After the storm

It might have been Ben Lovett from Mumford and Sons coming up on stage last night to thank the artists who had performed at Space, as a part of the Communion tour. Some of the music was heavy. Too heavy. The lament of disconnection, search, anger, passion, loss, and ache - was palpable. Which, for some reason, after the show had me thinking about the weight of the angry Psalms - to their credit they were honest - and then meditating on how anger unchecked just leads to isolation. Which of course, then had me considering the place of the imprecatory Psalms..

  

Quiet rivers

I came up with this improvisational piece on piano, some kind of meditation. I was thinking of places where we've fallen and hurt ourselves, along with our own imperfections. Meditating on a personally painful situation, and new beginnings. Brought me peace while improvising through it. 

Words

Interesting story I came across:

There once was a little boy who had a bad temper. His father gave him a bag of nails and told him that every time he lost his temper, he must hammer a nail into the back of the fence. The first day the boy had driven 37 nails into the fence. Over the next few weeks, as he learned to control his anger, the number of nails hammered daily gradually dwindled down. He discovered it was easier to hold his temper than to drive those nails into the fence. Finally the day came when the boy didn’t lose his temper at all. He told his father about it and the father suggested that the boy now pull out one nail for each day that he was able to hold his temper. The days passed and the young boy was finally able to tell his father that all the nails were gone. The father took his son by the hand and led him to the fence. He said, “You have done well, my son, but look at the holes in the fence. The fence will never be the same. When you say things in anger, they leave a scar just like this one. You can put a knife in a man and draw it out. It won’t matter how many times you say I’m sorry, the wound is still there.”

The little boy then understood how powerful his words were.