Kibuye Music: Silent Night in 4 languages

(from Eric)

With the arrival of Mathieu Lembelembe a little over a year ago, I looked around and said to myself, "We have quite a bit of musical talent here at Kibuye now."  What followed was an idea to record a few Christmas songs amongst our team and several of our musical friends here.

Life being busy and 2020 being 2020, by the time I got around to finalizing any of the songs, many people had changed locales.  But we did manage to complete two songs.

The first is Silent Night, sung in English, French, Swahili, and Kirundi, the four main languages of Burundi.  Kayla, our American teacher, sings in English.  One of Kibuye's Burundian doctors, Ladislas, and his wife Annick, sing in French.  Mathieu, our Congolese architect, sings in Swahili, and the worship team at our local church welcomed me one dark evening to record them singing in Kirundi.  Michelle, Greg, and I came together for the music.

The second song was "Far as the Curse is Found" which I actually posted on this blog nine years ago.  For this one, I browsed my favorite carols for a bunch of lines that I thought were so good that they needed increased visibility and so pulled them altogether and made a new song.  They are 9 carols total, if you want to hunt for them.

Music sharing on Blogger not being any better than when I originally posted this in 2011, I'll just link the old video.  Suffice to say that Kayla did a great job singing background on the recording, and that the accordion made an unexpected appearance.  Email me if you want me to send it to you.  =)

I am a Child of God

(from Eric)

I find myself prone to a lot of ups and downs.  Not in a worrisome way, but it is still troubling.  If I'm at the hospital and my patients are all doing well, then I feel great joy at my life and who I am.  On the other hand, if there is a run of bad outcomes, I can feel quite down.  Then, if I go and have a good conversation with a teammate, I can feel great.  A little while later, someone comes to me with a new problem that wasn't on my radar, and I feel like a failure.  I try to shake it off and remind myself of the bigger picture - that there will always be some problems and that there are good things as well.  And that works.  Sort of.

Up and down.  Up and down.  Sometimes quite rapidly, actually.  I feel free sharing about it because 1) it's undeniably true, and 2) I'm pretty convinced that I'm not alone in this.

What's going on inside of me?  I believe it's a question of where I'm rooting my identity and my worth.  My ups and downs are telling me that I have founded my identity on what I do - on my successes and failures.  Since my life is inevitably a mix of successes and failures, my perception of self-value rises and falls like the tides.  To the extent that my heart embraces the Christian truth that my identity is rooted in the unchanging grace of God, that he has loved me and adopted me as his son for no other reason than his unmerited love, my sense of value finds a firm foundation.

So, my ups and downs mean that I've put my faith in the wrong place, namely in myself.  I know this, and what's more, I've known it for a long time.  So why is it still a struggle?  I think it's because some deep part of me really wants to earn my own value, and thus I rebel against grace.  I know it's a non-starter, but the battle rages on.  Recognizing my reticence to such amazing love gives me further reason to thank God for the unconditional nature of his acceptance of me.

So, pray for me.  In fact, pray for us all.  Our team is passionate about our work, and so I don't think it's a stretch to say that we are all tempted to place our identity in the wrong place.  We need frequent, even constant reminders that we are God's children by his grace.

There is a popular church worship song these days which I have enjoyed on this theme.  A couple of weeks ago in our local French service, Dr. Alliance's wife Cynthia led us in singing this song.  The power at the church was out at the time (but not the hospital!), so I got to enjoy it a cappella with a single drum made out of an ancient 50-gallon shipping drum with a cowhide over it.  Enjoy.

Song For the Dry Season: Banga Hill

(from Eric)

The dry season is now fully advanced here at Kibuye.  The rains stopped sometime in late May, and have yet to restart.  The red dirt has become red dust.  The banana leaves next to the hospital road are colored copper by the powder tossed up by passing taxis.  The sky is hazy, and the leaves of the eucalyptus crackle like paper instead of their normal rustle.  

We wait for the rain.  We wait for green and growth.  We wait for the air to be washed out and the sky to return to its normal brilliant blue.  It should come within the next few weeks.  So I guess we'll just have to be patient and trust that maybe the dry season pushes the roots down deeper.  Maybe the foundation gets stronger.

We arrived in Burundi in August of 2013, and we moved to the hillside community of Banga, to study Kirundi for 3 months. It was dry then as well.  People told us stories about decades ago, during the war.  They told us that Banga had been hard hit, in a way that dovetailed with the end of the dry season, with the coming of cleansing rain.  I'm not in a position to verify their stories one way or another, but the imagery was striking, and so I wrote a song.

It's about rain washing the haze away.  It's about rain washing bloodstains away.  It's about the curious Christian truth that blood can actually wash stains away.  And through it all, we cry "Lord, send your rain."  It's been coming often to mind these last few weeks, as we wait for the rains to come.

