Hey Everyone,

go check out Autumns Andersen’s new single “Enough Room.”  My brother Nolan and I had the privilege of producing this song as well as a few others for her upcoming EP.  Enjoy!

D

A new day, here is a new song. This time an original song I wrote awhile ago called “A Love Song.” Since valentines day is approaching I can get away with being mushy, don’t get used to it tho.  Enjoy!

Here is a link to a new cover I just did last night.  Its a song by one of my favorite bands States.  Me and my friends recently got to hang out with them in Atlanta and I have to say they are some of the coolest people I have ever met.  If you like my cover you will for sure love their stuff.  Check them out at www.statesmusic.com  Enjoy!

“If I am capable of grasping God objectively, I do not believe, but precisely because I cannot do this I must believe.”

- Soren Kierkegaard

Many times I find my concept of God to be flawed.  This comes as no surprise really. I am not that bright to begin with, but nonetheless I find that many times I try to make God meet me on my terms.  No doubt this is because I am a product of my generation and I live in a world that seems to be moving back to the ideals of progressivism and enlightenment mentalities.  We function very strongly on what is logical and scientifically knowable.  We want to believe in this logical, consistent God because it’s human nature to want to put your money on the safest, smartest bet.  But I am beginning to wonder (like many before me) if that line of thinking is always the most beneficial route to take.

In an effort to make God work in our timeline, we generally take the route of theology and apologetics to defend Jesus.  These are obviously smart and intelligent roads to take, and there really isn’t anything wrong with trying to understand God that way.  However, when we look at the person of Jesus, I think we misunderstand the way He wanted us to approach Him. Not religiously, scientifically, or theologically, but relationally.

This isn’t a ground breaking thought, but it can be a transformative one.  Especially when you think of how often we are encouraged to engage God, other people, and ourselves in the exact opposite way.  More often than not our relationships with others are transactional.  We are just so busy, wounded, tired, skeptical, etc. that we can’t justify investing in people or places that we don’t gain any benefit.  The result is that our concept of “wise” living involves the work of learning to emotionally budget ourselves.  We make sure to not get too involved in others’ lives, or we make sure to not put too much hope or trust in people, because we can’t afford the emotional crash of a possible failure.

Don’t get me wrong. We all certainly make “fools rush in” type decisions in our early years, but our concept of maturity comes from a perspective that looks at that type of emotional and relational engagement as “idealist” and “pie in the sky” in its thinking.

Because of this mentality, we most certainly begin to be natural skeptics in how we approach others, but then we begin to become naturally skeptical of ourselves.  If we hold others to such a high standard, and we want to be consistent, logical, self-aware people, we then have to gain the ability to self-diagnose and work on ourselves so that we become the type of person we want to be friends with.  This of course breeds a sense of self consciousness and doubt not only in other people, but also ourselves.

Life is busy enough, so in order to be the people we want to be we have to make time to be attractive (work out), smart (get a degree), funny (stay up on the latest movies and TV shows), social (internet connectivity), and entertaining (pick something).

It’s no wonder most young people spend most of their time trying to NOT think about these things.  We would rather drink, experiment with drugs, compulsively date, become addicted to drama, etc.–anything to help us forget about how our world is one where we are made to feel we have to constantly measure up.

This thinking bleeds into every aspect of our lives.  So when the concept of a personal relationship with God comes into play, we approach him like we do all other relationships.  We want to make sure we are safe with this guy named Jesus. We want to make sure He really loves us, and we don’t really trust Him when He says He loves us and only requires that we trust and believe in Him.  So we use our logical minds to break down what Jesus “really means” when He says things, and by doing so, we slowly begin to chip away at the idea of a relationship and try to make an equation that is knowable.  We don’t trust people, so why would we trust a relationship?  Heck, how do we even know if we can trust ourselves?  Therefore, we begin to subtract all things human and hold ourselves to a higher less human standard.

