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Hymns for the heart.

These lyrics are just a few that I chose to sing on Inheritance. It will be available everywhere Feb. 12, or at my table before then. :) can't wait to sing with you. Holy, Holy, Holy Holy, holy, holy! Lord God Almighty! Early in the morning our song shall rise to thee. Holy, holy, holy! Merciful and mighty, God in three persons, blessed Trinity! Holy, holy, holy! All the saints adore thee, casting down their golden crowns around the glassy sea; cherubim and seraphim falling down before thee, which wert, and art, and evermore shalt be. Holy, holy, holy! Though the darkness hide thee, though the eye of sinful man thy glory may not see, only thou art holy; there is none beside thee, perfect in power, in love and purity. Holy, holy, holy! Lord God Almighty! All thy works shall praise thy name, in earth and sky and sea. Holy, holy, holy! Merciful and mighty, God in three persons, blessed Trinity. Be Thou My Vision Be Thou my Vision, O Lord of my heart; Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art; Thou my best Thought, by day or by night, Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light. Be Thou my Wisdom, and Thou my true Word; I ever with Thee and Thou with me, Lord; Thou my great Father, I Thy true son; Thou in me dwelling, and I with Thee one. Riches I heed not, nor man’s empty praise, Thou mine Inheritance, now and always: Thou and Thou only, first in my heart, High King of Heaven, my Treasure Thou art. High King of Heaven, my victory won, May I reach Heaven’s joys, O bright Heav’n’s Sun! Heart of my own heart, whate’er befall, Still be my Vision, O Ruler of all. O The Deep Deep Love of Jesus Oh the deep, deep love of Jesus Vast, unmeasured, boundless, free Rolling as a mighty ocean In its fullness over me Underneath me, all around me Is the current of Your love Leading onward, leading homeward To Your glorious rest above Oh, the deep, deep love of Jesus - 'tis heaven of heavens to me; and it lifts me up to glory, for it lifts me up to thee! Oh, the deep, deep love of Jesus - spread his praise from shore to shore! How he loves us, ever loves us, changes never, nevermore!

Writing a blog...

...on motherhood and the character of God. I decided to solicit thoughts/questions from mothers in order to round out my ideas/experience. Please message me or comment with anything you’d like to share, because I would love to read it!

What has being a mother taught you about God’s love/character? Has there been confusion in that department? Do you have things that trouble you or that are difficult to reconcile in your experience of having a child vs. what you thought God’s love was like before that? Any thoughts/stories/experiences are welcome, including from sons who would like to share things about their mothers. Or anyone, really.

Even Unto Death (the story)

Even Unto Death -- it’s out today.

In a world filled with death—in a world where death is both the weapon and the wound—my faith is shaken, challenged.

You must remember that night, months ago, when I saw the video of those twenty one precious Egyptian men kneeling on a Mediterranean beach.

You remember them, don’t You? They, in their orange jumpsuits, prisoners of the black-clad soldiers standing behind them?

I stared at the procession…and I knew that I was looking into the sickening, quaking black hole that is Death.

“A message signed with blood to the nation of the Cross”, read the text.

I shivered as I had never shivered—my blood ran cold in my veins.

“Blessings and peace be upon the one sent by the sword,” their veiled leader said, his knife poised.

The captives prayed, their lips moving silently, their eyes closed or raised to the heavens.

What were they whispering, in those last, fast-fading moments of their lives? Were they afraid?

What did they say to the God who is beside, before, and behind them?

The soldiers stood stock still in the wind, knives at the ready.

Then, they cut through flesh, vein and bone—their merciless blades attempting to assuage the hunger of Death.

But Death cannot be satiated—

for even Death is dying.

All is not as it seems.

The men wielding the knives (precious also, though they do not know it) are the prisoners of Death.

The twenty one men that they beheaded are miraculously, blessedly free.

This is the Great Paradox of Christianity. “Christ is risen from the dead, trampling over death by death.”

I have to believe that these twenty one martyrs are each in the kingdom of Light, interceding for their executioners.

