In my head there’s a bit of luck involved with it. Coming across the right phrases and structures yes, but more importantly, the timing. I’m as much “me” now as I have ever been and probably will ever be. Things will change and additions will come (as will subtractions unfortunately) but for the most part, I am confident in my identity. I’m going through a period of looking at God in my life and how to identify my image of who he is which will then transfer into my concept of how He works in and through me which will lead to…which will pour over into…which will affect…which will change…which will ultimately lead me to fulfillment through him in ways I’ve not yet seen.

I’ve told of this scripture before, but in the Gospels, Jesus asks Peter “What about you Peter, who do you say I am?” and I can’t help but continue imagining him asking me the same thing. I don’t really have a solid answer right now. That’s where this self-portrait idea came from. If I can somehow find a way, infinitesimal as it will be, to describe to others the way God works in my life, I will know more about myself than I ever have before.

Which will lead to…which then will change into…which will in turn become…which will subsequently appear as…which will also infer that….which will…which will…

It’s all a mess, obviously, but soon I should have it completed (In 4-5 parts) and will probably share it with all of you at that time too.

In the meantime..”What about you, Peter?”

There’s a part of this time of year that makes me want to crawl into a self-imposed hole. A getaway of sorts, call it my panic room if you must. I don’t know why, but it just seems to come with an overwhelming feeling of “lonely”. I’m sure it will pass.

Now for happy things.

I want to let people know what I’m listening to on Spotify or LastFM or Rhapsody or any of the other streaming sites, but I want to do it on my terms, not on theirs. And, I don’t need people to know what every four song set is that just played for me. (For prying minds, it’s Radiohead’s Kid A right now…c’mon March 13th, you can get here quickly if you would like!)

Christmas lists aren’t for kids. They are for people who want other people to know what to get them for Christmas. Mine is usually not that complicated really, a couple jersey’s, video games, maybe a book or two, and some clothing options. Is this a need for bigger dreaming or is it just simple tastes coming through to the surface. (Last year, Todd and Katie blew me away with the gift of a typewriter, I still use it, although not enough, and it makes me intangibly happy to do so.

I’m about to embark on an artistic endeavour that every visual artist ahs to go through. But since I am not a visual artist really, I am doing it through words. It’s a self-portrait experiment. I am pretty sure an art school staple is the se;f portrait exercise and I figure, as an artist of some kind, it’s important I know where I am lyrically within myself. So over the next few days/weeks I am going to map out my self-portrait through words. You will have to read it someday I bet, so that’s a lucky break for you!

I spend a whole heap of time at The Coffee Tree in Loveland. By whole heap I mean, a ton, buckets of time (can time be bucketed?), and money but that’s another thing entirely. Today in line a lady made me smile. She was…..elderly…yeah, that’s the nice word for it right?…and she got a mocha. The girl at the register, who is always delightful, asked is she would like whipped cream on that. In a youthful defiant tone the older woman says “Why not?!” This answer happens a lot, I even say it from time to time, but it makes me smile when people you don’t expect to be are simply happy enough to have whipped cream on their mocha’s.

Now for my list of top songs of 2011. These aren’t all songs that were released this year, just songs that completely caught my attention this year. There are probably going to be a few albums listed too because of their immaculate presentation and presence in my life over the past year.

“Further Along” By Josh Garrels- ”We’re all castaways in need of ropes. Hanging on by the last threads of our hopes…” Don’t GET me started on the goosebumps I’ve gotten from this song. (See also: The entire Love & War and the Sea in between album. “Ulysses” is another highlight for me.)

“Leave it Alone“, “Simple Math” and “Deer” by Manchester Orchestra. REally this is an album shout out. The entirety of Simple Math is one of the reasons, many upon many reasons, MO is working their way into my top 5 of….wait for it…all time. Yeah, even as a current band they have changed the way I hear music. These songs have left me breathless at times.

Listener’s Wooden Heart album. Basically a spoken word/beat poetry album with music attached. It attacks so many of the spiritual and secular problems we face in this world as Christians seeking some sort of answer. The song “You were a house on fire” is something I won’t ever forget listening to for the first time. “Wooden Heart” and “Falling in love with glaciers” are the other two highlights for me among so many quotable epiphanies.