In the end, we feel pretty proud of ourselves because this line of thinking either takes you into Christian culture and Christian thinking or takes you far away from it.  Either into the arms of scientific endeavors, other mysticism, or other religions.  However, it will not take you into the arms of Christ.

If you try to engage Christ in any way other than relationship then you will truly encounter what will eventually become (to coin a phrase from Timothy Keller) a counterfeit Jesus.

Jesus demands that we not only approach Him as a person but that we also approach ourselves and each other as people. The first 18 verses of John chapter 1 reflect this.  The Gospel accounts document the entire life of the Incarnation and prove that God demands we engage Him relationally.  The Gospels only reflect a truth that we find began at the beginning of time itself.  Genesis tells the story of this deep and rich love relationship between God and man.

Many times people ask: “If God loved us so much how could He allow such evil to exists.” The story we find in Genesis tells us of a rich environment where we find a lovely God creating a world where humankind is completely immersed in the love of its God.  God creates the world, animals, light, everything.  Then He makes a special place for man to live with God, to walk with Him, and to be provided for by Him.  God even gives man and woman a singular choice to allow them the choice to love their creator.  Yet, we find we take advantage of that choice.

Often, I find it interesting to think about our concept of evil.  Many times we think that in the moment where Adam and Eve ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that evil itself was magically unleashed on the earth and into existence.  However, we forget an important part of the story.  The existence of tree of the knowledge of good and evil could suggest that evil existed before we ate of the tree, we just weren’t made aware of it until we ate of the tree.  The existence of the serpent (who is widely accepted as Satan) supports that evil existed, just not within the context of Human understanding.  Meaning that human understanding of evil up to that point was comparable to that of a parent and child relationship.

A parent gives a child rules to follow at younger ages and doesn’t hold them accountable for every mistake a kid makes.  You certainly don’t hold an infant to the standards of a toddler, and you most certainly don’t hold an infant to the standards of an adult.  I would suggest that so it was with God and humankind.  We know evil existed before then, and we know it existed on the earth.  But we were not held accountable for those actions until we ate of the apple.

The Garden of Eden was under the sovereign rule of God. He made residence in that Garden with His creation.  But after we broke our covenant with God we were removed from that existence and set into the one we know now.  One where God’s unifying presence between us and nature is broken, where we have to provide for ourselves, toil, suffer, and struggle under our own yoke.  It is also a place where we have to struggle with our own limited understanding of good and evil.  This is the element of the curse we brought on ourselves directly and immediately when we ate of the fruit.  Where our own limited understanding hinders us from engaging God the way He created us to engage with Him–relationally.  In this new world, we question Him even more than we did before.  Yet, by His grace, by the person of Jesus, and through His Spirit, we find ourselves able choose to live engaged with the Him each day.

The work we are asked to do is not to measure up, or as one of my friends likes to say, “give back.”  Instead, Jesus simply asks us to submit ourselves the way He first submitted Himself in the garden, and how He did so again through His life on Earth as a human, through His death, and though His resurrection.  God has given Himself to us as both God, Friend, Father, Human, and Opponent.  Jesus doesn’t ask us to make logical sense of Him, or to exhaustively know Him, and neither does He hold us to that impossible standard.

12 On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. 13 But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” – Matthew 9:12-13

Jesus calls us to approach Him humbly as creatures that where not made to be perfect by standards we can comprehend.  He asks us to approach Him as beings that were simply made to engage with Him in relationship.

“Come to me all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” – Matthew 11:28

Jesus wants us to admit we are broken, to leave that behind, and approach Him humbly.  Jesus wants you to approach approach Him with idealism, wonder, and awe.

“Jesus said, ‘Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to such as these.’” – Matthew 19:14

God wants us to drop everything, trust Him, and learn about Him.  Not just understanding scripture, and praying from a heart that is motivated by logging hours, but from a heart that is thirsty to find anyway to get to know who Jesus is MORE.  This doesn’t mean more CHURCH.  This just means more Jesus.  Jesus transcends the culture we know as the modern western church.  We find Jesus everywhere, and we always find Jesus with people.  This is one of my favorite poems called “As King Fishers Catch Fire” by Gerard Manley Hopkins.

