Tough Day

“Eric, get up. I think something’s wrong with Brennan.”

That’s how my day started. My day is ending with me sitting out here in the studio, typing a blog, because my sweet wife and naked son are sleeping on the couch, which is where I usually type.

Brennan woke up this morning screaming and yelling, and not breathing right. He is usually the happiest person I know, so he was acting completely out of character. Every breath that he took was accompanied by a grunt. If you have or have had a baby, then you know that they grunt when trying to poop, kinda like me. It was this same grunt, but every time he would breath in, he made that sound, like he wasn’t getting enough air.

After a bit of Googling around online, we were convinced that he needed to go to the doctor, as most websites said that if your baby is grunting in an unusual way, then seek medical attention immediately.

We took him to see his pediatrician (happenstance had him actually working this Saturday, which was good). He listened to Brennan’s lungs, said they sounded clear; checked his oxygen level, 100%; and even tried a breathing treatment to see if that would help…nothing…except an unusually high fever. He was still screaming here and there, and still grunting as if he was struggling to breathe. So, off to the X-ray room to see if, by chance, he had pneumonia…No pneumonia, so the doctor sent us home and said that he was going to run the X-rays over to a friend of his for a second opinion.

We got a call a little after 1:00 pm, and were told that we should take Brennan to the emergency room, as it looked as if he may something lodged in his wind pipe. The doctor couldn’t see anything in his wind pipe, but said that the pipe was extra wide in one part, so there may be something in there.

We packed up that sweet boy and took him to Vanderbilt Childrens ER, and he was admitted right away. They put him in a little, backless yellow gown and commenced to poke, prod, and test everything they could. His fever had grown, so they gave him some children’s Tylenol and took him in for their x-rays…seemed like a way to gauge us since he had x-rays just a couple of hours before. I was wrong. He settled down substantially after the Tylenol kicked in, and was even laughing and playing like he normally does. Then the doctor came back in and told us to walk with her to look at the new x-rays. Turns out, Brennan, being his spastic self, wasn’t sitting still when they took the other x-rays, so the wide part of his throat was actually just movement that he made when the x-rays were taken. She showed us the new ones, which proved 100% clear. That’s good – nothing in his wind pipe…Great, but why is he breathing so weird, and why is he acting so out of character? The doctor seems to think that maybe he is just getting sick, and that is why his fever is out of control. Some babies grunt instead of crying when they don’t feel good, so he may actually have nothing wrong with his breathing, since he is getting 100% of the oxygen that he needs anyway.

We brought him home, and he did great for a couple of hours. Things got worse tonight, and his fever is bumping up around 104° F. He is still grunting, except when he is sleeping, and he cries when he is awake. The only thing that relieves him is when Ruth holds him. I don’t think he has been out of her arms more than an hour today, even when he is sleeping. We have tried wet washcloths and even a bath to try and bring his fever down, but none of that is working. We are keeping plenty of fever reducers in him, and since he won’t relax without Ruth holding him, they are going to spend the night holding each other, and each of them seems to be trying to comfort the other.

Who knows what the morning will hold, but we can only pray for the best. I think that when the fever goes down, he will be good, but he has been burning up all day, thus the sleeping naked. Lucky dog. I imagine this won’t be the last of our trips to the ER with Brennan, but it sure made for a scary day. I hope they both sleep well tonight. Thank you, everyone who has been calling and emailing to check on his progress. Pray that it still turns out to be nothing serious.

 

The Last Few Nails?

Man, I’ve missed you guys. I have been so busy these past few weeks, and I am finally starting to see a little breathing room. I peaked at a couple of your blogs earlier today, and it looks like I have been missing out on quite a bit. Sorry for staying gone for so long.

I spent this past week at a festival called Creation East, in Shirleysburg, PA. It is supposed to be the largest Christian music festival in America (70,000 people this year). I’m not sure yet, but this festival might have driven the last few nails in my CCM coffin. I am so torn right now. Should I stay or should I go? That is the question (not for you to answer, necessarily. most of you have already told me your answer). Now, I must answer it for myself. The bigger part of me wants to leave, because I can’t take it anymore. The other, smaller part of me believes that these people need to hear the gospel, and I must stay and preach it.

