Stay and respond and expand and include and allow and forgive and enjoy and evolve and discern and inquire and accept and admit and divulge and open and reach out and speak up, this is utopia.
Looking for approval or blaming others or feeling like a victim. Whenever I feel myself doing that I try to stop and see myself as someone who's a creator in more ways than just what the word typically means.
I rejected the God that was portrayed as masculine and judgmental and cruel at times. The concept of us bring not worthy to receive him is something I used to say every Sunday in church, and eventually I just couldn't say it with any conviction.
There is consequence of our forgetting who we are. Forgetting that we're able to create our environment, from our health to economy to war. Something can be done about everything we perceive as bad, if we so choose. If we are aware of the concept of compassion.
When I pray, I'm just talking to what some people might call our higher selves: God, myself, my intuition, my heart. Whatever that is, that's where I go.
Writing a song doesn't heal things. Even if the song comes up with a solution, it's still only a theory. Going out and living my lyrics is a whole other deal. That takes courage.
When I was 11 years old and I was on a road trip with my family. I turned to my dad and said, "Do you believe in Adam and Eve?" And he said he didn't think so. I remember that felt like a slap in the face, because if my parents questioned Adam and Eve, then they potentially questioned everything within Catholicism. Eventually that idea led to my feeling liberated, but at that time it was very scary.
I love the universality of music and how it can viscerally connect people from culture to culture, regardless of anything. It kind of levels everything out and connects us. That universal sound thing is a big deal to me.
I've been doing a lot of different cross-training and kickboxing and Capoeira and kite surfing, and I've just really been back to what I consider my original athletic self.