from january 2003 till may of 2011, i was the music pastor at a small church in austin, tx, called mosaic. it was a tight knit group of people doing their best to explore faith, belief, community, and so many other things that go along with that line of questioning.

as the music pastor, i had an unusual amount of freedom in what we sang together. songs ranged from bob dylan and nick cave, to g.k. chesterton and 3rd century popes, to songs i would write or learn from talented friends in the community. we were able to not just sing songs about god, about who god is and what god has done, but we would sing about who god isn't, where god might be when we needed god, why god seemed to not notice us at times. we also sang about who we wanted to be, who god had called us to be - not a group of card carrying believers, t-shirts and all, but how we were going to be in the streets when we left our upper room in downtown austin. what we were going to do with our fear, our love, our friends and family, our city.

"community is messy," we used to say. some folks got tired of hearing that. there was a sense of it being an excuse for some awful thing or other. but excuse or not, we never found a way to escape the day to day reality of that statement. community is messy - community formed around religion is possibly more messy. there are lots of strongly held ideas, theologies, and beliefs to navigate, and these things get tested, as do the relationships that have formed around them. this testing is mostly natural and good, in my thinking. there is a danger though, of clinging to ideas too tightly, of loving theologies more than loving people. this is how all wars begin - i love being right about what i believe more than i love my neighbor.

i look back on my time at mosaic, and i try to see all the parts, and to see what they made together, as a whole. this is, of course, an impossible task. meaning cannot be found, even by one person for themselves. much less can one person discover the meaning of a group for the group. meaning is ever changing, ever evolving, completely subjective. it is a ridiculous exercise in exercising ridiculousness. but that is what we are best at, we humans: making things mean something. for me, mosaic was an experiment in creating a life that questions what we've been given, told, and sold. i moved away from austin (and therefore mosaic) for separate and external reasons, but i'm fairly certain that, had i stayed, i would have questioned myself right out of a job! a good friend once told me that her experience of church was that her church grew her up enough to where she didn't need it anymore. this has not been true of any church i've been a part of (there's always been much more of an unspoken and frantic "you can't leave! they'll eat you alive out there!"). but in many ways, whether it meant to or not, mosaic gave me space to grow (in some ways) to the point that i did not need church anymore, at least not to find and commune with god, or myself, or the world i live in.

and so, in the words of the immortal poet bryan adams (whom i am appalled to discover is completely absent from my itunes library), "i guess nothing can last forever." all messy things come to an end, which is to say life is full, and long, and nothing truly ends. in the words of another, infinitely better poet, "not life, not death, but movement."

these are a group of demos i recorded for mosaic back in 2006, before i took to the road for four months with my friend alex dupree. it was recorded by the highly gifted erik wofford in his bedroom off of north loop (as opposed to in his incredible studio, cacophony, in east austin). all the songs are in the public domain, with new music by me, except for the couple that i wrote the words to as well. the other two exceptions are "the revolution choir," penned by the aforementioned mr. dupree, and the titular hymn, "been in this war for too long," written by the always sincere and gentle christopher james simpson.

thanks to don vanderslice and brian seay for taking a chance on me in 2002, and for giving me the incredible opportunity to cultivate and curate a spiritual experience through music (for others and for myself), once a week, for eight years of my life. thanks to all the incredible musicians that came through the band over the years - you shaped me more than i could say. and thanks to you, for being curious and open, be you a seeker or believer.

answers are dead. questions are alive. stay open. it cannot be too much longer.


seth woods,
albuquerque, new mexico,
july 2014