listening

i do a lot of listening, but do i do enough? there's a big difference between casually soaking things in and being actively involved in what is being said. there is a tremendous need inside all of us to be heard and taken seriously. i consistently find myself tuning out certain conversations because i don't feel involved in whatever they're talking about. in meetings, i'll drift off and then come back to my senses wondering, "what just happened? was it important? i'm really hungry..."

i desire to be active in my home and in my community, but i can't do this without first listening and learning. i should put myself 100% into whatever i'm doing at the moment instead of wishing that i were doing something somewhere else. i most often wish that i were in the basement working on a song or starting an art project. however, i'm realizing that it's how you live your life outside of the studio that determines the content of your art. without a rich and focused work or social life, you don't have all the experiences and opinions necessary to say something with your art.

using our 5 senses is the first step to creating beautiful songs and pictures.

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the animal and the angel

there exists in me two promptings:

one of them is directed toward animalistic desires, and though i have indulged in many things that look, taste, smell, and feel desirable, I have found no satisfaction in them. There is only more hunting to be done in order to sate my thirst for pleasure.

the other is prone to avoid animalistic pleasures at all cost, and although this may seem right and nobel, it is nonetheless unpleasing to me and my creator. as humans we were made to experience and enjoy the world around us.

i think i understand more clearly how to balance these two inner forces.

i was reading rob bell's novel, sex god. he talks about how the bible approaches this issue:

"in the creation poem that begins the bible, people are created AFTER animals. and from the rest of scripture, we learn that people were also created after angels. the order here is significant. the movement in creation is away from tohu va vohu (wild and waste OR formless and void) toward greater and greater harmony and order and beauty...how we live matters because god made us human. which means we aren't angels. and we aren't animals."

i desire to exist somewhere in between the wide range of these two extremes.

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