Nifty Noodles/ Aftermath
West Coast Office 5/24/06
In my last noodle, I was worried about being so candid, especially as I continue to look at my mistakes with marriage…I will say that I was more exhausted than I realized but the insights have been exceptional even in my fatigue. And I’ve tried to steer clear of airing unnecessary dirty laundry that is not appropriate.. but with respect to how it might be of benefit to us all I risk some vulnerability here.

I’ve received lots of comments on it though, one guy wants to print it in his brochure for a pastors retreat we are doing in Topeka on August 2nd .

Since writing last… God seems to have rushed to fill me in on my place in this world… nothing has been in my timing but his plan seems to be moving never the less.

I was fretting over no bookings and the band sitting idle… and today I’ve got two guys talking to me about band dates… and one wants me to speak to the pastors about my part in the story of how the church has affected it’s own servants.

I know that we all want to run from our current positions on occasion… I don’t miss the road when I’m not on it… maybe there’s a balance here though… the “God’s People” insight is really big for me… like when I realized that I have equated sadness with closeness to God… realizing it was my own thought process that kept me in depression to maintain faith.

With a little more rest I’m discovering that I am loved by quality people … God’s real friends!!!! I just don’t get to see them on a daily basis. Such is the nature of my existence…my friend on the bike ride, James, has had some epiphanies as a result of this ride as well… there’s something about finding a way to be alone with God that really makes the rubber hit the road!

I’m surprised at who reads the noodles! Pastors do! I’ve had a few quote directly from them in sermons… what’s that all about? I think younger men are looking for honesty in ministry. And behind the scenes insights as to it’s pitfalls… see… I am serving as a warning to others!!! 8)

Truth is I don’t know what God has called me to other than himself.. but it’s bigger than music and smaller in the eyes of the beholder here on earth…

I think we all just want to escape our realities some times… and moving to Utah is total crock… I think I’m exactly where God knew I would be at this point… and the down time has been more gratifying to him in my relationship with him… in a way that all my efforts were not. It is because I’m actually aware of him when I’m not moving.

I don’t sit still well but on a motorcycle… flying through long stretches of God’s country he can get my attention. You should know that anytime your efforts seem unsuccessful you have to question God’s will… and your own… I don’t want to do the same things over and over and expect a different result. There’s a fine line between persistence and insanity. 8)

I don’t mean to say that music is over for me… it will never be.. but I’m aware of what my singing will never provide for me… it will never provide a closer relationship to my maker or give me the sense of significance I’m missing. It wouldn’t matter how many people showed up at gigs. In fact I felt my own arrogance when things were bigger.

I’ve just come to a place where I’m willing to do what ever is the will of God! One things for sure… just because yer not moving doesn’t mean you’re not where you are supposed to be!

O.k. again so there’s That…. Bryan D

Nifty Noodles/ Unsettled
West Coast Office, 5/23/06
I’m still processing my three day “mission trip” to Utah. 1500 miles on a motorcycle leaves you a lot of time to let go of the thoughts caught in your head. I thought about how many people are gone from my life since I was here last. Two uncles, all four grandparents, a father in law and several friends are all dead now. I thought of relationships still ongoing and how they’ve changed in recent years too.

Some things have hit me since returning after this little sabbatical. My now ex wife, Jodi, always said to me at the end of our marriage… “ we don’t want the same things” and I could not understand. Now it has dawned on me… Jodi is “Settled”… and loves “Stability”. She knows who she is. She has a place to call home. And her family and friends come to her place because it is there!

I’m discovering that I too now want that. I’ve always sung songs because it felt purposeful. But I was not settled. I was anxious and unsettled. Inside of me, turmoil has ruled. And I’ve been running my whole life trying to get away from being unsettled. The act of staying busy has served to keep me unsettled too. I thought I loved to travel. But even in vacation time when I do.... I just wanna go home as soon as I can. I was riding dangerously fast in that last 100 miles to my house.

In many ways, I have made my wanderings my religion to justify everything. After all Paul had his journeys and I can attach much scripture to the “work of God”. And I can do good things in God’s name and not spend any time listening to him. In Zion the silence is deafening… in a beautiful way though it is the sweetest music to the soul. I thought about how insignificant my music has been in the light of anything long term. These mountains and the white noise the wind creates blowing through the canyons speaks larger longer volumes to my soul than any song I’ve heard.

And I took some assessments of my behaviors…. I have loved making music but I have hated “pleasing people”. And yesterday I had the most amazing insight… so simple it’s a wonder its never crossed my mind before: It’s not “God’s people” who have made me angry over my lifetime… it’s just people who missed what made me happy about music.