John Mark McMillan’s whole catalog. “Chemicals” and “Love You Swore” captivated me. I always know a song is good for me when I’m listening to the album for the first time and I repeat a song multiple times without going on to the next one. These two songs stopped me dead in my tracks.

“Element” by Matthew Mayfield. Great song, especially coming to me late in the yer when I always seem to let the weight of another year passing by get to me.

“Disarmed” by Thrice. They are a perennial favorite of mine. This song, speaking to the power against the enemy and his schemes is just a solid song!

“Dearest” the Black Keys (Cover of Buddy Holly’s song by the same name). This is a haunting cover of a beautifully simple song. The album Rave on Buddy Holly is a great compilation that gives some relevance to one of the great early songwriters of American rock and roll.

“Keep Your eyes Open” by Needtobreathe. A band that I will try to see every time they come through town. Their live presence is amazingly deep and rich. They are thoughtful and genuine and their music is so perfectly composed it’s subtly catchy and overwhelmingly easy to listen to for anyone. This one is particularly meaningful to me this year for whatever reason. Also, my top concert memory of the year was NTB’s ”secret” Denver show.

“White Limo” and “One of these Days” By the Foo Fighters. These were numbingly loud even if the volume knob (I know nothing really has knobs anymore) isn’t all the way up. Great songs and a great live concert experience of 2011 also!

Ask me another day and I will give you a different list, but that’s them for now. This got really long in a hurry. Sorry.

Goodnight beautiful world.

When I was a kid I wanted, and some part of me now still wants, to be stabbed or shot. (Stop laughing. Close your mouth. Don’t unfriend me.) I wanted to feel something so unique that I would never forget it. I didn’t want to be shot or stabbed in a fatal type of way. Obviously. Just to feel that end of my sanity in a very physical way.

As I grew up I realized this was a deeper longing than just getting mugged in a friendly way. My deeper desire is that I just like to feel. To touch. To be touched.

I have four tattoos and three piercings. There’s a uniqueness to each one of those things as they relate to tactile memories. I can vividly remember the first time a tattooing needle ever touched my skin. It was a crazy flood of emotion and sensory awareness I’ve never felt again.

I can honestly say I think once I got in the longboarding accident, the desire for the stabbing and shooting sort of died a little. Again, I think the accident pushed me into an awareness of not only my desire to touch and be touched in different ways, but the sense of my own mortality too. (Which is a whole different blog for another time!)

This desire of mine is as simple as my everyday activities. One of the major reasons I love my beard the way I do (see picture for its Sasquatchian glory) is that I get to run my fingers through it. The feeling is unique, creepy to some of you probably, but comforting.

I absolutely love the feeling of rubbing two of my fingers together. That slight rough texture you get is just comforting to me.

There’s the famous monologue in the movie Crash when Don Cheadle talks about when we crash into each other just to feel.

As I have been trying to force myself through this weird idosyncrasy I’ve realized that one of the root causes of my love of the tactile sense is that it proves the existence of something. If I run into someone, for that moment I exist to them and they are irrevocably in my life. When I feel a certain texture, it means that thing exist in that moment. It’s a frail grasp on things at times, and seemingly foolish but don’t we all just want to exist to someone?

I know, it’s weird. But that’s ok by me.

Goodnight beautiful world.

If there was a way to let you know, beyond the doubt of an ordinary human, that everything was according to a plan made for good, I would. If I could pray harder for healing in your too-big heart I undoubtedly would. I am.

He says “I Am!” and we accept it. But that’s not enough when flatline techno-noise doesn’t disappear. But He is, was, and will be. He can. Where no one else can.

If there was a way to show you the smiling face of your grandson and help you hear Great-Grandpa in his sleepy voice, we would. All of us. But to know and believe are two separate things.

If your brother and sisters could say enough, or with the right words that they love you for taking over the role you’ve been trying to fill, they would. If they had it in them to show you you’re fearfully and wonderfully made, even in this seemingly weakened state, they would.

If she could open her heart more and pour it out with love and faith and the strength of the last 37 years, I know she would.

