DeadHead

The seat beside him was supposed to be empty.

The man in the pilot’s uniform took the empty seat beside me just as they closed the cabin door, and for one impossible second I thought he was the person I had killed.

Not because of his face.

His face was wrong. Too narrow. Too pale. Clean-shaven where Gordon had worn a short beard to hide the scar under his chin. The man beside me had no scar, no beard, no blood on his shirt, no look of surprise frozen forever in the dark pupils of his eyes.

But he had Gordon’s stillness.

That was what made my hands tighten on the armrests. The same awful quiet. The same way of occupying space as if the world had already happened and he was merely waiting for the rest of us to catch up.

He placed a black leather flight bag under the seat in front of him, buckled his belt, and turned to me with a small, tired smile.

“Sorry,” he said. “Almost missed it.”

I nodded because nodding was easier than speaking. My mouth had gone dry the moment he sat down.

Outside the oval window, rain slipped in bright threads down the glass. Blue runway lights blurred and trembled in the dark. Somewhere beneath my feet, engines groaned awake, deep and animal, and the plane gave a little shudder.

The man looked past me toward the window.

“Bad night to fly,” he said.

I forced myself to breathe.

“Are you flying the plane?”

He smiled again, but this time it seemed to arrive a second too late.

“Not this one.”

His uniform was dark navy, almost black in the cabin light. Four silver stripes on the sleeves. Wings pinned above the breast pocket. He looked like every pilot I had ever seen coming through terminals with coffee in one hand and the secret knowledge of weather in the other.

And still, for half a second, some ugly little part of me wondered how he had gotten there.

Not into the seat.

Into the uniform.

The thought came and went so quickly I almost missed it. But he didn’t. I knew he didn’t. His eyes shifted toward me, calm and dark and unreadable, and I felt suddenly exposed, as if the cabin lights had brightened just over my row.

I looked away first.

There was something wrong with him.

Maybe it was the rain.

Maybe it was the fact that no one had checked his ticket.

Maybe it was because the seat beside me had been empty all through boarding. I had watched it, prayed over it, guarded it like a miracle. No one beside me meant no questions. No accidental touches. No one noticing the mud on my cuffs or the bandage wrapped too tightly around my left hand.

No one leaning close enough to smell the smoke in my coat.

“I’m deadheading,” he said.

Read the rest of the story on Medium

#AirplaneHorror #atmosphericArt #DarkArt #darkFiction #deadhead #Deadheading #DeathAndJudgment #eerieIllustration #FictionWriting #ghostStory #GothicFiction #gothicIllustration #HauntedFlight #HorrorFiction #juneteenth #kmls #moralReckoning #murder #mystery #PeaceGrooves #psychologicalHorror #Racism #shortStory #StormyNight #SupernaturalThriller #suspense #ThePassenger #ThePilot

Visual Art Interpretation – My Hopes and Dreams for the Next Year

I began with an idea of drawing my age and it gradually morphed into a radiant, hand-made number filled not so much with tasks to accomplish as with the people, callings, loves, and practices that give me joy.

The bright red border and repeated golden lights give it the appearance of a theater sign or a carnival ride. They are a remnant of posters I used to make when I was a boy. Inside that celebratory outline, the words curve, turn, reverse, overlap, and require the eye to travel.

The words I placed inside my age—Sing, Play, Memories, God, Laugh, Journey, Pastor, Author, Husband, PeaceGrooves, Friends, Art, Church, Love, Woodcraft—are striking to me because so many of them are relational or creative. Author is near Husband. Pastor winds along the same road as Journey. PeaceGrooves circles alongside Friends, Church, and Love.

The Word I Did Not Write

After finishing the piece, I realized that I did not write health or healing anywhere inside it. Those things matter deeply to me, especially in light of some of the recent physical concerns and uncertainties I have been carrying. And yet, perhaps their absence does not mean they were forgotten. Perhaps I instinctively wrote the life I hope healing will allow me to continue inhabiting.

I did not write healing, but I wrote Sing-Play: the hope that my body and spirit can still release themselves into music.

I wrote Laugh: the hope for lightness, delight, and joy.

I wrote Journey: the hope that I can continue moving forward.

I wrote Husband and Friends: the hope of remaining present in love and relationship rather than retreating into worry or isolation.

I wrote Pastor and Church: the hope that I can continue serving meaningfully among people.

