scraps....

Well the move is over, and it was quite the process. During the packing/cleaning process, I found scraps and scraps of paper with strange little things that I have written down. I do that--if something comes to me, or inspires me--I have to write it down. Immediately. On anything. I carry around a little book in my bag for that purpose--to write song ideas, lyrics, anything that gets my mind working. But I don't always use it, so these things end up getting scribbled on anything that I can get my hands on at the moment: sticky notes, receipts, wrappers, napkins. Anything works, I'm not picky. I've been stumbling across a lot of those kinds of scraps with my crazy handwriting scribbled all over them.
Some of what I write are things said directly to me (which is the danger of ever saying anything to me....I WILL write it down and you may have no idea that what you just said was completely profound to me....several of you have experienced this and then found yourself in the middle of my music), some are random thoughts of mine, some are things that Rob says from the stage on Sundays....
This isn't really all that new to me, infact its often how I write songs. I gather scraps together and read them and find the common thread among them and write.
I'd like to share some of these that I found in the last week. Some of them require explanation, but I probably won't explain...some of them deserve a long commentary and I'll probably get really long winded....some are incomplete thoughts that may or may not mean a whole lot to you, but here they are anyway:

"prevents faith from becoming a subsitute for reason & logic"

"you are not defined by what you are not."

"you're like me...you don't care what people think of you, its that you care about what you don't want them to think about you." (a friend said this to me)

"how creative are you?" (same friend said this to me about my music)

"this dream....forgive us in advance if its not big enough."

"because we see faith as a journey, change is assumed."

"work and struggle and never accept an evil you can change"

"true love wraps its arms around its beloved.... True love is obsessed with liberation."

here are some of the starting words that eventually inspired my song "Israel" a few years ago...it started out being about two girls that I love dearly who are sisters....it changed a lot, but here were some of the original ideas:
"love for them is a hand that's open
not the one who closed the door
and the outside sells
because the inside only hurts
we are so broken
our hearts lie open..."

Last, I found an envelope that I had scribbled some things down on one night at Mars when Dr. Becky Kuhn was speaking. She's my hero, she inspires me to no end...she's wise and funny and smart and if I could be like anyone it would be her. She says something profound every time she opens her mouth. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Dr. Becky, two of her big topics are HIV/AIDS and homosexuality--specifically the church's response to those two issues. Her frankness would make people uncomfortable coming from anyone else, but somehow she can say ANYTHING and even the most uptight white suburbanites seem to sit back in their seats a little bit.
This particular night she was talking about the church's inability to accept individuals who are homosexual. She posed the following question: "Who is going to be the community to accept you first?" Wherever you are first accepted is where you will return. (shouldn't it be the church? isn't this what we were called to do? isn't this why we exist?) Mars Hill often says "love wins"....Becky said "He who loves FIRST, wins."
Some other things she said:
"interrupt the cycle [of judgement]"

"what's your secret? what makes you judge and defend?"

I love this:

"Where does your theology get in the way of loving?" Wherever you find your theology in the way of loving...that is not God.

I've been thinking all week about those two statements: "He who loves first, wins" and "Where does your theology get in the way of loving?" It was interesting for me to find those old lyrics I wrote "love for them is a hand that's open" before I heard Becky say these things. This just inspires me more and more to not be part of a religious system that is exclusive. This is the last thing Jesus taught.

Ah, the scraps.