Every Person Is Hope
Every person has the right to write and tell their story. We each come with this piece of hope. Every person is hope. If we are looking, they will change our lives.
Read MoreThink of Me
When you see a butterfly kiss a flower, I hope you think of me.
When someone gives to you expecting nothing in return, I hope you think of me.
When someone lends you their ears instead of their advice, I hope you think of me.
When you feel like giving up but the voice inside says, “don’t quit”, I hope you think of me.
When you laugh deeply, I hope you think of me.
When you dream your dreams, I hope you think of me.
When you feel seen and known, I hope you think of me.
When a song says everything you didn’t know how to say, I hope you think of me.
When you don’t know if you can go on, I hope you think of me.
When you wonder if anyone is listening, I hope you think of me.
When you’re tired or afraid, I hope you think of me.
When life feels good and you sing by yourself, I hope you think of me.
When you learn something new, I hope you think of me.
When you forget your pain, I hope you think of me.
When you remember you are complete, I hope you think of me.
Space to Be
I carry this anticipation with me. It feels so much bigger than me. It's really hard to explain but I suppose this post is about trying to do exactly that. I think I want to share about it because it feels such a part of me, even though I cannot define it.
I think about all the things I am passionate about and enjoy doing. They mean something a little different to me now than they did just a few years ago. I could do them well and they gave me a sense of accomplishment. I tried very hard to do these things perfect.
The more I do the work of letting go and embracing who I am, the more aware I am of how much space I occupy in the world. I suffer when I attempt to contain it. It is not like a weight or something I carry, it just is. My mind regularly compares it to pregnancy for some reason. Of course I've never been pregnant, but that’s where my mind goes. It is an energy I’m learning to honor, be thoughtful with, and nurture. It’s possible it's me in some sense.
I can run to grab a paint brush, my guitar, a person, my bike, my phone, my computer, or anything to give myself to. I realize the sooner I stop and be with whatever I’m feeling, the sooner I can experience ease and comfort. It's easy to grab onto something that feels familiar and let my mind run in its groove. I recently turned down a job-offer because I knew the job did not resonate with who I know myself to be (even though I really need some money!). It felt so good to honor my truth no matter what. It’s scary but it’s progress.
I've told people about this "bigness" I feel, this pregnancy. I've told people I want to travel the world and experience other cultures and create safe spaces for people to discover more of themselves. I imagine my passion for speaking and creating and relating will help me do just that. I want to keep learning and giving and growing and experiencing life in its mystery, rawness, and depth. I am trying to be content with my current place and contributions and accept them as enough.
I believe I’m here to be free and that is free. I do my best to give myself grace for this process because I can feel like my brain short-circuits as it adjusts to new realizations and as I practice new habits. My healing journey has offered me more empathy and compassion for others. The deeper I go into my life, the beauty and madness, I become less judgemental of others. What used to maybe turn me off in others might now be attractive. What used to scare me might intrigue me. What used to disgust me I might embrace. Engaging with life as it is, is messy and hard work. I used to tried to present the proper and polished, chin up, “I've got my shit together look”. I tried to do this full-time. I try to do this less and less. Progress, not perfection.
-Josh
Change
Change is a process of being honest with myself. I resist change when I don't want to be with my experience or accept the truth. I go into denial by resisting emotions and evacuating. It seems so much easier to try to justify mediocrity. Maybe mediocrity means existing and going through life doing the same things that don’t make us happy over and over again and wondering "what if"?
I don't think any person is exempt from change, or fear. I've realized I do have a choice in whether or not I will be fear's slave or make the changes in my life for my happiness. I seriously have no soapbox to stand on and I am no professional at working with fear, but I am grateful for those in my life who have helped me notice mediocrity symptoms. Noticing when I'm "recoiling" (as I like to call it) is something I've only realized in the past four or five months. This ability really surfaced after my time working with a life coach.
Honoring my feelings and myself has been one of the most difficult and important things for me to learn, because it was not my "normal". Digging my feet in ground and pushing forward, because I’m worth it, feels damn good.