Banga Hill

(click below then select track #9 to listen, download for free)

Here at the end of the dry season

I sit on the veranda and watch the sun

Sinking behind the hills ten miles away

as every tiny farm soaks up its rays

and when the rains come

they say I’ll see twice as far

as this dusty haze is washed away.

They say that it wasn’t so many years ago

the war came and cut the fleeing down

the hillside ran with blood for days and days

until the rain came and washed it away

Now they’re left with the pieces

of a life that’s left behind

a life maybe to somehow find.

Lord, send your rain, fall on all where we are

Though thirsty, we have run all from your well - on Banga Hill

It’s Friday morning and the people climb

up the hill into the church next door

A song is raised in beauty and in strength

the bread is broken and the cup is poured

it’s blood spilled out

that is somehow like the rain

it washes away all the stain

Bless the rain, falling on us now

the worst and the best, the hatred and love

on the old, and on the young

and let it fall on us, for we are all 

on Banga Hill

(5 Sept 2013 - Banga)

New Album of Music for Free!

(from Eric)

It's been about a year in the making, but I finally finished a collection of Burundi-era songs.  I have shared a couple of them on the blog before, but there are a total of thirteen, now available for free download.

I hope these songs can give a few different glimpses into life here.  Today, I'll spotlight the first track, "Though the Mountains Give Way".  I wrote this song just weeks after arriving in Burundi, when we heard about the Westgate Mall terrorist attacks in Nairobi, where we had had lunch just six weeks prior.

At the time, we were living on that rural Banga hillside, where we spent three months getting an introduction to Burundian culture and Kirundi language.  I remember sitting on the veranda, looking across at the mountains on the other side of the valley.  I was reading Psalm 46.  "Therefore we will not fear though the earth gives way, though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea."  The words came alive, and I trembled.  I could picture the distant mountain being uprooted, and felt the terror that accompanied the idea that the mountain where I'm sitting might be next.  "We will not fear?"

It came alive so vividly precisely because of the Westgate Mall attacks.  The revolutionary nature of faith.  The way that the reality of God so drastically changes our outlook on the world.

"I will not fear."  Mostly, I say it in order for it to be true, rather than because it already is.  But I do believe that there is good reason for it to be true, so I guess we will press always closer to the author and perfecter of such faith.

(Track #1.  Download it along with the others for free.)

Song: Man of Dust

(from Eric)

"Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven." - 1 Corinthians 15:49

We are back in Advent, and thus we are mercifully reminded again of the importance of promises.  

We are reminded of promises given, and what it is like to live in anticipation of their fulfillment, even as we wait.  This verse in 1 Corinthians 15 is a promise set in a whole chapter full of promises.  

It is just what a promise should be.  It starts with "Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust..."  I hear those words, and they are describing me.  They are describing my reality.  They are naming the world in which we live.  I need that acknowledgement, if I am to trust what follows.  I need the verification that the distance between where we are and the fulfillment of the promise is that great.  In other words, I need recognition that the promise is just that audacious.

Without it, the great reticence says:  "You think we can be taken from A to B, because you don't understand how far we are from A.  We will never reach A, must less B.  We need the kind of transformation that could take us from A to Z!"  But the image of the man of dust?  Yes, that is where we are.  I bear it every day.  We all do.  We bear it in our frailty, in all we cannot do, in every way that we wound each other, half-intentionally and half-unintentionally.  We bear the image of the man of dust.  Yes, you understand.

What's that you say?  We are just as sure to bear another image?  No longer the man of dust, but the man of heaven?  The image of Jesus?  Can it be?  As we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.

***

One of my projects during our time in the US has been to record a batch of songs written during our time in Burundi thus far.  One of them was "Ubuntu bw'Imana", shared a few months ago.  So here is the "second-fruits" of the project.  Hopefully the album will be done and ready to share around the end of the year.

Man of Dust 

(click here for download of mp3)

It wasn’t what I wanted, and maybe you would say the same

But our intentions at the start didn’t survive

For we flung our words like water we felt slipping through our fingers

meant to assuage the thirst that was inside

This is the way of things,

but we’re not satisfied

We have borne the image of the man of dust

in all our sorrows, and in every time we fall,

we have carried it through it all, over and over again -

But as we have borne the image of the man of dust,

so we will bear the image of the man of heaven.

Down through the ages of our fathers before

there is burned into our bones a mark

and the choices that we make and the way we fumble fear

show us all to hold a common heart,

This is the way of things,

here in the dark.

We have borne our tattered garments over hills and over boulders

under a sky that has no mercy shown

and our feet have beat a furrow deep into the sand and clay

an ancient highway worn

Yet there is one who remains and remembers that we are but dust...

