For years I’ve been recording songs into my voice memo app. I got home this evening after driving for a bit. And the words for this poem / song were just kind of there. I could just kind of hear it. So I sang it through. Wrote it out. Edited it. Sang it. Recorded it. And figured I’d share.

River Overflow

The river is overflowing
Yeah, the current is strong
Lost in time, where I’m going
Don’t know where I belong

The river is overflowing
Can’t hold it back no more
Feeling loved, seeds are growing
Washing up upon the shore

Letting go of the worries
Lightening the heavy load
No need for the frantic hurried
Just cruising down this road

The river is overflowing
Can’t hold it back no more
Feeling loved, seeds are growing
Washing up upon the shore

One drop, one wave, one flow
Let the water take control
High tide, time to know
It’s good for the soul

The river is overflowing
Can’t hold it back no more
Feeling loved, seeds are growing
Washing up upon the shore

Overflowing, yeah
Lost in time
Overflowing
Feeling loved
Letting go
Overflowing...

Previous Substack post: What Writing A Song Has Taught Me About Myself

Quiet Formation on Amazon

Sunrise

Morning comes.
Not just any day.

He is risen.

And just as He rose,
hope arrives.
We feel it
just as we experience the sunrise today.

Real.
Bright.
Beautiful.

A promise is kept.

A miracle occurs.
Miraculous.
Beautiful.

There isn’t better news for Christians
than the true story
we celebrate on Easter Sunday.

Peace

The noise stops.
Just silence.
A quiet wish for the end of the long fight.
The guns rest.
The tanks sleep.

We wait for a simple, good morning.
No bombs. No sirens.
A sky that is only blue or grey with clouds.
Not smoke.

Protect the soldier, tired and far from home.
Protect the father holding his child near the sound.
Protect the mother who must rebuild a broken room.
Protect the young one who only knows fear.

Let the markets breathe easy.
Let the costs fall.
Let the hunger fade from the tables.
The paper money should feel solid, not like dust.
A full plate is a quiet blessing.

In the chest, a soft plea.
Peace must begin here, inside the small space.
A choice not to hurt.
A choice to see the other face.
To wish well for the one next door.
And the one across the water.

A slow start.
A simple breath.
Hope is a seed planted in the torn earth.
We watch for the first green shoot.
May it grow high.
May the shadow of the fight shrink small.
Let us walk toward the light together.
Just simple steps.
Toward peace.
Now. Soon.

Resources on Amazon:

Quiet Formation

Quiet Formation Journal ; Quiet Formation Companion Guide

Healing

Truth

Praise

It is Good Friday. The air is thick
with an expectant silence, the kind that precedes
a great unveiling, or perhaps,
a seismic, irreversible shift.

We stand here, in the shadow of the cross,
but the shadows themselves
are merely the proof of an unimaginable light.

History.
A clumsy compound word,
a concatenation of syllables that attempts
to hold the immense, untidy archive
of all that has ever been.

We trace the etymology, the shallow paths
of linguistic drift: historia, inquiry, knowledge acquired by investigation.
But the modern ear, tuned to a different frequency,
hears a deeper resonance,
a deliberate, pointed meaning,
as though the chroniclers themselves
were divinely inspired punks
with a message hidden in plain sight.

His story.

Not exclusively, of course. Not the exclusionary grammar
of a single protagonist erasing all others.
It is not the tyrant’s account, or the conqueror’s ledger,
which, for too long, it was made to seem.

But the scaffolding is sound, the foundation true.
The deep time of human endeavour
the grinding of civilizations into dust,
the rise of empires, the sudden, quiet collapse
of a belief system no longer fit for purpose
is framed by an arc that bends, slowly, painfully,
toward justice, toward a singular, self-giving love.

This arc is His story.
The thread pulled taut through the beadwork of millennia.
The invisible, ineluctable narrative force.

He is the beginning and the end of the inquiry.
The telos that gives the past its meaning.

Today, the pivot point.
The story finds its climax,
not in triumph of arms,
not in the thunderous coronation of a king,
but in the scandal of a public execution.
A failure, by all worldly measure.
A man, naked, humiliated,
left to bake beneath the indifferent Mediterranean sun.

This is the great secret:
His Story is predicated on His defeat.

