Last week, the Lord blessed Jess and I with the birth of our son, Brennan Daniel.  The emotion and significance of that moment at 8:51pm on August 10th and the week and 2 days since then is far more than I could blog, sing or express – yet, I need to try.

There are so many aspects of this that I’d like to tackle right now, but the first one that I have been hit with is legitimacy.  You see, I was born out of wedlock and raised by my grandparents.  While I knew and visited occasionally my biological parents I never experienced their claim on my life – I never really felt like they were my parents.  I say none of this out of bitterness, because God has worked great things through the reparation of those relationships, but simply to state that I was very aware growing up that I was, by definition, a bastard.

My grandparents loved me as their own child and I was so blessed to be raised by them, but in a way it just wasn’t the same.  I always had this knowledge that out there, somewhere, were my “real” parents, doing something at that moment that was a higher priority than being my parent. That knowledge loomed over me all of my life, especially during my twenties when friends began to have their own children and I saw the immediate, relentless love that they had for them.

So as a 33 year old man, to hold my first born son in my arms and see him through tears of overwhelming joy, one of the first things I said to him was “Brennan, you are my son and I will never leave you.”  I swore to him in that moment, and in not so many words, that by the grace of God he would never know the pain of illegitimacy.  My son may be called many things in his life – but a bastard will never be one of them.  He is my son and I will never deny him.

It makes me appreciate how Jesus may have felt when he stepped down into the water to be baptized by his cousin John the Baptist.  To hear the words of his Father at that moment, spoken from Heaven, “This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased.”  What great affirmation and validation that must have been.  I’m sure Jesus walked his whole life in the shadow of rumors surrounding his “real” father, and the whispered accusations that Joseph was not the father.  But to hear from heaven as he was baptized that his one, true father had claimed him and was pleased with him – it is every bastard’s dream come true!

I realize that this is by far a traditional birth announcement (generally Hallmark tries to stay clear of the word “bastard”…), but hopefully some of the emotions and thoughts that I am beginning to process as a new dad will be an encouragement to you as you read.

And for any ladies out there, Brennan Daniel Harney weighed 7lbs, 8ozs and was 20 and 1/4 inches long.  Besides that – he is the cutest thing EVER!!!

Brennan Daniel Harney

One of the songs that our church really likes to sing is called “God of This City”.  Every time we do, we try to bring our attention to the neighborhood that surrounds the building where we meet and we sing and pray about the “greater things” that God will do in our community.  It’s quite a visceral experience since our church meets on the 3rd floor of a building and we can physically look out over the rooftops and sing over the ones we are here to serve and love.

Well, after the 2^nd or 3^rd time we sang this song as a congregation, Buck, one of the older gentlemen in our church, approached me. (Okay, on a complete side note, I just have to share that whenever an older brother or sister approaches me at a church service regarding music, I usually prepare for the worst.  Like “it’s too loud”, and “why do we repeat the words so much” or “can’t we sing more hymns?!?!”  I have to say that we have been blessed by some incredibly mature, mature members at UPCC, because they are usually rocking out more than me!!)  Buck told me how much he likes it when we sing that song and that we should keep singing it, but he had one piece of advice.  He told me that people in our community don’t think of this area as a “city”.  And it’s true, you really never hear folks from the community refer to this area as a “town” or “city”.  Buck reminded me that the folks round these parts say they are “from the Valley”.  His request was that we change the lyrics to sing “You’re the God of this valley…”.

It was a great suggestion and Buck, if you ever read this I want you to know that I LOVE your idea!!!  The only problem is that it doesn’t quite sing as well that way.  It’s probably just because I am so used to hearing it the original way, but the few times that I tried to lead the song with “valley” in the place of “city”, I just felt that it wasn’t quite as lyrical.  Plus, I always feel a little weird about changing the words to somebody else’s song (even though Chris Tomlin significantly edited the song from its original Bluetree version).  But I loved the idea of being able to sing a song that held some sentimental, spiritual, significance like what Buck suggested.

So eventually I concluded that I would just have to write a song that conveyed these ideas.  Now this is scary for me, since I really have never written a song designed for congregational worship.  I know that may sound weird to some of you, but it’s true.  I’ve always written songs that were pretty personal and while certainly reflected the spiritual journey I was on, didn’t lend themselves too well to corporate worship.  Nevertheless I thought that an original song could be a great ebenezer (little definition quiz there for you attentive types) for our community to remind us all what God has done here and how far He has brought us, not only as a local church, but in the greater scheme of redemption.  Plus, I REALLY like Buck’s idea and thought it deserved some effort on my part.

