the blog of Jerry Bolton
Archive for March, 2009
…identity crisis
0Current Tunage: Thrice – Identity Crisis
read below for lyrics:
This song has been meaningful to me of late. It’s old Thrice, from their album of the same name as the song. Enjoy.
Thrice – Identity Crisis
Image marred by self-infliction
Private wars on my soul waged
Heart is scarred by dual volitions
Juxtaposed and both engaged
Kindle flame, a test of faith
Help me see it through
I put all my trust in you
Refine hate and love
Fall afresh on me
End this crisis of
Identity
Draw this darkness out like poison
Stab, retrieve, again decline
Help me drive the dagger deeper
Trace with me explicit line
Take this blade, a test of faith,
And strike me deep and true
I put all my trust in you
Refine hate and love
Fall afresh on me
End this crisis of
Identity
This is my voice, all shadows stayed
This is my heart, upon the altar laid
Please take all else away,
Hear my cry, I beg, I plead, I pray
I’ll walk into the flame,
A calculated risk to further bless your name
So strike me deep and true,
And in your strength I will live and die, both unto you
…all the neighborhood watched the fire burn
3Current Tunage: mewithoutYou – C-Minor
One of my favourite mwY songs – in no small part due to the lush horn section.
Some lyrics from the fourth and soon-coming mewithoutYou record have surfaced. Here’s one song, which I’ve already taken a shining to. Note that they’re rough because they’re leaked and based on someone’s transcription (which means there’s definitely been some mis-heard words).
“a Stick, a Carrot & String” by mewithoutYou
The Horse’s hay beneath his head
Our Lord was born to a manger bed
Then all whose wells run dry,
Could drink of His supply
To keep him warm, the Sheep drew near,
So grateful for his coming here:
You come… with verses of grace,
Come to take my place?
The Donkey whispered in his ear:
Child, in thirty-some-odd years,
You’ll ride someone who looks like me (untriumphantly)
While the Cardinals warbled a joyful song:
He’ll make right what man made wrong!
Bringing low the hills that the valley might be filled!
Then, Child
Asked the Birds,
Well, aren’t they lovely words we sing?
The tiny Baby lay there
Without saying anything.
At a distance stood a mangy Goat
With crooked teeth and a masked coat,
Weary eyes and worn, chipped & twisted horns
Thinking:
Maybe I’ll make friends some day
With the Cows in the pews and the Rambouillets
But for now I’ll keep away -
I’ve got nothing smart to say
…but there’s a sign on the barn in the Cabbagetown:
WHEN THE RAIN PICKS UP
AND THE SUN GOES DOWN,
SINNER, COME INSIDE!
WITH NO MONEY, COME AND BUY
NO CLEVER TALK NOR GIFT TO BRING
REQUIRES OUR LOWLY, LOVELY KING
COME, ALL EMPTY-HANDED
YOU DON’T NEED ANYTHING ELSE
The night was cool and clear as glass
With a sneaking Snake in the garden grass
Deep cried out to Deep,
The Disciples, fast asleep
The snake peeked up when he heard You ask:
If You’re willing that this cup might pass
I could find my way back home,
Maybe have a family all my own… but
Does not the Father guide the Son?
Not my will but Yours be done!
What else here to do?
What else here but You?
And the Snake who’d held the world,
A stick, a carrot and a string
Was crushed beneath the Foot of
Your not wanting
Anything
…hear my voice goes to ones and zeroes
0Current Tunage: Thrice – Digital Sea (Live)
Thrice’s recent live record is an exmaple of a live album done right – 25 tracks on 2 discs from 1 show, a DVD of the concert including an extensive and downright interesting interview with the band, and *excellent* recording quality. Not to mention they played a great show, very much like they always do (I need to see them live again!).
Posting more regularly is a promise I often make here, and it’s probably my most often broken promise (not that I break many, I hope). It would be interesting sometime to aggregate through all the last 5 years of posts and trace every broken promise to post more. Interesting, but largely meaningless.