It is the moment where God
stops observing from the safe distance of the heavens,
and descends, fully, painfully,
into the absolute worst of the human experience.
He takes the sum total of our collective mistakes
the petty jealousies, the large-scale genocides,
the daily cowardice
and absorbs it.

The cross is the ultimate editing bay.
It cuts the past from its bitter future.
It redefines power as surrender.
It redefines victory as sacrifice.

Look at the weight of history hanging there:
The tribalism of the stone age,
the cold calculations of the Roman law,
the spiritual blindness of the religious elite.
All of it converges on this single, splintered piece of wood.

And in the silence that follows the cry, Tetelestai
“It is finished”
the story is suddenly, completely changed.
The debt is paid. The logic of an eye for an eye
is shattered by an act of gratuitous, radical generosity.

The old world is over.
The new history begins here.

When we speak of history,
we are sifting through the debris of human hubris.
Potsherds and fallen columns.
The brittle parchment of treaties broken before the ink dried.
The hollow stares of marble busts
that once represented men who thought they were gods.

But within this vast, melancholy archive,
the Christian - the one who listens to the name, His story
finds the enduring, unbreakable pattern: grace persists.

In the wreckage of the cities,
a small community gathers, sharing bread.
In the face of the state’s crushing authority,
a martyr whispers a prayer of forgiveness.
In the face of philosophical despair,
an illiterate fisherman preaches hope.

This is the continuation of His story.
Not the grand narrative written in steel and oil,
but the submerged, resilient truth
written in the soft tissue of human hearts.
It is the story of the persecuted, the marginalized,
the ones who keep the flame alive
in the long, uncertain night.

Praise is not mere ecstatic utterance.
It is an acknowledgment of reality.
It is naming the world as it truly is,
which is to say, as a gift.

Today, on Good Friday,
praise is the hardest, most necessary act.
It is looking at the brutality, the apparent waste,
and seeing the intentionality behind the wound.

Praise for the terrible necessity of the cross:
For the love that would not rest
until it had plumbed the depths of our suffering.
For the final, perfect empathy.

Praise for the broken narrative:
For the moment the predictable plot
the hero wins, the villain loses
is discarded for something far more complex,
more human, and ultimately, more divine:
the hero loses, and in doing so, saves everything.

Praise for the ongoing story:
For the historians of the world who continue to look,
to investigate, to refuse the easy lie.
They are, perhaps unknowingly,
His archivists. They catalogue the evidence
of the world’s desperate need,
the very need that was met on this dark afternoon.

The story is not over.
His story is still being written,
in every act of kindness,
in every resistance against despair,
in every breath drawn in the hopeful knowledge
that death itself has been subverted.

Good Friday is the solemn asterisk
at the bottom of the page of history.
It directs us to the footnote:
See Resurrection.
The story does not end here.

We stand in the pregnant pause.
The silence holds the promise of Sunday.
And the whole, terrible, magnificent story
is good.

Waiting

Not for the clock to spin faster,
though the heart keeps its own impatient rhythm.
This sun, a slow wash across the floorboards,
is meant to be savored, minute by warm minute.

The small, perfect tilt of the coffee cup,
the blessing of birdsong outside the window,
this breath in and out, a gift undeserved
these are the here-and-now anchors. I clutch them.
I will not wish away this light, this Sunday,
this quiet, unremarkable day.

But there is a low tide of yearning,
a constant, pulling ache beneath the surface.
It is the shape of what is absent:
a voice, a resolution, a distant shore.

It is the longing to step across the threshold
into the ‘after,’ where the old wounds
are finally smooth, where the silence is filled,
where the great, heavy stone has been rolled away.

To be simultaneously whole here, now,
and desperately elsewhere
a taut wire stretched between gratitude and desire.
The world is beautiful, complete in this moment.
And yet, I wait. I simply wait.

Poems on Amazon:

Unfolding. The Silence I Seek. Silence.

The Unseen Reservoir

The weight of the crown, they say, is heavy.
But the true burden is the hidden cost
the invisible drain of constant giving.

You stand at the helm, the steady rock,
absorbing the tremors, charting the course,
your gaze fixed always on the horizon
of everyone else’s needs.