I’ve blamed “God’s Friends” for discounting my efforts in his name for a lot of years… and used it to stay burned out and cynical. People have a way of wearing you out sometimes wouldn’t you agree? But it’s a poor reason to not pursue my relationship to the maker of these Rocks. I thought about the verse that says if we don’t offer praise to God “the very rocks will worship him”. Well I think they are doing a better job than I am at present.

A former preacher friend told me “I get along better with God, now that I don’t work for him”. I thought about that a lot… I’ve “served God” with my little efforts in my unsettled state my whole life. I could say it was my “calling”… but maybe too it was my deference. Cause when you’re unsettled it’s easier to “work” for God than to be with him and let him do his own will.

In this minute music is losing my interest. So too is my desire to travel. To always be gone from community. I don’t know if I can change that in my last days. But I’m wanting to be me and enjoy the scenery and live one day at a time.

I’m tired of being displaced. And I’m finding that reality only because the career I’ve chosen has coasted to a near halt. A waiter at a little coffee shop in Zion said he quit his factory job in Michigan and moved to Utah and he’s loving a simpler life. And I began to dream a new dream of painting pictures with words and looking for artistic expression that doesn’t have to depend on the approval of others. That would mean I may have to find a new way to make a living. But I’m no longer serving the purpose of Church work as I’ve known it (it’s all about “growth” which usually means bigger numbers really) and therefore I’ve lost the interest of that constituency. I’m losing heart in doing another recording. Knowing it’s not gonna sell unless I’m on tour… spending my life with strangers. I want to be surrounded by friends these days. I’ve sacrificed all of that. I live on the phone for connections.

I have one friend that I see almost everyday and one “love interest”… and I need more friends. I miss God. Maybe it’s because I’m moving all the time. Seeing the majestic mountains of my home state, They seemed timeless and I thought about my grandmother in the early days. This was the country my grandparents loved. They are gone now and so too will my parents be. And then too I will be gone long before God or these mountains will change. . I could sense a magnificent God in those mountains… a God I don’t really know because of all the distractions in this world. I have a loneliness of soul that I will probably never escape from. That loneliness has led to most of my not always unmanageable addictions.

I live in a tiny little apartment that I love because it says “welcome home” on the gate out front. It is my own little place that I can cultivate and have a sense of belonging. My whole married life I struggled, unsettled, to feel like I belonged anywhere. My wife and my sons were not mine. Nor were any of our friends. It’s obvious now… they seldom call me and it is because I was detached. I’m suffering from a failure to bond. Oh but I was traveling… Working for God of course.

I can’t say that I can stop the whole direction of my life but even as I have tried to “Redefine” my purpose I have been in denial about what has been wrong with me. There’s an insurmountable distance from others that doesn’t seem to go away no matter how I try to connect.

O.k. so theres that…. Bryan D

Nifty Noodles/ Trip to Zion
5/ 22/06 West Coast Office
I just finished a motorcycle trip that I’ve been talking about doing for almost fifteen years. My friend James and I took off Friday for my home state of Utah. We covered fifteen hundred miles in three days…. Drove through Las Vegas in 103 degree heat on the first day and stopped in St. George, Utah. Left Saturday morning for a ride through Zion National park, Killed most of the day out there. We had some tourists from Italy ask to take pictures of us with our bikes… I guess we look like the local Indians decked out in leather and boots… I in a “Doo Rag” for a helmet and James in a floppy western hat. Late in the day we rode from Mt Carmel to Bryce Canyon where I thought we’d made reservations for the night… turns out no… me and James don’t communicate well 8) … “I thought you were gonna book it”… So now it’s about four o'clock in the afternoon and we don’t have a place to stay. There was no room at the Inn…..So we opted to ride another 100 miles to Torrey, Utah across highway 12… some of the most breath taking scenery you’ll ever see… in a hundred miles you cross desert, meadows, moonscape, and then gorgeous national forest and one of the largest growths of Aspen trees in the world… we made it to a little hotel some other bikers told us about called Wonderland Inn… clean simple and boy we were exhausted by the time we pulled in. There was a BMW biker convention in town and every hotel was packed with motorcycles…of course James ride’s a Harley and Matilda is a VStar Classic so we weren’t really invited. But two wheels is two wheels and there’s an easy bond among the faithful.

I’d planned to go back the way we came just to get another view of one of my all time favorite landscapes. There’s an Outrageous two lane blacktop running though the whole thing. But next morning we realized we were over 8000 feet above sea level and it was maybe 40 degrees in the morning… we’d never climb back into those mountains this early and live to tell about it…. even the back road out was freezing by bike… we went 20 minutes and then stopped to thaw out…it was Sunday and we needed to cover some 600 miles just to get home. We were on back roads so far removed from civilization that my cell phone didn’t work for three days. We were on the kind of roads where you have to stop for cows standing on the center stripe. Passed two rattlesnakes.. one was already dead. I nearly ran over the other one.