I recently got sucked into the swirling nether vortex known as Twitter, and you can find me here, tweeting away. I figured that my compulsion to update my Facebook status deserved a more fitting arena for its execution. So far, I’ve been quite impressed. I love the adless, clean simplicity of it. I also love knowing what many of my heroes and inspirations are doing with their everyday lives (although that in itself makes twitter feel far more voyeuristic than Facebook has ever been, though I suppose the lack of photographs makes it less so in reality). This is particularly true when aforementioned heroes and inspirations are, for example, in the studio recording that new record, releasing an update to software I use regularly, or what have you. Knowing these things in realtime is handy-dandy.
So, shameless tweetvertising aside, life is good. This will be an update. In approximately a month and two days, I will be a university graduate. That much is certain, although it is contingent on my completion of about 7 odd projects, papers, and assignments between now and then, most of them sizeable. Foregone conclusions, though, eh?
Lately I, and my wife with me (usually), have been enjoying the swirling and ephemeral sounds of The Rocket Summer, Thrice, The Appleseed Cast, Mute Math, Mae, Celldweller, Nobuo Uematsu, and, on occasion, a little Underoath, Living Sacrifice, and Mars Ill. Oh, and I mustn’t forget Brandon Heath, Bebo Norman, Remedy Drive, Derek Webb, Aaron Shust, and whatnot.
Musical preferences aside, we’re as-they-say “chugging along”. Weekends are full of more happenings and happenstance than weekdays (and thus tend to be busier, if that were possible). I’m back to my old ways as part of the Worship team at our church, helping run Sound Tech a couple times a month – Mixing and Matching and Mastering and trying to Make-things-sound-real-good and such. It’s a fun exercise for my ears and (sometimes) my reflexes. Steph is back to her old ways teaching Sunday School once a month also. We’re really starting to feel like it’s “home”, friendships are starting to firm up, we’re starting to know most of the people by name (at least the major players), our small group has been an encouragement and a blessing, and we’ve been on the requisite dinner date (discovering friends who share our passion for 24, board games that are fun, good coffee, and doing life for Jesus). Not that we didn’t have friends like that already, but more is always good, ya?
With regards to my “second reformation” series, I do still plan to pick it up in some form. I suppose the problem is that views and thoughts are always evolving, and so unless one keeps at a body of work consistently, it can run away – or, better put, it can grow its own legs and mind and evolve into something beyond your control (kind of like children?). This is to say, in order to pick it up, I really need to map out where I want to go, decide what specifically I want to say (and to whom), and get my head around things. I also need to re-think what I want to call it – I’ve decided that Reformation is too strong a word for my thoughts (particularly after reading a few Emergent authors claim their movement is a new “reformation” – ugh). Perhaps it will be “Jerry’s Thoughts for the Future of Autonomous Local Churches (particularly the Open Brethren of Ontario)” or something, I guess that would be more specific, eh?
Musings aside, I’m in a good place right now. Small Group is starting into a study on the Foundations of Discipleship which PROMISES (indeed, all but GUARANTEES) revelations and challenges grandiose and meaningful. School plugs away; I can smell the finish line, I can see the work that lies before me, and I can know beyond a shadow that ‘this too shall pass’. Marriage is still the best thing on God’s green earth, and Steph the best Thing.
Jesus is sweet and terrible, wondrous and dangerous, full of majesty and full of ways to tear my Self apart… He’s “the Image of the Invisible God” and I love Him for it, even as He takes me, breaks me, and makes me something new again and again. Praise God for the Cross, the Life, the Way. Nothing else in this finite universe compares with the Infinite One.
Saturday morning (I mean afternoon) quibble: “Infinite One” is an oxymoron, but I’m overlooking that because it frankly doesn’t matter. God is One and God is Infinite. So, to call him the Infinite One is sensible even as it is a mystery and a challenge to my finite (grey) matter.