Dear Theophilus

The final post in the 4 Song Ep is here and it ends with a doozy! This is my favorite song by far. Erin and I spent a lot of time on these and are now sharing them. We hope you enjoy! This song based on this saint and Bishop, Ignatius, who wrote some letters in the early 100's on his way to facing the lions in Rome for his faith. His writings are beautiful and they really touched me as they have the whole Christian faith for the last 2000 years. The interesting thing about Ignatius is that he wanted to die. He thought it was a great honor to die for the faith and often talked of fighting the beasts, provoking them, hoping they weren't too full from eating other people already. In his final letter, to the Romans where he was going to be executed, he asked them not to interfere or try to stop his execution. If anything he asked them to come to the arena and provoke the beasts to eat him. He did not want them to cry but to sing hymns of Jesus. Below is the song and full ex...

This is post #2 of 4 on the 4 songs I wrote for school... This is one of my favorites. The songs works and it recorded well. I have been toying with this song for a long time, so some of you may have heard it before - sorry. Lots more banjo, no drums, lots of electric guitar and one of the best guitar solos I have ever come up with (which is not saying much if you know me :)). One of my learning objectives was that I wanted to seek traditions outside of my own. The Psalms have not been a major part of my worshiping tradition in my home church. More than that, before coming to SPU I was unsure about the Psalms. I wrestled with David and Solomon and their roles in scripture. I mostly avoided them, not finding much value in them at all. I think my issue was that David and Solomon both started great but devolved into a mess of a family that ultimately cast the people of God into the stone ages and persecution and exile. I think I was hurt because the church taught ab...

So, I wrote 4 songs for this project I had to do at school... It is this class where I could do a project, literally almost anything, where I synthesized the material that I was learning. I decided to write and play some songs. These are not finished. I have my favorites. The next four blog posts will be about these four songs. Here is a playlist with all 4 on youtube. You can easily listen to any of them. I am going to blog about what I was attempting to do and say in each song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3udEpVy92w4&list=PL3A3C391AEE5B22F5&feature=plpp_play_all The first song is my LEAST favorite but it has been knocking around in my head. It is called "Rise Up!" “Rise Up!” With your left hand you clear my path, With your right you hold me close Your Holy fire all around me will be my light home, it will be my light home Rise up our God the Lord above, You are the great and Mighty One You stay our enemies away, you pour ...