There’s probably no greater cause of war throughout history than religious differences.  The only thing that comes close to it is greed.  I choose to stay as far away from the human element of religion in my spiritual practice, which, of course, is rather impossible, but, for me, preferable.  We humans (and I count myself as one) have confused the study of God, consciousness, reality, our world, matter, thought, spirit and the universe by dividing into groups and along the way, shutting doors and windows to alternative thought in an effort to protect our own.

It strikes me that religions often are more limiting than creative.  They often force the thinker into a box and essentially say, “think this, study this, here is the only truth – shut the rest out.”

If there is anything that I’ve learned in my life’s study of spirituality, it’s that nobody has a corner on truth.  Truth is truth.  Everybody has access to it. Every religion I’ve ever studied captured and illuminated much truth for me.  The only thing that really ever got in my way was the differences in language or the various definitions of words that are tossed about.  Most religious differences I’ve found to be based on a confusion of semantics.

So I choose to call myself first a spiritual seeker rather than a religious person.  I hope this does not offend you as I approach the writing of this post with the objective of unifying thought as opposed to dividing it.

Wikipedia states, “A scientist in a broad sense is one engaging in a systematic activity to acquire knowledge.  In a more restricted sense a scientist is an individual who uses a scientific method.  The person may be an expert in one or more areas of science…  Some perform research toward a more comprehensive understanding of nature, including physical, mathematical and social realms…  This is distinct from philosophers, those who use logic toward more comprehensive understanding of intangible aspects of reality that lack a direct connection to nature, focusing on the realm of thought itself.”

If we’re to accept these definitions put forth by Wikipedia, then I suppose I’m sort of a scientist/philosopher, a combination of both.  I do engage in a “systematic activity to acquire knowledge” and also I do “use logic toward more comprehensive understanding of intangible aspects of reality…, focusing on the realm of thought itself.”

All said and done, I prefer the word “scientist”.  I find spirit to be actually quite tangible the more I study it and matter to be less and less the reality.  So I call myself a spiritual scientist.

If I am pinned down to name a life religion I admit very freely to being a Christian Scientist.  For those who need a specific religious definition of the way I think, that explains it as well as I know how on the religious level.  I grew up a Christian Scientist, attended the Christian Science Sunday School and learned the principles of the religion.  In my late twenties and early thirties I decided to explore beyond and commenced a 20-year journey of examination of many of the world’s great religions.  This journey was primarily the result of some very serious and thoughtful research I participated in the first couple of years of that journey using the drug, LSD.

The controlled research that I and a few friends took part in certainly opened our minds to many things never before considered regarding life, consciousness, reality and matter and launched me into even further study of spirituality in areas that did not include drugs.  It became very clear to me that drugs were not the answer, but I will say that they did provide me a fascinating starting point for exploration and launched my bark into immediate waters of wonder and matter/mind-blowing thought.

I then spent a few years as a practicing Hindu and found that religion to be immaculate in its conception, rich in thought, radical in approach and full of truth.  Ultimately I found it difficult to practice it as a western capitalist trying to build a career in show business in NYC.  I don’t know whether that would be true for me today, but decades ago I then moved on to Buddhism.

For a couple of years I studied the Dhammapada, generally accepted to be the words of Buddha, and found these verses to be elegant truths that rarely differed from the teachings of Jesus Christ.  Studying Buddhism was a joy for me because it further substantiated my understanding of the basic truths of Christianity.  There were, of course, many unfamiliar words that in the beginning would scare me and actually put me off until I learned to simply explore the meaning of the word.  Always these strange words constructed in foreign languages revealed to me truths that I already believed and understood when translated into my own language.  Through these studies I learned not to be fearful of words that I did not use or even know and rather look at their strangeness as opportunities to shed new light on spirituality.

I finally came to understand that human language is insufficient to explain the world of spirituality.  It simply was not invented for that world.  And so looking at spirituality through the various lenses of language became a plus rather than a minus.

I studied Confucianism, Jainism, the Koran, Judaism, Taoism, and Bahá’í through those years of seeking and honestly found that basically, they all said pretty much the same thing, but used different words.

I then, while in my mid forties, began to have a number of serious physical problems for the first time in my life.  As I had never been to a doctor, taken medicine or set foot in a hospital, I decided to tackle these physical problems by healing them rather than using the medical route.

