Here is some great camping info:  do you need to rent sleeping bags, or tents?  REI in the Springs rents all kinds of camping gear: Tents, pads, stoves, etc. They just don’t rent out sleeping bags. For a 3 man tent it’s around $20 for members of REI from Friday to Sunday and $25 for non members. Their phone number is (719) 260-1455.

You will be glad if you join her. She is full of wisdom and honesty and loves a good party.

We’re introducing a new service for indie musicians and producers. Follow the link or type StringOverdubs.com into your browser to find out more! We’ll be adding more and more audio samples and photos.

If you’re an artist or know one, why not tweet this, forward it, or share it on facebook?

We love to write blog posts for you to get via email. But we love your email inbox and the space you love for it to have.

We might think of something we want you to know about every other day, but we don’t want to get emails with new blog posts from anyone that much, so we figure you don’t either.

But, if you use Twitter, which even the US Government is figuring out they should use, you can get little tiny updates, notes, opportunities, and niceties when you want them. We’re, uh, tweeting quite a bit now.

Follow blackthornprjct on Twitter.

Also, if you are a Facebook addict like everyone we know and their mom, you might want to become a fan of our page. We’re using it a bit more too these days.

TBP Facebook Musician Page

If this post made no sense to you, I commend you for loving the real and simple things in life. Now go use your flint and steel to build a fire. And say hi to my Dad–that’s probably what he’s doing.

Click the poster for more information! The full day of worship music featuring Karla Adolphe, Aaron Strumpel, Ben and Robin Pasley, and more TBA. The gathering is going to be casual and packed with value. You might never get a better chance to revel with and engage us in our hometown…er home mountain…pass…area.

Our good buddy Aaron Strumpel has a new album called Elephants. We played with him on it and it stretched us musically beyond what we knew before. It was magnificent and is now available for you and very worth hearing. It’s not light listening (hence the name) but is full of deep, pungent layers and unhindered expression of every kind, all soaked in the scriptures.

Aaron is having a CD release concert on Friday night in Fort Collins, CO at Everyday Joe’s. Laurie and I will be joining many crazy (and I think crazily dressed) friends who will bow, pluck, pound, shake, yell, dance, and sweetly whisper into the microphone as Aaron’s band of supporting pachyderms. Come on out if you’re ready for some crazy Jesus love for the courageously faint of heart.

You can buy a CD at the show, but if you live far away, you can listen and order a first edition on Aaron’s website. Click the image or links above. Here are the show details:

Aaron Strumpel Album Release w/ Listener & Fienix,
Friday, May 1st
Everyday Joe’s
144 S. Mason St.
Fort Collins, CO
7:00pm- 10:00pm
$5

One final note: Gary Adolphe is playing in the band. Wowza.

“For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God.”
- Romans 8:20-21 (New American Standard Bible)

“I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”
- Galatians 2:20 (New International Version)

“The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.”

“For you must not think that I am putting forward any heathen fancy of being absorbed into Nature. Nature is mortal; we shall outlive her. When all the suns and nebulae have passed away, each one of you will still be alive. Nature is only the image, the symbol; but it is the symbol Scripture invites me to use. We are summoned to pass in through Nature, beyond her, into that splendour which she fitfully reflects.”

“In speaking of this desire for our own far-off country, which we find in ourselves even now, I feel a certain shyness. I am almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you—the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence; the secret also which pierces with such sweetness that when, in very intimate conversation, the mention of it becomes imminent, we grow awkward and affect to laugh at ourselves; the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell, though we desire to do both. We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience. We cannot hide it because our experience is constantly suggesting it, and we betray ourselves like lovers at the mention of a name. Our commonest expedient is to call it beauty and behave as if that had settled the matter.”
- C. S. Lewis, “The Weight of Glory”

There are several quotes in this audio that got me so excited, I wanted to write them down and show the whole world. I loved a particular moment in episode one about the difference between conforming to a doctrinal statement and reestablishing a loving connection to our Dad in heaven. Laurie brings some real-life practical sensibility and a unique perspective.

If you haven’t explored ChurchThink before, it’s full of articles and podcasts on the nature of the Church and the Kingdom, and our role in God’s big family. From our friends at Enter the Worship Circle. I especially recommend the newest article as well, on the Kingdom and politics, if you’re interested in exploring foundational issues on engaging the kingdoms of this world as a believer. I might just head over and hear that podcast now, myself.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Sidenote: We’re back in Boulder/Broomfield next weekend with a house concert (open to the public with rsvp) and leading worship at Cornerstone. Calendar.

We met a duo from Bedford Texas–shared the stage actually–at the opening of Crooked Tree Coffeehouse in uptown Dallas. Traded CDs and loved theirs. We’ve listen several times through. The Allens‘ CD is so wide and warm that you almost don’t notice the lyrical potency at first–they don’t pull any punches. And I mean that in the most contemplative, cryptic possible way.

Laurie likes “Grey’s the New Green” for melodic and vocal reasons. I think “Black Sheep” is a a good, honest mad-at-God song, which is something that I feel more people need occasionally. I also find “New Song” quite haunting, not a little because of the pedal steel.

Fortunately for you, it looks like the Allens have linked up with some of our good artist friends who are doing something very progressive called Noise Trade. You can listen to free samples and then download the album for whatever cost you think seems right, or tell some friends about the whole deal and get the album free. Click the photo above to get there.

Our former bandmate Katie Herzig’s new album is there too, as well as lots of other people we like, not the least of whom are Matthew Perryman Jones, Derek Webb, and Waterdeep.

Unrelated postscript: happy birthday to Bill Monroe’s mandolin, the one he used to start something called bluegrass.

Here’s another picture from the recording session, with Robin, Laurie, and the back of Aaron’s head. Be sure and visit Enter the Worship Circle to find our more, and to hear other great collaborative and solo worship recordings!