There are some explicit ideas in the songs, but the music is fantastic. You can take a listen here: www.myspace.com/rarariot
Interesting fact: (I am not making light of this so please do not take the following comment in that way) The drummer for the band wrote most of the lyrics for the album but died unexpectedly before it came out. Knowing this puts an interesting twist on such lyrics as "I wouldn't like dying even if it was good."
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| Sure. In my mind I would like to limit my belongings to “just a few things” but even then, I will acquire more. I moved to Amsterdam with “just a few things” that was actually still too many to cross such an ocean with. But I was going to settle here and I wanted to prove it by bringing my stuff. There is something about this longing for more and the longing to possess things beautiful, as if possession of beauty will reflect the beauty of the one who obtains it.
I see this more in me, the longing for beauty playing itself out in what I own, in what I wear, in the outward. If I were honest, which I often am or at least try to be, inside there is a desert, a wasteland with memories of things owned and unsatisfied.
Today, I got out a trash bag. I mean, have I even worn this sweater in the last year, or thought about this jacket? There are people who would love a jacket like this and I have not even thought about it since I got it. Okay, so there are things I own that are there for just owning sake. I don’t even use them but the thought that one day I might need them, or want them, keeps them in my grip. So what of letting go? Is my real fear regret? Jealousy that the coat I did not think of this last year is now being worn by someone who will enjoy it? I heard that when we are in heaven, our greatest joy will be to see another person experiencing a greater level of relationship with the Lord. At this moment I stand above this large black hole, staring down at that coat on the top of the pile thinking about how today, I can’t even enjoy the thought of someone making use of something I didn’t even know I owned.
I have a trash bag full of clothes to give away and some are already taken. My closet and drawers are stuffed with more options then I can wear in a week, some of which will find their way to a dark black grave or into the hands of someone who will remember them. And the desert is still here, inside, and it can’t be filled by a shopping spree, the latest new earrings (I know the add said they were heaven on earth). They can hint at something my Maker has already placed inside of me. His beauty, the longing for it that is placed here as an oasis not of the illusive, but of the real.
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| All I know is that there is a moment, when I am biking to the top of this canal bridge behind my house, I reach the top and all of a sudden everything is silent and nothing is moving. Not my bike. Not my breath. Not a thing...
that is one of my favorite moments.
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| Squire Circle – my Missouri home
In the place where we lived
At the end of that street
We played kickball at night
Until we had to go to sleep
And I played that game again
With the blankets over my head
And the monsters under my bead
And I sang:
“Hush or they will hear
Lets wait till its all clear”
Then the morning came and it was
Off to the woods by myself,
The deer and the God I knew could hear
I would fly with the birds
And run from the bees
I would lie on the grass
And stare at the leaves on the trees
Singing:
“Hush or they will hear
Lets stay till its all clear”
That was when innocence ruled
And everything was new
Nothing could come between me and You
I could hear the angles singing over my head
I could hear the angels singing over my bed
“Hush or she will hear
Lets stay till its all clear”
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