I visited a Christian Science Practitioner to elicit his help.  We commenced a three-month series of meetings – one a week – where we systematically did a “spring cleaning” on my thinking.  One visit we would discuss business ethics, the next, self-confidence, the next, sexuality, and so on.  Each week he would correct my thinking and adjust my consciousness of right and wrong.  He was merciless and I dove into this cleaning of my attic with him.  During the week I would practice what he taught.

After 3 months of these meetings I was a better man – mentally and physically.  We never discussed my physical problems at all – only my mental insufficiencies or confusions.  I cleaned these up and committed to a better way of thinking and practicing that thought – a better way of living.

In the course of those three months all of my physical problems cleared up and went away.  I was healed.  There was never any difficulty moving through this experience.  It was all completely positive and I enjoyed the challenge of cleaning up my mind and watching the physical ills disappear as a by-product of that mental purification.

I became a practicing Christian Scientist once again.  However, Christian Science was then the basis of my thinking, the central core, though not the circumference of my thinking.  Since then I have borrowed helpful corrections to thought from all the sources I studied over those years countless times.  Again, truth is truth and I had a myriad of ways to investigate it and look at it.

I have never found this mixing pot to be confusing to my practice and demonstration of truth.  My spiritual seeking continues to this day – probably more than ever as I grapple with life, and become more conscious of my own spirituality.  The more I learn; the more there is to learn.

In the last ten years I have chosen music as my central tool of exploration.  As a life work, music is probably what I’m best at.  I’ve spent a lifetime practicing, so why not use it as the means to explore the objective of utmost importance.  Exploring spirituality through music is really fascinating because music is such a universal language.  It is not limited by spellings and strange words, but is appreciated and loved by all mankind.

Music too is a fascinating science.  Again, the more I learn; the more there is to learn.  The two, music and spirituality, seem to go hand in hand for me.  One complements the other.  I am a more spiritual man when I’m creating my music and I’m definitely a better musician when I approach the creation of music spiritually.

I am also always at my best as a person when I am in the studio writing, arranging, orchestrating, etc.  There I am the happiest, the most fulfilled and the least stressful.  Trouble just seem to fall away when I walk into my studio and I find myself doing everything I can in life to get to work musically.  On days when the rest of life gets so hectic that I can’t do that work, I struggle.  On the days that I work, I am fulfilled.

Still some things to be learned here… )

So I am a spiritual scientist/philosopher/musician.  Being a human being is far too often a struggle.  Here is where I need to improve and learn to manage life.  Here is where I’m still stuck – earthbound.  Both The Missus and I now discuss daily how we can approach these issues of humanity more gracefully and productively.  Here is where the problems lay.  Here is the next plateau of concentration.

In the meantime, however, I have my joy life, my world of peace, creativity and fulfillment to enter into and explore.  My gratitude abounds for this space in thought.  I am divinely fortunate.

I don’t know what I can accomplish during the rest of my time here on Planet Earth, but I do know that I am committed to this one endeavor only – scientific spiritual seeking through music.  Everything else pales in comparison.  Eating, sleeping, the laborious minutiae of everyday life all are just things to work through so that my true commitment can be practiced.  The human experience is a stepping-stone to the divine.  We’re trying to make those steps shorter every day.

Even More Inspiration

• Even Now
• When Things Go Wrong
• God Is doG Spelled Backwards
• The Atheist
• Loving God
• Phoenix Rising

I’ve always been curious to meet an atheist.  Whenever someone announces themselves as one, I always try to take a moment (or often many more) and discus their atheism with them.  I like to first start with the obvious question, “Define God?”

I’ve had this opportunity 15-20 times in life and it’s always been the same experience.  Once they’ve explained their definition of God to me, I’ve always found myself saying back to them the same line: “Well then, I must be an atheist too because I don’t believe in that god either.”

Often the definition portrayed is archaic, anthropomorphic, and usually something taught them by confused parents or Sunday School teachers, but always ideas that I find equally hard to swallow.

Can this be the most misunderstood word in the human language?  Quite possibly so.  I’m not here to rectify that.  I have had an evolving, ever-changing struggle with the concept of God for over a half a century now.  I’m not at all sure what God is, but I do have a feeling for what He, She or It is not.

A guy in the sky with a long white beard?  No.  A He or a She?  No.  A Father/ Mother?  Sort of…  An infinite and eternal concept?  Probably.  Love, Life, Truth, Being, Interconnection?  Yes.

