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New Years Eve 2014 (Don’t Dream it’s Over)

2014 Dusking

It’s New Years Eve 2014, a day devoted to tomorrow.

It feels like I’ve been writing this post for days now, if not weeks and months. Since this is my final posting, I suppose it’s been in the works all year long. I remember all too well the end of 2013, facing major changes and staring into the face of the unknown.

Welcome to the future. No hover cars or robot servants, and nothing else seems to be any different either.

After losing at least a week out of life to that horrible cold/flu bug sweeping the nation, the cold and cloudy grey weather and my aching body have finally given way to light and a semblance of life. The sky was a blue we haven’t seen in ages, with thin clouds rolling in like ocean waves. It’s colder, yes, but the sun is a welcome visitor even for one last day.

I’ll join the rest of humanity and wonder where the year went. Highs and lows, many trials and a few triumphs…sadly this year the scale tipped far too often in the wrong direction.

While everyone is recounting the past and pointing hopefully to the future, I’ll allow myself no such luxury. For me there is only now.

If you are fortunate enough to have had a great year, then I’ll say congrats. As for the rest of us, all we can do is hope for better…but if I’ve learned anything from 2014, hope is a dangerous word.

For the first time in years and years, I don’t have a damn clue what is in store for the coming year. As a believer, this is a very strange place to be indeed. I’ve searched Scripture for plans and promises, I’ve hurled prayers toward the heavens, and cried many tears of the hopefully hopeless. I’ve given in and given up. I’ve trusted time and time again, only to see hopes and dreams shatter into shards that have cut my spirit to the bone.

I just don’t know what else to do but wait in the now.
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It’s been said that sometimes we can fail and fall so far that even the plans of God are nullified, or at least changed beyond recognition. I have fought this notion with every fiber of my being, but still the year comes to a close. Nothing has changed…

Maybe God gives the visions to those young and strong enough to make them happen, leaving the dreaming of past glory to the old. Maybe that’s all the old can do…dream the dreams that give vision to the young.

And off there in the distance
The morning fire still glows
The promise of a dream that may still grow
And beyond this days horizon
Past the final pathway turn
The day has found its ending
Where Hope fights the darkness as it burns

Father, thank You for the gift of this moment. Be with us in every ‘now’ of the coming days…

Now I will wait for the new year and a new day. I have seen this days dawning, and now it’s dusking.

Today becomes tomorrow…
And still I wait, and dream that it’s not over.

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The Fall

Today is the last day of summer.

Today I turned fifty-three. I won’t go so far as to say I celebrated this day, but certainly I was wished a happy birthday by family and friends. There were the usual jokes and ribbing about being an old man…fifty-three is not old these days, but it ain’t young.

Typically birthdays don’t affect me one way or the other, the notable exception being turning twenty-five. It was a year of uncertainty and madness and regret, and a time where life should’ve started making sense. Yet the senselessness of that time still haunts today.

It was pleasant enough today…but already the signs are there for those adept at their reading. Summer is gone, and fall is upon us. A crispness is in the air, and while the days are still warm, the nights grow cool.

Tomorrow is the autumnal equinox, which is a fancy way of saying fall is here. Equinox is a Latin term for ‘equal night,’ meaning day and night are the same length. In the coming days, nights will grow long and days will shorten.

Today is the last day of summer. Tomorrow the fall begins.

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It’s maddening, actually. While others of a certain age work toward their winding down, I feel as if I’m just now starting. The questions and doubts that haunt every artist are magnified in the fading light. Has my time passed? Do I have enough fuel for the path I seek?

Am I simply too old to do this?

I joke that age is a number, and today I feel one hundred. Yet in my gut I still feel the flame that burns bright against the coming dark. With promises given and gifting empowered, I stubbornly hold to the vision of something greater than myself. I wonder and wail and ask the Father for the meaning behind it all. The only answers seem to be the whispering wind and silver of clouds heavy laden with doubt. Even my own choices conspire against the knowing of this vision of music that reveals and redeems and restores.