-Josh
Acceptance
Bitterness and resentment make it very difficult for me to be healthy. For me, the desire to belong, be understood, and loved unconditionally reside deeper than the difficult feelings of shame, disappointment, anger, confusion, or sadness that can surface when these desires go unfulfilled.
As I become more healthy I become more aware of who I am and my health, and my eyes and heart open further to see others as they are in any given moment. When I feel rejected or kept at a distance from someone I care deeply about, I can easily retreat into my head and hoist the world on my shoulders. I can think I’m unworthy or unlovable. I start listening to the lie that I am not “enough”.
I am beginning to notice the transformation that happens within me when I choose to stay present with my feelings and not try to control outcomes. When I choose to try to understand why this person may be acting this way. When I acknowledge the experience they’re presenting and stay connected with my heart for the person.
Sometimes I can feel almost overwhelmed with suffering and confusion, but I’ve found some kind of consolation in knowing that what I’m experiencing is a human experience. I am not alone in this. I have loved and lost, had much and had little, and I am learning to accept that suffering is a constant and worthy companion in my journey of love. Suffering is not my aim but vulnerability is. I try to stay with the pain and not run from or push it away. In a world where to be a warrior means to cover in armor, I try to stay “undressed”, because it has proved the only way for me to live authentically and experience true intimacy.
If I feel hurt in these relational scenarios it is often because my expectations or hope of connection have gone unfulfilled. However, I am beginning to notice that connections and solutions often open up in greater ways when I listen and honor others for who they are and what they are experiencing at that given moment. I try to trust. I try to keep this person in my heart, even when it hurts. I try to pray for them. I try to see the best in them. Most importantly, I am trying to be more kind and accepting of myself first.
-Josh
Friends with Life
I need to be in nature and I especially love being near the river by my house. The river teaches me life is connected and keeps going. The butterflies call me back to the present moment and to see through my true-eyes. Children remind me to receive life as it is and that I don’t need to try to figure life out. I can allow life to figure me out instead. Friends and family remind me I'm not doing this life thing alone. I am fascinated with the song that nature sings. It reveals how life works, what we are, and offers us the invitation to step out from under familiar forces we find comfort in serving and identifying with. Maybe that is a job we hate, a relationship we feel we're pretending in, or a house we hate affording.
Unadulterated joy and happiness cannot be taken, but they can be discovered, appreciated, nurtured, felt, lived, and shared. Understanding my truth is essential as I uncover my joy and happiness. I like to think that our “truth" is a powerful, malleable and endless process directed by wonder and questions. Whatever we need to engage with that helps us remember and nurture our authentic-self is so important. I am learning that the questions unearthed in this process are doorways to gold-nuggets.
The gnawing and wonderful question "Who am I?" is easily hidden under our attempts to belong to something outside ourselves, and our attempts to try to manage the image of ourselves we prefer others to see. It is easy to hide in a look, book, band, belief, job, experience (past, present, or future), relationship, or the picture of our future we're encouraged to carve into our psyche and protect at all costs.
I’m learning how pointless and counter to my health it is when I over-assign value to absolutely everything in my life. It leaves no space or time for appreciating life. Over-assigning (or playing God) value can seem to provide some sense of safety, control, and belonging without requiring me to change. I go to extremes and my versions usually confirm my limited and inflated, or deflated views. I cover up the questions and get distracted from the freedom of life in every moment. "Who am I?" is an uncomfortable question that I think will always stay with me because I need it in a world of constant change. It is uncomfortable to ensure I do change. It should be exciting as well! We need this question and we need to engage with what we find if we are going to feel alive and truly loved. Only then we can offer the same to others. I like to think that the journey inward is the journey outward, and vice versa. It has seemed this way in my experience at least.
-Josh
"Life is easy, why do we make it so hard?"
Jon Jandai speaks of how simple life can be. He asks, "why do we make life so hard?". Jon speaks with brevity and joy as he tells his version of living a fulfilling life.
I am the canvas.
I am the color.
I rode the wind,
It brought me back again.
Nothing moves,
While seeing from here.
Speed is absent,
When I am home.
Everything matters,
Yet nothing is,
Everything is passing.
Everything belongs.
