so.zo comics

Just wanted you to be aware of a cool artistic offering my friend Ryan Huffman has been keeping up with for some time now: so.zo comics (I put a link to it in my 'music, lit. & the arts' list). Our coffeeshop/cereal bar on High Street is called so.zo, and Ryan's created this little strip as an homage to it and the people who are in and out of there a lot. A lot of the jokes are a little inside, but I think anyone can enjoy the humor and the great art (all composed within Microsoft Paint amazingly!).

monthly post

I'm sitting with my wife at one my favorite Morgantown restaurants/music venues, Black Bear Burritos (notice how the door to the street behind me says 'GOOD LUCK' as you go back out into the world...)! It was a beautiful evening and we decided to walk from our apartment in South Park around downtown. We considered a couple places first, but inevitably came back to Black Bear. I used to always get the 'Double Wide,' which is just a big burrito with steak (or chicken), rice, black beans, onions and all kinds of other good stuff, topped with barbecue sauce. Mmm! But they took it off the menu a while back (though you can still order it if you want, they saved the recipe), and I've since gotten stuck on the Bear Trap, a little wrap with turkey, bacon, lettuce, tomatoes and this really, really good dressing: honey mayo. I'm halfway done with one right now!

Anywho, I thought I'd try and get back in the swing of things (AGAIN) with this blog. I don't mind not blogging everyday (it can be time-consuming, especially for me, the slowest person on earth), but I hate when good thoughts strike me and I let them pass by. I need to get one of those Moleskine notebooks that slide right into your pocket like my friend Billy has (he blogs a lot more frequently than me, check it out).

I just wrote a new song this week! I'm a little concerned about copyright so I won't post it here (though I know I posted another song of mine recently, oh well...), but I thought I'd mention it because it started in a dream. Yeah, isn't that cool? I had this dream about a month ago that I was leading music at a big church (much like mine, but different) and I had a really long cord to my guitar so I walked out into the congregation and looked toward the stage with them. They were all raising their hands to God, and there was no band or anything on stage, it was all dark, but there was some ambient music. And all of a sudden everyone sang out: 'Be-hold! Be-hold!' It was really moving to hear all the voices in unison.

I woke up and was afraid I'd forget the melody so I wrote the notes into a document on my phone and went back to sleep. I didn't do anything with until this week, and all of a sudden the song came to life! I used the 'behold, behold' part in the pre-chorus. And I looked up some Scripture with 'behold' in it and came across a lot of end-times stuff in Revelation ('Behold! I come like a thief...' 'Behold! I am coming soon...). I love Revelation 21 as well, where he says, 'I am making everything new!' and how there will be no more mourning or suffering or pain or death; all our tears will be wiped away. And so I looked at other inspirational and mysterious Scripture about the end, like in 1 Corinthians 15 where it mentions that 'in the twinkling of an eye' we will all be changed, and in 1 Thessalonians 4 where it describes that those of us who are still alive when the Lord comes back will meet him in the air. Awe-inspiring stuff! So the song is basically about the Christian's great joy in looking forward to that.

I'll record it someday...

MARCH.08 MINISTRY LETTER

Please click on each of the below thumbnails to view my current ministry update letter!

Vote for Judge Drew Crislip!

My stepdad is running for office! He's the family court judge for Harrison County (after this election, he'll be working with another family court judge to jointly cover both Harrison and Doddridge counties), and after years of serving his position by appointment from the governor, the law changed and in 2002 he had to run for his office for the first time (he ran unopposed then).

This year, though, he's got some people running against him, so he's had to start the long, exhausting, expensive road of campaigning. He asked me to help with a TV commercial and radio spot. Jonny Haring filmed and edited the above commercial, and I recorded a radio spot at home with my recording equipment (I've also did the little jingle I wrote for him, which will be played during the intro to his website, which I haven't heard if that's ready for revealing yet), but I can't figure out how to post it.

So if you live in Harrison or Doddridge County, vote for Drew! He's a fair, totally uncorrupted judge who has no hidden agenda and only, always seeks the best choice, as hard as it may be in each situation. He holds himself accountable to God and to his own conscience.

