TheDivineNOW

Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch

2011-08-25T00:11:00.000-07:00

At the end of last year, I decided to take time off from live gigs. My band was feeling old and worn out to all of us and the spark had left us. My stated intention was to begin playing live again in the fall. It was closer to the truth to say I had no intention of gigging with the Mark Archambault Combo again. I had gone from singing the blues with passion and conviction to halfheartedly "whining" the blues. A few months ago my friend Rob Curcio volunteered to play bass if I wanted to play out. Drummer Mike Brennan completed the package and we were ready to rehearse.

What was still missing was a spark of inspiration. "What kind of music do you guys want to play?" was my question to them. "It's your band, you figure it out", was their answer.

It is up to me to pick the music that is played before and after church at Aldea. One Sunday I threw on a Motown's greatest hits CD and watched as the room lit up. People of all ages were tapping their feet and singing along to these wonderful songs. Rob said this was the music we should be performing. I already have several original tunes that fit the style. Now with the inspiration firmly in place, we are off and running.

Our first gig is in two weeks and we are excited about the music. It feels great to be singing songs by The Temptations, The Four Tops, Supremes, Aretha Franklin, Sam & Dave, Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes, Marvin Gaye, Wilson Picket, Jackie Wilson, Ben E King, Ray Charles... I LOVE PLAYING MUSIC AGAIN!!!!

Please do me the favor of visiting our ReverbNation account and seeing us live. I promise you will have a great time shaking your booty and singing along.

May the Lord bless and keep you,

Mark

Grace + Power

2011-03-08T20:50:00.000-08:00

My wife and daughter are sick of hearing me talk about it. Yesterday Micquette asked me "What are you?" I dodged the question. "well, what are you?" she continued. I had just finished making her a grilled cheese & Spam sandwich. I started singing the Spam song from Monty Python. "Spam, spam, spam, spam, lovely spam, wonderful spam..." She looked at me like I had two heads. I am pretty sure she does not know about Zaphod Beeblebrox, so I took it to mean she doesn't get it. Before she can ask again, I YouTube the Spam Song to enlighten her. That is the problem with her being ten years younger than I am, she lacks the cultural upbringing my generation had.

"I have not forgotten the question. What are you?" She smiles, I smile, we smile. "I don't know", I finally reply. "I no longer know what to call myself. I have spent countless hours reading about beliefs, dogma, ideas, etc. I have been watching Christian television and listening to my own old sermons. Late at night, while the house is asleep, I am up reading the bible, Strongs Concordance, books by Dan Millman, Robin Sharma, Thomas Merton, William P. Young, Richard Bach and anyone else that may shed new light. Micquette and Kleigh have heard my wonderings and ramblings for years, but the last few months have been more intense, I NEED to break through to this new place, to see it come alive. A new idea is formed in my head. Maybe others have caught on well ahead of me, but it is new to me.

Grace
"For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men." Titus 2:11

After years of thought, study and prayer, I believe that the Bible is correct when it says that Jesus was successful in paying the price for the sins of the world. It seams a simple enough statement for a Christian pastor to make. This idea of God being able to do what He says He does is simple, but not popular. The standard church position has shifted away from the Bible teaching that God is light and there is no darkness in Him. Our Heavenly Father has been replaced by something hideous and unspeakably cruel. Instead of unconditional love for all mankind, our God is reported from pulpits around the world to condemn the vast majority of our parents, sisters, brothers and neighbors to an unending torment of separation and pain. Make the wrong choice in the short blip of time we live in and spend eternity in agony. The God I love and the Bible I read have been misrepresented in a most sick way. All this emotional torture may be handy to build man made kingdoms, but it is a false God and a gross twisting of the most beautiful relationship we can have.

"You shall know the truth and the truth will make you free." If the above teaching is the truth, it makes us a mess of conflicting emotions, not free. My relationship with God is based on love, security, mercy, safety and grace.

Power
I seek to live like Jesus. The Jesus I read about in the New Testament healed the sick, made blind eyes see, walked on water, fed thousands of people from a small list of groceries, raised the dead, had conversation with God, lived a supernatural life. Jesus demonstrated the very power of God in everyday situations. I want THAT! I not only want that, but am tired of hearing all the well made arguments as to why I cannot have it. I have seen too many supernatural things in my life to except living a mediocre and spiritually limp faith. I have seen healing, seen miracles, talked to God, known things that only heaven knew. This has been my past and it will continue to be my future.

Grace + Power
All this brings me back to the question: what am I? I have never been in a church that embraced both grace fully and demonstrated the power of God in any real way. I cannot call myself this label or that label, because none of the available labels combine these two elements. If I have missed something in my search, forgive me and send me information. Help me on my journey. In the mean time, I have started a gathering of like minded people on Monday evenings to explore these ideas. If you would like to join me on this journey, I will post the information on my facebook page each week.

Blessings to you,

Mark

Five Things I Do Not Want For Christmas

2010-12-10T17:01:00.000-08:00

I am sitting in a hotel in Alabama waiting for a meeting to begin. My brain cannot handle another thought about the meeting, so…

Five Things I Do Not Want For Christmas

1. Gifts for adults, from adults and by adults.
I probably do need new socks and underwear. Pricey pens and handsome ties are nice. These are all well and good, but it’s Christmas and not a trip through the SkyMall Catalog.

When I was a kid I used to give my pipe smoking father a ceramic ashtray and pipe cleaners for the big day. The ceramic ashtray is a thing of the past. Back then it was the perfect gift for my dad, even if it was kind of cheating. You see, my parents owned a series of retail art stores specializing in ceramics. My life was filled with ashtrays, large vases, 18” high German Shepherds with pink painted tongues, dirty turtles*, etc. The ashtrays were great big, curvy objects of art, not unlike the cars of the 1950’s. Each one weighed five pounds and took up an entire end table. Some even had big lighters or lamps popping out of them. They looked so groovy with the green shag carpet in the living room. This was the 70’s at my house.

Ceramic ashtrays made perfect hills and battlements for my small army men. As soon as dad was gone, I cleaned them (sometimes) and they went into their proper use in the military. No one expected me to get him anything useful or grown up: I was a kid. He was happy: I was happy.

If I had had the money for one of those nifty 23 channel CB radios, that would have been a good gift too. I remember at 19 years of age a buddy of mine and I used an old CB base unit to transmit The Clash and Elvis Costello to the truckers on Rt 14 outside Woodstock Illinois. We had two turntables and a microphone. That’s right: we were rebels with a pirate radio station. At 10 or 11, my dad would have grounded me for such foolishness. The way I looked at it, any Christmas gift had to do double duty: first my dad had to have some use for it, and then I would figure out its proper function in this world. As for the pipe cleaners, if you are under the age of thirty you probably have no idea what I am talking about. Dad and I would spend countless minutes making animals and people out of them, posing our creations on his proud, shiny, new ashtray. He could always unbend them later and use them.

My son is nine and in Cub Scouts. The day he joined was a cause for dancing in the streets. Now, in my late forties, I can re-live all the things I probably didn’t get around to when I was in Scouts. I bought an extra copy of his book and have read it cover to cover once a week for a month. We take time to play together like never before. I have a great excuse: he needs badges! He needs badges and I am just the man to make sure he does it by the book. His being in Scouts is like Christmas for me.

Next time you have the urge to get me something for Christmas, make it fun.

2. A $1000 Yak
Last week I was in the Wagon Wheel, Picture Rocks Arizona’s’ answer to Starbucks, when the gentleman to my right started swearing about his 19 year old, estranged son. It seems the young man lives in another state and is undeserving of a gift. I cannot tell you why, but I know it involves much use of the F-word to get the point across properly. Maybe the kid used his iPod and a 23 channel CB radio to broadcast Snoop Dogg and the Juno soundtrack to truckers on I10 in El Paso? My new friend has decided to give the gift that keeps on giving: a $1000 Yak. He ordered another round and explained, there is an organization he supports that takes your money, buys livestock, gives it to someone in a developing country and does it all in the name of the loved one of your choice. The virtual beasts run from a $25 chicken to the grand slam $1000 yak. I think this is a fine idea, I really do. Maybe you can donate a duck to Henry in France for me some year. After much thought, however, I do not want a $1000 yak in my name this year. What if your beneficence goes awry and it ends up at my house by mistake? My neighbors would be OK with it, I’m sure, but my daughter would want to keep it and we are out of spare animal room at the Arkabaulds.

3. Anything pertaining to Justin Bieber, Dancing With The Stars, Americas’ Got Talent, Star Search, Solid Gold, ect.
Nuff said.