"Lead all souls to heaven, especially those in most need of Thy mercy,” I thought desperately.

I could not help but weep, and hard. But by some small miracle I did not despair.

I only thought “What would I pray, if it were me kneeling on that beach?”

Jesus, the very thought of You, it fills my heart with love.

Jesus, You burn like wildfire and I am overcome.

Lover of my soul, even unto death;

with my every breath I will love You.

Jesus, You are my only hope, and You my prize shall be.

Jesus, You are my glory now, and in eternity.

Lover of my soul, even unto death;

with my every breath I will love you.

In my darkest hour, in humiliation:

I will wait for You—I am not forsaken.

Though I lose my life—though my breath be taken:

I will wait for You—I am not forsaken.

One thing I desire—to see You in Your beauty:

You are my delight—You are my glory.

You, my Sacrifice—Your love is all-consuming:

You are my delight—You are my glory.

Lover of my soul, even unto death;

with my every breath I will love you.

This is our faith.

Even death will die.

#ForTheMartyrs

#EvenUntoDeath

Available now.

We feel His eyes upon us as we sit under the fig tree and our souls momentarily spring to life at the touch of His hidden finger. This flash of fire is our solitude; but it binds us to our brethren. It is the fire that has quickened the Mystical Body since Pentecost so that every Christian is, at the same time, a hermit and the whole Church, and we are all members one of another. It remains for us to recognize the mystery that your heart is my hermitage and that the only way I can enter into the desert is by bearing your burden and leaving you my own."

Thomas Merton.

Entering the Silence: Becoming a Monk and a Writer (The Journals of Thomas Merton Book 2) (pp. 466-467). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

Open Hands.

Open hands do three very important things: they let go, they receive, and they give.

Like most people, I have a hard time doing any of these things very consistently or very well. I write about this today because it has been on my heart a lot as of late: my life seems to operate in cycles of accumulating disordered attachments and then releasing them at the behest of the Holy Spirit’s insistent, still small voice—then my disordered attachments clog up the pipes again and I have to do it all over. And it is always painful. That pain is a good thing—it should hurt to open my hands around the things I inappropriately take solace in or make idols out of. It should hurt, because clutching my idols is not actually loving of myself or respectful of my own dignity as an image-bearer of God. Perhaps the most pernicious bit about those attachments is that they actually keep me from recognizing and receiving the Love of God where it is offered—and in turn, I am inhibited from sharing that Love with others. Let the Love of God peel your fingers open around whatever it is that is preventing you from receiving it. Let go, receive, and give. Live life with open hands. xo

Audrey

Audrey Assad's new band with Seth Jones is lit! Great sounds and lyrics. Check out #StrangeFire http://thndr.it/1KatGm1

Elf tears, the Police, and a dash of Enya running through fields. (Also, LEVV)

Hello friends,

So much good news this week!

It is release week for my band LEVV and I am so so so excited to finally be putting out this record!

Seth and I recorded this last summer and we are so happy and proud to announce that it is available and ready to be heard. My dear friend Mike Donehey described it on twitter today as ‘elf tears, the Police, and a dash of Enya running through fields.’ I decided that would be the perfect way to describe the project to you. :)

It is available now on iTunes, Amazon, and Bandcamp.

If you like it, please spread the word! One thing we really need some help with is our Thunderclap. We need at least 250 people to join the Thunderclap and donate just one tweet to help us spread the word about Strange Fire. If you join up, you get 10% off the EP! We are completely independent, DIY and self-managed, with no PR or agents to help us do this, so Thunderclap is a really cool way that we can all band together to send Strange Fire hurtling out into the world. Check it out and see if you'd like to be involved! (Again, you're just donating one tweet of announcement. No other commitment required.)

If you missed the story on LEVV and how it came to become the band that it is now, you can read more about it here. (http://levvmusic.tumblr.com/post/111283215471/so-why-levv)

Hope you enjoy it. We truly put our whole hearts into this.