So here is the first draft of a song I titled “From the Valley”.  I am planning on introducing it to UPCC this Sunday morning and hope that it’s a song we can all rally around.  Again, I am a little nervous that it may not live up to the great songs we sing each Sunday, but in the end I hope that it is pleasing to God and a great reminder to us all of what He has done for us as a church.

From the Valley

Verse 1

Some He has called out of the desert

Some He has led from shallow wells

From despair too great to measure

From the very place we fell

Chorus

From the valley he has lifted us

And placed us high upon a mountaintop

We will sing over the rooftops “we are free”!

We will be a light upon this hill

Vessels we know only He can fill

So the glory of our Father can be seen

From the valley

Verse 2

Now He has given us the vict’ry

And has saved us from ourselves

He has erased our shameful history

And pulled us from the depths of Hell

Chorus

From the valley he has lifted us

And placed us high upon a mountaintop

We will sing over the rooftops “we are free”!

We will be a light upon this hill

Vessels we know only He can fill

So the glory of our Father can be seen

From the valley

Daniel R Harney © 2011, Grain of Salt Music

I received a forwarded email today, asking me to help ban a new movie from reaching theaters in the U.S.  I honestly don’t even open up forwarded emails much anymore, but I did read this one.  It made me think too, for a good hour, before I decided to write back.  Yes – that’s right, I wrote back!  I really didn’t feel comfortable forwarding it on to my friends, but I needed to address the original email.  After it was all said and done I felt a little weird sending it back to the friend that forwarded it to me – after all, some folks pass these things on without too much thought, so I didn’t want to put anyone on the spot or anything.  But I did think that the ole blog would be a good place to air the original email and my response – perhaps it can create a productive dialogue about the subject.

 So here’s the original warning:

 Fw: Going beyond disrespect

The movie “Corpus Christi” is due to be released this June to August.  A disgusting film set to appear in America later this year depicts Jesus and his disciples as homosexuals!  As a play, this has already been in theatres for a while.  It’s called “Corpus Christi”  which means “The Body of Christ”.  It’s revolting mockery of our Lord and we can make a difference.  That’s why I am sending this e-mail to you. If you do send this around, we just might be able to prevent this film from showing in America.  Let’s stand for what we believe in and stop the mockery of Jesus Christ our Savior. Where do we stand as Christians?  At the risk of a bit of inconvenience, I’m forwarding this to all I think would appreciate it, too.  Please help us prevent such offenses against our Lord. There is no petition to sign, no time limit, or minimum number of people to send this to.  It will take you less than 2 minutes! If you are not interested and do not have the 2 minutes it will take to do this, please don’t complain when God does not have time for you because He is far busier than we are Hey, it’s worth a shot! Apparently, some regions in Europe have already banned the film.  All we need is a lot of prayer and a lot of emails.

JUST GET THE WORD OUT

 Here is my response:

I had not heard of this movie before, but if it truly depicts Christ as the forwarded email describes, then yes, it is a mockery of who Christ truly is.  I fear though that efforts from Christians to ban the film will only address the symptom of the problem and make us look like we are afraid of the falsehood contained in this movie.  Perhaps instead of picking up the proverbial picket signs (or forwarding emails in this case), we can think of ways to use this film to initiate dialogue about who Christ really is.  It is offensive that anyone suggest our Savior had ever sinned – regardless of the type of sin. But will our protest to the world’s misrepresentation of Jesus forfeit an opportunity to introduce them to the one, true Jesus?  The blessing in all of this is that it is they who are bringing up the subject of Christ.  They are expecting the Christian community to take offense – and rightfully so.  What if we don’t play out the tired, clichéd script of the self-righteous Christian and instead, take this opportunity to show these filmmakers grace – the grace that only the true Christ could show them.  After all, we may be the only true Christ they ever see.

 This is merely my two cents and can be disregarded as easily as you can click on the delete button.  I don’t suppose to have all of the answers, but I’m tired of my Christianity being defined by what I am against instead of what I am for.

 God bless,

 Dan

 

 Thoughts?

About 5 years ago my supervisor at work asked me what my goals were – where did I see myself going in the company.  I hadn’t thought about it all that much, but at that point I knew that my major life goals all revolved around music.  I think my supervisor and co-workers knew that about me as well – that while I was certainly grateful for my job, I would give it up in a heartbeat if I could pay the bills with music.

