The sun starts to slump
To lay her head down
On piney bristle pillow
The work is done, the work is done
Among rushes and thrushes
The creek is calling through
The Taskinas creek trickles
The salt subdues, the salt subdues
Climb the Crate Myrtle
I smell a Cedar’s scent
The York River whispers
The day is spent, the day is spent
(I meant to post this during the fall…. would have made more sense then, but better late than nothing at all)
The geese are all fleeing for the south
Chased by winter’s warring shouts
Driven by northern, swollen winds
The kind of cold that shakes you in your shins,
Too temperamental to endure
They seek a tepid temperature
They pause for formidable fishing
As the hunter’s hits are merely missing
Like scissors spinning past their weightless wings
They clamor, cackle, and call among other things,
Their flustering alarms beget more flight
As they course toward clouds with myriad might
They yell at the yellow yielded crops
Their squawks fell like dripping drops
Like the summer’s roaring rain
Resounds individually yet the same,
All birds of an identical feather
Wings beating till the end of never
The pink peach sun slips slowly behind pines
The sinking sky shares her heady harvest wine
She supplies the sweetness and delirious delights
And no one sips more than the fowl in their flight,
Their calls mingling in the moon’s waning stare
Singing their winter song for anyone who cares
This was one of my favorite songs I wrote in 2012. I have not done an audio recording of it yet, and I can’t say it’s really finished as a work of art. But I know part of my appreciation for it comes because I was fairly emotional in the moment when I wrote what I’ve written thus far. “I’m quick to accuse, but slow to repentance. Lord, may I not be slow.” I would like to constantly live in a place of extending forgiveness and asking/receiving forgiveness.
(special thanks to my good buddy Stephen Stonestreet who made this video for me when I begged him to stop at the New River Gorge on our mini tour last summer)
The young, yearning oak yields her green in the summer
Before her leaves fear the fall
I was like her both eager and cunning
But now I can see where I’m wrong
How many times must I ask for forgiveness
Before I can recognize my fault?
I’m quick to accuse but slow to repentance
Lord, may I not be slow
Lord, make me like some red leaf in the summer
To remind the trees of their call
The ground takes no prisoners no matter their beauty
Let Your wind sweep away us all
Last year for me began much like it ended for most people in the US- cold and fraught with exciting, uncertain potential. I had some idea of what to expect but no idea about the beauty and challenges that lay in wait.
2012 was the year I got engaged, and the year I got married to the most inspiring, incredible woman. It was the same year that many family members, friends, and acquaintances rallied around me to help me release my first full length album (and I am still blown away by everyone’s generosity). It was a year of touring with buddies and playing music in living rooms, cafes, parks, street corners, auditoriums, convention centers- all for strangers, God, and friends alike. Few journal entries were made as I found myself speechless or without words at the end of each day, each week, each month, and I still can’t find the right words to explain the whole year: for the beauty and joy of all of it.
Last year was also a time of struggling with my pride and my fear. Often times the challenges before me were not circumstantial, but they were mostly internal conflict with myself, with darkness, and with God. But it was an appointed time to be emptied so I could be filled with what I actually needed: the Love of God. This Love was demonstrated not only in personal, spiritual ways but through countless acts of tenderness and sacrifice of people who helped me get back up along the way.
I am in a deep debt of gratitude and love to every person (every one of you!) who has been a part of this chapter of my life. It would be impossible to repay the kindness and faith of all the warm loving people around Megan and I. Looking back on the year I see so many sunrises, sunsets, and the beautiful faces of people I met as well as people I know very closely. I see the faces of my family, my friends, and my exquisite bride. I see my Lord Jesus in every face, and I know I am not closer to him in proximity, but I feel closer because I realize more and more that He has been everywhere all along.
Sleeping on couches, floors, and everything else; traveling in country and out of country; talking continuously on a cell phone to book benefit events, concerts, and maintain a long-distance love friendship; three years of continual movement and opportunity including all 50 states- I now enter a brief stationary season for which I am grateful.
Maybe you are wondering what this next year will look like for you. Maybe you’re not into religion and maybe you’re not into new years resolutions or lofty goals. I would offer three thoughts for anyone: talk with God like He is in the room with you (because He is), listen to and love the people who are overlooked (because they are agents of God), and take MUCH BIGGER risks (because God is searching for faith in humans).
Thank you so much to every one of you, dear friends. May God shine on you, and Happy New Year 🙂
Isaac
ps My wife is incredible. But that’s not all. She has a program called Love and Scissors that teaches the trade of hairstyling to women and men coming out of sex trafficking. Check it out! LoveAndScissors.com
If you try to avoid stepping in poop by always looking down at the ground, then there’s a good chance you won’t step in poop… but you won’t see what’s all around you. If you’re looking at what’s around you then you might accidentally step in poop from time to time, but at least you saw the stars, the ocean, the mountains, smiles, and eyes.
Fighting for originality is like fighting to be the first person to ever have fingernails… it’s better to just be you, and the difference between you and everyone else will be obvious.
Hopefully not painfully obvious.
Sometimes I would like to say to God “change the world,” but then I’m not sure why He would have made human beings in a confined space with a limited amount of time unless He wanted us to do something with it! Sometimes His offered “safety” is solely His ability to console you and move you toward action in the midst of the most severe adversity, not to remove it altogether (though it wouldn’t be unlike Him to change everything for the better when we least expect it).
