We sometimes claim ownership to things that are not ours.
Oh, we know the usual items. Too often we claim credit for something we were slightly involved in or for someone that we tangentially know. We do not really mean anything evil by it of course - we are not one of those people claiming stolen valor, for example - but we are almost instinctively drawn in by the fact that people are paying attention to it and if we are at all involved, we want a little bit of the attention as well. It feels good. And after all, we were somehow involved, right?
But there is another kind of ownership we are quick to claim sometimes, an ownership of things that really are not ours but we wish they were.
It is a gray area. It is not as if we are precisely lying - after all, we usually have some relationship to the thing in question - and often times the thing or people involved never know that we really think that. And we may never verbally admit to anyone that it exists - it may only dwell in the recess of our heart, a secret thing that we lay claim.
The difficulty, of course, is that we actually never owned the thing.
It is a difference - a big difference. It is the difference between actually having the money in hand to purchase something and telling someone "I can get the money to purchase the thing" when you are not sure you have it. It is the difference between definitively having a date versus having the concept of possibly talking to the person about having coffee. It is the difference between having the job offer and telling others you have a job offer when in fact you have only had a first interview.
It is often the distance between fantasy and reality.
Why? Sometimes it is simply harmless, the sort of silly fantasy or wishful thinking that simply wishes a situation to be different in our life - that we are something, or know something or someone. Sometimes it is less harmless: we feel we do not have the ability or courage to actually do the thing and so hope that acting as if we did will make it so (this may work for changing our own behavior, but seldom in this case). And sometimes it is desperation that we desperately need something to be different or better in our lives and so we grasp at straws with hands wide open, hoping that such a thing slightly grasped is the same as something actually grasped.
But it never is in any case. The thing - be it an object or a relationship, a person or an experience - was never really ours. We perhaps believed it to be, acted as if it was, told others that it was - but it simply was not. Our minds, our hearts, and our souls perhaps created a reality where there was really nothing but fleeting images and happy wishes.
It was never really ours. But sometimes we certainly act as if it was.
Wednesday, August 06, 2014
Tuesday, August 05, 2014
A Fog of Our Own Devising
I wonder how many times we bring our own confusion upon ourselves.
Too often I think we like to believe that we are surrounded by a fog of living. We believe that it is similar to the so-called Fog of War, that confusion that is well documented in the midst of military action where all becomes confused and unclear in the reality of explosions and death. We look around us at the confusing set options and circumstances that we often find ourselves in and find that we, too, seemed to be lost in a mist of events, uncertain at times of what is truly going on and who we are truly with and what we should really be doing.
At least, that is the way the seems to us. But does it seem that way to others?
I wonder if it that is fact not true, that the fog that we find ourselves too often ensconced in is something of our own making. We have a grand tendency to confuse our own lives, to put up obstacles where none exist and to walk into walls that are clear to everyone around us. We feel ourselves to be trudging through a mist we can barely see through, hands held straight out as we try and make our way. To all around us, it must often look as if we are playing blind man's bluff in the daylight for no particular reason.
Often we lack the ability to see ourselves and the situations we are in clearly, completely, honestly. This is part of what it means to be human. We are a bundle of experiences and emotions, filtering the world in a way that no-one else can quite do. That can be quite a powerful thing - after all, at some level all forms of art are the interpretation of an individual of the world around them. But it also means that we can see problems that others simply cannot and create issues where none exist - things which are very really to us indeed but only because of the fact that we make them real. And so we end up wandering through a fog which we have created, a mist which makes the easy difficult and simple confusing and the hard almost unsolvable.
Is there a solution to this fog? Surely there is. If this was a meteorological discussion, I would simply say that the sun or wind eventually drive the fog away. And in this sense God, or a good friend, can often serve the same function, driving away the confusion and helping us to see things for what they really are. Removing the fog helps us to see the true obstacles for what they are and remove those cobwebs of unreality from clogging our vision.
But here is my problem: sometimes it feels as if God and friends are not enough. Because there are times when, although the weather is clear and splendid, the fog always comes rolling back in.
Too often I think we like to believe that we are surrounded by a fog of living. We believe that it is similar to the so-called Fog of War, that confusion that is well documented in the midst of military action where all becomes confused and unclear in the reality of explosions and death. We look around us at the confusing set options and circumstances that we often find ourselves in and find that we, too, seemed to be lost in a mist of events, uncertain at times of what is truly going on and who we are truly with and what we should really be doing.
At least, that is the way the seems to us. But does it seem that way to others?
I wonder if it that is fact not true, that the fog that we find ourselves too often ensconced in is something of our own making. We have a grand tendency to confuse our own lives, to put up obstacles where none exist and to walk into walls that are clear to everyone around us. We feel ourselves to be trudging through a mist we can barely see through, hands held straight out as we try and make our way. To all around us, it must often look as if we are playing blind man's bluff in the daylight for no particular reason.
Often we lack the ability to see ourselves and the situations we are in clearly, completely, honestly. This is part of what it means to be human. We are a bundle of experiences and emotions, filtering the world in a way that no-one else can quite do. That can be quite a powerful thing - after all, at some level all forms of art are the interpretation of an individual of the world around them. But it also means that we can see problems that others simply cannot and create issues where none exist - things which are very really to us indeed but only because of the fact that we make them real. And so we end up wandering through a fog which we have created, a mist which makes the easy difficult and simple confusing and the hard almost unsolvable.
Is there a solution to this fog? Surely there is. If this was a meteorological discussion, I would simply say that the sun or wind eventually drive the fog away. And in this sense God, or a good friend, can often serve the same function, driving away the confusion and helping us to see things for what they really are. Removing the fog helps us to see the true obstacles for what they are and remove those cobwebs of unreality from clogging our vision.
But here is my problem: sometimes it feels as if God and friends are not enough. Because there are times when, although the weather is clear and splendid, the fog always comes rolling back in.
Monday, August 04, 2014
Higher Value
So my week of training on Lean Principles of Manufacturing is completed. Overall not a bad way to spend a week learning. The thing that this has brought home to me is the importance of making the most of the time that have - not only by trying to do things more efficiently and effectively, but by choosing the right things to be doing.
This is nothing new, of course - Stephen Covey made a career (well deserved because he was a fine communicator) around these concepts: Figure out the important things, then do them. I have read The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People several times yet in never really seemed to take hold. That is beauty of universal concepts though: one can keep trying different venues until you find something that clicks.
That said, what are my higher values? I confronted this issue on the weekend when, after having accomplished a great deal on Saturday, I still did not feel like I had "done" anything. When asked by Snowflake, I commented that I felt that I had not done the highest value things I could have accomplished that day. I did a little better yesterday (interestingly, a higher value activity seems to be planning, something that we always justify not making time for) but still did not get everything done I should have gotten done.
I need to work on this (obviously). Time is the great limiting factor and large chunks of my time (at least right now) are taken up with things that I would argue do not have the highest value in my life (other than paying the bills, of course). That is okay, maybe for the first time in a long time: I now have a rubric whereby I can take the activities, judge them, and then figure out how to make them even more beneficial to me. If, as was presented, 50% of the activities at any company are waste (not value added, not improving the product, not willing to be paid for by the customer) can this be any less true of my life?
One goal: Every time I undertakes something from now one I need to ask myself: is this the Highest Value Activity I can possibly be doing right now for the product at hand - ultimately, my life?
Let us make it a goal never to spend our time on lower value activities again. Life is too bereft of time, the stuff of which life is made.
This is nothing new, of course - Stephen Covey made a career (well deserved because he was a fine communicator) around these concepts: Figure out the important things, then do them. I have read The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People several times yet in never really seemed to take hold. That is beauty of universal concepts though: one can keep trying different venues until you find something that clicks.
That said, what are my higher values? I confronted this issue on the weekend when, after having accomplished a great deal on Saturday, I still did not feel like I had "done" anything. When asked by Snowflake, I commented that I felt that I had not done the highest value things I could have accomplished that day. I did a little better yesterday (interestingly, a higher value activity seems to be planning, something that we always justify not making time for) but still did not get everything done I should have gotten done.
I need to work on this (obviously). Time is the great limiting factor and large chunks of my time (at least right now) are taken up with things that I would argue do not have the highest value in my life (other than paying the bills, of course). That is okay, maybe for the first time in a long time: I now have a rubric whereby I can take the activities, judge them, and then figure out how to make them even more beneficial to me. If, as was presented, 50% of the activities at any company are waste (not value added, not improving the product, not willing to be paid for by the customer) can this be any less true of my life?
One goal: Every time I undertakes something from now one I need to ask myself: is this the Highest Value Activity I can possibly be doing right now for the product at hand - ultimately, my life?
Let us make it a goal never to spend our time on lower value activities again. Life is too bereft of time, the stuff of which life is made.
Friday, August 01, 2014
Thursday, July 31, 2014
On The Peril of Naming Our Problems
I am having a problem with naming my problems.
Urusula Le Guin is famous for the concept and power of naming in her series The EarthSea Triology. In the first book, A Wizard of Earthsea, the hero Ged releases something from another dimension. What he finds through the course of the book is that by naming something, you come to have power over it - and can control it.
Sounds delightful, does it not? Find you problems, name your problems, and suddenly you have the power to know what they are - after all, if I define something as anger or depression or failure I know it, and by knowing it I have knowledge of what it is and perhaps how to deal with.
But there is a subtle risk therein, a risk that I had never considered until this week when Bogha Frois brought it up to me: "You have to be careful when if you find a problem you immediately name it" she said. "By naming and defining it, you may deprive yourself of the ability to deal with it because by defining it you suddenly put it into a box. If you put it in a box too quickly you become comfortable with it because you think you know what it is - and thus short-circuit the process of truly delving into it."
She is right, of course. By defining something we often tend to cut short the process of discovery. "Hey" we say, "this is depression. I know depression. I know the five stages of depression" - when the thing is not fully depression at all. Depression may be the symptom, not the cause - but suddenly we "know" what the problem is and thus we feel no need to go deeper.
