Sample Purpose (click)
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I had a very difficult time finishing this piece.  It began as a simple exercise in exploring orchestrational possibilities in jazz chords while applying percussion techniques on the keyboard.  Adding a line for the saxophone simply seemed like the thing to do at the time, and it made it possible for me to have a live instrument for the presentation of my final project for the class for which I wrote the project.  So I wrote the first two minutes of this piece with no intent outside of making pretty sounds.  But I liked the sounds so much that I felt the need to turn them into a coherent musical exposition.  After being stuck on the piece for about six months, I finally decided that the only way I was going to finish it was to make up an ending that worked and polish it until it was good.

I have a very hard time feeling a sense of closure when a piece doesn’t seem to have any meaning outside of itself.  So even when I had all but finished the piece I still couldn’t leave it alone because I didn’t understand what it meant.  And yet I had already named the piece “Hide and Seek” simply because of the way it sounded.  It seemed to be trying to go somewhere profound, but became sad when it couldn’t get there.  Then it returned to searching for that profound place, this time without being concerned about the result.

The sound reminded me of my childhood games of hide and seek when I would be entertained by looking for my friends that had hidden from me.  It was enjoyable not because I found them, but because I found them through a process of searching for them.  But sometimes they would hide so well that I would grow weary of looking for them.  But it would then be all the more exciting when I found them.  But the purpose of the game wasn’t to find but to seek.  So becoming irritated because I couldn’t find my friend was silly since all that should have resulted was enjoying the game longer.

While applying this concept to life itself, and thinking about the music in the context of the Purpose project, I finally realized that this piece is about searching for the purpose of life.  Many people (myself included) become frustrated when attempting to work out the reason God put them on the earth.  While there is the obvious Sunday school answer of “serving, worshipping, knowing, and glorifying God”, very few people are satisfied with that answer and justifiably so. Knowing and glorifying God is an infinitely broad description of our purpose since God is an infinite being.  Saying that really means to do what we were doing all along but for a different reason and maybe throwing in a few religious practices to remind you of that reason.  But as dissatisfying as the answer may be, it’s still the correct one.  However, I’ve taken it a step further with this piece.

The beauty coupled with tension throughout the first fast section recounts the beauty of life in the midst of seeking the reason for our existence and being disillusioned by the answer we find.  This results in a discontentment because without knowing the details of why we were put on this earth we have no idea of what to expect from life.  So as we move into the slow section we wonder in vain why we exist and therefore what we should be doing with our lives.  But in the midst of this anxiety, we find that beauty remains inherent all around us, even throughout our pain.  This brings us to the second fast section in which the sounds that were harsh in the beginning have been reinterpreted and are beautiful.  Nothing has changed but our reason for perceiving.  We’ve realized that we exist for the sake of seeking the answer to the question of our existence.  God put us here to ask questions and seek answers.  Since God is throughout all aspects of creation, this ends up meaning that God put us here in order to seek Him.  We still haven’t moved beyond the broad Sunday school answer, but realization has satisfied me and justified my life and work.

Purpose hides and so we seek it.  But along the way we find beauty and realize that the purpose of life is the process of searching for it.

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Sample Purpose (click)
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It is very rare for me to write a piece quickly and have it be worth anyone’s time.  But sometimes the meaning behind the sound in my head is so obvious that it takes very little time to make it into a coherent musical unit.  One Sunday afternoon I sat down to put a few initial ideas down and ended up not stopping for eight hours, resulting in the first draft of “The First Song”.  After meeting with Dr. Lorenz (my teacher) twice about the work, tweeking the formal structure, and perfecting notation for the improvisational aspects, I finished the shortest piece I had ever written.

The length of The First Song was determined by the use I had in mind for it, but its transient nature also contributes meaning by leaving the mystery of romantic love a mystery.  My main goal was to tell my wedding guests exactly how I felt as the woman I wanted to marry walked down the aisle to become my wife, but the piece works very well without the visual aspect being present.  It is a simple depiction of what happens in a man’s heart the first time he sees the woman that God is about to give to him.  It didn’t need to be long, because this emotion in its specificity happens once in a lifetime and is very short.

