For Any New Followers

Since I restarted occasional blogging, a few new people have peeked in on me here.   This is not my day job, and I take breaks, because life is busy and we all must prioritize.   But I hope you find some of my posts interesting or edifying in some way.

One thing you’ve probably noticed is that I write and record music.  It’s a hobby and an outlet.  Having said that, I try to use the talent God gave me to write music that has some meaning to it, that glorifies God, or that conveys a message I think to be important.

I was delighted a little while back to receive an e-mail from someone in Florida who shares my affinity for the Packers, and who also took some time to listen to the music I have linked to on this site (see music page above).    After a brief exchange, he asked to purchase a CD.

Well, my CD was a bucket-list venture.   Honestly, I’m just thrilled to provide them free of charge to anyone who actually wants one.   And I’m dead serious about that.

Now, the main issue is it does cost $3 plus the envelope to ship them, and I am willing to eat the cost for the occasional requestor.   My deal has been that you need to promise to pray for my family and I.   I’ve said that makes us even, but I feel bad in retrospect saying that, since it devalues prayer.   Actually, I am sure I come out way ahead on that deal.

So, if anyone wants a CD, you can contact me via e-mail and I’ll gladly send you a copy.   No need to pay me anything.   If you insist, I won’t turn you down, but please I am serious that it is not necessary.

You can actually find my CD in cdbaby as well, if you want to order the old fashioned way or download it.   I think I have it there for $5.    As you can see, I’m not in it for the riches.   Also, you can find me on spotify too.

I have actually just finished a new song.   It is a pro-life song that I have put a lot of thought and effort into and I think it is possibly the strongest message I’ve ever incorporated into a song.    I will post that separately, probably tomorrow.   I encourage you to look for it.

Reprise: Heaven Has A Broken Heart

Re-linking to a post from a couple years ago.   A song I recorded, as appearing on my CD “Avant-God.”   (Information to the right)

Just felt the message has some meaning today.

Please follow the link here.

Heaven Has A Broken Heart – now on youtube

Here is a video of the 5th cut from my CD “Avant-God.” The song is “Heaven Has a Broken Heart” and is embedded here. For videos of the first four CD tracks, check out previous posts.

Since one reason why it has taken me so long to get the videos up is that I never quite have the time to put a nice video presentation together with pics or video, I have decided it would be nice to just get the music out there anyway. So, the video here is just the lyrics, as was “The Game.” Sorry it isn’t fancier, but hopefully you enjoy it anyway. This is my plan for the rest of the songs on the CD, so I should get them up a bit more expediently.

As always, opinions are welcome, and if you really like the music, a brother could always use a few CD purchases from CD Baby (or a direct e-mail)!

Enjoy! I have printed the lyrics below the video and have added a few thoughts as well.

Heaven Has a Broken Heart
From the ancient tributes
To the modern rites of praise
We’ve known a higher Power
Since the beginning of our days

Over time it seems that everyone
Wants to go a different way
We change the rules as we go on
No matter what His Law says
We change His words to fit the part
Now, Heaven has a broken heart
Heaven has a broken heart

It doesn’t take much time
To observe the miracles we know
We see the mystic hand
Amidst the highest heavens’ glow

All He wants is to be known
That’s why He sent His gifts
All He wants is faith within
So we know His spirit lives
It’s so easy to forget
That’s why He’s so quick to forgive
But we haven’t done our part
Now Heaven has a broken Heart
Heaven has a broken Heart
Heaven has a broken Heart
Has a broken Heart

And we won’t stop
Until the Light has reached everybody’s hearts
And we won’t stop
’til everyone in this world makes a brand new start

We won’t stop
’til the Light has reached everybody’s hearts
And we won’t stop
’til everyone in this world makes a brand new start

And we won’t stop (we will not stop)
Until the Light has reached everybody’s hearts
And we won’t stop (we will not stop)
’til everyone in this world makes a brand new start

We won’t stop (we will not stop)
Until the Light has reached everybody’s hearts
And we won’t stop (we will not stop)
’til everyone in this world makes a brand new start

I wrote this song years and years ago, and it was basically a lament. I am saddened by relativism. People kinda sorta believe in God, but don’t want to live as if there is a God that demands anything of us, or expects us to live in a certain way. More and more people define morality as to conveniently fit into however it is that they wish to live their lives. It must be nice believing that there is a God Who will see us into heaven and at the same time let us define what it is He wants out of us. But what is sad about it is the fact that this isn’t truth. And our world is worse for it.