If you’ve ever heard the word “Majesty” in describing God or his handy work and yet you’ve never seen these mountainous works of art.. you really don’t know what the term implies. Awesome, Spectacular also come to mind. The best cathedral I’ve ever been to is in Utah… God himself handles the real maintenance at this one. And there is no specific times for services. Worship starts immediately though. There’s lots of time to “meditate” on a motorcycle… if you don’t have one you may never know… but a friend of mine said once he could have saved a lot of money in therapy if he’d bought a bike!

I changed clothes three times on the way home as the weather fluctuated… it took us 14 and ¾ hours to get home and in the silence of the west coast office… my ears have been ringing for a couple of hours because Matilda just roars. Now I need a healing from the time of healing if you know what I mean. What a wonderful opportunity it was to set everything on hold and go do something you’ve dreamed of for years…

O.K. so there’s that…. Bryan D.

Nifty Noodles/ Unprepared Ministry
5/8/06 Phoenix, Az
I drove from Grand Junction Colorado down to Phoenix in my little convertible PT Cruiser to do my weekend dates. I’ve traveled all these roads before but it had been a long time. Took the 550 through Ridgeway, Ouray and Silverton and hung a right at Durango (my mom’s home town). This is some of the most beautiful country in the country if you ask me. I was missing Matilda… driving alone and out of cell phone access, I would count motorcycles I passed and take the “Obligatory” photo’s of the appropriate views. I love pictures of where I’ve been but I hate takin em. This is a biker’s paradise in the summer. Counted at least 40 bikes. They thin out in the desert around four corners. I stopped there too and took a picture or two and looked at all the Indian jewelry (and the Harley’s in the parking lot 8).

I had planned to stop in Flagstaff but I missed two exits and I was out of town. So I picked the next sign with a hotel on it. Turned out to be a wonderful decision. It was Sedona. A very upscale community of snowbirds nestled in the red rocks of the desert. Wow. I had a field day in the art and artifact stores. Drove around top down in the moonlight before turning in at the Kokopelli hotel. This isn’t quite like being on tour.. I’m squeezing in vacation time on the way to a gig. Woulda been nice to share it with someone but alas everyone else has a real job 8).

Met Curtis Frisbe the promoter for two dates in the Phoenix area. Nice guy with a story or two to tell. Recent health problems surrounded by miracles in being a recipient of a liver transplant that granted him more time on the planet. A man smaller than me, I remember his prayers were brief… like someone who makes a lot of contact with the almighty.

Both concerts were poorly attended. Probably my fault, I’ve lost the ability to draw a crowd it seems. Phoenix is a sprawling town and you can drive an hour here with out getting across it. The highlight of the first gig at Dream Center in Scottsdale was the sunset before the show… The sun goes down nice in the desert. Jesus loved it too I imagine.. he spent a lot of time there.

The other highlight really was seeing Rich Davis and his wife Veronica who supported me both nights here. The second night was an even smaller auditorium that seats maybe two hundred tops and there might have been 50 in attendance. Now if this was a bar and the crowd was up I’d think I did alright. But the enthusiasm seemed rather “reverent”. 8 ) I tried to exercise my sense of humor and not project what a low attendance says about my value. But alas I had more spiders of conscience crawling across my mind than I could really deal with. let’s see the excuses for why people didn’t come to the show included “it’s Cinco De Mayo and I don’t do Spanish tunes”…. And of course “ the Lakers are playin the Suns in the finals” and I’m not singin at the local sports bar. “It’s a long way to get here”….” traffic’s bad tonight”… truth is my visibility is waning. Too bad right when I’ve gotten pretty humble and might have something to say and sing.

The real highlight and maybe the most valid ministry here came from sitting with a couple who came last minute and then went out with me and the Davis’s and the promoter after the concert. Hearing them speak eventually of the loss of their 13 year old daughter just 30 days ago and the dark times of faith they were in. Sometimes the “ministry” is to not say anything but to hear the pain of another soul as they work through their own salvation. To be the face of God for a moment while someone is lamenting their confusion over the circumstances they are in.

I was glad I came! I was a part of something in God’s plans and it didn’t look like anything I’d prepared for.

O.k. so there’s that… Bryan D’

Nifty Noodles/ Addendum.........The Landmark
Grand Junction Colorado
I would love to make note of the quiet passing of a little known “landmark”. It was the source of inspiration for four generations of one family. Anna Forney was my grandmother. 1631 Wellington was a mainstay through many years of my own wandering. It is here in a quiet little spot in Grand Junction, Colorado, a house on a hilltop that was a fountain head of love and acceptance for many over the years who are now scattered all over the world. The Wellington home of my grandparents was the family Mecca! Anna lived there for some 60 years.

Bryan's Grandma Forney's House in Colorado