text: Here is what we have to burn off sometime this fall after a heavy rain. You can see the second story of the house just above the burn pile and the land that was cleared off to the right of the house.
  Our garage will sit right in front of the power pole in this picture. We can actually see the corn field to the north of our house now. I know it’s not water or mountains, but it is Kansas folks, and I like having a view, even if it is corn!
  And while all this was going on I worked on pruning out the roses in our driveway turn around. I don’t think these roses had been touched in many, many years and it took me hours to get them trimmed. These are the roses that I wrote about in a previous post that I think are around 100 years old. They bloomed beautifully all summer and I hope all my hard work doesn’t kill them. Here’s their before picture:
  And these beauties bloomed unexpectedly this past week under a tree in our front yard not far from where we recently buried our cat, Kayla. It seemed like a fitting memorial to her.
  Sweet Kayla…the lillies are so beautiful! Can we come to the bonfire? My husband loves to burn things too, ya know.
  Yes, you can come to our bonfire. Bring your hot dogs, smore fixin's and a long hose to help us keep it from burning down the barn.
  
  The walnuts and strawberries are happy to roast together. Early in the season, sometimes strawberries aren’t quite sweet enough. But, don’t add sugar (roast them in balsamic and our blood orange olive oil).
  Take half of the strawberries and lay them on half of the baking sheet, drizzle with olive oil, salt, pepper and balsamic. With your hands move them around a bit to make sure they’re all olive oiled.
  
  Now, a church-attending nay-sayer (who may or may not be a true Christian) may argue that anyone who could say what I just did cannot possibly be a Christian. Some might even call it heresy.
  As both a Christian AND a musician, I face the same enemy. Enemy who is not the devil, that is. And if I am defeated by this enemy as a musician, I lose my effectiveness and my usefulness to that profession. If I am defeated by this enemy in my spiritual life, I lose my capacity to be someone truly worth knowing. And what is the point of being alive if one is not a human being worth knowing?
  I propose to enlist the assistance of no less a person than Sir Colin Davis – one of the most outstanding conductors of this era – to help us understand the message of this post.
  Earlier this year, the journalist Tom Service wrote: “Sitting in his north London home, surrounded by the accoutrements of a life at the heart of classical music – busts of Berlioz and Beethoven, a letter by Sibelius, a slew of scores on his table – Davis tells me he has spent a lifetime fighting a battle. Not against orchestras, managers, or musicians, but against his ego.”
  Now, I’m a conducting graduate of a fairly prestigious institution in the English-speaking world, and I studied with some of the top conductors in the world (not only the UK) – including a three-time Grammy award winner. I’ve become much more involved in the world of professional classical music – as a prospective conductor – and this kind of admission is more common than many people might think. But – only behind closed doors! This is just not the kind of stuff that conductors tend to talk about in wide public forums! So this is not just another sound-bite from a highly-decorated musical public servant – this is a little ‘leftfield’- as contemporary parlance has it.
  This failure to “come to the end of [oneself]” sounds pretty similar to the idea of ‘battling one’s own ego” to me… Let’s hear from Sir Colin himself:
  “One’s ego becomes less and less interesting as you get older, to oneself and to everyone else. I have been around it too long.
  Davis is telling me that whether I get to his exalted level, or somewhere less high-flying, as a conductor, my role is HELP people to feel free to do the best job they can by the music – and that I (me, myself and I) am of ‘no account whatsoever.’
  In conducting school I learnt many things – not least that while the best conductors worked incredibly hard to become the best conductors, they were not averse to a few ‘power trips’ every now and then. The very concept of a ‘self-effacing conductor’ was a real oxymoron until I began to work (as a student with some world-class conductors behind closed doors and discovered that they are actually really humble about what they can and can’t do, and what they do and don’t know. But, as I stated earlier – these things are ALWAYS said behind closed doors and NEVER admitted to singers or instrumentalists! So for Sir Colin to express himself in one of the most-read newspapers of our time thusly is very, very interesting to me.
  So, if a world-renowned conductor – who is not in any way religious – is able to admit that his greatest battle over the years has been with his own ego, how come more of those who claim to subscribe to a faith that requires the subjugation of self for a greater spiritual good don’t achieve anything close to this level of basic humility? Indeed, why do so many Christians, having ‘surrendered all’ soon find themselves wanting recognition for having been such a self-sacrificing Christian?
  I know that deep in my own heart, I have struggled at times with the temptation to view myself as being more important than I am. This has taken both a positive and negative form. The first tends to surface at times when I experience success and victory in whatever arena – even the spiritual, where I could not have less excuse for forgetting that I did not deliver myself. The second seems to take the form of guilt and personal recrimination for things I have indeed done wrong. Far from being a sign of deep spirituality, the failure of any Christian to truly focus on Jesus as opposed to their own failings, frailties and foibles is in fact one of the subtlest forms of self-absorption that exists. This will keep people going round in circles for YEARS sometimes with no progress whatsoever…
  Let’s look again at something Sir Colin said: “One’s ego becomes less and less interesting as you get older, to oneself and to everyone else. I have been around it too long.” Would to God that this were true of most of us, and especially those of us in ministry!
  I desperately want to win the battle against my own ego – but not just so that I can succeed as a conductor – or, even more crucially, as a pastor. I want to win because I want to see God’s face one day. And Romans 7 makes it very clear what I am up against. Let’s look at this passage from The Message translation: “14-16….”I know that all God’s commands are spiritual, but I’m not. Isn’t this also your experience?” Yes. I’m full of myself—after all, I’ve spent a long time in sin’s prison. What I don’t understand about myself is that I decide one way, but then I act another, doing things I absolutely despise. So if I can’t be trusted to figure out what is best for myself and then do it, it becomes obvious that God’s command is necessary.”
  The reason why I choose to make this point using the Message is because it is absolutely impossible to miss the point of the passage – one of Paul’s toughest, and one frequently butchered by well-and-not-so-well-meaning Christians. And the narrative continues below: