Stanford

A Soundtrack of Community, Vision,
Movement, Rest, & Beauty.

New to Soundtrack? Start here:

Each Soundtrack consists of one or more rhythms of Play, Pause, Stop, Record.
Please click through the tabs for how to experience this Soundtrack.
When you start each rhythm, you will find a quote or two, followed by the Play list. Read through the quotes, the written word may cause you to pause before listening to the music. Then settle into the music. Ruminate on it; allow it to sink into your bones. Ask the Spirit to reveal to you what God has for you right now, in the moment. Look around, or close your eyes. Let the beauty of your surroundings mesh with the music, and let God reveal Himself to you.
You can listen to the playlist first or press play and move right to Pause. Read through the questions you find there. Some will jump off the page, others will slide away, unnoticed. If you find yourself drawn to a question, take the time to think it through. Engage it. You have the time, take the time. If you feel yourself resisting a question, definitely work on it. Often in our resistance lies the area of our heart that God most needs to deal with. Be open to dissonance, wrestle with the minor keys in your heart.
When you are ready, read through the Scripture found in Stop. Take your time here. Often it seems that we skip through the Word, at times because we have read the passage so often, it is overly familiar. Don’t allow this to happen. Even if you know the passage by heart, read it anew. Read it with the backdrop of music and beauty.
Then, begin to Record. Write down your prayerful response to what God is showing you. Pour out your anguished cries of abandonment if you feel God is distant. Create a marker, showing what God has done or will do. Record a thought, sight, sound, anything that will remind you of everything God is showing you.
This is only a suggested outline, there is no special formula. Feel free to change key, adjust tempo, to find God’s rhythm and join it. This Soundtrack is about you meeting with God and working things out. He may have a different score written for you. Be open to His Spirit. Do what you need to do, even if that means just finding a quiet place to sit.
The experience will consist of moving through four stations around town:
1 – Main Street, 15 – The Mill, 16 – Train Station & Walking Trail, 14 – The Terrace.

Community

Main Street

I am from clothespins,
from Clorox and carbon-tetrachloride.
I am from the dirt under the back porch.
(Black, glistening,
it tasted like beets.)
I am from the forsythia bush
the Dutch elm
whose long-gone limbs I remember
as if they were my own.
I’m from fudge and eyeglasses,
from Imogene and Alafair.
I’m from the know-it-alls
and the pass-it-ons,
from Perk up! and Pipe down!
I’m from He restoreth my soul
with a cottonball lamb
and ten verses I can say myself.
I’m from Artemus and Billie’s Branch,
fried corn and strong coffee.
From the finger my grandfather lost
to the auger,
the eye my father shut to keep his sight.
Under my bed was a dress box
spilling old pictures,
a sift of lost faces
to drift beneath my dreams.
I am from those moments –
snapped before I budded –
leaf-fall from the family tree.
Where I'm From

George Ella Lyon

But some of us have moved away and they are the ones who miss this street the most. They will always belong here even when they think they no longer do.
Water Street

Crystal Wilkinson

Play

One – U2
Forever Young – Bob Dylan
You’ve Got a Home – Christa Wells
Changes – David Bowie
What a Wonderful World – Louis Armstrong

Pause

Where are you from, who/where are you now, where are you going/who are you becoming?

Who are your people?

If you were walking down a street that represented your history and community, what would you see?

Stop

Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.
Share with the Lord’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality.
Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse.
Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn.
Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited.
Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone.
If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.
Romans 12:12-18

Record

Take time to respond.

Rewrite the poem Where I’m From to tell your own story.
As little or as much as you would like.

Vision

The Mill

A maker’s mind must like making,
and must smile on what it makes,
even if it’s treacherous, or frowned upon
by people too polite to feel
the pleasures of the truth and laugh.
The Lord God Made It All: A Boogaloo

Maurice Manning

The greatest need of our time is to clean out the enormous mass of mental and emotional rubbish that clutters our minds.

Thomas Merton

Play

A Country of My Own – Thad Cockrell
The Longing – All Sons & Daughters
Be Thou My Vision – The Scottish Festival Singers
One Day Like This – Elbow

Pause

What would you do with the Mill? What could this place be?

What parts of your life are ripe for rebuilding?

Where do you want to go?

What do you want to build?

What broken narratives do you need to retire?

If your focus is not to “prove” but to “improve”, what is available?

Stop

For still the vision awaits its appointed time; it hastens to the end—it will not lie. If it seems slow, wait for it; it will surely come; it will not delay.
Habakkuk 2:3

Record

Take time to respond.

Reflect – Journal

Movement

Train Station & Walking Path

It may be that when we no longer know what to do,
we have come to our real work
and when we no longer know which way to go,
we have begun our real journey.

The mind that is not baffled is not employed.
The impeded stream is the one that sings.

Wendell Berry

I don’t know where I’m going, but I’m on my way.

Carl Sandburg

Play

All The Road Running – Mark Knopfler, Emmy Lou Harris
Give a Man a Home – The Blind Boys of Alabama
Dreams Come True – Brandon Flowers
Don’t Carry It All – The Decemberists
You’ll Never Walk Alone – Marcus Mumford

Pause

What is your next step?

What clutter is in your way, what is slowing you down?

Can you see the path before you? Where is it taking you?

Stop

Make every effort to support your faith with goodness, and goodness with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with endurance, and endurance with godliness, and godliness with mutual affection, and mutual affection with love. For if these things are yours and are increasing among you, they keep you from being ineffective and unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
2 Peter 1:5-8

Record

Take time to respond.

Reflect – Journal

Rest & Beauty

The Terrace

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

The Peace of Wild Things

Wendell Berry

In a world of noise, confusion and conflict it is necessary
that there be places of silence, inner discipline and peace.
In such places love can blossom.

Thomas Merton

Play

Trusty and True – Damien Rice
Meet Your Maker – John Mark Pantana
Running For So Long – Parker Ainsworth
The Lord is My Shepherd – Paul Zach
Redemption – Maximilian & One Hope Project
Beautiful Day – JJ Heller

Pause

Is it easy or difficult for you to find rest? Why?

Where do you go when you need rest?

Where are you finding beauty? If you are not, where can you look?

What does Sabbath mean to you? What place does it have in your life?

Stop

There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God;
for anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from their works, just as God did from his.
Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one will perish by following their example of disobedience.
Hebrews 4:9-11

Record

Take time to respond.

Reflect – Journal