I found myself in an awkward situation, because I didn’t want to appear disinterested in moving up in the company, but I really had no ambitions of success in the banking industry.  So right then and there, I decided that my goals were to give music my all until I was 30 years old.  If something didn’t change for me by the time I was 30, I would concede my dream to the life of a career banker.  It seemed like a great idea to me – one that allowed me was honest about where my heart truly was, yet realistic and open to my other career possibilities.  At the time, I was about 27.  So I figured that 3 years gave me a nice buffer to get things going musically and start transitioning out of the company.  If things didn’t look promising for me in that time, then I could start to really focus on banking.

Can you see where I’m going with this?  Last month I celebrated my 32^nd birthday.  I am still at the bank if that gives you any indications how my music career had progressed. 

Now I do want to throw up a couple of disclaimers here.

1.  The last 5 years have been busy and productive – I met, dated and married Jess (obviously the biggest accomplishment of my life!), put out a 3^rd CD, and played out on a consistent basis. 

2.  I generally like my job at the bank and am very grateful for it.  I just don’t want anyone to think that I don’t appreciate that part of my life – all the more in this economy.

But for whatever reason, I haven’t been able to pull that trigger – to give one up and devote myself solely to the other. While I enjoy what I do at the bank, I can’t imagine a life without music in it, and I have a very hard time thinking that I won’t be able to go “on the road” someday and play all over the country.  In contrast, I really can’t quit my job and just start playing without some consistent assurance of income.  It’s a frustrating position to be in.

I have no great revelations here for you either.  I’m still frustrated by it, but it’s where I am in life.  As far as my little deal with myself to give music up by 30 – yeah, that’s not going to happen.  I don’t think I could ever stop writing songs and wanting people to hear them – It may be my calling or egotism, but it is what I love to do.  Besides – it’s not like it was even a well thought out idea.  I pulled a life goal out of my butt cause I felt a little pressure at work!

I know, it’s been a while.  But I wanted to let my faithful readers (both of you) know that for a limited time you can download my CD, Breathing October,  from Noisetrade.com for free!!  Well, not exactly free – you can either donate any amount of your choosing or input 5 email addresses of your friends.

I realize that most of my friends have the CD (and may be a little bitter that I didn’t give it away from the beginning…) but I am asking that you help me spread the word about this and get this music to the world!!

As always, thanks for all your love and support!!

Dan

     When I was in high school my friends and I debated the issue of music frequently. Now, you’re probably saying “There’s an issue of music?!?!?”. In a word, no, there really isn’t. But we didn’t know that then.
     You see I grew up in an independent, fundamental, Baptist church. Making issues out of non-issues was an art form to us – everything from women wearing pants (not that they promoted pants-less women, but that women should only wear skirts and dresses), to Bible versions. The big one for us though was whether Christian Contemporary Music, or Christian Rock as we called it, was God honoring. This was probably the most heated topic for me and my friends, being that we were extremely drawn to musical expression.
     I have no desire to address these issues in a blog – I walked away from these idiotic ideals years ago and have no intention of ever returning. For those of you that are still distracted by them, let me share with you what I have learned in the last ten years: Pants on women are fine though I really like skirts, no version is inspired by God, and Christian Rock might have a better chance of honoring God if it didn’t suck so much.

     Some good did come out of our pubescent debates. I remember beginning to form my own philosophy of art and its role in the Christian’s life. But I also remember a line that the anti-CCM folks used to use on me that I actually agree with. They would say that Christian Rock is nothing more than “Jesus is my boyfriend” music. Basically meaning that if you just took out Jesus’ name and replaced it with the word “baby”, you’d pretty much just have another run-of-the-mill pop song. I saw some validity to this thinking because it did annoy me that some songs seem to take the transcendent concepts of grace, love and forgiveness and bring them down to the level of a simple, junior-high infatuation. Again, I have no desire to blog about these types of songs because I think that I have also walked away from that kind of meaninglessness years ago.

    But that line of reasoning has helped me realize that there is a category of music out there that counters the “Jesus is my boyfriend” crap. It’s when a song about earthly truths suddenly transcends its intent to heavenly meaning. It’s when the songwriter hits a note inside of you that is so deep, that it is not only a good relationship song, it becomes a worship song of sorts.