I wrote Art, Author, Woodcraft, and PeaceGrooves: the hope that creativity will continue flowing through me rather than being swallowed up by discouragement, exhaustion, or fear.

Perhaps healing is everywhere in this drawing without being visible. It is hidden beneath almost every word: Let me be wekHzll enough, free enough, encouraged enough, and alive enough to keep inhabiting these loves.

But perhaps the omission also tells me something tender and difficult about myself. When I think about the future, I often think first about what I can give, create, serve, love, and build. I may not always think first about what I need. This picture invites me to remember that somewhere in the glowing year ahead, there must also be room for my own care. I am not only the husband, pastor, artist, author, musician, friend, and creator. I am also a person who needs healing, rest, gentleness, and grace.

The Smear Between Author and Husband

One of the small accidents in the piece occurred in the space between Author and Husband. Water smeared the color there, and I had to cover it as best I could. I was mostly able to hide the mistake, though I know it happened.

That accidental smear now feels strangely meaningful. Author and Husband are two of my most intimate identities: the part of me that creates worlds and gives language to inner experience, and the part of me that shares an actual life in love and covenant with another person. Perhaps those two identities were never meant to be sharply separated. My writing rises from my lived relationships, from tenderness, memory, fear, faith, longing, disappointment, and love. And my creative life inevitably spills into the life I share with my wife.

The water touched the border between those words, and I tried to repair it. That is not a failure of the picture. It may be one of the most honest parts of it. Life does not remain perfectly inside the lines. The roles I care most about do not remain untouched by mess, vulnerability, or accident. Sometimes the colors run together. Sometimes I try to cover what went wrong. Sometimes a trace remains, visible mostly to me.

Yet I did not throw the picture away. I continued working on it. I allowed the imperfection to dry and become part of the finished whole.

Perhaps that is an image of grace. A life of grace is not a life where nothing ever gets smeared. It is a life in which even the smeared places can be incorporated into the beauty.

Church: Almost Illegible

I also noticed that Church almost looks like “Churgh.” It is there, but it is not the clearest or most immediately readable word. That, too, feels symbolic.

Church is deeply present in my hopes for the coming year. It is part of who I am, part of my calling, part of my relationship with God and with community. But church is not always simple or perfectly clear. It can be difficult to read. It can be beautiful and messy, life-giving and exhausting, sacred and profoundly human all at once.

In this picture, church does not appear by itself in a clean, isolated space. It is crowded into a circling path alongside other words: Love, Friends, Art, the movements of creativity and ministry surrounding it. That seems truthful. For me, church is not separate from love, friendship, art, imagination, service, or reconciliation. It is beautifully entangled with them.

The fact that the word may be hard to dicipher signifies that church is something I continue to believe in and belong to, though at times, it may be difficult to see clearly its formation.

The Shape of the Year

The large number itself is not simply filled in. It becomes a winding course. The words curve around turns and corners; some appear upright from one angle and upside down from another. To read the whole image, I almost have to rotate it, follow it, and let my eyes travel through it.

I do not know exactly how it will unfold. My hopes do not form a straight road or a neatly numbered plan. They form a brightly lit labyrinth. Something that appears upside down from one position may look different once I travel farther along the curve. Something that seems peripheral now may become central. Something disappointing may redirect me toward an unexpected opening.

This drawing does not say, Here is my plan to master the next year.

It says, Here is the glowing path I hope to traverse.

Music feeds ministry. Woodcraft feeds contemplation. Writing feeds faith. PeaceGrooves gathers together my imagination, my longing for peace, my love of play, and my desire to offer something meaningful to others. Marriage and friendship keep my creative life from becoming merely solitary. Church places my personal dreams within a larger body. God is not outside all these things, looking down upon them from a distance, but present among them.

My life is not a ladder climbing toward a single success. It is a winding, illuminated journey through many loves.

The Lights Around the Border

The repeated yellow bulbs around the border give the piece a vintage, celebratory feeling. They make the year look like something grounded in the past yet being announced: a show beginning, a stage opening, a bright invitation to enter.

There is something almost exuberant about it. I did not draw a quiet little calendar page or a restrained list of intentions. I drew my age as a symbol of hope. Music, laughter, love, friendship, art, faith, craft, writing, church, PeaceGrooves—these are not hobbies or decorative extras around the edge of life. They are among the things that make life worth living.

And yet the lights are not machine-perfect. They are hand-drawn. Each one is slightly different. Some are rounder, some rougher, some more irregular. The brightness of this coming year is not a slick commercial promise that everything will be perfect. It is the brightness I have carefully drawn around my hopes with my own imperfect hand.