AS kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies dráw fláme;

As tumbled over rim in roundy wells

Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s

Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;

Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:

5

Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;

Selves—goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,

Crying Whát I do is me: for that I came.

Í say móre: the just man justices;

Kéeps gráce: thát keeps all his goings graces;

10

Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is—

Chríst—for Christ plays in ten thousand places,

Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his

To the Father through the features of men’s faces.

Jesus doesn’t want us to make sense of Him objectively.  He wants us to walk with Him daily.  Likewise, He doesn’t want us holding each other to that kind of a standard.  Jesus understands we are process, not static cold beings.  We are growing, failing, learning, and breaking down.  He wants us to be perfect in our dependence on Him, to be perfect in giving grace and love to each other and ourselves, and to put our best effort towards loving each other in the same way Jesus loved us.  But we can’t do any of that before we learn to simply love Him, and engage Him daily.  Not for knowledge, or fuel to prove a point, but to get to know Jesus for knowing Jesus sake.  Within the person of Jesus is the power of transformation, healing, reconciliation, community, and so much more.  But it can’t be tapped if those those things are our aim.  To quote my friends who are challenging me to live more closely with Jesus each day, it has to be about “Jesus + nothing.”

DL Rossi

Hey all,

from time to time I’d like to share a local artist with you.  Today I wanted to let you know about the art work of my roommate and dear friend Jake Pradko.  His website is:

http://www.Pradko.com

Jake is a super talented artist, his current works are abstract art.  I find a lot of depth and inspiration in Jake’s work.  For local artists it always means a lot to have the support of your local community.

So if you get a chance check out His stuff and support him if his art speaks to you!  I’ll leave you with one of my favorite paintings from His website!

“Yell” by Jake Pradko

This is one of my favorite pieces Jake has done.

DL Rossi

Songs are interesting things.  Of course you can say that about any written work of art, but for the sake of this moment, just stay with me.  At their essence a lot of songs are a subject, moment, or theme being judged by an artist.  We as the listener are allowed to agree or disagree with this artist, but no matter what, in most cases, the artist is trying to say something.  Sometimes they try to talk about a subject like love, and they want us to think about it a certain way, or feel an emotion they have felt.  Songs are, to me anyway, a lovely thing.

However, it is interesting to think about the human dynamic of a song and what it might tell us about human nature and self-confidence.  Many times we love songs because we feel validated by a shared emotion or a shared wound.  However, feeling validated or justified simply by a common emotion or wound doesn’t actually make an argument sound.  Also, voicing a frustration or sharing a wound doesn’t fix a problem.  It doesn’t fix the problem because people’s problems can’t be fixed that quickly.  Often we react to something negative by claiming it as negative and deciding (logically) that the best course of action for ourselves is to blame the said thing and move ourselves as far away as we possibly can from it.

For example:

I feel ugly when I watch a Ryan Gossling movie.  Therefore, I will not watch Ryan Gossling movies.

Or:

Most guys I’ve dated cheated on me. Because of this, it’s safe to assume most guys are cheaters. Therefore, I will not date. (Half of you won’t be able to get past that example. I’ll leave it anyways because I like that I just made some of you uncomfortable.)

So it is with the songwriter and the listener.  We hear a song like, “Song For The Dumped” by Ben Folds Five (Did I just show my age?  Yes I did!) and as a dude who has been hurt by girls, I raise my rock fist in the air and blame all women across the world for every problem I have ever had, and I feel great about myself in the process (thank you very much).  However, I am not right in my judgement.  Mainly because I am making how other people have treated me THEIR problem to deal with and not mine.  I have placed all responsibility on someone else and made myself a victim (Brilliant work Daniel!!!).