     The best example I can think of this is “With or Without You”, by U2. Yes, yes – U2 has been my favorite band since I was 15 so I am a little biased, but this song strikes a chord in a lot of us that is not just earthly in meaning. Now I’ll be the first to admit that I really have no idea what intent Bono had when writing it. He seems to be very spiritual and a fellow believer in Jesus, but there is nothing that says to me that this song is about God anymore than it is about a girl. Yet there is something about the words, his emotion, the musical build that just resonates within me something meaningful. At the song’s climax, when the only vocal is one of no words at all, just Oh-Oh-Oh-Oh, one can sense a yearning and a hurt that just relates to me on a very spiritual level. Perhaps it has less to do with the spiritual intent of the author, but more the interconnectedness of our earthly relationships with our spiritual nature – that we were truly designed to love God with all of our heart as well as our neighbor as ourselves.  That “neighborly” love then makes the best pictures that we have of Jesus – through the expressions of each other.
     I realize that this observation of mine is subjective, but I wonder if any of you have also observed this about your favorite songs, movies, books, or works of art.
This thought process and subsequent blog was inspired by the song “Transatlanticism”, by Death Cab for Cutie. Some other songs that hit me this way are “Reservations” by Wilco, and “Let Go” by Frou Frou (although very aptly covered by Boys like Girls).

 

By the way – sorry for the lame youtube videos, but I wanted to give you all a chance to hear the above songs without seeing some amateur video of a 14 year old boy interpretive dancing to these beautiful songs!  The words can speak for themselves.

I’d like you to take a look at the two pictures below.

Trans Siberian Orchestra

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Behold the Lamb of God

 

 

Which one of these concerts would you say represented a better Christmas experience?  Bear in mind that both pictures were just taken with the crappy camera on my phone, but I think that in contrast to each other they offer a fairly good representation of what each night’s performance held in store for its attendees.

Last week I had the opportunity to see the Trans Siberian Orchestra live in Philly.  It was probably the most elaborate light show that I have ever seen!  My iphone picture surely doesn’t do it justice.  Between the lasers, pyrotechnics, and movable stages, every audience member was blown away.  The musicians must have been some of the finest in the world as they precisely played every second of that 2 hour show.

I must admit though that my heart sank a bit, when they began to tell their Christmas story.  The narrator, in a James Earl Jones-esque voice, told the tale of a man on Christmas eve that had stumbled into a bar to drown his loneliness away.  Sometime during the course of the night an angel swept him away to show him that Christmas was celebrated all over the world – by the rich and comfortable to the poor and hungry. At the end of the angelic tour, the man was somehow resolved to leave the bar and continue this celebration of the “spirit” of Christmas. I kept hearing myself ask the question, is that all?

Last night a friend and I drove 3 1/2 hours to a high school in New Milford, Connecticut to see Andrew Peterson’s “Behold the Lamb of God” concert.  The lighting technician at this show was certainly competant enough to get the spotlights on the featured musician in time for their solos, but there were no lasers, pyrotechnics or movable stages.  Although I would argure that some of the finest musicians in the world were represented at this concert as well, they were, at times reserved and certainly did not act as though they knew they were the best.

I must admit that my heart wept often through the duration of this concert.  For while there was no manly-voiced narration, these songs too told a story.  A story of a people that had been enslaved for as long as they could remember.  This people yearned to be delivered from the depth of their very soul. This story told of a God whose heart had been broken from love of these people and how He planned to bring them as close to Himself as possible.  The songs painted a picture of how this God used people, people that put their trust in Him without  being able to see the whole picture, to bring about this plan.  And the plan that God contrived was to become one of us.  To feel our hurt.  To share our joy. And ultimately to die our death.

This Christmas, I want to celebrate it with a capital “C”.  Let’s go beyond the trite sayings of “Jesus is the Reason for the Season” and spend some time with the “brave little boy who was God but He made Himself nothing.  And He gave up His pride and He came here to die like a man.”

I’ve had a lot of drama with my website(s) over the years.  I used to have danharney.com, but I forgot to renew the domain name – now some dude has a picture of a boat on it and hasn’t done anything with it in years.

Then, when I finished Breathing October, I spent a bunch of money on danharneymusic.com.  The guys that designed it did a great job on it, but it was very difficult for me to update any information on it without a degree in website design-er-ship (I’m not really sure what the correct degree would be called, but you get the point).  Plus, I never really liked the danharneymusic thing.  It just seemed too long.

So, I finally decided to partner up with a company called hostbaby.com and do my website through them.  It’s very easy for me to manage and update, plus I have the very convenient, danharney.net domain name. For independent artists that are just looking for a place to spread the word about their music, this company rocks!! 

I’ve just been able to get up some old bios and stuff for now, but my concert listings are up to date and ready to go.  Please visit and let me know what you think and if you have any ideas for the site!  Here’s the official address:

www.danharney.net

And to the dude that is holding danharney.com at ransom…your boat is STUPID!!!!  Take that!