I saw an amazing video presentation on my TED app last week by Alexander Tsiaras called “Conception to birth – visualized”.  It’s a talk showing human development from conception to birth and beyond.  Mr. Tsiaras is and associate professor at Yale and presents a beautiful and compelling talk and video on birth.  In it, he states that, as a scientist, before he explored this project, he was essentially an atheist, but that in the course of working on the project, he realized the absolute necessity of a higher power.

As I watched his wondrous video, I too saw the absolute of God.  The biological mechanism that produces each of us, the mathematical structure that forms the fetus from the two cells of egg and sperm, the absolutely miraculous evolution of egg into human person he explains is mystery, magic and divinity.  The intelligence behind this marvel called birth is so staggering that it can only be the result of some higher power.

Now I’m not sure where to put all this material result of matter molecules forming human beings, because essentially I see this human experience as an illusion – like a dream – and basically unreal in the first place, but here is a most compelling drama played out for thought.

Where does all this material existence come from in the first place?  Or is there a first place to begin with?  If it isn’t, then it didn’t come at all and isn’t really here.  Whoa…  Getting pretty deep here, Pete.  In so deep I’ll never get out.

But simply looking at this material existence – at the wonders of the human body, the infinity and scale of the cosmos, the organization of nature, the breakdown of matter into its relative nothingness, the wondrous, unexplainable and inconceivable concepts that we pass through daily and take so for granted, how can anyone with a thought past themselves not see that there is something out there, in there, everywhere that is not controlling the organization and ebb and flow of these staggering concepts.

Something is in control of all this even when things seem out of control in our own lives.  Something is still in control of the building and sustenance of life, of the evolution and organization of nature, of the revolving of our tiny planet around our small sun, (much less the creation and disposition of the many universes around us).

It is all so far beyond us, so far beyond the confines of our limited thinking and understanding – even our own brains that we carry around in our own heads are pitifully understood.  And yet it all goes on working.

I sat in an airplane last month and watched the cars below all stay in their places on their side of the road and not run into each other – thousands, millions of cars all staying in their lanes – millions of drivers avoiding instant death moment to moment driving home after work.  Something else was clearly in control.  Sometimes one of these millions breaks the rules and swerves out of control, but trillions of moments go by as the universe works and inside each of those cars sits a man or woman focused on something totally different than staying alive – their love affairs, their shopping lists, the music on the radio.  They all naturally stay in their lanes within the laws of organization and only rarely does the system break down.

From my perch in the plane, all those tiny headlights traveling at 70 miles an hour, all making it home to dinner spoke to me of God in control of His/Its universe.

And so I say to all of you self-proclaimed atheists out there, “Redefine your god concept.  If you don’t like the name, call it ‘dog’.  I don’t care, but open your thought to a higher power, a universal organization, a force of nature – something beyond yourself that is perchance in control.

We do not live in chaos no matter how chaotic our lives.  We live in the immaculate organization of matter molecules and constituent masses so perfectly organized around us that we take the whole thing for granted moment to moment.  To whom do we owe that?

Next time you take a breath.  Next time your eye blinks.  Next time your heart beats.  Next time you smile. And on and on and on…

Even More Inspiration

• Spiritual Scientist
• God Is doG Spelled Backwards
• Words Of Wisdom
• Loving God
• Thoughts On Thinking or Thinking Makes It So
• Straight ‘A’s

Previous to this month I had only ever written one Christmas song – a song recorded by the Jenny Burton Experience called Christmas In My Soul.  They say, in the music business, that the month of June is the month to write and begin one’s Christmas album, the preparation of such to be around 5-6 months.  Who can write Christmas songs in June?  What a silly notion.

This year the Missus has come up short in her search for the perfect Christmas song for her Christmas Day performance in church.  She had decided to employ a terrific Boston harpist and together with her organist, Bryan Ashley, keep it small and delicate in accordance with the spiritual implications of the morning.  Last year she used a brass quintet plus the church four manual pipe organ and blew the roof off, so this year she wanted to do something completely different.

But no song came to mind to fit the criteria.

While watching her go through her turmoil, I happened to mention one day several weeks ago that perhaps I could write one for her.  This was said in a fit of compassion for her plight while I was in the middle of the mad dash of the final throes of my own CD, Goin’ Home.