This of course is a normal human emotion.  We all do it.  However, do we really think about the consequences of this action?  We essentially are giving up our ability to deal with our own lives and our own emotions and placing our emotional selves into the hands of someone who, by treating us the way they have, have proven they will not think about what is best for us.  Yet, often we trap ourselves into thinking that as victims the only way to heal our wounds is to become validated by those who have wronged us.  (in Tim Gunn voice) Bad choices!!!

How then can a human being find peace in situations that cause us great emotional pain and trauma?  Well, as a Christian, my short answer is, of course, found within the person Jesus Christ.  But the long of my answer has depth that I think can prove useful to you my dear friends and family.  So in the immortal words of Samuel L. Jackson in Jurassic Park: “Hold on to your butts.”

Jesus meets us in our suffering.  Look at the cross. You can’t get much worse than that.  Where we seek justice by forcing people to change their ideas, Jesus seeks justice by disarming us of our attempts at controlling a situation and forces us to let go of our want for vengeance.  If anyone deserves vengeance it is Jesus, yet He doesn’t take it.  Instead, He welcomes those who have wounded Him to drink of His blood and eat His flesh.  Granted, this is a grotesque visual to give, but it’s fitting in the sense that as we want to tear the eyes out of our enemies, Jesus allows His enemies to have His body and welcomes them into a journey of relationship with Him.  How on Earth did Jesus find a way to do this as a human?  Where did He find the energy?  Where did He find the grace?

My humble submission to you is that He did so by constant connection to His Father.  Jesus was in dialogue with God constantly.  Yet, I don’t believe that dialogue looks the way we would inherently think it should look.  Yes, Jesus prayed and listened to what it was His Father had for Him to do.  But I think a huge part of that relationship that we miss often is the idea of a true Father-Son relationship.  I think often, what Jesus did with the Father was listen to the truth of what His Father thought of Him and His work.  Meaning, Jesus spent time meditating on how insanely loved He was by His Heavenly Father.  I know that’s a weird thought to think but stay with me on this one.

I can just imagine Jesus walking away and asking, “Father, I have done what you asked today. What more do you have for me?”  God’s response could have been, “Son, that is all for today. I will bring more for you soon.  Until then, know I am well pleased by you.  I take great joy in your work.  You have blessed me by the service you did in my name today.  I love you.  Better yet, I like you a lot kid. You are pretty awesome. ”  (Yes, I bet God used text smiley faces back then.  Have some imagination you cynical bums.)

Jesus would respond.

“Father, thank you.  I indeed have been blessed by you.  I thank you for your love, and for your mercy, and for the path you set before me today.  Great is your name above all others.  In you my hope, trust, and love are well placed.  I love you.  And I like you a lot as well Papa!!  You rock! ”

I don’t think we think about that often.  Mainly because of the context of how the Bible was written, but I don’t think it’s that odd to think about God thinking of us that way.  John 3:16 says Jesus loved US so much that He DIED for us.  I think you have to be pretty much crazy in love with someone to die for them.  You most certainly like them to some extent, and at the very least, see worth in them.

Yet, most of us limit our view of God to just being a game of trying our hardest to please a God who views us as unrighteous and not good enough.  So many of us do not think God takes pleasure in us.  So when someone wrongs us or wounds us, it only gives weight to our own fears and wounds and validates them.

To put it frankly, a lot of people don’t think God enjoys them very much.  And if He enjoys them at all, it’s not on a daily basis.  God wouldn’t want to pay attention to you every moment of every day right?  Yet think about how destructive those ideas are to us!  Have you ever played sports?  Or played music?  Or just think about teachers in school–when you left the class room after class and got a paper back, which was more life giving to you:  a paper with an A on it and no notes or thoughts from the teacher, OR an A paper with notes on it praising you for the work you did, pointing out sentences that were constructed beautifully and well thought out thesis statements?

