A number of fine individuals have relayed their experience of UH3 to me in the past few days; it is remarkable the diversity of stories that are found in an hour of creative mass. We've mulled about the idea of having a formal opportunity or setting for attendees to respond and post what captured their imagination or disturbed them: the dissonance, the ambiguity, the harmony, the emptiness (perhaps this blog is as fine a place as any). I'd like to claim that each set piece was carefully orchestrated to lead everyone to the same elevated place, but we hardly know how the experience unfolds. And most often we find our best efforts miss, and our hacks are endeared.

My favorite moment was looking out at the crowd during the hymn, and seeing a dear friend cupping his hands as if receiving water from a fall. That made the evening for me. Musically, the hymn was my favorite moment as well, and as it goes, we spent the least time preparing it (many thanks to Phil Peterson of Grace Church for scoring that wonder). Fawning over Joel's piano playing also makes the personal annals; I rather fancy the perched position on the edge of the CP-70.

And the closing piece by Messiaen, featuring Austin's documentation of an anonymous baby, a dog and his master, and baristas behind the counter, still haunts me. As it relates to the theme of the night, I saw it as a beautiful honor to the minutia of our human lives; a peek into the simple delight that God finds in the details of his Creation.

Should any of you wish to share your experience or meanings please do so here, we'd love to know what you made sense of... nonsense, just as good.

I often wish I could get away from God; have a healthy, confident, atheistic worldview that allows me to go about my day without concerns of eternity or pain. On those disturbing, hopeful days I plea to God that he would do good things and do them directly so I could give him credit and be certain of his existence and his care--but as it goes, such light often comes through other people. Not how I would put my omnipotence to use.

A blue morning came around this week and my dear bandmate sent over a composition that haunted and stirred my heart, dragging me from the morass and towards wonder. The lyric and chorus pierce me: Do I really love God's thoughts about me? Are they precious? I can't say.

Here it is, Mark's latest composition (a home-recorded scratch track at that), now acting as the overture piece to UH3 "one three nine". I hope you're blessed as I was, and brought to a point of curiosity about a God that thinks lovely and myriad thoughts about you.

"From You to You"

Aiming for a bit more concrete thematic base, we opted to use Psalm 139 as our creative guide this go around. It is a right-weird psalm, as many go. One moment the psalmist is adoring his maker for the beautiful complexity of the self, the next calling for the smoting of the haters. I can feel for such schizophrenia; my faith(doubt) is marked with equally absurd bouts of calm and calamity. Even the Psalm narratives with tidy endings may have taken years to pass--I tend to glamorize the tragedy of the ache and rush to God's deliverance. If we're honest, God doesn't always come through for us. Not all our stories have concise and true endings.

Psalm 139 offers much to play with regarding the intimacy and complexity of our being, and it seemed like a fine follow-up to our previous theme of hiding--oh the wonder of such fractions and nuance to who we are. We're even reading up on fractals (that background image currently adorning the site counts as one--I know, sexy). I often despise the complicated abilities afforded us humans; I wish that life were easier and the world less complex. We could just as easily been created like fish or cattle--not capable of much good or ill (the scope of my bovine theology will have to wait for now).

The musical material as well, is following the theme of nuance and intimacy. It is, to date, the most complicated and dynamic music we've written. We expect to do some of the program without much amplification, letting the acoustic instruments play within the splendid acoustic treatment at Kane Hall.

Fractals will also make there way into the visual installation. I could explain it here, poorly, but that would ruin the fun.

Perhaps we will be honored with your company...
1 Nov at Kane Hall (Univ. of Wash.)

This blog post has been a long time coming. I have meant for sometime to share this poem that was penned by my friend Amanda Chan for UH2. It was cut the night before the program and the way it went down and the way my communication of it came across was very hurtful to her and shaming. It's also ironic because the title of the program that season was "don't go hiding" and the cutting of the poem has indeed sent her and some in my life into hiding.

When I first read the poem, from knowing her personally I was just amazed by her honest communication, transparency of her own story and faith and the poem's clear call to not give up on beauty, hope and love and not to bury the faith of others. We fuck it up all the time, but God's love is still there - still perfect.

The church I work at has this slogan so to speak that we've put out and it goes like this:

What if there was a community that:
*promotes the arts
*is honest about the church's mistakes
*creatively reclaims the ancient traditions of the church
*trusts that the message of Christ is inclusive and liberating
*sides with the poor and marginalized
*loves a good BBQ

Man, I have already failed to do a lot of things on this list! but I still aspire to it. Especially wanting to be a living part of a church that is honest about mistakes both past and present, siding with the marginalized and the poor, trusting that Christ's message is specifically for people of all sexualities, races, genders, occupations, abilities, intelligences, languages.... and therefore relevant to all people. Christ help me! I both fail to remember what is true and I fail to love like you.

Amanda, I told you this before--this poem is lovely. As I reread it I am again struck by how gripping and beautiful each statement in it is. And, in the light of our journey the last 4 months it rings even more true to me. Your voice is a beautiful thing and I am sorry we silenced it.

And here it is, Amanda's unedited poem (which includes two lyrical references from the program--"Love is Perfect" and Sufjan's "Oh God, Where Are You Now?").

