BREATHE
Every element of this month's "performance piece for meditation" is specifically, intentionally, very carefully calibrated to assist with one singular process: the shift, in you, from your everyday sense of being, into

THAT PLACE

WITHIN YOU

That place of loving, and knowing, and certainty, and flow;

That place through which you are deeply connected to yourself, and the Universe.

This is a song about what it means to really and truly turn yourself over to what you want: to DIVE IN. I got to share it on a TV show about "Using Your Gifts" recently, and here is a little more to the story behind the song. While I was working on this song I found myself asking myself, "Are there areas where I am holding myself back? Are there ways in which I identify something I really want to come to pass, and then hover around the edges of letting it become so? And, maybe more importatly, when I look back over the course of my life at times when I really HAVE let myself DIVE IN, have I been glad I took the plunge? My answer to this last question was a strong, powerful, life-affirming YES!

Well, loyal fans, as I write, it is the end of summer, and I thought before we waded into yet another heavy and life-altering topic, (as we will next month), I ought to cut you some slack, and throw you a light-hearted song. A downright silly song, actually. Definitely one of my silliest. This song was commissioned by a Mr. Jameson Willington Smirthington (not his real name) to help answer the question "How can I learn about FUN?" (not his real question).   I think his real question was more like, "How can I use a song to TRANSITION myself into a more happy-go-lucky state of mind?" So this song, "I Wanna Have Some Fun," is our answer to that. I had a ridiculous amount of fun recording this song, and if you choose to listen to it, make SURE you listen all the way to the END of the song, because that is where all the JUICY STUFF IS. 

TOPIC: Reaching to connect with a sibling

My Sister Amy - I jumped off this dock without a life preserver and she jumped in after me 

What follows is the story of me and my sister. Of all the songs I perform live in concert, these two "Sister Songs"--a matched set--are the most frequently requested. When I play the first song, half the room tears up. When I play the second song, the other half of the room gets all watery-eyed. (The non-teary people know better than to come to my concerts, I guess). Each of us, it seems, can relate in some way to one side or the other of this equation: siblings who grow apart--and one who maybe struggles with it more than the other.

GROWING APART
When we were young, Amy and I shared a room, a bunk bed, and many late night conversations, giggling and doing imitations of the voices (and imagined gastrointestinal releases) of all of our neighbors. We had secret glances and little pieces of shorthand. Everything she did, I wanted to do. But when we grew up, Amy and I grew into different lives. And we grew apart. She seemed okay with it. I spent a lot of years, when I stopped to think about it, feeling somewhat tortured by our apartness. I came up with no end of stories, explanations, reasons, justifications, and excuses for what it all meant. On the surface, I am not sure what it looked like, but inside of me, down below the surface where no one could see, there were a lot of approaches, and a lot of retreats. I was hurting, and I didn't know where to go with that hurt, or how to give it a voice. 

Three years ago I wrote a song for a village in Ghana, Africa. From that day to this, the song has been sung by children in the village each morning, in school, right after they salute their flag.  Just this month, a music video has been created to commemorate this song,which has now been performed live by a children's choir in Australiaand has been shared as a recording in churches and at retreats all throughout the US, many times over.

For this month's song, I have been racing against the ticking clock of cancer. And while I have been doing so, a whole town in western New York has been rallying around one dear little boy. 

UPDATE
Alex Haws died of a rare form of liver cancer on Wednesday, October 24 at 4:15 PM.
The write-up below was written and ready to publish earier that same day, and I have opted to leave it in its original form, written when Alex was still alive.

THE STORY
Lisa's brother Steve died unexpectedly at the age of 36. In attending to her grief she did two astonishing things--one which made the papers in St. Louis where she lives, and one which helped her grieving father to finally cry with her.  I want to tell you briefly about both of those things, because it will give you an idea of what an inspired and inspiring person Lisa is, and it will provide the back-story out of which this month's featured song, The Connection, grew. When Lisa's brother Steve died, he left behind a life-dream of refinishing, to very exact plans, a once-fine, run-down house he had purchased many years earlier, in downtown St. Louis. He died before he was able to raise the funds for his vision. Lisa transformed her grief into a miracle, gathering  the funds and completing the house, along with her extended family, as a labor of love. As the project came to completion, she had a second transformative idea when she learned about what I do: She commissioned a song for Father's Day, for her dad, in the voice of Steve. Steve and his dad had not had an easy relationship, and when Lisa shared that song, which was called Regained, with her dad, father and daughter were able to cry together for the first time since Steve's death. (That song, incidentally, was featured on the Brave Records website in May of last year for Father's Day and created a phenomenal  spike in their website visits as people across the country and around the world shared the song on Fathers Day.) 

WHO WOULD BE ON YOUR 30-PERSON SUPPORT TEAM?
This month I want to ask you to see what happens when you try to imagine something. I want you to imagine for just a moment that you are sitting at a table, and that you are surrounded by literally ALL of the people who love you – from your past, and from your present as well. What would it be like, to have all of those people together for a moment in time, gazing upon you, seeing you as they have seen you in your finest moments? Seeing you through the eyes of love? Who would be there at the table? How would it feel, for you, to try to take in all of that attention and love, at once?