Children and immature minds embrace emotion without reason. Adulting is hard.
When unreasonable emotionally driven people define the definition of reasonable without challenge, terrible consequences follow.

#idiotsincharge regularly couch unreasonable criticism within their moral certainty and utopian idealism. Real leadership defines terms and conditions and lays out logical positions for discussion and possible action.

Doing nothing is almost always an option. Just because you want something to change doesn’t mean it is necessary. Deciding if it the expectation and associated decision is reasonable restarts the whole adulting cycle.

There is a lot of animosity in the minds of a lot of parents who are watching school systems and government fail our children and create totally unnecessary stress and deep distrust for competency of so many teachers and administrators.

We see the futile policies, the bias and political decisons and the stark differences between results and messaging. Families are still being destroyed by the bureaucrats in the name of the utopian greater good.

We see these decisions. We won’t forget. The excuses are no longer working. I see students in open states being given better opportunities, better education, and better examples for living. It is shameful that Virginia is not leading… not in safety. Not in liberty. Not in education. Not at all.

Lord Northam and his blackface clan have planted the seeds of incompetence and dependence and now the system is proceeding to fail over and over and over. The animosity is here. It is seething just below the surface with so many. Even the looney liberals can only say “they are doing the best they can” so many times before it is recognized as a trope and useless drivel.

The conservative views and approach to liberty and empowerment with protest in the face of power… in word and deed is superior. We must use the system and act swiftly to save a generation of students and ourselves with them.

Results are required. Lack of results require changes. Status quo is not the way forward. Too much has changed. Too much is at stake. It always was.

If you think that making music is primarily about the right notes and right rhythms, you and I on different planets. Right notes and rhythms are maybe 25% of the experience. Maybe less. Sharing the soul of the performer, and the composer with form, style, choice and color across time and place is everything. Notes and rhythms are like bricks and boards. They are necessary to build a house, but useless to actually live in until they are assembled. #ChoirIsLife

To change things, solve the problem in front of you. Directly in front of you, in your house, neighborhood, church, with friends and family. Don’t complain about it. Start solving now. One little decision at a time. One person at a time. Local. Local. Local. Disassociate from chronic problem makers in favor of solvers.
Big Bang - One size fits all solutions do not exist.

How do you get what you want? First you must decide what you want. If you truly want to change something, decide and get to work.

What problem are you solving? Exactly. Specifically. Locally.

FYI- in a free society you don’t get to tell/command others’ priorities. Everyone has their own problems. If your solution is to tell others what to do, you are exercising control and likely tyranny. That is simple reality for all of us.

If you don’t have s solution to a problem, get to work. Educate yourself. Live your life. No one is coming to save you or do your work for you.

Finding a team and a cohort, a brotherhood is a difficult things in a world full of problems. Everyone has to play their part.

CYA medicine is not science.

CDC guidelines are just that. Now that govt is regularly enshrining pseudoscience unspecific drivel into law, the number of criminals will radically increase. Overreach requires protest

The pandemic response was never meant to get US to zero risk. This bar is ridiculous. The guidelines and practical implications of restrictions must be balanced and they are not. I long ago projected a protracted useless extension of governing regulation due to the #idiotsincharge. Sadly I was and am correct.

Rip off the mask of politico-medical Utopianism now. Reject these insane autocratic recurring control cycles.

Get your vaccine after consulting with your doctor. Ignore the media and political messaging and presidential posturing.

Educate yourself and live your life. Most importantly, enable your children to live their lives. They are not at a material risk. In reality, they never were. Sing. Play. Hug. Socialize.

Do not wait for permission to get on with life. You do NOT need permission to celebrate Independence Day or any other day.

The same mentality that drives a victimization culture also empowers the “protected class”perspective of so many who feel morally and even intellectually superior because of their role. Both seek attention and reparations and entitlements.

It is hard to come to grips that we are all equal and results are based on luck, advantages, and good decisions most of all. People are equal. Ideas are not. Results are not the same and life is not fair. It never was and never will be. Educate yourself. Love your life. Do your job. Be. Love. Serve. Repeat. Expecting reverence is a deadly trap.