The lights continue around the bends. They do not shine only along the smooth or impressive stretches. They follow the narrow turns, the dips, the places where the shape curls inward. The light does not abandon the complicated places.

What This Picture Says to Me

This is a picture of my hope not merely to survive another year but to remain fully myself within it.

I want to sing and play.

I want to laugh.

I want to remember.

I want to journey.

I want to love and be loved.

I want to remain a husband, a pastor, an author, an artist, a craftsman, a musician, a friend, and a dreamer.

I want PeaceGrooves not merely to exist as a project, but to become an expression of something deep within me: my longing to imagine, create, and make peace.

I want God not as an abstract religious idea floating somewhere outside my life but as a living presence woven among music, love, creativity, friendship, church, memory, laughter, and journey.

And perhaps beneath the entire picture is the word I did not write: wholeness.

Wholeness includes health. It includes healing. But it is larger than both. It is the hope that all these different names for myself will not compete with one another, break apart, or fade away, but somehow curve together into a single radiant life.

The smear between Author and Husband, the almost-illegible Church, the reversed words, the crowded pathways, the uneven bulbs, and the wandering design do not lessen the picture. They make it more honest.

My hopes for the next year are not cleanly arranged or perfectly protected from mistakes. They are handmade. They are entangled. They are vulnerable. They are colorful. They are imperfect.

And, Oh Yes!, they are still shining.

#anabaptist #Art #authorLife #Church #creativeCalling #creativeLife #discernment #Faith #Friendship #God #Grace #handmadeArt #Healing #hopesAndDreams #husband #illuminatedPath #imperfection #Journey #Laughter #Love #memory #mennonite #mixedMedia #Music #pastorLife #PeaceGrooves #personalGrowth #personalReflection #ReflectiveEssay #SpiritualReflection #visualJournal #vocation #wholeness #woodcraft #WordPressTags2027Hopes #Writing

Head and Feet Blues (SONG)

One of my favorites when Jeremiahs Run was still performing live.

Head & Feet Blues (Live) | Various Artists | The Belly Hymns Project https://kmls.bandcamp.com/track/head-feet-blues-live

Lyrics

This is a story about a man who split himself in two.
One part stayed the same the other just grew and grew.
One part stayed in one place, the other up and joined the ratrace.
He had his head in one place and his feet in another.

Head in one place feet in another. You got your head in one place, your feet in another. Your heart’s disconnected one way or the other. Head in one place feet in another.

The part that never changed was always true,
it was always old and the growing part was always new.
While one part was dying from entropy the other part was dying from too much speed,
Head in one place feet in another.

Head in one place feet in another. You got your head in one place, your feet in another. Your heart’s disconnected one way or the other. Head in one place feet in another.

I heard a story about a man who split himself in two.
One part stayed the same, the other just grew and grew.
I got to wondering when the story was through which part was me and which part was you.
Head in one place feet in another

Head in one place feet in another. You got your head in one place, your feet in another. Your heart’s disconnected one way or the other. Head in one place feet in another.

Song written October 27, 1998

#1998 #1998Song #Aging #albumCoverArt #alienation #alternativeMusic #artRock #disconnectedHeart #dividedSelf #entropy #existentialSong #growingUp #HeadInOnePlaceFeetInAnother #Identity #indieMusic #innerDivision #lyricalReflection #modernLife #Music #musicArtwork #oldSelfNewSelf #originalSong #PeaceGrooves #poeticLyrics #ratRace #reflectiveMusic #songCover #SongLyrics #Songwriting #speedAndStillness #SpiritualReflection #splitSelf #TheBellyHymnsProject

Instruction in Simple Contemplation

Inhabiting the Word until the Word inhabits us

Simple Contemplation is a way of reading Scripture not only with the mind, but with the whole person. It is especially suited to the Gospel stories of Jesus. Rather than standing outside the text as a distant observer, the reader prayerfully enters the scene, beholds Christ, listens, feels, notices, and allows the living Word to become present within.

This practice has deep roots in Christian devotion. It is often associated with Ludolph of Saxony, a fourteenth-century Carthusian monk whose Vita Christi — The Life of Christ — invited readers to meditate imaginatively on the events of Jesus’ life. Ludolph’s work deeply influenced Ignatius of Loyola, who later developed this kind of Gospel contemplation in the Spiritual Exercises. In the Ignatian tradition, imaginative contemplation is a way of becoming present in a Gospel scene so that one may encounter Jesus more personally and be moved toward love, discipleship, and transformation.