I wonder if in some ways this is a coping mechanism for us, a way for us to avoid truly digging into our problems. Most people would prefer to feel good rather than bad; by naming something and thinking we understand it we reduce the level of pain and anxiety caused by feelings we cannot name flowing into our existence.
But the danger is real, as Bogha Frois pointed out. There is real self discovery that must occur before resolution, a real wrestling in the soul that we all too easily try to turn away from in our quest to make ourselves feel better. We name the problems we think we have - but in naming them, perhaps instead of bringing them under control we instead cause them to hide their true natures, and thus their real names.
Urusula Le Guin is famous for the concept and power of naming in her series The EarthSea Triology. In the first book, A Wizard of Earthsea, the hero Ged releases something from another dimension. What he finds through the course of the book is that by naming something, you come to have power over it - and can control it.
Sounds delightful, does it not? Find you problems, name your problems, and suddenly you have the power to know what they are - after all, if I define something as anger or depression or failure I know it, and by knowing it I have knowledge of what it is and perhaps how to deal with.
But there is a subtle risk therein, a risk that I had never considered until this week when Bogha Frois brought it up to me: "You have to be careful when if you find a problem you immediately name it" she said. "By naming and defining it, you may deprive yourself of the ability to deal with it because by defining it you suddenly put it into a box. If you put it in a box too quickly you become comfortable with it because you think you know what it is - and thus short-circuit the process of truly delving into it."
She is right, of course. By defining something we often tend to cut short the process of discovery. "Hey" we say, "this is depression. I know depression. I know the five stages of depression" - when the thing is not fully depression at all. Depression may be the symptom, not the cause - but suddenly we "know" what the problem is and thus we feel no need to go deeper.
I wonder if in some ways this is a coping mechanism for us, a way for us to avoid truly digging into our problems. Most people would prefer to feel good rather than bad; by naming something and thinking we understand it we reduce the level of pain and anxiety caused by feelings we cannot name flowing into our existence.
But the danger is real, as Bogha Frois pointed out. There is real self discovery that must occur before resolution, a real wrestling in the soul that we all too easily try to turn away from in our quest to make ourselves feel better. We name the problems we think we have - but in naming them, perhaps instead of bringing them under control we instead cause them to hide their true natures, and thus their real names.
Wednesday, July 30, 2014
A Hole in My Soul
I found the hole in my soul. It does not have a name.
What is it? Some element seems to a fear of being left behind by the successes of others. Apparently I always feel left behind - or afraid of being left behind, overrun by those who are simply more successful than I. They move on, I linger.
Another element is attachment - making me feel something about myself. What that something is, I cannot fully say - because again, it does not have a name.
Value? That may be part of it. I perceive I have no value except in the context of someone else. Or perhaps that I view myself as unimportant and a servant and I want someone to notice me as something more.
Sometimes I feel as if I am forgettable, that if I did not remind people that I am here I would be forgotten. Perhaps it is a manifestation of the fact that I feel small and of no account - desperate to be noticed and for attention, if you will.
How do I look in those flights of fancy and dreams in my head? Not at all like I feel actually am. Strong. Confident. Noble. Competent. Honorable. In other words, everything that I do not feel I am in real life. Or even the sensation that if I were to become these things it would not matter.
What do I want? No, what do I really want? To be great and use the talents I believe (or believed) I had to do great things. To be competent and confident, a leader. To be in relationships that are fulfilling. To succeed.
But my success fall into what if feels like so much of my life is: things of the shadows, things that do not make an impact on the larger world or fulfill this hole. Iaijutsu, Heavy Athletics - these are small accomplishments that matter little in my daily life, or seem to.
And writing, my great hope and dream of success once upon a time? The simple reality, based on actual results, is that I am probably much less of the writer in fact than I believe myself to be in my head. In my mind, I am the next literary genius with mighty stories to tell that will change the lives of others. Evidence perhaps indicates that I am simply a person who likes to write but maybe should keep my day job.
Which leaves me with what, precisely?
A hole. A hole so big and so large in my soul that I would do anything to fill it. A hole that I keep hoping will fill with interests or relationships or activities. The interests and activities never do and I more than likely destroy the relationships in my incessant need to have the hole filled.
Here is the issue: After I have written all of this and tried to put some definition around a longing and a pain so deep it almost overwhelms me at times, I realize I have probably not named it at all.
All I can tell is there is a whole, a fissure that runs through my thoughts and my life that when it fires, can consume all other things in its need for relief. And I simply seem to have no idea what to do with it at all.
What is it? Some element seems to a fear of being left behind by the successes of others. Apparently I always feel left behind - or afraid of being left behind, overrun by those who are simply more successful than I. They move on, I linger.
Another element is attachment - making me feel something about myself. What that something is, I cannot fully say - because again, it does not have a name.
Value? That may be part of it. I perceive I have no value except in the context of someone else. Or perhaps that I view myself as unimportant and a servant and I want someone to notice me as something more.
Sometimes I feel as if I am forgettable, that if I did not remind people that I am here I would be forgotten. Perhaps it is a manifestation of the fact that I feel small and of no account - desperate to be noticed and for attention, if you will.
How do I look in those flights of fancy and dreams in my head? Not at all like I feel actually am. Strong. Confident. Noble. Competent. Honorable. In other words, everything that I do not feel I am in real life. Or even the sensation that if I were to become these things it would not matter.
What do I want? No, what do I really want? To be great and use the talents I believe (or believed) I had to do great things. To be competent and confident, a leader. To be in relationships that are fulfilling. To succeed.
But my success fall into what if feels like so much of my life is: things of the shadows, things that do not make an impact on the larger world or fulfill this hole. Iaijutsu, Heavy Athletics - these are small accomplishments that matter little in my daily life, or seem to.
And writing, my great hope and dream of success once upon a time? The simple reality, based on actual results, is that I am probably much less of the writer in fact than I believe myself to be in my head. In my mind, I am the next literary genius with mighty stories to tell that will change the lives of others. Evidence perhaps indicates that I am simply a person who likes to write but maybe should keep my day job.
Which leaves me with what, precisely?
A hole. A hole so big and so large in my soul that I would do anything to fill it. A hole that I keep hoping will fill with interests or relationships or activities. The interests and activities never do and I more than likely destroy the relationships in my incessant need to have the hole filled.
Here is the issue: After I have written all of this and tried to put some definition around a longing and a pain so deep it almost overwhelms me at times, I realize I have probably not named it at all.
All I can tell is there is a whole, a fissure that runs through my thoughts and my life that when it fires, can consume all other things in its need for relief. And I simply seem to have no idea what to do with it at all.
Tuesday, July 29, 2014
Honest Writing
I sometimes wonder if I am doing this correctly.
When I started this blog I do not suppose that I knew precisely what I intended to do with it - theological and political commentary, as I recall. Perhaps once in a while a piece of useful information or two.
That was almost 9 years ago.
What this has turned into is none of those things - rather it has become a sort of online journal of my thoughts - and then some. I grapple with this sometimes: is this really what I meant to do? Is this really what I should be doing?
Much as I would like to believe myself to be, I am not the most inspirational writer all the time. Often I am depressed - in fact, I bet if I went and considered the tone of the titles of this blog I would find that more often than not I am writing from a place of frustration or sadness or depression rather than happiness. Certainly if there was a real market for online writing (Let's be honest - most of us do it for free) this would probably not be the royal road to riches.
The question: Is that wrong?
One thing I always try to do when I write is be honest - in my blog, in my books, in my journals (yes, I have journals. They go back to 1999. They probably make this look like optimism central). What you see on this page is unrefined me in its raw, usually early morning form. It is one reason that I have used a nom-de-guerre all of this years even though I bet the bulk of my regular readers, being family and friends, really know who I am (and it is more than once I have gotten a call from my father asking "So, read your blog. What is up?") - it allows me a level of anonymity to write these things and feel secure enough to write them.
But am I being honest enough? Am I being myself enough?
This is the thought that is rattling around in my head this morning: am I being honest enough? Is my commitment to honesty through writing as sincere as it needs to be? Am I being myself enough that I can be honest? Or am I even now cloaking myself in phrases and allusions so that there is some level of safety while keeping deeper issues hidden away?
The great writers, the best ones, have a way of writing that makes truth real and apparent, no matter what vehicle they use. Their honest selves bleed out from the paper through their characters and plots and settings and writing in a way that leaves the reader craving that sort of transparency and real living - honest living - for themselves.
How do I get there? How do I write even more honestly? How do I be even more of me? It is not purely by putting other parts of my life on the paper - maybe the parts no-one needs to see - that makes me more honest - it is that unwavering commitment to take a thought and follow it no matter where it leads in myself and being willing to document what I find there in a way that is not voyeuristic or crass or pernicious or hurtful but in a way that makes the thought clean and straight and true.
In iaijustu the best cuts are the ones which are kept true to the angle of the cut and the hand placement is correct. When you have done it correctly you know it by the mirror bright line of the katana and the shwoosh of the displaced air and feeling of your hands on the tsuba and the fact that you have completely cut through the tatami mat as it falls away. When you have made a true and honest cut, you always know it.
May that be true of my writing as well.
When I started this blog I do not suppose that I knew precisely what I intended to do with it - theological and political commentary, as I recall. Perhaps once in a while a piece of useful information or two.
That was almost 9 years ago.
What this has turned into is none of those things - rather it has become a sort of online journal of my thoughts - and then some. I grapple with this sometimes: is this really what I meant to do? Is this really what I should be doing?
Much as I would like to believe myself to be, I am not the most inspirational writer all the time. Often I am depressed - in fact, I bet if I went and considered the tone of the titles of this blog I would find that more often than not I am writing from a place of frustration or sadness or depression rather than happiness. Certainly if there was a real market for online writing (Let's be honest - most of us do it for free) this would probably not be the royal road to riches.
