Notes from Allen on his this project       

First of all, THANKS for listening and for your encouragement of what i get to do.

i always enjoy hearing the story behind a song. That’s one of the things that makes live music so enjoyable to me. The notes which follow give a little history and background to the songs, as if to offer the garden of thoughts from which they were harvested. i hope that they might give you some food for thought. My guess – my hope – is that you might have your own reflections and thoughts to add to my own. These songs might say something to you altogether different than what they say to me. 

ABOUT THE GUITAR TUNINGS:

To you guitar players who might be interested in the tunings or chords: for each song, i give the tuning and then the chords that i play in the song. YOU have to figure out when to use which chord, where to change, how to do the nuances. But the basic material is here. For most of the songs on the disc, there are usually a couple of guitars being utilized, often in different tunings. The chords i give are for the principal guitar; this would be the tuning that i use when i’m playing the songs live. Have fun. …

COMFORT 17     Click on logo for sound clip

This is a song about a fictional signpost (though it was inspired by an actual sign i saw in Boerne, Texas while visiting Dave and Sarah Austin). Imagine this. There’s a beautiful, i mean beautiful, place. You get there by a narrow road. The signs that get you there are simple, unembellished, imperfect, even difficult to read. They are the ONLY signs that get you to that desirable place. If you judge the destination by the signposts, you’ll probably not get to the destination. Moral of the story: judge the destination by the destination.

This is a song about teachers, preachers, even singer/songwriter types like myself. At best, none of us can be more than simple, imperfect, difficult to read signposts. But those who follow Jesus point others to a glorious destination, hoping that we might ‘make the teaching about God our Savior attractive,’ but realizing that we cannot begin to communicate the deep goodness of Jesus’ love.

i decided to let this be the first song because it describes what i hope for this project. i pray that someone will follow the message to that place where there are sunsets like none we’ve ever seen.

It amazes me that God, Who has unlimited means to establish the Kingdom, uses ones, broken ones like us, to invite and chauffeur others to the mountaintop.

Carnival of Counterfeits    

My friend and mentor in many ways, David Wilcox, taught me a new tuning and gave me a cutaway capo for playing in BGDGBD. This is my first song, though i hope not my last, in that tuning.

In March 2002, i played, with great pleasure, at a Sacred Romance weekend with John Eldredge, author of the book with that same name. i wrote this song for that weekend. The phrase was lifted from his book, Wild at Heart. (Because of time constraints, i didn’t get to sing the song.) Here are John’s eloquent words:

"The world is a carnival of counterfeits – counterfeit battles, counterfeit adventures, counterfeit beauties. Men should think of it as a corruption of their strength. Battle your way to the top, says the world, and you are a man. Why is it then that the men who get there are often the emptiest, more frightened, prideful posters around? They are mercenaries, battling only to build their own kingdoms. There is nothing transcendent about their lives. ..

The world offers a man a false sense of power and a a false sense of security. Be brutally honest now – where does your won sense of power come from? Is it how pretty your wife is – or your secretary? … Is it knowledge – that you have an expertise and that makes others come to you, bow to you? Is it your position, degree, or title? A white coat, a Ph.D., a podium, or a paneled office can make a man feel like pretty neat stuff. What happen inside you when i suggest you give it up? (W)hat would you think of yourself if tomorrow you lost everything that the worlds has rewarded you for. ‘Without Christ a man must fail miserably’ says MacDonald, ‘or succeed even more miserably.’ Jesus warns us against anything that gives a false sense of power. When you walk into a company dinner or a church function, He said, take a backset. Choose the path of humility; don’t be a self-promoter, a glad-hander, a poser. Climb down the ladder; have the mail clerk over for dinner; treat your secretary like she’s more important that you; look to be the servant of all. Where am i deriving my sense of strength and power from ? is a good question to ask yourself … often." John Eldredge, Wild at Heart.

The Airplane Movie (The Headset Song)

The flight from Atlanta to Seattle is a long one. So much so that they’ll offer you a movie, if you’ll rent the headset. On one such flight i decided to forego the movie, choosing instead to read a book that i’d just begun. i found myself though looking up often from my book to the movie screen, as if i could somehow figure out the story from the images that were rushing by. From time to time, the people around me with the headsets would laugh together. The lady beside me cried a couple of times. They were INTO the story. i was on the sidelines, looking in and trying to get it.