This is not fantasy replacing Scripture. It is Scripture becoming spacious enough for the soul to enter. The imagination is disciplined by the Gospel story. One does not invent a different Jesus; one allows the Jesus of the text to become vivid.

Simple Contemplation asks:

What do I see?
What do I hear?
What do I feel?
Where am I in this scene?
What is Jesus doing?
What is Jesus saying to me?
What is being formed in me?

The purpose is not merely to understand the passage, though understanding may come. The purpose is to abide. To remain with Christ. To let the story move from page to prayer, from prayer to presence, from presence to life.

How to Practice Simple Contemplation

Begin by choosing a Gospel passage. It is best to start with a concrete scene: the Nativity, Jesus calling the disciples, the healing of Bartimaeus, the woman at the well, the calming of the storm, the washing of feet, the crucifixion, the resurrection appearance on the road to Emmaus.

Read the passage slowly. Do not hurry. Read it once to become familiar with the story. Read it again to notice details. Read it a third time as prayer.

Then close your eyes, or lower them, and allow the scene to form.

Do not force it. Let it come gently.

Notice the place. Is it crowded or quiet? Is it day or night? Is the air hot, dusty, cool, damp? Are there voices nearby? Are there animals, stones, water jars, tables, boats, lamps, bread, nets, sandals?

Then, notice the people. Where is Jesus? What is his face like? Who stands near him? Who is afraid? Who is angry? Who is ashamed? Who is longing? Who is left out?

Then, place yourself in the scene. You may be one of the named people. You may be a bystander. You may be a servant, a child, a disciple, a skeptic, a sick person, someone in the crowd. Let your place emerge.

The practice traditionally uses the senses: sight, sound, smell, touch, and even taste. This “application of the senses” helps the passage become embodied rather than abstract. Ignatian contemplation often asks the person praying to enter the Gospel scene through the imagination and to engage Christ there in a personal, heart-to-heart way.

Once you are there, watch Jesus.

Do not rush to explain him.

Let him act.

Let him speak.

Let him be.

If words arise, listen. If emotion arises, receive it. If resistance arises, notice it. If nothing seems to happen, remain gently present. The point is not to manufacture an experience but to consent to encounter.

At the end, speak with Christ simply. Tell him what you noticed. Ask him what he desires to show you. Receive his gaze. Rest in his presence.

Then, return to the passage and read it once more.

Finally, carry one word, image, or phrase with you into the day.

Example: The Nativity

Read Luke 2:1–20.

Imagine the night. The road has been long. The town is crowded. There is no room. The child is born not in comfort but in poverty and vulnerability.

You stand near the edge of the place where Mary rests. Joseph is tired. The animals shift and breathe. The child makes small sounds. The Lord of Heaven has entered the world without defense.

You look at the manger.

You notice that God does not come as domination. God comes as dependence.

You feel your own ego quieting. Your need to be important, admired, successful, powerful — all of it stands embarrassed before this child. The Word has become flesh, and the flesh is small.

You ask:

Jesus, where are you being born in me?
Where have I made no room for you?
What part of me still refuses humility?
What would it mean to receive you today?

Then you sit quietly.

You do not need to solve the scene.

You let it live in you.

The Fruit of the Practice

Simple Contemplation helps Scripture move from information to formation.

One may study the text and ask, “What did this mean?”
One may contemplate the text and ask, “How is Christ meeting me here?”

Both are good. They belong together. But contemplation guards us from handling Scripture only as an object. The Bible is not merely a thing we master. It is a place where we are mastered by love.

To inhabit the Word is to allow the story of Jesus to become the architecture of the soul.

His mercy begins to shape our mercy.
His patience begins to shape our patience.
His courage begins to shape our courage.
His nonviolence begins to expose our violence.
His humility begins to undo our pride.
His cross begins to reveal our false selves.
His resurrection begins to awaken our hope.

In this way, simple contemplation is not escape from the world. It is preparation for faithful living in the world. We enter the Gospel so that we may return to our homes, churches, neighborhoods, and conflicts bearing the mind of Christ.

A Brief Pattern for Daily Use

Choose a Gospel scene.

Read it slowly.

Ask for grace:
“Lord Jesus, let me know you, love you, and follow you.”

Enter the scene with your imagination.

