Heat waves rise off simmerin’ streets, shimmerin’ in the sun
Gotta be 99 degrees or more out there
It’s been this way now for seven days, can’t take another one
Gotta get some rain into this dusty air
Weary faces search the sky; they sigh and complain
Others praise the One who sends the sun and the rain
And your people worship your name
With their whole hearts, without shame
And your peace comes down like rain
On your people once again
People so dry, cryin’ for water
Sun burnin’ down hotter and hotter
They look to the sky with hearts all aflame
They lift up your name
And peace comes like rain
Thunderheads bloom on the horizon in the fiery noon
Grey shadows soon cover all the dry, cracked ground
Thunder rolls as lighting bolts light up the afternoon
Trees toss their heads, rejoicing in the sound
The smell of rain rides the wind, the clouds let down their hair
Grateful faces smile again as rain fills the air
And your people worship your name
With their whole hearts, without shame
And your peace comes down like rain
On your people once again
People so dry, cryin’ for water
Sun burnin’ down hotter and hotter
They look to the sky with hearts all aflame
They lift up your name
And peace comes like rain
I’ve heard all creation groaning, travailing in pain
Awaiting the day your children are revealed
Yet even now, I hear your Spirit pouring out the latter rain
Giving life to seeds you’ve planted in your field
To bring to harvest fruits of righteousness
Precious fruit that shall remain, it will remain
And your people worship your name
With their whole hearts, without shame
And your peace comes down like rain
On your people once again
People so dry, cryin’ for water
Sun burnin’ down hotter and hotter
They look to the sky with hearts all aflame
They lift up your name
And peace comes like rain
Peace comes like rain
Peace comes like rain
(This is an essay I wrote for the 2017 Colorado Christian Writers Conference. A version of this essay geared to writers won the conference’s writing contest that year in the Published Writers-Prose category.)
What would you say if I told you God wants you to be disillusioned? Or even that God himself wants to disillusion you? And that he wants me, you, all of us, to bring about a whole lot of disillusionment? It sounds cold, uncaring, mean, cruel, even hateful.
But for a Christ-follower, that’s the calling. The Spirit of God opens our eyes out of the vast sleep of the world, out of the dreams born in darkness, the delusions of human grandeur, the illusions of this upside-down world. And he begins to show us how he sees us, how he sees the world, how everything must be turned upside down in order to be set right side up.
The Light of the World who, in his earthly life, was accused of being a magician, an illusionist – he shines a light on the illusions people spend decades leaning on; he kicks them out from under us, then catches us when we fall. And the act of falling into God’s arms, letting our hearts be caught by the great fisherman of Galilee, is the truth that opens our eyes and starts the process of freeing us from the world’s layer upon layer of illusion – the process of glorious disillusionment.
And the more disillusioned you become, the happier you are. The more the joy of disillusionment sets in, the more the wild taste of freedom on your tongue is spoken out to the world. You delight in being among the last who are first, numbered with the least who are greatest – the disillusioned fools who are full of light. You delight in leading others by serving them – serving up fresh words of truth that will help others become disillusioned like you. You prospect for the fool’s gold the world treasures, and exchange it for real gold, the treasure God stores in the hearts of all who love truth.
You recognize that your job is to speak words that rob people of their strength and restore them with the weakness of truth, not heavy like their old egotistical arguments, but lighter than air, light as sunlight on spring leaves. Your assignment is to steal the junk food right out from under the faces of hungry people, yank the food right out of their mouths, and feed them the richest, tastiest, most nourishing cuisine they’ve ever imagined. And you do it all with a grin on your face, like a burglar who breaks into people’s homes to pile riches on their floors.
You’re a trickster for God. You’re a warrior who uses the sword of the Spirit to carve God’s initials in the walls of people’s lives. You’re a tattoo artist who decorates people’s skin with the words of life. You’re a hunter who finds the prey and gives them new life in the forests of heaven. You’re called to pull rabbits out of hats, to give God’s answer to questions people haven’t known how to ask. You’re called by the Master to be a master disillusionist. Congratulations! You’re a fool for Christ, a victim and perpetrator of God’s own work of glorious disillusionment.
Drawing Near
“Draw near to God and he will draw near to you.” (James 4:8a)
God wants us to come near to him. And most people who believe in God, in some form or another, want to get close to God. In fact, I believe there’s a cry deep in the heart of every person who ever lived to come as close as possible to God—to embrace God and be embraced by God. Most people aren’t in touch enough with their own heart of hearts to be aware of that desire except in an extreme situation, when they are stripped down to their most basic self and its most basic needs and desires.
Those who seek God, whether Jews, Muslims, Christians, or whatever, have different ways of worshiping—different ways of drawing near to God. Reading and meditating on scripture, repentance, confession, prayer, singing, fasting, kneeling, chanting the names of God or shouting “Praise the Lord! Glory to God in the highest! Blessed be your holy name!”—all these, and many more, are ways people use to try to draw near to God.