And behold, there is a mystery to tell

There is a promise, that when these dusty windows fade

Our eyes will finally see into the finally light of day

and our hearts, all scarred and weathered, will finally love and rejoice...

(22 July 2014 - Kibuye and Greece; 1 Cor 15)

Song: Ubuntu bg' Imana

Several years ago, I was given a book by Chuck Jacob which was based on a Burundian hymn (of all things).  The hymn was written in the early 20th century in Kirundi by a man named Emmanuel Sibomana.  An Anglican missionary translated it into English, and this was used as the structure for this book on the subject of the grace of God.  I enjoyed the text and the meter, but not knowing the tune, I wrote one for it (posted here back in 2012).

We've sung it as a team from time to time in worship, and when we got to Burundi, we procured a few Burundian songbooks.  As soon as I learned a bit of vocabulary, I found a hymn entitled "Ubuntu bg' Imana" ('the grace of God') which had the right number of stanzas.

Later on, at Kibuye, I asked some of the med students at our bible study if they knew the tune.  Several did, and they agreed to let me record them one night after bible study.

Then, this past month at home in Nashville, my brother-in-law Jonathan and I did a recording of it, first in English, with several stanzas of the med students singing the original in Kirundi at the end.  

Click here to download and play.  (Sorry, I can't seem to find a reliable online player)

O how the grace of God amazes me

It loosed me from my bonds and set me free

What made it happen so?

His own will, this much I know,

Set me, as now I show

At liberty.

My God has chosen me, though one of nought,

to sit beside my King in heaven's court.

Hear what my Lord has done

O, the love that made him run

to meet his erring son!

This God has wrought.

Not for my righteousness, for I have none.

But for his mercy's sake, Jesus, God's Son,

suffered on Calvary's tree-

Crucified with thieves was he-

Great was his grace to me,

His wayward one.

And when I think of how, at Calvary,

He bore sin's penalty instead of me.

Amazed, I wonder why

He, the sinless One, should die

For one so vile as I;

My Saviour he!

Now all my heart's desire is to abide

In him, my Saviour dear, in him to hide.

My shield and buckler he

Covering and protecting me;

From Satan's darts I'll be

safe at his side

Lord Jesus, hear my prayer, your grace impart;

When evil thoughts arise through Satan's art,

O, drive them all away

And do you, from day to day,

keep me beneath your sway,

King of my heart.

Come now, the whole of me, eyes, ears, and voice

Join me, creation all with joyful noise:

Praise him who broke the chain

Holding me in sin's domain

And set me free again

Sing and rejoice...

A Song for the Day

Today was another smallish size day for the Internal Medicine service here at Kibuye, so I thought I'd give another random sampling of patients.  We had 7 total (i.e. one for each medical student.  Yes, we have a lot of students.  But they are good at learning from each other's cases…)

1. Jean-Phillipe (no real names) is a 32 year old guy with HIV who has been here 27 days.  We've done some good things for him.  We have successfully treated his tuberculosis, and corrected his HIV-med regimen (he was only taking them half the time…).  We've tried to check his CD4 count, but they only send them once a month, and I guess there is a quota, and we missed out last month.  But he still has nightmares and vomiting.  And now he says he looses consciousness.  I'm not sure he would know, because he is always alone.  We've tried everything.  The student suggested some HIV-related brain lesion, which is a good idea, but we can't test for it or treat it.  I talked to Jason and he may get an endoscopy tomorrow.

2. Juvenal is 47, and is his neighbor in the isolation building.  He doesn't have HIV, and is being treated for TB also.  He's a bit better, but not enough, so now we're entertaining concomitant emphysema, given a long smoking history.  He maintains a good spirit despite a long hospitalization.

3. Across the little hall is Luc, a 29 year old taxi-driver with severe malaria: blood in the urine and vomiting.  He was treated with quinine at another hospital.  We brought him in and gave him the exact same treatment, and he is getting better.  I don't know why this happens.  What goes on at those other places?  Are they missing frequent doses?  At any rate, he is looking better, but had a fever last night, and I can't figure out why.  For now, we're hoping it doesn't come back tomorrow.

4.  Rounding out the 4 beds in isolation (all mine for the time being) is Gloriose, a 70 year old lady who came in with dysentery, and sure enough, got better with appropriate treatment.  It's nice to have something go smoothly.  She's going home today with some Cipro.

5.  Gilbert is a 35 year old guy who admits to being a vrai buveur (a real drinker), which might not have been so bad if he didn't also have Hepatitis B.  He's in florid liver failure, and there is not much we can do.  We gave him some diuretics, and drained 4L from his belly.  But then Friday he slipped into a coma.  Honestly, I'm surprised he's still alive.  His coma is a bit lighter, and we're trying to treat everything we can, but he's very sick.  He has a couple faithful friends with him that seem to appreciate that we care about him.  We prayed with them on Saturday.