Hear the gospel?, you ask…I thought this was a Christian festival. Yes, hear the gospel. I am quite certain that what was being taught and celebrated at this event was not Biblical Christianity. I used to think that it was just a poor caricature of true Christianity, but I am now convinced that it is something completely different.

It is moralism. It is a belief that we are living up to a law. It is the belief that Christ is a life-enhancement tool. It is the belief that Christianity is a neat little lifestyle that the world wants to take away from us. It is crappy teachers like Reggie Dabbs making racist jokes on stage to try and make himself appear humorous and vulnerable to the largely white audience. It is preachers like Justin Lookadoo, who when given an hour to preach the gospel spend 55 minutes trying to make everyone laugh, and 5 minutes trying to make everyone cry, and then agrees to meet everyone at his merch table afterwards. It is positive people like Julie Laipply who try to encourage girls to embrace their princess identity. It is countless others who, when given the microphone to proclaim the gospel, instead tell everyone their personal story with a really breath-y voice at the sad parts, instead of proclaiming the true message of the gospel that we discussed in the previous post. It is every single speaker working a blatant merch pitch into their “gospel presentation.” It is Barlow Girl leading the crowd in saying “Jesus, I’ll let you love me,” over and over for several minutes, to the sound of delayed guitar picking and nice cymbal tapping. It is worship leaders, acting too-cool-for-school with their scripted hallelujah yells, amens, and their hands raised at the exact same point every time they play, as if it were all well rehearsed in front of a mirror. Oh yeah, and their thumb rings. It is a group of people proclaiming their love and faithfulness to Christ, instead of proclaiming his love for them. It is sermon after sermon about how we need to live offensively, put up boundaries between ourselves and everyone else, and keep our private parts in our pants. It is all ages of people getting together to celebrate their goodness, instead of seeking and learning about Christ.

I guess I would feel different if it were 70,000 people who didn’t have it all together and knew it. Maybe if they didn’t celebrate so passionately something so far from the truth…then I would feel differently. But no. Most of these people can’t be told anything different than the false truth that they have already bought in to. They just aren’t teachable. Maybe that’s why every sermon is just a pep rally for what they already believe in. That’s got to be easier to preach about, huh? They should invite John Piper to preach at one of these bad boys. In the words of Clay, “He farts more truth than these other guys ever speak.”

I haven’t made up my mind, nor have I explored too many other options, so I don’t know if I will stay or go. I have already made commitments for the rest of the year, so Lord willing, I will at least be in for the rest of this year. I will keep you posted, and desire your prayers.

 

Pretty Good Music, Vol. 9

Man, I’ve got so much to tell you guys about this last week. I am really tired, and need a night of down time. I didn’t have internet for the past week, so haven’t had a chance to look over the comments you all posted. Needless to say, I am grateful for them, however… I haven’t read my Bible in a week, posted a blog in over a week, seen my family in almost 2 weeks, played my guitar in over 3 weeks, or recorded anything in over 4 weeks. So much to do, and so little time! So, this video will have to do for now. I’ve been listening to Lyle Lovett’s most recent album for the entirety of this trip. He was the only thing keeping me sane at Creation East. Here is a video of my favorite song. For the record, I have done some shows in the theatre that is shown in the video. It’s gorgeous.

 

Greetings from Pittsburgh!

Tonight, I wish that God had planned for me to do something other than merchandise for a living. I am in a Red Roof Inn in Pittsburgh but I wish I was back home inside a tiny house in East Nashville. I am in between two 4-day festivals, one in Ohio and the next one in the Alleghany mountains of Pennsylvania. The first festival went great, and I had amazing volunteers to hang out with for a few days. Those guys make all the difference between a good experience or a bad one. The conversations were great, and hopefully we will see a few of them joining in our conversations on this thing.

