Cemetery In The Rain

I walked around in the cemetery in the rain yesterday with a Canon XL2 on my shoulder. I'm working with several photographers this week to create a video for a message my Pastor is going to speak on Sunday. The monuments, the epitaphs, the cool gray concrete and granite, the weathered white marble, it was incredible. The wind whispered about the brevity of life, the leaves rustled on the ground, reminding me that seasons change and life is a process of living and dying and living again.

Cemeteries aren't really for dead people, you know, they're for the living... for us to remember and memorialize, to the best of our abilities, some person that had a significance in our lives. That's why we carve memorials in marble and granite and not in wax. There were some beautiful monuments, ornately carved, all trying to make eternal proclamations about a finite being, some who lived ninety years others who lived three, a short dash between two dates.

My friend Dan spoke at a funeral and he said, "Some people die and leave this earth in an exclamation point, some in a question mark, but for the believer, death is just a comma."

I saw one epitaph that said "Trust In God," and in the end, what else can we do? Here's the deal, though, I don't want to wait until the end to trust in God. I want to trust him during the dash. Nothing more can be done when the song is over, so I want to sing with Him right now. I am different than Him, he is holy, I am not, He is infinite, I am finite, He is awesome, I am awestruck, and in that difference, as our voices blend, we sing a two part harmony.

Here's the first stanza of a poem or a song that I felt inspired to write. Copy and paste it into the comment section and add your own stanza to it. Let's write a song that is the voice of the Bride, singing with the Groom. If you're a musician or a singer and would like to compose a melody to what we make and record it, send it to me and we'll play it here on this blog.

My voice is weak, a melody floating from lips of clay.
His voice is strong, speaking light into the day.
He is before and after, I'm in between.
I am creative, and He is the Creator.
I draw a picture, He makes everything that is seen.

-Armando
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Here's the video clip that I put together. Photo's supplied by Mike Ekbundit. I shot the video using a Canon XL2. The song is called Goodbye and it's by a group called Plankeye. I found the photos of the leaders and their info online. Fun, fun.