#LEVV #Audrey Assad #StrangeFire #pop #electronic #indie #Arrow #Darkness

What’s behind our new Transcendental Design Series? You asked and we answered!

http://www.store.audreyassad.com

levvmusic

image © Troy Wise. http://attheloft.typepad.com/.a/6a00e54ecca8b988330120a59bc36c970b-500wi

Drifting on a midnight breeze over the ruins Watching all the colors bleed into the ocean Is this a waking sleep, a happy illusion Is this a living dream, a vivid delusion Falling faster up the full vanilla sky Running over mountains, breaking up the night Fields and forests, sleeping spectres in the sun Beauty shooting through me til I come undone Walking on an angry sea, my hands on the water My mind full of old debris, my heart all aflutter Maybe if I close my eyes I’ll see where I’m going Maybe if I quiet my mind there’s something worth knowing Falling faster up the full vanilla sky Running over mountains, breaking up the night Fields and forests, sleeping spectres in the sun Beauty shooting through me til I come undone

audreyassad

new lyrics from my band LEVV, and one of my favorite pictures.

Five days.

Five days until I see your honey hair, your blueberry eyes, your charcoal lashes flitting. Five days without feeling the soft swift brushing of your tiny fingers on my collarbone as you nestle your head into the curve of my neck.

Five days of missing you not only because I love you, not only because you are flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone, but also because we are fifteen months into this relationship (twenty four, if I count the months you grew within my own body) and I am beginning to get to know who you are—and little boy, I really, really like you.

You're my running-errands-buddy, my felt-hat-crusher, my reading pal, the little one always ‘underfoot’, like my mom used to say to me. Sometimes I hate it when you're underfoot. It makes cooking and doing dishes very difficult. But knowing I'll go five days without you underfoot makes me miss it—and you—already.

I like the person you need and want me to be. I don't always like the person that I am around you—just by being near and being yourself, you highlight the best and worst parts of me—you call me out of myself over and over, each and every day. I could never thank you enough, little boy.

Five days until I can squeeze you again. I can’t wait.

humansofnewyork

“I’m tired of driving a cab. So I decided to start dressing funky and see what happens.”

audreyassad

This guy is my hero today.

Let’s build something.

I am super excited to just offer you guys a sneak peek at something we’re starting up this fall: I am partnering with an organization called “Save The Storks” to raise money to build and mobilize a mobile pregnancy crisis center and set it loose on the streets of New Jersey, my home state.

I don’t post or tweet about abortion much, because I honestly feel the “pro-life movement” in America has overall lost some focus on how to be truly, really whole-life in its mission and message. The ‘dialog’ on this stuff feels fruitless most of the time. However, I believe the abortion industry is guilty of grave wrongs against women and their children—very much including the many, many women who staff and operate Planned Parenthood clinics: and so, when I heard about what STS is doing, I knew I wanted to be part of it. Tweeting and posting about abortion is well and good—but building and staffing a mobile pregnancy crisis unit is better. If we think we can provide better care for women, then we’d better do it—and do it well.

For more information on these amazing vehicles and how you can be part of #TeamAudrey, click here. You will hear more from me in the coming months about this amazing organization and how we can help them help women and provide them with the care they need.

https://impact.savethestorks.com/fundraise/team?ftid=53708

Xoxo.

Audrey

Fortunate Fall Demos

Hello all! It is time to get back to recording, and I can’t wait! I got to listen to some studio roughs of what we’ve done thus far and I feel equal parts excited and intimidated by what is yet left to do. We have an ambitiously long tracklist for the amount of time we have to work, so please think of us and say a prayer that we can be focused and inspired within the timeframe allotted. In the meantime, my Pledgemusic pre-sale continues—and we came up with a really cool thing to celebrate with once we hit 150% of our goal.

The way I like to make records usually includes a period of intense writing/demo-ing — for the last two projects of mine, those periods have been one and the same. I wrote and demo’ed Fortunate Fall all in one month. I have all those demos in order of the record’s final tracklist, and when we hit 150% I am going to make those available for the listening pleasure of all pledgers. I am always fascinated with how songs start and end up—here is your chance to hear where Fortunate Fall began! It is my favorite project I’ve ever worked on so far, and I’m excited to reveal its beginnings to all of you who are being so supportive of this new project, Inheritance. Thanks to all who have pledged already, and spread the word if you would like to hear these demos released!

xoxo,

Audrey

Help me choose!