That same lament not only stays with me today, but has become exponentially more prominent. This is exactly how “good” gets defined as evil and “evil” gets defined as good. We are great at wordsmithing the issues of the day. We are great at finding in our sympathy and empathy and compassion for people who need to hear a difficult message a way out of the difficult message. We don’t want to offend anyone who is doing wrong, even if the message that needs to conveyed is necessary for that person’s salvation. We convince ourselves that what others do doesn’t really matter, and in fact, why would God really expect any more of them?

I wrote the lyrics of this song to recognize that we all carry a knowledge of God in our hearts and that this inherent knowledge is there for a reason. It is not to make stuff up about him or to conveniently paint Him as we’d like to paint Him. It’s not to twist the words of His Law or ignore it altogether to create our own world of morality. It is to know Him, seek Him, and to love Him. And that means expending ourselves in the process, and it means accepting that we may have issues we will struggle with, but we are called to that struggle.

THe end of the song is a call to arms of all those willing to take it on. Don’t stop. Don’t be shouted down by the voices of moral relativism who tell us that the moral societal issues are steeped in intolerance and bigotry. That the Truth doesn’t matter. Don’t stop.

We may never see that day where the entire world is converted, but we can still make that our personal goal. Of course, it is the Holy Spirit that drives that, but we can be instruments of it. Don’t stop until the Light has reached everybody’s hearts.

Revisiting “Holy Water”

As you’ve likely noticed, I’ve recently gotten “the bug” to work on music-related efforts. I am finally taking the time to get my previous CD works up on youtube and post them here, and I am beginning to get “rough drafts” of new songs recorded so I can start the process of listening and developing and so forth. It is a labor of love for me, but one that often doesn’t rise to the top of the priority list because of the rest of life’s obligations. But every now and again I force myself to make time to do it.

For those wondering when I will continue to post on my series of walking through the Catechism as it relates to prophecy, I will get to it, and I even have some stuff ready to go on it already. But I just go with the flow of the moment here, and right now I’ve got other things on the brain.

Now that I am working on getting more material in public view, I wanted to do more than just throw up the music/videos with no context to them. One nice thing about going to a concert is hearing the artist tell the story about how a song came to be. It helps add meaning to the song and the text.

Well, I kind of realized after the fact that I didn’t do any of that as I started introducing my music here. Oh, long ago I offered up a little bio and CD description, but that’s way in the archives. I’m going to correct this oversight here.

A couple years ago, I introduced the following song:
https://catholicdiatribes.wordpress.com/2010/05/02/holy-water-on-youtube/

I am going to post the lyrics here, and then I’m going to share with you how this song came to be and what the lyrics are intended to convey. Of course, like all art, the listener may take their own things from it, as well.

Holy Water
I used to think I knew what was good
I guess I thought it was all well understood
But now I know how wrong I had been
It’s good to think about life now and then

I took the water’s embrace
And I can feel the void in me it replaced
A new sense of purpose in my head
And so I stood right up and said

I love the Holy Water
I love to feel the splash upon my face
I love the Holy Water
Receiving His unending gift of grace
And I cannot recall ever feeling quite the way I felt
On that day
I love the Holy Water

Thought life couldn’t be too much more
But I didn’t know I’d shut the door
A lifetime of selfishness
Makes me proud of nothing that I did before

So I took a step back
And realized there was nothing else I could do
I had to have the water
Took the Christ plunge at the deep end of the pool

I love the Holy Water
I love to feel the splash upon my face
I love the Holy Water
Receiving His unending gift of grace
And I cannot recall ever feeling quite the way I felt
On that day
I love the Holy Water

(aaah, aaah)

I used to think I knew what was good
I guess I thought it was all well understood
But now I know how wrong I had been
It’s good to think about life now and then

I love the Holy Water (I love it)
I love the Holy Water
I love the Holy Water (I love it)
I love the Holy Water

OK, so first on the music: This is my most straight-ahead driving harder-rock song. I grew up loving rock music, and I am not of the mind that the style of music in intrinsically evil, despite many of the problematic uses of it. Christ touched the lepers and He healed them. To consider things or matter of any kind intrinsically evil is a Pharisitic quality. Now, I’m not suggesting it should be played at Mass, but neither do I apologize for pulling out an electric guitar for a Catholic or Christian song.

This song was born, quite honestly, when I first bought my recording equipment and just messed around to see how it worked. I just happened to stumble across a few chord progressions and the theme came to me and I went with it.

As I wrote the lyrics, I purposely kept it somewhat vague as to whether or not I was referencing actual holy water as blessed by a Priest, or whether or not I was using it to describe the waters of baptism, or whether or not it was emblematic of the Holy Spirit. It’s really a reference to all three.