It’s apparently also very predictable (although this does not detract from the emotion but rather intensifies it with anticipation). Because this life changing emotional experience had been foreshadowed on so many different occasions it was surprisingly easy to predict accurately.  The very first note in particular was a very obvious one:  A single sharp and high pitched percussive strike on a grand piano with the sustain pedal engaged in order to bring the entire sound spectrum of the piano into a subtle state of anticipation to depict the literal physiological reaction of a man’s heart when he sees the object of his deepest and most passionate affection from a distance.  I’d felt this many times before when seeing Liz from a distance and to describe the emotion musically was very simple.  From there it was simply a matter of imagining her walking towards me with the intent o giving herself to me and (I to her) for the rest of our lives.

The flurry of nervous tremolos and glissandi following the first note describes the excitement I had while anticipating my bride’s walk towards me. The way I use the sound spectrum here is designed to be a direct reaction to the first note’s sympathetic resonance just as the anticipation of Liz walking towards me was the result of seeing her.  I think it is also important to point out that I use the black key pentatonic scale to color the sound with a slight stereotypical oriental impression.  This was motivated by Liz’s patriarchal Chinese heritage, but I masked the color because it’s very hard to see that she’s part Chinese.

The next minute or so of the piece describes the anticipation, nervousness, and wonderful joy I felt as she walked towards me.  I could do nothing but bless God and rejoice in my bride’s beauty, the richness and depth of her spirit, and her love for me.  The various components of the sound are designed to fit together in such a way as to put into the mind of the listener a snapshot of the passionate and complex mixture of emotion  This texture builds and comes to a point at which it can no longer be contained and collapses out of necessity.  The bride has arrived face to face with the man rejoicing before God over her, and his joy must be contained in a permanently lingering conclusion that will be preserved for as long as they both live.

Long story short, I love my wife.

The man said,
“This is now bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called ‘woman,’
for she was taken out of man.”

Genesis 2:23, NIV

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Buy Purpose: CD Baby ($4)

Sample Purpose (click)

It’s been a long journey putting this new project together.  Now that I’ve had a chance to sit back and see how it has turned out I am confident that it was certainly worth the effort.  I’d like to take a moment now to help you understand what I’m hoping people will take away from it at the surface level:

This has been a challenging year for me (emotionally) because I’ve deeply questioned the value of my life pursuit in music, the value of my faith in God (which has become stronger than ever), and the value of my very existence.  This project is the result of that questioning. As you listen, search for the questions I’ve been asking in the music. Don’t look for the answers because they’re not there; The composer hasn’t found them.

A technical note: There are lengthy transitions between some of the tracks that are meant to bring the project cohesion.  Listen to them as part of the project.

I hope you enjoy it on the surface level.  I’m looking forward to helping you dig deeper into it soon.  Thank you so much for your continued support.

Purpose hides and so we seek it. But somewhere on the way we find beauty and realize that the purpose of life is the process of searching for it.

Special thanks to my freinds Cassie and Eva for their help with recording this CD.  Buy it so that they can get paid!

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Getting to know God and becoming more like Him should be a Christian’s chief concern in life. Following His commands is a given, and not sinning would be a very simple task provided we grew to love God with all our hearts.  There are two methods that God as given us to grow closer to him: general revelation and special revelation. Special revelation is God’s word given to us through the prophets and any teaching or analysis done that originates from scripture.  The church handles the word of God quite effectively for the most part, and I have taken a lot from the teaching I have received.  But, unfortunately, simply teaching the word only goes so far and the intense division in the church we have today bears witness to this.  The word of God is only part of the picture, and for the church to not teach general revelation as much as it teaches special revelation is to limit the church’s perception of God’s glory and majesty along with the deep knowledge and wisdom that result from studying his creative work both aesthetically and analytically.