Hello friends...

Just wanted to post about the voting process we are currently undergoing at Pledge Music. (In case you have missed it up to this point, let me catch you up: I am doing a new record that is a blend of traditional and original hymns, and I’m running a presale—those who pre-order early get to help me craft the track list by voting on hymns for the first three weeks. We have a couple of days left on the second list, so get in while you can if you’re interested in helping choose the songs!) I’ll be gauging what the favorites are and using that information to help me select what traditional hymns I record. There will be a few originals as well, and I hope it will be a really prayerful and rich combination.

So I just wanted to post a bit of a birds-eye look at how this is working. Each week for the first three weeks I’m putting out a list of ten traditional hymns and you guys who have pre-ordered (THANK YOU) pick your favorites using an easy survey that Pledge Music sends out as an update. So far we have had about 650 of you vote on this week’s list—that is awesome, but it’s only about half of the people who have pre-ordered. So if you haven’t filled out your survey yet and you would like to do so, please head on over and submit your votes before the new list comes out on Thursday!

(first ten—voting is concluded already for these)

Be Thou My Vision How Can I Keep From Singing? Be Still, My Soul O The Deep, Deep Love of Jesus Of the Father’s Love Begotten Just As I Am It Is Well With My Soul I Heard The Voice of Jesus Say My Jesus, I Love Thee Doxology

(second ten--pre-order and vote until Thursday!)

Ubi Caritas Abide With Me The Night Is Wearing Fast Away All The Way My Savior Leads Me Salve Regina Jesu, Joy Of Man’s Desiring Lo How A Rose E’er Blooming Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus Ave Maria Of The Father's Love Begotten

We’ll be revealing the third and final list of ten in a couple of days for your selections. So excited that we are able to do this in such a collaborative way—thank you for participating!

Why hymns / prone to wander

Anyone who knows me or knows my music in recent years knows that I have tried incessantly to reference “Come, Thou Fount” in song after song—obsessively almost, to the point where, when I was writing for Fortunate Fall, my husband (who was managing me then) point blank told me I was overdoing it with the ‘prone to wander’s and the ‘tune my heart’s and the ‘when a stranger’s. Here’s the thing: I think the reason I have been obsessed with referencing those lyrics is because, if I had to boil down my “faith journey”—if I was ever called upon on any given day to give a state of the union when it comes to the affairs of my heart—there is just no other song I can think of that so roundly articulates what is my constant reality. I am in a never-ending cycle of detachment/desolation and subsequent return to intimacy/consolation. The lengths of the various parts of that cycle vary and fluctuate, but the next step never, ever does. One part is always followed by the other part—the valley by the mountaintop, and the mountaintop by the valley up ahead.

Shadowlands. That is my experience of this earth. (another theme I have been fixated with throughout my years of songwriting) Lewis coined the word (I presume? I’ve never heard it anywhere else) in his “The Last Battle”. ‘There was a real railway accident,’ said Aslan softly. ‘Your father and mother and all of you are – as you used to call it in the Shadowlands – dead. The term is over: the holidays have begun. The dream is over: this is the morning.’

I go through these stages as a person where I just desperately want everything to be over. I get tired. I get anxious beyond belief. I get to feeling crazy from all the tiny wounds of life, compounded with the immensity of the suffering in the entire world around me. Not to get too cheesy early 2000s on you (who am I kidding?? I am totally going to) but I was driving home from a coffee shop today thinking about this hymns record, and why it will be so unutterably healing for me to make it, tears rolling down my face as I listened to Alanis Morissette’s “Thank U” — “how about unabashedly bawling your eyes out? how about not equating death with stopping?”

Confession time.