She's Hiding
by Amanda Chan

Beauty's not lost
She's hiding

in the cracks and crevices inside us
peering out from the shell of
those places we know are incomplete

like the sandcastle
built by a ten year old
that's more sand
than castle

he was afraid to take away
from the ocean
the only substance that keeps it alive

instead he made it from the footprints of parents
too scared to admit they don't know each other anymore
as they walk along the shoreline

so now he has a crumbling castle to show mom and dad
he points to it and says
look, I made a home for us to stay in
because our house doesn't hold laughter anymore

Love is not lost
She's hiding

from the hands of a father
whose only version of touch
is through his fists

from the eyes of a mother
who sees only shame
when she looks at her lesbian daughter

from churches
and their bastard gods
burying the faith
of humans not strong enough to push back

Hope is not lost
She's hiding

But I don't know where to find her

Where is this kingdom of heaven
on earth
that can draw out these muses for the ones crying
Oh God, where are you now?

I want to see Beauty
in the falling down buildings
that hold memories
big enough to make us Stop.
and wonder who built them

I want to feel Love
from a man like Fred Phelps
as he helps a gay man
when he realizes they are people too

I want to hear Hope
in the voice of my girlfriend
as she sings
in a church I never thought she would enter again

We are hiding
from ourselves
and each other
because it is not safe to be exposed
but we cannot go hiding

there are moments:
beautiful moments
charitable moments
hope-full moments
when we can come out and say
here it is
my one love
it's not perfect
sometimes I fuck it up
but here you are
my one love
you're quite perfect

I am a songwriter. The songs that I write have basically three things: rhythm (I got that), melody, and words. These come together in an unpredictable fashion and… behold: songness. But about the words.

I have received a lot of feedback over the understandableness (or lack thereof) of the words at the last two Urban Hymnal events. We like reverb. We like playing rock songs in large, cavernous, acoustically messy holy spaces. We don’t believe that the music simply serves the words, but rather that the words are a part of the music. We also labor and sweat over every syllable and how it should sound, let alone the words that those syllables are a part of. The lyrics are significant. So if you can’t understand them have you missed it? Well, I think the “it” that we’re hoping for is something so much deeper than a head-understanding of the meaning of words and phrases.

Sigur Rós comes quickly to mind. Part of Urban Hymnal’s existence is owed to a trip Zadok and I made to Austin, TX to see said band. Financially unwise. Artistically and spiritually inspirational. Both of us left the concert having felt like we had encountered God in worship through this band that sings in a made-up language--when they are not singing in Icelandic (which might as well be made up). So clearly the impact on us had nothing to do with their words… or at least our understanding the words. I was moved. I know I am not alone as many of you have said things like “I worship to Sigur Rós.” Is this what the apostle Paul meant when he spoke of “groans that words cannot express?” Would Paul like Sigur Rós?

Rock shows in cathedrals are acoustic nightmares… and we love them. But should we print the lyrics? Our fear is that everyone’s faces will be buried in a piece of paper and miss out on all the visual pieces happening around them. Or that they will be so focused on understanding the meaning of the lyrics that they’ll miss out on their soul being moved. But I want you to hear lines like “dressed as a field, fed as a bird” {Zadok} because that sticks in your mind in the best way. So I’m asking for help. Print the lyrics? Sing in Latin? Not sing at all? Groan loudly? Oh help.

I'm quite proud of the narrative and progression of our last program, something not often found in Protestant music/worship. I think they call it liturgy or something; I am so low-church it is practically gutter. Two hours before doors I was frantically ringing up my high-church friends and soliciting them for incense and other sensual miscellany, as if they keep jars of myrrh in their glove compartments. Next time perhaps.

Our hope has always been to combine elements of both high and low church, and as well, offer something found in neither such as volume. Yes, we know, this last one was loud. The music is generally of the rock genre, which is supposed to be loud so we may not be apologizing for volume anytime soon. It is oh so quiet at times too. There is something liberating about setting up a rack of amps in a cathedral. If St. James will have us, we'd love to fill that immense space with layers of synths, guitars, and strings. Also, for the Deaf, volume is required to feel the music. What a fascinating experience that must be: to see the words and ideas signed out, the pianist pounding away on their console, and to feel synchronized waves of vibrations.

As always, we'd love to hear about any other elements you think would fit the next program.

From last night's event more than a few people had nice words for us, but the most common comment was "no offense, but the silence was my favorite part." None taken - it was mine too.

Honestly I had had a pretty late night the night before and not the calmest mind the day of--it was not until our silence point in the program that I finally felt my soul drop into place, catch up and be present and be aware that Christ is so present too. For me it felt like a fast forwarding frame that finally stops and starts playing in real time.

...And it makes me happy to hear so many say they needed that. My thought is, if we can get a couple hundred Seattleites to STOP just for 4 minutes and recognize that they NEED that... that we ALL need that... well that in and of itself is worth all the effort. However, you could have done that at home--and you can. Yes this silence is free anytime, but we avoid it like nothing else, maybe because we are afraid of what we will meet there...

I think sometimes I am both afraid I may hear something from God in the silence and also afraid I will hear nothing. So interesting that I can put expectations on what should be REST. Like I said before, the result of the silence for me was just my soul catching up with myself and then a real sense of being present with Christ and being glad to be there, knowing God was with me in all my tumult of emotion, in all the complexity that is my life and my world, and with all these other people in their worlds too.

What did you meet there in the silence?