2011 - Another Year of the Rabbit

The last year of the Rabbit, as anyone familiar with the 12-year cycle of Chinese astrology, was 1999. My experiences in 1999 were more in line with a Year of the Dragon, a time of extreme highs and desperate lows: I saw the Gathering, an avant-garde church I'd started in 1998, grow into a little community; Athan Asia, the band I'd played with since the last year of the Rabbit in 1987, broke up; I started speaking at church camps and retreats in earnest; and I nearly destroyed my marriage of three years. I won't say how: the Apostle Paul called himself the Chief among Sinners and didn't bother with the details of the thorn in his flesh the Lord refused to remove. I see little evidence in the Bible of people giving sordid confessionals of the sort heard so frequently in the '80s: you had to sin big to have a really great testimony, as though people fucking up was something unique or unheard of. The Bible says less about life prior to a transcendent transformation than it does about what comes next. Where we see the effects of the Curse, the Bible is more concerned with how God turns this into a blessing: Joseph is sold into slavery to become a powerful politician, thereby saving Egypt and other lands from famine; David kills a man to have an affair, the union of which produces Solomon, who builds the first temple; and so on.

Likewise, I'm interested in telling my own Phoenix tale: not the immolation, but of rescue from the ashes. Some posts will be narratives, others will be art, some music, and a few, theological reflections. This is my theme for the year of the Gold Rabbit. I want to share the experience of the last twelve years in a spiritual, emotional, and to some degree, career desert. I want to share the artwork I produced for the Gathering's various slideshows, which tells the story of that church, but also shares the way we expressed faith. I want to share the music I produced, both with the first year of the Rabbit with Athan Asia, as well as this last year of the Rabbit with Seven Devil Fix. I want to tell you how I got better, because that's a story worth telling. Transgressive tales are legion: redemption songs should be.