To only study the word is like getting to know a person only by talking to them.  When I first met Liz (my fiance) we got to know each other initially through conversation, but as our friendship deepened conversations by themselves only went so far.  We started to experience life together; listening to a stream together, attending to a specific part of the sky, running, going to the symphony, studying pedagogy, and countless other activities enhancing not our factual knowledge of one another, but in a profound sense our aesthetic understanding of one another.  I didn’t ask Liz to marry me because of the factual knowledge about her that I had accumulated; it was because of the things I had learned abut her aesthetic characteristics in between conversations that I fell in love with her.

Do we somehow expect our relationship with God to develop differently?  How is it that He can give us such a clear picture of what kind of relationship he wants with us using marriage and we (mostly) ignore it?  Just as it is impossible to fall in love with another person by talking it is impossible to fall in love with Christ only by studying the Bible.  You have to spend time with him outside factual knowledge and dive into the richness of his creative work.  By enjoying other people’s perceptions of that work, creating representations of your own perception, and perceiving his wonders first hand, you will gain an aesthetic understanding of our Savior beyond words.  This is when and how you will fall in love with Christ.  Feel free to memorize every word of the Bible, but until you learn to actually perceive Him in the world around you, you cannot know Him well enough to love Him.

Now, when it comes to the study of scripture, it’s impossible to even understand the depth and beauty of the Bible until you’ve experience life with God.  Much of he factual knowledge in the Bible is rooted in the aesthetic understanding of the world.  I, for example, was bored to tears trying to read the major prophets until I had composed the Dark Process since that was how I learned to understand a large work rooted in emotion rather than story.  Several symphonies and concertos by various composers also acted as gateways into the major prophets for me.  But this isn’t even the best part; I met with God and glorified his name in the midst of these aesthetic experiences that also enabled me to enjoy His Word.  So it hasn’t been the Bible alone that has caused me to love God, it has been the perception of His creation through the lens of Scripture which I gained through an understanding of creative work..  That said,  I also want to make it clear that the lens of scripture is vital to the accurate perception that draws us to worship.

Aesthetic education teaches the believer to learn about God through general revelation.  It is through God’s gift of his creative work perceived through the lens of His word that we will learn to love Him.  Therefore opportunities for aesthetic education in the church are essential to foster a passionate and unifying adoration of our Savior.

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Aesthetic education helps us to make new connections in the things we perceive (not to mention in our brains).  For example, how is a tree connected with the sky?  We would all agree that they belong in the same field of vision, but what is significant about the two being in one person’s perception simultaneously?  Study painting and you may begin to see something about these very normal things that you never noticed before.  Write a poem and you may feel a new emotion evoked by the subjects.  New connections are made because you have been taught to see things in a new and largely unexplainable way.  Not only that, but you will find enjoyment you’ve never had before which will motivate you to dig deeper.  New connections, when taken to much higher levels, can create entire worlds.  When massive amounts of new connections are made, learning becomes inevitable.

But what is the practical value of achieving this?  What are some specific examples of how this enhances a person’s education.  I could simply say that people involved in the art consistently receive higher marks, but I’m not convinced that that is relevant since I am also not convinced that high marks indicate a good student.  My concern is that a student becomes interested in something worthy of their attention.  If a student excels at every subject but is disinterested to the point where he does not do any learning on his own, then he is not making a worthwhile amount of new connections and his education is useless. This is exactly the problem that aesthetic education conquers.  Its usefulness is hidden in the depths of cognitive development and not in isolated example.  It is the all-encompassing method towards becoming a more effective learner.

Aesthetic education should be at the heart of any educational institution.  It is in the area of study in which the mind learns to open itself to new possibilities and insights.  The inherent intuitive benefits of a rich background in the arts teaches students to approach every subject with a passionate and attentive curiosity that pursues knowledge to the ends of the earth.  If this is not the purpose of education, then I fail to see why we don’t stop going to school at the age of twelve.

