It still feels a little sad on one hand to use AI to complete the songs and pre-songs I have been collecting for 13 years. At the same time, I recognize how much music I have been able to produce in just three weeks - 24 songs! (Not all of those live here, but most of them do). It feels like I was an artist who had only scrap paper and a pencil before, but now I have a supply of canvas and a set of paint so large I don't always know what to do with. But finally I can bring you my heart in full color. There are limitations, specifically some of my favourite songs that I have written melodies, lyrics, and chords for already, I just can't get AI to cooperate on. It won't obey chord progressions, and I both don't know what I want, nor how to explain what I want at times. 

Still, the bulk of my collection, in my musical naivety and easy fatigue, are words and rhythms without a song. It has been stirring to revisit my spiritual experiences from the past, especially when I was in a growth spurt right before tragedy reeled me back. In some ways I wonder if this journey is only for me, because maybe I need now the me that I was then. I would love for all this effort to challenge, grow, and comfort others, but even if not, here I am just rolling though my history. 

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My pastor used to frequently ask me “What's the Lord saying (to you)?”. To answer that, I have been considering how the church has spent so much time focusing on murder, adultery, and thieving in the lists of evils in the Paulean letters, but we seemed to have missed that things like dissensions, strife, and sects are in the same list. Sure, we have talked about the need for unity, but we haven't understood it. And I watched church split after church split of people determined to do things their own way, offended at God's own servants. And we have ignored the Paulean commands to remove the evil from among ourselves in regard to those who call themselves brothers, but continue in the lists of evil actions. This unity, I think, looks different than our human minds construct. Probably we need to forsake focusing on the ‘big tent’ unity, and start just looking at and running with Jesus. Whoever is looking at him, and running the same way, there the unity will be, unity in love, the unity that will testify to nations and bring in a harvest. I am not anti- “big tent” here in the sense of a vendetta against certain denominations - I am actually probably on the extreme end of progressively ecumenical - rather my admonishment is to those whose opinions have skirted away from Christ and shifted to their own preferences and opinions resulting in dissensions, sects, and strife. May the grace of God be poured on us all for our overcoming even these thing that seemed little to us. 

 For you were called to freedom, brothers, only the freedom not for an occasion to the flesh, but serve one another through the love, for all the Law is fulfilled in one word - in this: “You will love your neighbor as yourself”; and if you bite and devour one another, see that you may not be consumed by one another.    Galatians 5:13-15 (LSV)