Spiritual Belly

Today's post may be a little controversial, but bear with me. There's a game I play on my phone called Polysphere. Each level starts with a cloud of polygon shards, like shattered glass. The goal is to find the image in the shards. You rotate and twist the shards over and over until they line up and the image pops out. Very addicting. I think the discovery of truth is a parallel effort. Sometimes, you're given a thought or a statement that doesn't make sense or you disagree with. You can stop there with the disagreement and just call it wrong. Totally acceptable thing to do. Or you can view it as a learning opportunity. A chance to experience an idea that's not your own, to chew on it and look at it from different aspects with the goal of not condemnation, but understanding. Let's take a concrete example. The church I've been sitting in on is going thru the apostle Paul's letter to the church in Ephesus. Paul's goal is to provide instructions on beha...

Well, I did it. After almost 10 years of absence, I got back in the saddle and played music at a church service. It brought back all the memories and feels of why I liked to play music with a group. There definitely is some rust on the fingers, so it will take me a hot minute to get comfortable again, but the key thing is I did it. Those that know me know my story. I grew up involved in church music. I can remember my parents being a little surprised at our small church in Folsom where I led the kids group in a Native American dance from the piano. No cultural appropriation intended - it was just the only song I knew. Drums and piano are my main instruments and I love them. There's something magical about making melodies and rhythms with a group of people. Really hard to put into words, but it feels like I'm home when I'm playing with people. I feel like I can be my authentic self and help make the world a little bit more beautiful. When I was in high school, we went to a l...