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November Psalm

November 29, 2017 — 1 Comment

November 2017 has been hard on some people in my life, and many more I don’t know. My beloved Uncle Bill died, leaving my dad the only surviving member of his immediate family. A few days later my sixth grade teacher who was also my friend’s dad died. And just last night I heard the news that another friend lost her mother. All of this as the world around me died too; leaves crumbling to dust, humans gathered for prayer in churches and mosques destroyed by guns and bombs aimed by other humans.

I wrote this song in the midst of all that loss, all that death. Which is why, I’m sure, the song insisted on quoting the Song of Songs, “love is as strong as death.” I’m going to keep believing that, and aiming to live like it’s true.

Night falls in the city

All the little creatures scurry home to bed

I’m out on the sidewalk

Rehearsing all my hopes in humankindness

Cold November comes again

I hold my candle in the wind and feel everything breathe

Trees lean over houses

Stripped and swaying in diminishing dreams

I’m barely believing

Keeping life like mindless habit

Old November sighs and moans

I drone a lullaby for wonder joy and innocence

Take heart, my soul, my mind

Take courage armed with love

For love is as strong as death, (as death) as death

I still carry the memories

Of the moments that I never understood

I’m not looking for answers

Just a knowing look from some other face

Scarred November’s not surprised

I feel familiar in her eyes

Hard November bides her time

I feel the weight of all the years

In her nonexistent tears

Old State New City, Home As I’ll Ever Be

October 5, 2017 — 2 Comments

It’s been a few months. Of leaving Colorado, loading all our stuff in storage and living in my parents’ basement, looking for houses in Saint Paul (we finally got the fifth one we offered on), getting kids launched into new schools, updating drivers’ licenses and vehicle registrations, you get the idea.

We’ve been moved into our new house for just over a month now, and we’re starting to get reacquainted with living in the Twin Cities, eleven years after we left it. There is so much going on here, and I’m excited to dig into it! Last Saturday we went to hear The Salt Vine and Annie Mack at the Aster Cafe; Tuesday night we sat in on a dress rehearsal for Sam’s Son, an upcoming musical; and last night Nathan and I biked over to Humboldt High School to hear the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra give a free concert for residents of our neighborhood – and then on over to Wabasha Brewing to sample beers from our most local brewery (we were not disappointed – Cathedral Porter and Darktober, mmm!).

I’m eager to start playing music here again. We’ve got some big renovation projects happening in our house that will take a lot of our attention for probably the first year we’re here, but I’m hoping to at least get out and hit a few coffee shops soon.

In the meantime, here is a very rough laptop recording of a song I wrote this summer. (We haven’t gotten the recording equipment set up yet.) You can glimpse our gutted kitchen through the doorway behind me! Reminds me a little of this video Nathan and I made years ago in the house we gutted in Owatonna.

Lyrics:

You’ll never recognize your life’s undertow

That subtle subcurrent stays hidden

Till what you should have done a long time ago

Meets what you are because you didn’t

Keep your eyes open wide

Wear your heart on the outside

Clowns and cynics clog our pocket scrolls

We search for angels on the airwaves

We trip and tangle in the threads of trolls

Ensconced in our respective enclaves

Reach your mind towards the light

Hold your soul through its dark night

Keep your heart open wide

Wear your eyes on the outside

Of all of this cursed and kissed existence

You may not feel it for a long hard time

But joy comes ever back around

And nothing beautiful stays in the lines

And demagogues eventually fall down

Raise your voice through the haze

Hold my hand through these dark days

Keep your ears open wide

Let the best songs inside

Of all of this cursed and kissed existence

 

All Too Heavy by Jen Bluhm

July 2, 2016 — Leave a comment

Friends. I’ve been posting my song for #songaweek2016 each week here on my blog. I joined that group at the invitation of my friend and fellow singer/songwriter – but not fellow Bloom 🙂 – Jen Bluhm. This song of hers from a recent week is so good that I wanted to repost it on my blog so more people could hear it. She’s posted the lyrics on Soundcloud, so if you click on the “Soundcloud” icon at the top right corner below, you’ll go to Soundcloud where you can see the lyrics.

 

Frankenchurch is Loose!

January 15, 2016 — 3 Comments

So the poet Rumi, the novelist Mary Shelley, the comedian Bill Maher, and the Apostle Paul all walk into a book . . .

It’s a book for, about, and by members of the Christian church, and it finds some helpful instruction in things each of these people (among others) have said or written.

The book is called Frankenchurch, and I cowrote it with my father Larry Tindall and our friend Matt Bissonette. It’s a unique conversation grown from a reading of Shelley’s classic novel Frankenstein and comparisons we three see with the story of the church.

You can buy the book or download samples for iBooks and Kindle; and the book is available in print version at Blurb.

Here’s a little sample quote from the book:

Many new-to-church people are excited about life, like the newly-made Victim [the name we gave to Frankenstein’s nameless monster], and eager to create a strong and healthy church, like the young and brilliant Victor [Frankenstein himself].

And many jaded church people, including former church leaders, cannot stand the sight of the church they had a hand in creating, the church that also had a hand in creating them.

All of us church folks are both Victor and Victim.

It’s been nearly five years since we began working on this book, when I was still living in Owatonna. Matt conceived the idea, and invited my dad and me to help him with the actual writing and publishing of it. The first drafts were drawn up in my parents’ backyard garden and around their kitchen table as we three met to talk through the bones of the book itself.

I have fond memories of reading Frankenstein on my front porch swing and writing much of the content of Frankenchurch in the early morning hours before the rest of my family woke.

My dad, ever the pastor-teacher and life coach, poured his mentoring care of others into the discussion questions and revisions and additions to the text of the book; and his business acumen into learning and entering the world of self-publishing.

It’s been a true team effort, and we’re excited to finally send our monster creation out into the world!

Dark and Dawn and Dag Hammarskjold

August 18, 2015 — 1 Comment

In the soundless depths before dawn
you are with me.
You are not only in the lightening of the sky
but also in the embracing dark of this room.
I wait for you
with you
and the morning
like the night
is faithful.

^What I wrote this morning,
and then
what I read:

“To preserve the silence within – amid all the noise. To remain open and quiet, a moist humus in the fertile darkness, where the rain falls and the grain ripens – no matter how many tramp across the parade ground in whirling dust under an arid sky.”

And also this:

“Is your disgust at your emptiness to be the only life with which you fill it?”

^Both quotations from Markings by Dag Hammarskjold