4. Books on Religion.
I know I am a pastor, I love Spirit with all my heart. My reason for not wanting books on religion runs like this: imagine if you will, you know somebody: let’s say your spouse. You know this person really well. You talk to them daily. They talk to you. You have a sweet, loving relationship. Like all relationships, yours’ has its’ ups and downs. Now, someone writes a book about that person. They write it about how he/she was in high school. This book tells every bit of information the author could get their hands on about the way he/she acted then. There is even a section about the future. The writer states, based on the past actions of the subject, this is how they will act in the future… At the end of the book you know more facts, but do you know this person? Now I know my wife, she is able to express herself to me with no problem. She changes a little from day to day. She takes life on a case by case basis. In order to work with her on our life together, I have to communicate directly with her. I can learn a lot from Max Lucado or Dan Millman. They bring many things into a wonderful perspective. If they were writing books aboutmy wife, Micquette, I would probably read the first few. It is more important to me to deal directly with source. If you have a book you really want me to read, I will, but I am setting aside this year to get to know Spirit one on one. “Come, let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds.” Hebrews 10:24. Just God and me, not Spirit and me and a duck and a yak.

5. World Peace
It would be a great gift, but the maintenance would break me.

Happy Christmas, Hanukkah , Kwanzaa, Boxing Day, New Years…

May you know Spirit- Breaker, breaker One-Nine, you got the Holy Hauler, come back.

Mark Archambault

*ceramic turtles with genitalia on the bottom. Innocent enough from the top, but turn them over and… SURPRISE!

The Secret Life of Hubcaps- A (re)Collection

2010-09-15T00:25:00.000-07:00

This was the original intro to this book

The Secret Life of Hubcaps

A (re)Collection

I’m home, lost my job and I’m incurably ill. You think this is easy realism?*
I traveled 4600 miles in two weeks. If I had been pointed in one direction, I could be in Quito Ecuador by now, but instead I am back home in Tucson. Parts of me went with. Parts of me are all that ever go with. Some of me stayed in Tucson. I visited a large chunk of me in the Midwest. Some parts are scattered and move about in other peoples pockets. Pizzas get sliced and grabbed. Cards are cut and passed from hand to hand. A soul, my soul, would be better off in one piece. All the Kings horses, all the Kings me... The Kings me. The King is me? I don’t think so. If I really am the king, I will find a magic wand and hit myself in the head so hard that I wake up a week later. I will banish the fear, doubt and sadness from my kingdom. My thrown will be the front seat of a moving car, the sun shining in the window as I drive far from each heartbroken subject. I’ll gladly reign as an enlightened despot, fitting the bits of me back into a single soul, The soul: Mind, Will, Emotions. A set of molecules vibrating in unison at the correct speed to produce a single unified Mark Steven Archambault. At this time, however, I am not the King, not even A king. I am just pieces of a handsome man, looking for the rest of himself to catch up as I dance my Humpty dance. I am a DJ, I am what I play. I got believers, believing me.*

This is a collection of song lyrics, magazine articles, short writings, excerpts of two books and a tract I once paid to publish in a newspaper. I have added fresh writings to draw it together. The sole (pun intended) point of this assemblage is to bring me in focus to myself. I, like so many people at my age, would like to know how I got here. What choices led to this place and what choices lead away from here?

Furries was a novel designed to get almost every twisted thought out of my head. I discovered I was kind of funny, At the time I had no way of knowing it would end a 22 year marriage. This would not have stopped me, but it is the case. A choice.

Manna: A Journey into Prophetic Song is a collection of true stories from my first great spiritual awaking. Life has been a blending of spirits, music, voices from another place, voices from a larger town. Whereas Furries is a series of real misadventures wrapped in a fictional story, every word of Manna happened. Supernatural events that shaped my life . I have chased the Spirit and It has captivated me. A choice.

Pastor, musician, writer, artist, husband, dad, hero and villain. All these things are choices. The choices that have torn my soul and left me wandering.

As for the title, The Secret Life of Hubcaps, I had a dream a few months ago. In it I wrote this book and this was the title in the dream. Being ever mindful of the need for speed, balanced with a confusing and often overwhelming schedule, I am working on it now. The names have been changed in all the stories, details blurred, for a more complete run down see the chapter titled Furries Introduction.

Angels, Demons, Queen Bees and coffee stains: welcome to my (re)Collection.
August 2009

*David Bowie "I Am A DJ"

Bourguet Home

2010-09-14T11:42:00.001-07:00

Micquette and I spent this last weekend in Monticello New Mexico. Monticello is a semi-ghost town of 100 souls on a dead-end dirt road West of Truth or Consequences. We found the school her grandmother attended, her great-grandparents graves, a fire house dedicated to James Bourguet (her great-grandfather). Across from the fire house, we had a long conversation about the area with a member of the historical society. The village, nestled in a peaceful valley, is a time capsule of the 1880's.

Driving North-West out of town, we crossed a wash lined by large Cottonwood trees. The word "Idyllic" ran through my head as the trees swayed in the breeze. "That's it, that's my great-grandparents house." Micquette's smile lit up the car. Under the trees, sheltered by a hill, stood what was left of an adobe house, it's blocks returning to the earth through rain and wind. We crawled under a barbed wire fence and stepped back in time. Over 100 years ago, her family built this home and filled it with dreams, hope and lots of children. I walked around the broken walls, listening to the story of a couple creating something from nothing. Creating family. The house had been home to a lifetime of memories. I looked through every tree for the fort that all boys build. We saw glass jars and a long abandoned refrigerator.

After James died, his wife Guadalope moved away. The structure had done its job. The kids were all adults. Micquette's grandmother, Lucia became a teacher, a wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother... She lived in Silverbell Arizona: now a true ghost town. A week does not go by without someone telling Micquette a story of how Lucia impacted their life. Lucia's daughter/Micquette's mother, Lu became a teacher and, for thirty years, shaped countless minds and hearts with passion. The family of James and Guadalope Bourguet goes on and on, changing lives.

If you ever go to Monticello, drive out through the cottonwoods west of town. Just before the road dead-ends, lays the broken shell of a house on the right. The structure is empty: it's useful life over. Looking at the front door may see nothing special. Out of this doorway came a family that has changed their world. A legacy of honor, hope and faith walks from that door ever day.

It does not matter what your name is, where you come from or what you have had to overcome. You can make a decision to create something from nothing. You can send a dynasty out from your doorway. Jesus looked at them and said, "With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible." Matt 19:26. Now it's our turn. As for me and my God, we will send out life, creativity, hope, healing, faith and love from our doorway.

May the Lord make His face shine on you,

Mark

Half An Hour

2010-09-07T16:08:00.000-07:00

The Secret Life Of Hubcaps

Half an Hour

I have given myself 30 minutes to write something. OK, first thing that pops into my head… a guy in a goose suite, maybe it’s a duck, I’m not sure. The kind of farm animal with a white body and yellow bill. Walking on a green grassy hill. The sky is very blue and the clouds are very white and fluffy. There is a split rail fence and sheep milling about in the area.

What I have just written does not connect to anything else in my life. My computer and desk have taken over the dining room table again. My real desk is twenty feet away, clean and ready for action.

Five dogs, three turtles, two birds, a rabbit and a fish are all within the same twenty feet. Nobody moves. I understand the Mexican concept of siesta. It is 4pm and they have all been asleep for an hour. I would like to be asleep, but I have to go to a recording session and have no time for a nap.

Sleep, sLeep, slEep, sleEp, sleeP… sounds wonderful. My ride won’t be here for 25 minutes. Sleep. Maybe just a brief nap: a power nap. Edison did it and look how he turned out. My bed is within 20 feet of me. The rabbit doesn’t care if I nap. None of the dogs would tell. Hhhhmmmm. Sleep.

I guess I didn’t need all 30 minutes to write after all.

Micah Pt. 01 My Name Is Micah

2010-09-02T20:27:00.000-07:00

The Secret Life of Hubcaps

Four- My Name Is Micah

Once upon a time, in a city not too far from here, in a large office, in a tall building, behind a bulky desk sat a man named Big. “Find me another one, a prophet, psychic, seer… I don’t give a damn what you call it, find one NOW!” Big is handsome. The kind of handsome that raises the serotonin levels in everyone he meets. He is smart, graceful, always on the edge of a smile. Today he is not smiling. He is, however shining. Today Big is glowing with a light bordering on flame. A single drop of sweat lands on the desk in front of him. Steam rises off his temple.

The air in the room is brittle. A wrong move can break us all to pieces. I have not taken a breath in minutes. Static electricity jumps from person to person. Outside the noise of the crowd is deafening. Here, in this perfect place of class and style, it is a low roar. Right now no one in this room admits the world exists. It has ceased to turn on its axis. Evaporated into nothingness, banished from the space occupied by Big.

My right hand shakes, just a little. There is no need to hide it, as I know no one can see me in his glow. His eyes are waves, pulling me along in the undertow and pushing me away as they crash onto my shore. Now he is all about me. “Tell me everything you know about your ‘so called’ prophet.” The others use this as a chance to escape. Before I feel sorry for myself, I remember that when this is over, I will go home. They all have to come back tomorrow for another red tide.

