Dear Bruce …Wash me away from the waters of indifference

Dear Bruce,

I have been really challenged by many of your writings and the call to embrace a different sort of life.  Like most people, I tend to view life from a day to day perspective and don’t really look at life in terms of doing anything particularly great.  And I certainly don’t look at life in light of eternity on a regular basis.

Trouble is, for me, I get so lost in the routine and trying to stay afloat, that I just cannot see myself actually creating, let alone working toward, a strategic plan focused on a new life.  I am good at business, and am fairly smart, but I have a sneaking suspicion that I am not living up to my potential or “calling” as you put it.

Simply put, I think I am at a point in my life where I do want something different, but I am not sure what it is or how to begin.  I just sort of know that I want something more.  I want to do and be something more.  So, how do I get there from here?

Ed

Ed,

Great letter.  Huge questions.  Real life reality.  Many, I believe, are right where you are.  Just today I ran into a friend who had moved away for some time and has recently come back to town with his wife and kids.  The guy, who has done very well in business for some time, is moving back in order to do “something different”.  The adventure he and his family are just starting is an admirable one, but a very tough one.  They are starting a church!  As he put it, “If I were not called to do this, I am not so sure I would be altering my life like I am in order to get after it.”  As I former church planter myself, I encouraged him with these words, “If you are called to it, you will be miserable not doing it.  If you are not called to it…RUN FOR THE DOORS NOW!”

What is important here is to point out the significance of life altering decisions which determine how we live, who we impact, and how our lives play out.  This guy and his family have no “need”, other than the need to do what they were  meant to do, to be on such a journey.  Business and the good life were plenty entertaining enough.  However, what they have learned, and what we all learn at some point, is that ease, comfort, and passivity can only last so long.  Eventually, we all stand before the proverbial mirror to our souls, and we are confronted with the stark reality that this is not all there is.  There must be more.  It is then that a desire to live a larger life begins to take shape.  Seems like you may be at that point.

So, on to your journey.  The only impulse, one which will last throughout the adventure and all its wonderful dangers, is a sense of being washed away (to keep with the Olympic water sport theme of the week) from something (your current approach to life) and to a new vision (a larger life).  If we are not caught up in the tide of God’s moving, it is doubtful that the swim to a better shore will amount to much.  When God is calling us to Himself and to certain visions for life, He captures us, He washes us away with the splendor of His plan for us.  Ask God for that kind of sense or leading for your life.  When you are so enamored with a life bigger than the one you can pull off on your own, you will feel washed away from the mundane daily sense of “So what?” and you will be swept up in the tidal wave of adventure God is calling you to.  Anything less leaves you open to the possibility of running out of gas midway through the swim and calling for a life preserver as you struggle for your life in the waters of indifference.

In order to help you a bit more I am attaching a section from my book, Soul Storm (www.soulstormsite.com) which addresses this very theme.  Read about the life and music of John Coltrane and allow yourself to be swept away in the drama of God’s divine plan for your life.

Enjoy the read.

Washed Away

John Coltrane was a jazz master.  His accomplishments have reached beyond the realm of jazz and his recordings are studied by musicians of every stripe.  If you have ever taken time to listen to his work you know what it is to be washed away, lost, for a time.  “Train” or “Trane”, as he came to be known, pushed the envelope in the jazz world.  Always looking for a fresh sound, an innovative creation, Coltrane was perhaps, the hinge point for change in the jazz world.  His music registers on a different scale from the many jazz greats that had gone before or have come since.  John Coltrane’s ability with the saxophone is legendary as is his ability to carry listeners beyond what they have known or experienced.  Trane’s greatest achievement as a musician, is the highly regarded A Love Supreme.  Coltrane, himself, knew almost immediately that this was what his entire musical journey was leading up to.  He had come to know also, how far away he was from truly living life with passion, understanding and insight.  Leading up to the creation of this work Coltrane’s story was like too many we have heard about.  Fame, travel, money, the pursuit of pleasure, had all led to a life of addiction and desperation.  As the winds blew over the years the storm within his soul grew in intensity.  Eventually, the addictions, brokenness and strife washed over him and He made a turn, a change.  Out of this change, one of the most important contemporary musical contributions on record was birthed.  A Love Supreme spoke to him immediately, and has arrested hearers every since. 

