The Power of 15

     Fifteen is a small number. Especially for me. I go for big numbers, numbers like 50 or better yet 100. But life sometimes hands you small numbers. The guitar has been put away for several years now. Not forgotten, for it's still pulled out to sing the occasional fireside song, or used as a kid corralling tool, not to mention the role it sometimes plays as a Soul Soother. Why bother settling in to reflect on what it takes to write a song when there are 100 other things to do? Another wise musician perceived my predicament over the last week and helped me see that rich and valuable things can come from small numbers. In the past, 60,80,100 or even 120+ minutes were needed to write a song. But what could be accomplished if one only took a mere 15 minutes? Perhaps quite a bit. So, my long standing goal in the back of my mind of writing 30 songs in 30 days began to actually look doable!

 I first began to compulsively obsess that quality might be sacrificed if  songs were perpetually written in 15 minutes! That was the crux until I realized that a poorly written song was better than no song at all. Now that I have begun this project, it has become apparent that because of the constraints of having only 15 minutes, all fears are out the window. I don't have to carefully write to perfection - there's no time! I don't have to write with a certain "hook" to make the song flow perfectly- there's no time! I don't have to re-write lyrics over and over so they draw glorious pictures. Nope, just a raw and pure song the first time it flows out onto paper.

It's only day 2 and already I've written more songs than in the last 3 years!

Today:
WILLIAMS GAP

Do you remember those days?
The warm baby on your skin?
A hot walk past the barn.
Do you remember the cherry trees in the yard?

Time was new- Life was young
The sun rose and set like the howling of the wind.
- A bitter with the sweet.

Coffee on the deck.
The sun bursting in.
 Do you remember the days
where country was king?
The kitchen had a life- stories to tell by it's fire
and songs that sang through window sills.

Long runs up and down those roads.
Do you remember the farms and the smell of mud
caked on those bellies of the rambling cows?

Do you remember?
Do you remember?
Do you remember?

The Lenity of a Brother

Well, after a long and unintentional sabbatical (is that possible?) I have been ever so gently urged by some to post again. I have started re-reading Edith Schaeffer's What is a Family? I decided to read this again as well as The Hidden Art of Homemaking which happens to be my favorite book (well one of them). I haven't read them in years and haven't read What is a Family since I actually had my own family. Figured that was a good idea. In describing the family, Schaeffer uses a mobile to describe the family. She says:

" A mobile is a moving, changing collection of objects constantly in motion, yet within the farmework of a form. The framework of a family gives form, but as one starts with a man and woman, a mother and father, there is never any one day following another when these two, plus the children that come through adoption or birth into the home, are either the same age or at the same point of growth. Every individual is growing, changing, developing, or declining- intellectually, emotionally, spiritually, physically, and psychologically. A family is a grouping of individuals who are affecting each other intellectually, emotionally, spiritually, physically, psycologically. No two years, no two months, or no two days is there the exact same blend or mix within the family, as each individual person is changing. If people are developing in a variety of creative areas, coming to deeper understanding spiritually, adding a great deal of knowledge in one area or another, living through stimulating discoveries of fresh ideas or skills- they are affecting each other positively. The mobile of the grouping of toddlers with young school children, of ten-year-olds with teenagers, of young married couples with middle-aged married couples, of grandparents with two generations coming along under them, is amazingly real, vivid, and living as any possible mobile one could imagine. What is a Family? A family is a mobile. A family is an art form. A family is an exciting art career, because an art form needs work."
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And so you see in the picture above a small part of our mobile. Since no one's art is just like another's.... no two families are alike. That's just another part of the complexity of God's creation. We tend to think of the world around us: the animals, mountains, valleys, oceans, and universe, as God's creation but our families are yet another facet of God's creation. He created every one of us!
...And I happen to like the creation that surrounds me.