Day 18 “A Year in Thoughts”: Big Bird in a Small Cage

There are days that I feel like a little bird in a small cage with a lot on my mind. Big thoughts, big dreams, big hopes, big plans for the future, but sometimes the cage just seems to small. My soul sings like a big bird in a small cage. It mourns for things to change, mourns for the world to change. The world would like nothing better than to sit and sing along and yet do nothing to free the little bird that mourns.

 

Like a little bird in a cage humanity mourns for change.

 

For some reason today I felt kinda caged which could come from sitting in class and having little time to stop to think, create, and just reflect on this day that God has made. But as my evening slowed down just enough to have maybe an hour to spend sometime thinking and creating, I had this song running through my head. A song that I haven’t listened to in a while but for some reason it has always seemed really catchy to me and obviously has recorded it’s lines into my head. The song is “Big bird in a small cage” by Patrick Watson. In an interview about the song Patrick said he wrote the song seven years after he had visited this guy in Asia who had a house full of birds, and in those rows of cages there was this one big bird in a small cage. So he asked him why the big bird in the small cage, the the bird-keeper replied simply “because when you put a big bird in a small cage it will sing you a song.”

When I went back to listen closely to the lyrics of the song I found the song to be rather sad because when a big bird is in a small cage it mourns. It sings because it would rather be anywhere else but in that cage.

 

I don’t believe God gives us hopes and dreams and then puts us in a cage to small. We may find ourselves in small cages by own own choice and mourn every moment to be where our souls can be alive and free. The soul of humanity is mourning. Like a big bird in a small cage. But we are not created to be caged, not created to sit and do nothing about the state of humanity. God is leading people around the world to break out of the cages, to fly free and help others. God is healing people and turning their mourning to joy.

I don’t want to just listen to the birds mourn I wan to set them free. I don’t want to just sing along with humanity as it mourns but I want to show them to the truth that will set them free. You and I are not caged but free. Love helps. Love sings a different song. Love doesn’t cage the ones around us but empowers them to live a life more full. To move beyond the bars, barriers, doubts and fears. To stop mourning and see that the cage door is open. The life God offers is far greater than the life inside our little cages. It may not be as safe, or as comfortable, or as easy.

 

Humanity Mourns and God offers Life.

 

Not life in a cage he offers LIFE.

 

 

Life to the fullest

 

Think about (You can read about it on almost every page of the gospel)

 

-Caleb Ross Hunter

 

 

P.S. Below are the lyrics to Patrick Watson’s “A Big Bird in a Small Cage” and a link to it on youtube. Think about it.

Big Bird in A Small Cage

There was a house halfway ’round the world
And I was invited in for a small taste of gin

There was a hallway a thousand birds long
But the biggest one of all was in a cage too small

I asked the caretaker ‘cuz he was their maker
He looked at me and laughed took another sip from his glass

He said ‘open up your ears and hearts
You put a big bird in a small cage and he’ll sing you a song’

That we all love to sing along
To the sound of the bird that mourns

Well we rolled into town and the sweet New Orleans
To the Apple Barrel bar it was a hole in the wall
The ceiling weren’t tall and the floors filled with grime
But the sound that you would make would just warm their hearts

Well it was quarter to 12 and the boys walked in
They got their black suits on and the songs would begin
You open up your ears and hearts
You put a big bird in a small cage and it’ll sing you a song

That we all love to sing along
To the sound of the bird that mourns
You put a big bird in a small cage and it will sing you a song

 

Day 11 “A Year Of Thoughts”: That’s When We Were The Young

That’s When We Were The Youth

Over a sunset that set to soon

The green grows like the hills

For which we climbed then,

That’s when it was our youth

 

Those days we wondered in timeless masses out to play

 

To play was the name of it

That thing we did to pass the day

It was slow much slower then,

That’s when we were the youth

 

Feathers in our hair and speaking in our native tongue

 

To take to dreaming riding west

The horses flew across the yard

Always chasing the smallest one

That’s when milk made giant youth

 

Our mothers told us to grow strong so by and by we did

 

To this we write now as past

Though on we grow like children

For we still climb, play, chase the day

That’s when we find time for it

 

The time we never had as youth has found us, bound us, caught us somehow.

 

-Caleb Ross Hunter

A little reflection of growing old and moving past our childhood in poem form. Sometimes I think as youth we had a much better grasp on how fun life really is but as we grow older that fun gets sucked out of us by the ever faster moving time. The picture is of a piece of art that I painted and painted over again and this is actually of the middle stage of the piece. The original piece was a sunset, then I over laid that with two different greens and finally placed a feather on top of that. The final result of the piece is a curved canvas that allows for the feather to stand out off the canvas while being held on by a smearing of blue paint. As a child my imagination would run like crazy and there was always a story everyday to fill the time. Now my mind and imagination still run but i have to find the time for it. Find the time to stop and imagine, create, and remember.  That’s when we were the youth.

