P: Good morning, Jesus.

G: Hey there, my friend. Do you know why the birds are singing?

P: Um. Because they can? Is this a trick question?

G: My questions are always trick questions. Or had you not realized that yet.

P: Yes, I had noticed.

G: Patrick, the birds sing because I put a song in them.

P: Well, ok, then. That’s a weird answer, rather obvious, if you ask me. So why are you asking me that?

G: What did I put in you?

P: Sheesh. You are hard to track this morning, Lord. What did you put in me? Yourself? Life everlasting? I am not sure.

G: No, those are the right answers. What does that sound like?

P: I have no idea, Lord. You are going to have to help me out here. This sounds really weird.

G: Patrick, you just heard in church a few weeks ago that you have a “sound.” You also had a dream about this a few years back. What does it sound like?

P: No, I understand that, but it is hard to explain what something sounds like, especially when you start waxing metaphorical on me. I don’t know what my sound is, and I sure don’t know what it sounds like if I don’t know what it is. I am really uncomfortable with this.

G: That’s fine. Go get you guitar, and play for 10 minutes and come back.

P: Sigh. Ok.

----10 minutes later----

P: Well? I played for a while.

G: Had you ever played that before?

P: I had played the chords before, but not in that progression, and I had never heard that melody before.

G: The birds are singing again. Birds are not creative. You are. The song you just played was nice, and there was passion in it. Birds do not have that. What did your song sound like?

P: Well, it didn’t have words, but it sounded like a tune that someone would sing about wanting something.

G: And what do you want?

P: I was thinking about You, but I couldn’t come up with any words. All I could do was to “ba, ba, ba” the tune. I suppose thinking of You was what made it sound like that. So, I guess in my heart, I am wanting You.

G: Ok. You are starting to get the hang of this. So, let’s go back to the original questions. What did I put in you?

P: Yourself, life everlasting...

G: What does that sound like?

P: A song? I still don’t know.

G: You were thinking of me when you played just now, and you said it sounded like desire. So, when you allowed your heart to flow, desire came out. Whether I was the center or not is irrelevant. What is relevant is that creativity flows from the heart, through the medium of choice. Just now it was the guitar, other times through writing, and then again other times it is through relationship with people. Mankind is an instrument that makes a sound, and just like a guitar, man can be strummed. You can strum your own heart, and you can strum the hearts of other people. Are you following me now?

P: I don’t know, you confused me with the whole birds bit.

G: When birds sing, they call to each other. When a bird hears a song, it sing back. But birds do not create new songs. Man does. When man hears a tune that strums his heartstrings, it is in him to respond, just like a bird. The difference is that man can respond with a personal song, a new song. When a person comes to know me, what happens inside of them?

P: Like your word says, out of them flows a river of living water.

G: Right, so what do rivers of living water sound like?

P: Like a lot of things, how can I start to describe it? I would say that the obvious answer would be that it sounds like You, but who really knows what You sound like? All I can answer is that you are love, so, rivers of living water must sound like love. But then again, we are talking in metaphors, and none of this makes clear practical sense.

G: That’s because it doesn’t make sense to the flesh. The flesh is self serving, and love is not. That is why it flows from the heart, not the flesh. I have given you a new heart. Let it flow. You are second guessing it all the time, because you are making mistakes and saying or doing things that are not necessarily perfect. When you first picked up your guitar, you started by playing something that you had known how to play from practice, until your heart engaged in the process, and a song emerged on your lips. Do you think that I care that your flesh will want to get in the way of letting your heart flow? When you sit down to write, your flesh will do what it is trained to do: analyze, criticize, and theorize. There will come a time, when you can sit, and flow without the flesh being a part of your process. Your flesh is like the bird. It will sing uncreative sounds and people will respond with uncreative sounds. Your heart is like Me. It will sing, and strum the heartstrings of other people, and they will respond with a new creative song, that will in turn foment the creative song in other people. Have you understood?

P: Again, I think so. But it still seems like a new convoluted way of telling me what you have been telling me for a while now.

G: It is what I have been telling you, and I will tell you until it overtakes the part of you that doesn’t want to believe it. I will use every example on earth in which I have displayed this principle, if that is what it takes, but this is what you are to build upon. This is your foundation. I want you to start here.

P: OK. So love is something that causes a creative reaction in another person?

G: Bingo. That is what I wanted to hear you say. Just as when you thought of me when you played, you were flowing with desire, because I love you, and you want more of it, you want more of Me, and the song that came out was new. I love you, and that caused a reaction in you that was creative and new. The next part of the process is that your reaction to my love touches another person and causes a similarly creative reaction in them and so on.

P: Okay, Lord, I think I get it. I think what I have been forgetting is that my response to Your love is the source of me “flowing in the Spirit.” Am I right?

G: There you go, son. You got it. This is why I want you to start with Me before you do anything else. It makes the anything else part much more fluid. Ok, now get to work.