Ruth and Brennan are doing well. She sends me at least one or two photos or videos everyday just to let me know what’s going on. That’s always the best part of my day. Brennan is interacting more and more everyday, and he’s even learning to clap his hands! He will come crawling if you call his name, and if he hears the bath running, he takes of like lightening. I think bath time is his favorite time of the week. If I had a media card reader, I could post the videos here, but I don’t. Oh well…I know that it’s tough on me to be gone from them for so long, but I also know that it has got to be a lot harder on them. I’ve got a great wife, and she does such an amazing job with our son. I go crazy if I have to watch him by myself for an afternoon, but she does it day in and day out with no complaints. When I am on the road, there is no one to relieve her of the baby duties, so she is with him 24-7. That equals no alone time. Though I know that it’s not easy for her, it has been such a neat process to watch her fall into the role of being a mother. It comes so naturally to her. I am so thankful for my family, and can’t imagine life without either of them.

So, I’m going to hang here for a couple of days, and tomorrow I am heading down to the South Side district to hang for a bit. It’s kind of the old school section of Pittsburgh = lots of coffee shops. I hope my day will include at least one hot cup-a-joe, a couple of bowls with my trusty pipe, and catching up on a bit of reading (Chosen By God, by R.C. Sproul). Maybe my night will conclude with a good movie. If this rain will ever stop, it should be a good day.

Here is a question to keep you guys busy. I have been reading the Bible through this year, and am in Psalms right now. Proverbs comes next. So, how do I read Christ from these two books?

 

Christless Christianity

A couple of weeks ago, my brother-in-law and I were having a discussion about many of the issues that are keeping the North American Church from preaching the gospel. Imagine that, me having a conversation with someone about corruption in the Church, but I digress…He is also a White Horse Inn listener so he has been tuned into their Christless Christianity series, as have I. Dan brought up a great point, and the more I am involved in the Christian subculture, the more I am seeing that he is right. He seems to think that at the core of the problem is the fact that most of us who call ourselves Christians really have no idea of just how sinful we really are. We never pause to think about how desperately we need a savior. We arrogantly put slogans on our church letterhead that read, “Loving God, and Loving People,” as if we are actually doing that successfully. Or as if we actually could do that successfully. It’s like we are boasting about living up to the law.

Today, I was noticing the t-shirt vendor across the aisle from me. He is selling a shirt that reads, “I may not be perfect, but Jesus thinks I am worth dying for.” What the deuce? Yes, Jesus loves the elect so much that he was willing to pay the price for our sinful ways, but there is nothing “cute” about the gospel. You only cheapen it when you try to make it cute and trendy. And what do you mean, “I may not be perfect?” Maybe the shirt should read something like this…

“I am a wretched sinner, capable of doing nothing good, who deserves to be killed for my selfish deeds. There is not an hour that goes by in my day in which I don’t commit a sin that should cost me my life. Jesus Christ, my Lord, has taken my sin upon himself so that I may be with him eternally. There is no good that will come from me unless it is Christ working through me. I did not even meet him halfway. He did everything.”

But then, again, that would never fit on a t shirt. Maybe sweatpants, but not a t shirt.

He also has one that reads, “Live your life so the preacher won’t have to lie at your funeral.” Sounds well and good, but there is quite an undertone that the wearer of the shirt probably thinks that he/she is already living so good that the preacher will only have great things to say about them at their funeral.

It’s almost scary when I see just how ‘good’ we Christians tend to think that we are. Maybe that is at the core of all the cheapening of the gospel here in America. If we realized how sinful we were, we would take the gospel much more seriously, and thus would never tread the shallow waters that we find ourselves on. Maybe we would truly see it as the Good News that we so often proclaim it to be. That would sure make us better at evangelizing. I doubt we would broadcast our own goodness as much as we would broadcast the goodness of Christ.

But then again, we would probably have to throw away our “Jesus is my homeboy” paraphernalia also.

