The basis for hope

The basis for optimism is sheer terror. We are too scared to admit our lives are not what we'd like them to be. We wrap ourselves in the blankets of illusion and compromise, hoping to avoid the cold of reality. The truth is we've all fallen at some point. We've all woken up in the middle of the night and wished we were somewhere, or even SOMEONE else. Yet, that, I think, is the problem. That we ARE someone else. Most people are other people. Our thoughts are someone else's opinions, our lives a mimicry, our passions a quotation.

"We're all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."

That's the main thought I want to emphasis in this blog. We all get hurt, we all get beat down, we all become a facade, and we all are brokenhearted. The key difference is where we place our hope.

"But, Lord, 'tis for Thee, for Thy coming we wait,
The Sky, not the grave is our goal...
...Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say:
It is well, it is well with my soul!"

P.S.
To add a little bit of irony to this post, I must tell you many of these thoughts rely heavily on, if are not direct quotes from the written work of Oscar Wild. I do not find a major problem in this. Mr. Wild and I end up in two very different places of thought. I think it is safe to say my thoughts are not his opinions. Rather my life is the feeble reflection of Christ, in whom I have all confidence and trust, and am unashamed to imitate. Again, our defining characteristics are in what or who we place our hope. Hope: the key I sometimes ponder Mr. Wild lost.

-James

The part of me that breathes when you breath is losing time. (The God of all comfort)

I lost a friend tonight. It's been a long time coming (five years) so it wasn't totally unexpected...but there is sort of this...totality to it that I had forgotten about. I say "forgotten" because it seems I've been down this road so many times before.

I can remember a time in my life where I couldn't name a single person that I knew who had struggled with cancer...now, it's happened so often, and within such close proximity of my family, it's like a personal enemy.

Be still...
Let your hand meld into mine
The part of me
That breathes when you breathe
Is losing time

I can't find the words to say
I'll never say goodbye

I saw a host of silent angels
Waiting on their own
Knowing that all the promises
Of faith come alive
When you see home
Hold still and let your
Hand melt into mine

Shed your heart and your breath
And your pain and fly
Now your alive
Now your alive

I found out tonight through a short text message right before Water's Edge (a college, church ministry) started. I had a few moments to breathe and then the band went into a time of worship. They sang one song that I didn't know very well at all, but as it turns out one of lyrics was very meaningful tonight.

"We will sing, sing, sing
and make music with the heavens"

It reminded me of the David Crowder Lyric

"Turn your ear to heaven
and hear the noise inside"

When someone dies we often have that chilling realization of how real death is...Tonight was no different, but in addition to that, as we sang that line and I turned my mind towards heaven..it was just sort of a moment of realizing how real Jesus, and heaven is. I don't think I could' have thought of a better way to start this process. Not coming to Him and trying to not think about the pain, or the loss, but rather coming with everything, full on, and just being honest...

Do You who live in heaven
Hear the prayers of those of us who live on earth?
Who are afraid of being left by those we love
And who get hardened by the hurt
Do you remember when You lived down
here where we all scrape
To find the faith to ask for daily bread?
Did You forget about us after You had flown away?
Well I memorized every word You said
Still I'm so scared, I'm holding my breath
While You're up there just playing hard to get

And I know you bore our sorrows
And I know you feel our pain
And I know it would not hurt any less
Even if it could be explained
And I know that I am only lashing out
At the One who loves me most
And after I figured this, somehow
All I really need to know is

Did You ever know loneliness?
Did You ever know need?
Do You remember just how long a night can get?
When You were barely holding on
And Your friends fall asleep
And don't see the blood that's running in Your sweat
Will those who mourn be left uncomforted?
While You're up there just playing hard to get?

Our God is real. He is a real God to real people. Real people have real problems. They really struggle and hurt and get depressed and need real help. Only a real God with real love and real compassion can really help really troubled people.

Joy and sorrow are this ocean
And in their every ebb and flow
Now the Lord a door has opened
That all Hell could never close
Here I'm tested and made worthy
Tossed about but lifted up
In the reckless raging fury
That they call the love of God

"Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows. If we are distressed, it is for your comfort and salvation; if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings we suffer. And our hope for you is firm, because we know that just as you share in our sufferings, so also you share in our comfort." - 2 Corinthians 1:3-7

Tonight as I look at the light of the stars I think of how some of them at this very moment have passed, but their light still shines on. So it is with you, my friend. You have run your course, you have finished and are no longer here…but your light shines on. You see, just like love, starlight never dies. I'll miss you my friend. I still carry so much of you with me. You will be part of the days yet to fill.