Become interested and engage your perception.  Learn to learn.  Create something that communicates past the senses.

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Context and Prelude are on CD Baby for $4. Click here to purchase.

Please continue to invite people to the Facebook group: Click here to link to the group’s page. Thank you all so much for your continued support, I really appreciate it.

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I fear that this work may not be well received by certain kinds of people since it can come off largely as an inconclusive meandering of musical thought.  If it seems to be this to you, then I would encourage you to enjoy this work in the context of the Purpose project in its entirety and not as an individual composition since I composed, programmed, and recorded this for the sake of it being the center of the album.

It turned out the way it did because I am attempting to ask a question that no one has ever answered to my satisfaction:  ”Why do I exist?” God’s creation is wonderful and I love the mind, body, and relationships He’s given me so that I can enjoy it.  Most of all, I love the spirit He has put in my heart so that I can enjoy a relationship with God himself.  But why do I exist?  Why was I conceived and not someone else?  Why something rather than nothing?  Why does God exist and why did he create physical existence instead of not creating it?

After asking these questions for years, it has been revealed to me that while all things are for a reason, it is not for us to know that reason. Therefore, all we can do is follow God’s commands and enjoy the things he has given us in accordance with those commands.  This realization does not answer the question, but it helps us understand that as much as it concerns us, the reason we exist is to please God and enjoy what he has given us.

Purpose hides and so we seek it.  But somewhere on the way we find beauty and realize that the purpose of life is the process of searching for it.

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Context and Prelude are on CD Baby for $4.  Click here to purchase.

Please continue to invite people to the Facebook group: Click here to link to the group’s page.  Thank you all so much for your continued support,  I really appreciate it.

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Art – the quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance.

Aesthetics – the branch of philosophy dealing with such notions as the beautiful, the ugly, the sublime, the comic, etc., as applicable to the fine arts, with a view to establishing the meaning and validity of critical judgments concerning works of art, and the principles underlying or justifying such judgments.

(Definitions taken from dictionary.com)

It is difficult to assess value to something that doesn’t seem to have practical value in everyday life.  However, when an object or activity is held dearly by those closest to us, we have no choice but to either accept or seek to understand its value.  Many times we simply choose to accept that someone values something apparently useless, but when cost or time become an issue, practical value must be evaluated.  If it can be spared for the sake of continuing the livelihood of an individual or an organization, then it is eliminated.  But one must be very careful since some very important things have no obvious value.

In our educational institutions, music is one of those very expensive things with little obvious value.  It’s a good thing to have around, but if it gets in the way of physical discipline, academic achievement, or recreational activities, it is dropped.  The question that we must ask is, “How much value is there in art education, and does this value justify the neglect of funding sports, clubs, advanced sciences, or field trips?”

In order to begin to address this issue, I must pause to clarify the difference between art education and aesthetic education.  It is the same difference as between the light bulb and our vision; construction and use.  Art education teaches how to create a subject that can communicate to another person.  Aesthetic is the cumulative effect on a person’s perception that is generated from every component of the art.  Aesthetic education is the most important part of the arts because it is the part that carries over into all other facets of life since it teaches us how to observe and make new connections.

Creating art requires enormous amounts of time, effort, and–in the case of music–money.  Art education can therefore seem like an expensive waste of time and effort since it has little obvious practical value.  But many people love it dearly and the convince the people who don’t understand it to not let it die.  But what happens when funding is not available?  What happens when a person’s time is limited?  Do we let it slip from the educational experience?  If given a choice between science and music, what would we choose?  Why are most of you jumping to the obvious choice?  I suppose it is true that understanding the physical world is more important than putting on a Christmas concert isn’t it…

Can’t a compromise be reached?  What about art appreciation classes that don’t require that expensive and time consuming creative act?  Can we teach aesthetics without teaching art?  The problem is that students must create art in order to learn how to observe it because the most basic way of learning how to observe anything is to create it.  Taste is enhanced by cooking, watching sports by playing them, shuttle launches by playing with tube rockets.  Observation is always more effective when you know a little about how it’s done.  Therefore it is safe to conclude that the most effective form of aesthetic education is art education.  It is ineffective to sit through a lecture about how to observe art when we have not produced it.  Just as you can’t teach students to read without ever teaching them to write, so you can’t teach students to observe without teaching them to create.  So the first step in aesthetic education is art education.

