Justin McRoberts' Blog

CMY(K): Heaven Knows, Letter To A ‘Stuck’ Brother

October 6th, 2011 | 9 Comments »

Many of the songs that make up the CMY(K) project are written for and about friends, each of whom has or will receive letters about the songs. I’m posting a few of those letters here. ”Heaven Knows″ is written for a young brother I’ve had the pleasure of knowing for years and seen wrestle with the authenticity of his faith. This is the letter I wrote to him about the song:

Brother,
I wrote the song “Heaven Knows” for and about you.

You deeply desire to know and speak Truth. Your feet search for firm ground to stand on. You’d rather say nothing at all than echo the insane speculations of overconfident, arrogant and uninformed religion you remember from your past. These things are honorable in you and worthy of celebration. They are also evidence of a Divine work in you. The hard part of that work has been that it has meant years of restlessness and an inability at times to act with confidence.

You’ve engaged in many great conversations, read many insightful texts. Yet, more recently, the words of others have begun to fall short of your heart: you’ve not been moved and comforted by the same conversations and ideas you had been moved and comforted by previously. I believe that this because it is your heart that needs to speak rather than be spoken to. The time has come to act on what you do know rather than wait for further instruction, the next revelation or some deeper insight.

Until now, you have been full of words but few to none of them have been yours much less God’s. You have had little to no internal room for your own words because of the cacophony of voices swirling in you. Even the words you did speak were often arrangements of words you received from parents, your past or your former religion. But the time has come for you to speak your own words and to do so in confidence. You’ve come to know that the ground is there to stand upon and that the Truth is not as evasive as it once appeared.

You are not being asked to name anything. The time for conclusions and ‘naming’ has past (and another season like it is yet to come). For now, you are simply being asked to bear witness to what you have seen and let everything else be everything else. You are being asked to act according to what you know is True, regardless of the incompleteness of that knowledge. Just as Phillip was bid by the Spirit of the Lord to “Go South” with no further explanation, you have your own “Go South” to obey.

So, I wanted to give you a way to see and remember that work begun in you is real and that it will be brought to completion; a way to see remember that your circumstances, present or past do not direct your path; Your circumstances are not concrete; they are malleable. The thing, moreso than any other that you are being asked to bear witness to, the thing that must direct your course of action henceforth is your identity in the Father, who calls you “son.”

Thomas Merton writes “God is not a ‘what,’ not a thing …there is no ‘what’ that can be called God. There is ‘no such thing’ as God because God is neither a ‘what’ or a ‘thing’ but pure ‘Who.’ He is the ‘Thou’ before whom our inmost ‘I’ springs into awareness. He is the I AM before whom, with our most personal and inalienable voice, we echo ‘I am.’”

You are not stuck. You are not paralyzed. Not anymore. You have come to a moment you do not recognize; one that you were not prepared for. It is a pure moment… a moment without further breakthrough… no more revelation.. no deeper enlightenment.. You know everything you need to know. This moment is not about deeper knowledge, it is about the choice to act on the knowledge you’ve been mercifully granted; that you are a son of God.

Justin

—–

You can pick up “Heaven Knows″ and the entire “M” EP at iTunes
You can check out the digibook for “M” at my Issuu page

Heaven Knows
You have asked me to feed them
With my blood and my bones
But my body is burdened with concerns of my own

Heaven knows that I want to
I want to but I just can’t

You have asked me to follow
To believe and obey
But the very thought of it is what keeps me away

Heaven knows that I want to
I want to but I just can’t

“Do you want to get well?”
It always seemed like the strangest thing to ask a man

CMY(K): 33, A Letter To My Dad

October 3rd, 2011 | 7 Comments »

Many of the songs that make up the CMY(K) project are written for and about friends, each of whom has or will receive letters about the songs. I’m posting a few of those letters here. ”33″ is written for my Dad, Jonathan Walter McRoberts, who ended his life on May 6, 1998. This is the letter I wrote to him about the song:

You were thirty three years old when I was born. You were only fifty five when you decided the cards you had been dealt could not be played out and chose to end your life. I think of you often. You fool. I wish you were here.

Nine years after you left, on the morning I turned thirty three, I woke at 6:00am, put on a pair of your old running shoes and your favorite jogging shirt. I drove to the foot of Mt. Diablo, parked at the end of the Mitchell Canyon trail and ran up the valley where you and I most often ran together. Two miles into that valley is the place where your friends, along with Mom and I, scattered your ashes. I ran past that place and proceeded up the switch-backs, out of the valley toward Deer Flat. Deer Flat was as far as you and I ever ran together; It’s about four miles from the trailhead, every inch of it up-hill. I did not stop at Deer Flat this time. Though my lungs burned and my legs ached, I ran the entire 7 miles and over 1700 ft. of ascent to stand at the peak of the mountain. You never stood at the top of the mountain,save once when you came to pick me up the first time I peaked Diablo. That day I had done it in an act of youthful energy. But this time, on the morning of my thirty-third birthday, I did it to say something to myself and to you:

I am stronger than you were.