-James Legg

The second advantage to playing the guitar...

Not only will the ladies love you, but you'll UNDERSTAND THEM AS WELL!


Let me explain…no…is too much…let me sum up.

I once read this book called "For Men Only". It had a chapter about men needing to listen more. It made the point that women need guys to listen first, fix problems later…or perhaps the problem is not the facts or the situation, but that the lady needs her feelings on the matter heard. They don't always need our "brilliant" advice, they just want us to know we've LISTENED to them, and care about them.

Now, if that much isn't true, Ladies, go ahead and skip the rest and just comment "You're a moron, James Legg" and we'll go on with our lives.

However, if that much is even REMOTELY true, then we might be on to something here gentleman. As I sat and pondered this point, I tried to think of some avenue of a gentleman's life that would in SOME way parallel. I think I may have found one.

If any of you play guitar, you've been in this scenario. You and your friends are jamming around, playing riffs, favorite songs, etc. You then decide to share with the guys a new chord progression you came up with late last night at 2:00 am. "Hey guys, listen to this…" you say as you begin playing the slow but elegant ballad. All goes well for the first thirty seconds or so, until one of the other punks with a guitar starts playing little melodies over it. Now, depending on who you are, you may or may not say anything but every guitarist FEELS the EXACT same way. "PUNK! Can you not just listen for just two minutes!?"

It doesn't really matter if what they were playing fits the music or not. In it could even be a relatively good melody for the chord progression, but unless it's the music of heaven it just ticks us off a wee bit. It means that they can't keep their own guitar from going off for an incredibly minute amount of time, and just listen. It means while they may have HEARD our chord progression, they weren't LISTENING. We don't want them to add on, we don't want them to make it better, we don't want them to give us advice on what the chorus should be, we just want them to listen for a minute.

I don't think it's that much different with women. When they come to us with something that's troubling them, they don't want us to fix the circumstances. They want to know that we not only HEAR them, but we're attentively LISTENING to them.


Practical ways to do this:

Don't offer advice, LISTEN to them first.

Physically let them know you're listening, don't play a video game, instrument, watch the TV, read the newspaper, or blog while they're speaking. Make Eye contact.

Affirm their emotion. While you may not always understand or agree with everything they say, chances are, the emotion has a legitimate root, and can be affirmed without you lying to them.

Gentlemen, what do you think? Or more importantly…Ladies, what do YOU think?

-James

The scent of a repentant heart

A poem by James Legg:

You anointed my two feet
Just before my life fell apart
It’s fragrance a reminder:
The scent of a repentant heart

Betrayed by a close friend
Abandoned by all the others
Left to face my fate alone
All have fled even my brothers

Yet as I walked down the road
Head bent, ready to do your part
Up came a sweet reminder
The scent of a repentant heart

Condemned, beaten, and disgraced
A man of sorrows, some have said
Crucified, Mocked, rejected
The cross drenched from the blood I’ve shed

The cold reaches for my soul
As time comes for me to depart
The last breath breathed, took in
The scent of a repentant heart

(John 12:3, Matthew 26:6-13)

-James

Shall beauty transcend?

Below is an abbreviated version of a Washington post newspaper story. I picked out the parts that seemed most powerful to me. None of the facts are altered. If you want to read the full story, follow this link:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040401721.html

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It is 7:51 a.m. on Friday, January 12, the middle of the morning rush hour. The location is El’Efant Plaza. A mall that is connected to a subway, located in downtown Washington D.C. A violinist enters the building. He picks a wall to stand by, pulls out his violin, throws a few dollars into his case, pivots the case around to his audience, and begins playing. 1,097 people will pass by in the next 43 minuets.

No one knows this, but the fiddler standing against a bare wall outside the Metro in an indoor arcade at the top of the escalators is one of the finest classical musicians in the world. His performance was arranged by The Washington Post as an experiment in context, perception and priorities -- as well as an unblinking assessment of public taste: In a banal setting at an inconvenient time, would beauty transcend?

The fiddler’s name is Joshua Bell. To some of you this name may mean nothing, to others your eyes might gleam with a twinge of excitement and awe. For those of you who don’t know let me give you a brief summary…

Bell had his first music lessons when he was 4 years old. His parents discovered him stringing rubber bands across his dresser drawers, and picking out classical pieces by moving the drawers in and out to vary the pitch. His parents thought formal training might be a good idea. He is considered a child prodigy.