 

Elementary Questions, Part 6

So here I am, at the first of four of these summer Christian-consumer music festivals, the height of almost everything that I loathe. These bastions of materialism are hot, dusty, and LOUD, not to mention that the music isn’t even good! I can’t wait to get back home to Ruth and Baby Brennan. I can’t complain too much, though. I could go work as a butcher instead, if I really wanted to…But then what would I complain about? Besides, tonight was rained out, and I got to come back to the hotel early.

Now, on to my elementary question: What does it mean to be born again?

I understand that I am a wretched sinner. I understand that Christ has taken all of my sin upon himself and paid the price that was due for my sin. I believe that because of this, when I stand before God, I will be clothed in the righteousness of Christ, and thus will be found justified before him. But I’m still not sure what this being ‘born again’ thing means. When I was younger, “all things salvation” were kind of lumped into one little prayer, and often times came with their own little book of 4 spiritual laws.

I believe that I am a Christian, and I rest of all of my hope in Christ, but I am not sure what being born again is all about. Here is where it gets weird, to me…If I am covered in the righteousness of Christ, do I still need to be born again? Or, must I be born again in order to be clothed in the righteousness? If I am not now born again, does that mean that I am not covered in his righteousness and only lying to myself?

I had the “born again” experience as a child, but I am now fairly certain that I believe my experience had a bit to do with some nice organ music, touching chorus’s, and a pastor that felt very much like a grandfather. Even the way he spoke would often bring me to tears. I have never had another conversion experience, so to speak, but instead I have considered my experience as a child to be more or less a starting point, and my journey has grown from that point. Until now, I have never really thought about being born again, and have just assumed that I was, though aside from my childhood experience, I have no memory of a conversion. I have experienced so much joy and growth in these past few years, and am quite certain that Christ has paid the price for my sins, and though my sins are different than they were a few years ago, I still consider myself a broken sinner in need of a savior; only now I know that I am forgiven for those sins. If I have been born again, am I still a wretched sinner? If not, why do I still feel like one? If I haven’t been born again, am I still covered in Christ’s righteousness? Could I have possibly been born again as a child, even though at the time I was not aware of just how badly I need a savior? Sounds simple enough, right?

Thank God for patient friends who walk with me through these questions.

 

I Think I Hate Capitalism.

I’ve been wanting to write about this for quite some time, but since I have heard so much feedback from you all about my blogging negativity, I have been avoiding it. However, Worm has released me from the bondage of people pleasing by asking me to write about it! So here goes. This post is sure to offend, and possibly get me kicked off of blogrolls everywhere. I will leave a bit unsaid in hopes of opening up a discussion. Down the rabbit hole we go!!!

I hate capitalism. I haven’t always hated it, and sometimes, I have even dabbled in it myself. However, the older I get, the more I hate it. It turns the bottom line of everything into being the bottom line. It makes us greedy and selfish. It makes us into consumerists. It keeps us chasing after more and more, never being satisfied with what we have. It destroys words like, contentment, and turns them into words like, complacent, and giving them a negative connotation by doing so. It turns words like redistribution into cuss words. Capitalism teaches us that its okay to market anything to anyone that we want, as if nothing were too sacred: i.e. our wounds, our intimacy, our families, and even our relationship with God. Capitalism teaches us that it’s okay to market to (read: manipulate) people and convince them to give us our money. It allows us to be distracted from more important things in life. I am noticing a trend amongst my peers, as our budgets get tighter and tighter, that we are all starting to be a bit more of a close knit community. We don’t have the disposable amounts in our budgets that we used to have, so we stick closer to home, take more walks, have more conversations, and consume less. There must be a parallel in there somewhere.

Though you have often times heard me refer to myself as a socialist, I am probably not one of those either. There is a chance that I may be, but from what I can tell so far, that never works either. It magnifies laziness in people. So, if I must be in a box (and I’ve got no issues with that), then I will probably consider myself anti-capitalist, though I am not so naïve as to think that nothing ever good comes from it. Take, for example, the tremendous advancements in health care. However, capitalism has also brought greed into the health care picture and thus prevents many people from ever being able to benefit from those advancements. Maybe controlled capitalism would be best, but I guess that would still be socialism.