I know that now. I was afraid for many years that might not ever be true; You were a man of great strength during your short life. Yet, despite your strength you were broken down by the weight of the Market’s standard of success. I have had that same yoke placed on me and had feared that I would not be strong enough to cast it off. I am. You fool. I wish you were here to see it.

So much has changed so fast since that New Year’s morning. Things have come about that I had not seen. I have a son now. His name is Asa Jonathan, his middle name is a tribute to you. His first name means “healer.” His presence in my life is a daily reminder that the sickness your broken culture and fractured mother passed on to you ends with me. Many times since his birth I’ve been struck by the realization that you didn’t see this day coming. He is your grandson. He will never know you. You fool. I wish you were here.

I don’t intend for this to sound harsh and I am not writing you out of anger or pride. I’m supposed to have grace for you and I do. I always have and so did everyone in your life who mattered. I think that is perhaps the most tragic part of your foolish act: it didn’t matter to you that there was an abundance of grace available to you. You had judged yourself and had your verdict. What you didn’t count on is that, in doing so, you judged me as well. Just as you could not measure up to your own expectations, much less the expectations of your world, neither will I. None of us do, father. But you were accepted by those of us who mattered regardless of your success and failure; you were always received in grace. It is the knowledge that I am received in grace that saves me from your dark fate. This grace is my strength and it will not fail. I will pass this grace on to my son and it will not fail him either. My hope is that Asa will grow in this grace and in the unbreakable strength it grants those who receive it; and that, just as is the case with you and me me, he will grow to be stronger than his father.

You can pick up “33″ or the entire “M” EP at iTunes
You can check out the digibook for “M” at my Issuu page

33
At 33 I climbed the devil’s mountain in your clothes
And stood there choosing to believe what I had come to know
And reeling from the truth that I would heretofore live in
That some good thing must always die for some new good thing to begin

You were scattered at the devil’s feet; I was standing on his neck
So, I carried with me everything of yours that I had left
To say what broke you will not break me; I am stronger than you now
I am a father with no father but I will not let my grandson down.

CMY(K): Diseases That Have Cures, A Letter to God

September 29th, 2011 | 8 Comments »

Father, I do not understand Your world and even less when I think of the world as “Yours.” Calling it “Yours” causes a tension in me I’ve seldom found release from. In the one hand, I hold the knowledge that You are Good; that You are the Root of all that is good in the world. In the other hand, I hold the heavy weight of knowledge that, among any number of other atrocities, tens of thousands of children will die before the end of today due to things that could have been averted. This second knowledge is one I share with far more of my friends than I do the first. It is a knowledge so prevalent as to become innocuous at times. And that is what breaks me as I try to hold both things: that something so terrible as starvation can be so fundamentally true in a world governed by Someone so fundamentally Good.

You do not relieve this tension in me.
I have asked you to. But you do not.

I have also asked for some form of certainty or clarity, even if only for the purposes of explaining You and Your Mind to others but You offer nothing remotely like the kind of answer I’m asking for. What I have from You is what You’ve always offered; an assurance of your Presence and the challenge to let that be sufficient. You say what you have always said “Do not be afraid, I am with you.” You offer the knowledge that, in regards to those who truly suffer, You suffer with them; that You are the God of the Cross, Who stretched his good arms out to hold together the tattered edges of the world He made and loves. I am also aware that my own only truthful response to what I’ve seen is to do as You have done; to offer my presence, to do so sacrificially and to trust it is enough.

What I see is that there is so much wrong. What You tell me is that You are Good and that You are here. Though it honestly tears me in half sometimes, I hold both things to be true. I am fully aware that my comfort with Truth does not make it any more or less True. Is it enough for me that you suffer with us? There are days when it simply is not. Yet I’m learning that it is this way with Truth; that there are times when it is clear and bright and there are times when it is cold as a stone.

I wrote a letter to you, Lord
Not unlike the one You wrote to me
Not to explain myself or anything I think
Just to tell You what I see

Which brings us to where we are now
Where I don’t know how to begin
You won’t explain Yourself to satisfy my mind
And I simply won’t give in.

They say Your love is great
But maybe they should wait
Until it’s their child dying of diseases that have cures

They say You’re faithful like the sun
I watch it rise most every day
But if I stand here still and wait here long enough
The sun will also go away

All you’ll say is…

You’ll say Your love is great
With Your body broken, Your spirit faint
For a world turned over and laid to waste
While Your people treat each other like it’s some damned game
Cuz they’re all Your children aren’t they?
Yeah, they are all Your children anyway
Yeah, they are Your kids dying of diseases that have cures.