My older bro, Christopher, designed Drew's campaign logo:

Only Dreamed Of

I thought since I hadn't blogged in a while I could share something I wrote about a while ago. I was searching through my old e-mails and came across the explanation for and lyrics to a song I wrote just over a year ago (I can't believe it's been that long!). It's a song I'm really proud of, so I thought I'd share it! My thoughts about it are long, so prepare yourselves...

The ‘seed’ that started the was something a friend said during a prayer. He said to God something like, ‘If you love us even close to how much I love my children, that’s a lot, and we know you love us even more.’ It made me realize that all we have to compare God against is ourselves. We can ‘imagine’ that he loves us more than we love our own children, but it’s hard for us to ‘know’ that. The truth is, our love for our children and anyone else we say we ‘love’ is like hating them compared to how God loves us, but we can’t quite grasp that.

The problem is that we fail those we love, all the time, and God never fails us. Even if it were possible to not fail those we love our entire lives, at the end we fail them by dying. We can never promise to ‘always be there’ for someone because our fragile lives could end at any moment. To experience true love, we need someone who is not bound by death. That’s what was so amazing about Jesus’ resurrection. He truly was with them, ‘to the very end of the age.’ And that’s what makes it almost arrogant or at least naïve of us to suppose that our love or our efforts for others (without giving them Christ) mean anything, even if we sacrifice our own life, for ‘if only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.’ Death eventually thwarts all our efforts unless we have been given life eternal from the only One who has conquered death.

I had most of the song finished except verse 3 and I was looking for a way to wrap it up. Then another friend mentioned the ‘unexpected’ theme of the art show coming up and I realized that’s what I’d been writing about: how unexpected it was for Jesus to rise from the dead. How this is what we had hoped for, had dreamed of, but didn’t see it coming. So I made verse 3 first person, trying to capture how a lifeless person feels when, out of the clear blue sky, Jesus comes knocking at their door. The final ‘Nobody could’ statement contrasts with the other ones, showing them to be false and the only real statement of the human condition to be ‘I am in desperate need of someone to love me like I desire, but fail, to love others.’

So here's the lyrics to the song. Someday I'll record it and get it onto my myspace.

ONLY DREAMED OF

VERSE 1:
A father knows how much he loves his children
He can feel it in the gritting of his teeth
When one of them falls and he’s not there to catch him
And he knows there will be other times like these
But he thinks, ‘Nobody could care for them like I do’

A mother cries when she thinks of her daughter
She can feel her in the beating in her chest
A failing heart that will not beat much longer
She will go and leave her just like all the rest
Still she says, ‘Nobody could give to her like I do’

CHORUS 1:
Could we ever even wrap our heads around
A love that never goes away?
Do we have a single slightest notion of
A person who will always stay
And give the kind of love we’ve only dreamed of?

VERSE 2:
An architect walks past the demolition
Of a building he once poured himself into
With saddest eyes, he still recalls the vision
But he knows there’s nothing now that he can do
He sighs, ‘Nobody could know this place like I do’

A soldier bleeds and falters in the battle
As he draws his dying breath, he feels content
He grips the flag with all the life left in him
He thinks of the nation for which it was spent
He whispers, ‘Nobody could love her the way I do’

CHORUS 2:
Is there anyone to build a home for us
That will not crumble to the ground?
Can we find a warrior to fight for us
Whose body never will be laid down?

VERSE 3:
I hear the bell and wonder who it could be
There is no one coming ‘round here anymore
I pull the latch, and to my knees I’m falling
I did not expect to see you at my door
And I say, ‘Nobody could need you the way I do
Nobody should ever be far from you'

CHORUS 1

Nobody could need you the way I do
Nobody should ever be far from you

screaming session

Just some fun for all you lovers of the ludicrous, you samplers of the silly, you collectors of the crazy.

NEW LOOK!

My other Apple-carrying siblings convinced me to update the look of my blog. So here it is!

I'm getting to spend several days with them all this year, which is awesome. Christopher's quite the avid blogger -- you should check out his stuff.

DECEMBER 2007 PRAYER LETTER

Here (finally) is my latest prayer/update letter for supporters of the ministry. Just click the picture to view it larger and read it.

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYBODY! (Don't worry, I'll post again before Christmas. Just wanted to wish a merry Christmas to people who only check my blog because of the prayer letter. ...Not that anyone was really worrying about me not posting.)