6.  Marie is 70 years old, and showed up last week all confused.  It seems to have been a bladder infection, and she is getting better with antibiotics.  It's a good simple case for the students, because they can never believe that a bladder infection would do that.  But then, there are only 2 neurologists in the country, and they are long overdue for their neurology course, so it's a little hard to blame them.

7.  Our last girl is Goreth, a 23 year old high school student (due to financial problems, high school often goes until the mid-20s) who came in Saturday:  difficulty breathing, semi-conscious, big swollen legs, and distended neck veins.  Sure enough, we did an echo of her heart, and found severe heart failure.  Why?  I don't know, but I suspect bad valves, maybe rheumatic, based on her echo.  She had a low blood pressure when she came in, and almost all such patients die here.  However, she is still alive, and even looks a little better today.  We keep praying that she can get through.

7 cases.  7 individual stories.  We will see how they continue on.  They bump into us.  We bump into them.  Life.  Death.  Healing.  Scars.

A couple years ago, I wrote a song about Revelation 22 called The Leaves of the Trees.  This vision of the heavenly city speaks of a Tree of Life.  But that's not all.  The leaves of that tree are for the healing of the nations.

And sometimes that idea makes me ache.  Because it rings so true.  Yes, we need life, and badly.  Pure unspoiled and unthreatened life.  But we are who we are, wounds and all, and the fact that God would take that in hand, and provide us with healing, in addition to life, strikes me as a beautiful salve.  A key that fits the lock of our brokenness exactly.  There is joy, and there is sadness.  There are scars, and there are so very many moments in which all we do is just palliative.  Maybe even every moment.

But at the end, there is a promise.  There is life and healing for all our wounds.  There is, simply, that which we need.

(to listen, click on the play button.  Download for free.)

Free Alpine Music From Eric

(from Eric)

Once again, I've completed a compilation of songs from a certain period of our journey, with the hope that it will serve as a way to further articulate the lives in which we find ourselves.  These eight songs are mostly from our time in France (with a couple from our vagrancies in the US beforehand, but that was a hard time to write songs).  Thematically, they have a lot to do with the passing of time, and how that makes us who we are, as well as a good bit about leaving places and a few nods to the Sonship course.  Unsurprisingly, the imagery is often full of mountain cliffs and valley towns.  Once we finally got moved into our house here at Kibuye, I unpacked my instruments and recording gear, and went to work.

It is here for free download.  Unlike before, I've chosen to host this album on another site (Noisetrade), where perhaps interest might be piqued by some new people, previously unconnected with our story.  Please feel free to share this with anyone you think might be interested.  I would write these songs, even if they were never heard by anyone.  They just sort of feel like they need to be written.  However, it's my delight to share them with willing listeners.

Songs for the Suffering

by Rachel

Every day in the field of medicine, we are confronted with suffering.  Every day in life, probably, everyone is confronted with the fact that we live in a fallen, broken world, full of hurting and suffering people.  Maybe it’s your own suffering, maybe the suffering of a friend, or maybe it’s the suffering of large groups of people you don’t even know, somewhere else in the world, and it weighs on your heart.  Overall here at Kibuye, there have been some successes, but a lot of “failures”, people dying, not getting better, babies with malnutrition, etc.  Sometimes people ask how we deal with it all.  We’ve actually blogged a fair bit about dealing with suffering as Christian physicians in the past.  Today I wanted to take a different tact and write about songs that have helped me process suffering.  I love music, and I think emotions can be expressed and captured and healed through music in ways that just words alone can’t do.  So I’ve complied my “Top 10 List of Suffering Songs.”  Contrary to what you might be thinking, they’re not sad and melancholy.  Some are slower and heart rending, but some are a “stand up and scream at the top of your lungs that things are gonna get better” kind of songs.  Hope you enjoy listening to a few. 

1.  After the Last Tear Falls, Andrew Peterson

“We’ll see how the tears that have fallen were caught in the palms of the Giver of Love and the Lover of All and we’ll look back on these tears as old tales...”

This is quite possibly my favorite song of all time.  After everything in life, all the hurts and the broken hearts and broken dreams and shattered lives, at the end of all things, there is love.  There is God, the God who wipes away every tear from our eyes.  And there will be no more mourning or crying or pain...

2.  Beautiful Things, Gungor

“You make beautiful things out of dust...”

My cousin shared this song with me while I was in Kenya, and I have loved it from the first time I heard it.  The words are simple, but the music is goosebump-inducingly beautiful.

3.  Farther Along, Josh Garrels

“Farther along we’ll understand why.  So cheer up my brothers, live in the sunshine.  We’ll understand this, all by and by...”

