Letter to a Young Musician

You've chosen a noble vocation. Or, perhaps music has chosen you? That's even better. An invitation is preferable to a cold call.

At all times and in all ways, you must relentlessly pursue success. That is, as long as success is defined as increased skill and ability, imagination, humility, generosity of spirit, good humor, gratitude, innovation, love, and empathy, and becoming more like Jesus, not less. Your life as a musician is an invitation to become one kind of person in the world and not another, while leaving the world a better place than when you first arrived. It is a unique calling to live a seamless, integrated, creative life before God and the world, cultivating and enjoying the gift of music. Take it seriously . . .

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Art House North

A bit heart-numb and recovering from new-artist-itis, I remember the surge of joy I felt at first seeing the Art House — church and gardens — place cultivated.

Our initial conversations there left us feeling challenged and validated at the same time. It was as if something in the air transformed our weary stories of life on the road into stories of the blessing and stewardship of storytelling. I remember walking to the car after our first visit saying, ”I get it, I get it, I get it . . .”

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How Simon & Garfunkel Almost Saved My Family

My parents almost never went out alone together. They smiled giddily as they gave Jane instructions about dinner and bedtime. I paid attention. My father put his hand on my mother’s back as he opened the front door and ushered her out. Something important was happening in this moment, and it had everything to do with two fuzzy looking singers, one strumming a guitar worn high across his chest.

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Loving the Doldrums

Every sports team, professional and amateur alike, goes through peaks and valleys of success and failure, and what my Astros are going through is not unique or even unusual. Even in my childhood memory, I recall the last doldrums of the franchise in the late 80s and early 90s, but those losses and frustrations washed off as easily as grass-stained knees and grubby hands. In adulthood, in the time when you’re supposed to outgrow such things in a fit of sudden maturity, I find myself defending my fandom not only to denizens of other cities, but even to my own neighbors. That’s what happens when you love the worst team in the league.

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A Week Changed My Life

We drove an hour through clusters of adobe buildings to the college in Santa Fe. As we caught up on our lives over the past five years, I was paying attention to my friend, but also staring slightly slack-jawed at the Sangre de Cristo mountains as we pulled up to campus, fragrant with piñon, sage, juniper, and lavender — some of my favorite smells in the world. Those mountains were painted with hues of brown, gray, pink, orange; others in rich, brick red. The land offered a bleak, stark beauty; it cleansed the palette of my busy mind. Hummingbirds flitted about, and the New Mexico sky and clouds took my breath away.

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