I’m a musician.
More specifically, a songwriter, a composer of three to five-ish minute stories, sung exposés of heart and soul, guts and grime, faces and places. Sometimes they squeeze out of me like toothpaste from the tube, globular and grotesque until they shape up, shine up, or ship out. Sometimes they feel like a Rubik’s cube – confused and mystifying until the right colours align and the palette finds its rightful place. Sometimes they are a town made of Legos, uninhabitable ghettos, angular, sharp, hard on the feet, until the final block snaps into place and home comes into view.
In rare moments, they arrive complete. Finished. No edits required. A gift that asks only to be notated, promptly sung, and properly introduced to whomever might be interested.
This song is one of those.
2015. It came to me while sitting in my reading room at our home in Yakima, Washington. What follows is the story of its (and my own) emergence.
A church music director for most of my adult life, it had been my remit to satisfy front-of-house needs for artistic class, professionalism, cultural relevance (whatever that means), beauty, and involvement in the particular church of my employ. Choral directing, training, and performance; listening endlessly to frequently banal worship songs, pursuing the best ones for consumption; composing and/or arranging new songs; identifying, training, and releasing new musicians; seasonal concerts and performances; hobnobbing with the muck-a-mucks to ensure funding and support to our program; fielding “concerned” emails about my approach, methodology, song choices, or choice of hairstyle (no, really).
I genuinely loved it. I think I’ve been good at it but won’t ask too many questions, just in case…
But, any job, even one as fulfilling as this, can become stretched, insufficiently gratifying to ensure warmth on those cold days of uncertainty and desire for something new. The best tricks up one’s sleeve become well known, even expected, to onlookers. Tricks of the trade, inside jokes, clever banter (at least I thought so) – where once they generated wonder and amazement, now, at best, they go all but unnoticed and, at worst, prompt eye-rolls, chuckles, even groans generally reserved for Dad-jokes.
At least that was my growing perception. I’d spent my last creative dime, so to speak, and was struggling to feel fresh and original. To a dyed-in-the-wool Enneagram 4, that was unacceptable. Diabolical even. It prompted a long period of reconsideration.
A second presenting concern was the resignation of the senior pastor with whom I’d enjoyed years of heady and inspiring co-leadership. Duncan, a young and vibrant Princeton graduate with off-the-charts charisma, energy, creativity, competence, and ideas had joined our staff. I was smitten by his indefatigable creativity, compassionately confident, and compelling leadership. It was, in a word, a bromance.
Duncan and I in 2011
He had hit a wall personally and professionally and felt the need not just to resign from guiding our church, but from ministry altogether (he is now a happy and successful fire fighter). The news hit me like a train. I believed us to be the Simon and Garfunkel, Lennon and McCartney, Plant and Page of our church. By his own admission, he felt similarly. All that, however, was to be no more. I was lost and shouldered it like Apollo’s world-bearing curse. Could I continue doing all this but in brand new ways? Should I do these things but in a new location? Would I find satisfaction doing something else entirely? None of the above? All of the above?
For many, these questions are professional ones, career-defining questions designed to clarify and shape one’s evolving professional life. For me, they were existential and required a deeper dive towards any kind of answer. Let’s try anyway, shall we?
From longing to belonging. Exile to welcome. Banishment to inclusion. Since most of my best writing has arisen from places of the former, it has been exceptionally difficult capturing the latter. A series of essays sought to explore this topic, captured best in the Welsh Celtic notion of “hiraeth.”
Those like me, perpetually wandering melancholics, happiest when a bit sad can feel a little lost as this begins to melt away in the face of…peace. Shalom. How can it be that someone whose cottage industry had been disenchantment and ennui suddenly finds contentment?
After a sabbatical in 2016 to the UK, it was clear that this was where we were truly meant to be. There began a long process of discernment through which we embarked upon a new journey: a move from Yakima, Washington to Edinburgh, Scotland.
“You Want to Fly Again” was my heart’s cry for what we’re currently experiencing. The song had been covertly prophetic of what was yet to come. I was unaware that I’d written a song intended for everyone but which held within it the seeds of an unfolding reality. And that reality is good. Very good.
I encourage anyone who happens upon these words to do so with faith in the God who still works in mysterious and miraculous ways. If this can become our journey, I am bold to say it can be so for you as well.
May it be so.
innerwoven 