P.s. The milk reference is true, my mother would say drink milk it will make you strong however, I was allergic to dairy as a kid and when i out grew that I became lactose intolerant because i couldn’t drink it as a kid, somehow even without that much milk I still grew, I wouldn’t say strong but I grew.

Day 8 “A Year of Thoughts”: Discontent? Well Good Let it Move You.

For the past month I have sorta been lazy and a little discontent about that laziness. Every time I would watch a basketball game I would get excited and want to play again. In close games my heart rate would go up and I would wish I was back on the bench supporting my team and coaches.

One of the earliest pictures I have of my childhood is me standing in dad’s shoes shooting the basketball into my fisher’s price hoop. I grew up in the Hoosier state which is known to be the heartland of basketball. For years I lived and breathed basketball. I slept with a brand new ball in my hands in sixth grade and dreamed about playing for championship every night. The game was taught to me at a very young age and after three tries to make a traveling club team in 8^th grade I made it. Three years later my team went on to win both a state and a national invitational championship, and when I walked off the court of the national championship I made the decision to move on from the sport and peruse other things. I gave up playing for the final two years of high school. That was over six years ago now, yet the game is still in my blood. I can’t remove the teaching that I received as a kid, I can’t look at the game through anything but a coaching lenses, I can’t step back on the court and not feel a little confident that I can still shoot the ball.

When I was playing basketball I always wanted to hit every shot. I wanted to be ready for anything. I spent hours on my shooting form, making it perfect (yet the whole of 140 pounds of a 6′ 3” man that I am now still would just get pushed around out on the court, so it had to be perfect). But as much as I knew the game and as much as I was perfect at the little things I wasn’t that great, I’m still not great. I grew discontent, I had made basketball such a huge part of my life and when I finally won my championship (from the bench mind you), I allowed that discontentment to move me to a place of changing and finding ways to make my life more full of things that I believed would help me grow.

For most guys growing up in Indiana, basketball is something that they are born with yet it’s not for every guy. Unlike basketball though I was reminded today by Donnie Hinshaws sermon that we are all born with faith. It’s a gift that God has given us to propel us forward in hope.

I have always had faith in basketball…

That may sound like a silly statement, because it really is kind of a silly statement, but for me growing up it was true. I may not have always had that great feeling of having faith in God and trusting that he knew what he was doing. But I sure had faith that my favorite teams could win ever night, I had faith my 3-pointers were “Boom-babies” every time just like Reggie Miller back in the day. However, my understanding of faith today grew in a way that changed things.

See when we accredit God with giving us our faith then nothing we can do will earn that faith. Faith is a gift. I know you can’t work for salvation and we are saved by grace, but faith is not something we tweak in our form, or practice over and over until we are perfect at it, either. Faith is nothing like being taught as a kid to play a sport. Faith is a real part of our lives, God is waiting for us to live with Faith, to awaken what he has already put within us. To trust him knowing that he knows what he is doing. To hope fully in what God has for you.

Donnie said this morning, “To hope in something means the state of life you are in is a state of discontent”

To hope is to be discontent, to know that there is more and a way to live that is different then the one we are in. Discontentment is not a sin. Discontentment should move us to a deeper faith and hope in God. I think this is why faith is always seems to be growing in our lives, why theology is expanding as we are moved to learn and experience more of what God is revealing of himself to us. Why the closer we get to God the crazier and more awesome life seems.

I have a hope that lives can be changed. I have a hope I can learn to love. I have hope and faith that God can do the impossible. My discontentment moved me away from basketball because I had a hope that my life could be more than a sport. I have had discontentment in my heart for the next generation, for my own life, for the future, for I have faith that God can do more than what we are dreaming.

If God can take my little insignificant dream of playing a sport I loved for 16 years and winning at it come true then I have faith God can give me even bigger dreams and complete those a thousand times over. I’m not content with settling for less. I want to take risks and live by faith for hope holds my future forever in God’s hands.

Basketball maybe in my blood and I may never get it out now. Faith is in my heart and it’s pumping through all that I am. My heart is discontent to settle for anything but living life full of faith…

Sometimes we have to walk away from things to pursue in faith what God is leading us too.

Just read Hebrews 11 it’s a list of men that lived by faith, they did crazy things, they risked everything, and they walked away from a lot. But will you? Will I?

Heck yes I will.