Normal hurts
The past two months of not working an eight-to-four job have been an incredible gift. They have also been incredibly challenging. They have been a space where I have come to experience happiness in ways I only have since childhood. I’ve also felt exposed, lost, confused, yet gained clarity. The past three years have been a transformative time for me while I've found new ways of living and telling my story.
I've scripted several blogs, deleted, and started over. I bum myself out when I delete content of any kind rather than letting it breathe and be for a while. After I get over feeling overwhelmed, I can find value in the questions that appear through the confusion. Questions come to mind like "what do I hope to accomplish with this?", "what do I hope to give with my life?", "Why the hell am I doing this in the first place?". I suppose with any artistic process I engage in, again, it's simply because I have to. It's who I am. I long for connection. I'm honoring myself. I believe I have something to offer.
I was writing yesterday and attempting to encapsulate the past few years. I often try to make the grand smaller by manipulating/controlling/containing it with my little mind. But no song I've ever written tells my whole story. It tells its part. My favorite times songwriting are when the song just happens. For me, that looks like picking up an instrument and writing a song straight through in almost one take. Words and all. Another example is when I finish a painting and step back wondering how it happened. I stare in wonder like I did as a child under the untamed Wisconsin night sky. It's pretty freaking amazing and terrifying at times. That's being. Being, for me. It's so simple when I let it happen, and that is what makes art special. It doesn't need to be anything for anyone. It just is.
I suppose my artistic processes are a dance of trust and I feel less alone when I am connected with life authentically. Isn't art just trying to make life more fun, visible, palpable, and sometimes just more bearable? We long for connection, and I like to think it is what we’re made for. Even shitty connections remind us we're alive and that it’s okay to let some things go. It is beautiful to exist in the dance of completeness, surrender, and openness for what is to come. It's beautiful when people invite me in and who are also brave enough to step into my world.
Our normal is constant stimulation, constant expectations, constant comparing, and the mental poverty of feeling like we’re missing something (in a country of great wealth by our own standards). We want normal and at the same time are afraid to admit that we don’t. If nothing blows up normal, normal hurts until it hurts so bad we can't resist our true experience anymore. The easiest way to move through life is by following the script. The way to live YOUR life is by discovering your own. As artists, I think we have/are walking a journey of understanding that the ideas of security and conformity produce an absolutely predictable outcome, and it is not happiness. We try to be aware of how and where we walk, look for meaning, learn to embrace life as it is and my hope is that we do not give up. I have my really hard days/moments where I can start to look backwards and question, but then I remember how hard I’ve worked to get here and the real joy in trusting God and embracing mystery. This can feel like laughing and crying in the same sentence. We can exist exactly as we are and allow truth to transform us, rather than weigh ourselves and others down with all of our efforts and ideas of shallow absolutes.
We all create, every day, and I know that a little vulnerability can make life a lot less scary <3
The Art of Being Yourself
Caroline McHugh invites listeners into their own journey. The question "Who do you think you are?", could be a key to a life beyond our comprehension, unique and bursting in richness.
Feast Day of St. Francis of Assisi, October 4
Commemorating the life of St. Francis
(Excerpt from franciscanmedia.org)“He was, for a time, considered to be a religious fanatic, begging from door to door when he could not get money for his work, evoking sadness or disgust to the hearts of his former friends, ridicule from the unthinking. But genuineness will tell. A few people began to realize that this man was actually trying to be Christian. He really believed what Jesus said: “Announce the kingdom! Possess no gold or silver or copper in your purses, no traveling bag, no sandals, no staff” (Luke 9:1-3).”
A version of St. Francis’s Prayer of Peace
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace:
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy.
O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
Amen.
"Free" (a little diddy i just wrote)
Check out this little diddy i wrote. I’d really like you to know these words for yourself <3
Click on this link - facebook.com/joshkaymusic
From my life and heart. On iTunes today.
Happy Friday! Maybe it's exciting for you because it's the last day you have to work this week. For me, it's because this EP is finally on iTunes.
I enjoyed writing these songs with wonderful friends who joined in and brought their own stories and lives, without them, it wouldn't be the same. I pray you meet this Lover through this music, no matter what place you're finding yourself in life right now.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/as-it-is-in-heaven-ep/id1021779130
Blessings,
Josh