That excitement and anticipation of the first hill…the one that takes forever to climb but wastes no time sending you plummeting to the ground only to yank ya back up and toss ya back down. And during the falls you feel somewhat weightless and some even sick. Then you get a little time to recover your stomach as you scale another grade only before it turns you upside-down and spins you around. When it’s finally over and the adrenaline has gotten the best of you, a deep breath precedes the thought that “that was so much fun, why not get in line and do it again.” I miss that…literally and figuratively. But a new season is brewing and I’m out of hibernation. I’m ready to ride a roller-coaster; to get back in line and see what kind of reward will be at the end of all the slow climbs and fast falls.

I’ve been on solid ground, practically kissing it for some time now, and think it’s about time I “get to the point”. The winds of change are upon us and 2007 has proved to be a definitive year in my life and the lives of those around me. Since January, I’ve had 5 close friends leave the state for better jobs and an improved standard of life. A Chrysler employee, a news broadcaster, an architect, a lawyer, and a student all have moved away to begin the rest of their lives. And other close friends are getting so wrapped up in their relationships…well, you know where that’s going. So here I am, the musician. But the aging musician…no longer 22 with few worries. Oh no! I’m staring 27 in the face, or it’s staring me in the face. But I think I’m ready now to embrace my “late-twenties” and to see what new things God has in store for my next ride. Standing still isn’t exciting. Doing nothing isn’t exciting. The people around us aren’t going to stand still and do nothing. They’re going to move, change, grow, and age just like you and me.

That’s where I am right now.

I vividly see the world around me transforming and I want to transform too.

Now is the time.

I’m standing, but I’m doing something…

I’m in the line.

My ankles are really puffy and weird looking right now, unless it’s normal to have them be larger than your thighs. They have always been pretty swollen in general from a lifetime of sports abuse and unfortunate genes but right now they are truly troubled. I sat next to a chiropractor on my flight back to Detroit from Chicago and after she recovered from gasping at my Klumps-sized ankles, she told me that my body was healing from the trauma that I put my poor lower extremities through. She bluntly asked me if I exercise regularly when I’m not scaling the peaks of Turkey barehanded, and I sheepishly smirked and shrugged. For some reason she didn’t seem surprised. She advised me to start. By my calculations, hiking 120 miles in Turkey has bought me about 7 years of down time to return to my standard yearly rate of activity.

My hands are very tan. As are my forearms, forehead, and foreneck. Ok - not the foreneck, the backneck. Also, I noticed that the back of my calves are really tan, but then they turn pale right just before the knee, apparently the point at which my drooping shorts reached. I think that part of the reason that I didn’t feel claustrophobic in the tiny cramped stone silent tunnels that Frodo would have struggled to fit through was because I have a larger phobia of having my shorts drop down below a certain acceptable level on my lower back. I was pretty focused on keeping the lunar sightings to a minimum.

I keep doing weird things in my sleep. Last night I was looking for something in the sheets, in fact the search led me to stand up at the foot of the bed. Thankfully, I realized that I was sound asleep and that what I was looking for was just my pillow and the Holy Grail.

Two nights ago I was following the group into a very dark tunnel that had to be crawled through, and as I did my best to keep up with the group, I became very annoyed that someone had attached a very bright green alarm clock to the back of their pack. I didn’t need to know that it was 3:37am as we followed the rabbi into the caves of Cappadoccia. Oh - woops. I’m asleep again. Sorry babe.

I was so tired that I caught myself sleeping during one of the teachings. I woke up and quickly starting writing down what I was hearing. I realized that I had taken off my backpack. I then realized that I had taken off my shirt too. And my shorts. And I’m in my bed. Shoot. I really need some sleep - this is getting embarassing.

I have caught myself several time reaching for my left shoulder to take a quick sip of water through my Camelback hydration system. I have a weird wet spot on the shoulder of my shirt as I realize quietly that it is cotton, not a nozzle. I’ve been pretty thirsty I guess, going from drinking 400 ounces of water a day back to my customary 6.