The question: Is that wrong?
One thing I always try to do when I write is be honest - in my blog, in my books, in my journals (yes, I have journals. They go back to 1999. They probably make this look like optimism central). What you see on this page is unrefined me in its raw, usually early morning form. It is one reason that I have used a nom-de-guerre all of this years even though I bet the bulk of my regular readers, being family and friends, really know who I am (and it is more than once I have gotten a call from my father asking "So, read your blog. What is up?") - it allows me a level of anonymity to write these things and feel secure enough to write them.
But am I being honest enough? Am I being myself enough?
This is the thought that is rattling around in my head this morning: am I being honest enough? Is my commitment to honesty through writing as sincere as it needs to be? Am I being myself enough that I can be honest? Or am I even now cloaking myself in phrases and allusions so that there is some level of safety while keeping deeper issues hidden away?
The great writers, the best ones, have a way of writing that makes truth real and apparent, no matter what vehicle they use. Their honest selves bleed out from the paper through their characters and plots and settings and writing in a way that leaves the reader craving that sort of transparency and real living - honest living - for themselves.
How do I get there? How do I write even more honestly? How do I be even more of me? It is not purely by putting other parts of my life on the paper - maybe the parts no-one needs to see - that makes me more honest - it is that unwavering commitment to take a thought and follow it no matter where it leads in myself and being willing to document what I find there in a way that is not voyeuristic or crass or pernicious or hurtful but in a way that makes the thought clean and straight and true.
In iaijustu the best cuts are the ones which are kept true to the angle of the cut and the hand placement is correct. When you have done it correctly you know it by the mirror bright line of the katana and the shwoosh of the displaced air and feeling of your hands on the tsuba and the fact that you have completely cut through the tatami mat as it falls away. When you have made a true and honest cut, you always know it.
May that be true of my writing as well.
Monday, July 28, 2014
Just Drive
Sometimes there are mornings that I just want to get in the car and drive.
Nothing different than normal - get up, get ready, get in the car to drive to work - and then just keep going.
Where would I go with money in pocket and just driving? Maybe back for a visit to Old Home. The thought of driving across hours of empty landscape with just myself has a certain appeal to it right now. Or maybe down to the coast - not so much for the water but just to sit on edge of the ocean and look out into the water and off into the horizon.
Why Drive? There are just times where it feels like life - and the choices you have made in it - are simply overwhelming. It is a form of information overload except that it is not just information. It is sensation and emotion and a seemingly endless array of things that are crashing into your consciousness. I assume that there are people that can deal with this sort of informational and sensational overload. I cannot.
Driving (and because I commute I have done a lot of it in my time) allows me time to think and decompress in a way nothing else seems to. Driving allows me to control the amount of input that I want: Music? Conversation? Or just the quiet hum of the car operating (I have been known to put earplugs in to dampen the sound of the car)? I control it - based on the need I have at the moment.
And that need screams out to me now, every day. To take a time away from the responsibilities, the needs, the demands, the wants, the confusion that seems to litter my mind and soul every day.
I need peace. I need clarity. I need the silence of the soul that allows life's demands to just fade away in the the long horizon of the road.
I need to drive.
Nothing different than normal - get up, get ready, get in the car to drive to work - and then just keep going.
Where would I go with money in pocket and just driving? Maybe back for a visit to Old Home. The thought of driving across hours of empty landscape with just myself has a certain appeal to it right now. Or maybe down to the coast - not so much for the water but just to sit on edge of the ocean and look out into the water and off into the horizon.
Why Drive? There are just times where it feels like life - and the choices you have made in it - are simply overwhelming. It is a form of information overload except that it is not just information. It is sensation and emotion and a seemingly endless array of things that are crashing into your consciousness. I assume that there are people that can deal with this sort of informational and sensational overload. I cannot.
Driving (and because I commute I have done a lot of it in my time) allows me time to think and decompress in a way nothing else seems to. Driving allows me to control the amount of input that I want: Music? Conversation? Or just the quiet hum of the car operating (I have been known to put earplugs in to dampen the sound of the car)? I control it - based on the need I have at the moment.
And that need screams out to me now, every day. To take a time away from the responsibilities, the needs, the demands, the wants, the confusion that seems to litter my mind and soul every day.
I need peace. I need clarity. I need the silence of the soul that allows life's demands to just fade away in the the long horizon of the road.
I need to drive.
Friday, July 25, 2014
Secret Longings
The discovery of one's secret longings is a disturbing thing.
Not the secret longings that we think we have, of course - the things that we convince ourselves of in our mind that are the things that we want. No, it is the true secret longings - the things that we are acting as if they were actually important, the things that we consciously or subconsciously are trying to move our lives towards.
Do they always have to be considered disturbing? I suppose that is a fair question - after all, what happens if one is moving their life a way that is improving themselves? Is it disturbing to find out that one is trying to better one's self in a way that is good? Perhaps - although I think that even in this case, the idea that our conscious mind is doing one thing and our unconscious mind is off doing something else would be a bit concerning: it destroys the myth that we are in charge of our thinking as much as we like to thing.
But what do you do about the other ones - the ones that you sudden realize are there, the ones that you suddenly realize are maybe not as healthy for you - and the one's that perhaps part of you is trying to move your life towards? It is disturbing because it is as if you have been living an illusion within yourself, thinking you were advancing in one direction - but going in another.
And what do you do when you find them out? Often they have been there so long and have becoming so ingrained into the fabric of your life that they are more like a dye than something applied to the surface that can be easily removed.
The issue is that once discovered, I think these things have to be dealt with one way or the other - because once the secret is no longer a secret to us, it is as if we are trying to live two identical lives within our singular life. That will not work - it creates a dissonance where we are trying to do one thing and trying to do another thing, sometimes at odds to one another. We spend a great deal of time fighting within ourselves, almost as if we were trying to serve two masters, both of whom demand that we address their needs first.
I wish I had a better conclusion to this issue, but I do not. Writing this has been one of the hardest focus events I have had to do in a while - because this discovery to me is so new and I am not sure how to handle it. I know this though: once discovered, it must be addressed. A secret that is revealed is a secret no longer.
Not the secret longings that we think we have, of course - the things that we convince ourselves of in our mind that are the things that we want. No, it is the true secret longings - the things that we are acting as if they were actually important, the things that we consciously or subconsciously are trying to move our lives towards.
Do they always have to be considered disturbing? I suppose that is a fair question - after all, what happens if one is moving their life a way that is improving themselves? Is it disturbing to find out that one is trying to better one's self in a way that is good? Perhaps - although I think that even in this case, the idea that our conscious mind is doing one thing and our unconscious mind is off doing something else would be a bit concerning: it destroys the myth that we are in charge of our thinking as much as we like to thing.
But what do you do about the other ones - the ones that you sudden realize are there, the ones that you suddenly realize are maybe not as healthy for you - and the one's that perhaps part of you is trying to move your life towards? It is disturbing because it is as if you have been living an illusion within yourself, thinking you were advancing in one direction - but going in another.
And what do you do when you find them out? Often they have been there so long and have becoming so ingrained into the fabric of your life that they are more like a dye than something applied to the surface that can be easily removed.
The issue is that once discovered, I think these things have to be dealt with one way or the other - because once the secret is no longer a secret to us, it is as if we are trying to live two identical lives within our singular life. That will not work - it creates a dissonance where we are trying to do one thing and trying to do another thing, sometimes at odds to one another. We spend a great deal of time fighting within ourselves, almost as if we were trying to serve two masters, both of whom demand that we address their needs first.
I wish I had a better conclusion to this issue, but I do not. Writing this has been one of the hardest focus events I have had to do in a while - because this discovery to me is so new and I am not sure how to handle it. I know this though: once discovered, it must be addressed. A secret that is revealed is a secret no longer.
Thursday, July 24, 2014
Wednesday, July 23, 2014
A Lack of Belief in Long Term Success
I face two great problems in realizing success in any area of my life. It has occurred to me that this problems are not any different than those who are successful face; it is just that they have resolved them.
1) I have the inability to focus on a particular goal. I have enough problems deciding on one, but once I have, I have greater problems bringing focus and intensity to the problem at hand.
2) I lack the belief that I will be able actually achieve anything leading to long term success.
The second one is the one that qualifies as the epiphany, and perhaps the one that is more relevant - without believe that you will be able to succeed, the execution of any goal in pursuit of that success seems a waste of effort.
Where do this lack of confidence originate from? Certainly I have demonstrated that I can accomplish any number of things, and I am sure that if I polled my friends they would not see this as something that was an issue.
Perhaps the issue is not so much that I can or cannot accomplish things, but that I cannot accomplish things that make a serious impact on my life and my future.
Example: I (through the electronic grapevine) was made aware yesterday of a former coworker with whom I shared a similar title getting promoted. In the same period of time (approximately 10 years) they have gone from manager to VP. I have remained a manager.
Or the simple example of my current position where I have maintained the same title for 5 years while others have been promoted in far shorter periods of time.
Promotions come by many means of course, including effort. My point is that if I look over my career life of the last 10 years and point to my advancement in the field, I find that it is none at all. All the various efforts and initiatives went precisely no-where. At some point one begins to despair of ever moving forward no matter what one does.
Now imagine this seemed true in every aspect of one's life.
What is the solution? I can see it easily enough - believe that your efforts will pay off- but it is a very hard thing to believe at the moment. I can point to that string of individual and isolated success; unfortunately they seem more like individual rocks standing on the edge of the sea shore rather than a peninsula over which I can cross over.
It brings up a fundamental question to which I find myself seeking the answer: how does one change the very bedrock of one's belief from the concept that one cannot succeed to the belief that one can succeed?
1) I have the inability to focus on a particular goal. I have enough problems deciding on one, but once I have, I have greater problems bringing focus and intensity to the problem at hand.