The song is about the Truth of the Gospel, about the scriptures that give us the subtext of the play. Interesting that, when God came to walk among us as Jesus, He was described as "the Word." He is the One by which, if we are wise, we define all the words, all the scenes, all the relationships of life. Without the plot of the story, life is ‘disjointed and absurd.’

i don’t mean to suggest that understanding the Bible, or knowing the God of Whom scripture speaks, life becomes easy to figure out. Mystery remains, is maybe even intensified, in the life of faith. But life is not fatalistic, out of control, purposeless, senseless. Our little slice of it, our chapter if you will in the story, might look quite absurd at any given moment (planes flying into buildings?), but, the denouement is certain, and it is good.

Where the People Walk Backwards    Click on logo for sound clip

On December 3, 1999, i was driving to Birmingham to pay at a Christmas banquet. i had the radio turned off, no CD going, just quiet. As i am wont to do, i began singing to myself. This is the song that grew out of that ride. i stopped at a gas station to write the words down, and actually sang the song that night at Hunter Street Baptist Church. As i did then, i still sing it acapella when i do it in concert. Simply stated, it is an attempt to tell the Christmas story.

(cf. Jeremiah 32:33)

"Suppose we heard an unknown man spoken of by many men. Suppose we were puzzled to hear that some men said he was too tall and some too short; some objected to his fatness, some lamented his leanness. … One explanation .. would be that he might be an off shape.

But there is another explanation. He might be the right shape. Outrageously tall men might feel him to be short. Very short men might feel him to be tall." GK Chesteron, Orthodoxy.

Happy Lightning

Say you’ve had an ‘ordinary’ day. Get up, go to work, lunch, work, home. But somewhere in the course of the routine, something small but memorable happens. A smile or kind word from a stranger, a sunset, a letter, a phone call. It’s a tiny moment but it interrupts the flow in a pleasant way.

i read somewhere the observation that we are all engaged in a battle between boredom and amazement. Many or most, maybe all to varying degrees, are losing to boredom. i know it to be the case in my own life. But the God Who made us for wonder seems not willing to let our hearts die so easily. And so, from time to time, happy lightning strikes us, sometimes in small bolts, sometimes in veritable storms.

"Life, they say, is full of surprises. And so it is. Some are exciting discoveries. Some are unpleasant shocks. My experience has been that the memory of the shocks fade rather quickly. But some of the pleasant surprises remain vivid for years.

As a rule, then the happy lightning strikes, you’re not doing anything out of the ordinary. You may be taking a child to school, or going for a casual meting with a stranger. You’re half-asleep in the humdrum of daily living when suddenly something happens. Abruptly, circumstances arrange themselves so that the commonplace becomes the significant and the routine the memorable – so memorable that it perhaps changes you for the rest of your life." Arthur Gordon, A Touch of Wonder.

Is it too much to say that we were made ‘for the dance.’ i like CS Lewis’ words: "In Christianity, God is not a static thing – not even a person – but a dynamic, pulsating activity, a life, almost a kind of drama. Almost, if you will not think me irreverent, a kind of dance. … And now, what does it matter? It matters more than anything else in the world. The whole dance, or drama, or pattern (Three person) God is to be played out in each of us: or, putting it the other way round) each one of us has got to enter the pattern, take his place in the dance. There is no other way to the happiness for which we were made. Good things as well as bad, you know, are caught by a kind of infection. If you wanted to get warm you must stand near the fire: if you want to get wet you must get into the water. If you want joy, power, peace, eternal life, you must get to, or even into, the thing that has them. … If you are close to it, the spray will wet you: if you are not, you will remain dry. One a man is united to God, how could he not live forever?"

Love of a Different Kind

In 5 of the past 6 summers, i’ve been a guest musician at Young Life camps around the country. i am still pleasantly surprised that teenagers will let an old guy like me, an acoustic player no less, sing my songs for them. (i’m looking forward to a couple of weeks in July this year with my friend Mike Ashburn at Camp Timberwolf, in upstate Michigan.)

One summer, while working at Castaway Club in Minnesota, i wrote this song. i noticed that, on each Sunday of camp, as new camp groups arrived for their week, one could, if they paid close attention, often guess which boy and girl would be together by the end of the week. There was always the handsome boy who looked like he’d spent the summer lifting weights. His tan, hair, clothes, smile, everything indicated that he was the quintessential quarterback, strong, good looking, personable. A girl would get off who was gorgeous, tan, curvy, charming. The quintessential cheerleader. (Please don’t misinterpret this to be spoken unkindly of the QB or cheerleader.) These two belonged together. It made perfect sense.

