Is-land by Jeff Johnson

releases November 14, 2025

Featuring Jeff Johnson (keys), Josef Lupták (cello), Janet Marie Chvatal (voice), Brandon Vance (violin), Eliot Grasso (flute & whistle), Lisa Carter (Celtic harp) & Emy Carter (violin).

Composed, produced, recorded & mixed by Jeff Johnson
℗ 2025 Ark Records, Inc. / ArkMusic.com / Sola Scriptura Songs (BMI)
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Recorded & mixed at The Ark – Camano Island, WA
Additional recording at:
Cody Center, Laity Lodge – Leakey, TX
Orcas Island Community Church – Orcas Island, WA
St. Aidan’s Episcopal Church – Camano Island, WA
Gutenberg College – Eugene, OR
Mastered by JJ Golden / Golden Mastering

Artwork by Kathy Hastings © 2025 (www.kathyhastings.com)
Design by Court Patton (www.pattonbros.com)
Special thanks to Steven Purcell & Brian Moss

For Jonathan & Leila

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

IS-LAND

I once had a friend who, when I called him on the phone would ask me, “Jeff, what are your coordinates?” It’s an existential question. What am I? Who am I? Where am I? I love how the writer, Janet Frame describes a process of a person’s inherited memories from her family supplying the “individual furnishings of each Was-land, each Is-land” creating the “hopes and dreams of the Future.”[1]

I believe in God and that he is good and has made each of us with a body and a soul and has placed eternity in our hearts.[2] Yet our bodies, as wonderful as they are, come from dust and as painter, Bruce Herman[3] has succinctly put it, “we are fading back into dust in slow motion.” Yet, the soul – our ‘nous’,[4] our ‘is-land’ – even as our bodies fade away in this life, maintains a coordinate. But to what purpose?

Gregory of Nazianzus writes of “a swift, fleeting flash of lightning” that “shines in our eyes” originating from the Divine for the purpose of “draw(ing) us to himself.”[5] Why would this be? Because he who ‘was, is and will be’ desires us, he loves us. And because he “is” he wants us to be, too.

– Jeff Johnson

[1] “to the is-land” by Janet Frame
[2] Ecclesiastes 3:11
[3] www.bruceherman.com
[4] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nous
[5] “The Orations” by Gregory of Nazianzus