Why is education important?  In high school, I supposed that it was because I needed to know about the Korean war and how to solve a quadratic equation.  But I have since forgotten most of the details of both and have still been able to get jobs and continue on to graduate studies.  Obviously that information has not been necessary for my contribution to society.  Education is apparently not for filling our heads with facts that we will use throughout out lives, but rather to expose us to large concepts and realities that will help us to continue learning throughout our lives.

Now, why is aesthetic education important?  Education is learning to learn, but we learn details we won’t remember simply because the only way to become an efficient learner is to practice learning various subjects.  But how does one begin to practice learning when they haven’t leaned how to engage their minds in something that isn’t tangible until the mind brings it into the learner’s imagination?  What is art education?  Is it not making something intangible a reality?  Is art not therefore in the center of learning to learn?  Is not art/aesthetic education leaning to observe?  Learning takes place through observing, so if we never learn to observe we can never learn.   Art education teaches to observe.  Art education is education.

For imaginative and intuitive students, aesthetic education is the key to a lifetime of learning.  Omit this, and you not only omit a major purpose of the education institutions, but you omit a vital part of many student’s education (maybe for all students). So then, science or art?  Simply, yes.

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One of you says, “I follow Martin Luther”; another, “I follow the Pope”; another, “I follow Baptist doctrine”; still another, “I follow Christ.” Is Christ divided? Was the Pope crucified for you? Were you baptized into the name of the Baptist denomination?

C.S. Lewis describes the Christian denominations as a single house with multiple rooms. If you are part of the house, you are living for the same purpose and with the same life direction (seeking a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and behaving accordingly). However, every Christian gravitates towards people with the same specific doctrinal beliefs. Lutherans are in one room, Evangelicals another, Anglicans another, and Roman Catholics another. There is nothing wrong with this. It’s a big book and we’re going to disagree on how to interpret it. But the problem comes in when these different groups refuse to leave their rooms and associate with other people in their family. This behavior doesn’t encourage people from the outside to come into the house and enjoy a relationship with Jesus Christ themselves (which should be our greatest concern). On the contrary, it discourages them from entering and is actively counterproductive to the work of the gospel. Not to say that we have any power over the effectiveness of the Lords work, but he does want his children to be obedient. I Corinthians 1:10, “I appeal to you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another so that there may be no divisions among you and that you may be perfectly united in mind and thought.” Then Paul says this again in Philippians 2:1-2, “If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose.”

Unfortunately, all of the various denominations are so set in their different doctrines that they have deprived the body of Christ from necessary diversity. For example, Baptists don’t tend to associate with Pentecostals because Baptists are stiff and reserved while the Pentecostals are hyperactive and emotional. When people of these types don’t worship together, the Baptists become too stiff and the Pentecostals too emotional. Worshiping God must have aspects of both thoughtful meditation (Psalm 119:27) and of joyful noise (Psalm 98); Baptists and Pentecostals need each other in order to not take their natural tenancies too far. Different denominations contain different types of people, and these different types need to each other in order to maintain healthy and well balanced worship. In other words, denominations create extremes.

Getting God’s people to come back into the commons area of God’s house is going to be quite a challenge. In fact I don’t really see how its even possible. But where humans fail, God will succeed. Not only that, but he will succeed while using us to do it. That being said, I don’t quite understand the implications of the idea that I am now going to present to you. I see how it could work, but I know that it is not going to happen the way I think it is. Only God can move in the hearts and minds of his people to having the response necessary in order bring the body of Christ back together again. All I can do is present an idea that God has put on my heart. What God does with it in your hearts is up to him.

