Is It Well?

If it was, how would we tell?

Upcoming first release of d’Vine Family Band. :)

Dear Vine-lings 

The lore (paraphrased from memory) of the hymn “It Is Well” is something like this:  A rich European dude loses his fortune and volunteers to head on over to the new world through an old-school work away program.  He needs to wrap up his affairs and sends his wife and family on the boat before him, but tragedy strikes and the ship sinks.  Now the lad is truly at rock bottom and, as the tale goes, when they are in the exact place (though…how would they have known back then?) that his beloveds drowned he whipped out his journal and wrote the lyrics.  I like it, although the songwriter in me would hazard a guess that maybe just the phrase “It is Well with my soul” popped into his head and the verses came the next morning.  That’s how songs always present themselves to me anyway.  

It has been the strangest and greatest honor to serve as the primary musical minister of our little congregation for the past…. Oh how long has it been?  I know it’s been about two years on the dot since I first set foot in the place and my life began to rapidly change.  Days before I was invited to this church I was in my bedroom screaming into a microphone an EP titled “The Collapsing Myth of G*d the Absent Father.”  I was in a tremendously dark place, and I have no problem admitting that I was struggling rather graphically with suicidal ideation.  The month of September is national suicide awareness month, that isn’t what this post is about, but I can’t help but make an acknowledgement that it’s ok to feel that way and it’s especially ok to ask for help.  Perhaps the segue from that back to the subject at hand is that the simple (but very difficult to practice) belief that “It Is Well” served as the final antidote to prolonged droughts of hopelessness.  I say prolonged because I am still prone to a low tide of despair and the passing cloud of “maybe it would be better….and everyone would be better off….if I didn’t exist.”  I figured becoming a pastor would do away with that completely but the honest truth it has just added another layer of complexity.  Am I still allowed to feel this? I am not a hope salesman.  I’m not even sure in any logical way that hope is the best way to live a life.  In the words of my dear friend Levi “hope is the heaviest thing we have to carry”.   I feel less and less sure of any intellectual certainty, and am hitting confusing layers of situation and self that are asking the question “can you relax in this?”

I love an underdog story.  I recently obliged to joining a fantasy football league and drafted basically all Jaguars players.  I’m sure I’ll be out $25 in a few months.  It’s nice to believe, however unlikely, that the little guys will have their day in the sun.   I really believe that for this community, although lately the odds seem stacked against us.  We are an admittedly unorganized bunch.  Religion, spirituality, truth….none of these things really demand books and buildings.  None of it can be pinned down, it lives in the heart of the individual (the heart of G*d).  We’re a bunch of misfits,  a family of oddballs that found each other in the crumbling (literally) structure of an old movie theatre.  It’s been raining for a few days and there’s water coming in everywhere.  The sanctuary, right over Don our accountant’s desk, under the awning we hang outside, over the mainframe electricity and internet for the building, and alarmingly right over my desk with all my fancy music equipment.  We remain underfunded, and unsure, and huddled together under a white banner of surrender.  No tablets or commandments, no clean cut vision statement, just a community of humans with different experiences and beliefs coming together to hang out.  All giving money and energy to keep a thing alive.  I sat with Bobby after everyone had left today and we talked enthusiastically about all we’d love to see change and shift and grow.  We returned again and again to the reality that if we have to close up shop tomorrow (which seems a strange possibility) that we would be eternally grateful for these few years together. I am so honored to see the man’s character when no one is around.  He loves this place, and these people, in a deeper way than any of us can really see.  He’s given everything to keep it going, and if it all closed tomorrow I don’t think he’d carry a bit of bitterness toward us for not rallying around him or anything like that.    He helped me make art for that EP I created two years ago, crying out to G*d for help from my sorrow and addiction.  He invited me, at great risk (because I’m…well…slightly crazy) to not only be a part of this community but to help lead it.  He listened and loved instead of preaching or correcting.  He was the very hand and word of Christ in my life.  He showed me how to relate to a G*d that is gentle, fatherly, and above all friendly.  I am eternally grateful. 

I will never forget, early last summer, when He finished one of his messages with a poetic rendering of the Lord’s Prayer (which is now our weekly liturgy).  I left that service in awe, and deeply inspired to lend my own creativity to re-writing (healing) the hymns and scriptures that shape our faith.  It’s no secret that so much damage has been done under the “Christian” banner, and it was easy for me to hate the church, to hate christians, to hate the G*d that I had been taught.  I really believe so much of it to be a misunderstanding, that there is no evil and cosmic “THEY” at the helm of the mega-church capitalistic empirical Christian movement who maliciously hi-jacked Yeshua’s message of peace for their own profit.  I’m sure there’s been some seemingly devious moves along the way,  but I (against all odds) actually do believe in the intentions and the heart of all the “Christians” who have carried this idea forward over the centuries, however poorly.  So that week,  with this song, I began what I hope to be the real work of my life, which is creating songs that carry the cosmic Christ consciousness forward.   Songs have such amazing power, they imprint on our hearts far more easily than lectures.  That is why, as a worship leader, it is my highest focus to ensure that we are not singing shame and separateness over ourselves.  I hope you are comforted by the words of this hymn.  It’s not that there’s something errant about the original.  There’s truth everywhere you look.  The last lines are not a typo, I’m inviting you into a leap of faith.   That beyond all your individual suffering and joys, beyond all preferences and specificities, way deep down in the silent chambers of your heart there is something worth contacting.   You might call it your “soul,”.  Perhaps soul transcends uniqueness.   Maybe “soul” is a thing we all share, wether we have any awareness of it or not. In that space, all is already well.  In that great silence, eternal joy springs up abundantly.   There is no action you could take that would eternally bar your entrance into that realm, but there are behaviors that add obstacles to the path.  The good news, the gospel….is simply this.  You don’t have to do anything to be accepted into this kingdom of peace.  It is already within you.  You only need to grow still enough to hear it whispering, to follow your unique voice’s path into your sliver of spirit.   It’s here, now, wether you feel it, see it, sense it or not.  May we all continue to remind each other.  May we find the words to encourage one another that it’s there.  May we join in song, in love, in action.  May we rest in the peace that can not be understood.  May we know we are loved.    May we trust one another.  May we become a choir rather than a concert.  May we become a garden rather than a grocery store.  May we be a family, much more than a social club.  

Sincerely,

Pastor Corey

LYRICS:

Your peace is a river the ever-present Way
More joy than the ocean could hold
Whatever happens, your silence consoles
It is well, it is well with my soul

It is well with my soul, It is well with my soul

Though shadow should surface
And suffering will come
I rest in the one thing I know
That Christ is not absent
From my darkest moment
His light guides the way for my soul

It is well with my soul, It is well with my soul

My tendency to live life lost in anxious thought
My sense of separateness from the whole
Melts in the presence of G*d (Here & Now)
Holy moment of ease with my soul

It is well with my soul, It is well with my soul

Oh source of the radiance
Illuminate our sight
Let your love keep leading us home
Free from illusion, reborn into oneness
It is well, it is well with our soul

It is well with our soul, It is well with our soul