Notice what you see, hear, smell, touch, and feel.

Watch Jesus.

Let yourself be present.

Speak with Christ as with a friend.

Rest quietly.

Carry one word or image into the day.

#BiblicalContemplation #ChristianArt #ChristianMeditation #christianMysticism #contemplativePrayer #DevotionalPractice #DigitalSacredArt #FaithReflection #FuturisticIcon #GospelMeditation #GospelOfJesus #IgnatianSpirituality #ImaginativePrayer #InhabitingTheWord #innerTransformation #Jesus #LectioDivina #LivingWord #LudolphOfSaxony #MinimalistChristianArt #PeaceGrooves #PrayerAndScripture #PrayerPractice #SacredReading #sacredSymbolism #scriptureReflection #simpleContemplation #spiritualFormation #spiritualImagination #VitaChristi #wordMadeFlesh

A Day for the World to Say Sorry

From Australia’s National Sorry Day Toward an International Day of Truth, Repentance, and Repair

A PeaceGrooves Reflection

There are words so overused that they risk becoming weightless. Sorry is one of them. We say it when we bump into someone in a hallway, when we answer an email too late, when we make an insignificant mistake. Yet there are times when sorry is not small at all. There are wounds so deep, so deliberately inflicted, and so long denied that the speaking of sorrow becomes an act of public truth.

Australia’s National Sorry Day, observed each year on May 26, is such a day. It remembers the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children forcibly removed from their families, communities, languages, and cultures under government policies now associated with the Stolen Generations. The date marks the anniversary of the 1997 tabling of the Bringing Them Home report, the landmark national inquiry that gathered testimony from survivors and documented the devastation caused by these removals. The report called not only for recognition of what had happened, but for apology, healing, reparations, family reunion, access to records, and measures ensuring such violations would never recur.

National Sorry Day did not begin as a sentimental holiday….

Read the full essay at PeaceGrooves.

#AboriginalAndTorresStraitIslanderPeoples #AnabaptistPeaceWitness #Australia #buildingAJustFuture #colonialism #globalPeace #Healing #historicalMemory #IndigenousJustice #InternationalSorryDay #NationalSorryDay #Nonviolence #Peacebuilding #PeaceGrooves #publicApology #Reconciliation #rememberingThePast #reparations #Repentance #RestorativeJustice #SocialJustice #StolenGenerations #truthAndReconciliation

Spirit of the Living God (Fall Afresh On Me)

Accapella cantor with congregation providing harmony Pentecost May 24 2026.

Spirit of the Living God
Fall afresh on me
Spirit of the Living God
Fall afresh on me

Melt me
Mold me
Fill me
Use me

Spirit of the Living God
Fall afresh on me

#Acts2 #BreathOfGod #ChristianReflection #ChristianWorship #churchMusic #contemplativeWorship #divinePresence #Faith #fillMeAnew #HolySpirit #Hymn #KMLSMusic #mightyRushingWind #PeaceGrooves #Pentecost #PentecostSunday #prayerSong #sacredMusic #SpiritOfTheLivingGod #spiritualRenewal #tonguesOfFire #worshipSong

Fifty-Nine on Pentecost: Fire, Bridges, and a Heart Still Being Warmed

A Birthday Reflection — May 24, 2026

Today, I turn fifty-nine.

There is something strange about writing that number. Fifty-nine is not yet sixty, but it stands close enough to feel the gravity of that approaching threshold. It is a year poised at the edge of another decade, a number that invites a certain kind of honesty. Not the dramatic honesty that pretends everything has suddenly come into focus, but the quieter honesty of looking back over the terrain I have actually traveled: the things that have blossomed, the things that have hurt, the things still unfinished, and the signs of grace that keep appearing in the undergrowth.

I would like to say that I arrive at this birthday strong and full of energy, ready to gather every creative seed scattered through my life and bring it all into harvest. But that is not entirely true.

I have not been feeling well physically. My body has been reminding me that I am not simply a mind imagining world, a spirit dreaming visions, a pastor speaking words, or an artist shaping beauty. I am a body too—a body that tires, aches, worries, and longs to be well.

There is a particular sorrow in having so much one still wants to do while feeling uncertain about one’s strength to do it. There are stories pressing at the edges of my mind. There are songs waiting for breath. There are images, games, reflections, ministries, strange and beautiful worlds, and ideas of reconciliation and peace that I still want to offer. So much creative life has been stirring. So many sparks have appeared.