2) I lack the belief that I will be able actually achieve anything leading to long term success.
The second one is the one that qualifies as the epiphany, and perhaps the one that is more relevant - without believe that you will be able to succeed, the execution of any goal in pursuit of that success seems a waste of effort.
Where do this lack of confidence originate from? Certainly I have demonstrated that I can accomplish any number of things, and I am sure that if I polled my friends they would not see this as something that was an issue.
Perhaps the issue is not so much that I can or cannot accomplish things, but that I cannot accomplish things that make a serious impact on my life and my future.
Example: I (through the electronic grapevine) was made aware yesterday of a former coworker with whom I shared a similar title getting promoted. In the same period of time (approximately 10 years) they have gone from manager to VP. I have remained a manager.
Or the simple example of my current position where I have maintained the same title for 5 years while others have been promoted in far shorter periods of time.
Promotions come by many means of course, including effort. My point is that if I look over my career life of the last 10 years and point to my advancement in the field, I find that it is none at all. All the various efforts and initiatives went precisely no-where. At some point one begins to despair of ever moving forward no matter what one does.
Now imagine this seemed true in every aspect of one's life.
What is the solution? I can see it easily enough - believe that your efforts will pay off- but it is a very hard thing to believe at the moment. I can point to that string of individual and isolated success; unfortunately they seem more like individual rocks standing on the edge of the sea shore rather than a peninsula over which I can cross over.
It brings up a fundamental question to which I find myself seeking the answer: how does one change the very bedrock of one's belief from the concept that one cannot succeed to the belief that one can succeed?
Tuesday, July 22, 2014
Of Despair and Writing
Last night I despaired.
It was the whole day in coming. It built on a work day where I was reminded how far I have not come in my career, at one point fighting with a binder that I needed to three hole punch papers in. It was compounded when I got home and had dinner and then ate a little more than I should of. It was added to by the fact that I have been running low on sleep almost since we returned from vacation.
I simply got to the end of dinner and did not have the energy or will to do anything. Not the studying I had planned to do or the iaijutsu that I needed to do or the workout I wanted to do. Nothing. I just sat there missing energy and waiting.
Waiting for what? Something other than despair about everything at that moment: feeling bad, feeling tire, no energy, nothing. So in a fit of frustration, I wrote.
I have not written (as in writing for a book) since April and finishing my last texts. Why? I am not sure. I certainly have something I could write about, but with my typical concern about the perfection of the work (I know it can be good) I have put off doing anything about it because (in my mind) no action is better than bad action. And nothing else has really gotten my creative juices flowing.
So I wrote. It was not anything spectacular - unsurprisingly it was about a person facing despair (creative, no?). But in the simple act of writing I found a certain relief to my condition. The mere act of writing and creating gave me a sense of doing something, of taking action - something beyond the fact of what I was facing as I sat there with no energy.
I am trying to do others things better too - get more rest, eat a little better - but it appears I need to write more. Writing is one activity that, even if I am reluctant to start it and do it badly, makes me feel better as I am doing it. The creative process seems to tap something beneath my level of despair or depression or unhappiness or whatever it is I am struggling with at the moment and brings the associated sense of creation to the surface.
Today whispers to me that it has the possibility of being like yesterday - but this evening if I am faced with the situation again, I will fight back.
I will write.
It was the whole day in coming. It built on a work day where I was reminded how far I have not come in my career, at one point fighting with a binder that I needed to three hole punch papers in. It was compounded when I got home and had dinner and then ate a little more than I should of. It was added to by the fact that I have been running low on sleep almost since we returned from vacation.
I simply got to the end of dinner and did not have the energy or will to do anything. Not the studying I had planned to do or the iaijutsu that I needed to do or the workout I wanted to do. Nothing. I just sat there missing energy and waiting.
Waiting for what? Something other than despair about everything at that moment: feeling bad, feeling tire, no energy, nothing. So in a fit of frustration, I wrote.
I have not written (as in writing for a book) since April and finishing my last texts. Why? I am not sure. I certainly have something I could write about, but with my typical concern about the perfection of the work (I know it can be good) I have put off doing anything about it because (in my mind) no action is better than bad action. And nothing else has really gotten my creative juices flowing.
So I wrote. It was not anything spectacular - unsurprisingly it was about a person facing despair (creative, no?). But in the simple act of writing I found a certain relief to my condition. The mere act of writing and creating gave me a sense of doing something, of taking action - something beyond the fact of what I was facing as I sat there with no energy.
I am trying to do others things better too - get more rest, eat a little better - but it appears I need to write more. Writing is one activity that, even if I am reluctant to start it and do it badly, makes me feel better as I am doing it. The creative process seems to tap something beneath my level of despair or depression or unhappiness or whatever it is I am struggling with at the moment and brings the associated sense of creation to the surface.
Today whispers to me that it has the possibility of being like yesterday - but this evening if I am faced with the situation again, I will fight back.
I will write.
Monday, July 21, 2014
Weakness
A realization of weakness is never a very comforting thing.
I am weak - weak in ways that are numerous in number and defy description. For all the ways that I like to believe that I am strong and can deal with or endure life, I am fractured with weakness - fractures that can occasionally threaten to tear apart my otherwise seemingly placid life.
The worst thing about such weaknesses is knowing that they are there, threatening to act when you least expect it (or need it), diverting your attention and sapping your energy. There are days where I have to walk a very fine line between doing what needs to be done while not walking over the precipice into the yawning abyss.
Like what sort of weaknesses, you ask?
Always the rub, is it not? People say that they suffer from weaknesses but scarcely willing to actually discuss them lest they reveal themselves in ways that are painful and embarrassing. I do not know that I am any more willing than any other to reveal all of them - here is one, though: food.
I like to eat. I like to eat a lot. Given the opportunity, I would routinely snack and overeat all day to the point that gluttony became more of a struggle than it already can be. It is always there - especially when there are those comfort foods around that I love and something has caused the day to go awry: Frustrated? Eat. Depressed? Eat. Tired? Eat. Bored? Eat.
I know it may not seem like much compared to what others go endure - and it may not be. But now take that weakness and multiply it by 5 or 10 or more and this too often seems to be my life: weaknesses, living in the fracture lines of my life, ready to rupture from any number of potential inputs or issues.
How does one solder together such weaknesses? Is there such a thing as going an hour, a day, even a week without being constantly aware and fighting? Or is this simply the human condition?
I am weak - weak in ways that are numerous in number and defy description. For all the ways that I like to believe that I am strong and can deal with or endure life, I am fractured with weakness - fractures that can occasionally threaten to tear apart my otherwise seemingly placid life.
The worst thing about such weaknesses is knowing that they are there, threatening to act when you least expect it (or need it), diverting your attention and sapping your energy. There are days where I have to walk a very fine line between doing what needs to be done while not walking over the precipice into the yawning abyss.
Like what sort of weaknesses, you ask?
Always the rub, is it not? People say that they suffer from weaknesses but scarcely willing to actually discuss them lest they reveal themselves in ways that are painful and embarrassing. I do not know that I am any more willing than any other to reveal all of them - here is one, though: food.
I like to eat. I like to eat a lot. Given the opportunity, I would routinely snack and overeat all day to the point that gluttony became more of a struggle than it already can be. It is always there - especially when there are those comfort foods around that I love and something has caused the day to go awry: Frustrated? Eat. Depressed? Eat. Tired? Eat. Bored? Eat.
I know it may not seem like much compared to what others go endure - and it may not be. But now take that weakness and multiply it by 5 or 10 or more and this too often seems to be my life: weaknesses, living in the fracture lines of my life, ready to rupture from any number of potential inputs or issues.
How does one solder together such weaknesses? Is there such a thing as going an hour, a day, even a week without being constantly aware and fighting? Or is this simply the human condition?
Friday, July 18, 2014
Thursday, July 17, 2014
Cutting with the Kissaki
During the most recent Seminar our soke (the head of our style our school) noticed how someone was doing their overhead two-handed cut known as a kirioroshi, one of the basic cuts of iaijutsu in which the sword is swung from behind the back over the head to cut down. "Dame" said soke. "Wrong".
He explained that the way we were cutting resulted with us cutting with the longer edge of the blade known as the ha. What we actually wanted to cut with, he demonstrated, was with the kissaki, the very tip of the sword. In order to do this, one has to bring the sword high over head, almost to the point where it is perpendicular with the ground, and then almost cast the blade forward as if fly fishing while changing the tenouchi, the hand grip, to nigiri no kata, the "wringing of hands" as if wringing out a towel, where the hands are so turned to the top of the tsuka (hilt) that the wrists almost sit on top of the sword.. What this combination does is ensure that the tip is accelerating more quickly than the rest of the blade while the grip makes the left arm the force by which the blade is being pushed down, the right hand almost acting more like a guide (when done correctly, this is almost singularly an action of the forearms). The result is the that the kissaki, the sharpest part of the blade, moves most quickly and is driven down with incredible force for quick and precise cutting.
Practicing this after the fact was difficult, as is any activity in which one has learned and is now having to relearn the activity. But one could feel the difference almost at once: the blade almost flies as the top of the arc as it accelerates down and one has to work much more to ensure that the end of the cut is level, instead of the blade angled downward.
It made me think of life in general as I was practicing last night.
So often we attempt to muscle our way through our problems and difficulties by brute force or by energy that we expend or even by the power of the tools that we use. The reality is that this will not always get us the best results. It is often the precise application of that thing which most needs doing - the kissaki of our task, if you will - back up by the right application of effort - the power of the left hand - that will provide results in a way which, after we get used to it, will most likely stun us in how power, effective, and quick it is.
Force or length of sword alone does not determine the outcome. It is the correct application of them that will bring victory.
