{heart}

dear rend collective experiment,

i think it was love at first listen. partly because it was my favorite hymn ya'll rewrote. partly because let's be honest, i've been obsessed with Ireland & my irish heritage since age 5 and its incurable after visitng the island at 21. mostly though, its the way you draw my heart to see Christ. your music is a tool He uses. like putting a filter over my camera lens, one that causes God's beauty to sharpen in focus & the flashy cheapness of the world's pleasure to blur. 

i love the way you speak what my heart feels. i love the fresh words you use--they're not big or new words. simple, honest words; the kind i use to speak about my relationship with God that i rarely hear in songs. our language is so tired in the church, while our story is quite the opposite! for example keep me near: "rescue me in weakness of mind...You are everything that is beautiful, You are all that i want to see in me; create in me a heart of divine beauty..." straight up stole that from my journal! or in desert soul: "i'm lost without Your creative spark in me, I'm dead inside lest Your resurrection sing" spot on. my God is creative. i can be creative. my God can see--more accurately; my God has designed redemption for the brokenness of this world in ways I cannot imagine. i get kinda passionate about Jesus & beauty, seeing both in the bible & bringing both together to this dull bleeding earth. but i don't know how to do it. i don't EVER want it to become about me or about beauty for its own sake. and sometimes i feel incredibly small, alone. i know a very few friends who share my heart. but mostly, it seems as if my generation is only passionate about our own dreams or being in love or the newest story. i want to become an american group of 20-somethings passionate about living for Jesus first; and see what flows out of that. i want to be so in love with Jesus that i'm a catalyst for that in others. i don't know how my blank_letter post turned into a me rambling post so.

thank you for putting my heart & words to lovely music. thank you for reminding me that Jesus has beautiful creative people following Him. thank you for reminding me that loving Jesus is JOYful! that its worth stomping, clapping, jumping around about. for all the doctrine in my head i think i forget to rejoice over it.

cheers.

stolen from the bio on their website in case any of ya'll don't know them yet:
“We’re all handmade people created by our God who is not safe or small,” Gareth shares. “Our heart was ultimately to make music that was sonically creative and pushed the boundaries, but we also wanted to write something that really served the Church. It’s not us trying to do something crazy and different for crazy and different’s sake, it’s our response to a truly magnificent God with a wild imagination.”