——-

You can get this song for free at Noisetrade
You can pick up the entire EP at iTunes

CMY(K): David Dark Weighs In On “M”

September 28th, 2011 | 1 Comment »

Just as he did with “C”, Author and friend David Dark has offered a generous and insightful overview of “M.”

“Listening to “M,” the second installment of Justin McRoberts CMY(K), I’m amazed by the way a determinedly hopeful affirmation of the always-redeeming presence of God in every aspect of everyday existence can sit alongside a derisive skewering of the easy “Praise God” talk that abides–and even sustains–everyday, human injustice. With an ear for righteous indignation, dark humor, and all the ways we pull the wool over our own eyes, Justin documents his own ambivalence and offers a lyricization of Flannery O’Connor’s adage, ‘It’s harder to believe than not to.’ ”

You can get a free single from the EP at Noisetrade
You can pick up both “C” and “M” at iTunes

Reflections on 9/11, Part 2: Relational Engagement

September 9th, 2011 | No Comments »

A lesson learned from 9/11/01

Let’s not allow tragedy to be the only occasion for our engagement with darkness and brokenness. Let’s not wait until “something has “happened” before acting. Or, at least, let’s only act when ‘something has happened.’

Artist Makoto Fujimura, who was a resident of Manhattan on the morning of Sept 11, 2001, writes

“We have to realize that before any of these terrorist acts were committed, they were imagined… If we do not teach our children, and ourselves, that what we imagine and how we design the world can make a difference, the culture of cynicism will do that for us… if we do not take the initiative to help our children imagine better neighborhoods and cities, despair will ruin their imaginative capacities and turn them into destructive forces. These are the lessons of 9/11.”

One of the ongoing tragedies of our Sept. 11 remembrance is that, for many among us, our only knowledge of the Middle East and with Arab culture is only informed by cable news accounts of violence. Many of us lack an imaginative understanding of the culture from which such violence or hatred grew. This ensures that the misunderstanding and suspicion that often marks East-West relationships will continue.

Compassion International was in Haiti on January 12, 2010 when the earthquake struck. In fact, they’d been there for 40 years. Compassion staff knew what to do and how to help because they had the lay of the land already. They knew who to help and who to trust. They had the names and knew the situations of 65,000 children throughout Haiti, 6400 of them living It Port Au Prince where the quake was most devastating. Compassion had committed to an ongoing relationship with Haiti as a country and to its people as.. well.. as people. When disaster struck, those relationships provided clarity of purpose and action.

Compassion’s work is a model to me for engagement with darkness and brokenness in general; to commit, relationally to a place and a people and allow my action to spring from love in that relationship rather than only from crisis.

Reflections on 9/11, Part 1: Solidarity

September 7th, 2011 | 1 Comment »

I have been on vacation for a few weeks and plan on returning to blogging regularly now that I’m back. I’ll be continuing the CMY(K) blog series, highlighting key songs from the project, as well as picking up the “No, YOU Shut Up” series. For the time being, I’m posting a few reflections that will eventually be part of teachings I’ve prepared for this Sunday, the 10th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

—-

During the months and years following September 11, 2001, one of the more prominent sentiments was a kind of national solidarity. Our common sense of injury and offense bound us together as Americans. “We” had been attacked and “we” would respond, “we” would recover and “we” would remember together. We had good reason to lock arms with American neighbors of every stripe and consider more deeply the brotherhood of US citizenship. But reflection on the event also provides entry to a broader form of solidarity. On Sept 11 2001, we had a stark and tragic look what it is like to live somewhere like Bosnia, Northern Uganda or any number of places where events of quite similar offense and terror are more regular features of life.

We did suffer a terrible and reprehensible act of violence. Similarly, Bosnians suffered the a reprehensible act of violence when nearly 30,000 Muslim brethren were exterminated in 1995. We were made to feel vulnerable and unsafe, just as Rwandans in 1994 suffered the slaughter of over 800,000 fellow Rwandans (nearly 20% of their population), many of them children, in less than 100 days. I do not at all mean to lessen our own national tragedy. I only want to set in the context of others in the hope that, as we reflect this weekend, we might allow our injury and offense to move us past nationalism to a wider value of human life.

While the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks is certainly a time to reflect on what it means to be an American and therefore a member of the American family; it can, and perhaps ought to, also be a time to reflect on what it means to be a human; to share the same fears, hopes and needs and fragility as every other blessed soul on the planet. To put a finer point on it: allowing our reflection on this great tragedy to end only in a deeper sense of national pride and ownership will not be a mistake.. but it will be sadly short-sighted.

CMY(K): Heaven Knows, Letter To A ‘Stuck’ Brother

CMY(K): 33, A Letter To My Dad

CMY(K): Diseases That Have Cures, A Letter to God

CMY(K): David Dark Weighs In On “M”

Reflections on 9/11, Part 2: Relational Engagement

Reflections on 9/11, Part 1: Solidarity

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