We can follow some kind of liturgy, or just follow our hearts in seeking God. We can use religious language—“Oh Lord our God, we beseech thee by thy mercies, that thou wouldst bend the heavens and pour out thy redeeming grace upon us, etc., etc.”—and I’m sure God honors those prayers as well as the “OhGodOhGodOhGod” kind, or just “HELP!!!” We tend to judge others we think are not as spiritual or holy as us, based on their chosen form of worship. People look on the outward appearance; God sees the heart (1 Samuel 16:7).
But have you ever had a little child come to you, look up at you, raise his or her arms, and then climb up in your lap? He doesn’t have to say a word. And your heart melts as you reach out your hands to help her up onto your lap. Whatever you were doing, whatever weighty matters were on your mind—all those things just vanish at the opportunity to hold this beautiful little creature and be close to him. Time seems to stop as she looks in your eyes, as he leans his head against your chest.
I think that’s how God prefers that we draw near to him. And I think his response is the same: “Come up on my lap, sweet child, and rest with me. Let the world stand still awhile; you’re here with me, and that’s all that matters. Your hands hold tight to me, my arms wrap around you, and for this precious sacred time, when time touches eternity, we are one as we savor the love we have together.”
Of course, the child understands little if any of this. But it doesn’t matter, because what he or she knows is love, heart to heart, beyond words.
The closest thing I’ve found to this mutual human-to-God drawing-near experience is centering prayer. I don’t want to oversell it, so I admit it’s not always like that, at least from the human side. There are times in centering prayer when I’m feeling nothing, not sensing God’s presence, feeling tired and frustrated, bombarded with thoughts, feeling like I’m wasting my time, watching the clock, or even ready to throw in the towel, end the session early, and hope for a better time with God later in the day, or the next day. There are times of clinging feebly to one scripture, trying to see God in it, trying to connect with him, feeling like the cord doesn’t quite reach.
But that’s seeing things from the human side on a bad day. The illusions of this world can hide God from us, even when we’re crying out to him. He’s there, but we can be blind to his love and gentleness. That doesn’t change anything though. He’s still God and he still loves us.
As I’ve always said, people don’t usually see more than faint glimpses of God during centering prayer; it’s afterward, going through the normal daily routine, when we tend to see God’s hand in the little things of everyday life. It’s then that a scripture you hadn’t thought of in awhile comes to life right before your eyes. It’s then that you recognize that those twenty minutes you spent on centering prayer earlier in the day were a time of lifting your hands to God, and God reaching down to set you in his lap to spend time with him—a time of eternal sweetness unknown to your outer self, but cherished forever in your heart of hearts.
You can take the time to rest easy right now in the knowledge that God loves you, and that you don’t have to do anything to make that love happen or to keep it from going away.
The tongue is a fire, James tells us—a world of iniquity that sets our lives and our world on fire, and is itself set on fire from the fires of hell. That’s pretty strong language to use about a little piece of meat in our mouths, one we can’t live without. But James, the brother of Jesus, is absolutely right. He says nobody can tame the tongue (James 3:2-10). Lions and tigers and bears can be tamed (Oh my! Well, up to a point, at least), but you can’t tame your own tongue.
James was absolutely right. It’s only the Spirit of God that can tame the tongue, which is partly why, early in Genesis, God brought the confusion of different languages on those who were building the Tower of Babel. They thought they were doing something great, but they were just building their own kingdom, not God’s. So God showed them how their efforts looked to him: just a whole lot of confusion and self-righteous babble. And it was Holy Spirit who filled the waiting early Church with tongues of fire, enabling them to go from 120 people to 3000 in one day. Only God can tame the tongue. He even tamed the tongue of Balaam’s donkey to prove he could do the same for the rider.
But it’s not the actual literal tongue itself that’s the problem; it’s the false self—the self-made self—that tells the tongue what to say. The old nature has to express itself regardless of how it affects others. The ego has to build its kingdom, its own little Tower of Babel, with words. It’s the thoughts that come into the mind, spoon-fed by the self-made self, that won’t shut up so we can hear God’s voice and feel God’s presence in the silence. Biting your tongue won’t help. Getting your tongue pierced won’t make a difference. It’s the old nature that must be pierced, the self-made self that must be crucified. When Paul said, “I am crucified with Christ; nevertheless, I live, yet not I but Christ lives in me,” that’s what he meant: the true self, the God-made self, activated by Christ himself to live his life through us.