They should make pills for this…

Ok - I’ll admit it… I wasn’t ready for this trip. Not even close. I thought that because I took a few walks to the Starbucks right next to my house in my hiking boots that I would be ready to handle some hiking in the Middle East.

Sweet mercy.

I had no idea what awaited me.

I had no idea.

God knew what He had for me here. He knew how I needed to be broken physically to truly grasp the truth He has for me here. Lots of water, lots of heavy breathing, lots of overwhelming moments.

I stood where Elijah called down fire from heaven. I climbed where he climbed to face off against the prophets of Baal. It was eerily quiet up there. The kind of stunned silence that follows a dramatic event. The kind of silence that fills empty concentration camps, battlefields, and arenas. You can feel that the land has witnessed something spectacular and horrifying. 400 false prophets, crying out to the sky, cutting themselves, pleading with their god for his appearance… he doesn’t show… Elijah’s does. The God of Israel responds to the desperate cry of His prophet. Fire falls down from heaven… 400 false prophets, dejected and defeated, are butchered.

The story took on such different life as I stood there. This really happened. God really showed up.

I think I play it safe too much. Very few times in my life have I put something so deeply into God’s hands that if He fails to move I will be completely humiliated and maybe even harmed. Elijah stacked the odds so ridiculously against him that if God decided to do nothing, it would have cost him his life and God’s reputation.

As I sat on the top of that historic Mount, several thoughts raced through my head… What or who am I crying out to God for? What is my passionate plea? Am I living a life of risk and boldness for God?

This was a hard climb. Up the ancient path. I almost fell several times from the rocky terrain. I almost keeled over several times from the softness of my belly and the poor physical condition it represents. A hard climb that set the stage for a hard truth.

This is more than I bargained for…

I have always been enamored with creativity. And just like a Renaissance man from the 1500’s, I want to dabble in all forms of it. This is who I am- how I was made. But thinking beyond a simple interest and hobby- I believe creativity is in the depths of everyone. Weather you are in a lab testing DNA, preparing a lesson for your 3rd grade class, engineering new technology for the next hybrid, designing cell-phone towers or scrimmaging with your Monday night soccer league you must use creativity to succeed. Call it ‘trouble shooting’ or ‘problem solving’ –face it; you seek to be creative! And as Mike Buchanan states in The Holy Wild, “the human desire to create, simply mirrors the God whose image we are made, by whose breath we are filled.”

The Renaissance man is the ultimate creative occupation. Michelangelo, for example, was a painter, sculptor, architect, poet and engineer. I have been fortunate enough to have seen some of his creations, such as: the Pietà, the David, his fresco paintings on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and The Last Judgment fresco on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel in Rome, as well as the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica. From all that I have seen, I give testimony to his enormous amount of creativity. And to think he accomplished all he did without modern technology; his life radiated creativity.

It is the ‘movements’ of creativity and multifaceted individuals, which seem to grab my attention. The De Stijl, literally translated as “the style” was an art movement founded in 1917 by the gems of the 1900’s creators: the sculptor Vantongerloo, architect JJP Oud, designer Rietveld and the painter Mondrian. These men realized their human desire to create should span past their media of art and into a language, culture and geography. Perhaps they were searching for wholeness and identity found only in the creator of creativity. The main principles of the De Stijl movement continued on to greatly influence the Bauhaus movement in Germany in the 1920’s. And beyond being a great font for your text, Bauhaus was bustling with creativity.

I could go on for days about individuals such as Eliel and Eero Saarinen, Finnish architects best known for Cranbrook and the St. Louis Arch, Frank Gehry, best known for the titanium-covered Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, and Rem Koolhaas, Dutch architect known for his Urban Design. These individuals submerged themselves in creativity. Some were sculptors and furniture designers, which influenced their buildings. Or a scriptwriter and journalist, which influenced the integration of society and theory with culture and Urban development. The creativity in their life did not stay compartmentalized. It collided with the dynamic aspects of who they were to form a physical representation.

Will I allow the compartments of my life, the walls I have built to create categories of different friends, coworkers, family, and my neatly separated hobbies to be blown away so I can truly live. I understand God is the author of creativity and desire for my life to be a ‘beautiful collision’.