I remember my mom playing old folk songs on her classical guitar when I was a kid, my sister practicing piano when I was little, and watching my great uncle cry at a little jazz concert that I had gone to with him. I picked up the guitar at about twelve, but I didn’t really start writing songs till late high school.

    I met a woman not long ago who had spent a year in Africa. I asked her if she had gained any perspective on life and on her own culture from her time there. She told me that she realizes now that we hide from each other by burying ourselves in busyness, “productivity”... achievement. “Life can seem so inefficient in Africa but the people are deeply connected,” she said.

    In one of my favorite movies a character comments that people read to know they are not alone. Maybe everything we do is for that reason.  Dostoevsky, a Russian author, said in a book that the greatest desire of humanity is to find someone to worship, something worth living for.

    Jesus will return. In the meantime, I hope singing can be one way to remember: to re-attach, to what is True, to each other - to fix our eyes on the One who is worth living for.