Jazz
Here's what I love about jazz. It's 90% improvisation. Made up as you go. Different everytime. One player does something and the others respond, or compliment, or copy, or take the idea further. You play off of each other. There a chemistry. You can rehearse. You can study and prepare. You can practice your butt off. You can know style and own it. But it's still improvised.
That's life. As much as I practice and prepare I'm still improvizing as I go. Some parts don't go where I imagined. Sometimes parts clash. Sometimes I miss notes. Sometimes I get lost. Sometimes I'm out of tune. And sometimes there's beautiful music. That's life...and I love it.
I'm going to a jazz fest the next few days and I'm excited.
Fabrication
Cecil wrote a great blog about the fabrication of church. Check it out
here. This is some of my response...
Is church a fabricated place? Well…first off, it’s hard to talk about church as a place, because it isn’t. But I understand the intent of the question. Does cheesy music at an altar call lessen my intent of laying things down before the Lord? Was I impressed by the power of God or the pastor’s eloquent delivery? Am I infatuated with lights and sound or in love with God? Do I need these to make God appealing to a society that is so fabricated? Do I need to mass market Jesus?
I think that many people are frustrated because of what Steve writes about. When so much is put into a short weekend service it’s just easy to feel the presence of God. But is it becoming a spiritual junk food? A fix? Do I need the lights to see Jesus, or can I see him in my daily routine? Do I need a great band and sound system and video screen to sing to Jesus? What if all that was taken away, what would the church gatherings look like? What are we teaching by how we “do” church? “Do” is in quotes because I don’t think we do church, we are church. Worship isn’t something we do at a weekend service for an hour and then stop. Worship is who we are.
Let’s say that some of it is fabricated. Is that wrong? Does that make the decisions and the worship offered in church gatherings cheap? I don’t want to be presumptuous and say it’s up to me to determine the quality of something offered to God in worship. It’s a hard question. Let me know your thoughts.
Racism
Check
this out. Tom showed this to me a while ago. It's hard for me to comprehend what is going through their minds. Their ignorance is so frustrating. But still today so many people live hating others because of race and ethnicity. What do you think of the video? How does it make you feel? How does it make you act?
Religious Attitude
I read my Bible almost everyday. I have for over thirteen years now. Before that I never really did. Some days I feel like it and some days I don't. Some days I get a lot from it and some days I don't. It's like that for all of us. Some times we go through spiritual dry spells. We read our Bible, pray, go to church, give some money, sing some songs, and even wear a WWJD bracelet. Often at the point where we don't see the immediate return we call all of those things religious. And we don't want to be religious like those Pharisees. So the easiest conclusion would be to quit doing those things or change the way we do them, which is fine because once they become religious they do little good.
But here's what I think. Being religious has little to do with what you are actually doing. It has a lot to do with the attitude that you do things with. So when what you do becomes religious, the first stop may not be what you are doing, but your heart. Of course that's harder to see and harder to change. We can't really quantify that very well. We can't quantify being religious either.
For instance, say you pray at 5 specified times of the day and you face a certain direction towards a holy place when you do it. You get on your knees and say the same words every day. One day you realize that what you're doing has lost meaning to you. What would you do? Scrap that tradition? Stop praying altogether? Pray to another God? Pray with your fingers crossed? Or change your attitude? Obviously, it's different for every person and every situation. Sometimes we need to change what we are doing. Sometimes we don't. I think our first check should be the heart, and then what we do. I don't mean to over generalize, but sometimes we miss out because we think it's what we are doing that makes it religious.
What do you think? What do you do to get out of a religious rut?
Chuck Norris
Chuck Norris vs
Chuck Norris. Who would win?
Thanks
Grube.
Everyone's talking about Church Norris. Chuck Norris jokes are flying everywhere. Maybe I missed something, but how come? He's been around forever but the last couple weeks that's the only jokes I've heard. Anyways, I like it.
"Pray to Play" - "Play to Pray"
Matt Messner reminded me of an old habit I had in college. I would practice bass a lot everyday and if you looked at my schedule it may appear that playing bass was an idol of some sort because of the time that I spent at it. It probably could have easily become a god to me but I put a couple things into perspective. I had a little sign on my bass case that read "Pray to Play" and "Play to Pray."
"Pray to Play" reminded me to thank God for music, for the chance to make music, for talents, for talented people to play with, for a beautiful instrument, and for every time that I had to pick it up. It reminded me that without Jesus I would have nothing...or at least that everything I had would mean nothing. Thanking God first kept me humble.
"Play to Play" reminded that what I was doing in the practice room or in jazz band was a form of worship for me. When I was playing in orchestra it spoke to God. It was a prayer of some kind. And when I was playing for the Lord it inspired me to play better. I was reminded who was in the audience.
What it did for me was to make the secular sacred. It's all in the attitude of my heart. I had holy moments playing 'Round Midnight in bars and performing Mozart in concert halls.
What other areas of my life do I do that? How do you do that? In what ways have you made the secular sacred?