“A busker is a street musician: someone that works for tips. You can find them in front of the Art Institute or the hallways at O’Hare.” My voice squeaked; this is not a good start. He knows this part, I’m sure. Still, he says nothing, so I go on. “I heard about her on Craigslist; the discussion boards were full of hype. ‘Micah told me the future or Micah healed my dog…’ Nothing BY Micah, who would follow someone that posts their God like qualities online? There was certainly a lot about her.” I settle into my chair as the urge to pee dies down.

“I have never had the need to believe in anything. If I was going to follow an idea or a person, Craigslist would be a poor place to start. Guess I was looking for something to write about other than payoffs and politics.” Big shows his legendary ‘I care about what you have to say’ face. I become Hervé Villechaize to his Ricardo Montalban. He drops the intensity down a notch, but remains Khan, not Mr. Roarke.

“She was trying to play a song in a pizzeria on North Clark when I finally met her.It sounded like Smoke Stack Lightning as sung by KT Tunstall. In a few more months, she would have been somebody’s ‘Next Big Thing’, with or without me. I decided I would do it myself. No matter how many times I searched online, I could not find a photo of the already semi-famous singing prophet. I expected to find someone in white robes, swaying to a sitar and sitting in the Lotus position. I found her engaging and alert. She laughed easily then. As you know, that would change. How can this Holy Wonder Gyrl be playing an out of tune guitar in a faded summer dress? She needed a marketing firm to win the world. I was too happy to help.”

“I sat at a table in my own little world. …or should I say, ‘her own little world’. Her voice was a high alto as she sang.”

My name is Micah
I was born in 1982
In the city of dreams and the Lincoln Park Zoo
Sometimes I know things
A voice from nowhere talks to me
I see things that others do not see

I Will Not Close My Eyes

Semi-Pornographic

2010-08-30T19:26:00.000-07:00

The Secret Life of Hubcaps

Three- Semi-Pornographic

I once wrote a semi-pornographic book. I didn’t do it to write a pornographic book, but rather to allow myself to write what was inside at that moment. What was inside at that moment was a sense of humor that went unused while I was in seventh grade and needed to come out. I had been in a repressive situation for years and needed to go too far just to show myself that I could. Too far is a relative term. Too far for me was still fairly mild.

I play in a bar band on the weekend for a similar reason. If you ask me why I play in my blues/soul/rock band, I will tell you it is to keep my chops up for my paying gig. I am an over paid music pastor for my main job. The truth is, I need the opportunity to go beyond self control on a regular basis. I need to know that there is an opportunity to go crazy in a safe non-judgmental environment. If I want to talk trash, I do it there. If I want to play a five minute guitar solo or leave the rhythm section to dance with the crowd, this is my weekly chance. I don’t always do it, but I need to know that the chance is available.

Every few weeks I see someone at these gigs that does not belong. They may be male or female, old or young. They are always after something they do not understand. As a professional people watcher, I understand why they are there. They come to the seedy dive bars where I play to find a part of themselves they think has been stolen. The girl became a mom before she became a woman and her wild years were stolen. How can she know who she is, when her sense of self is defined more by what she does for others? Another person wandering into my world is the dude who was unexpectedly divorced by his wife. She took the kids and he is wondering what the fuck happened as he walks into this dark place, hoping for something to ease the pain of confusion. The pain of confusion is worse than other forms of pain, because there is no way to get at it easily. If I know what hurts and why, I can easily find a way to heal. How can I cut out the pain I cannot pinpoint? What cures the phantom wound?

There is only one thing for it: medication. The treatment for this ailment is found in the affirmation of flirtation. Flirtation becomes the medication. It does not have to be sexual flirtation. It might be someone listening to you that makes you feel worth something. For women it is too often the dogs that prey of the scraps of women. A woman that is not made to feel special at home will have her head turned a dozen times each night by the hungry dogs that wait for anything vaginal to enter the bar. A pretty woman is in danger in this world. For men there is a conveyor belt of people willing to identify with their loss. “When that happened to me…” they say. “They’re all the same.” says a blurry voice two stools down. At some point he hears “Listen, you need to go to that Son of a Bitch and…”. There are only so many variations. All this goes down easier with a few drinks.

After a few months of this, the fresh meat person either sinks into this sad little world, becoming a “Regular” or they come to their senses and go back to salvage what they can of their life. The choice revolves around the strength of the original character. Those with a clear idea of who they are are less likely to be turned by the action of others. I know what they are looking for. They want to know that they are alright. The person they are is becoming something else and they need to know that that person is acceptable to someone. They ironic twist in all this is that while searching for someone to affirm who they are, they become someone new. Invariably the person becomes more like the place they choose to find acceptance and less like the place they came from. Whether this is good or bad is subjective.

As for me, I wrote a semi-pornographic novel. Am I a better person for it? I think so. I, in my new (not as pure) self, think I am a much more compassionate soul. I have grace for the people I meet. Maybe we all need to go crazy now and then.

Momma We’re All Crazy Now.

Mark

Impossible Things

2010-08-30T15:14:00.000-07:00

"Alice laughed: "There's no use trying," she said; "one can't believe impossible things."
"I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."
Alice in Wonderland.

After years of frustration at the difference between my ambition and my accomplishments, a friend suggested that I see a counselor. There was the usual delay with me forgetting to set the appointment for a few months. Eventually I arrived. The Doctor’s office was cramped. Photos and art from India lined the walls. The chair was so comfortable, I almost slept. I cannot remember her name, but I can drive you to her office. If I miss a name, I assume it will show up later on a bill or in an email. Life seems to work like that. For forty-five minutes she asked me questions about work and career cycles in my life.

Sometimes a bell goes off in my head and I learn something important about myself or the other worlds around me. The doctor leaned in and said “Maybe there is another way of looking at your life. A way that takes the negative emotion out of the way you live and work. A way that can set you free of this frustration.” DING!

You see, I KNOW I am capable of, and destined for, something larger than myself. My goal has always been to live a life that is extra ordinary. In many ways, I have lived my dream life. When I was eighteen, I decided I wanted to travel, own a recording studio, write, produce and perform music and to do it all on my terms. It is thirty years down the road and I am living that life. I am living that life with one small hitch: it doesn’t look like I thought it would. It is a case of “be careful what you wish for, you may get it.”

My wife and I have been watching Gene Simmons Family Jewels the past few months. I am pretty sure YesterMe was thinking along those lines: beautiful castle in Los Angeles, big time music tours, fame, etc. It seems likely that those were the things fueling my masturbatory dreams. The whole reverend thing was NOT in my picture perfect world. It has turned out perfect, if not the picture I had in mind. Let’s get one thing straight right here: MY LIFE KICKS ASS.

Somewhere in all this, I never stopped believing six impossible things before breakfast. I see a vision of FutureMe and move toward it. As Marc Bredencamp says “I’m somewhere in the future and I look much better than I look right now.” Doing anything I want in life is made all the more desirable if I am told it is impossible. Impossible just means we haven’t looked at it from enough angles. “I can do all things through Christ, who strengthens me.” Said the Apostle Paul and I am just stupid enough to agree. I am sure I did not know that line at eighteen, but I know I today. I grew up looking at the inspirational posters in the library and believing the slogans. By the time someone told me they were all bullshit, it was too late, it was already a part of me.

My story to the doctor was one of bands, movies, documentaries, books, CDs, publishing companies, non-profit organizations, magazines, churches, and a variety of other projects started from a dream and dropped when some other shiny thing caught my attention. The frustration of it all has driven me to sabotage good situations and spend countless hours in dark rooms looking off into space in fits of depression.

“Have you considered that you may be a Pioneer and not a Settler?” as she explained her theory of me to me, her words sprang to life in my heart. “A Settler comes into a situation and creates order. A Settler manages the growth and the day to day operation of a thing.” She continued “A Pioneer dreams, explores and creates something where there was nothing. You lack follow through on projects because you simply do not care about the long term of the thing. You are curious to see if it can be done. You want the experience of proving to yourself that you CAN do it.” Her words were now exploding in my sole. “As soon as you are satisfied you have beat the challenge you set for yourself, you are off to something else.” She continued “The down side of all this Pioneering is that other people are involved in the achievement: people looking forward to the benefit of this new thing. That’s why you like to work alone. Working alone leaves less people disappointed by your lack of interest in the final result.” She commented that this pattern may only show up in a few areas of my life, but is the dominating influence in those areas. She then gave me a few tools to help work around this issue in my career.

I walked out of her office and was very quiet for about two days. It all made perfect sense, but is it just a cop out for being a slack? I had already spent most of my life beating myself up over a lack of follow through. I have never seen the movie Failure to Launch, but that phrase runs through my self talk. No one can hurt me as completely as I can hurt me. What do I have to lose by looking at my life from a different angle? I long ago embraced the impossible as a life choice.