Here is the Pecan/Pumpkin layer cake that my wife made for Thanksgiving yesterday! And if that wasn’t enough, I came home tonight to a kickin’ lasagna!! And if THAT wasn’t enough, she went shopping tonight… and DIDN’T MAKE ME GO!!! (note the escalation of exclamation points!!!!)

Lord, thank you!!!!!

 

Pumpkinny Goodness

Tom Winkels is a great friend and my government teacher from high school (as well as wrestling coach).  He brought up some great points in response to my blog about Obama that I wanted to share as well as respond to. Here are his original thoughts.

 

Dan,
Thanks for sharing. We have had past conversations about these topics and new discussions are always helpful. One question I have is the following, Does the word of God have different directions for governments, churches, and individuals concerning responsibilities. Have a great day

Two things I would like you to address. Obama does not believe in banning Partial Birth abortion — torture of innocent babies and he does not support protecting the life of a baby who survives abortion. These to me are pretty basic positions on helping “the least among us” but yet he is against “torture” against terrorists?? If he does not protect the life of the youngest lives will he protect the life of the “oldest” among us or will economics make the difference.

 

 

#1.  Does the Word of God have different directions for governments, churches and individuals concerning responsibilities?

 

While I admit that I have not studied this out extensively, I really don’t think so.  In Romans 13, Paul teaches that the believer is to submit himself to his government, for it is God that is ultimately in control (pardon the paraphrase).  As far as government is concerned Christ taught us about the Kingdom of God, and while we are far from seeing that being represented in our earthly governments, that should be what its citizens need to be concerned about.  What are Kingdom values? One of the things that attracted me to Obama was the role of Christ’s Sermon on the Mount in his life.  He has mentioned on numerous occasion that Christ’s teachings has helped shape his heart for people.  I hope it’s genuine. I would love to see what those influences could do to affect our foreign, healthcare, and human life policies.

 

#2.  Obama has not voted to ban partial birth abortion.

 

I spoke to the heart of this issue in my original article explaining my support of Obama.  I do not agree with his pro-choice stance, because I believe that human life is no man’s (or woman’s) choice.  I wish that he was committed to furthering legislative initiatives against abortion – at any term.  However, we cannot expect that changing a law will change a heart.  At the end of the day, I would rather have the demand for abortions be reduced.  I believe by ignoring the correlation between poverty and abortion we do a greater disservice to the unborn than by not concentrating our efforts on overturning Roe vs. Wade.  Incidentally, there are some great initiatives in the work (by democrats even!!) to see the amount of abortions being reduced.

 

Partial birth abortion is an atrocity, but so is any abortion, casualty of war or torture victim.  I say that, not to lessen our disgust with partial birth abortion – but to heighten our disgust of any life-taking injustice.  One mistake in theology that a lot of Christians make is to buy into this concept of “innocent” life. Paul states very clearly in Romans that there are none righteous – none!  We are all born into sin and fall short of God’s glory.  He is ultimately the One that determines who is redeemable – not us.  We must protect all human life.

 

Obama stated in Christianity Today that he has not voted against partial birth abortions because there was never an exception for the mother.  While I don’t agree with his stance, I can certainly acknowledge such a scenario to be tragic.  Something that we as the church need to acknowledge is that there are followers of Christ that do not come to the same conclusions that we might.  When Obama was asked by Rick Warren, when life started, Obama answered honestly by saying that he didn’t know. My answer to that would be that I believe that scripture alludes to life beginning at conception, so that’s why I believe any choice regarding human life is God and God’s alone. Obama does not believe the same thing.  I pray that the Holy Spirit changes his views – as much as I pray that God changes my views if they are not correct. But we need to understand why people believe the way they do – not just condemn their conclusions.  In Obama’s mind (in my opinion), he is not opposing these abortions because he lacks a value for life – he is trying to protect the mother’s.  Again – I do not agree with this reasoning. But overall, I think Obama’s ethic of human life was the most consistent of the potential candidates to be our next president.

 

 

I hope that I adequately expressed my opinion in response to Tom’s comments.  It is this level of discussion that will be most important for the church.  Will we ever completely see eye to eye on everything? Probably not – but the great mystery of the gospel is that we are unified in our diversity. God, in only ways that a true God could, actually draws us closer to Him and each other amidst out uniqueness.  I’m not ashamed to say that I’m excited about the possibilities of what God is doing in our world right now!

 

Funny thing is, weeks after all of the election hype is over our job remains the same – love God with all our hearts and our neighbors as ourselves. I pray that my life, church and government reflects that goal.