If Grandma could show you over and over a thousand times what your presence there last year did to strengthen her and keep her upright, she would. If he could let you into her servant’s heart and let you see yourself the way she does, it would surely erase all the hurt and pain and allow you into the presence of His grace.

But in a small and insignificant whisper that carries with it a crushing weight, we all hear…

“It’s not your burden to bear beyond reason. I am working in him, to prosper and strengthen him. Be there. Hug him. Let him come near to us all in his time. I alone will be the healer of wounds and loss. I will fill the hole that can only be re-filled by me in a loss such as this. Be still. Know. Love him, above all else, with MY heart.”

If we could, we would. And believe when I say we are, all of us, trying Dad.

The past few months (really, if I’m being honest, since October ’10) have been a consistently inconsistent roller coaster of peaks and valleys. Sometimes as little as a minute passes between them, sometimes as much as a month or two. The valleys have always been a constant part of my identity. Since I can remember there has been a certain sense of “less than” or of  ”something else is out there that you’re missing” inside me. Doctors call that depression. A few years ago I dealt with it medically, had to, to wake up and actually move from lying down in self-pity and shallow selfishness to walking around in defeat and a small amount of hope.

I stopped that. And since then, God, the God of creation, father of Jesus Christ, has been working very tangibly in my heart. Calling me out of those depths into….well….into what?

I grew up in a Christian home. A great family that, as anyone else’s, had its issues and inconsistencies. I was never faced with a REAL threat of my existence or an honest and soul-churning questioning of who I am in this world.

Lately I’ve wrestled a lot. Not in the spandex and sweat kind of way but in the mind and heart way. Then, just the other day, sitting around a table with two of my newest and currently closest friends, I realized that my identity is unknown to me.

In Matthew, Jesus asks Peter “Who do the people say I am?” Peter answers “Elijah, some say John the Baptist, some Jeremiah…” To which Jesus follows up with a question so basic, so simple. So easy and plain that it is one of a devastating nature that we must all: atheist, Christian, Muslim, seeking, close-minded, wrestle with.

“But what about you? Who do you say I am?”

Wait for it…

Yeah…there it is.

After 28+ years of living, I am finally realizing that He has been asking this in my life for years without my hearing it. Who, Morgan, do you know me to be in your life? Who are you through me in this world, my son? (Although the last seems to present the answer within the shell of the question, it’s never that simple.)

So, as a 28-year-old man, I find myself as open and expectant (not expecting) as a child on their first day of school. The new definition of a world I’ve been quietly existing in is at hand in my life and I am absolutely ecstatic about the possibility of being freed from my cynical and questioning nature!

There is an existential heartbeat beneath the entirety of everything in and on this earth. By asking the questions, we can get to a place where we may not get specific answers but we get leading questions that allow the search to renew  itself and bring us closer to the savior that has been by our side the entire time.

This life is Yours, and all that is within it. Thank you for that freedom. Amen.

Good night beautiful world.

I don’t say this publicly to elicit any type of reassurance of my “non-average” nature. I don’t say it to start the pity fiesta.

It’s just true. I…WE…have the ultimate power of the God and Creator of the universe and everything in it within me based on my acknowledgement of the power of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. But I don’t use it. And therefore…

…I’m average.

I doubt. I act trustworthy but doubt the power found in prayer and trusting his provision. This happens daily. Over the past month or so it has been a deep struggle though. Trying to rise above that medium-bodied so-so-ness has become a real problem.

My intentions? They are fabulous and grandiose on a meager day.

My actions? Pitiful in comparison.

It makes me sad some days. Today for example.

I fall short, as we all do, of the glory. I screw up. I come in at 50%.

If actions speak louder than words, I’m whispering to a world that desires a primal scream. This can’t be true on an extended level in life, it leads to resentment, interdependence on others, and complacency.

Discontent. Average, picket-fence, 401K, 2.5 kids and a lab existence.

Forever I will search the bigger, more exciting options, and will in most cases, fall short of that.

I fear rejection and instead of embracing that fear and knowing it will happen, I avoid it by not asking many questions I know will elicit potentially negative responses. I call instead of setting up an appointment. I text instead of call. I email/facebook instead of text. I delete instead of reply.

I avoid.