In the months since that meeting I have decided to come out of the closet. Look at me world: I am a dreamer that, like Don Quixote, is always chasing windmills! I will not be deterred by what is or is not possible. My life does not need to look right to anyone but me. Sometimes I will win and sometimes I will fail utterly. I have found the failures make better stories. 

Mark

The Secret Life of Hubcaps- A Chapter A Day

2010-08-29T02:38:00.000-07:00

The Secret Life of Hubcaps

ONE- A Chapter A Day

Every six months or so, I start/continue writing a book called the Secret Life of Hubcaps. I get a few chapters pulled together and something shiny happens. Something shiny that takes my attention off the book. Often that something is the simple act of remembering some other project I have forgotten about for six months. The cycle goes on and on and I drift along remembering one thing after another. As I have mentioned before in this book, by the time I finish a project, there have been many deaths and many rebirths.

I have books all over my house. Each one has a few chapters read. I vaguely recall the beginning of many, many stories. As I write this, it is 1 am on a Sunday morning and I got out of bed to write. I had been reading a Richard Bach book that I have started several times. This time I made it past the introduction. Something in the few pages I read sparked a thought: What happens if I give myself permission to be who I am and work the way I work? I have been writing songs since Nixon was in the White House. I (almost) always write the same way. The first note comes with the first word. The first line is followed by the second line. A verse or two are followed by a chorus. I arrange the song as I am writing it. I write the way you hear: sequentially. The music comes into my head as a finished piece. In my preteens and teens, I was unable to get out what I heard in my head. My musical journey has been learning to translate the thought into a reality others can hear.

Markology 101- Every song ever written is in existence at all times. Music was created outside of time and is waiting for someone to catch it as it goes by. Every bit of melody, word couplet and so on is energy vibrating in the spiritual atmosphere. This comes through to the rest of us by a person willing to be used. Tin Pan Alley songwriters like George and Ira Gershwin or hard core rockers like Kip Winger are all feeding off the same source: energy. It is a thought from Creator that floats in our collective consciousness until thought again or remembered by an individual. We learn to receive or hear the thoughts that appeal to us as “writers”. I can improvise a song and call it Manna and say God created it or I can “write” a song and call it the brilliant work of the Reverend Mark Steven Archambault © 2010 Humnal Music ASCAP. It really is all the same. It is like a microphone and a speaker. Vibrations move a diaphragm (microphone), it becomes energy and that energy in turn moves a diaphragm (speaker). Spirit creates a vibration (song), it is vibrating in us until someone amplifies it by receiving and playing/singing it again.

When a song comes to me, I do not write it down unless I feel I have it completely. If I have not received the whole of it, I let it go. When it is ready for me, it will come back to me. For years my life was filled with notebooks of lyrical bits that I might use someday. That day never came. When I looked back at things unfinished, they made no sense to me. They were not yet complete. The burden of carrying every half cocked idea from my waking existence became too much for me. When I moved from Wisconsin to Arizona in 2004 I burned over fifty notebooks. It is now a matter of faith with me. If I never write another song or book or whatever, so what? I went for a few years with no new songs and rarely thought about it. Surely if Spirit wants me to have a song, I will have a new song. They drop out of a clear blue sky when I am thinking about other things. Driving seems to produce the best ones. Doing dishes is another song generating activity. When I had a lawn mower, and a lawn to mow, I cranked out tunes every week. The point is that the song is already there. Bringing it into our world is about relaxing and trusting that I will receive.

I used to listen to NPR religiously every day. For a complete list of why I no longer do that, buy me a few beers and get me started. On Public Radio there was a program called Chapter A Day. I loved it. A book was read aloud one chapter a day. It was a model of simplicity. One thought laid out after another in sequence. The shiny thought that ran through my head at the top of this page was simple: why not write a book the way I write songs? Front to back, start to finish? What do I have to lose? Who am I trying to please? I can write one chapter a day without editing or attempting to pull it all together. To the best of my knowledge exactly 16 people have heard my original music and only slightly more than that have read my published articles. Given that no one is beating down my door begging for my thoughts, I can be free to be honest with me, about me and for me. No one else will care because, well... no one else cares. Not unless those 16 drooling music fans tell two friends each. At that point it could become chaos right here in Picture Rocks.

So here goes, a chapter a day. Check back in a month and see how I am doing.

Mark

A Loud Pop!

2010-07-05T20:43:00.000-07:00

You may have heard a loud “POP” this morning as it rang throughout southern Arizona. It was the sound of my head dislodging from my buttocks.

It happens on an all too regular basis. I am going along in a somewhat forward manner, happily ignoring the obvious signs of an eminent crash, and I remember. Remember what? Remember that I have been down this road before. A few years shy of forty, I felt Spirit guide me to a book, Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki . I had never read a book about money before. I had made lots of it and kept almost none of it.

“My people perish for lack of knowledge" -Hosea 4:6

Before your eyes glaze over, this is not really about money. For the next two years I read everything on money management I could get my hands on. I applied this knowledge to my life and things turned around. Until my divorce, I was a dynamo. Even after, I was ever hopeful and managed to get things going several times, only to watch things crash with each attempt. The problem was never the plan: I have great ideas and lots of them. Something in me failed to follow through. I become distracted and lose sight of the goal. Shame sets in as I kick myself over not doing better. I usually pick things up again later and often times finish what I started, but by the time I have achieved the goal, the energy and joy of it is gone. Usually I just shelve it for good. As I write this I have two documentaries left unedited, a few podcasts unedited, at least four CDs of my own music unmixed, but otherwise finished. I own several domain names and two hosting sites. Yet the only way to find me online is through facebook, twitter, myspace and the Divine Now podcast.

“Is motivation permanent?” The answer is no – but then neither is bathing. Now, just in case you think I’m encouraging you not to bathe, let me assure you that I believe in bathing”. –Zig Ziglar

A few years ago I discovered The Secret. That was also a head popping moment in time. The teaching comes straight from Jesus and so was easy for me to grab onto. I can feel some people tensing up at that last sentence. I will not bother to defend it here. Read what Jesus taught and you will find it. Even if the words are different, the meaning is the same.

The Shack rocked my world and left me crying for days. It is a beautiful voice of grace and a masterwork of theology. Only the Gospel accounts of the last days of Jesus have moved me as deeply. Micquette and I have given away countless copies.

I can feel Spirit pressing on me these past few weeks. Encouraging me to move forward in power. I know the feeling. The signs are forming to guide me. I will move when it is clear which direction to head in. This is not a job or address change. Rather, there is something being made ready for a blessing. Something that, when energy is applied to it, will produce greater gain. In the Charismatic church world, we call this the “Anointing”, God’s special favor on something or someone. It is coming for me. There is nothing I can do to earn it or force it to happen. I do not even know what it is. I’ll let you know as it unfolds.

So what was the loud pop all about today? One of my kids is struggling in school. My smart young mini-me bombed out of a summer school class and hide it from me. Of course I found out. Parents ALWAYS find out. Frustration was my first reaction. Why hide it from me? I took a day to think it over before responding to the news.

After a good night’s sleep, I began to get excited about the possibilities this minor fiasco presents. My mind was soon filling with ways I could help get the grades back up. Instead of anger, I am looking forward to being a help in guiding my student on to better grades and the confidence I know it will give. This grade crashed and burned because my child refused to ask for help. Soon shame set in and it became a secret to be kept from me.

I sat my young one down to have “The Talk” about it all. Seconds before it began, Spirit gave me a picture of my own life. My Heavenly parent stands with outreached arms, excited to guide and help. God is ever ready to give into my need, even as shame and self condemnation keep me from asking for help. Sometimes I need help or information or motivation. Sometimes I need a hug.

We had the talk, sigh. I cried as soon as my kiddo slumped off to lick unseen wounds. All you have to do is ask for help.

All I have to do is ask for help.

May the Lord bless and keep you.

Mark
reverendmsa@hotmail.com

Say Nothing Once ...Tweets I have Twittered

2010-07-02T17:11:00.000-07:00

Follow Mark

Yes I said these things... and here I am saying them again.

Love, once imagined, will impair reason and disrupt thought for life.

"Heaven's walking 'round in me" it's more than a lyric, it is a belief that the Kingdom of God is here and now, breathing through us.

It's a great big, beautiful day!

I am driving over the Hoover Dam with my 15 year old daughter behind the wheel. She has had her permit for one day. Pray for me!

Waiting in line at the DMV to renew my registration. I hit my stop watch when I came in. I'll post the time later.

The more I think about how blessed I am, the more perfect my life becomes.

I woke up thinking of the movie line "what if this is as good as it gets?". I'm fine with that. You?

Today I choose to find Christ, follow Christ and be the spirit of Christ in my world. That is the best I can do.