Things tend to make more sense in retrospect.  And some things will never make sense here on earth.  But if we believe that things happen for a purpose, that God can use ANYTHING for his glory, then maybe we can cheer up.  Maybe we can look forward with hope instead of gloom.

4.  Homage to the Suffering, Matthew Perryman Jones

“Here’s to you when the rain hits too hard, when the battles that you fight just leave you scarred...soon the Son will come with healing in his wings.  He’ll wipe away your tears and make you new.”

This is a turn up the volume and belt it out kind of song, which I’ve been doing with this song since I first heard it in 2004.  Sometimes you just need to sing loud and remember that Someone else is fighting on your side.

5.  Lullaby, Eric McLaughlin

“When you are tired, not just your hands, not just your feet but your heart, wounded from all you can’t do or have done but it’s fallen apart...”

Eric first played me this song weeks after Ben was born at Tenwek, and I immediately started crying.  There were and still are so many days when I feel like this.  Nothing is working.  Everything falls apart.  What am I doing here?  And this song helps me to remember that God calls me to rest in Him, to find my worth and identity in Him, to simply....trust.

6.  He Will Come, Waterdeep

“He will come, he will come, he will comfort all that’s hardened.  Make the deserts into gardens and we all will see his face.”

This song also has a line that goes “She can handle any tragedy that comes her way but not little things like this,” referring to a line about spilling your coffee on the way to work.  Sometimes my days seem like that.  Send me something big and awful and I can rise to the occasion, but when my kids are screaming or I spill dinner on the floor it just seems too much.  But big or small, God is coming.  He is here and He is renewing everything.

7.  Show the Way, David Wilcox

“Look.  If someone wrote a play just to glorify what’s stronger than hate, would they not arrange the stage to look as if the hero came too late? ... And in this scene set in shadows like the night is here to stay, there is evil all around us but it’s love that wrote the play.  So in this darkness love will show the way.”

Not a month goes by that there’s not some big news in the world about a gunman or a bomber.  And everyone wonders what’s going on in the world and how much “worse” everything is than it used to be.  But that doesn’t mean that the darkness is winning.  Love will ALWAYS win.  

8.  Our God is in Control, Steven Curtis Chapman

“This is not how it should be, this is not how it could be.  But this is how it is, and our God is in control.”

Most people in Christian circles know the story of Steven’s young daughter dying.  He writes this song from real life experience, and at the end of it all, he can acknowledge that it hurts and it shouldn’t be, but we’ll understand at the end and sing Holy is Our God because of it.

9.  Holy is the Lord, Andrew Peterson

“Even though you take him still I ever will obey.  But Maker of this mountain, please.  Make another way.”

I could have chosen another dozen Andrew Peterson songs or so, but settled on this one.  A powerful retelling of the Abraham-Isaac story that really shone new light on a familiar tale for me.  What was going through Abraham’s head when God asked him to sacrifice Isaac?  I guess I never thought about it before, that maybe this hero of the faith would have just said, ok God, I trust you.  But what if he said, “oh, God, not this.  You are sovereign and you can do what you need to do in my life, but please not this.”  Because sometimes that’s what I say, too.

10. What I’ve Been Looking For, Eric McLaughlin

“Maybe I should face another day.  Maybe now it’s one day closer to when you show your face.  Maybe that’s what I’ve been looking for all along.”

Eric based these lyrics on a Buechner quote that really struck home for the both of us.  Prayer is and I think will always be a mystery.  What about all the times that prayer seems to go unanswered?  But Buechner says this:   

"Even if the boy dies, keep on beating the path to God's door, because the one thing you can be sure of is that down the path you beat with even your most half-cocked and halting prayer the God you call upon will finally come, and even if he does not bring you the answer you want, he will bring you himself. And maybe at the secret heart of all our prayers that is what we are really praying for." 

I hope you’ll get a chance to listen to some of these favorites, and I hope that they are able to provide some peace and healing the way they have for me.

Burundi Church Music: A Sample

We have made a couple references to the music at the church next door.  A few weeks ago, I turned on the recorder on my phone during a song.  It's rough, but it captures the experience pretty well, to the extent that I've enjoyed listening to it since then.  

So I thought I would share it.  I can't get the online music player to work (techies, help!), but you can click here to listen to the mp3.  Feel free to download it as well.

A Song For Albertville

As perhaps a final salute to our time in France, I made a rough recording of a song I wrote to try and capture something of our little alpine town.  There are obvious images which, for those of us who lived there, recall various everyday sights and sounds, and for those who haven't, hopefully share something of the world around us, like a little musical scrapbook.