To bring all the churches together something must develop that members from all of the various denominations can be a part of. Higher education is already doing this to a large extent. For example, Cornerstone University (where I did my undergraduate studies) has more than 45 denominations represented in its student body. After growing up in a Baptist environment my entire life, this was an incredible opportunity for my ideas to merge with the view points of students from other backgrounds. It resulted in me actually getting into God’s word and discovering truth like I’d never experienced it before. This is the type of growth that could happen should Christians find something comparable to this in their own communities. Unfortunately, higher education can only go so far since it is very expensive and it is completely unreasonable to hope for a Christian university in every geographic context. It is also unreasonable to expect private elementary and high school education to accomplish church unity since this targets a fairly narrow demographic.

Music education is very peculiar. Because of the performance orientation it has, it drives people from very different backgrounds into that same room to enjoy an intellectually rich presentation together. Since the audience is typically connected with one of the people performing, and the people performing are connected to one another, these performances result in social connections that would’ve been impossible any other way. In this way music education has the power to bring random people together in order to strengthen the relational context of a community. But then make everyone in that room a passionate believer in Christ Jesus, and the result isn’t just a well connected community. What results is a well connected church that otherwise did not exist provided that this program does not exist only in a single church. And this finally brings us to the point I wish to make.

Create an inexpensive and Christ oriented music education program in a community that is connected with every church in that community, enroll representatives from every congregation to participate, back it up with prayer, and encourage every congregation to observe the resultant artistic presentation, and you will see entire church bodies uniting starting with the individual layperson and working its way up into the leadership.

If you live in the Lansing area and would like to see this happen, look over the plan in my blog entitled “The Church’s School of Music” and contact me to let me know you want to help make this happen. If you don’t live in the Lansing area but you would like to see this happen in your community, be bold and give it a try.

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Thank you all so much for your support by inviting people to join the Facebook group.  I’ve been pretty overwhelmed by the results so far.  To the newcomers, thank you for joining us and taking a look at what God is doing here.  Feel free to invite your Facebook friends to the group yourself.  You can find instructions on how to do this in the post from last week.

May God continue to work out his plans in completely unpredictable ways.

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What exactly is this website?  On the one hand this is clearly a business that is struggling to succeed.  On the other hand this website is clearly seeking to be a ministry that has already had a positive influence on quite a few people and in that regard has been very successful.  Whatever this is it’s not a church because I’m selling CD’s on iTunes and CD Baby, and it’s not really a business yet because it is not currently profitable (which as we discussed in January I can’t be doing for very much longer).

I try to make what I do here an overflow from my worship of Christ.  It mostly turns into music, but sometimes it winds up on this blog too.  Then again, as we saw in January, I sometimes fail at this.  But overall, most people seem to agree that this website represents Christ and is a very relevant and potentially a powerful ministry.  So why isn’t this thing exploding with people wanting to hear my work?

I’ve been struggling with this question for over a year, and there are several explanations.  One is that most people I’m close to seem to think of this as something I do for fun that I use to pass the time in a constructive manner.  It’s not.  For over a year I’ve been hoping and praying that God would grow this into something that would supplement an income for me.  I haven’t really made this as clear as I could have, but I hope that I’m making it clear now.  This doesn’t mean, by any stretch of the imagination, that I’m upset with anyone for misunderstanding.