I know when I played basketball a coach who encouraged me and uplifted me ALWAYS motivated me more than a Coach who was just demanding and cold.  Now, don’t get me wrong, I think God will challenge us and kick us in the butt often.  But, I don’t think we rest in His affirmation for us very often.  I actually don’t think we believe Jesus when He tells us “my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

A great testament to this is the fact that right now the Church is not any different than the rest of the world when it comes to sexual activity before marriage (Relevant Magazine just had a great article on this and CNN posted about it as well).  I can’t prove this, but I think a big factor for this is that no one actually feels like acting like a Christian after they leave the church because they think Jesus demands we be perfect and we don’t have the energy to be a perfect person all the time.  So they unplug from their Christian lives and unplug from Christ when they want to relax.

For me, working in the church, I have found that when I come home, I want to unplug from my job.  The problem is I too often associate Jesus with my job.  I think I need to be “on” all the time, so when I get home I drop Jesus off in the closet when I take off my coat and pick Him back up in the morning when I go into work.  Sure, I’ll read the Bible often, but I don’t look at following Jesus as a place where I can find rest, if you look at how I spend the majority of my down time. I look at Jesus as a person or space I have to work in constantly.

When I realized this, I realized there was something REALLY wrong with that.

Many of us can’t believe that Jesus loves us just the way we are.  Because of this, we never visualize Him or try to hear His encouragement when He offers it to us.  I think if people honestly felt like Jesus was pleased with them, we wouldn’t see people so desperate to hook up or so desperate to find validation in our jobs or other people.  We wouldn’t see so much depression in our schools or eating disorders across the board.  We medicate our feelings of inadequacy in every way but going to Jesus.

Jesus is crazy about you.  He thinks you are the bees knees (yep, I just said that).  He thinks you are beautiful. And while He may be just loving on His own design and His own artwork, He doesn’t care.  He loves you, and He loves me.  I hope I can learn to spend more time gaining my validation and rest in the arms of a creator who really loves me and tells me that daily.  I have to quiet myself and believe that each day, but I think I’ll find I benefit from such a discipline.  Hopefully you all will join me as well!

DL Rossi

Here is my new video for “Suckers and The Chumps.”  I was blessed to be able to have my roommates help me out with this one.  Hope you enjoy it, you can also listen to a studio cut of this song in the music section of this page!

Hello friends,

I say friends intentionally because I know the only people who will be viewing this page are in fact my friends and family (Hi mom). I know a lot of you know I have had a pretty busy last 2 years. These last two years really put a halt on a lot of my creative output, and these last two years, I have questioned a lot of my creative gifting pretty heavily. Because of that, I have not released or wanted to release any music or write any blogs or essays, which is odd for me, because these once were projects I found great joy in.

This past year I found myself in a pretty deep depression, struggling with anger, frustration, anxiety, and more. And although there is nothing unique in struggling with these things, I found that I was turning my back on some of the biggest outlets God equipped me with to manage these feelings. The less I wrote, both written forms and musical forms, the less connected I felt to God. The less I shared what was on my mind, the more polluted my thoughts became. I essentially was ready to turn my back on everything I had spent most of my life pursuing because I couldn’t make sense of anything anymore. I thought I would just quit music all together and go back to school, or just get a job in a downtown area, experience life, and wrap up the pursuits I had been chasing after in music and writing.

It’s strange what low self-esteem does to you, how anxiety, fear, and anger snowball in your mind and in your heart. It is indeed crippling to feel as though you have nothing to offer the world around you, that you feel you would be more useful if you stopped existing. This is very dark I know, but the truth normally is more dark than we’d like people to think. Thoughts of suicide entered into my brain at times, large amounts of guilt over my sins and short comings, I truly was not moving towards Christ, or trusting that He would watch over me. Matthew 6:25-34 was not something I believed. I really believed (and still struggle with believing) I had screwed up God’s plan in my life so badly He couldn’t do what He promised in Matthew 6:25-34.

How prideful and self interested we get in our self deprecation! When we believe our actions can trump the work Christ did on the cross. Yet, still the anxiety grew.

I had released a worship album last year that I was very self-conscious about. I recorded that album surrounded by friends who supported me but I couldn’t truly believe that what I had to offer could really stand on its own or have value. I struggled throughout the recording process with self-consciousness and doubt, that only continued as I played shows.