Seeing a light at the end of the tunnel, she grabbed at the offer and signed me up.  At first I thought, “Oh no, what have I gotten myself into?”  Where would I ever find the time to do this?

Then she came up with the notion that not only should I write it and arrange it for harp and keyboard, but that we should also record it and sell it for Christmas.  Then she came up with the idea that we should also do the sheet music for it and sell that too and let others use it in their churches for their Christmas services as well.  Then she came up with the idea that as long as we were going to do all that, she may as well use the song for her musical Christmas Presence lecture that she does around the country with lecturer, Chet Manchester.  This only moved the deadline for all this up by about 2 ½ weeks!  “Egads,” thought I.  “What have I done?”

So I did it.  In the next 3 days Julia will record the lead vocal to the orchestrated track, Craig Wagner, the designer, will design all the packaging, I’ll mix the song, the WFM staff will manufacture about a hundred singles to start with and by Thursday we’ll be selling this song that will receive it’s first performance in St. Louis on this coming Sunday.  Whew!

Will we make it?  With God’s help, we shall.

It’s a new world.  Things like this can be accomplished in a matter of weeks, a matter of days now.  The power of computers – the power of Mind.

The writing was fun and accomplished in a matter of 48 hours.  Once that was done, I knew we’d be OK.  The rest was just a matter of getting’ it done.

Julia directed me to the Bible for my text and chose the tried and true – think Handel.

“And his name shall be called Wonderful,
Counsellor,
The Mighty God,
The Everlasting Father,
The Prince of Peace
Yes his name shall be called Wonderful”

But I also wanted to shed some new light on the subject – not just rehash George Fredric.  Julia suggested that I combine the Bible text with some of the text of Mary Baker Eddy and her thoughts on the life of Jesus.  Julia and her big ideas!  Using text (non-lyrics) always makes good songwriting very difficult in that text is not metered and has a way of not particularly sounding very musical much less poetic.  On top of that the text of Mary Baker Eddy cannot be changed by even the alteration of a comma.

However the text she gave me was poetic to a certain extent so I thought I’d give it a go.  I had a great deal more content than I needed to begin with.  Julia can have her long-winded moments, so I had to do some clever editing.  Always easier to cut than to add.  While fooling around with several lyrical directions the line struck me like a lightening bolt — “And his name shall be called Wonderful,”

“What a great idea,” thought I.  Call the song Wonderful!

And so I did.

I was on my way…

Here is the finished lyric.  In another magical musical week you’ll be able to hear, sing, play, perform, buy and listen to the whole thing through the wonderful world of MIDI, LOGIC, the INTERNET and God’s gift of inspiration.

Hot off the presses!

Wonderful

Text by Mary Baker Eddy
Lyrics adapted from the Book of John
Music by Peter Link

The wakeful shepherd beholds
The first faint morning beams,
Ere cometh the full radiance
Of a risen day.

So shone the pale star
To the prophet-shepherds;
Yet it traversed the night, and came
Where, in cradled obscurity, lay
The Bethlehem babe,
And his name shall be called Wonderful,
Wonderful

The people that walked in darkness
Have seen a very great light:
For unto us a child is born,
And a son is given:
And the government shall be upon his shoulder:

And his name shall be called Wonderful,
Counsellor,
The Mighty God,
The Everlasting Father,
The Prince of Peace
Yes his name shall be called Wonderful

Now the Son of man is glorified,
Yes and God is glorified in him.
Verily, he says unto you,
“He that believeth on me,
The works that I do shall he do also;
And greater works than these shall he do;

If ye love me, keep my commandments.
And I will pray the Father,
And he shall give you another Comforter”

The prophet of today
Beholds in the mental horizon
The signs of these times,
The reappearance of the Christianity
Which heals the sick
And destroys error,
And no other sign shall be given.

When a new spiritual idea is borne to earth,
The prophetic Scripture of Isaiah is renewedly fulfilled:
Saying “Unto us a child is born, . . .”
“Unto us a child is born, . . .”

And his name shall be called Wonderful.”
Counsellor,
The Mighty God,
The Everlasting Father,
The Prince of Peace
Yes his name shall be called Wonderful
Wonderful
Yes he is wonderful
Wonderful!