Say only the truth you wish to see come into your world

I started thanking God while driving and have had to pull over and cry thinking about His love and grace.

This is a test, this is only a test. Had it been an actual Twitter your life would be made better by it.

Today I choose health, today I choose to be the breath of God. Make a choice as to the role you will play in your life today.

I am celebrating the Divine Now, one now at a time.

This is the perfect day to give grace to someone.

A copy of my "Live at Alfie's Pub" CD or download to the closest guess for how long I wait in line at the DMV! Contest ends at 5pm.

I moved from a small town in Wisconsin to the desert just outside of Tucson. I felt a little out of place so I bought a car from the guy next door. After dragging it over to my yard, I put it up on four new cement blocks and now I fit right in.

If you see me today, and I fail to bless you in some way, smile, and we will both be blessed.

I worked today. ...I just want credit for that much.

I found out today that my TV commercials have aired over 5000 times in the last three years!

I Tweeted... and now it's all over Facebook!

Someone asked me yesterday if I treat people as well in real life as I do on Facebook. I wonder...?

I have been in Long Island so long I'm talking funny, like Carl from Aqua Teen Hunger Force.

Today I am handsome.

Find what is perfect about this moment and you have found gold and diamonds.

Take 5 minutes, just 5 minutes, to quiet your mind. Breathe and allow Spirit to remind you of how deeply you are loved.

I am reading The Power of Now. Great book, but I'm so far behind that "Now" for me is sometime after 2012.

Life is dynamic, fluid, always changing. As I celebrate the past and envision the future, I love and cherish you in my life right now.

There is beauty in truth, No matter how it looks at first glance.

I waited 32min 20.9sec at the DMV. Tim Schultz guessed 45 minutes and won Live @ Alfie's Pub

Aren't we forgetting the true meaning of Christmas? You know, the birth of Santa... :-)

What are you waiting for?

About to make a horse shoe pit. The horse next door is looking uneasy.

My son just informed me it is 298 days until his ninth birthday.

You need to hear the voice of God for you and I need to hear the voice if God for me. We both need to trust that this voice is true.

Today is a perfect day. It is the only day I have, so I officially declare it "Perfect".

On my way to Flagstaff AZ. Which is near Winslow, where I may, or may not stand on a corner.

Trouble comes suddenly, but blessings pour out slow & steady.

I started my day reading Shakespeare in the bathtub. I now have the urge to say clever things while wearing tights.

I'm going to sing at church so that others may share in the suffering of our Lord.

Where else but church can you rock out first thing in the morning? Respectable people would still be in bed. :-)

Miracles happen every day. You need to know this so you can look for miracles in your own life.

It's never too late to have a happy childhood. :-)

A note to everyone in the world: I am taking a nap.

Follow me on Twitter here

008 Jose Ravenwing Pt 1 "What a long, strange trip it's been"

2010-06-30T17:25:00.002-07:00

Last year I started a CD with Aldea, last year I started a CD with the Mark Archambault Combo, last year I started a book "The Secret Life of Hubcaps", last year I started a lot of things. On my facebook account I have written "Sometimes the light is shining on me. Other times I can barely see. Lately it occurs to me: what a long, strange trip it's been." So go the lyric to the Grateful Dead song Truckin'. So goes my life.

I have no idea if the book, CDs or anything else I've started in the last few years will ever be completed. I might be the only one who remembers that I once ran a non profit organization promoting awareness of the US Constitution and Bill of Rights. I still have the web site and tapes for a documentary on the subject. I also have a fence half built around my pool. You may now feel sorry for my wife. :-)

One thing I HAVE finished is this, the first of (probably) a four part interview with Josie RavenWing. I will write more about it as we post the podcasts, but check it out. The story gets better as it goes. Listen here
The Divine NOW

Join us on facebook

Follow Josie RavenWing

May The Lord Bless & Keep You,

Mark

Trying to daydream, but my mind keeps wandering

2010-06-26T15:04:00.000-07:00

Space.. the final frontier. These are the voyages of my mind. Things became hectic and I missed a few weeks updating this blog. I had a few technical issues editing the podcast just as life kicked into overdrive. It is now six months later and I am just getting back to editing the interviews for the podcast.

I checked the stats for the podcast a few days ago. I had not looked at it in months. The podcast has had between 40 and 75 downloads a day for months! The long promised Jose Ravenwing interviews will begin uploading this week.

I was in New York in March for a few weeks. I was doing insurance inspections after big storms tore up Long Island. From the moment I was given the assignment, I was on a dead run with little sleep. I flew out of Phoenix the next day and landed with an hour left of St. Patty’s' Day. By 8am I was climbing a ladder to inspect a roof. The next five days are a blur of roofs, reports, downed trees, rain, bad GPS directions, rain, fast food, rain... There came a point where I was ready to fly home and my pay became messed up. No money! I spent three days living in a rented SUV with no money and nowhere to go. This would have been the perfect time to reflect on the Divine Now. It rained hard every day. The wind blew. Instead of seeing the sights, I saw rain. I was on Long Island and am pretty sure it is beautiful. "Pretty sure" because all I saw was a hard driving rain.

One afternoon I was so bored I sat in the SUV watching shopping carts roll around a mall parking lot. The mall was on a hill and the lot had an angle to it. People came out of the store and left carts next to their cars when finished. The carts were caught by the wind and rolled down the hill. This was an affluent area and the carts seemed to know what each car costs. Carts build up speed going downhill and stop short of the 1984 Chevette. Seconds later the cart turns hard left and slams into a shiny 2010 BMW. Cart after cart, Escalade after Porsche, the day wore on. I will skip the Karmic lesson.

Even with this grand entertainment, all I could think of was home. 3000 miles away and dry as a bone, Picture Rocks AZ was where my heart lay. Home seemed like a great idea. In New York, I found the best radio station I have ever heard: 101.9 WRXP FM. That station RULES!!! The song "Home" by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros had just come out. It was on at least once an hour and reinforced my focus. I missed my wife most of all. The voice from the radio sang “Ahh home, let me come home. Home is wherever I’m with you.” Every place I saw made me want to come back with my family and enjoy it with them.

My money was still messed up, but I came up with enough for a ticket from JFK to Phoenix. I returned the SUV and showed up in the airport 24 hours before my flight was due to leave. What I did not understand is that you are not allowed to pass through to the flight area until the day of your flight. This was about 3pm the day before. I slept on a heat vent until the next morning. For four days I had no shower, no bed, my phone died and yet a strange peace had settled. The world began to look like a very different place. Displaced and disconnected, I saw people that are like me, but are not MY people. I spoke to no one. “Ahh home, let me come home…”

Once on the plane, I resorted to my standard flight habit. I fell asleep and stayed asleep as long as I could. When I couldn't sleep I pretended to sleep. I sat in coach between two chatty, happy people. Once home, I slept for three days. I wasn't tired: I was burned out. Burned out, but HOME.

Check out the podcast here.http://aldeamark.hipcast.com/rss/the_divine_now.xml

May the Lord bless and keep you.

Mark

Dancing Days

2009-12-04T22:28:00.000-08:00

You need to hear the voice of God for you and I need to hear the voice of God for me. We both need to trust that this voice is true.

Micquette, the kids and I moved into our new house a few weeks ago and I just set up the television today. I don't watch much TV. I prefer to live life, rather than watch it. You'll notice that rarely are the people on television shown watching it themselves. While searching through a few boxes in my office, I found several VHS tapes of old concerts and sermons. During the 1990's I had a Christian rock band and traveled throughout the mid-west and southern US. I have stacks of cassettes, VHS and DAT tapes with the music and message from church services and concerts.

This afternoon, I popped in a VHS tape labeled simply "Overflowing Cup". http://www.overflowingcup.org/ I am ordained through this wonderfully chaotic church in Beloit Wisconsin. The tape turned out to be a concert by my then band "The Apostolic Groove". I could not remember the event at first. We played a heavy schedule of gigs in the few years leading up to this. The band name those days was "Number 8". In 1997 alone, we performed over 250 times. After about forty five minutes of music, most of which I fast forwarded over, I spend ten minutes talking. Talking to the me here in Tucson AZ. Talking to my future.

Prior to this particular show, I would have told the audience of their need to repent and be saved, given an invitation to come forward and prayed with people as the band played behind me. I did not realize at the time of this taping, but I had already given my last "Alter Call" a year earlier. Their was no invitation to this crowd, just a clear word to future me.

I was married for two decades to someone also in ministry. We had one child, a house in the rolling farm land of Southern Wisconsin, a small construction company to pay for it all and a dream lifestyle. I worked about nine months a year and had the time and money to enjoy the rest of my time. On many levels, it was a perfect life. And yet...

...and yet, I hated working in the construction field. My marriage was an unholy mess and my ideas about God had already changed in ways that would take me a few years to sort out. I was about to have my world ripped apart. What follows are random lines from me that night.