I played shows in churches and at camps and was so confused by the responses I would get. Words from people who didn’t even know me saying, “Son you are blessed by the Lord, not many people in this industry are authentic and you have an authentic passion for Jesus.” This would trouble me greatly because of things I was struggling with intensely in my life. I began to question both the discernment of people, and the credibility of worship music in general. What if I got up on stage and sang a song about what I really struggled with, what I really thought, who I really was?. And what if I spoke about where I found my hope, what if I worshiped God right after admitting to struggling with lust, depression, or anger? In my heart, I know I would most certainly be rejected, by some of my family, by some of my friends, by some of my local church community, by the greater church, and by the people who told me I had a gifting.

If I told them how often I struggle with pornography, overeating, depression, anger, jealous, greed, lust, and even as I said before, thoughts of suicide, would they even want me on stage? Would they even want to hear what I had to say?

I lost hope. I felt the only options I had were to either shape up, be a squeaky clean Christian, or abandon my post and find something else to do. Eventually these thoughts brought me to a place of confusion, doubt, and finally no desire to perform any of that music at all. Even to this day, it’s a struggle to play the songs from my first record anywhere because of the emotions and feelings I associate with that album.

In the midst of this conflict in my heart and mind, I was then struck with cancer this past July. And though I could see Satan attempting to tear my life apart, it was in that experience where Christ spoke intentionally into my heart and gave me direction.

Throughout the process of being tested, surgery, more tests, and now more tests, I found the fear and doubt melting away from my heart. I saw value in myself when I was confronted with losing the life that I thought didn’t matter that much, if anything at all. I was surrounded by family, friends, my local church community, and men who loved me deeply. And I realized that the idea of being transparent and presenting my art, both written and musical, in an honest fashion, was indeed the only way to present my art. I didn’t need to be self conscious about what I did. I just needed to steward what God gave me and present it without fear or anxiety. I need not to allow fears and anxieties from the past turn into the weight of depression over me.

Jesus simply wants me to believe that He is enough for me, and what He equips me with is enough. That my opinions, thoughts, songs, writings, and conversations don’t always have to be perfect, or right, or tidy, but they have to be humble, said in love, and submitted to Him. I will be wrong. I will produce crappy works of art. I will be judged by people, but Jesus was judged harsher than any of us and He wasn’t wrong and never produced anything crappy. There is no escape from critique, and from doubters. There is only rest, peace, and love in the arms of Christ.

So with this blog, and with this year, my hope is to present you, my friends, my community, and plain ol’ strangers with thoughts, feelings, and stories I come up with. I am not attempting to be perfect or to be a professional. I just want to create and share with you. I don’t think I will always be presenting art that is attempting to be “right”, but I am going to attempt to create art that is “honest” to my thought process. I believe there is power in being wrong with our thoughts and our opinions and still sharing them. I think we are wrong in our art more often than we think, and that “pretty” and “inspiring” music can be just as wrong as “dark” and “depressing” music. In fact, the latter can sometimes be more true and right than the former (and I believe scripture speaks to this as well: Ecclesiastes, the Psalms, etc…).

So I invite you to share your thoughts on what I present here, to dialogue with me, to tell me if you think I am wrong or if what I make isn’t good to you and why. I invite you because I believe your voice is just as important as my own. I believe that the creation of art should spark more creation and not end with positive critiques and praise that fizzle into nothing and fade away. I believe that people are more important than art, and I want to create music for my friends, not for masses of unnamed people who I never have a chance to interact with. I want to explore who Jesus is with you, through song, through writings, through discussion, and community. I want to grab a beer with some of you after I post something that sparks a thought. I want to hear your stories and share your art here as well. I want to help you create your art and support you in your art. I want this destination on the web to not just be a place where you can consume my art. I want this to be a starting point for true relationship and dialogue, where we can explore what it means to be humans, and not be afraid of what we find.

Sincerely,

DL Rossi