Favorite Songs Part 1

Since writing my last post I've rediscovered an old song which I heard awhile ago and had forgotten about. So there will be a surprise addition to my list of seven songs.

There was no particular reason for the order of the songs I listed yesterday. Looking back over them though they seemed to be grouped most conveniently. First up we have, I Hope You Dance by Lee Ann Womack.

This song is rather uncharacteristic for me, I'm not normally a fan of the genre. The choice is particularly ironic because I don't dance...ever. Not even in my dreams do I dance. However this song is ranked so highly by me because it speaks of hope, and humility yet is restrained by truth. There's plenty of songs that paint pretty pictures of life and encourage people to hope for things that only happen in fairy tales. This song though is fenced in by the lyrics, "Time is a wheel in constant motion always rolling us along. Tell me who wants to look back on their years and wonder where those years have gone" It's important to hope for and pursue good things that have not yet come to pass. But to hope for things that can not come to pass or will not ever happen is not merely stupid but it's immoral and wrong as well. This song reminds us that we are bound by time and that it rolls on quickly. From this foundation we proceed to the rest of the song. We learn to stand in awe of the oceans grandeur, to consider the beauty of the heavens, to love hard and never give up. This song reminds us that life is about choices. We can sit on the sidelines, we can watch others participating in the struggles and the pain, in the joy and the victories and we can exist by ourselves until time rolls on by and we find ourselves look back wondering where the years have gone. Or we can choose to participate to share in the trials and the pain to share in life's hardships and life's triumphs. To dance as it were even when your feet have blisters and your ankles are sore.


Next comes a song more to my personal tastes. Blow Me Away by Breaking Benjamin.

The feel of this song is where it's message lies. It's lyrics are rather vague and repetitive. The song incorporates a message though which I know I need to learn and relearn almost everyday and I believe most of my generation needs to learn as well. The message is that, life is hard, time is short and most people are not going to survive. "No time to lose, We've got to move, Steady the helm." It means to me, consider my ways, count my days and focus. Realizing that I can die at any moment how am I going to choose to act right now? Should I continue righting this blogpost or should I go tell my sister how much I love her? or maybe I should go try to evangelize to all my neighbors. Regardless of what you happen to think I should do in light of the fact that life is not guaranteed a minute from now, I hope we can agree that nobody should simply let life pass them by. "The chorus says, "Only the strongest will survive, lead me to heaven when we die, I am the shadow on the wall, I'll be the one to save us all." As I get older and learn to understand people better I'm realizing that most people as they get older are not maturing. They are simply accumulating experiences the weight of which is slowly crushing them. Most people are in a process of slowly dying. To live we must filter our experiences and think through them so that we understand them. This song has taught me that just because my heart is beating I'm not alive and unless I strive to survive I will fail and become just like everybody else.

Oel ngati Kameie, it means I see and understand who and what you are. I watched the movie Avatar yesterday with my brothers and I heard this song again for the first time in awhile. The lessons I learned from and the reminders I was given after reading the lyrics would be enough for two or three blogposts by themselves. Boiling everything down to a summary statement I was reminded that I very often look and do not see, or I see and do not understand. For example how often do I look at my Bible and see merely one cover amongts many? Or how often do I see my Bible and fail to understand that there within it's thirteen hundred pages is wisdom and truth that has conquered kingdoms and destroyed cultures. Within it's covers are the foundational truths of human existence, who we are? why we are here? where we are going? where did we come from? what is love? what is truth? what is reality? who is God? what is prayer? Answers to all these questions and more are there for my perusal and yet nine times out of ten I simply see a worn black cover with golden lettering. Or another example, consider how many people look at their lives and see only things worth complaining about. they see themselves and do not understand that they are a unique individual created to fulfill a cosmic destiny.

Music To Think About

In an attempt to better understand what's going on inside my head I've tried to identify a selection of songs that help me answer questions about me like, who I think I am?  who I actually am? what I hope to be? and what I care about? Music is a powerful teacher and in our culture in which music is only increasing in popularity it's important to pay attention to the music we're listening to. The person who doesn't understand themselves will never really be in control of their actions. Thinking about our music choices allows us to understand more of what is important to our spirits.

Below are 7 songs, each of which represent different aspects of my character.. I'll be writing two or three blogposts over the next week or so explaining why the songs are significant. My mind is a confusing and chaotic place and I don't totally understand all the reasons for why these songs are symbolic to me, yet they all are and I"m excited to learn more about myself as I write about them. I Hope you enjoy the music.


                                                     I Hope You Dance by Lee Ann Womack

Blow Me Away by Breaking Benjamin

The Call by Celtic Woman

Pale by Within Temptation

Darkness by Blackmore's Night

Once In Every Lifetime

Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing

by

Abigail Zsiga

                        “Music is a moral law. It gives a soul to the universe, wings to the
                         mind, flight to the imagination, a charm to sadness, gaiety and life
                           to everything. It is the essence of order, and leads to all that is
                                 good, just, and beautiful, of which it is the invisible, but
                                   nevertheless dazzling, passionate, and eternal form" 

I don't know who wrote this but it's not from Plato like the internet says it is. 

Plans For What's Next.

The world is a big place and for the past year and a half I've been excited to see more of it. All of my life I've grown up in the same neighborhood, hanging out with the same sort of people, cracking the same sort of jokes, reading the same sort of books and watching the same sorts of movies. Because I've read alot I've always been aware that just over the horizon were people and cultures as different from me as night is from day. My reading awakened in me a hunger to go, to explore to become apart of those peoples lives and do my level best to understand these people and their cultures. 

For along time that hope was nothing more than a dream; some shadow on the fringes of my daily existence. Slowly that shadow has stepped into the light of day. As I went from homeschooling to a private school to an online college to graduating college one year after high school my dreams for my future slowly began to take actual shape. The process of manifestation has revealed a reality different from the dream I had while I was in high-school and college. As a student I wanted to go, and live and travel and study. I wanted to ride horses through the Mongolian steppes and hear Orthodox monks chant their liturgy that dates back a thousand years.While these are still very real desires which one day I'd like to satisfy. For now the more important desire is one for understanding. I want to talk to people, to read their great books, to learn their language and discover their mysteries. My culture and my relationship with God has left me with powerful beliefs about the nature of our world, the definition of truth and the reality of God's form and existence. I want to test my beliefs in the context of another culture, in a religious, political and social environment entirely different from what I've grown up in.

The Five pagoda temple built before two generations before the United States ever existed.

To live and exist in a culture other than my own will test my beliefs, will shape them and cultivate them. I'm so excited for the man I will be twelve months from now when I may or may not come home depending on how it goes. God has been so kind to me, so very merciful. I have an everlasting stream of reasons to be thankful for all the things God has seen fit to give me as I've gone through this process. The truth that if God is on your side you can never fail has been proved again and again. Initially I was not so excited to go to China. Of all the countries in East Asia, China was the last on my list to teach in. As I've thought more though China is in many ways ideal for my purposes. China is the oldest culture in East Asia rich in lore and wisdom. It's culture dates back to long before the birth of Christ and it's sages have meditated on truths that the west with it's Christian hedonism has long since forgotten.  In addition China is in many respects the political and social opposite of the United States, a perfect environment to experiment with my belief structure. 

Writing about it makes my excited. There is much to be excited about in my life and in yours. I go now to prayer. Thanks all of for your support and kindness may the peace of God be with you.