And alongside those sparks has been the quiet prayer:

Please, God, let me be well enough to tend the fire.

Perhaps that is why the date of this birthday feels especially meaningful.

Today, my birthday falls on Pentecost Sunday.

Pentecost is the day when frightened and uncertain disciples, people who had already known grief, bewilderment, failure, and hope beyond explanation, were gathered in one place. They were not standing at the height of their strength. They were waiting. They were living between what had been promised and what they could not yet see.

And into that waiting came breath and flame.

The Spirit descended. Words awakened. The scattered were gathered. The fearful found their voices.

I have often thought of creativity as something like that: a rushing wind through a room that has gone still; a flame resting upon an ordinary head; a language arriving that I did not fully know I knew. A story comes. A song arrives. An image forms. An idea for peacebuilding, a game, a sermon, a strange new country of the imagination appears as though someone has opened a window in a room that had grown close and airless.

Over this past year, windows have opened.

PeaceGrooves has continued to become more than an idea. It has become a gathering place for the things I most deeply care about: peace, creativity, imagination, justice, story, music, and the hope that human beings can learn to live differently with one another. I have imagined games that refuse the old assumption that conflict must end in domination. I have thought about creative peacebuilding not merely as an interesting phrase but as a calling: the possibility that art and story and play may become instruments of reconciliation.

I have continued to write strange, shadowed, luminous stories—stories emerging from history, disaster, forgotten figures, mystical places, wounded worlds, and the possibility that even within darkness there may yet be a voice calling toward mercy. I have made images and songs. I have watched one idea open into another and then another, like doors in an old house I did not know was so large.

And all the while I have continued to minister: to preach, to walk with people, to seek the goodness of God in the land of the living. I have continued to believe that reconciliation is not a decorative word for the church, but part of the very shape of the gospel: enemies becoming neighbors, strangers becoming companions, wounds becoming places where healing may begin.

Yet I can not pretend that this year has been only creative exhilaration.

There has also been weariness. There has been discouragement. There has been the familiar ache of wondering whether what I create will ever find the audience I hope for, whether the songs and stories and visions will reach beyond the small circle in which they first come to life. There has been the weight of inhabiting a body that does not always feel cooperative. There has been the fear that perhaps my energy will diminish before the fullest flowering of my gifts.

But Pentecost does not come only to the vigorous.

The Spirit does not descend only upon those who are untroubled, healthy, young, successful, or certain. The wind blows through closed rooms. The fire rests upon waiting people. The gift is not that the disciples suddenly become invulnerable; it is that they become alive with a life greater than their fear.

Today also carries another spiritual memory. On May 24, 1738, John Wesley went reluctantly to a meeting on Aldersgate Street. Reluctantly—that word matters to me. He was not triumphantly marching toward a spiritual experience. He went while troubled, still searching, still uncertain. And there, while hearing words about grace, he wrote that he felt his heart “strangely warmed.”

I find myself less interested now in a faith that demands I always appear strong and more drawn to the quiet mystery of a heart that can still be warmed.

At fifty-nine, I do not need to have everything solved. I do not need to prove that every dream has succeeded. I do not need to deny that I am tired or that I long for healing. Perhaps the deeper prayer is that my heart would remain warm: warm toward God, warm toward my wife, warm toward the people I serve, warm toward beauty, warm toward the wounds of the world, warm even toward my own imperfect and unfinished self.

It is possible for a person to grow cold over the years. Disappointment can do that. Illness can do that. Rejection can do that. The constant awareness of limits can make the spirit draw inward and protect itself.

But I do not want to live cold.

I would rather remain tender, even when tenderness hurts. I would rather keep imagining peace in a violent world. I would rather keep writing songs in a world of noise. I would rather keep dreaming of bridges while so many others are building walls.

For May 24 is also a day of bridges.

On this date in 1883, the Brooklyn Bridge opened after years of labor, loss, pain, and perseverance. Washington Roebling, who oversaw its construction, became physically incapacitated during the work, and the project continued in significant measure through the indispensable work of his wife, Emily. A bridge connecting divided shores came into being through vulnerability, endurance, and partnership.

That image speaks to me.

Perhaps a life is not measured only by towers raised or destinations reached. Perhaps it is also measured by the bridges one has helped build: between people, between faith and imagination, between sorrow and hope, between church and world, between creativity and reconciliation, between the person I once was and the person I am still becoming.

