Enter the Mystery with Eyes Wide

Welcome to my blog.

If it had to be like other blogs, I would now write:
And don't let the URL hit you on the way out.

But I've decided instead to let this be a sort of cave where my sacred sketches are lit by the profane flame of conscious artifice.

What does that mean?

It means I won't bore you with the details of my daily existence. I will try to make this a banquet table of only rare offerings. I won't spell out my opinions for you, or belabor the facts of my checkered past. Instead, there will be gently gleaming clues embedded in stories, and in lyrics.

In fact, I've been using such a system for a long time, and think I've become adept at it. Just as Da Vinci may have encoded certain secrets in his paintings, my entire history, all my passions and concerns, my darkest secrets and most vulnerable, ineffable hopes, are already there -- embedded in lyrics and in stories.

We are all initiates of this mystery religion together. And all but the most stubbornly blind and jaded acolytes of utilitarian science must agree that there exists in us a sacred impulse. A woman in a check-out line says that she is wearing the beautiful scarf you just complimented to hide her hairless scalp, and begins to share her experience with chemotherapy. What is your impulse? To run and hide? To will your pager to beep? I think those are mere reactions to the real impulse. The real impulse -- be still and listen to it! -- is to reach out to her. Physically? Yes, initially. But really, the impulse is to impart a sort of healing through touch. Not an instantaneous healing, as in the Jesus miracle stories, but the beginning of one. Healing is available to everybody, but requires interaction, touch, hearing, and time. And what we run from, I think, is the time commitment, and the fear that rather than becoming a healing force, we will absorb the illness ourselves, or the fatigue that goes with it.

I don't believe in any of the creation myths as stated in any of the sacred texts. But I have been listening to an energy that only really flows when two or more are gathered together to achieve a higher, humane end.

So, I won't preach. I'm not qualified. But I just want to cue you in to the fact that many such ideas, and hidden agendas, and less lofty secrets, are and will continue to be embedded in my stories and songs.

I invite you all to respond by email to what you discover here.

Your Servant in Song...