-Caleb Ross Hunter

Day 5 “A Year of Thought”: Searching Eyes and Beating Drums

Yesterday I was working on my photo for project 365 and I took an old National Geographic magazine and after flipping through the whole thing I used the cover for part of a picture. However, from flipping through the magazine I noticed some portraits of some people from Africa. It struck me as I took some time to look at all of them. In each picture their eyes seem to catch mine and hold them, as if they were speaking to me… I know that sounds a little weird and out there, but if you look into their eyes they are all searching.

The eyes are searching?

Searching long and deep.

Searching for something.

Anything.

But how can we give them what they are searching for?

A few years ago I started writing a poem that I thought might turn into a song, but it still sits somewhere under a pile of uncompleted lyrics and from time to time I find it flowing back through my mind.

Can you hear the beat of the drums

echoing through these plains

as children dance and sing a song

show me what it means be alive

fill it up, fill it up again

spark my heart to love

every nation that cries out to you

as God wipers louder

in your ear

take heed and listen

and hear

can you hear the beat of the drums

as hearts turn to the healing one

blind see and a people redeemed

show me what it means be alive

It’s a poem about Africa, I wrote it shortly after hearing Caleb Bislow speak about how he was chasing this crazy dream that God had given him about going to Africa and serving the people there. One of the things that Caleb said that night has really stuck with me, he said when he was fighting with himself about going he just came to this point where he said “I’m tired of being inspired and I’m ready to do something”. That quote hung on the wall in my room for years and has been an inspiration to me when I’ve been trying to figure out what to do.

Finding inspiration is easy, doing something about it is the hard part.

Each of those faces that I tore out of that magazine was searching, their eyes are like those of the next generation that I’ve dreamed about. They are searching. Searching for love, for healing, for grace, forgiveness, nourishment, and Life. They are searching for everything that God can give them. That God can give them through us.

When the world stops and looks at the face they ask why?

Why the searching?

Why the tears in their eyes?

Why the scares on their faces?

Why the fear?

When the world asks why we answer with Love.

Love when the world asks why?

Can you hear the drums?

I hear the drums of a changing generation that is learning to live life to the fullest every single day. It sounds much like the beating of my heart, sparked by my own searching for healing and finding it in the one place that I can, I want to learn to love those with searching eyes. I want to keep the drums beating so we can dance and sing with the children of the world, Jesus loves me this I know for the bible tells me so, little ones to him be long they are searching and he is found!

Next time you look into someone eye, ask what are they searching for?

How can I answer with Love?

The world is waiting for us to stop being inspired and to start doing something…

-Caleb Ross Hunter

Day 1 “A Year Of Thought” : Wind Swept By Love

 

Wind Swept

I am a no body

From an unknown state

Anything but myself

 

This wind swept love

Keeps telling me

I can’t stay the same

You’re somebody who’s got to love

 

This wind swept love

Found me with you

From the broken to healing

All that we need to be in love

 

It’s all our own,

It’s all our own,

Give it like the wind

Feel it as we go

 

-Caleb Ross Hunter

 

 

A thought that has been flouting through my mind the past few months comes in the form of a simple sentence “Love like the wind”, but what does that mean.

 

I feel it’s effect,

I can see it’s effect,

I can sense the change that comes with it’s effect,

But I can never fully capture it, it’s powerful and real.

 

Love like the wind, can’t really be stopped when it’s starts blowing, it can be calmed but the potential is always there. If we are loving like the wind we have to be someone, we have to be ourselves, but we always have the option to be moving, growing, and letting love have an effect on us. Right now I am wind swept. I’m wind swept by God’s crazy love that overwhelms me everyday. I can feel it changing me, I can see it moving me, but I can’t fully capture it but it’s there it’s real.

I am also wind swept by the awesome love from the people around me. Like a cool breeze or warm summer wind love is blowing and bringing joy out of the depth of my heart. I want to find ways to love like the wind everyday. Ways for people to feel it, to see it and be changed by it. I want to live it.

 

LOVE LIKE THE WIND

 

LET LOVE SWEEP YOU AWAY

 

-Caleb Ross Hunter  

Everything You Are

Find me here

All that is me

Long, for we barely Know

Long for we barely know

 

Bring us to this place

Strip us of ourselves

So this is barely who we are

This is barely who we are

 

It’s everything you are

It’s everything you are

Showing through

Showing through

 

It’s colors clear In the rainbows here

It’s color bright from the sunrise

It’s in our hearts it’s so clear

 

It’s Everything you are

it’s everything you are

Showing through

everything we are

everything we are in you

 

-Caleb Ross Hunter

New Song Lyrics