I do not know all the bridges my life may yet build. I know only that I want my remaining years to matter in that way. I want my ministry to help people cross from fear into love. I want my art to help people cross from numbness into wonder. I want PeaceGrooves to help people imagine forms of community, play, and storytelling that do not require enemies to be destroyed. I want my life to say, however imperfectly, that another way is possible.

On May 24, 1844, Samuel Morse sent the first long-distance telegraph message:

“What hath God wrought.”

It is a phrase of astonishment. A phrase for standing before something new and scarcely believable. A phrase that looks backward and forward at the same time: marveling at what has come to be while wondering what it may make possible.

Today, on my fifty-ninth birthday, I find myself asking that question of my own life.

What has God wrought in fifty-nine years?

Not perfection.

Not a life without sorrow.

Not a straight line of accomplishment.

Not a body untouched by weakness or a soul untouched by struggle.

But there is love. There is a marriage and a shared ministry. There are songs. There are stories. There are carved and painted and imagined things. There are sermons preached and people accompanied. There is the stubborn conviction that peace is not naïve, that reconciliation is not weakness, that the imagination may yet become an instrument of healing.

There is joy that has somehow continued to rise through weariness.

There is beauty I have been permitted not only to see but sometimes to make.

And there is still more waiting.

Bob Dylan, born on May 24, shares this birthday. He is another reminder that creativity needs not stop at the borders of age. It may deepen. It may shift. It may become more weathered, more honest, and more necessary. Songs do not cease simply because the singer has traveled a long road. Sometimes, the road itself gives the song its voice.

I do not want this coming year merely to be a holding pattern before sixty.

I want it to be a living year.

I want health—not simply because I want relief, though I do; not simply because I want freedom from worry, though I do—but because I love this world and still want to participate in it. I want strength to preach and minister. I want strength to make music. I want strength to create strange and beautiful stories. I want strength to love my wife well, to be present to people, to follow the paths opening before me.

I want to be able to receive each day not merely as something to endure but as something in which grace may still take shape.

Yet even here I must be gentle with myself.

My worth does not depend upon how much I produce. My life is not validated only by completed books, successful songs, public recognition, flourishing projects, or the ability to do everything my imagination desires. Before I make anything, before I accomplish anything, before I am strong enough to do all I hope to do, I am loved.

Perhaps that is the warmth I need most.

At fifty-nine, standing in the firelight of Pentecost, I pray for the Spirit once again—not as spectacle, not as spiritual achievement, but as breath.

Breath for a tired body.

Fire for a creative heart.

Courage for a minister of reconciliation.

Comfort for the places in me that are afraid.

Patience for what is not yet finished.

Joy is not dependent upon perfect circumstances.

Healing, as healing may come.

And above all, the assurance that I remain held within the goodness of God.

Today, I am fifty-nine years old.

I do not know what this year will bring. I do not know what my body will require of me, or what new stories will be born, or what doors may open or close. But I know what I hope for.

I hope to remain awake.

I hope to remain tender.

I hope to remain creative.

I hope to keep making peace.

I hope to keep crossing bridges and building them for others.

I hope my heart is still capable of being strangely warmed.

And on this birthday of wind and fire, of messages carried across distance, of bridges spanning divided shores, of songs still being sung, I offer my unfinished life once more to the One who breathes over creation and says, even now, that it is good.

Come, Holy Spirit.
Breathe upon what is weary in me.
Warm what has grown discouraged.
Heal what is hurting.
Kindle, what is waiting.
And grant that the year ahead may become,
in ways I can not yet imagine,
another answer to the question:

What hath God wrought?

#Aging #AldersgateDay #birthdayReflection #BobDylan #bridges #BrooklynBridge #ChristianSpirituality #creativeCalling #Creativity #Faith #fireAndBreath #Grace #Healing #HolySpirit #Hope #illness #JohnWesley #lifeJourney #Ministry #Music #Peacebuilding #PeaceGrooves #Pentecost #PentecostSunday #personalReflection #Prayer #Reconciliation #SamuelMorse #SpiritualReflection #storytelling #strangelyWarmed #turningFiftyNine #WhatHathGodWrought

Last Light of Orbit 59

Tonight
I am riding the dark rim of a circle,
carried by a world
that has never once stopped turning
beneath my restless feet.

Somewhere behind me,
the sun still touches the first hour
of the day I was born—
that bright door through which I came,
crying, breathing,
astonished into being.

And now,
fifty-nine journeys later,
I approach that door again
from the other side of time.

