YONDER BREAKS

It's been a hard year. A rude awakening of sorts. A lot of work, not much pay. No time. Out of balance. Things are changing, but one of the things I have noticed this year is that this is a common story. I work with folks who devote hours and hours to multiple jobs, and still  struggle to make ends meet. It would be one thing if they were choosing this life in order to afford an ultra cool loft and a Maserati, but most of these people are just feeding their families and paying off a modest mortgage. I suppose there are always ways to cut back, but outside of moving to Costa Rica and living on a farm, I'm not sure what else to do about it. Photo by Don C. So one day I'm standing on the ramp at the airport (one of my jobs) and watching a plane get ready to take off. By my side are these same men and women that are barely scraping by. In front of me is a sleek travel tool, man's invention. To operate it takes thousands of guys like us, wearing our hands and backs d...

I was in the middle of a 20-day work streak, tired and ready to have a day off with still a ways to go. But sometimes good things come to those who wait, and though I wasn't expectant, one good thing just popped up -- my company gave me an unexpected day off for Good Friday! Awesome! I had a choice though -- my boss said I could work the extra day if I needed the money (really it's a small staff, and I know she wanted the help), which normally isn't terribly tempting for a guy like me, but we could have certainly used the money, and it would have likely been the responsible thing to do. But if you read this blog at all, you know me -- I rarely choose money over time -- and so I declined. As I entered the blessed 24 hours of no work, I wondered if I had made the right choice. It only took about 20 minutes to come up with the answer to that question...YES! I had breakfast with my wife and kids, went to the beach, surfed a little (until I saw a gnarly looking jellyfish), h...

I was driving to work the other morning and saw a beautiful sunrise over downtown Charleston. The city is known as the Holy City because of all the church steeples that line our modest skyline. As the sun crept up that morning, it silhouetted one of those famous churches, shining through the windows of the bell tower. It was beautiful, that silhouetted church, but it sparked an idea -- is this a picture of the state of the church right now? Here we have an old fashioned building, the way churches used to be designed -- huge steeple that stretched into the sky with a cross on top, reminding all who see where their hope comes from, their safety and their salvation. But churches aren't designed that way anymore, and church isn't performed the way it was back then either. The liturgy of the past is widely gone, and the ornate buildings of old have been replaced by more practical warehouses and shopping centers. But in the silhouette of these buildings, what do we see? The  line ...

"It's easier to be a dreamer in Los Angeles," I told my friend Karl as I lamented my lost status as an Angelino. We moved back "home" to the South last year and it brought about the toughest season  of our family's lives. One contributing factor was that I had moved to LA to pursue film , and so in moving back with little to show career-wise, I can't help but feel like some sort of failure. It's not entirely true -- as I told a friend recently, every time I had time to work on a movie, I ended up surfing and skateboarding instead -- I guess our habits have a way of revealing what our true passions are. I also discovered that pursuing something as competitive as filmmaking required a great amount of sacrifice, particularly relationally, which was something I guess I wasn't willing to do. Anyway, being away from it all and trying to figure out my life has got me thinking a lot about dreaming. As I said, it's easier to dream in LA, where...

It's always been difficult for me to connect with God during a worship service. I'm not sure why -- I am a musician after all, so you'd think it would be my first choice of meeting God. But for some reason it's rare that I really feel my spirit connect with God's during the musical part of a worship service. This Christmas season, I found myself at  St. Andrew's Church  in Mt. Pleasant. I owe a lot to this church, having gone here often in high school and always coming away a better person, as well as being continually impressed with their community. It was actually on a St. Andrew's trip to  Creation Festival  that I made the public declaration of faith that changed my life. Sixteen years later, I still see the light of Jesus in this place. Despite the tremendous quality of this church and its worship team, as I stood in the pew with good friends singing Christmas carols and worship songs, I still felt disconnected. We might as well have been sing...