"One time we were baptizing in that tank right over there. The tank is on wheels and was over here at the time. So don't think we were tossing people from the stage to the tank. ALTHOUGH THAT WOULD RULE!! Like dwarf tossing for Jesus. I'm sure I just offended someone. Oh well. Dave had accidentally over filled the tank. A rather large young man was being dunked and, when he went under, the water went everywhere like the parting of the Red Sea. It was SO COOL!!!"

"If you plan on my dunking you, remember, I never charge for ministry. The dunk is free, but if you want me to let you back up you should probably have a $20 in your hand. We always ask the person being baptized if they have anything to say before they go under. This one guy took the mic from me and talked for almost half an hour. He was standing in COLD water. It hurt to watch. I had shrinkage for him. A half an hour of that was painful and funny, all at the same time. Someone asked me why I didn't take the mic away from him. I had a television camera pointed at my face the whole time and it was his moment to shine. I just smiled."

"The whole time I have ministered in this church I have had one simple message. I believe that every person on this earth has the right to hear the voice of God for themselves. You need to hear the voice of God for You and I need to hear the voice of God for me. We both need to trust that this voice is true. It doesn't always look pretty. It doesn't always look right or traditional. Sometimes it can look downright strange. Like starting a church in a bar."

"The Lord works in different ways in different seasons. As He is changing and moving, we need to change and move. We need to trust that the Holy Spirit is working this all like a giant jigsaw puzzle to make it picture perfect."

"As I have said many times, God is not up in heaven wringing His hands worried about how this all works out. He is outside of time, knows the end from the beginning and that has to be good enough for me."

"I say all this because I am entering a season in my life where I have no idea what is going to happen. I'm not being all "spiritual" on you here. I have no clue what happens next and I am afraid. For the first time in my life, I am unsure of everything. Something is about to change, I do not know how and I have no control over it. Nothing makes sense and I find myself laying awake at night wondering."

"When Moses was at the Red Sea, Pharaoh's army was coming up fast and his own people had to be complaining. They were up against it and there was no earthly way it was going to workout for them. Am I the only one that wonders if he wet himself? Because these days I'm right on the verge."

"I am trying to hear and trust the voice of the Lord in my life right now. Speaking for myself, I sometimes judge others harshly for the way their life looks without knowing what is really going on with them. I have no idea what is going on in my own life, let alone anyone else's. Making judgements without knowing all the facts was the original sin of eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good & Evil of Adam and Eve fame, and I am still stumbling over it today. How can we rightly judge anyone or anything without knowing everything? Only God knows. That's why it is better to follow the Voice"

Within a year of these words I had lost my home, my wife, my ministry and my business. No one will ever know how many times I lay on the floor with thoughts of ending it all. Over the next few years I cried enough tears to make the desert bloom. I had moved to Arizona: a place I have come to love, but at the time I considered it Hell's Lobby. Everything was turned upside down and shaken.

My life is very, very different now. God has redeemed the years the locust have eaten (Joel 2:25-29). I am blessed beyond anything I could have hoped for. Those things that consumed my nights with worry a few years ago are all gone. Just shadow, not real terror.

I posted the line from the top of this page on facebook this afternoon. Someone commented, asking if it was from a song. I guess it is in a way: the song of my life. The one thing I was able to hang on to, when everything else around me failed, was hearing the voice of God and following that voice. My ex-wife used to tell me that if I thought God was telling me to jump off a cliff, I would. She was right, only if it was something that would harm me, it wouldn't be that voice speaking.

I used to think "Hope deferred makes the heart grow sick" was my life verse. It seemed everything was just slow and painful. Galatians 6:9 says, "Let us not grow weary in well-doing, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart." That's another way of saying "hang in there, it gets better." I hung in there and it's true when it says "Surely we will come again rejoicing." ... and don't call me Shirly.

I wrote a song before everything went bad. A song, also speaking to the me of today from the me of the past. Here are the words:

These are the days after my heart's been melted like wax by the holy fire of the risen Lord

I have been burned down, a city left in ruins, but I have been lifted up by the hand of the Lord

Dancing days are here again

Pass me the tambourine, I want to dance before the Lord

If the Lord had not been on our side when men attacked us

When their anger flared against us, they would have swallowed us alive

The flames would have engulfed us, the torrent would have swept over us

The raging waters waters would have swallowed us alive

Dancing days are here again

Pass me the tambourine, I want to dance before the Lord

hear it here www.myspace.com/moremark

The painting you see here hangs in my dinning room and was done by artist Kyle Reinbold of Beloit WI. I know him from my days ministering at the Cup. Check him out at http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000188717805

Until next time

May the Lord bless and keep you, May He make His face shine on you

Mark

http://aldeamark.hipcast.com/rss/the_divine_now.xml

Seems Like Christmas To Me

2009-12-02T10:55:00.000-08:00

Seasons Greetings!!!

In my adult life, Christmas has been something I give serious thought to from December 24th through 4pm, December 25th. I love the shopping, lights, music, tree and all the rest of the goodness of the day. At 4pm, my mind switches to other things and I am done. When my son, Justin came along, I added about three weeks to the front end of the season and have enjoyed it.

Last spring, Micquette and I married. We now have five kids between us. Suddenly Christmas has meaning for me. The world is a more innocent place. I look at the house and see where the tree will go. I am anxiously awaiting the opening of Winterhaven (http://www.winterhavenfestival.org/). I even wrote a Christmas song! That's a first.

My wife and I are both passionate people. Passion for politics, passion for faith, passion for life. Her passionate ideas do not always agree with my passionate ideas. This makes for some very, um... PASSIONATE conversations around our house. The one thing we try to remember in all this passion is to put faith, hope and love before our ideas.

This is from the Kevin Smith film Dogma (a movie I refused to watch when it first came out because I had heard it was blasphemous):

Rufus: He still digs humanity, but it bothers Him to see the sh*t that gets carried out in His name - wars, bigotry, televangelism. But especially the factioning of all the religions. He said humanity took a good idea and, like always, built a belief structure on it.

Bethany: Having beliefs isn't good?

Rufus: I think it's better to have ideas. You can change an idea. Changing a belief is trickier. Life should be malleable and progressive; working from idea to idea permits that. Beliefs anchor you to certain points and limit growth; new ideas can't generate. Life becomes stagnant.

I'll leave you with the words to my new Christmas song. I'll add this on to one of the Divine NOW Podcasts soon. I "believe" I'll have a great Christmas this year.

Seems Like Christmas To Me

(Archambault)

I hear "Walking in a Winter Wonderland"

Blasting from an open top Jeep

Seems like Christmas to me

Plastic snowmen in the sand

And lights on a cactus tree

Seems like Christmas to me

I know Santa will find my double-wide

Stocked with cookies and cake

Where the coyotes howl out "Deck the Halls" and "Jingle All the Way"

Quails are dancing in the yard

Snakes rattle out the beat

Seems like Christmas to me

Mistletoe hangs from a mesquite tree

As I kiss you tenderly

Perfect Christmas to me

Seems like Christmas to me

May the Lord bless and keep you,

Pastor Mark S. Archambault

Man in a Maze

2009-11-28T15:43:00.000-08:00

There is a symbol found on t-shirts, bumper stickers and rocks here in Arizona: the Man in a Maze. I moved to a small desert community, seemingly by chance, a few years ago after spending most of my life in the great mid-west of the United States.

I've always been fascinated by place names. One of my first stops at any place I have lived is the reference section of the local library. What went into the making of this new place? What history shaped it? Why are things named "Lost Mill Road" or "Capstone Alley"? Names are important in that they tell you much of what people were thinking about at the time. I began asking what and where about Picture Rocks as soon as I moved here. The what was easy, everyone here knows there are pictographs on rocks in the Saguaro National Park. I live on the edge of it as I am writing this. It was three years before I found someone that could tell me "where" they are. Heck, they are at a picnic area in the park. Picture Rocks (the town)is a little like Green Acres without the hot babe living on the farm. My running joke has been: I moved to this little community in the desert a few years ago and felt like I didn't belong. After much thought, I bought an old truck from my neighbor, dragged it to my house, put it up on a fresh set of cement blocks... and now I fit right in.

These rock art drawings never fail to move me. Just as I am reaching out to my world through this blog, someone thousands of years ago was reaching out to me. My eight year old Justin and I have been to these rocks many times. This morning he asked me to go again. I have returned from our picnic with renewed wonder.

