replay

it feels surreal. its like the moment where you know you need to just get over it but you know you are just about to. that light drawing so close it is almost blinding you. is this real or am i just once again deluded? may my mind be captured in grace.

i remember the first song i wrote on my guitar - the Congress my bible study teacher handed me. the one with the black nylon strings. classical. sweet tones. i remember lying on my bed, plucking away at every open string and let the strings sing and resonate. i fell in love. i found shapes and chords and keys that made sense. and that one time i 'performed' at the tiong bahru apartment, hacking my way through chords i thought fitted with the songs.

i never quite owned a guitar even though i played extensively, until i shelled out my savings to buy my first yamaha APX. those little glory days. and soon it was takamine, a few flings with the ovation, and now, there's taylor.

but as far as i can remember, the Congress wrote my very first, based on Isaiah 42, 6 - 7. NIV. Word for word. It's funny now that i seem to have a neck to pick up scripture wholesale and write melodies over them. real perculiar. started with a whim when i led our sunday morning worship - sang/rapped Psalms 24 over the chord progression of Enter In preceding the chorus. Then came Save The Day, my frustration at the genre selection of modern day psalmists and made my own version of Psalms 120 & 121. And let's not forget Psalms 23, the shepherd song prelude to my pending bankruptcy.

then came Isaiah 32, a suggestion over camp at easter to co-write a song to leave behind for the next generation. like they say, roll with the punches. Made For More became a humming tune that took me by surprise. It was then Forge weekend, and a series of requests for the song to be recorded so that other communities could sing them at their regular services.

tonight i sit at the heel of the week, wondering, what all this means. I am deep in the water, wet with mixing down hours and hours of songs written by our community, recovering from a long week of getting the choir together, teaching the chorus to a song i only finished writing at 2.00pm today, putting it all together at 3.00pm, in the same afternoon, to what will be the finale anthem for Seeds, our 2008 Annual Dinner, over the coming weekend.

my brother says, the fly wheel effect doesn't slow down. it can only go faster. will this spin out like a lot of the ones before? all i know, is along this journey so far, i have been surprised by grace, stumbling upon people who find space in their hearts to lend me their strength, who come alongside to colour the music, willingly, without any hang ups, resources who find their way to my living space, and the relationships that formed as a result.

i am rich though i am poor. i am resurrecting though i may be close to losing my job. i am surrounded by grace and close to understanding love though my heart is still angry and wayward at times.

as i look back on that cold morning, all alone in the basketball court, praying and seeking, those sweet 16 years ago, this looks like a glimpse to what the answer might be.

who's to say what makes or breaks? who's to say what makes me wake, for in the morning, I'll still be breathing.