We crazy Catholics believe in valid infant baptism, so most of us don’t actually feel (or at least remember) the emotion that comes with baptism. However, every year at Easter Vigil Masses all over the globe, plenty of adults are baptized into the faith. I try to imagine every year what they must feel at the moment that water is poured over them, and I vicariously feel a sense of awe. When I wrote this song and the theme of “Holy Water” emerged, this really was my primary focus. The lyrics were intended to not talk about me in that regard (I was baptized as an infant and praise God for that gift) but to sing from the perspective of someone who finally came to the realization that “goodness” is not something to be done on your own, but to be done with the help of the Holy Spirit, initially through the Sacrament of Baptism.

So, the baptismal allusion as an adult here is not in any way intended to convey the idea that baptism is something that should be done as an adult (or conversely NOT to be done as an infant). It is simply a story of conversion, acceptance, and regeneration.

However, the lyrics are written so as to not be limited to Baptism. We revisit our baptism every time we sign ourselves with Holy Water, or during a sprinkling rite during the Easter season. Holy Water is a powerful sacramental in the Catholic faith and we should embrace it and use it. We all know, of course, that it is still water, and that it is not magic. God is ultimately the source of all power of any sacramental. But we use physical things to constantly remind us of this, and God uses the matter He created to work with us in our spiritual journey, and through His divine power these elements become the conduit of grace. So, as simple as that all is, take a step back and how can one not “love the Holy Water!”

Of course, the Holy Spirit is behind all this. Water is often used as symbology of the Spirit, and the lyrics are intended to convey that as well. In particular, I can attest to the feeling of going to confession after a long and rocky absence. Besides the weight that was lifted, I could almost feel the infusion of grace and the Spirit that came with that experience. I LOVED that “Holy Water!”

The lyrics, of course, will not win a classic poetry contest. The style of writing is meant to work with the style of music. Yet, in all ways the intent is to be respectful to the topic.

The Game – now on youtube

I finally got around to posting a video of the 4th cut from my CD “Avant-God.” The song is “The Game” and is embedded here. In my previous post I listed links to the three other songs I’ve uploaded.

The video here is just the lyrics, so nothing fancy – just like me. But I want to get my music up on youtube so this is probably the way I’ll just do it from now on – simpler and faster, even if the videography leaves a bit to be desired.

Would love to hear what you think. Unless you don’t like it, in which case I’m not sure I love it, but I can take it!

Ill be back with more diatribical type of nonsense later this week.

Enjoy!

Random Reflections for the 2012 Summer Solstice

Happy Summer!

Well, I’ve been a bit tied up lately and needed to make the choice that the blog here was a lower priority than a lot of other work that had to be done in both my personal and professional life. But I thought I’d just offer a personal reflection today.

Our lives are truly amazing. I sometimes find it difficult to find God in the work I do, but He is there. He has given me the skills and abilities to provide for my family. I was called to be a husband and father and never felt the call to religious life. To be fair, when I was younger I didn’t spend a great deal of time in discernment over it, but I do recall always feeling pulled towards married life. My education and circumstance has led to doing work for an insurance company. My job is beneficial to society and I put in an honest day’s work, but I can remember struggling a bit with the idea that, as I started really blossoming in my faith, that I wasn’t “doing more.” In other words, I almost thought I should feel called to some sort of ministry instead of a secular job. But I didn’t. So, I almost questioned my seriousness of faith because I thought I should feel called but actually didn’t feel called. A wise Priest friend of mine basically called me an idiot (in a nice way) and pointed out that we just need to be the best Catholics everywhere we are, and that the world needs good Catholics everywhere. Not that my company is unethical or dishonest – they aren’t – but I can help make sure that it stays that way. Further, God has blessed me with the ability in my work to provide for my family in such a way that my wife stays home and homeschools. I learned during this time to not look a gift horse in the mouth, and accept the blessings God has provided. Further, just to make sure I’m where I need to be, we pray as a family often for the ability to hear and understand and respond to God’s call in our lives. God can request a change in direction at any time, and we need to be ready.

At Mass last Sunday we heard about the mustard seed. I couldn’t help but think about my own gardens. I have not discussed it much here, but we have a somewhat massive gardening operation. It is a lot of hard work, and I start most of the plants we grow in a little greenhouse. Very few things help me to recognize the miracle of God’s creation like saving a seed from one of last year’s tomatoes and then planting it and watching it grow to yield a large plant with numerous tomatoes and countless other seeds. One tiny seed not only yields fruit, but also yields so many seeds within those fruit that you could literally cover the earth with tomato plants within a handful of generations of plants if you had enough people to harvest them and plant them and nurture them. This is unmistakeably miraculous, but it is so commonplace in our lives that we don’t give it a second thought – until you start toiling and working and thinking. And yes, I do have a mustard plant…

Youth baseball is coming to an end, and this is an occasion of praise! 🙂 The 9 year old has games on Tuesdays and Thursdays, while the 7 year old has games on Mondays and Wednesdays. Both love it and we are thankful to be able to provide this activity for them, but it really does creat havoc with the summer schedule, so we are always happy to see it end. The rest of the summer can now be freed up for more camping activities and other things.