Beyond that, the song is trying to describe something of the ambiguity of "post-Christian" Europe.  Beautiful scenery, walking to the bakeries, narrow streets.  On the other hand, things that are just a bit off, maybe more than a bit tragic:  Empty churches, war memorials that bespeak of not-too-distant loss. And yet, even there, where perhaps the masses have decided to abandon God, his grace falls like the rain, and his goodness abounds.  It's a mixed goodness, like all that we would experience on this Earth, but, in the words of Buechner: "What's lost is nothing to what's found.  And all the death that ever was, if you set it next to life, would barely fill a cup."  

It's a fact to be learned anywhere in this wide world.

(sorry, the web music player I was using is not working currently.  So, the only way to listen is to follow the link and download.  I swear it's a clean file, having placed it there myself.  Web gurus: feel free to suggest a solution to this problem.)

Albertville

(download)

In the autumn, we'll go walking

all through this valley town

Across the railroads, and down to the river

where the alpine peaks look down

And when we turn into a narrow passage

where the wind is brisker

and it scatters all the leaves and all the halves of chestnut shells

up above, under the eaves, where the sun in shining

all the ivy's afire with the red and bronze

that's ringing like a bell

And the bell's ringing on the hillside

at the church of Conflan's tower

though there's never anyone on the inside

and it always rings eight minutes past the hour

though there's much in what's been lost

it's as yet nothing to what's found

there's beauty and there's tragedy

like there is sky and ground

and this is where we live

where the alpine peaks look down

When the fall passes to winter

the snow will hike the downward trail

from the rocky peak of Belle Etoile

to every hollow of the vale

and our boots will trudge the unplowed walk

four times a day to the school

to take our kids across the street into the warmth of the bakery

coming home, they're running in the snow

as we pass by a pillar

topped with a stone eagle with its eyes full of bravery

it's the monument with all the names there

of all the sons of the town

felled amidst the two world wars all those years ago

that their memories would go on

----

When the peaks are green again

then it won't be very long

until it's our turn at the station

for the train to take us on

We'll have glanced up against the story

the mark is small, but indelibly made

and that's fine, for the story's held by ancient hands

they work mysteries, but never have they strayed

Song for Sonship: If Not For Your Love

Coming off the last post, here is a song I wrote to try and express the same sentiments.  Again recorded on my phone, please forgive/enjoy the simplicity of the recording.  In light of what I wrote before, I hope that it bears no further background, though hopefully it fills out the ideas a bit.

The bridge is taken from Gerard Manley Hopkin's poem, That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and of the comfort of the Resurrection, which you can read here.

If Not For Your Love

Seize a few better things, then buttress them high with stones

and bury deep all else beneath

Where perhaps I maybe could believe

That these are not part of me

If my virtues will make you love me

Then I have no vested interest in honesty

So I lie, and tell myself that it’s true

For I fear the same of you

That you’d flee if you knew

If not for your love, 

then I would never bear the truth about myself

And I can’t even admit to myself

That this is what I do

For none could love the blackguard that’s making bold his plea

That how I am is really what you see

Just don’t dig too deep

And this means the death of pride

And means all my worth is lavished on me from outside

Staring into this dark space

Falling out of this chase

To rest an object of grace

And it’s left but ash

But in a flash, at a trumpet crash

I am all at once what Christ for he was what I am

And this jack, this joke, 

this poor potsherd, patch, matchwood, immortal diamond

Is immortal diamond

If not for your love, 

then I would never bear the truth about myself

Song For a New Year: Ordinary Day

I love Christmas, but I generally let New Year's slide.  In fact, after Rachel and I got married on New Year's Eve 2005, we were both secretly happy for a ready excuse to never watch the ball drop again.

But for those for whom New Year's provides an opportunity for stepping back and examining one's life, then I think it can provide a real virtue.  How do I want to change?  What do I want to see done this year?  Where do I want to be a year from now?  In that spirit, I offer a song and the thoughts behind it.

If a life is pictured as a line, with a series of peaks and troughs, then the vast majority of it is spent in the grand in-between time, the daily grind.

We look back at a year for it's cardinal events, like a Christmas letter: we got married, we graduated, we retired, we bought our first house, our child was baptized.  And yet most of the year was none of those things, and I would argue that most of the significance of the year was none of those things.  It was instead the time and relationships that are so ordinary they are almost invisible.  However, their invisibility does not mean that their power is any less.  It is just unseen.

And I think this is good news, because I believe that God is always at work in these small moments.  It is here that we are changed, that we become who we are, and our presence in the world is most felt.

In Kenya, a new visitor would often stagger at the idea of our daily life, but the biggest surprise for me was just how wonderfully ordinary it really was, in the end.

And this reminder couldn't be more timely for us here, laboring with inch-by-inch progress in French, another trip to the supermarché, another conversation with my kids, another walk to church.