It dawned on me that the ‘love’ which makes two beautiful people find each other, while wonderful and mysterious, is a far cry from the Love which we hoped they might learn about at camp. With that thought in mind, this song got written.

Yes, you have heard this song on a previous CD, "Before the Count of Three." So why do it again here? Well, it just fit. i wanted this new CD to be a whole, a complete story. And it just made sense to have this song in the line up. This new version is just voice and a couple of guitars with some small lyrical changes.

Undo The Fall

Just west of my house there is a hardwood bottom through which a small stream runs. The stream bed, being rock, makes for the calming music of falling water. (The sound at the first of the song was actually recorded beside the stream.)

One year, a big wind blew through the bottom and uprooted some of the biggest trees. Some of them fell across the small stream such that the flow of the water was blocked. As i was clearing those trees from across the stream, the thought of humanity’s fall in the Garden came to mind. One thought lead to another and the song got written.

In one sense, that phrase "undo the fall" describes the whole of Christ’s redemption in this world. It always defines the life of His followers. In ways big and small, in the relational, political, environmental, educational, creative, and other realms of life, the disciple of Jesus is about reversing the effects of fallenness.

Some thoughts by others:

Most people die with all of their music still in them. OW Holmes

"While we hack and prune we know very well that what we are and pruning is big with splendour and vitality which our rational will could never of itself have supplied. To liberate that splendour, to let it become fully what it is trying to be, to have tall trees instead of scrubby tangles, and sweet apples instead of crabs, is part of our purpose." CS Lewis, The Four Loves.

"Modern alienation is an echo from the Big Thud in Eden, the Fall; it si the latest stumble in a series of downhill bumps. What began with nature becoming ‘thorns and thistles’ and ‘the sweat of they brow’ and pain in childbirth now continues in the same direction, the direction from garden to wilderness." Peter Kreeft, Christianity for Modern s.

Love to Give Away    Click on logo for sound clip

i get asked a lot about what it is like to be now 46 and never married. i honestly don’t dwell much in my thoughts on the subject of singleness. It’s what i am, and always have been. It’s what i might always be, though i leave my heart open to the possibility of marriage. i am thankful for where i am in life. i have not put life on hold until marriage happens, and i don’t look for another to rescue me from being single. i honestly like my life. And i sometimes think that maybe i’m single, in part, just to be able to encourage other singles. Are there challenges to being unmarried? My gosh, yes. (Which is the same answer to the question, "are there challenges to being married?") But, still, life is good and rich and purposeful.

We go through life with a barrel/fountain/well of love to give away. In marriage, the husband and wife, rightly so, give most of the barrel to one another (and to their children if they have children). There is overflow that they share with others. Single people, on the other hand, don’t have that one person on whom to focus their affection and attention. They are free though, happily so, to give love "by the jigger" to many. It is one of the great joys, even amidst the sometimes lonely moments of the unmarried life, to quietly, creatively, simply give to others. And i firmly believe that, for some, a mere ‘jigger’ of love can be huge. The little attention that we might show others could well be the signpost that points them to the higher Love of God.

i was writing this song in the spring of the year, when some married friends of mine were getting ready for the graduation of their high school senior kids. That fact made me realize that, should i remain unmarried (or even if i marry late in life), i might miss out on some of those moments that are the happy lightning of marriage and parenthood.

To you, my unmarried friends, be thankful. OK, be lonely too, but be thankful and consider the blessings that come with your being untethered. Find a place to give your love away.

The Moon is Round    Click on logo for sound clip

In December of 2000, i had the wonderful opportunity to play a concert in Knoxville with by dear pals, Ed Cash and Bebo Norman. Adella Thompson brought us in as a surprise to the volunteer leaders of Young Life. We played first at Adella’s house and then went to the New City café where we stayed till past midnight. When we got back to Adella’s even later, and were hanging out in the kitchen, we noticed a basketball sized rock in which was inscribed the cryptic words, "the moon is round."

Adella explained to us that a 14 year old girl had died the year before of cancer. In her journal, they found a page which included the words, all by themselves, "the moon is round." While no one can know for sure, it was suggested that the girl was trying to communicate the thought of God’s continued presence and faithfulness even when His ways are hard to ‘see’.

This song grew out of that story and thought.

From a website entry earlier:

There was a full moon last week. Almost clear skies, broken up by gray cauliflower clouds, made for a glorious mixture of light and color. The moon was a warm, soft, bright, full circle of light that, through the night, made it possible to see almost the entire quarter mile from my porch to the chapel across the pasture. It was exactly what we expect of full moons. It was, in its bigness and beauty, very easy to admire.