I say all of this, again, not for pity but for prayer. Before all else, with a humble heart, I ask for your words of prayer to the Father for help with this, that I may live the dynamic and earth-shattering life He has set out before me, before all of us. And I, in return, will do the same for you. We are ALL in this together to change the things we know as average into greatness.

Walking. One step, just like everyone else, at a time.

This too shall be a memory of when we knew change was afoot and chose to be a part of it, not a passive observer.

Good day beautiful world.

                   Having been transported by
                   expectations of his memories.

It is a moment, inexplicably beyond words
but still the poet exhales.
A feeble and broken attempt
at bleeding and tears.

A full man, half-grown.
A skin of the boy he was,
molted,
an exhibit for the wall of a well
and better-educated man

MJD 7.10.11

Innovation is often reserved for technology (Guttenberg, Jobs, Gates, Kurzweil etc.) and methods of thought (Einstein, Mendel, Newton, Freud etc.). Steve Jobs was definitely one of the greatest innovators of this generation, that can not be debated really based on what I know about him.

But why does it always have to be something big? Kerouac? Stone? Henson? Ginsberg? Dylan? Hendrix? Mozart? Foer? Burns? Child? Puck? All these people took things that already existed and changed them. It took a niche market at first and was seemingly foolish to the outsider but slowly grew and changed the face of what their chosen field was over time. Whether you agree or even know or don’t care.

It’s why poets exist, to innovate sentence structure and meter and conscience and rehearsed movements of the eyes. Left. Right. Always. Always?

Innovation is why food tastes good. “I’ve never tasted anything like this before!” “Why didn’t I think of that?” are both phrases I love hearing and saying.

Change is beneath music’s draw. Needing something new, something better than a 1,000x repeated album. Something I haven’t heard before. Something catchy. An old favorite in a new way.

It’s in our nature as a race of humans. Change the status quo because we get bored. We want to push the boundaries of our abilities/knowledge/awareness. It was from the beginning of time, and it will be until the end as well.

What do you dream of? What do you want to contribute to this world?

I want to upend your previously held beliefs on what sandwiches are and should be. I want to dive deeper into harmonies in music and change the way your ear hears the subtle nuances behind the songs. I want high school students to LIVE moments they have only ever read about, for them to feel, within the context of their current existences, the plight of different groups throughout all of history.

They may not happen, they may provide retirement for me and my family. I don’t know. But I won’t stop dreaming them.

Goodnight beautiful world.

Romantic ideals that mean I believe honestly, I could write and get a paycheck, one. Maybe even subsequent paydays from it, who knows?! Most of it would be short stories, I think I could write some wicked short stories which would lead me to publicize (read: actually share) my poetry which would then transfer into an actual novel or two (I have two ideas currently, which may or may not become short stories) and also a brief foray into non-fiction (a cultural study of America, since before it’s inception, and it’s population’s social mindset leading into war using primary media from the different era’s to see if there was a correlation between social attitudes and war-mongering essentially…I know, I know.)

“The only thing worse than not having the answers is knowing. Having the result only makes the pursuit seem futile and eternal. Be within yourself where the only answers you have come from the experience you’ve known.”

I’ve written about him before, this is not about him. This is about being inspired to be better than average and as it says in James 4, knowing the good we ought to do and doing it rather than not.

It’s perfectly fine to be ok
sometimes.
To be caught in the everyday of this life
and others’, to be here, present…
not actively engaged in the depths or the heights.

Isn’t it?

Or is it against our calling to be complacent
with “how things are”.

You say “It is what it is.”

or it isn’t, it is how it seems to be,

or it isn’t.

It’s ok to hold on to hope. Simple
intangible
unknowing hope.

Or what if…
what if we didn’t hold on?
We let go, to enjoy the fear

of falling? Of being caught?

This is the true prize of this plight in this life…

(Deeply moved by the word “prize”, the author realizes here the ending of this word can be held onto for extended periods of time. Most words (see “plight” and “life”) are not designed to be extended, they are finite. “Prize” and “love” are words of a unique nature, intended to linger, to present a challenge to the orator to end the saying of such a beautiful word.)

…being caught

and held onto by something more grand
than the horror of inactivity and
it’s consequences.

A hug, to inspire healing
of unknown maladies.

MJD 26.9.11