I was hoping what would happen is that the people closest to me would help by inviting their Facebook friends to my group which is associated with this website (the group most of you probably linked to this post from).  But most people didn’t help me in this way and I’ve discovered that there are several very good reasons for this to happen:

• People didn’t understand what I was asking them to do.  They either did something that wasn’t what I meant or they became frustrated not being able to figure out how to invite people to a group.
• People intended to help me out by inviting people to the group but they just kept forgetting.  When I reminded them, they did what I do and put it off until I gave up reminding people.  Then they forgot for good.
• A few people left the group because they were sick of getting reminder emails.  Try to compare this problem with the last one and find a solution to that one!
• Many felt that inviting people that they didn’t think were interested would be annoying and intrusive.  I understand this perspective, but I want to emphasize that I’ve sought to make this website a place for people to not only hear good music, but to hear the gospel.  If the gospel is being proclaimed and the music is of a high enough quality to be worth most people’s time to at least check out once, I see no reason to not tell them about the website unless my theology is completely off the wall.  So invite them anyway and let them decide whether or not they’re interested.  If it’s the worst thing that happens to them today then they have a very blessed life.

So if you don’t mind, I’d like to try this again.  Only this time I want to communicate very clearly:

• You don’t owe me anything.  I’m asking you to do this because I need your help and no other reason.  I very much need and appreciate your support.  Please help me.
• I want this website to be my career and my ministry.  I’m very serious about this and I want to make sure you realize that if God wills it I would like to devote my life to this ministry.  Please partner with me and help me do this.
• I would appreciate it if you all to kept a close eye on me and let me know the moment I do something that I shouldn’t (Clearly bad theology, arrogance, a stupid piece of music, etc.).
• Facebook is an explosively powerful tool in the hands of 50 people (I think that’s about how many people are going to read this post).  If everyone that reads this helps me make this happen, you will see this thing take off.
• If there are certain people you’d rather not invite, then don’t invite them.
• Please do this right away so that you don’t forget.  I would really appreciate it.

The only problem left unaddressed now is the problem of not understanding Facebook well enough to do this for me.  Here’s how you do it:

• To invite people to my website’s group, start by clicking this link:  http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=69646739022
• If you are not a member of the group yet (you get the emails just by being invited), click the join button (or respond to invitation).
• Once you’re a member, just below my picture (upper left) you’ll see a link that says “Invite people to join”. Click this and you’ll see every person that you are friends with.
• Click on every person so that they are all highlighted. Once this is done, click “send invitations” towards the bottom of the page.

Thank you all so much for doing this.  You have no idea how much I appreciate it.

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This past week I’ve been forced into inactivity after getting all four of my wisdom teeth out. I’ve been stunned at just how much a procedure like that can slow down thought processes let alone one’s physical activity. Until today It’s been hard to think clearly, hard to read, hard to focus on much of anything. So I’ve been taking the opportunity to catch up on sleep since that seems to be the only thing I’ve been able to do well. But the times I wasn’t sleeping were not boring even though I didn’t really do anything. I didn’t think about anything particularly interesting, nor did I listen to vast amounts to sermons or musical literature. I just was, and being in such a state is beautiful. In fact I’d go as far as you say it’s where we find our purpose.

“By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.”

“Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates. For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.”

“‘If you keep your feet from breaking the Sabbath
and from doing as you please on my holy day,
if you call the Sabbath a delight
and the LORD’s holy day honorable,
and if you honor it by not going your own way
and not doing as you please or speaking idle words,

then you will find your joy in the LORD,
and I will cause you to ride on the heights of the land
and to feast on the inheritance of your father Jacob.’
The mouth of the LORD has spoken.”

I’m not saying that there is a command from God to not do anything at all once a week (Jesus was clearly against this interpretation). I’m saying that if you just take the time once a week to stop diverting your attention with the physical world and focus on delighting in life itself, you’ll realize that these moments are why we exist. If you don’t delight in it, your life could be so much better. Taking pleasure when there’s nothing to take pleasure in outside of being alive is to sit on the white shores of eternity, taking in the beauty of a perfection outside your comprehension. This is the state of mind that only the sabbath rest of the creator can give you. This is the rest that nothing can ever take from you if you will simply take the time to go there.

Just stop. Turn it off. See where the default state of your heart and mind is. Discontent? Try God. Try eternity. I hope to see you there.

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