And so, if your new year is providing you with perspective, think on the vital but invisible ordinary days.

I wrote this song in Kenya to try and highlight this idea.  I wrote it about an ordinary day at our home with a hike up the nearby Mount Motigo, realizing that what was ordinary for us would sound exotic to others, but that was the whole point.  I owe the central idea to Walt Wangerin's The Book of the Dun Cow.

Ordinary Day

(download here)

you and I today

red dirt underneath our shoes

walking in the afternoon

stop awhile and stay

on the edge of a concrete porch

drinks in hand and laughter in our mouths

ordinary day

all that keeps the darkness still away

come what may, come what may

you and I tonight

sitting on the front porch

a touch of silver light

tinge of charcoal in the air

music from the girls' school

rolling up the hill to echo off our chairs

ordinary love

all that keeps the darkness still undone

as it ever was, as it ever was

you and I right here

baskets in the tea fields

equator sun comes near

they wave as we pass by

Maggie shakes a wrist and all

the mothers of the roundhouse village smile

ordinary grace

all the keeps the darkness still at bay

come what may, come what may

Whiter Snow

(from Eric)

It was a very pleasant November, with just a hint of snow, and we were starting to wonder whether winter in the Alps meant clear valleys and snow-capped mountains surrounding us.

No.

It has been snowing all week, and then yesterday we heard that "the snow is coming".  Which I guess means the 6 inches up until then didn't count.  And lo and behold, it didn't.  It dumped about 10 more inches in the last 24 hours, and a crazy weather report predicted up to 1 meter (seriously?!) over the weekend.

They don't really plow the sidewalks here, and you can see below how socked in the cars are.  So, I'm kind of wishing we weren't on our last roll of toilet paper.  But my goodness, it is beautiful.  It's been the steady wet snow that sticks to everything with almost no wind, so every last little tree branch is white.  The parking lot in the picture has been the site of many snowball fights and the making of many a bonhomme de neige (snow man).  You wouldn't guess it by how white it still is.

In honor of the Christmas-y scenery and the fact that this may be the last white winter for our families for quite some time, I thought I'd post this song.  A winter song for Christmas time that's not really about Christmas (just like "Let it Snow", "Frosty" and others).  I wrote this song almost 13 years ago, amazingly.  When I met Rachel, she heard it and decided to marry me, so it will always be a favorite of mine.

Whiter Snow

(free album download here)

The dusting of this frail world begins upon these trees

It stumbles down again

And blankets all the soil that hides

beneath its coat of freeze

So I slip under its covers, I hide under his wings

Opening my eyes to find a plane of newer things

Things that I had brushed aside or powdered into grains

My fragile hands have broken

All of the times I thought that I had come to dance

Above the weaker strains

So I fall into a pile, and I hide under his wings

As brokenness cries out to brokenness, as I begin to sing

Whiter snow, come and go, down underneath my feet

Let your purer grace show all of your win in my defeat

Whiter call, come and fall and fill in all of my tracks

For your end, it still remains

To spring out of the pouring rain, and

Make us new again

Lately it seems you've been finding me lost under

all this blizzard of the swirling deep

Soon it will melt as it soaks me on through

and then covers me again in its sleep

But what you have done is much thicker

It's much higher and wider than words

Covering not that which you could make new and now,

We are unfrozen, you're making us new

And so we run with you in the night

We are lifting our voicing to sing

Just for this moment to be here with you

Held in so tightly under your wings

For more snow pictures from this past week, click here. 

Umbuntu Bg Imana

Many thanks to our pastor Chuck Jacob for pointing me to a little book by Sinclair Ferguson, which is loosely structured around a 7-stanza hymn entitled "How the Grace of God Amazes Me".

It just so happens that this hymn was translated about 60 years ago by a Rwandan missionary.  It was written in Kirundi by a Burundian pastor named Emmanuel T. Sibomana, and it's original title is "Umbuntu Bg Imana" or "The Grace of God".

The fact that we will later be learning Kirundi scares me a bit when I see a little word like "Bg".  It's also lovely for us to hear such an expression of grace from the heart of a Burundian, and hopefully we can find people who already know this hymn when we get to Burundi.  I was quite taken with the meter structure and, since I don't know the music, I set it to a little tune.  I'm putting it here for you to enjoy.  (My recording gear is on a big red box packed for Burundi, so this was done on my phone in a veritable "Wow-modern-technology-but-this-has-terrible-quality!" moment.)

May God's grace amaze you as you head into the advent season.  As the book says, if you aren't being amazed, then you're not experiencing grace.  It's just that incredible.

Umbuntu Bg Imana - by Emmanuel T. Sibomana

(click the play button to listen)

O how the grace of God amazes me

It loosed me from my bonds and set me free

What made it happen so?