A leader’s heart is an expansive basin,
ready to catch the sorrows, the anxieties,
the ambitious overflows of the team.
You dispense wisdom like water,
fill the vacant spaces with your energy,
and believe, perhaps, that the source
is limitless, a miracle of perpetual supply.

But even the deepest well runs dry.

It’s not a failure, this simple truth of physics:
You cannot pour from an empty cup.
You are not a machine designed for endless output.
You are a human being, intricately wired,
with a capacity that needs replenishing,
a spirit that demands repose.

The instruction on the airplane is not a suggestion
Secure your own mask before assisting others.
It is a brutal, necessary parable.
A sputtering, suffocating leader is of no use.
Your service to the world diminishes
when your service to yourself ceases.

This is not selfishness; it is stewardship.
It is the self-compassion that recognizes
the instrument must be kept in tune.
Step back from the urgent clamor.
Feel the sun on your face, the quiet hum of rest.
Refill the unseen reservoir.
The light you cast upon your team
is only as bright as the reserves you hold.
Be kind to the keeper of the light.

Get your copies of:

Quiet Formation and Quiet Formation: Journal

Quiet Formation: A Collection of Poems

Home

I’m learning

that wisdom doesn’t arrive loud.

It doesn’t kick the door in

or announce itself with credentials.

It slips in sideways.

Between meetings.

In the pause after the hard conversation.

In the moment I realize

I don’t need to win this one

to be whole.

I used to think strength meant certainty

clean edges, clear answers,

a life that fit inside sentences

people could quote.

But life keeps refusing to cooperate.

It frays.

It contradicts itself.

It asks better questions than I can answer.

So I’ve stopped trying to land the plane.

I’m flying it with the windows open now,

letting the turbulence teach me

what control never could.

I’m paying attention to what softens me.

To what makes me quieter, not sharper.

To the kind of truth that doesn’t dominate a room

but changes the temperature in it.

I’ve learned that leadership

isn’t standing above the mess

with a megaphone.

It’s staying present inside it.

Breathing steady.

Naming what hurts without making it holy.

Holding space without gripping it too tight.

Some days I still want the map.

The formula.

The proof that I’m doing this right.

But more often now,

I trust the compass.

The one calibrated by love,

by grief,

by the stories I carry

that don’t need to be explained to matter.

I’m not chasing arrival anymore.

I’m practicing attention.

And somehow,

that feels like home.

I wake up to a glow

before I wake up to myself.

Thumb scrolling

through a world reduced

to yes or no,

like or ignore,

agree or disappear.

1s and 0s.

Clean. Efficient.

Confident in their certainty.

The feed knows what I linger on.

What stirs my anger.

What keeps me just agitated enough

to stay.

It calls this connection.

It calls this community.

It calls this for my good.

But I wonder.

Is this truth I’m being handed,

or just comfort?

Is this understanding,

or a hall of mirrors

polished by algorithms

that whisper,

See? You were right all along.

The news arrives pre-shaped,

edges sanded down

to fit my profile.

The world becomes smaller,

louder,

more convinced of itself

by the minute.

And somewhere in all this optimization,

curiosity becomes inefficient.

Listening takes too long.

Nuance doesn’t trend.

So I log off.

Or at least, I try.

I step outside

where nothing is curated.

The sky doesn’t ask my opinion.

The wind doesn’t care who I voted for.

A neighbor waves,

and suddenly the world regains depth.

I sit across from another human

and let the conversation wander.

No metrics.

No winners.

Just pauses, laughter,

the holy awkwardness

of being real together.

I practice seeing.

Not scanning.

Seeing.

I stay curious

on purpose.

I ask better questions.

I let myself be changed

by answers I didn’t expect.

I give thanks

for small, stubborn graces:

warm coffee,

unfiltered laughter,

the quiet courage it takes

to remain kind.

I choose love

not as a feeling

but as a daily discipline.

Because I am not code.

I am breath and bone and wonder.

I was not made

to live inside a loop.

So I hold the phone loosely.

I hold people close.

I remember who I am.

And I refuse

gently, daily

to get swept up

in the 1s and 0s.

We didn’t solve anything.

No treaties signed.

No conclusions wrapped in ribbon.

Just words passing back and forth

like a well-worn ball,

thrown without keeping score.

Time softened.

Phones stayed quiet.

Sentences wandered and found their way home.