The only opinions that really matter are those with standing and agency. In a court, it is the jury not the judge. In a governing body for our form of representative democracy , it is the representative not the individual citizen. In the executive branches it is the officer and the elected decision maker (governor) who is accountable.

Individuals can and should say what they want. Influence matters. In the end, it is the vote, not the noise that tells the truth and determines outcomes. The protests and riots and television/news broadcasts are informational NOT deliberative.

Discerning intent is complex and virtually impossible in so many cases. The mob mentality being supported by fear and inflamed rhetoric is troubling and damaging to all of US.

Educate yourself. Live your life. If and when you sit on the jury, or in the leadership seat, do your duty and decide to deliberate well. Our world 🌎 literally depends on it all too often these days.

How difficult is it to be socially acceptable and socially accepted in your own family and house? The answer is much more difficult than most are willing to accept and is most often related to power respect and deference.

The power of a congregation of souls to exclude is infinite. The clique-tribe fit in mindset is toxic. The desire to please and be accepted is hard wired into our grid but it too often destroys the wiring over time when falsehood and selfishness become obvious.

Inclusion requires intent and action. Accepting differences, risks, and never ending challenges and journeying on regardless is what living is all about.

Gun violence is a national crisis. Law abiding gun owning citizens are not the perpetrators. We are not even major contributors. We are simply the only viable target available to a ruling political class bent on virtue signaling over virtue.
To fight an epidemic you must target and eradicate the source first and foremost. Any solution must be rooted in policing criminals, transforming mental health solutions/care, and teaching firearm safety.
This futile exercise in creating more and more laws to restrict those who already follow the law is deplorable and misguided.

It will have no material effect on the epidemic. The parallels to lockdown mentality and subservient citizens is unavoidable. The only option available is a “we will not comply” movement. This will create more law breakers not less. The #idiotsincharge are playing more and more games with the politics of power and control, manipulating emotions of the weak.

When they fail to affect the gun violence with their new lockdown logic(as they did with The 2020+ lockdowns) what will we do and say? That is the question.

When the stone was rolled away, the mask was ripped off of the facade that death is the end. The fear is overcome and faith is revealed in the flesh. Man’s vicious pursuit of relevance and virtue at the expense of the virtuous is proven false and empty.

There is nothing rational and reasonable about our risen Lord. The resurrection is miraculous just as our salvation. The Age of Enlightenment has no answer for a resurrection because Jesus is both God and Man. We see dimly through our human eyes, but today we see enough. We celebrate eternal life given to each of us specific, beloved, first born children of Christ. Hallelujah. He is risen. He is risen indeed. In the resurrection, the promise is fulfilled.

This cactus “crown of thorns” was given to me by dear friends years many ago. We aren’t good at plants in our house but it always seems to survive. Some periods have more thorns than others. Some times have more flowers than others. Today is Easter and we celebrate the risen Lord. Earthly death awaits all of us. In Christ we live forever. Death, o death, where is thy sting? It is not here in this period and time.

Palm Sunday reminds me that Triumphal entry celebrations can turn to vicious ego and power driven public executions in a matter of days. Who leads the charge? It is almost always the pious posing puritan pseudo protectors of the greater good.

Let me be clear. President Biden is definitely not okay. I watched that press conference and it was obvious. I don’t know for sure who is running the executive branch but it is not him. My guess: whoever wrote the cards for him knows who is really leading the country and they aren’t going to tell anyone.

Also, WTH is going on with “holding” facilities on the border. There is obviously a crisis as VP Harris was assigned to solve it... seems to me that the “no transparency/media allowed” policy is also a crisis. No one is assigned to that one and the media is useless. The orange man bad model now equals old man good. The stark difference in the reporting lens for each is harming the country.

Americans are suffering. Job #1 for POTUS should be the citizens of the US. The globalist autocratic moral busybodies are the king #idiotsincharge these days.