He explained that the way we were cutting resulted with us cutting with the longer edge of the blade known as the ha. What we actually wanted to cut with, he demonstrated, was with the kissaki, the very tip of the sword. In order to do this, one has to bring the sword high over head, almost to the point where it is perpendicular with the ground, and then almost cast the blade forward as if fly fishing while changing the tenouchi, the hand grip, to nigiri no kata, the "wringing of hands" as if wringing out a towel, where the hands are so turned to the top of the tsuka (hilt) that the wrists almost sit on top of the sword.. What this combination does is ensure that the tip is accelerating more quickly than the rest of the blade while the grip makes the left arm the force by which the blade is being pushed down, the right hand almost acting more like a guide (when done correctly, this is almost singularly an action of the forearms). The result is the that the kissaki, the sharpest part of the blade, moves most quickly and is driven down with incredible force for quick and precise cutting.
Practicing this after the fact was difficult, as is any activity in which one has learned and is now having to relearn the activity. But one could feel the difference almost at once: the blade almost flies as the top of the arc as it accelerates down and one has to work much more to ensure that the end of the cut is level, instead of the blade angled downward.
It made me think of life in general as I was practicing last night.
So often we attempt to muscle our way through our problems and difficulties by brute force or by energy that we expend or even by the power of the tools that we use. The reality is that this will not always get us the best results. It is often the precise application of that thing which most needs doing - the kissaki of our task, if you will - back up by the right application of effort - the power of the left hand - that will provide results in a way which, after we get used to it, will most likely stun us in how power, effective, and quick it is.
Force or length of sword alone does not determine the outcome. It is the correct application of them that will bring victory.
Wednesday, July 16, 2014
Post-Vacation Drain
So it only took about one day of routine to destroy my energy level.
This is not unexpected. I gave up the concept many years ago that returning from vacation means anything at all changes while you are on vacation. Workplaces seldom become better by your absence. Always a little disappointing I suppose, because one would like to believe that this time it will be different - but not unexpected.
I noticed the waning over the course of the day. When I got in I was energized, focused, moving forward on projects. By the end of the day I was drifting, slowing down, seemingly lost in my ability to focus on what I had to do. Coming back and realizing that without your presence initiatives continue to be not acted on will do that for you.
The saddest part of this whole experience is the fact that all the dreams and plans you built a head of steam for while on vacation disappear. The good ideas you had, the "I am going to change things now and this is how I am going to do it" seem to float away like a tattered flag in the wind, leaving you only with the shreds of what you had dreamed to accomplish.
I do not suppose this is the goal of any vacation, in reality. A vacation does not solve your career or work problems, it merely gives you a break from them. But perhaps it can provide one more piece of functionality: to give one the wisdom and incentive to simply ask the question "If nothing changes, how long until I am willing to admit this fact and take real action to move on?"
This is not unexpected. I gave up the concept many years ago that returning from vacation means anything at all changes while you are on vacation. Workplaces seldom become better by your absence. Always a little disappointing I suppose, because one would like to believe that this time it will be different - but not unexpected.
I noticed the waning over the course of the day. When I got in I was energized, focused, moving forward on projects. By the end of the day I was drifting, slowing down, seemingly lost in my ability to focus on what I had to do. Coming back and realizing that without your presence initiatives continue to be not acted on will do that for you.
The saddest part of this whole experience is the fact that all the dreams and plans you built a head of steam for while on vacation disappear. The good ideas you had, the "I am going to change things now and this is how I am going to do it" seem to float away like a tattered flag in the wind, leaving you only with the shreds of what you had dreamed to accomplish.
I do not suppose this is the goal of any vacation, in reality. A vacation does not solve your career or work problems, it merely gives you a break from them. But perhaps it can provide one more piece of functionality: to give one the wisdom and incentive to simply ask the question "If nothing changes, how long until I am willing to admit this fact and take real action to move on?"
Tuesday, July 15, 2014
Rain and Porch
It is raining.
I am writing to you from my porch this morning where, enshrouded in darkness, it is raining. Not the heavy downpours that we seem prone to during this time of year but rather the gentle sort of rain that I would recognize from Old Home during the Fall or Spring.
It is another one of those circumstances that becomes a bit of a shocker: yesterday we were at the very high 90's and brutally hot. Even last night when I walked Syrah the Mighty at 9:30 there was still not a cloud in the sky. Now, blessed rain.
There is a cool breeze that is wafting its way across the porch as I write as well. It is devoid of any hint of humidity which the day might later bring but is now just lazily and happily moving across the porch and my computer, a gentle greeting from the cloud cover above.
And we are in such desperate need for rain - any rain - right now. Not that we have been so bad as years past, but we are already on severe water restrictions (not that such influences me at this point. Other than my garden and select plants, I am operating under belief that if it cannot survive the climate here I am not going to make special efforts. My money and my efforts are better spent on other things). I took a chance last night and did not water the garden in hopes that it would rain - even when the sky said otherwise to me.
The rain seems to be getting harder. The ground now bears the true appearance of a rainstorm, not just the half-wet appearance of a storm which was all promise and no action.
As I sit here, it strikes me as terribly odd that dreadful things can happen - are happening - half a world away and yet I am sitting here on my porch enjoying a quiet rainstorm as if nothing else in the world was going on. Surreal, almost.
Now the rain seems to be cutting back some, leaving only the draining sound of the water as it runs down the gutters and into the drainpipes as the major sound. The cool wind is still making its way across the porch, perhaps a last gift as it moves off to some other porch and summer returns.
Would that all my mornings started this peacefully and full of life-nourishing grace.
I am writing to you from my porch this morning where, enshrouded in darkness, it is raining. Not the heavy downpours that we seem prone to during this time of year but rather the gentle sort of rain that I would recognize from Old Home during the Fall or Spring.
It is another one of those circumstances that becomes a bit of a shocker: yesterday we were at the very high 90's and brutally hot. Even last night when I walked Syrah the Mighty at 9:30 there was still not a cloud in the sky. Now, blessed rain.
There is a cool breeze that is wafting its way across the porch as I write as well. It is devoid of any hint of humidity which the day might later bring but is now just lazily and happily moving across the porch and my computer, a gentle greeting from the cloud cover above.
And we are in such desperate need for rain - any rain - right now. Not that we have been so bad as years past, but we are already on severe water restrictions (not that such influences me at this point. Other than my garden and select plants, I am operating under belief that if it cannot survive the climate here I am not going to make special efforts. My money and my efforts are better spent on other things). I took a chance last night and did not water the garden in hopes that it would rain - even when the sky said otherwise to me.
The rain seems to be getting harder. The ground now bears the true appearance of a rainstorm, not just the half-wet appearance of a storm which was all promise and no action.
As I sit here, it strikes me as terribly odd that dreadful things can happen - are happening - half a world away and yet I am sitting here on my porch enjoying a quiet rainstorm as if nothing else in the world was going on. Surreal, almost.
Now the rain seems to be cutting back some, leaving only the draining sound of the water as it runs down the gutters and into the drainpipes as the major sound. The cool wind is still making its way across the porch, perhaps a last gift as it moves off to some other porch and summer returns.
Would that all my mornings started this peacefully and full of life-nourishing grace.
Monday, July 14, 2014
Seriousness
Seminar has been this weekend. As usual, I have enjoyed it even as I am reminded once again of how little I actually know about Iaijutsu. This year's take away for me? Seriousness.
I realized is practicing and my attendant continued issues of not performing correctly that I am not serious about iaijutsu the way I should be. I get to a certain level in this (or really in anything) and then I get bored with it. I am not on the path of continued improvement and truly knowing that which I participate in. I allow myself to be satisfied at a certain level and consider that to be having "achieved" something.
As I reflected on this Saturday night I realized that this is not only true of iaijutsu but of my life in general. I want to do things but I never pursue them to the level that I should but only to the level that I am interested in or does not bore me. The result? I know a lot about a great deal but am an expert at or achieve very little.
What does this mean? I need a renewed commitment. A commitment to actually completing that which I start, a commitment to accomplishing fully that which I set out to do. A commitment to be serious about that which I undertake, to accept and realize that any decision to start to something is a decision to follow it through to true completion or mastery.
I took the time to list out the things that I feel are important to myself and my life. 10 things. I am going to use as the basis of my commitment and seriousness. If it is on the list, it needs to become an item which I intend to either complete or master. And for those which I complete, I will place another item on the list.
Life is to short to not be serious about that which we do and seek to do it to the best of our abilities.
I realized is practicing and my attendant continued issues of not performing correctly that I am not serious about iaijutsu the way I should be. I get to a certain level in this (or really in anything) and then I get bored with it. I am not on the path of continued improvement and truly knowing that which I participate in. I allow myself to be satisfied at a certain level and consider that to be having "achieved" something.
As I reflected on this Saturday night I realized that this is not only true of iaijutsu but of my life in general. I want to do things but I never pursue them to the level that I should but only to the level that I am interested in or does not bore me. The result? I know a lot about a great deal but am an expert at or achieve very little.
What does this mean? I need a renewed commitment. A commitment to actually completing that which I start, a commitment to accomplishing fully that which I set out to do. A commitment to be serious about that which I undertake, to accept and realize that any decision to start to something is a decision to follow it through to true completion or mastery.
I took the time to list out the things that I feel are important to myself and my life. 10 things. I am going to use as the basis of my commitment and seriousness. If it is on the list, it needs to become an item which I intend to either complete or master. And for those which I complete, I will place another item on the list.
Life is to short to not be serious about that which we do and seek to do it to the best of our abilities.
Friday, July 11, 2014
A Car Battery and The Will of God
I am ungrateful for all the wrong reasons.
It is not that I cannot see God's hand evident - sometime daily - in our lives. It is that it never seems to be in the way that I want it to be.
Witness yesterday. I charged the offending van battery and tested it. It started like a charm. Headed out later in the day to run some errands. The second stop I make, the battery is low again. And then here is the hand of God:
1) The breakdown occurred less than a mile from The Ravishing Mrs. TB's work, so she could come pick me up. Additionally, it occurred in a supermarket parking lot so it was easy to access.