Even More Inspiration

• Even Now
• Love Is The Reason For Living
• The Decline of Lyrical Craftsmanship – Part 1
• Nothing
• You Must Remember This!
• My Body

Perhaps a song called Faith, perhaps Who Will Heal The World, perhaps Julia’s Upon The Mountain.  I’d play my ‘hood, Hell’s Kitchen, awake and stand on my terrace overlooking Lower Manhattan, the Village, Wall Street and the Statue Of Liberty and holler, “Wake up, New York!  We’re alive!

Last night I looked out on a new building springing up down where the Twin Towers once stood.  It was lit majestically in red, white and blue.  It stands where once, not so long ago, there was nothing but a hole in the ground.  Hope re-kindled.

This morning the sun rises on the tenth anniversary of 9/11.

I wasn’t in NYC ten years ago this morning.  At first I counted it a blessing.  I was in my other home in Colorado sleeping with the Missus when the telephone rang to tell us of the unbelievable news.  We spent the rest of the day, just like the rest of you, glued to our TV and watching the images over and over in disbelief as they burned into our brains for all time.

We were safe, but somehow, that wasn’t enough.  We wanted to be here.  Our living room terrace and window opened up every day to us with those iconic, majestic towers.  They were part of our life.  And now they stood no longer.  Toppled by mad men Hell bent on destruction — horribly unsuccessful in their “success”.

We came back to NYC a month later to a hole in our life and a smell that still lingered – of burning metal and falling people.  The morning after we arrived, we walked down to the crash site still numb from the experience and became even more numb.

For the next ten years, as we looked out on these anniversaries, we would see only two giant shafts of light reaching into the heavens to remind us – as if we needed reminding.

This morning we seem to be threatened again.  I wake up to a day of remembrance, a day of hope, a day of new life, and yet, a day of warning.  I shall take my precautions, but I, like 8 million others of us will go on living in the face of terror because, as the song goes, “If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere”.  Whether that’s true or not, that captures the spirit of New York – the spirit of America.

Today I shall write and create music.  No matter where this day takes us, I shall do what I was put on this earth, in this fair city, to do.  Nothing will stop me from doing that.  No confused minds, destructive thought or sad misguided life motives can get in the way of that.  That is my protection from evil.  Simply to do good.

Goodness reigns over evil always and forever.  I will not let this thought go.  Even the people killed ten years ago this morning still live – in spirit, in their own spiritual reality, in our hearts and memory.  Evil, in its proudest moment stands as nothing but a distant memory this morning – shallow in its intent and failed in its purpose.

Its purpose was to weaken; it made us stronger.  Its purpose was to destroy; it made us create and build again.  Its purpose was to make us hate; this morning I feel nothing but love – love for the departed, love for the world.  Its purpose was to create fear; this morning I stand in my window and face the world knowing that God is the only control.  Goodness reigns.  Evil simply loses again and does only what it knows best to do – nothing.

Now the sun is up.  The city wakes.  Many head off to church.  Many take their own moments of inner peace with their God understandings and pause respectfully before heading out on their day.  A few don’t even know what today is.  They missed it in the rush of life.

I wouldn’t miss this for the world.  It’s a day of action, a day of living, a day of dominion over evil, a day of creativity and a day of remembrance.  Tomorrow we shall simply move into the second decade and go about our business.

I hold to the understanding that God is in control, evil is nothing and life is full, rich with blessings and eternal in its nature.  I am a being.

That’s ‘being’.  I am.  I live.  My life is.  The whole concept includes nothing but the idea of continuation – the continuation of goodness.

Have a great day!

Even More Inspiration

• Even Now
• WFM Listening Room Series II – 2
• Breaking The Logjam
• Spiritual Scientist
• Resisting Evil
• Hitting The Wall

Stepping back as I have done over these last 5 years of Watchfire Music and investigating the whys and wherefores of this demise has taught me that it was an industry that needed to fail because it was in many ways corrupt.  Greed was king.  Artists were treated horribly by the people in power and money took precedence over music so much that the industry became a jumble of confusion.

Record stores closed, new innovations like the Internet were paid little attention, an industry where the creative artist stood at both its center and circumference was run by lawyers instead of creative people and even the artists got sucked into this chaos of greed and began to value the almighty dollar more than the almighty song.

Greed, at this moment of thought, strikes me as the reigning terror of not only my world, but the rest of the world’s confusion as well.  This comes as no surprise to anyone, I’m sure.  After all, it is considered one of life’s seven deadly sins.

