simply groove

any of  you who have ever grown up with a drummer in the house know the instance I'm talking about. it's that learning period a year or two into playing when your thoughts on what "good" is equate to this:  "the more stuff I can hit with this stick in the shortest period of time, the better I am playing!" 

ha

yeah, thank God that doesn't last forever. after playing with others for a while you come to realize the music is about more than how fast you can go... actually it's about more than anything about you at all. when other players are with you, it's about giving them something to play with. 

   as a drummer, the other musicians need something from me more than complicated layer of notes coming and going at 600 bpm(beats per minute)

They need to know where the groove is.

it's easy to get lost in the chaotic feeding frenzy that is the "pursuit of happiness" in our society today. and it seems like the more we pursue it the more complicated life gets. life was like that for me in high school. I had my "Christian life" but I also had all this other stuff going on around it. I had friends that I saw every day, but the topics of God and how to live like Christ never surfaced. my life was just to cluttered. and my relationship with God was just one aspect of a overly-complicated life. 

you know, my typical day could have looked like this:  music, school, homework, friends house, skateboard, drums, tv, God, taco bell, video games, more music, stress about math, family time, dinner, tv, sleep.

can you see my focus? ...neither could I.

there is this group of Christians living in Philadelphia who call themselves "the Simple Way". one of their mottos is "to live simply, so others may simply live."  now, they mean that they don't overcomplicate their live with expensive living so that in turn they can provide for those lacking basic essentials. but that motto fits well into other areas of life than just financial arrangements, doesn't it?

   we get caught into adding all this fluff to our lives to the extent that even those around us who could be desperately be looking for God would never see Him in us. it's easy to forget that our lives aren't about us. they are all about connecting THEM with HIM. 

that's it. 

simple.

it's all about the rhythm section.

this one of the first things I learned when I started playing 13 years ago. and everyone in the band reminded me of it constantly. when I first sat down on that first Sunday morning to play at my church, I think every member of the church came up to me at one point or another before we started and said, "you know the drums are the most important part." or "it's all about the drums and bass" 

   this even bled into learning guitar, when I picked it up I soon realized that, even on it, the notes, the volume, every other part of the music I played hinged on the rhythm. piano was the same way. 88 keys laid in front of me, but which ones I was playing was always secondary to the rhythm I played them with.

life moves in rhythm.

there is this poet named Solomon in the Bible wrote a poem called Eccesiastes, most of which is very depressing as the writer strives to find meaning in life. but what starts as very a very pointless, useless life, begins to take shape in chapter 3 when he starts noticing that everything in life moves with cadence, with a rhythm.

   and this groove, as he says in the first 2 verses, is set by God.

so God is the drummer?

the chapter goes on seeming to dig out of the dreary state earlier and gets lively as he writes the rhythm of life he sees it going on around him.

he says:

God sets the time of birth, and the time of death.

the time for planting and the time for harvesting.

the time for killing and the time for healing

the time for tearing down and the time for building up.

the time for sorrow and the time for Joy.

the time for mourning and the time for dancing. 

the time for not making love, and the time to make it...

it keeps going and each one is worth thinking about, but the point is it's all cyclic, or rhythmic.

and God is setting it.

this is so easy for us forget this, especially when we are caught in the down times. 

but up times will come.

they always do,

even if you can't see it.

remember that Solomon wrote this poem at what seemed like the end of his country's high point. they had been blessed, they had turned away again, and were just a few years away from the darkest time in their history another 8oo or years of slavery to empires. empires that would come and go, passing the people of Israel from one to the next like a baton.

but the big crescendo (lifting up) was coming wasn't it.

I wander if that's what he meant by "time for killing, time for healing" and "time for mourning time for dancing" and so on. it sounds a lot like the old and new testaments doesn't it?

so, when you feel at the end of your rope, like it couldn't get any worse, like you aren't in control of anything, 

May you remember that you aren't in control.

God is.

He wrote the song, He knows the speed, He directs the major and minor movements, the upbeats and the downbeats. and the big crescendo is coming...