Sing Silently

Ruthie and I spent the weekend up in the mountains with a group of friends. My friend Josh Feit played a new song that he had written. Knowing the subject of the piece, I had tears in my eyes at the end.

The song was called "Sing Silently." The lyrics went like this:

Sing silently
Sing silently
'Till the bluebird mama can make it home
'Till the bluebird mama can make it home

Tread tenderly
Tread tenderly
'Till the blackbird papa can make it home
'Till the blackbird papa can make it home

Sing la la la
To the shadows in the room
Keep singing la la la
To the shadows in the room

He wrote it about a girl at a local apartment complex, who witnessed violence in her home and can't sleep well anymore. I think that, as we dive into the pain of the lives around us, art like this becomes more and more essential, both in ministering to that pain and in keeping our sanity.

Songs like this do a beautiful job of telling stories, of releasing pain, and searching for hope. I believe that Josh's example is one that more of us should follow. He makes art that relates to the overwhelming mysteries he faces, and the resulting song is such a powerful call to compassion, to hope, to love.

There's much more that I could say on this, but I'd encourage my readers to hop over to Josh's site and check out the song for themselves. A recording of the song is available at The Redline Project.

Communicycle Ride (Flashback to Sunday)

This Sunday after church, David, Melvin and I joined the rest of the Communicycle posse for a ride on the Silver Comet Trail.

David got to ride on the bike he built in the program. Melvin's bike is still in progress, so we borrowed one for him. They both struggled with the endurance aspect of the ride, but seemed to have a good time and feel proud after it was all over.

Philosophy of Guitar

Yesterday was the first day of Eric's summer guitar class. He had been thinking about spending some time with different philosophical ideas about music related to perception and emotional resonance, but when the class showed up, it became clear that another approach might work better:

Blanca and her brother Alicio have been coming to our center since we moved here. Blanca does much of the cleaning and housework in her apartment, helps her mom sell tamales in the neighborhood, and cares for her brother. She's a very busy kid.

It turns out, she's also a killer guitarist. Eric was amazed at how quickly she picked up the chords and started playing. We hope she keeps coming to these lessons. It would be a great skill for her to develop so early.

After getting home from work, I went out for tea with Josh Feit and David Park from Open Table Community, and we talked about the difficulties of a multicultural approach to ministry, how to talk about our unconventional approaches to Christian work, good music, and Triumph the Comic Insult Dog.

It was so good that midnight snuck up on us, and the staff kept checking if we were going to leave yet.

Communicycle

Good news: it turns out Eric isn't dead after all. We had a great time celebrating his birthday at Communicycle, Stone Mountain, then the Waffle House.

I've been meaning to post pictures of Communicycle for months now.

We regularly bring some of the older kids to a nearby warehouse where husband-and-wife team Josh and Margaret Feit head up a bike workshop. The "build a bike, earn a bike" program lets our kids learn how to take a bike apart, clean it, and rebuild it. As a bonus, they get to keep the bike at the end.

This has been a huge help to us. It gives us an environment to connect with the kids who don't really dig the whole arts-and-crafts focus of our activities center. Tonight Eric and I brought Ariel. As everyone worked, I was able to capture these totally candid, unposed pictures