Now, at age39 Joshua Bell has arrived as an internationally acclaimed virtuoso. Bell has filled the house at Boston's stately Symphony Hall, where merely pretty good seats went for $100. At the Music Center at Strathmore, in North Bethesda, he played to a standing-room-only audience so respectful of his artistry that they stifled their coughs until the silence between movements. When he performs, he walks out to a standing O. Interview magazine once said his playing "does nothing less than tell human beings why they bother to live." He is undisputedly the greatest violinists alive today, and in the top ten of all time.

The violin he plays has a history of its own, and is considered to be one of the finest violins ever crafted. It’s price tag is about $3.5 million.

The piece the he opens with is Bach's "Chaconne". It is considered one of the most difficult violin pieces to master. Many try; few succeed. 19th-century composer Johannes Brahms, in a letter to Clara Schumann said this about the piece: "On one stave, for a small instrument, the man writes a whole world of the deepest thoughts and most powerful feelings. If I imagined that I could have created, even conceived the piece, I am quite certain that the excess of excitement and earth-shattering experience would have driven me out of my mind." This piece and others that Bell later played are masterpieces that have endured for centuries on their brilliance alone, soaring music befitting the grandeur of cathedrals and concert halls.

Now that you have been properly introduced, let me remind you of the setting; a bare wall outside the Metro in an indoor arcade at the top of the escalators.

And so the master begins playing, throwing his pearls away, whether it is to swine or appreciative listeners is yet to be decided. Three minutes role by, sixty-three people have passed the musician before someone takes notice. A man gives Joshua Bell a glance, acknowledges his existence, and continues to walk. It may not have been much, but it was more than any of the other sixty-three people gave.

A half-minute later, Bell got his first donation. A woman threw in a buck and scooted off. It was not until six minutes into the performance that someone actually stood against a wall, and listened. In the three-quarters of an hour that Joshua Bell played, seven people stopped what they were doing to hang around and take in the performance, at least for a minute. Twenty-seven gave money, most of them on the run -- for a total of $32 and change. That leaves the 1,070 people who hurried by, oblivious, many only three feet away, few even turning to look.

Even at his accelerated pace, even at the height of emotion, with the most beautiful and joyous melodies ever to be laid upon human ears, the most fluid and graceful movements of the fiddler; only seven stopped to take notice. So apart from his audience -- unseen, unheard, otherworldly…you find yourself thinking that he's not really there. A ghost. Only then do you see it: He is the one who is real. They are the ghosts.

There was no ethnic or demographic pattern to distinguish the people who stayed to watch Bell. The behavior of one demographic remained absolutely consistent, however. Every single time a child walked past, he or she tried to stop and watch. And every single time, a parent scooted the kid away.

The poet Billy Collins once laughingly observed that all babies are born with a knowledge of poetry, because the lub-dub of the mother's heart is in iambic meter. Then, Collins said, life slowly starts to choke the poetry out of us. It may be true with music, too.

Calvin Myint. Happened to be one of the people who passed by the musician that day. He got to the top of the escalator, turned right and headed out a door to the street. When interview by a reporter a few hours later, he had no memory that there had been a musician anywhere in sight.

"Where was he, in relation to me?"
"About four feet away."
"Oh."

There's nothing wrong with Myint's hearing. He had buds in his ear. He was listening to his iPod.

For many of us, the explosion in technology has perversely limited, not expanded, our exposure to new experiences. Increasingly, we get our news from sources that think as we already do. And with iPods, we hear what we already know; we program our own playlists.

The song that Calvin Myint was listening to was "Just Like Heaven," by the British rock band The Cure. It's a terrific song, actually. The meaning is a little opaque, and the Web is filled with earnest efforts to deconstruct it. Many are far-fetched, but some are right on point: It's about a tragic emotional disconnect. A man has found the woman of his dreams but can't express the depth of his feeling for her until she's gone. It's about failing to see the beauty of what's plainly in front of your eyes.

Edna Souza is from Brazil. She's been shining shoes at L'Enfant Plaza for six years. Souza nods sourly toward a spot near the top of the escalator: "Couple of years ago, a homeless guy died right there. He just lay down there and died. The police came, an ambulance came, and no one even stopped to see or slowed down to look. People walk up the escalator, they look straight ahead. Mind your own business, eyes forward. Everyone is stressed. Do you know what I mean?"

British author John Lane comments: "This is about having the wrong priorities. If we can't take the time out of our lives to stay a moment and listen to one of the best musicians on Earth play some of the best music ever written; if the surge of modern life so overpowers us that we are deaf and blind to something like that -- then what else are we missing?”

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Then what else are we missing? My pastor posed this question today.

“If the Kingdom of God was all around us, how would we recognize it? Or would we even recognize it at all?”