I think God is just as grieved as anyone when someone’s life is abruptly taken by another before their time, because I think He would prefer instead that people have the opportunity to lay down their lives for others and for Him. Although- this is just my opinion- I think He is even more grieved when people are given opportunities to lay down their lives in little ways but choose not to for the sake of their own safety. Oh God, protect us from self-preservation!
Here’s the lyrics to a song I wrote about Safety and Wisdom from God’s vantage point.
“Faintest Flicker”
Take your fruit from any of these trees
Not the one in the middle leave that one for me
But I give you the mountains, I give you the sea
I give you wisdom, but I won’t give you safety
I give you truth, I give you truth, I give you truth
Whose faintest flicker far out-flashes the brightest flame of fantasy
The best life lost is a life laid down
Not to be taken like some torn wedding gown
I give you my hands and I give you my feet
I’ll take all your frailty but I won’t give you wings
I give you truth, I give you truth, I give you truth
Whose faintest flicker far out-flashes the brightest flame of fantasy
©2012 Isaac Gill Music. All Rights Reserved.
When Jesus stands on trial at the court of the world’s curiosity will you be among the accusers demanding that He prove Himself with signs and wonders, will you be hiding behind the columns of indecision ambivalently watching His innocent face be spat upon, will you be standing outside by the fires of fad renouncing your faith in fear, or will you be standing with him, bloody hand in bloody hand, expectantly preparing for imminent death and resurrection?
Remember, He is coming back with fire in His eyes, and He is looking for faith on the earth.
If being a Christian means “Little Christs” and we profess to be Christians, insinuating that we already ARE like him, then why don’t we do what He did? He only had 12 disciples, all of whom abandoned Him the night He was betrayed by one of them, all of whom He forgave after His resurrection, all of whom suffered and died like He did, for others, for God’s glory.
Don’t make Christianity about anything other than Jesus. If it’s only the pursuit of doctrines, codes of conduct, theories of origin, and ideologies of heaven or hell then you might just denounce Him, because you were never really fascinated by Him, only yourself and how you could best prove yourself to you and others. Jesus doesn’t share His lovers with lesser idols. He loves the lost and the least likable. Those who love Him are best proved by whether they live and die like He did- preferring others, serving others, forgiving others, dying for others: living life as a love song to God. Any other Christianity is fake, and we as Christians should not be offended or afraid when the world, regardless the intent, attempts to hold us accountable to the truth we claim, the truth they might hope to see manifested in us.
“You’re familiar with the old written law, ‘Love your friend,’ and its unwritten companion, ‘Hate your enemy.’ I’m challenging that. I’m telling you to love your enemies. Let them bring out the best in you, not the worst. When someone gives you a hard time, respond with the energies of prayer, for then you are working out of your true selves, your God-created selves. This is what God does. He gives his best—the sun to warm and the rain to nourish—to everyone, regardless: the good and bad, the nice and nasty. If all you do is love the lovable, do you expect a bonus? Anybody can do that. If you simply say hello to those who greet you, do you expect a medal? Any run-of-the-mill sinner does that.
48“In a word, what I’m saying is, Grow up. You’re kingdom subjects. Now live like it. Live out your God-created identity. Live generously and graciously toward others, the way God lives toward you.”
Matthew 5:43-48
(The Message)
In spite of opposing evidence, I think most people will believe what they want/desire to believe and act accordingly, whether it is superficial versus actual right-living, comfortably ignorant ambivalence, or bold, indulgent evil. And there are some who are innocently, fervently seeking truth, and they will find it, regardless of the threat levels and anxiety of their present, hot skepticism.
However, my heart is broken for those who are skeptical because of the hurts or inconsistencies they’ve seen or experienced, and they have deliberately mislabeled their unbelief in God as a lack of scientific evidence, personifying Science with the same terminology and verbiage they once ascribed or could potentially ascribe to the Maker of science. Be real with yourself. If there is hurt, then there is hurt, and not actually a lack of evidence for God, rather a lack of evidence for love in all the places or people where you thought you might find God, who is Love.
If you forgive others then you will be forgiven. It is impossible to recognize God if you do not forgive people who are made in the image of God.
God does not shy away from violence, controversy, poverty, and brokenness. In these heinous subjects He can, through kindness, forgiveness, and mercy, prove that all people are wrong, and only God is right. Even the greatest and seemingly well-intentioned theologians and mystics were the enemies of God unless they asked for and shared forgiveness.
Sometimes I feel like a day doesn’t go by that I don’t wrongly judge someone or slightly lie about something whether to someone else or to myself and God. I am learning more and more that I cannot take myself very seriously even at my best, except for love and perfect love being something I’ll never fully attain in understanding or execution while I live in this body. And I’m anxiously ok with that, wanting very much to authentically contain and spill the very same love that floods my unconscious mind when I consciously think about who Jesus Christ was and is.
Jesus welcomed sinners and rebuked the self-pious. Jesus, friendly and wise and void of malice, greed, or lust, while being crucified by religious clerics called out to God, “Father, forgive them, they don’t know what they’re doing!” If there was a standard for forgiveness and mercy I think it would be that, not that He reluctantly murmured “I forgive them” or permitted some public pardon but that He lived it boldly and then died for it gladly.
And this is why I choose to believe that Jesus Christ is the full expression of God, and this is the lens through which I read the Bible. This is how I make sense of life when I am calm enough and quiet enough to try to make sense of it. Jesus Christ is the embodiment of Forgiveness.
SOUNDS + SILENCES 