Summer is over. I realize I’m in the beginnings of my autumn…fall is here, and winter will follow all too soon…

 

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“Dream…”

For all who feel the weightlessness of their own worth

For every one numbed by the coldness of their own heart

Longing for a hope beyond the circle of the world
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You wander in the shadow cast by the joy you seek

But in the dark you dream…

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“Listen and Repeat”

Maple_george_vinson_project_150

“Let everything with breath praise The Lord.”

Psalm 150:6

It has always been my intent for Project Onefifty to be the artistic expression of this passage, for this verse to live and breathe in the everyday through music and media of all kinds.

So what does it mean to praise the Lord during seasons good and bad? Is it to ignore pain and pretend all is well? Is it to embrace joy when others are lost and alone?

Todays post does not attempt to answer these questions despite needing them in my own heart and life. Today is just about the thoughts and feelings of the morning, a gentle wrestling, with a greater match sure to come…

* * * * *

I am not inspired.

The dawn was once again beautiful, the morning star shining in its loneliness against the background of the coming day. Hours later the crispness of the early hours still lingers, more a foretaste of the fall than in truth a midsummers day in the South.

I sit on my smallish porch in one of two weathered white rocking chairs, a faded pillow against the small of my back. A gorgeous river birch is shading my eyes from the overt glare of the sun. The prevailing sound is that of the wind in the front maple tree, green and full on this July Monday. In the fall it glows a fiery red before letting go of it’s glory, always reaching heavenward even when I do not.

As usual my thoughts stray to music…

But these days music is not the balm it has been. There’s certainly no shortage of great music to enjoy, despite all those people prophesying it’s death. There is more great art to be found now than I can ever remember. My memory is not great for certain things, but it’s filled with a lifetime of music.

It’s not that music no longer holds me in gentle thrall…far from it. It’s my passion as well as my chief (better make that only) export. I hear music even now in the whispering wind and the birdsong from the woods behind my house. Even the occasional shouts of kids playing at the big hill provide accents of sorts.

I still live and breathe and dream in notes and rhythms.

For all the sensory input of the morning, I am not inspired. Yet the fire to create burns as red as the fall maple.
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They say that only amateurs wait for inspiration, and that ‘real’ artists and writers simply get up and go to work. I live in the Nashville area, a city built on music built from 9-5. But hey…I have no hits, so who am I to knock the work ethic of those who do?

So I sit here on my porch with my pen and journal, doing the work of a writer…recording thought and feeling, digging for truth in spite of myself. My dog Farley is here with me, sniffing the breeze like he knows something is up. Today I wish I had his instincts.

For some reason I think of my time growing up. Where did that come from?

Back in the ancient days of the 20th century, a diploma demanded two years of a foreign language. The choices were few: German (hard), Spanish (who wants to be called Jorge? ‘hey Whore-Hey!’), and French. Despite being born in West Germany, I chose French. That’s still Europe, right? Little did I know I would be ‘Monsieur Georges’ for the next two years. Sure, it looks innocuous enough in print, but try being a freshman and sophomore with a name pronounced ‘zHOrsh.’ Not the manliest of names for an emergent nerd.

While life with French I & II teacher Madame Gobeill had its moments, I sadly remember few words and phrases. But one still comes to mind from time to time:

‘Ecouter et répéter’ or ‘listen and repeat.’

There’s a lesson here. The great writers are constantly listening to the world around them, soaking in life and revealing it as it is and as it should be. The great musicians listen intently to the music in which they willingly drown, looking for just the right moment to add to the magic their own insight and vision. There is simply nothing else like these moments…

Listen and repeat.

The maple is still reaching toward heaven even as the wind rustles a rhythm for the still-singing birds. Music and magic and inspiration abound.

Father, thank You for the gift of this day. Help me to listen and repeat and follow the song You placed within.