Everywhere I look around me I see the influences of evil trying to confuse us into buying into its charms, its energies, its seeming power.  In the last two weeks we here in NYC have been ‘attacked’ by 2 natural disasters – first an earthquake, then a hurricane.

Let’s reconsider the term “natural” here.  What’s natural about all these disasters?  Don’t be duped for a moment into believing that it’s just nature taking its natural course.  It’s thought that controls the universe, not nature.  And disaster is not “natural”.

As I watched the hurricane bear down upon us and prepared both mentally and physically for its onslaught, it struck me that a hurricane was nothing but ego raging across our world, shouting, “Pay attention to me!  I am mighty. I am destructive!” and sucking in its energies from all around itself, running around in a vicious circle of self-destruction and, along the way, destroying everything in its path.

I worked on handling ego in my own personal life and as a result, the hurricane had very little influence upon my life.  In fact, I slept through it secure in thought that its so-called powers were simply imaginary.  I’m not being naïve here.  A couple of decades ago I was in a hurricane in Antigua that was incredibly impressive and destructive, but, at the time, I received it as an entity to contend with, be frightened by and in the end, hide from.  I got sucked into its evil spell and was seduced into its dominance.  It was not a fun experience.

This time, many years later, I had the maturity and perhaps the wisdom to see it as it really is – simply ego’s misinformed impression of its own importance trying to suck us all into its illusionary power.  I refused to be sucked in.  I resisted its spell and refused to give it credence.

The end result was that our lives did not touch.  I refused to acknowledge its supposed existence and it could not draw me into its swirl of confusion.

The same principles can be applied to marital confusion, to the sad state of affairs of political confusion in our country today, to financial confusion, to sexual confusion and to worldwide greed.

In the past decade I’ve taken on a new understanding of this word “ego”.  In the first 4 or 5 decades of my life it really meant to me little more than a confusion of conceit.  However through my readings, mostly of the works of Eckhart Tolle and several others, I have come to understand that, for me, this word and its implications need be looked at and handled on almost a daily level.  I’ve understood that my ego is really my confused mortal thinking and really the mind of my own confused material self, trying to dominate and run the show.

It is not I.  My ego is my confusion, but it is not I.  My spirituality and all that surrounds that and emanates from that comprise who I really am.  My ego is trying to be, claiming to be me, swelling up in its self-importance, raging like the hurricane and sucking into its path all the energies it can to stay alive, but in the end will burn itself out in its self-imposed path of destruction just like all hurricanes.

This is the mortal dream.  In the end, the ego does die.  The ego is really my mortal self, trying to stay alive and run the show, but it’s a hopeless cause.  In the end it will die survived only by my spiritual man.

We, as a people, must not be frightened by evil.  We must learn to stand tall against it and refuse its presence in our lives.  Of course that means that we also cannot give its seductive pleasures place as well.  If we are seduced, well then, the simple law of life is that we must pay the piper.

We all like to test this theory over and over in our lives hoping that 2+2 do not, in fact, equal 4, but fortunately this simple law of life is true.  The good we do equals the good we receive and the bad we do equals the bad we receive.  Life balances out.  In the words of John Lennon, “Instant karma’s gonna get ya’.”  It’s just the way it works.

So what do we do about it?  We resist evil.  We minimize ego.  We see through the hurricanes to the great truths of life and stick to them.

We consistently spring clean our lives and do periodic mind checks on the integrity of our thought.  We re-balance our pleasures and hold to the fundamentals of goodness that we know in our hearts.  We wake up each morning with resolve to do it better, get it done, and treat everybody along the way with respect and yes, here comes that word again, love.  We love our fellow man and demonstrate it moment to moment throughout our lives.

We give.  We give and we give and never stop giving.  We give of our energies and our talents, our time and yes, our money.  In short, we do positive things.  We live positively.  This is our resistance to evil.  This diminishes the path of the hurricane.  Being positive balances this mortal dream and puts ego in check.  If we get real good at this and we simply get real good.

Pretty simple stuff here, but not always easy to do.  There are a lot of temptations out there, greed being one of the biggest.  Need to lose weight?  Check greed.  Need to improve your financial stability?  Check greed.  Need to improve your marriage?  Check greed.  Need to succeed?  Check greed.

One thing for sure:  Evil always succumbs to goodness.  Goodness is ultimately all and evil is nothing.  Take advantage of this fact.  Goodness works.

Give it a shot.  It’s your life.

