making. contact.

I know that I will be processing what I'm learning and thinking about from this month for a long time. Firstly, because I'm a slow processor anyway and need lots of time and space to behold anything. I'll need to be still and look back. Secondly, because more is going on than I think I even can be aware of or know right now. But it's good. I like it.

At the moment though, It's coming into focus for me that there is a big difference between making these songs and performing them for people. The making aspect I can do largely alone. I can sit in my room with my guitar and big black sketchbook, or in the sanctuary down the road at the piano late at night for hours and hours and write. I can disappear into it. Then I can pull out some microphones, turn some knobs, push a mouse around a desktop for a few months and end up with a UPS guy delivering a box of CDs to my front step. I could do all of that without anyone ever even knowing that it had happened. That's fine. I need that space, I like that process. It's a bit like prayer.

But this past nearly-month, it's been a beautiful distinction to take the things I've held close to me and personally deliver them to real live breathing, tangible people, in real living rooms. I've loved the visits and the stories. Most simply, I'm just realizing that I love to make things, but I love as much or more the movement of those things from my proximity out and into other's proximity. It helps me see that Jesus is calling for wholeness and integration. It always comes back to people making honest contact (and no one can make contact without honesty).

I can't stand back very far to look at all this right now... so it may be vague. But it is feeling very near to me and tangible - all the beds, dinner tables, attentive eyes and ears, walks, bowls of cereal, stories, embraces, and homes that have been shared constitute what I'm feeling. And by the way, I don't just mean that physical homes have been lent to us for a day or a few days. I mean that everywhere we've stayed we've been made to feel at home. We've been folded in. Met with warmth. Sustained by peace and rest. Being on the road, I'd have gone crazy by now without the deep hospitality of all those who've made a place for us over these few weeks.

I miss folks back home, I miss folks from just days ago.

My prayer for some time has been simply that God would make a place for me in his work. I just want to be joined to Jesus, his own heart, his life and story, his work. My main fear is that I'll be left stranded and empty. All the mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters, homes and fields that I've found myself near this month and over the past few years always prove my fears wrong and the faithful heart of God right and steady. I am amazed at how God invites us to participate with these burning hearts of ours, how he remembers us and incorporates us into himself. I'm amazed how frightened I am to let that happen and I'm amazed at how much peace and joy I have when it does happen. It makes for real alive-ness to communicate between us and our Lord and among us, Our Father and others.

That should do for now... glad to have this month to share, glad for you, my friends, my family to share with.

much love, matthew