Bryan Sirchio Schedule and A new Song
Hey Everyone,
I hope this note finds you doing well!
I'm writing you this time for 3 primary reasons;
1. To invite you one last time to next week's "Convergence, Music, Worship, and Liturgy" conference in Nashville, TN (February 7-10, 2017).
There's still time to get in on this! Click here for registration details
Check out this list of musicians and speakers who will be joining us in Nashville; Brian McLaren, Doug Pagitt, Mark Miller, Ken Medema, Marcia McFee, Peter Mayer, Rev. Vince Anderson, Bryan Johnson of Trinity UCC in Chicago, Gary Rand and The Many, Richard Bruxvoort Colligan, Andra Moran, Paul Demer, Rob Leveridge, Sherry Cothran, and of course I'll be there as well. Plus many more incredible people. Seriously, this is going to be amazing. You can register for part of the event (day passes) if you can't be there for the entire time. Click here for all registration detials or just show up at the door!
2. To Offer Some Unexpectedly Open Dates on My Calendar for Bookings!
For some sudden and unexpected reasons I now have several unintended open calendar dates on my event schedule. I would love to fill the following dates on my 2017 schedule, so if any of these dates and/or locations are appealing to you, please be in touch and let's figure something out together. I'll make you an offer you can't refuse! Some of these are coming right up so please be in touch if you're interested in booking me at your congregation.
Open Dates: (concerts, Sunday morning worship, weekend workshop or retreat, combination thereof!)
Simply email bsirch@sirchio.com or call 608-577-8716 to discuss possibilities and details.
February:
Sunday, 2/19 in the New Jersey/New York area (yeah, we'd have to jump right on this!)
March:
Weekend of 3/10-12
Weekend of 3/31-4/2
May:
Weekend of 5/19-21
Weekend of 5/26-28
3. To Encourage you with a few words and a new song called "God Will See Us Through"
So let's face it--we're living in a wild time at this moment in history. Whether you liked or loathed the results of the November election, the beginnings of the Trump era have given us all, to put it mildly, a lot to work with. I know many people who are struggling and feeling raw, disoriented, angry, sad and at times just disgusted to the point of apathy or withdrawal.
But I also have a strong sense that we are now witnessing a fresh and powerful wave of soulful, kind, just, respectful, and spirit-centered response. People are finding their voices, finding each other, and building new coalitions. People are trying to respond with an energy that is deeper and more mature than the energy that is causing the problems. The current climate seems to be serving as a wake up call for a lot of us.
I want to put my energy into some kind of constructive and faithful response. I want to try to be a person who is awake and aware and consciously responding with love, kindness, justice, and open-hearted creativity. I'd much rather be lighting candles than shouting at the darkness, and so I'm renewing my commitment to doing just that in my personal, professional, and public life. Another way of putting that for me is to say that I'm rededicating myself to serving God and to offering my words, music, and gifts in service to the common good and especially to those who are most vulnerable, victimized, and excluded.
This is true personally as well as socio-economicaly or politically. As Buddhist author Pema Chodron reminds us, we all need to choose whether we are going to bring more aggression into the world, or less. We can choose to pause and give some space to our inner lives when we feel fear or anger or some form of toxic reactivity arising. When we do that in our personal lives we give the universe the gift of not bringing more aggressive energy into the world. And we teach ourselves how to practice forgiveness and respect and mercy in our engagement with everyone and everything. God knows we all need that as individuals, and we need to bring these things into our public living also.
But I'll admit there are times when the whole thing feels broken, hopeless, flat, and disenchanted almost beyond repair. Times when many of us are just holding on trying to survive emotionally and get through another day. I've been there pretty accutely myself in recent weeks.
I'm not offering anything all that profound here really, but in those times when I'm hanging on it makes a huge difference to remind myself once again that God is real, and that God is with me and all of us and working on behalf of Love in this world. I need to remember that even though things may hurt like hell or just plain suck, I can trust that I'll be given the strength and grace I need to keep moving forward. It makes a difference to remember that God has tenderly seen me through every frightening or sad or difficult time in my life, and to remember that I have every reason to trust that God will see me and all of us through whatever we're facing and moving through now.
All of this is why my daughter Emma Ceurvels and I recently wrote this new song called, "God Will See Us Through."
She's going to kill me that I'm sharing this very raw recording of this song with you! Its just her sending the latest version back to me on an iphone message. That's how we write together, and she was not intending for anyone else to hear this! You'll hear some noise and I think a grandchild or two at the very end...
But even though the song is not quite finished and Emma was not paying much attention to the quality of the performance, just about everytime I listen to this song I find myself tearing up. It touches my heart with some simple things that I need to hear again and again. Here are the lyrics;
God Will See Us Through (By Emma Ceurvels and Bryan Sirchio)
In times of brokenness, in every wilderness, God has seen us through
Times when our strength was gone, somehow we carred on, God has seen us through
Look behind and see throughout history, God has never let us down
Lean ahead and trust God is guiding us, God will see us through somehow
God will see me through, God will see you through, God will see us through this now
Step by step we'll be given all we need, God will see us through somehow
So I'm sharing it with you (click here to listen) just as is in case this is something you need to hear yourself. Emma will forgive me for letting you hear this terribly rough recording. And we'll have this song available soon (along with sheet music) on the Convergence Music Project website. www.convergencemp.com
Thanks as always for all your love and support, and I hope to see you out there at some live event soon!