Even More Inspiration

• Thinking And Creativity
• God Is doG Spelled Backwards
• Spiritual Scientist
• Remembering…
• Even Now
• Thoughts On Thinking or Thinking Makes It So

Last week in her church service (which gets broadcast around the world on the Internet) the Missus performed a new song fresh off the presses.  It has received tremendous feedback, the kind of response that makes all the blood, sweat and tears of this industry totally worth all the effort.  I’ll have to admit that we were not prepared for this response.  Who knew that this national occurrence would come?

Julia Wade (The Missus) chose the song to fit the sermon of that particular Sunday over a month ago, but it turned out to be the right panacea for the moment.  The trouble is, it is a new song that she has been working on for her new forthcoming CD, Silk Road, due to be released this coming Christmas season.  We have no single completed; we have no sheet music to sell – yet.

So we’re going to rush this one out to you ahead of its time.  We’ll release it as a single and its sheet music in the next couple of weeks.  I guess it’s just a song that demanded its own time – not on my schedule or Julia’s, but on its own schedule.   Like a baby who comes early – once it’s born, you simply have to stop all else and deal with it no matter what.

Here are only a few of the comments that we’ve received:

“We had the great good fortune to hear you perform “Even Now” in the Mother Church last Sunday.  We were traveling and just happened to be there in Boston. We both wept, it was SO gorgeous… even my husband cried — who is a Methodist!

Is there a recording of that song available?  My husband is an accomplished guitarist and he loved the guitar music so much too. Of course your singing was a gift!

Thank you so much for sharing your beautiful singing with all of us.  We will never forget how special that was!” –Carolyn

“Thank you Julia and Peter for your loving support.  That new solo is so right for what we’re going through… It was as though you were singing to us!

Thank you.  And thank you, Peter.  Deepfelt message.

And we’ve already heard from family in South Africa who listened and loved the Internet relay.

Your support means so much to us.” -Love, K.

In the meantime, here’s the lyric to tide you over…

Even Now
Music and Lyrics by Peter Link

Even now
The sun will rise
The morning come
The day begin
Even now
When all seems lost
And darkness falls over all
Even now
God’s watching over you
Here in the dawn’s first light

At every turn
In every need
With every breath you take

Even now
With cross to bear
He’s always there
In simple truth
Even now
With heavy heart
His love will lighten your way
Even now
He soothes the salted wound
And eases your troubled mind

At every turn
In every need
With every breath you take

God loves you
Hallelujah
God frees you
Hallelujah

Even now
With broken dreams
And weary soul
He’ll carry you
Even now
When all has failed
And mountains are in your way
Even now
He stands a sentinel
The shepherd of all you do

Your every turn
Your every prayer
And every move you make

Your every turn
Your every need
And every breath you take

God loves you
Remember these words that I sing
God loves you
God frees you
Hallelujah

Even More Inspiration

• Wonderful
• You Must Remember This!
• Love Is The Reason For Living
• My Body
• Nothing
• Spiritual Scientist

As American physicist, Barbara Brennan, states in her book ‘The Hands of Light‘: “Through experiments over the past few decades physicists have discovered matter to be completely mutable into other particles or energy and vice-versa and on a subatomic level, matter does not exist with certainty in definite places, but rather shows ‘tendencies’ to exist.  Quantum physics is beginning to realize that the Universe appears to be a dynamic web of interconnected and inseparable energy patterns.  If the universe is indeed composed of such a web, there is logically no such thing as a part.  This implies we are not separated parts of a whole but rather we are the Whole.”

This is just the beginning of a whole series of articles, comments, theories and scientific findings on the non-existence of matter.  If you are a regular reader of this blog, you already know what I think about all this.  Here’s just a bit more thought on the subject – not necessarily a scientific approach, but certainly a more poetic or lyrical approach to the subject.

NOTHING
Music and Lyrics by Peter Link

What is the chaff to the wheat?
Nothing
What is the dross to the gold?
What is the darkness to light?
Nothing
Nothing’s still nothing a thousand fold

Nothing’s no more than a fraud
Trying to be something when really it’s nothing
Claiming existence with no real consistency
What is matter to God?
What is matter to God?
Nothing
Nothing

What is the false to the truth?
Nothing
What are the tears to the crier?
What is an absence to presence?
Nothing
What is the ash to the raging fire?