I have two "real" jobs: I am a pastor and an independent insurance adjuster. I'm the guy that takes pictures of your house after the pipe burst or the fire. I was on my way to a suburb of Phoenix last summer when my GPS did what my GPS does: got me good and lost. iPhones look flashy, but are often no trade for a map. I was looking for an address and the GPS guided me off the I10 well before the town I was looking for. Soon I was on a one lane dirt road that was knocking fillings loose and beating my poor car to pieces. The end result was almost twenty miles at ten miles an hour, only to find a very rusty barbed wire fence strung across the road. I had been in a national park for miles without realizing it. Why, you say, did I go down such a mess of a road in the first place? Because in Arizona, it is very common to find dirt paths pretending to be respectable boulevards. The road I live on in Picture Rocks is dirt. Unlike my beloved mid-west, roads are what you call them here, and not a standard you can count on.

All this bumping and jarring (while listening to Calexico, I love them) created a very spiritual desire to pee. I stopped in the middle of the road, no one had been on it in seventy-five years anyway, so what the heck. While enjoying my communion with nature, I looked up and saw the most beautiful pictographs I have ever seen. I reached for the accursed iPhone and snapped pictures happily for several minutes.

Three hours later I found the house I was trying to inspect. It was the next day while doing my insurance report that I looked closely at the photos of the rocks. The rock background of The Divine NOW logo is one of these rocks. I have thought of how the Spirit draws us into sacred moments. As the prophet John Lennon wrote "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans." God finds us where ever we are.

I was in a New Age bookstore with Micquette in Sadona AZ last week. She loves that stuff. She was excitedly showing me some gadget and I smiled. She said "I know, training wheels." I am interested in how people connect with Spirit, whatever form that takes. Yet, for me, it has always been very easy: I just ask. She has heard me say many times that we don't really need Ouija Boards, Tarot cards, $500.00 prayer lines, Psychics or Prophets. All we have to do is ask. Those things may get the conversation going, but there is no need to hang onto training wheels forever. Just ask! Spirit is not hiding or requiring us to come through special people or through that item we just payed $200.00 for. Just ask and be willing to listen.

There, I just wrecked several million dollar business'. Man in the Maze is a representation of a person standing at a maze looking for meaning and Spirit. There is a center or goal and then there is another path off of that. This path is the after life. May you find the center of your journey and be blessed along the way. At the end of the day it's between you and Spirit and everything else just clouds the issue.

Mark Archambault

http://aldeamark.hipcast.com/rss/the_divine_now.xml

Josie RavenWing Inteview

2009-11-21T14:08:00.000-08:00

Josie RavenWing is fascinating. I have been interviewing her all afternoon. The conversation is so interesting I don't want it to end. This woman has had a life truly worth living. This podcast has almost not happened. Everything that can go wrong... has.

Yesterday I was in prayer when Spirit showed me an email on a computer screen. The sender said "God" and the Subject was "Today". The email was dated 21 November 2009, today's date. In the vision, I opened the email and all it said was "Today". That captured my attention.

We were scheduled to do this interview last night. That didn't happen. We started again this afternoon. First my mixing board was giving me a fit. Then we recorded almost 45 minutes of interview when my computer screen went blue. The Blue Screen of Death! I use Sony software for audio and video work and it always saves the audio somewhere and allows retrieving the work after a crash. "Always" didn't work this time. The audio is nowhere to be found. A riveting story was lost and Josie had poured much energy into it.

She graciously agreed to start over from scratch. By this time it was obvious that her work was going to take two podcasts. As I type this, we are taking a break between interviews and will begin again in a few minutes. I am shaking and feel weak. The Spirit is so strong in the room I am almost overcome. POWERFUL is the only word I can think of. Her energy and sweet spirit are palpable.

There is something special about this interview. I will do my best to have it online in the next week. Look for the podcast at http://aldeamark.hipcast.com/rss/the_divine_now.xml

In the mean time, please follow these links to Josie's work.

http://www.healingjourneys.net/

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=583012162&ref=mf

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=67362583337&ref=mf

Blessings

Mark

www.MySpace.com/MarkArchambault

005 Bringing Golem To Life:Jewism Mysticism Through Music

2009-10-30T17:54:00.000-07:00

Isreali composer, musician Jonathan Keren talks about his life and work.

Podcast 005 http://aldeamark.hipcast.com/rss/the_divine_now.xml

You can reach Jonathan at http://www.jonathankeren.com/

After our interview, Jonathan sent me the following email-

Thank you!
It was only after we finished our conversation that I realized I could have elaborated on an interesting aspect of the piece: The 6 texts I used (inspired by Jewish mysticism) were chosen carefully by me, and they all have something to do with music or language (or a combination thereof). I wanted the texts to be deep and beautiful, of course, and interesting for me to set to music- but also to have a connection to what I was doing- writing a piece of music about the mysticism of music....
I am attaching the texts, and some explanations about the piece- either just for your own curiosity, or if you wish, to put online...If people who heard the interview would like to see the texts for themselves, they will be able to if you add a link to the attachments I am sending you.

On The Bridge Of Words- Notes About the Piece

On The Bridge Of Words was commissioned by the Koussevitzky Music Foundation in the Library Of Congress and the 92nd Y in New York. The occasion for which the work was commissioned was a concert featuring pianist David Greilsammer and Ensemble SuedamA, which sought to present philosophical and musical connection between Freemasonry and the Jewish Cabbala. I was given complete freedom in composing this piece, apart from the fact it had to feature a narrator (and therefore text had to be chosen); and it had to have a distinct connection to the Cabala.
The Cabbala, for me and for many others, feels infinite and untouchable. The subject of mysticism fascinates me, but in order for an artist to create their own paraphrase on a given subject, they need to study that subject with profundity and care...and in the case of the Cabbala, maybe even a lifetime would not be sufficient.
Confronted with this conflict on the one hand, and my enthusiasm about writing the piece (and fascination with the subject) on the other, I started with acquiring the very basics of Cabbala. The　commission required a text, and thus the piece could not be an abstract work, which can be inspired by a preexisting text or by abstract ideas. My idea from the start, rather then dealing with primary Cabbalistic sources, which are often indecipherable, was to focus on secondary sources, namely literary works that are inspired by Jewish mysticism. This would create a triangular relationship between the original Cabbalistic texts, the writers inspired by them, and finally the composer, looking at the two from a distance, from a different era.
In my research I explored the extent to which the Cabbala has influenced and inspired writers and philosophers for centuries, from Jewish poets and writers in medieval Spain, through Kafka, Freud and Yung, Bashevis-Singer and the latest generation of Hebrew literature in Israel. At the same time I investigated the history of music in early Judaism, possible connections between Cabbala and music, and the way music is viewed in different Cabbalistic sources. This research, which went on for a few months, helped me not only in choosing the text for the piece, but also conceiving its structure.
The seven lower　Sefirot　(the attributes) in the Cabbala correspond to the seven days of the week, the seven stars in our solar system, but also, according to some scholars, to the seven notes in the diatonic scale. There is also a correspondence between the ten attributes and the instruments that were used in the temple in Jerusalem. I decided to find different texts, each one corresponding in character to a different attribute, and each one is based on a different note in the diatonic scale.　　
Six texts were chosen, but there is a seventh one, which consists of a mix of all other text- a Cabbalistic idea in itself.
As for the actual sources, I chose text that deal with music and language, which adds another layer to the Cabbala- inspired text- composition relationship. They do have, in my opinion, a distinct mystical flavor. From the selection of texts I used, I should just mention one curious detail: two of the writers of the texts I chose, Franz Kafka and S.Y. Agnon, read the Book of Dreams by Rabbi Nachman of Breslow, and both were deeply influenced by it. Especially for Kafka, this book was the spiritual gate to Jewish mysticism. Although S.Y. Agnon denied that there was any influence of Kafka on his work (in fact, he claimed he did not know it very well, and the little he know did not speak to him) there are some striking similarities in the writing of the two- and because of this special connection I chose texts by these three writers.　
Jonathan Keren