Bryan Sirchio
February 4, 2017
I hope this note finds you doing well!
I'm writing you this time for 3 primary reasons;
1. To invite you one last time to next week's "Convergence, Music, Worship, and Liturgy" conference in Nashville, TN (February 7-10, 2017).
There's still time to get in on this! Click here for registration details
Check out this list of musicians and speakers who will be joining us in Nashville; Brian McLaren, Doug Pagitt, Mark Miller, Ken Medema, Marcia McFee, Peter Mayer, Rev. Vince Anderson, Bryan Johnson of Trinity UCC in Chicago, Gary Rand and The Many, Richard Bruxvoort Colligan, Andra Moran, Paul Demer, Rob Leveridge, Sherry Cothran, and of course I'll be there as well. Plus many more incredible people. Seriously, this is going to be amazing. You can register for part of the event (day passes) if you can't be there for the entire time. Click here for all registration detials or just show up at the door!
2. To Offer Some Unexpectedly Open Dates on My Calendar for Bookings!
For some sudden and unexpected reasons I now have several unintended open calendar dates on my event schedule. I would love to fill the following dates on my 2017 schedule, so if any of these dates and/or locations are appealing to you, please be in touch and let's figure something out together. I'll make you an offer you can't refuse! Some of these are coming right up so please be in touch if you're interested in booking me at your congregation.
Open Dates: (concerts, Sunday morning worship, weekend workshop or retreat, combination thereof!)
Simply email bsirch@sirchio.com or call 608-577-8716 to discuss possibilities and details.
February:
Sunday, 2/19 in the New Jersey/New York area (yeah, we'd have to jump right on this!)
March:
Weekend of 3/10-12
Weekend of 3/31-4/2
May:
Weekend of 5/19-21
Weekend of 5/26-28
3. To Encourage you with a few words and a new song called "God Will See Us Through"
So let's face it--we're living in a wild time at this moment in history. Whether you liked or loathed the results of the November election, the beginnings of the Trump era have given us all, to put it mildly, a lot to work with. I know many people who are struggling and feeling raw, disoriented, angry, sad and at times just disgusted to the point of apathy or withdrawal.
But I also have a strong sense that we are now witnessing a fresh and powerful wave of soulful, kind, just, respectful, and spirit-centered response. People are finding their voices, finding each other, and building new coalitions. People are trying to respond with an energy that is deeper and more mature than the energy that is causing the problems. The current climate seems to be serving as a wake up call for a lot of us.
I want to put my energy into some kind of constructive and faithful response. I want to try to be a person who is awake and aware and consciously responding with love, kindness, justice, and open-hearted creativity. I'd much rather be lighting candles than shouting at the darkness, and so I'm renewing my commitment to doing just that in my personal, professional, and public life. Another way of putting that for me is to say that I'm rededicating myself to serving God and to offering my words, music, and gifts in service to the common good and especially to those who are most vulnerable, victimized, and excluded.
This is true personally as well as socio-economicaly or politically. As Buddhist author Pema Chodron reminds us, we all need to choose whether we are going to bring more aggression into the world, or less. We can choose to pause and give some space to our inner lives when we feel fear or anger or some form of toxic reactivity arising. When we do that in our personal lives we give the universe the gift of not bringing more aggressive energy into the world. And we teach ourselves how to practice forgiveness and respect and mercy in our engagement with everyone and everything. God knows we all need that as individuals, and we need to bring these things into our public living also.
But I'll admit there are times when the whole thing feels broken, hopeless, flat, and disenchanted almost beyond repair. Times when many of us are just holding on trying to survive emotionally and get through another day. I've been there pretty accutely myself in recent weeks.
I'm not offering anything all that profound here really, but in those times when I'm hanging on it makes a huge difference to remind myself once again that God is real, and that God is with me and all of us and working on behalf of Love in this world. I need to remember that even though things may hurt like hell or just plain suck, I can trust that I'll be given the strength and grace I need to keep moving forward. It makes a difference to remember that God has tenderly seen me through every frightening or sad or difficult time in my life, and to remember that I have every reason to trust that God will see me and all of us through whatever we're facing and moving through now.
All of this is why my daughter Emma Ceurvels and I recently wrote this new song called, "God Will See Us Through."
She's going to kill me that I'm sharing this very raw recording of this song with you! Its just her sending the latest version back to me on an iphone message. That's how we write together, and she was not intending for anyone else to hear this! You'll hear some noise and I think a grandchild or two at the very end...
But even though the song is not quite finished and Emma was not paying much attention to the quality of the performance, just about everytime I listen to this song I find myself tearing up. It touches my heart with some simple things that I need to hear again and again. Here are the lyrics;
God Will See Us Through (By Emma Ceurvels and Bryan Sirchio)
In times of brokenness, in every wilderness, God has seen us through
Times when our strength was gone, somehow we carred on, God has seen us through
Look behind and see throughout history, God has never let us down
Lean ahead and trust God is guiding us, God will see us through somehow
God will see me through, God will see you through, God will see us through this now
Step by step we'll be given all we need, God will see us through somehow
So I'm sharing it with you (click here to listen) just as is in case this is something you need to hear yourself. Emma will forgive me for letting you hear this terribly rough recording. And we'll have this song available soon (along with sheet music) on the Convergence Music Project website. www.convergencemp.com
Thanks as always for all your love and support, and I hope to see you out there at some live event soon!
Bryan Sirchio
February 4, 2017