What is the gain if a million lives
Are lost while the world is obsessed making war?
What is the point?  Good God!  What are the spoils?
What on earth is it for?
What on earth is it all for?
Nothing
Nothing

What is the past to the present?
Nothing
What are the remnants of time?
What are the scraps and shavings of dreams
Forgotten and long left behind?
What of a thought considered then spurned
And left in the dust forsaken?
What was it worth?  What does it matter?
If it was simply mistaken

What is death to life?
Nothing
What are the findings discovered by science?
What are the laws on which we place reliance
When we find the findings were flawed?
What is matter to God?
Nothing
Nothing

What is the chaff to the wheat?
Nothing

Even More Inspiration

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• You Must Remember This!
• Love Is The Reason For Living
• Wonderful
• Valentine Thoughts
• Light At The End Of The Tunnel

This is a story sent to me by a friend.  It touched me and inspired me, so I thought I’d send it on to you.

One day, when I was a freshman in high school, I saw a kid from my class walking home from school.  His name was Kyle.  It looked like he was carrying all of his books.  I thought to myself, “Why would anyone bring home all his books on a Friday?  He must really be a nerd.”

I had quite a weekend planned (parties and a football game with my friends tomorrow afternoon), so I shrugged my shoulders and went on.  As I was walking, I saw a bunch of kids running toward him. They ran at him, knocking all his books out of his arms and tripping him so he landed in the dirt.  His glasses went flying, and I saw them land in the grass about ten feet from him.

He looked up and I saw this terrible sadness in his eyes.  My heart went out to him, so I jogged over to him as he crawled around looking for his glasses, and I saw a tear in his eye.  As I handed him his glasses, I said, “Those guys are jerks. They really should get a life.”

He looked at me and said, “Hey thanks!”  There was a big smile on his face. It was one of those smiles that showed real gratitude.  I helped him pick up his books, and asked him where he lived.  As it turned out, he lived near me, so I asked him why I had never seen him before.  He said he had gone to private school before now.  I would have never hung out with a private school kid before. We talked all the way home, and I carried some of his books.

He turned out to be a pretty cool kid.  I asked him if he wanted to play a little football with my friends.  He said yes.  We hung out all weekend and the more I got to know Kyle, the more I liked him, and my friends thought the same of him. Monday morning came, and there was Kyle with the huge stack of books again.  I stopped him and said, “Boy, you are gonna really build some serious muscles with this pile of books everyday!”  He just laughed and handed me half the books.

Over the next four years, Kyle and I became best friends.  When we were seniors we began to think about college.  Kyle decided on Georgetown and I was going to Duke.  I knew we would always be friends, that the miles would never be a problem.  He was going to be a doctor and I was going for business on a football scholarship.

Kyle was valedictorian of our class.  I teased him all the time about being a nerd. He had to prepare a speech for graduation.  I was so glad it wasn’t me having to get up there and speak.

Graduation day, I saw Kyle.  He looked great.  He was one of those guys that really found himself during high school.  He filled out and actually looked good in glasses.  He had more dates than I had and all the girls loved him.  Boy, sometimes I was jealous! Today was one of those days.

I could see that he was nervous about his speech.  So, I smacked him on the back and said, “Hey, big guy, you’ll be great!”  He looked at me with one of those looks (the really grateful one) and smiled… “Thanks,” he said.

As he started his speech, he cleared his throat, and began.  “Graduation is a time to thank those who helped you make it through those tough years. Your parents, your teachers, your siblings, maybe a coach…, but mostly your friends.  I am here to tell all of you that being a friend to someone is the best gift you can give them.  I am going to tell you a story.”

I just looked at my friend with disbelief as he told the first day we met.  He had planned to kill himself over the weekend.  He talked of how he had cleaned out his locker so his Mom wouldn’t have to do it later and was carrying his stuff home.  He looked hard at me and gave me a little smile.  “Thankfully, I was saved.  My friend saved me from doing the unspeakable.”

I heard the gasp go through the crowd as this handsome, popular boy told us all about his weakest moment.   I saw his mom and dad looking at me and smiling that same grateful smile.  Not until that moment did I realize its depth.

Never underestimate the power of your actions.  With one small gesture you can change a person’s life; for better or for worse.  God puts us all in each other’s lives to impact one another in some way.

Even More Inspiration

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• Even Now
• Thinking And Creativity
• Thoughts On Thinking or Thinking Makes It So
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