But that was a week ago. Since then, the perfect circle has shrunk by the night – evolving from egg, to football, to banana, and, perhaps by now, to a mere sickle-shaped sliver.

Behind the night clouds of late, the moon has been at times a mere smudge of faint light. No contours, no definition, no focal point or center.

Last night, the sky was all clouds. No stars, no moon, no soft, warm light. Gunshots of lightning, the kind that makes children run for their parents’ rooms and sends outdoor dogs looking for cover, was the only light for part of the night.

And yet, on every night this past week, as i have watched the moon diminish and disappear, i have known at all times that (1) the moon is up there, and (2) the moon is round. At the darkest moment of stormy night, i always knew it was there.

God seems like the moon at times, one day being clearly seen and the next nowhere in sight. For every major character in scripture, including Jesus, there were times that God seemed covered in darkness.

There are periods in my life, probably yours too, where the Lord’s presence is warm, soft, bright, recognizable all around me. And yet, at other times, He, and His ways, can be indistinct, hidden, distant, even frightening.

What do we hold onto at during hard times. For me, it’s always ‘the truth as it is in Jesus.’ It’s always and only the cross. Every trip there is reminder enough that (1) He is up there and (2) He is good.

This song begs the question, at least it’s meant to -- what are you sure of? What do you believe to be absolutely true? What, if anything in this most uncertain world, can you be certain of? Is there anything? Really?

If i sign a letter or card with the phrase – the moon is round – i am simply asserting that i believe certain things to be true. When everything else shakes under the gunshot lightning of life’s storms, it is those things, i pray, that i’ll always be able to hold onto.

From The Journals of Jim Elliot, by Elizabeth Elliot, p.300: "December 26 … The Moon is Round!" … Elizabeth’s notes: "This refers to an experience which Jim told me about years later. He had been depressed, doubting the sovereignty of God. The moon seemed to show him that there is wholeness, that all things are complete in Christ, even when they appear partially shadowed."

Think About It

This is a song that just happened one day when i was noodling around with the guitar. As often happens, i had no intention of writing anything but as i started singing random words, the lines to this one fell together.

The abilities to think, to reason, to deduce, to organize words and thoughts are remarkable gifts. The obvious sometimes escapes us perhaps because we don’t take time to ‘make some stillness’ and think. We rather like a little bit of noise to keep us company, and distracted, don’t we? This song is just an encouragement to steal away and to spend some moments reflectively.

When i ventured into music full time back in 1995, i took some time to write a ‘mission statement’ that would give some direction to my work and which forced me to ask what i might offer, given the way that God has made me, to the work of building the good kingdom of Christ. i concluded that, Lord willing, i would write songs that would ‘provoke Godward thought.’ Those words will define what i’d like to be about. i hope this project comports with that intention.

The Monologue

Why the monologue at the end of the songs? As much as anything it was a response to a common request to record the spoken parts that usually make up a concert. i plan to do a live recording someday (actually i do them all the time; we’ve just not edited one yet for distribution). "The Moon Is Round" is a compromise. Rather than talk between songs, like i do in concert, i just put some thoughts together at the end. In many ways, it was the most difficult part of the project. Whenever i record something, and know that those words will be put in a permanent, unalterable form, i get nervous about choosing the exact word to say what i want to say. That exercise simply proves, each time i do it, just how slippery words can be. And when speaking extemporaneously, as i do most of the time when i’m introducing songs live, it is all too easy to say things unintentionally and imprecisely. When the words are not being recorded, it’s one thing. When mikes capture every syllable, every intonation, every slip, it’s rather unnerving. …

All that said, though, i wanted to offer some explanation to the songs. Most listeners, i suppose, understand without me telling them just what the songs are about. Still, i hope that my comments might ‘connect the dots’ and give some sense of cohesiveness to the songs. They are, after all, to be understood together. As i mention in the monologue, there is a school of thought which says that it is bad form for a writer to ever tell what (s)he meant to communicate in a song/poem/picture. That ‘rule’ has always struck me as rather odd and somewhat nonsensical. And i call to mind what another has written, "i would rather speak five words with understanding than ten thousand words in an unknown tongue." i don’t think that offering my own interpretation will diminish a song’s ability to say to a particular listener something altogether different than what i intended. That’s one beauty, and the flip side, of the ‘slipperiness’ of words.

SO …

That’s all for now. Other than to say thanks again. It’s ones like you that make me say ‘the lines have fallen for me in pleasant places.’

Every blessing,

allen to some, levi to others