Not as an infant,
not innocent of pain,
not untouched by sorrow,
but bearing the strange cargo
of a life still becoming:

songs not yet fully sung,
stories rising like constellations
out of the black field of the mind,
wood shavings, prayers,
pulpit words and private wounds,
the names of those I love
burned warm inside me
like lights in the windows
of a house at night.

This year has not carried me gently.

My body has spoken
in the difficult language of weakness;
I have learned again
how fiercely the spirit longs
for flesh that will follow it—
hands steady enough to make,
lungs deep enough to sing,
strength enough to stand
and speak of hope
without needing first
to be rescued by it.

And yet—

even weary,
I have felt new worlds
pressing against the walls of me.

I have heard characters knocking.
I have seen cities rise from mist.
I have watched peace take strange forms—
a game, a song,
a tale whispered beside the ruins,
a tiny flame refusing
the vast machinery of darkness.

Perhaps this is what grace is:
not that the journey leaves us unwounded,
but that the wounded still dream;
not that the night is empty of fear,
but that even now
there are stars bright enough
to navigate by.

Tonight
I am almost at the crossing.

The earth is bearing me
through the final miles
of my fifty-ninth voyage around the fire,
and I can feel tomorrow
waiting just beyond the curve—
not as a promise that all will be easy,
not as a guarantee of healing,
but as an opening
in the wilderness of time.

Behind me:
every journey I somehow survived.

Before me:
the sixtieth flight,
wide and uncharted,
shimmering with things
that have not yet found their names.

And above me—
or within me—
or nearer than either—
the One who has traveled every mile,
who was present at my first breath
and remains
in this midnight breathing,
this fragile body,
this fierce desire
to keep creating,
keep loving,
keep turning toward the light.

So let the last hours come.

Let the old circle close
like a well-worn book
whose pages are stained
with tears and fingerprints
and sudden bursts of color.

Let me stand for a moment
on this spinning sphere,
under the patient stars,
and say:

I was here.
I am still here.
I have been carried farther
than I knew how to go.

And when morning arrives,
when the invisible line is crossed,
I will lift my face
toward the ancient sun
and begin again—

older,
gentler,
still unfinished,
still beloved,
still burning
with the holy ache
of being alive.

#59thBirthday #agingWithGrace #Beloved #birthdayPoem #birthdayReflection #celestialImagery #comet #cosmicPilgrimage #Creativity #Faith #fiftyNinthOrbit #GodSPresence #Grace #Gratitude #Healing #holyTroubleOfBeingAlive #Hope #journeyAroundTheSun #KeithLyndaker #longingForHealth #newBeginnings #orbitOfGrace #PeaceGrooves #sixtiethOrbit #SpiritualReflection #stillBecoming #towardTheLight #tripAroundTheSun

WildWords – The Shadows of Birds

Evening sun,
feverish glow—
what’s begun
I do not know.

Sky above,
I below,
face aflame,
body blow.

Light’s caress,
warming flow,
birds take wing
across the window.

Here I lie
as day burns low,
between what stays
and what will go.

#birds #ContemplativePoetry #dusk #eveningSun #illnessAndHealing #innerWeather #lightAndShadow #LiminalSpace #lyricPoem #Melancholy #PeaceGrooves #Poetry #reflection #ShadowsOfBirds #SpiritualReflection #sunset #tenderness #transition #whatStaysAndWhatWillGo #window

WildWords – When Noon Went Dark

On this day,
May 19, 1780,
the sky forgot its brightness.

Noon came wearing midnight.
Candles were lit at tables,
in churches,
in homes where people looked upward
and wondered if the world
was ending.

Perhaps it was only smoke,
fog,
cloud,
fire carried on the wind.

But those beneath it
did not know.

And perhaps that is the lesson:
we often live inside the darkness
before we understand its cause.

We name it judgment,
doom,
abandonment,
the end.

But sometimes
the light has not died.
It is only hidden.

And somewhere beyond the smoke,
beyond the fog,
beyond the heavy cover
of what we cannot yet explain,

the sun remains.

#candlelight #creationAndWonder #darknessAndLight #easternCanada #fearAndHope #fog #forestFires #hiddenSun #historicalReflection #May191780 #mystery #NewEnglandHistory #NewEnglandSDarkDay #PeaceGrooves #reflectivePoetry #signsAndWonders #SlowMover #smokeAndCloud #SpiritualReflection #TuesdayReflection #unseenLight