2) We were close enough to home that I could run home and get the tools I needed. Fortuitously (?) I had just organized my socket set so I could easily grab what I needed.
3) We originally went to one store to buy a battery but could not find it the model number. We looked at the battery and it was from Wal-Mart, so we drove there. Turns out the battery was under warranty. They said they needed to charge it to invoke the warranty but when I said I had already tried they were good with that. Not only was the battery free, we got almost $4.00 back.
4) This whole thing has occurred during my vacation, when it was easy for us to deal with it. During my regular work week this would have been a great deal more difficult.
All evidence of God's hand in our lives. So why am I not feeling more loved and taken care of and grateful?
Because I am selfish. Because all of this is quite handy of course, but what I really want is for the things that I want and think important to be taken care of as well. My projects. My dreams. My goals.
That is not the way it works, of course. Christ knew nothing of the sort. Neither did the apostles. Their concerns were God's concerns, their goals God's goals.
I am going through Acts right now. Time and time again, one finds the apostles preaching - and then something bad happens. Prison perhaps, or lashings, or maybe stonings. Never once do they grumble about it, never once do I catch them complaining that God is not fulfilling their dreams for their lives. God is always working to fulfill His goals - and the apostles see everything through that lens.
So perhaps, in the midst of my grumbling and baseline gratefulness, it would not hurt me to reflect for a moment that God, even though He is busy with the universe, has taken the time to determine that us having a functional van that we could easily repair is something that is important and somehow critical to what He is doing - and that perhaps all of my own wishes and wants do not rise to that same level.
It is not that I cannot see God's hand evident - sometime daily - in our lives. It is that it never seems to be in the way that I want it to be.
Witness yesterday. I charged the offending van battery and tested it. It started like a charm. Headed out later in the day to run some errands. The second stop I make, the battery is low again. And then here is the hand of God:
1) The breakdown occurred less than a mile from The Ravishing Mrs. TB's work, so she could come pick me up. Additionally, it occurred in a supermarket parking lot so it was easy to access.
2) We were close enough to home that I could run home and get the tools I needed. Fortuitously (?) I had just organized my socket set so I could easily grab what I needed.
3) We originally went to one store to buy a battery but could not find it the model number. We looked at the battery and it was from Wal-Mart, so we drove there. Turns out the battery was under warranty. They said they needed to charge it to invoke the warranty but when I said I had already tried they were good with that. Not only was the battery free, we got almost $4.00 back.
4) This whole thing has occurred during my vacation, when it was easy for us to deal with it. During my regular work week this would have been a great deal more difficult.
All evidence of God's hand in our lives. So why am I not feeling more loved and taken care of and grateful?
Because I am selfish. Because all of this is quite handy of course, but what I really want is for the things that I want and think important to be taken care of as well. My projects. My dreams. My goals.
That is not the way it works, of course. Christ knew nothing of the sort. Neither did the apostles. Their concerns were God's concerns, their goals God's goals.
I am going through Acts right now. Time and time again, one finds the apostles preaching - and then something bad happens. Prison perhaps, or lashings, or maybe stonings. Never once do they grumble about it, never once do I catch them complaining that God is not fulfilling their dreams for their lives. God is always working to fulfill His goals - and the apostles see everything through that lens.
So perhaps, in the midst of my grumbling and baseline gratefulness, it would not hurt me to reflect for a moment that God, even though He is busy with the universe, has taken the time to determine that us having a functional van that we could easily repair is something that is important and somehow critical to what He is doing - and that perhaps all of my own wishes and wants do not rise to that same level.
Thursday, July 10, 2014
On Autos and Grumbling
Frustrating return.
We got in at 0135 on Tuesday night. By the time we arrived at the car it was 0200. Go to unlock the car and hit the unlock key for all doors - nothing. Great. Try to start the car - nary a click.
We call and get some help. I am fortunate in that I carry jumper cables; I am less fortunate in remembering where they are (sort of a trick in the dark) but find them. Hook them up to the transit bus and up it starts. Wait for a few minutes, then say thanks and everyone gets in the car. First thing I do: kill it.
Call the front again. This time he brings a charger. We wait for a few minutes, discussing the fact that the weather has been hard on batteries lately. Finally, almost 40 minutes after we get to the car, we head out. I am extra careful going home, always trying to coast through the lights and avoid having to restart.
Then yesterday morning I get a call from The Ravishing Mrs. TB. "The van just died" she said. "The lights flickered and then everything just went out." Fortunately it was less than a mile from home so I drove out. Sure enough, the battery cable I had pulled off to replace the headlamp before we left was loose. Got it back on and took it home, then re-cleaned the posts and re-tightened the battery while charging the other car battery.
And now this morning. She goes out to the van and tries to start it. Clicking. Fortunately the battery in the other car is okay so she can take that. I check the charge level - dead, according to what I have. Start the charger again (fortunately I am still on vacation).
I want to look at the situation and look at the blessings: that I am still off, that we can get by for a bit with one car, and that nothing serious has happened on the way to or from home. I really do. But what I find myself stuck with instead is that nasty sense of "Why us? Why now?"
I should be grateful. Instead, I find myself grumbling.
We got in at 0135 on Tuesday night. By the time we arrived at the car it was 0200. Go to unlock the car and hit the unlock key for all doors - nothing. Great. Try to start the car - nary a click.
We call and get some help. I am fortunate in that I carry jumper cables; I am less fortunate in remembering where they are (sort of a trick in the dark) but find them. Hook them up to the transit bus and up it starts. Wait for a few minutes, then say thanks and everyone gets in the car. First thing I do: kill it.
Call the front again. This time he brings a charger. We wait for a few minutes, discussing the fact that the weather has been hard on batteries lately. Finally, almost 40 minutes after we get to the car, we head out. I am extra careful going home, always trying to coast through the lights and avoid having to restart.
Then yesterday morning I get a call from The Ravishing Mrs. TB. "The van just died" she said. "The lights flickered and then everything just went out." Fortunately it was less than a mile from home so I drove out. Sure enough, the battery cable I had pulled off to replace the headlamp before we left was loose. Got it back on and took it home, then re-cleaned the posts and re-tightened the battery while charging the other car battery.
And now this morning. She goes out to the van and tries to start it. Clicking. Fortunately the battery in the other car is okay so she can take that. I check the charge level - dead, according to what I have. Start the charger again (fortunately I am still on vacation).
I want to look at the situation and look at the blessings: that I am still off, that we can get by for a bit with one car, and that nothing serious has happened on the way to or from home. I really do. But what I find myself stuck with instead is that nasty sense of "Why us? Why now?"
I should be grateful. Instead, I find myself grumbling.
Wednesday, July 09, 2014
Tuesday, July 08, 2014
Leaving and Coming in the Upper Meadow
It has been almost a week of vacation now - a week of being essentially free of work and home and the ordinary routine of my daily life. This had not struck me until this morning, as I went for my now usual Lower Meadow walk to the southwest of the House towards the edge of my parents' property.
Walking through the low grass and wildflowers I noticed that honeybees are hitting up the little blooms that cling to the ground for the last bit of run-off moisture. This warms my heart even as it saddens it: on the one hand I am excited that someone here is keeping bees; on the other it saddens me as the bees that are reaping the pollen and nectar harvest are not my own. Still the overall sense I have is happiness: bees can make it here. Maybe they will for me one day again.
The blackberries at the end of the pasture that mark the dividing line have grown taller even as they do not appear to have pushed out any farther in the Meadow. I check: no ripe blackberries yet. We have missed the season by about a month. Darn - there is nothing quite like blackberries plucked fresh and popped into your mouth.
As I walk back in the direction of the house the thought strikes me from above: I am a week out of my ordinary life. Not only the cares and pressures of work - which look minutely small when one steps away from them - but the ordinary situation of my daily life. My very mannerism and ways of carrying about my day have not been activated in over a week. The way "I am" has simply not been evident.
Or how I have come to allow myself to be.
If you have followed my blog long enough, you will know that buried beneath the life that I seem to life is the life that I really want to live, the life of doing great things and accomplishing things of worth. What I find at this moment is that this man - the one walking up the Lower Meadow with me - may be the individual that can do it.
Of course the question is always "How do I make it work?" How do I take this individual and put him back into the actual situation of his life and still find this inner sense of calmness, of drive, that needs to be there to make things happen.
The secret, I think, is to not go back the way I came out.
Looking at now and given the time frame I have established, I now have a window. I simply need to list - and execute - on those things that need to move me towards that ultimate window.
Practically this means changing a number of things in my life - not so much what I do as much as how I act and carry myself. Of looking at things in a different light. Of being who I need to be to do what I need to do, not who I need to be merely to endure.
Somewhere on the walk down and up the Lower Meadow I appeared and disappeared at the same time. Now, I need to follow up on the man that walked up the hill with me.
Walking through the low grass and wildflowers I noticed that honeybees are hitting up the little blooms that cling to the ground for the last bit of run-off moisture. This warms my heart even as it saddens it: on the one hand I am excited that someone here is keeping bees; on the other it saddens me as the bees that are reaping the pollen and nectar harvest are not my own. Still the overall sense I have is happiness: bees can make it here. Maybe they will for me one day again.
The blackberries at the end of the pasture that mark the dividing line have grown taller even as they do not appear to have pushed out any farther in the Meadow. I check: no ripe blackberries yet. We have missed the season by about a month. Darn - there is nothing quite like blackberries plucked fresh and popped into your mouth.
As I walk back in the direction of the house the thought strikes me from above: I am a week out of my ordinary life. Not only the cares and pressures of work - which look minutely small when one steps away from them - but the ordinary situation of my daily life. My very mannerism and ways of carrying about my day have not been activated in over a week. The way "I am" has simply not been evident.
Or how I have come to allow myself to be.