Silences weren’t awkward

they were invited to sit with us.

We were there.

Not performing, not scanning ahead,

not saving energy for later.

Fully spent in the moment

and somehow more full because of it.

Then the standing up.

The small rituals of leaving.

Coats, keys, the half smile that says

I don’t want this to end, but it can.

The hug lasts a second longer than necessary.

Enough to register.

Enough to land.

There it is

that quiet charge,

that low, human electricity

that doesn’t ask for words.

The universe taps my shoulder, gentle, almost amused:

This.

This is what you keep forgetting.

Walking away lighter,

not because life is easier,

but because for a while

it was shared.

The fields are scarred, the rivers run red,

Children go hungry, while others are fed.

The night is heavy, the silence is long,

But still we gather, and sing our song.

Hope, oh hope, don’t let go of me,

Through the shadows, we still can see.

Dreamers walk on, though the road is rough,

With joy in our hearts, the light is enough.

The city walls whisper sorrow and fear,

Voices are broken, but still we hear.

Hands reach out in the cold and rain,

Longing for healing, a balm for the pain.

Hope, oh hope, don’t let go of me,

Through the shadows, we still can see.

Dreamers walk on, though the road is rough,

With joy in our hearts, the light is enough.

Some say we’re foolish, chasing the skies,

But stars are born in the darkest nights.

And every seed in the earth below,

Carries a promise it dares to grow.

Hope, oh hope, don’t let go of me,

Through the shadows, we still can see.

Dreamers walk on, though the road is rough,

With joy in our hearts, the light is enough.

So raise your voice, let the silence break,

A kinder world is ours to make.

Though sorrow lingers, we’ll carry through,

Hope lives on in me and you.

Some days I am on the rack,

not bound by rope but by range

pulled open by the width of things,

by how much the world insists

on being felt.

Beauty tugs one wrist,

pain the other.

Confusion leans back with its full weight

while clarity pulls, clean and sharp,

as if certainty could save me

if it just stretched far enough.

I am lengthened by polarities.

Everything says come closer,

nothing says let go.

The highs lift me toward light

until my shoulders ache,

the lows drag me downward,

slow and deliberate,

as if depth itself were a teacher.

All at once.

Always all at once.

Thoughts wrestle thoughts

grappling in the chest,

sweaty, breathless, unresolved.

Feelings counter, twist, refuse the pin.

Joy won’t release its hold on grief.

Hope keeps pain from tapping out.

I am not being torn apart, exactly.

I am being asked to widen.

To hold more than one truth

without snapping.

This is the strain of being alive

the stretch between who I was

and who I am becoming,

the ache of learning

that the rack is not only torture.

Sometimes

it is the instrument

that makes room

for a larger self.

There is a season for fire,

for proving,

for climbing ladders made of hours and hunger

a season where speed is virtue

and brilliance burns hottest at the edge.

I lived there.

White-knuckled.

Metrics and mirrors.

Winning by force of will.

Strength measured in how hard I could push

and how little I could feel.

But time, patient and exacting,

whispered a different math.

Not loss

conversion.

What once flashed now settles.

What once raced now sees.

Crystallized knowledge

experience cooled into clarity,

truths hardened by repetition,

less spark, more substance.

Not the shout of insight,

but the calm sentence that holds.

I no longer need to be the smartest in the room.

I want to be the one who knows

which room matters.

This is the gift of the second curve:

to trade raw power for pattern,

ego for wisdom,

novelty for meaning.

To teach instead of conquer.

To guide instead of grasp.

To measure success not by applause,

but by the quiet multiplication of others.

Transcendence is not retreat.

It is ascent by different means.

A widening of the lens.

A softening that strengthens.

A life no longer spent proving

but offering.

From strength

to strength

not the strength of youth and force,

but the strength of perspective,

love,

and the rare courage

to become useful in a deeper way.

This is not the dimming of the light.

It is the light learning

how to last.

