Free Stuff
My sheet music and other free resources are available here. Just follow this link.
These things are under a Creative Commons license that allows you to download them and copy them freely—for any non-commercial use.
Enjoy!
Store
I have books, CDs, and a video series for sale from my store page. (I wish I could just give everything away, but one must eat!)
I’m especially excited about my new book, now available: My Burden Is Light: A Pastor’s Plea for Rationality, Honesty, and Humility.
About
Merry, Mystical Missives
Here you’ll find everything I’ve sent out to the mailing list for The Merry Mystic.
Be True
In this issue of The Merry Mystic, I share the story of my children’s baptism, and I sing the song I wrote for that occasion.
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There’s a live version and a studio version of that song on my album, Smackdown.
Got a baptism story to share? Scroll down and tell us about it below.
Clear Fountain
One of my favorite symbols for God is the fountain. I wrote about this in my book, The Inn of God’s Forgiveness:
This clear fountain became for me a symbol of God: a symbol of the mysterious, unceasing source of love and joy and energy. If I could choose one symbol to stand for my church, it would not be a cross, but a fountain.
Superficially, a fountain is a pleasant sensual experience. You see the dancing sunlight on the water, and you hear the soothing splashing of the water, and the laughter of children and the singing of birds around the water, and you smell the cool water falling through the hot air, and you can take off your shoes and feel the water washing the weariness from your feet. But at a deeper level, a fountain is a powerful symbol. It’s so inexplicable—and so wasteful! It just throws water up into the air. It doesn’t irrigate crops, doesn’t turn a turbine, doesn’t move commerce down the canal. It just gives itself, whether anyone is there to receive it or not.
This is my song “Clear Fountain.”
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“Clear Fountain” is from my album As a Deer Longs; I’m singing and playing all the instruments, but the angelic background vocals are provided by Kelly Autrey-Webber, my wife. I couldn’t think of a suitable fountain nearby to film for the visual background, but the little river near my home is just as good—better, in some ways, because it’s not human-made.
Do you have a symbol for God that is particularly meaningful to you? Please tell me about it below.
Judgement Day Blues
Hello, friends. Today I have a comic song to share with you. It’s about the apocalypse—which is always good for a laugh. It’s called “Judgement Day Blues.”
(Sorry that the performance is a little rough. I only wrote the song this week, and I haven’t found enough hours to polish it up. But you’ll get the idea.)
I’m laughing at the apocalyptic here, but seriously: I think this is one of the most harmful parts of our received tradition. I’m an experienced preacher, so I can almost always find some way to put a positive spin on those passages of scripture. But I get tired of doing that. I feel strongly that this part of our tradition has done a lot more harm than good. It just isn’t a healthy way to think about God.
I hope that a little laughter will be good medicine for that. Please share this post with someone who needs a laugh.
As Long as You’re Falling…
Hello, friends. I’ve a little song to share with you today — a piece of wisdom from my martial-arts tradition. This is something every martial artist knows about what to do when you’re falling.
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Please take a leap by joining the conversation: share a story or ask a question below.
P.S. If you have another minute, I have a short essay you might enjoy reading as well. It’s a guest post, as a “Monk in the World,” over at Abbey of the Arts. It’s about karatedo as a spiritual practice. I really like the virtual community there. (Except that they don’t have much of our humorous, skeptical side — but you can always come here for that!)
These are the (mostly video) messages sent out to The Merry Mystic mailing list.
Sermons and Such
Every week, I preach in the Open Prairie United Church of Christ in Princeton, Illinois. I’m not sending most of these out to The Merry Mystic mailing list; but on the outside chance you’d like to see a sermon, here they are.