If you have followed my blog long enough, you will know that buried beneath the life that I seem to life is the life that I really want to live, the life of doing great things and accomplishing things of worth. What I find at this moment is that this man - the one walking up the Lower Meadow with me - may be the individual that can do it.
Of course the question is always "How do I make it work?" How do I take this individual and put him back into the actual situation of his life and still find this inner sense of calmness, of drive, that needs to be there to make things happen.
The secret, I think, is to not go back the way I came out.
Looking at now and given the time frame I have established, I now have a window. I simply need to list - and execute - on those things that need to move me towards that ultimate window.
Practically this means changing a number of things in my life - not so much what I do as much as how I act and carry myself. Of looking at things in a different light. Of being who I need to be to do what I need to do, not who I need to be merely to endure.
Somewhere on the walk down and up the Lower Meadow I appeared and disappeared at the same time. Now, I need to follow up on the man that walked up the hill with me.
Monday, July 07, 2014
Day At The Ranch
It is July at the Ranch
The weather here is hot - hotter than it is at New Home, oddly enough, but there are still small portions of grass that have not turned the straw-brown of summer. The trees still tower, mantled in their cloaks of green, creating a variegated skyline between us and the mountains similar to that you would see in any skyline.
Some things are different of course - nothing is static even though change comes dropping slow here. A tree shed its branch by the driveway due to internal rot which did not become visible until the branch fell, leaving a gaping hole into the tree when one drives by, view into a secret world. One or two more fields seem to have fences where none were previously. And there is always something new that has been added to the collection of tools or equipment to see.
But many things remain the same. The birds still cluster back and forth on the feeder. The young tom turkeys wander by in the evening, making their pass like a group of young toughs looking for food and excitement. And the silence continues to overwhelm, even as is the wind gives a faint whisper through the trees.
It is good to be home.
The weather here is hot - hotter than it is at New Home, oddly enough, but there are still small portions of grass that have not turned the straw-brown of summer. The trees still tower, mantled in their cloaks of green, creating a variegated skyline between us and the mountains similar to that you would see in any skyline.
Some things are different of course - nothing is static even though change comes dropping slow here. A tree shed its branch by the driveway due to internal rot which did not become visible until the branch fell, leaving a gaping hole into the tree when one drives by, view into a secret world. One or two more fields seem to have fences where none were previously. And there is always something new that has been added to the collection of tools or equipment to see.
But many things remain the same. The birds still cluster back and forth on the feeder. The young tom turkeys wander by in the evening, making their pass like a group of young toughs looking for food and excitement. And the silence continues to overwhelm, even as is the wind gives a faint whisper through the trees.
It is good to be home.
Friday, July 04, 2014
Remembering The Real Reason For the Fourth of July
When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. --Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained, and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.
He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.
He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislature.
He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:
For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states:
For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing taxes on us without our consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:
For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses:
For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule in these colonies:
For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments:
For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.
We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.
New Hampshire: Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton
Massachusetts: John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry
Rhode Island: Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery
Connecticut: Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott
New York: William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris
New Jersey: Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark
Pennsylvania: Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross
Delaware: Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean
Maryland: Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton
Virginia: George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton
North Carolina: William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn
South Carolina: Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton
Georgia: Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton
Source: The Pennsylvania Packet, July 8, 1776
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. --Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained, and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.
He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.
He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislature.
He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:
For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states:
For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing taxes on us without our consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:
For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses:
For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule in these colonies:
For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments:
For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.
We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.
New Hampshire: Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton
Massachusetts: John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry
Rhode Island: Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery
Connecticut: Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott
New York: William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris
New Jersey: Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark
Pennsylvania: Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross
Delaware: Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean
Maryland: Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton
Virginia: George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton
North Carolina: William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn
South Carolina: Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton
Georgia: Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton
Source: The Pennsylvania Packet, July 8, 1776
Thursday, July 03, 2014
The Dojo of the Outside
Even though we are not at home, Seminar is coming soon - and so the bokuto traveled along with us so that I can practice (turns out traveling with a wooden practice sword is no big deal at all as checked luggage - although when I had to pull it out and retie the sageo I certainly got some looks) along with my obi and my practice hakama. My in-laws have a fine backyard for such things, and out to practice I went.
Practice outside of the dojo is always an interesting thing. The dojo is a very controlled environment with even lighting, an even floor, and temperature control. The outside world is very different of course - at New Home I bridge the gamut from frozen and rainy to hot and humid. Here in Old Home I have a treat indeed: cool breezes, no humidity, and a mild (to us, anyway temperature). The even lighting gives way to the sun - and always facing away from it to practice (thus proving Musashi's dictum of always try to have the sun at your back or to your right side).
The footing is the most noticeable.
Here the footing slightly rises and falls with the small divots and hills in the yard - something that is noticeable to the eye as one looks across it or even walks across it, but which is very noticeable to the balance when one tries to execute a waza across it. The stamping of the foot becomes an opportunity to lurch forward and throw the suheigiri (eye-level straight cut) off; the stepping back for an ukenigashi (block) or a wakinokimae (back stance) becomes the opportunity to fall back and lose the movement. One no longer can just pay attention to the mechanics of the cut or the place of the blade; one has to pay equal attention to where one is and how one is stepping.
It is a bit disconcerting to start out with something other than what you are used to, not just for the variety of practice but the hard realization of the fact that one is not as nearly skilled as one believes one's self to be. That is good of course, and a fine reminder that practicing anything under perfect conditions does not lead to mastery but to a delusion of what one's true ability is.
Because, as some very wise martial artists have said, we train not for the dojo but for life.
Practice outside of the dojo is always an interesting thing. The dojo is a very controlled environment with even lighting, an even floor, and temperature control. The outside world is very different of course - at New Home I bridge the gamut from frozen and rainy to hot and humid. Here in Old Home I have a treat indeed: cool breezes, no humidity, and a mild (to us, anyway temperature). The even lighting gives way to the sun - and always facing away from it to practice (thus proving Musashi's dictum of always try to have the sun at your back or to your right side).
The footing is the most noticeable.
Here the footing slightly rises and falls with the small divots and hills in the yard - something that is noticeable to the eye as one looks across it or even walks across it, but which is very noticeable to the balance when one tries to execute a waza across it. The stamping of the foot becomes an opportunity to lurch forward and throw the suheigiri (eye-level straight cut) off; the stepping back for an ukenigashi (block) or a wakinokimae (back stance) becomes the opportunity to fall back and lose the movement. One no longer can just pay attention to the mechanics of the cut or the place of the blade; one has to pay equal attention to where one is and how one is stepping.
It is a bit disconcerting to start out with something other than what you are used to, not just for the variety of practice but the hard realization of the fact that one is not as nearly skilled as one believes one's self to be. That is good of course, and a fine reminder that practicing anything under perfect conditions does not lead to mastery but to a delusion of what one's true ability is.
Because, as some very wise martial artists have said, we train not for the dojo but for life.
Wednesday, July 02, 2014
A Long Pause
As you are reading this I am probably somewhere over the continental United States. I am doing something that I have not done since I was laid off in 2009: I am taking 2 weeks off from work.
A whole two weeks?
Yup, that is the way that it seems.
The activities are split up: a week at Old Home visiting in-laws and The Ranch, two days to recover, then four days performing Iaijutsu at a seminar with the head of my order.
I had original planned to go, come back and work, and then go again but then suddenly thought "Why would a ruin a perfectly good vacation by putting some work back into the middle of it.
I will have plenty to do, of course: friends and family to see, places to go, even a little iai to practice. And, as I have musing about the last few days, lots to think about.
I intend to continue writing during this time, but in the odd event that something is not here do not worry - I may merely be taking a breather in this moment of long pause.
After all, I do have a great deal to consider.
A whole two weeks?
Yup, that is the way that it seems.
The activities are split up: a week at Old Home visiting in-laws and The Ranch, two days to recover, then four days performing Iaijutsu at a seminar with the head of my order.
I had original planned to go, come back and work, and then go again but then suddenly thought "Why would a ruin a perfectly good vacation by putting some work back into the middle of it.
I will have plenty to do, of course: friends and family to see, places to go, even a little iai to practice. And, as I have musing about the last few days, lots to think about.
I intend to continue writing during this time, but in the odd event that something is not here do not worry - I may merely be taking a breather in this moment of long pause.
After all, I do have a great deal to consider.
Tuesday, July 01, 2014
Trying to Find God's Will II
God's will (at least for my discussion purposes) has three parts:
1) Salvation: "For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved." - John 3:17
2) Sanctification, or becoming more like Christ: "For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren." - Romans 8:29.
3) Spreading His Kingdom: "Go therefore and make disciples of nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all the things I have commanded you..." - Matthew 28: 19-20a
- Or in another sense, God's will is first that we be saved, that we become more like His Son, and that we then spread His Kingdom (through His Word and making disciples) throughout the world.
So a simple question: How am I doing on these things?
Am I truly saved? I like to think so, but is there evidence of this in my life? (Honestly, this has always been a struggle for me as I never had the classic "Moment of Change" experience in my life. I would have to look to my actions and thoughts, I suppose.)
Am I consciously conforming myself to to the image of Christ? Really and honestly, no for the most part. I often become so ensnared in the need to "self actualize" or become more of myself (which is almost a cultural directive now) that I spend little time about learning to be more like Christ, of picking up His attributes and making them my own - but as John the Baptist said, "He must increase, but I must decrease" (John 3:31).
Am I consciously spreading His Kingdom? Here the answer is (almost certainly) a large negative. "Sure, I give a little money occasionally for missions and perhaps pray about it once in a while, but that is about it. I think I can honestly say that I do nothing - not one thing - to spread His word and make disciples in the places I am, let alone to all nations.
So, all in all, it would seem that if I am looking for God's Will - at least the stuff I can definitively know without question - I am far from it. So what do I do instead?