A Love Supreme was born over a five day period in 1964.  John Coltrane had been going non-stop that year and had recently seen the birth of his first son.  Taking a few weeks away from his brutal schedule and planning to spend time with wife and child, Coltrane got away from it all.  He took his wife and son to their new home and planned to kick back for awhile.  Then “the work” came calling.  Amidst the joy and expectation of having a newborn son, John Jr., came the birth of another creation.  This new birth would be the crowning achievement of his musical life and would demonstrate a new found desire to leave his old life behind in pursuit of the divine call to a higher life.  His new artistic creation would be a marvelous, poetic, heart stirring jazz tribute to God.  After those five days of seclusion in a separate part of the house John Coltrane came back to earth a different man.  His wife knew something different had taken place.  Ashley Kahn, in the introduction to his book on John Coltrane, titled after Trane’s most famous work, records Alice Coltrane’s remarks,

It was like Moses coming down from the mountain, it was so beautiful.  He walked down and there was that joy, that peace in his face, tranquility.  So I said, ‘Tell me everything, we didn’t see you really for four or five days…’  He said, ‘This is the first time that I have received all of the music for what I want to record, in a suit.  This is the first time I have everything, everything ready.”

This work, written as a tribute to God, became a best seller as soon as it hit the stores.  Its impact still reaches listeners today.  Musicologists, musicians, music lovers can tell of their first encounters with this amazing work.  Ashley Kahn, points to a few of the memorable recollections of first-timers,

The first time I heard A Love Supreme, it really was an assault.  It could’ve been from Mars as far as I was concerned, or another galaxy.  I remember the album cover and name, but the music didn’t fit into the patterns of my brain at that point.  It was like someone trying to tell a monkey about spirituality or computers, you know, it just didn’t compute.  (Carlos Santana)

I was at the top of the Grand Hotel in Chicago [on tour in 1987] listening to A Love Supreme and learning the lesson of a lifetime.  Earlier I had been watching televangelists remake God in their own image: tiny, petty, and greedy.  Religion has become the enemy of God, I was thinking…religion was what happened when God, like Elvis, has left the building.  I knew from my earliest memories that the world was winding in a direction away from love and I too was caught in its drag.  There is so much wickedness in the world but beauty is our consolation prize…the beauty of John Coltrane’s reedy voice, its whispers, its knowingness…Coltrane began to make sense to me.  I left the music on repeat and I stayed awake listening to a man facing God with the gift of his music.” (Bono, Lead Singer U2)

Just as Santana, Bono, and many others have gotten washed away to another place while listening to Coltrane’s work, so we too can be carried away by the Master’s purposes. 

The experience of Coltrane moving on from a life of addiction and despair toward something more birthed a musical achievement that will live on for time to come.  His willingness to hear, listen, and respond to God stirring him, moving him, and offering him a better life provided all of us something of beauty we can appreciate.  Had he chosen to stay where he was, living in what he had previously known, we would be without this great work.  And the same is true of us.  When we are brought to that “moment”, that fork in the road, that turning point, we must pursue the route that God assures us is for an enlarging of the borders of our heart.  Moving on and allowing God to wash away what we formerly knew is critical to our future.  Like Santana, though we may not at first see the patterns in the music, in time we can come to recognize the value of God’s plan.  In the wash cycle of God’s work, we find a life clean, fresh, new, and more desirable.  When the old is gone and the new has come we understand what Coltrane intended in his titling his glorious work A Love Supreme.  It is the Creator’s supreme love that gives our lives direction.  The supreme love of God is where we find a life worth living.  In the stirrings of our lives we ought to look for the hand of God seeking to lead us to a better place.  Washed away in the waters of His unending love we find ourselves carried away to new life.  Displacement of the life we once knew may be the very thing we need. 

Go get ‘em!

Bruce Smith

optimuslife.org

This entry was posted on 15. August 2008 at 12:45 and is filed under Dear Bruce. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.