I am, God-willing and time-able, planting the seeds for recording a new CD. I plan on focusing on Catholic prayers and devotions for this one, with some other stuff as well, but probably not incorporating much of the harder-driving music that I love to do. But I really want to focus on this. I also want to pull in a lot of talented people I know to be involved in it as well. Lots of visions and plans, but we’ll see where it goes. It’s not a top priority, but hope to steal time here and there. I would also like to find time to upload more songs from my last CD to youtube, and will be sure to link to any that I do.

In case you’re a late-arriver to this blog and have not seen/heard the three music youtube vids to songs on my CD, here are the links:

https://catholicdiatribes.wordpress.com/2010/05/02/holy-water-on-youtube/
https://catholicdiatribes.wordpress.com/2010/05/03/i-dream-of-heaven/
https://catholicdiatribes.wordpress.com/2010/08/04/quiet-time/

Yes, it really has been almost 2 years since I uploaded them, and have done NOTHING since. Shame on me. I’ll try to get some more up.

Blessings to all of you. I’ll try to get back into the prophetic walk through the Catechism shortly.

I Dream of Heaven

Continuing my foray into the world of posting my music on YouTube, I now have the song “I Dream of Heaven” posted. I’ve embedded it here. Listen and enjoy!

“Holy Water” on YouTube

I’m finally inching forward on the technology front, and I managed to put together a simple video thingie with my song “Holy Water” as the backdrop. It’s up on YouTube. Please give a listen.

Come on, People! Don’t be shy. I’m not Joking when I say I’m giving away CDs for Free, Including Shipping.

No takers? I know I don’t get a ton of traffic, but even if you aren’t interested, surely you know someone who might be? Send them the link.

For more details on my giveaway offer, read this post.

I’m keeping this a sticky until I get 5 takers.

Merry Christmas From Me – Get a Free CD!

Well, I didn’t start my blog all that long ago, but thanks to a couple fortunate links from Spirit Digest and a link from the Catholic Answers forums, I’ve had a few visitors already. While not thousands, it’s a nice start.

So, since it looks like I have a few people stopping by now, I would like to offer a free CD to the first 5 people who e-mail me (use the e-mail in my “Contact Joe” page).

I do not have limitless resources, so I can’t go overboard with this. So, I apologize for those who e-mail me 6th or later. I will even pick up the shipping on the lucky first five responders.

The CD is Catholic oriented Rock music. Not metal or anything, but rock. Definitely contemporary music, nonetheless. There are a few things that make it noticeably Catholic, but it’s not like the entire CD is in-your-face Catholicism or anything (if any of you non-Catholic Christians would like to give it a shot.) So, you probably are only interested if you like that kind of music, or maybe you want to get something that’s a positive influence for your kids who like this kind of music.

So, why would I do this?

Quite honestly, while I would love to sell a ton of these and make a bunch of money, I simply don’t have the time or organization (and marketing drive) to make that happen. I did this as a labor of love. It makes no sense for me to have a gazillion boxes of unopened CDs that I will never sell. That’s the first reason.

The second reason is that I know that it is difficult to pull the trigger on paying money for something that you haven’t heard on the radio. So, part of my labor of love is to actually want people to have a copy and (hopefully) enjoy it.

Third, I am hoping that you’d be so kind as to come back here and let others know what you thought (hopefully you don’t think it’s terrible!). Perhaps with some encouragement from people who listened to it, I can generate a few future sales. And if you feel comfortable passing on a suggestion to others, that’s great too. That is certainly not required, though, so don’t let that deter you from requesting your copy.

Fourth, if you like it and you are either an owner of a Catholic store or know of a local store that may be interested in carrying the music, then please let me know of them (and if you wish to pass on a kind word regarding the music to help out, that’s great). Again, not a requirement to requesting a CD, just kind of a hope on my part that getting the CD out to random individuals may bear some fruit. If not, then so be it.

If anyone is blessed with the financial means and wishes to purchase a copy directly from me or through the CD Baby link, that’s great. But for those who just feel like they don’t want to risk the dollars of such a transaction, try to claim your free CD.

So go ahead and send an e-mail with the address you want it shipped to. I will let you know whether or not you are one of the lucky 5. (Only 1 free CD request per person, please. If for some reason you’d like more, we can discuss price via e-mail).

God bless, and have a Merry Christmas.