solace | spring playlist

Spring is coming.

I have to constantly remind myself of this. I have to muscle my way through the grey days, through the grasping cold snaps in February and March, through the frosts that kill the early daffodils before they can even bloom. Midwest winters can be brutal. I get glimpses that winter’s hold on us is loosening with the “false springs” we get sometimes: a warm weekend, or a day when the sun shows it’s weather-beaten face. We all collectively lift our faces to it, close our eyes, and nod in gratitude. We take a deep breath, preparing to go under again for a few more days. Winter isn’t easily beaten here.

Spring is the season of resurrection and new life. But the weeks before things really start to burst and grow are, appropriately, Lenten in their scope. We work the ground, we plant the seeds, we remember that we are dust, and we look expectantly to the life we are promised. So even in a season marked by life, we are scarred by death.

When I wrote some of the primary poems in this season for the book, I was thinking through what it means to encounter death as a resurrected person. When I met Christ, the first thing He did to me was to kill me, and He’s been putting me to death ever since. Unless I realize my death, I will never realize my life. But beyond the metaphors, I was encountering the very real sting of physical death at the time. What did this resurrection, which waits and waits and waits yet again to bring about our rising, have to do with this everyday reality? What kind of hope is this that only shows its face in glimpses and slivers?

So in some sense, writing these poems was a way to know death, to remind myself that grief is not an end in itself, but a way of life. This was my way of embracing the thing I hated, but not without the hope that was coming – however far away – relentless as the encroaching sun at the end of winter.

And with these poems came songs to sing in the night.

So friends, you who are weary of winter and ready for some light and warmth, here it is: poem by poem, song by song, the spring season of SOLACE.

(You can pick up a copy of the book at my shop or on Bookshop.org to read along)

TRACKLIST:
1. chicago in season ii / Chicago (Sufjan Stevens)
2. invocation / The Matins of St. Clare (Respighi)
3. stay with me / Monarch (Zach Winters)
4. nestling / How Can I Keep From Singing (Audrey Assad)
5. receive / Hero Over My Head (Kings Kaleidoscope)
6. spring cleaning / Freedom (Tim Fain)
7. elements: the taste of earth / Digging in the Sand (Josh Rouse)
8. elements: the smell of smoke / Golden Embers (Mandolin Orange)
9. elements: the sound of air / Sound (Sylvan Esso)
10. elements: the impact of water / The Cure for Pain (Jon Foreman)
11. a leaf, taken / Leaf (Nick Box)
12. nadia / Light a Candle (Andy Gullahorn)
13. triptych for Holy Week: absentia / Tourniquet (Breaking Benjamin)
14. triptych for Holy Week: limbo / Rattle (Penny and Sparrow)
15. triptych for Holy Week: absolutio / His Heart Beats (Andrew Peterson)
16. (soon) / The Lord Is Coming (Scott Mulvahill)
17. majestic / This House (Sara Groves)
18. blackbird / Blackbird (The Beatles)