How do you get there? How do you get that voice in your head to stop? One way is to practice centering prayer. Spend time in silence with God, look beyond the voice, look past it to the horizon, to the God who is there even though you can’t see him. When your attention drifts, you use a name of God to help you refocus your attention on him; you express your love for him with that one word, and you forget everything else. And that kills the old nature, the self-made self, one little thought, one little word, one little tongue-byte at a time. Do that for twenty minutes, preferably twice a day, and you’ll soon begin to notice that your tongue is less likely to spew out nasty stuff.
The tongue is a warning light, a sensor that indicates your spiritual state at any given time. What’s going on inside of you on a spiritual level? Is there confusion? Anger? Deception? If your tongue is spouting curses, lies, or gobbledygook, that tells you it’s time to submit it to the Holy Spirit’s tongue tamer: silence before the everlasting God. He doesn’t scream “Silence!” at you like the Wizard of Oz. He’s gentle and kind, but he’s the real deal, not a phony. He’s worthy of worship, and times of worship and praise provide another way of taming the tongue. But perhaps even more than worship, God is worthy of our silence before him. And he uses it most effectively: silent adoration of God in his holy presence is one of the most important ways the self-made self is put to death.
Whether it’s a contemporary worship band, a recording of a choir and orchestra performing a Latin-mass hymn, or just a few unaccompanied voices singing a well-known praise song, contemplative prayer sessions can be enriched by a short musical introduction. I have seen this sometimes as a blessing, more often as just an ordinary, it-is-what-it-is kind of thing.
One recent morning at such a prayer group, I felt a little annoyance when the recording usually used to start our prayer time came on a bit loud. I asked God to tell the group’s leader to please turn down the volume on the recording. The way God responded to that prayer was beautiful. I heard his whispered encouragement asking me to listen as if I’d never heard the song before (although I had, many times), and to practice in-the-moment listening, as if with the heart of a child.
I felt the Spirit’s joy in the invitation. Laying aside my annoyance, I accepted the challenge. As the song continued playing, I experienced the music as a fresh breeze scented with rain, apple and honeysuckle blossoms, and many other scents, wafting into the room. That grace-laden zephyr was gradually accompanied by the songs of many birds, the rushing of a great river giving way to the deep drumming of a distant but immense waterfall, and the hushed amens and “yes, Lord” affirmations of many humble, worshipful voices.
I heard all this in the Spirit, and I doubt that anyone else in the room heard it that way. It was a special, beautifully gift-wrapped reminder to me of how God can turn the ordinary and mundane into the magical. The song led into a time of relaxing in the sweet Spirit’s rest, a time of being nourished by the presence of God like a baby at the breast. The peace of that lullaby echoed through the silence of centering prayer, the scripture meditation and quiet discussion that followed, and on into the rest of the day. I’m sure I’ll hear that lovely canticle in the future—it’s used often with this group—but never as just a common, everyday thing again. That’s one prayer I’m quite happy to say God did not answer!
Okay, I’ll try to keep this as simple as possible. A “duh” beat is the fourth note in groups of four sixt eenth notes, counted as 1e+a 2 e+a 3e+a 4e+a, with th one of two things (but not both at the same time, fortunately).e “+a” pronounced “an-duh.” An “uh” note can be
12/8 is an amazing time signature. (Actually, they’re all amazing; saying one is my favorite is like saying which of my legs is my favorite.) But 12/8 a good example of how insanely complicated rhythm can be. Because 12 is divisible by 3, 4 and 6, it's possible to be playing in 3 and 4 and 6 all at the same time! Sounds crazy, right? But jazz, blues, R&B, gospel, and some types of rock music all depend heavily on 12/8 time.
Just how complicated is rhythm, Mr. Gary? Isn’t it just a matter of counting to four? Well, yes, when you first get started. So is a bug, when you first see it: it’s just a round thing with legs. But the more you examine it , the more complex it becomes. Same with just about everything in nature, for that matter. And rhythm is part of nature! From tummy-rumbles to earthquakes, from the tides to the seasons and the earth’s orbit around the sun that causes them, life is full of rhythm.
Welcome! If you're curious about drumming, well, I'm all about drumming. (And a few other things.) in this blog I’ll be exploring various aspects of rhythm and drumming. Warning: rhythm is very complicated! But it’s also a whole lot of fun.
A Time For Love

Woman feeling free in a beautiful natural setting.
In the time of shining love
You will walk upon the sky
Like the moon that hears above
The enchanted tide’s reply.
There will be a time for you
In the void that lies beyond
When the mountains of your fear
Melt to nothing and are gone.
Then the fantasy of bliss
Will be fantasy no more
And the dream you feared to dream
You’ll awaken to explore.
So may every seed you sow
Be a cherished work of art
And may all your efforts glow
With the love inside your heart.
1973
To label it
Is to table it
Fable it
Unstable it
Disable it
And to name it
Is to claim it
Blame it
Shame it
All-the same it
But to let it be
Is to leave it free
For the winds of the mind
To someday find
And carry it homeward
Undesigned
To you