Emerald & Alba

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights... - James 1:17

When I was younger, I discovered that the land of my distant heritage was one that enraptured my imagination. I fell in love with that which is Celtic – the music, the landscape, the history. I bought albums with harps, fiddles, bodhrans, penny whistles, Uilleann & bagpipes. I bought books about Scotland’s role in history and their role in shaping the Western world. I bought wall calendars with pictures of castles, hillsides, lochs, moors, and mountains to afford me the opportunity to look at something Celtic and beautiful every day. Scotland and Ireland became the landscape of my dreams. I invested time daydreaming about overcast skies, old stone bridges, ancient cathedrals, fog on the Highlands, and dinner at small pubs complete with fireplaces and fresh Guinness. I began many sentences about this wonderful part of the world with the phrase, “One day….” and no-doubt exhausted my family and friends with declarations about how I couldn’t wait to get over here.

This morning, I woke up in Dublin and am currently on a ferry headed for the coast of Scotland, on my way to play music in Glasgow.

Christchurch Cathedral, Dublin - circa 1030 AD

When I was younger, two bands changed the course of my life forever. I discovered U2 and The Police when I was 13 years-old and became convinced that a musical road was the one I was meant to travel on for the rest of my life. It is no exaggeration to say that The Joshua Tree completely altered my young understanding of what rock music could do to a person’s spirit and consciousness, and when I finally got a chance to watch Rattle and Hum and saw Larry Mullen, Jr. slam out his groove to the Beatles’ Helter Skelter, I said, “That, right there, is what I want to do for people.” Most all of my musical experience has flowed from the seed that those four guys from Ireland planted.

Last night I played a sold-out gig at a venue that U2 themselves performed at a handful of decades ago.

The River Liffey in the beautiful city.

Dreams are sacred things. They are gifts to us, not of our own making, and they are meant to be safeguarded, fought for, entreated over, and cherished throughout our lives. We hold them before God with an open hand and wage war for them with a sword in the other. To achieve one’s dreams takes persistence and the forsaking of both comfort and the status quo: one must endure criticism and degradation and resist the call of his own spirit to give up an unnecessary struggle and succumb to the flow of the world around him. We are not required to pursue our dreams, of course, but we might just have to answer for whether or not we did and why.

But once you reach the top of that mountain…. Once you make it around that curve in the road…. The view is absolutely breathtaking.

I’ve found myself several times on this tour stunned by the reality of the situation I’m in. I sit in the front of our tour van in order to take in all that’s around me as we pass by. I wave my touristy flag high as I break out my camera to take a picture of an old church, a river walk, or something else that the locals pass by every single day. I queue up old U2 albums or the Braveheart soundtrack on the iPod while we pass through the countryside. I am not particularly given to too much sentimentality (a few doses of it is quite healthy, I’m sure), but over here I cannot manage to get enough.

I suppose that what I’m attempting to get out in the midst of all this is that the joy that comes from seeing one’s dreams realized is well-worth the blood, sweat, and tears required to reach them. God gives us dreams to show us what is possible in life: He wants us to live and not simply to exist. He wants to illustrate to us the reality of unimaginable riches beyond what is normal, what is usual, what is standard. Don’t bury your talent. Acknowledge where it came from, invest it, and never give up the fight.

The prize is completely worth the price.