His own will, this much I know,

Set me, as now I show

At liberty.

My God has chosen me, though one of nought,

to sit beside my King in heaven's court.

Hear what my Lord has done

O, the love that made him run

to meet his erring son!

This God has wrought.

Not for my righteousness, for I have none.

But for his mercy's sake, Jesus, God's Son,

suffered on Calvary's tree-

Crucified with thieves was he-

Great was his grace to me,

His wayward one.

And when I think of how, at Calvary,

He bore sin's penalty instead of me.

Amazed, I wonder why

He, the sinless One, should die

For one so vile as I;

My Saviour he!

Now all my heart's desire is to abide

In him, my Saviour dear, in him to hide.

My shield and buckler he

Covering and protecting me;

From Satan's darts I'll be

safe at his side

Lord Jesus, hear my prayer, your grace impart;

When evil thoughts arise through Satan's art,

O, drive them all away

And do you, from day to day,

keep me beneath your sway,

King of my heart.

Come now, the whole of me, eyes, ears, and voice

Join me, creation all with joyful noise:

Praise him who broke the chain

Holding me in sin's domain

And set me free again

Sing and rejoice...

The Journey Blesses Time

I've been writing songs for over half of my life.  One result of that is that I don't really remember all the songs I've written.  Maybe I won't hear them for years at a time.  One upside of this is that, since I often write about some lesson that I'm learning, this rediscovery gives me a chance to relearn it.

And this is surprisingly useful.  Being able to describe or express a concept is notably different from internalizing it, and I am living proof.  It's like reading an old journal entry.  Sometimes I can't believe that I could express something so many years ago, and yet feel like I've never really learned it at all.  It may even be true that writing a song about a given truth is my way of closing the issue prematurely, of me pretending that I've got that issue under wraps.

I recognized that several years ago.  I even wrote a song in 2003 about how, when I write a song, I tend to stop learning the lesson or appreciating the wonder of whatever the subject is.  It ended with the idea (which I thought clever) that if I write a song about this issue, then maybe I'll bring the premature closure to a premature closure.  People liked the song, but as you might have guessed, the whole "idea pun" part of it was lost on half the people, and considered confusing to the point of unappreciation by the other half.

"Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose."  I look forward to next year, when I will be able to pronounce that phrase accurately in French.  For now, I rely on the English translation:  "The more things change, the more they stay the same."  I was driving across the state of Michigan tonight thinking about the challenges of this year.  Among them is being between two places.  There is a joy in getting up most days and putting your hands to a defined, practical task in front of you.  Even if it is slow work, even if you're spinning your wheels, at least you hand is to the plow.  This year is like a super-long preparation for a very complicated journey.  And part of me would like to get on to the next thing.

And lo and behold, I get to rediscover a song of mine from 2009.  "Time will bless the journey that's in store, as the journey blesses time."  The images of the song are all about the continuity of a journey.  It's about walking or sailing, where you cover every inch.  This is in contrast to a plane or elevator ride, where the door closes, some time passes, and when it opens, it's like some magic just eliminated all the points between here and there.  It's a reminder that so many things require time to make them what they are.  Even the particular turn of a musical phrase is all about the passage of time.  You can't rush it, because it's the time itself which is blessing the music, just as the music has blessed the time you've spent listening.

So, the waiting.  The anticipation.  The preparation.  Even the tension.  Something is forged in the fires of time.  Does it require faith to trust that God is working something good out of this time, and that it's not just passing as a matter of fruitless necessity?  Yes, of course.  And it always will.

But God holds time.  And what we've seen of him declares him to be trustworthy.  What we have learned of him may be small and limited, but I suspect he is working some good thing, maybe something below the surface, some undercurrent that is vital even if quiet and underrated.  I don't know this for sure, neither can I prove it.  But it fits with what God has revealed of his character, and so, by his grace, let us trust him with our hours, our days, and our years.

Time Blesses The Journey

(download)

Tolkien ambles home along a garden lane

Sold his car and then discovered once again

All the cobbles in the street

And more than that, the movements of his feet

It's been planes and elevators for too long

Until I was getting off, the windows all were drawn

So, though I've arrived, there's still

Something that I missed along the way

I've been away from this ocean town

Reminds me of all that stretches past the shore

But these points on a line remind

That time will bless the journey that's in store

As the journey blesses time

Think I can see Vespucci on the open waves

Nothing on his horizon now for days

He cuts through every blade of tide

And sails under every inch of sky

I've been afraid of these mountain views

All of the heights that still are left to climb

But these points on a line remind

That time will bless the journey that's in store

As the journey blesses time

So the hour sits behind the tutor's desk

Dons the Oxford robe and teaches me the rest

That much will come and go

That much will collide and then fade away