Maybe it’s not capitalism that I hate after all. Maybe it’s consumerism. Maybe it’s materialism. Maybe it’s marketing. Maybe it’s greed. I’m not sure, so until this conversation is over, I am an anti-capitalist. What about you?

 

A Word About Songwriting.

I have steadily been trying to finish up this record, and it’s almost done. Clay is coming over Tuesday to lay down a bit of percussion, and then it’s all done, save for the vocals. I have been putting off doing the vocals for quite a while now because we have all put so much into this record, and everything sounds amazing, so I don’t want to ruin these songs by throwing my nasty voice over top of everything. Oh well, I can’t run from that for too long. Lord willing, I will finish the vocals after I get back from a bit of work that I must do this summer.

There is still one song yet to be finished that I really want to include on this thing. I started writing it last summer, and then just kind of put it aside. Songwriting, for me, gets tougher and tougher as I get older. I’m not one of those Nashville cats who can sit in a room and write songs from 8-5. No, I’m one of those guys who puts his heart into every song that he writes. There in lies the problem. Songwriting has always been therapeutic for me, sort of a release of whatever angst is going on inside. Thus, I don’t write happy songs (If I’m already happy, I don’t need therapy, so I don’t write about it). The older I get, the less interested I become in my own personal dramas, and that makes it tough to write. I’ve written a couple of songs that were about/for other people and their dramas, but that is rare. I, like almost every other musician that I know, am quite narcissistic. Sure, I could write Christian songs all day, but it seems as though most Christian music these days is just rehashing what has been being said for 2,000 years, and quite frankly it was said in a much better way many generations ago, so I will just sing the songs already written. How many ways can we sing about falling on our knees, crying out to God, and being rescued from sin? That’s not cynicism, but if the hymn writers of old did a swell job, then I don’t need to bring anything else to the table.

I think this song is almost done. I will probably throw it on the tail end of the album, with just me and an acoustic. Maybe a little harmonica. We’ll see. I’m really excited about you all hearing it. There have been a lot of talented folks here at Brown Note studios these past few months and it has really been a great project to be a part of. To be honest, I could shelve the whole album when it’s done, and I’d be fine with it. I almost don’t want to ruin it all by trying to be a capitalist. Oh well, I think Ruth would kill me if I did that. Nah, she’s quasi-socialist too.

 

Back by Popular Demand…

Ah, this is cheap. Someone can’t come up with anything to write about, so he is using his son just so he doesn’t go another day without a new post. Plus, the only thing anyone ever tells me to write about is him. Do you have anything that you want to discuss on here? Ohhhhhh…look at the baby.

 

Words & Phrases

It’s felt like Christmas here at the Brown house recently. Daddy’s got a bunch of new guitar toys (Fender Blues Jr., Barber Tone Press, Ernie Ball VP Jr., and a Voodoo Lab Tremelo for any of you gear heads out there) and Mama’s got a new mattress. Does that sound fair to you guys? Daddy got all these new toys and a new mattress…Mama just got a mattress. Hmmm…sounds like someone got the short end of the stick. hint: it wasn’t me.

Where did all this fabulous stuff come from, you ask. Well, not from working, that’s for sure. Money that I actually work for gets handled much more responsibly. Nope, this money came from China, i mean “W.” And I guess it probably came a little bit from me, since it was my money to start with, but if I think about it like that, then it’s no fun to blow it. Besides, that’s what they want us to do with it, right? I’m just submitting to the governing authorities.

So, all that to say, I have thoroughly enjoyed being stimulated by George W. Bush. So much so that I wish he would stimulate me again. Chalk that up to words and phrases that I thought I would never say. It goes right up there with, “Yeah, right now I am on tour with Avalon,” and “Man, this new Neil Diamond record is great!” Or what about, “I don’t really like this tobacco.” They can all go on the same list.

Look at ya, G-Dub. You might be a Democrat after all! Now what’s this I hear about a possible second stimulus package? What are you planning on doing with yours? Have you received it yet?