I’m pretty sure that I retired from vocational music ministry this morning officially. 25 years of doing the job, fitting in, and going along for the greater good with notes, rhythms, and service design are over in my mind.
I actually resigned from First Baptist Ridgeway for any that don’t know. No hard feelings but plenty of anxiety.

Ministry is guaranteed to always be part of my future. I’m a musician so there is that, but I can’t see a job for me which forces me to fit into a box anymore. The old Jeff, the tenor, the performer, the passionate powerful presenter has been in a chrysalis for a long time. Maybe I stay in there. Maybe I come out a moth. Maybe I come out a glorious butterfly. Who know? Only God knows.

I hope that I’ll be afforded and opportunity to lead again in the future. I adore choirs. I revel in live music making with passionate and skilled collaborators. I also love preaching and teaching scripture and leadership and using technology.

the future is bright but the one thing I know for sure is that it won’t be like it was. I’m grieving that loss. I’m a change champion but even for me it is exhausting and the cost is high.

What you do when someone says “I am not okay.” Says a lot about you.
Most people will never answer that way because they don’t trust. They expect judgement, condemnation, fixing, and controlling behaviors to follow such a personal admission. Fear is in charge.

What do they most often need?
Acceptance, attention, time... relationship and connection. LISTENING and Sitting/serving, maybe studying, eating or just silence.

Are you okay? Don’t ask the question if you aren’t prepared to put in the time, sacrificially, to love and serve.

For anyone who sings and leads in worship AND anyone who attends and wants to lead. Perhaps most important of all...for the congregation: as we approach worship we must find the balance and always seek the higher excellent things for glory to God, not praise of men and not our own preferences. It is difficult for all roles to execute. It is simple to criticize. The relentless return of the sabbath provides a weekly opportunity. As for my experience, some are far better than other. This is simple reality.

The force is strong with this one. He should go back to population and act like everyone else to set a good example. That is one way.
In the movie of course, the special then step up and lead in a new way, setting themselves apart.

The real way is to learn where you can best serve and then do so safely after education yourself. Raising all with you while you continue to seek to improve yourself.

The answer is never to lower the bar and race to the bottom to simply include. The distribution curve has a top and a bottom. Neither can be ignored.

Educate yourself. Live your life. Be. Love. Serve. Repeat. Freely giving and loving but standing proud. Let your light shine bright for all to see. Sing loud for all to hear. Stand and be counted. You are specific, beloved, first born child of Christ. Act like it.

it would be awesome if Jesus gave the disciples light sabers. Wait? Maybe he did. See: #TheHolySpirit

Best thing I’ve heard from a pulpit in a while. I’ve added my take of course...

2019- year the media and “culture” said to cancel the negative people. Don’t do anything with them. Those realists are just negative Nellies. Everything will be fine as soon as the negative voices are gone.

2020- the year where we were all encouraged to shout down the positive hopeful people because the world was ending and system is deplorable. Their support for standing up and singing loud and proud is a radical position. Hunker down and look out for yourself above all. Socializing is unsafe. If you want to see and be with people you are killing them. Be fearful.

2021- this year we are not supposed to ANYTHING with ANYONE because... there is just too much risk. Be alone. Wait for permission. Someday when it is safe the powers in the know will tell you.

I never bought into any of it. I’m sorry for the months in 2020 where I was so flipping afraid. It will not happen again from me. Be. Love. Serve. Repeat. Is not a passive sit back and watch thing done on a video stream or TV. Living is loving and loving is living. Face to face. Hand to hand. Heart to heart.

Here is the thing about war... cold or hot, it doesn’t matter who is to blame for the aggression. The casualties are the soldiers and the civilians, not the generals and the politicians. Think about it because the moral paradox is stunning. As the Dems and the Reps fight, the people of the United States Suffer. As friends and family fight on social media, relationships are destroyed, damaged, and in many cases lost altogether. This carnage is avoidable if we return to local actions with liberty and accountability, family and church responsibility, and respect for ALL lives now and into the future. The blame game retribution retaliation rhetoric and violence is utterly useless and only perpetuates the problem. Period.