About three days out of the week, if a stranger walked up to me on the street and asked me “do you believe in Jesus? do you believe he was God? do you believe he is your God now?” —well, I’d have to say “I don’t know.” Hear me out. I intellectually assent to all of those things, and I’ve really just about staked my life on the Creeds of the Church—it’s where I’ve pitched my tent—it’s blessedly Home. And Jesus is a person with whom I am currently living out a long, arduous and ardent relationship. But God in heaven, I struggle to believe. I go through months of feeling blind—of groping around what feels like an unending darkness, grasping after something, anything, that would help me let a little light in. I pray in these times, until I stop. And I do stop. (God help me) The only prayer I end up uttering after weeks and weeks of blindness leading to the inevitable growing

hardness,

I can only find it in my heart to say, “God?”

I hope you know what I mean.

So why a hymns record, then?

I need, desperately and truly, to make this project. This is a gift (I hope) to the Church, but it is also a medicine from God in this hospital we call the Church that I can spend my time singing things I so often struggle to call true. I say a lot at my shows that I write songs to preach to myself, because I need it the most. Making a record of hymns (which will be mostly traditionals but also some originals) will be a way in which I can, once again, nail the stakes of my tent down a little deeper into the ground, arm my heart with words of life, and say to the black vacuum of unbelief,

you will not have me.

Please consider helping with the campaign so that you can help me shape and form this collection. (if you pre-order you get to vote on songs!)

I’ll close with this.

Here are some lyrics from a new song I wrote for this album, inspired by the martyrs in the Middle East in recent times. When we get to 100%, I’m going to post a recording of it for pledgers.

Jesus, the very thought of You

it fills my heart with love.

Jesus, You burn like wildfire and I am overcome.

Lover of my soul even unto death:

Even unto death may I love You.

Jesus, You are my sweetest hope,

And You my prize shall be:

Jesus, You are my glory now and in eternity. Lover of my soul even unto death:

Even unto death may I love You.

Lover of my soul even unto death:

Even unto death may I love You.

I hope and pray these words will be true of me. But for the grace of God go I.

(this, in addition to being Rembrandt’s Prodigal Son, is a hint about the record’s title, which I have not yet announced, by the way)

More about this record of hymns I’m doing...

...you guys. We are already 18% funded as of now and I can not CAN NOT express adequately how grateful I am. I have been excited and nervous for days, which today has manifested in my spilling hot sauce, salsa, and grilled chicken juice on myself. At separate times, but in the same shirt. Yeah...so if you see me walking around Nashville today, you’re welcome for the look I am currently rocking. Because, grilled chicken juice.

I just wanted to offer a little more information about the record. It is currently untitled, but it will be named something other than hymns. I have one favorite idea, and I just need to be sure it is the perfect title before I announce it. I am passionate and excited and inspired about tackling the challenge set before me here with as much creativity as I can—I want to respect the time-honored musical traditions of the various streams of Church music I love, while still doing something artistic. I think that’s a unique provocation that doing a hymns records presents, and although it is daunting, it feels like something incredibly worth doing. So thank you from the bottom of my heart for helping me do this. I produced Fortunate Fall and Death, Be Not Proud myself. They were both amazing experiences and I learned a lot on the job (though probably not as much as I wish I had!) but this time I am co-producing with Dan James (check out his unreal music here) because I felt like he could help me take what could easily turn into a really sleepy record, and make it the opposite. I want to make something that is dynamic, deep, and rich; something that takes you from heights of transcendence to the smallest moment of whispered intimacy. That’s a tall order and I didn’t think I could do it on my own. So Dan’s going to help me. We go into production on this starting May 12. It’s a first for me, not to have the tracklist completely selected going in—it’s an adventure for everyone, not in the least myself. Thank you so much. And if you haven’t pre-ordered yet, you still have time to get in on hymn selection and get two instantly downloadable hymns from me today! (All The Way My Savior Leads Me and Ubi Caritas).

Love to you. This is a great day...chicken juice and all.

#Audrey Assad #hymns

I’m making a new record!!!

I'm making a new record you guys!! Hymns! :) If you pre-order it, you can help me pick the songs and the artwork. Check it out here—I am SO excited! http://www.pledgemusic.com/projects/audreyassad …

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