Here are the texts

THE TEXTS
　
I spend my life working with thoughts. And one problem that gives me no rest is: do these thoughts ever rise to the heights reached by authentic music?
　　
What should amaze us is the general sense of security and self- sufficiency which usually attends man when he speaks. The average man feels as if he were actually conveying his expressed thoughts or emotions, as if the words he uses were steel bridges over still waters.
Most men do not realize how tenuous is the bridge of words, how deep and dark is the yawning abyss that lies below, and how miraculous is each successful step made on the bridge of words.
Translated from Hebrew By Avraham Holtz
　
It is known that sound is heard more purely in a place which is hollow or pierced, due to the purity of the spiritual air which enters therein, as in the case of the kinnor and similar musical instruments, which produce sound without any speech. And so also the concavities of the upper stories, caves, mountains, bathhouses, ruins etc, whose interior is hollow- notice that from them there is also produced a sound like the sound of the one who is speaking. By means of this secret you will understand the meaning of " Moses spake and God answered him by a voice", in a voice similar to that of Moses. You must know that the body of man is full of hole and cavities, from which you may understand how the Shekhina dwells in the body which is pierced and contains cavities and which gives birth to speech.
Translated from Hebrew By Jonathan Chipman
　　
I took a seat and watched intently.
Each musician plays by himself, but all the strains are blended into one song.
Every man and woman is joined to his or her instrument, and the instruments are joined to the floor of the temple, but each player thinks the he alone is bound, he is too ashamed to ask his neighbor to set him free.
Translated from Hebrew By Walter Lever
　　
Now the Sirens have a still more fatal weapon than their song, namely their silence. And though admittedly such a thing has never happened, still it is conceivable that someone might possibly have escaped from their singing, but from their silence certainly never.
But Ulysses did not hear their silence; he thought they were singing and that he alone did not hear them. For a fleeting moment he saw their throats rising and falling, their breasts lifting, their eyes filled with tears, their lips half-parted, but believed that these were accompaniments to the airs which died unheard around him.
Soon, however, all this faded from his sight as he fixed his gaze on the distance, the Sirens literally vanished from his resolution, and at the very moment when they were nearest to him he knew of them no longer.
Translated from German by Willa and Edwin Muir
　　
There is a land that includes all other lands.
In the land that includes all other lands, there is a city that includes all the cities of hat land.
In the city that includes all cities, in the land that includes all lands, there is a building that includes all buildings.
Here, there is a man who includes everything in that entire building.
Here, there is the one who composes all the humor and jokes in the entire land.
Translated from Yiddish By Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan
　　
VII
　
…Here, there is the one who composes all the humor and jokes in the entire land.
…But Ulysses did not hear their silence; he thought they were singing and that
he alone…
…he alone is bound, he is too ashamed to ask his neighbor to set him free.
And so also the concavities of the upper stories, caves, mountains, bathhouses, ruins etc, whose interior is hollow- notice….
…how deep and dark is the yawning abyss that lies below.
I spend my life working with thoughts. And one problem that gives me no rest is: do these thoughts ever rise to the heights reached by authentic music?
　
　
　
　
　
　
　
　
　
　
　
　

004 The Red Door Pt. 1

2009-10-30T17:37:00.000-07:00

Pastor Kathy Price is a dear friend. I am ordained through her father's ministry, The Overflowing Cup in Beloit WI. In 2003, Kathy and our friend Teri asked me to be involved in a church meeting in a roadhouse saloon in rural Wisconsin. This podcast interview came at the same time as a newspaper article about her bar church. Listen to this podcast and follow it up with episode 007 to hear the fallout!

Find The Red Door at www.myspace.com/reddoorsanctuary

Newspaper articles http://www.GazetteXtra.com/news/2009/oct/03/tiny-congregation-seeks-god-bar/

http://www.beloitdailynews.com/articles/2009/10/19/news/local_news/news1901.txt

Television http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Gze8pSGj-Q

You can reach me at reverendmsa@hotmail.com

The Overflowing Cup www.overflowingcup.com

To See You performed by Mark Archambault and the Liberty Full Gospel Praise Team from the CD Live at Liberty 1999

003 A Letter To God

2009-10-30T17:25:00.000-07:00

Life couch, business woman and spiritual guide Judy Cochrane spoke with me about a letter she wrote to God and the powerful results.

From Judy's website http://www.spiritaulitee.com/

"Well, you peeled back the layers of my old soul, showed me where I was blocked, and I let it go. I’m not my story anymore!"
- Your oldest client, AZ

"Your sweetness, your humor and your light brought me through and out of my darkness."
- Thomas C., CA.

A few relaxing sessions with Judy re-energized my search for solutions to depression after years of frustration as I sought relief through pills prescribed by a medical community that was not aware of the power of the mind and spirit to bring about healing. Judy encouraged me to be generous to myself and others, guiding me on how to tune-in and control emotional reactions to events past, present and future. This helped me find and live my authentic self. She taught me that no matter what happens, I can deal with it and everything will be just fine. Judy is truly an angel of light.
- Bob H., OR.

002 Life Shaping

2009-10-30T17:06:00.001-07:00

John McLeod has a gift. He hears the voice of Spirit, he sees visions and has helped many to connect with God in a clear, practical and powerful way. John practices Life Shaping, a form of guided Spirit healing. I have used John as a guide on several occasions. In 2008, I drove 2000 miles to Life Shape at his office in Wisconsin and 2000 miles back to Tucson a few days later. Listen to the podcast as John and I talk about this revelatory experience.

John can be contacted at thetruthrevealed@hotmail.com

001 Finding God in the Moment

2009-10-30T16:51:00.000-07:00

The first Divine Now podcast was with Dr. Kevin Skinner. Kevin is the senior Pastor at Aldea Spiritual Community in Tucson Arizona USA. He is also my pastor and friend. Kevin was a logical first choice for me. A recurring theme in his Sunday messages is the mystical view of finding God in the moment. I spent years in the Christian Charismatic camp and am always looking for the big, sweeping, knock you off your feet, presence of Spirit. Kevin has a sweet spirit and the ability to sense the divine in most things. After months of observing his life and message, I am hooked. His self deprecating speaking style has earned him a loyal following at Aldea and as a business seminar speaker. You can find more about Kevin and his experimental church at http://www.aldeaonline.org/.

Kevin's Podcast is available at http://aldeamark.hipcast.com/rss/the_divine_now.xml

The Divine NOW on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/group.php?gid=158487221269

Kundalini Express: The Art of Tripti Singh

2009-10-25T20:04:00.000-07:00

You may recognize the reference to the song by Love and Rockets. I was on my facebook account when I received an IM from Digital Artist Tripti Singh. Tripti lives in India. I had sent her a friend request based on a group we both belong to and I assume she was trying to make sure I am not a stalker. :-) ... I'm not (no, really).

During this conversation I discovered her art. My questions soon turned to how she relates her art to Spirit. She gave a detailed answer about the residual energy left over in the form of Kundalini energy. As a Hindu, she explained her connection to higher soul and how this connects to give her art a spark of divinity. These excerpt are from our conversation.

About being imbued with creative energy from Spirit-

Tripti

Yes I believe these things we carry by birth
and situations never make us separated from it.
If we go far from it, we are pulled back in.
Have you felt that force?

Mark

I have tried a few times to stop making music and I have tried to stop being involved in ministry. I end up being pulled back every time.
It is as if, a part of me is asleep and then wakes up and walks me in that direction.

Tripti

It's quit strong force it never lets us escape.
Yes and it fills me with guilt.... that i am doing something wrong to suppress it.

Mark

YES!!!! I understand that!

Tripti

There are people who are connected with same thought.... this time I met a musician.
wow great feeling!

I am sort of at will ... when I want and when I don't want...with higher soul, then other spirit....
I believe I am connected with higher soul.

Mark

Do you have ways that help you connect with that higher soul or does it just happen on it's own?

Tripti

Yes meditations.
It's like opening a window.
I do it on my will when i want to do it.
Some times it happens when something strong hits my thought.
It pulls me back.

Mark

I find that inspiration comes when I am thinking about something else. I have written many songs while driving or washing the dishes, mundane things...

Tripti

I always have to go in isolation.

At this point in the conversation Tripti talks about a meditation she has done.

Tripti

Well three persons imagine to sit on three ends of triangle
and do meditation
and try to connected with divine light.

We agreed to set up a time to try meditation in this way. She in Kanpur India, me in Tucson Arizona and another person of her choice. She also gave me permission to show her artwork here on this blog. Please Contact her with your thoughts on her work. I, for one, love it.

Funny, I was not thinking about any of this when I sat down to work tonight. It is now three hours later and I have not done a thing on my list. Spirit found me when I was not looking.

You can reach me at reverendmsa@hotmail.com

Blessing

Mark

You can find Tripi Singh on facebook at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=158487221269#/tripti.in or on her web site at

Tripti Singh Research Scholar, (Indian Digital Art)

http://www.triptis.20fr.com/

http://fineartamerica.com/profiles/tripti-singh.html http://phauxshow.com/gallery/tripti-singh/

http://www.triptis.20fr.com/

Conversations on Spirit & Mystics

2009-10-23T19:03:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the Divine Now. In my life, I have been many, many things: father, son, husband, pastor, musician, songwriter, journalist, business owner, student... On and on it goes. In all this, I am one person on a journey: a journey into spirit and into self.

The goal of this blog and the podcast that goes with it is simple. I want to explore how others connect with Spirit. I will continue to find interesting people connecting with an infinite presence. Each interview brings some other aspect of that relationship.

Please listen to the podcast at http://aldeamark.hipcast.com/rss/the_divine_now.xml You can subscribe to the podcast through iTunes by typing either The Divine Now podcast or Mark Archambault into the iTunes search engine. While you are there, subscribe to Love is My Religion: The Podcast of Aldea Spiritual Community. This blog will follow the episodes of the podcast and provide additional information about the guests.

I can be reached at reverendmsa@hotmail.com

May God bless and keep you,

Mark S. Archambault