I’ve been staring at the glass behind me

Like it’s where the answers live

Every mile I replay the moment

Every almost, every if

But my hands are on the steering wheel now

And my breath is finally mine

There’s more road than memory

By a holy design

I don’t need to hate what’s fading

I don’t need to curse the pain

I can bless it as it passes

And still choose a different lane

There’s a reason the windshield’s wider

Than the mirror I leave behind

I was made to see what’s coming

Not just study what survived

I’ll check the past when I need to

But I won’t live there anymore

I’m moving forward with the ratio

Eyes on grace, hands on the door

Every scar taught me some language

Every loss refined my voice

I didn’t break ; I bent toward mercy

I’m still standing in the choice

I’ve been training my attention

Like a muscle, slow and true

Learning where to place my focus

Learning what to let pass through

I forgive what couldn’t hold me

I release what couldn’t stay

God is not in my rearview

He’s the road that clears the way

There’s a reason the windshield’s wider

Than the mirror I leave behind

I was made to see what’s coming

Not just study what survived

I’ll honor all that shaped me

But I won’t carry every war

I’m moving forward with the ratio

Eyes on grace, hands on the door

If I glance back, it’s just to learn

Not to live, not to burn

I trust the road I haven’t seen

More than the wrecks I used to be

Stillness taught me how to listen

Motion’s teaching me to trust

I don’t chase ; I walk in purpose

From the ashes, from the dust

There’s a reason the windshield’s wider

And I’m finally aligned

With a future that’s not frantic

With a heart that’s redesigned

I don’t need to rush the healing

I don’t need to prove I’m strong

I’m moving forward with the ratio

And the road is long, but right, and on

Just a glance back when it matters

Then my eyes return ahead

More mercy than momentum

More alive than what I said

Windshield faith.

Rearview peace.

There are meetings that feel arranged

by something older than time,

where no introductions are needed

the heart recognizes the heart

before the mind can catch up.

You don’t strain for words.

Silence feels friendly.

Laughter arrives early,

as if it’s been waiting for permission

to come home.

Something in you says, Yes

not loudly, not dramatically,

just steady and sure,

like a tuning fork struck once

and answered immediately.

Resonance.

A shared frequency you didn’t know

you were missing

until it filled the room.

There is joy without performance,

affirmation without proving,

encouragement without fixing.

You are seen,

and somehow seeing back feels natural.

Gratitude rises - not because

this person completes you,

but because they remind you

of who you already are.

Connection just is.

No grasping. No rush.

Only the quiet wonder

of two spirits recognizing

they are not alone in their way of being.

And in that recognition

lightness.

Joy.

A gentle awe

that says, This matters.

I learned hunger before I learned hope

Cold floors, counting change, learning how to cope

All I wanted was a safe place to land

Four walls, a little peace, something solid to stand

Bread on the table, sleep through the night

Body just asking for the basics of life

You don’t dream big when you’re just trying to breathe

You don’t look up till your knees leave the concrete

Built the base one brick at a time

Survival first, then the climb

I’m a self actualizer

Coming alive layer by layer

From the ground up, I’m learning who I am

Not just getting by, not just getting higher

But becoming the truest version I can

Yeah, I’ve been every rung on the ladder

Now I’m standing where meaning matters

I’m a self actualizer

And I’m not done yet

Needed shelter, needed certainty

Locks on the doors, some predictability

Safety taught me how to exhale

How to loosen my grip on the fear that fails

Then came belonging, the ache to be known

A seat at the table, a place called home

Love in the mess, not love on loan

Heard my name, and it felt like my own

Started trusting what I feel

Started letting myself be real

I’m a self actualizer

Coming alive layer by layer

From the ground up, I’m learning who I am

Not just getting by, not just getting higher

But becoming the truest version I can

Yeah, I’ve been every rung on the ladder

Now I’m standing where meaning matters

I’m a self actualizer

And I’m not done yet

Esteem came slow, but it came sincere

Earned my voice, faced my fear

Not chasing applause, not begging for proof

Just standing steady in my own truth

Now purpose is calling me by my name

Not success, not status, not fortune or fame

It’s using my gifts, it’s living aligned

It’s peace in my body and fire in my mind

I don’t need to be perfect

I don’t need to be praised

I just need to be honest

In the life that I make

I’m a self actualizer

Fully present, fully wired

All the pieces finally making sense

From survival to love to desire

To a life that feels heaven-sent

Yeah, the ladder didn’t save me

The climb’s what shaped me

I’m a self actualizer

This is me - awake and free

Needs met, soul fed, standing tall

I’m not at the top - I’m just whole

Self actualizer

Living the call