1) Work out salvation - Either I am saved, or I am not. I need to work this out in my mind.
2) Consciously begin conforming to the image of Christ - This is a large one, but pretty easy to start on. Simply pick any book of the New Testament and list all the things we are commanded to do. Start by picking one thing and consciously incorporate it into my life. Repeat.
3) Find a mission. Find something - some way of being definitively involved in showing Christ and God's love, and do that.
I have to confess - in doing this exercise I find myself a little disappointed. Why? Because none of these things seem to directly address what I consider to be my "real" situation: big life decisions upcoming, doing something I do not like really doing, even wishing that large portions of my life were different than they are.
But that, apparently is not really the point. There is little esoteric knowledge here - nor, I suppose, are we commanded to seek it. What we are commanded to do is to be saved, sanctified, and serving in the Great Commission.
Perhaps the other stuff will becoming obvious further down the road.
1) Salvation: "For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved." - John 3:17
2) Sanctification, or becoming more like Christ: "For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren." - Romans 8:29.
3) Spreading His Kingdom: "Go therefore and make disciples of nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all the things I have commanded you..." - Matthew 28: 19-20a
- Or in another sense, God's will is first that we be saved, that we become more like His Son, and that we then spread His Kingdom (through His Word and making disciples) throughout the world.
So a simple question: How am I doing on these things?
Am I truly saved? I like to think so, but is there evidence of this in my life? (Honestly, this has always been a struggle for me as I never had the classic "Moment of Change" experience in my life. I would have to look to my actions and thoughts, I suppose.)
Am I consciously conforming myself to to the image of Christ? Really and honestly, no for the most part. I often become so ensnared in the need to "self actualize" or become more of myself (which is almost a cultural directive now) that I spend little time about learning to be more like Christ, of picking up His attributes and making them my own - but as John the Baptist said, "He must increase, but I must decrease" (John 3:31).
Am I consciously spreading His Kingdom? Here the answer is (almost certainly) a large negative. "Sure, I give a little money occasionally for missions and perhaps pray about it once in a while, but that is about it. I think I can honestly say that I do nothing - not one thing - to spread His word and make disciples in the places I am, let alone to all nations.
So, all in all, it would seem that if I am looking for God's Will - at least the stuff I can definitively know without question - I am far from it. So what do I do instead?
1) Work out salvation - Either I am saved, or I am not. I need to work this out in my mind.
2) Consciously begin conforming to the image of Christ - This is a large one, but pretty easy to start on. Simply pick any book of the New Testament and list all the things we are commanded to do. Start by picking one thing and consciously incorporate it into my life. Repeat.
3) Find a mission. Find something - some way of being definitively involved in showing Christ and God's love, and do that.
I have to confess - in doing this exercise I find myself a little disappointed. Why? Because none of these things seem to directly address what I consider to be my "real" situation: big life decisions upcoming, doing something I do not like really doing, even wishing that large portions of my life were different than they are.
But that, apparently is not really the point. There is little esoteric knowledge here - nor, I suppose, are we commanded to seek it. What we are commanded to do is to be saved, sanctified, and serving in the Great Commission.
Perhaps the other stuff will becoming obvious further down the road.
Monday, June 30, 2014
Trying to Find God's Will
I need to find the will of God.
I know, I know. The Scriptures are filled with it: Be ye holy, for I am holy; do not commit adultery; love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength; love your neighbor as yourself. I get it. The will of God (MacArthur would call this the revealed will of God) is littered throughout the Bible.
I am looking for something bigger.
I find myself in the position of being able to predict (within two to four years) the fact that I will have to make another choice - perhaps "have to" does not cover it, I will be forced to. A clock has started ticking, a clock that I am certain will go off within that time period. When it does, I am going to to (more than likely) be in the position of needing to either make a significant move or make a significant change in my life.
So what is that change meant to be? That is my question.
Once upon a time I thought I knew the will of God for my life. I thought I was meant to serve in the teaching ministry of the church, but that was proven not to be so. Then I thought it was to serve in the church in the capacity of an elder, or even a deacon - again, proven not to be so. For a while I even thought it was to serve on a worship team - but that also was only proven to be for a little while. So whatever it was, clearly I either missed it - or did not do it.
And now I see another great turning.
I need to know - because otherwise I feel like I am just flailing around in the dark, hoping to find a direction when I know a choice is coming up.
And I do not want to miss the correct choice again.
I know, I know. The Scriptures are filled with it: Be ye holy, for I am holy; do not commit adultery; love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength; love your neighbor as yourself. I get it. The will of God (MacArthur would call this the revealed will of God) is littered throughout the Bible.
I am looking for something bigger.
I find myself in the position of being able to predict (within two to four years) the fact that I will have to make another choice - perhaps "have to" does not cover it, I will be forced to. A clock has started ticking, a clock that I am certain will go off within that time period. When it does, I am going to to (more than likely) be in the position of needing to either make a significant move or make a significant change in my life.
So what is that change meant to be? That is my question.
Once upon a time I thought I knew the will of God for my life. I thought I was meant to serve in the teaching ministry of the church, but that was proven not to be so. Then I thought it was to serve in the church in the capacity of an elder, or even a deacon - again, proven not to be so. For a while I even thought it was to serve on a worship team - but that also was only proven to be for a little while. So whatever it was, clearly I either missed it - or did not do it.
And now I see another great turning.
I need to know - because otherwise I feel like I am just flailing around in the dark, hoping to find a direction when I know a choice is coming up.
And I do not want to miss the correct choice again.
Friday, June 27, 2014
Thursday, June 26, 2014
Vintage Chick: Chapter One
Friends - There will be no post this morning. Instead, I request that you go and read my friend Buttercup's post from yesterday. It is so searingly honest, so passionately written, so moving, that it is well worth your time. I really wish I could write like that.
Chapter One
Chapter One
Wednesday, June 25, 2014
Home Made
I like things - mostly food and drink - that I make myself.
Oh, not just prepare myself. Make myself. Like as in brewing or cheesemaking or growing the garden and then consuming.
I realized this last night as I pulled three jalapenos off of the pepper plant they were growing on and placed them on the counter. I like that feeling. Or the feeling that I got after I put my two cans of beets up that I grew in my garden and processed. Or considering the cheese that I will have to wax before I go on vacation, to preserve it for when I get back.
I have tried to transfer this to other potential handmade activities but always seem to derive the most enjoyment from this. Partially, I suppose, because I like to eat and drink. But I wonder if partially that food and drink is such a practical thing. It feeds the body - and if made by one's self, it feeds the self as well.
I will admit that my imagination is always fired by the idea of doing something handmade, like blacksmithing or woodworking (two things that I do not do), but it is most fired by consideration of other ways I can make food and drink.
Perhaps here lies a potential clue in what I should be looking to do?
Hard to say at the moment of course - my area of operation is small and my time is limited. But there is little that thrills my heart more than being out working in the garden or preparing something in the kitchen, something that I know I will be the direct recipient of.
There is nothing more tasty than food provided and prepared by yourself.
Oh, not just prepare myself. Make myself. Like as in brewing or cheesemaking or growing the garden and then consuming.
I realized this last night as I pulled three jalapenos off of the pepper plant they were growing on and placed them on the counter. I like that feeling. Or the feeling that I got after I put my two cans of beets up that I grew in my garden and processed. Or considering the cheese that I will have to wax before I go on vacation, to preserve it for when I get back.
I have tried to transfer this to other potential handmade activities but always seem to derive the most enjoyment from this. Partially, I suppose, because I like to eat and drink. But I wonder if partially that food and drink is such a practical thing. It feeds the body - and if made by one's self, it feeds the self as well.
I will admit that my imagination is always fired by the idea of doing something handmade, like blacksmithing or woodworking (two things that I do not do), but it is most fired by consideration of other ways I can make food and drink.
Perhaps here lies a potential clue in what I should be looking to do?
Hard to say at the moment of course - my area of operation is small and my time is limited. But there is little that thrills my heart more than being out working in the garden or preparing something in the kitchen, something that I know I will be the direct recipient of.
There is nothing more tasty than food provided and prepared by yourself.
Tuesday, June 24, 2014
Shared
I realized yesterday that I miss having a shared thing.
As long as I can remember, I have had a shared thing, something that I worked on or did with someone else in which both were actively involved in the event towards something else. Playing outdoors, role playing, band, drama, The Firm (and its 52 predecessors), worship team, teaching - for well over 35 years I have had activities in my life that have been shared with at least one other person (or in some cases, 100).
But surely you have activities, you may ask? You seem to be busy. And I am. I have many things that I do - and that I enjoy doing. The difficulty is that they are projects that are essentially individual in nature. Even those that I do in a group - Iaijutsu, Highland Athletics - are performed in the context of an individual. And the others - cheese or mead or writing - are all completely within the context of one person - me - doing the activity.
Why does this matter? Because having a shared activity means that one has someone to share the activity with - the interests, the growth, the doing of it. One has someone to bounce information and knowledge off of, someone who can directly appreciate the failures and successes that one meets. A shared activity means the drudgery becomes a little lighter and the victories become a little lighter.
But most of all it means a shared soul - that in at least on aspect of one's life, one gets to share a sliver of someone else's soul, their inner most being. Because true love of a subject and sharing it is really the act of opening up one's inner self - one's deepest interests and desires - to someone else. When we truly share an activity with another, we can let our guards down in a way that is both intimate and enchanting.
Not so with regular life, of course. Too often regular life becomes a series of events in which we bounce off others like marbles in a bag, each of our lives impacting another as we chase our own goals, sometimes almost immune to the impact that we have on others and too busy in what we are doing and pursuing to move beyond our hard outer shell. It is only in sharing activities with others, having a project or goal or unifying theme outside of ourselves, that hardness of our outer selves can soften.
And this is what I have realized I am missing.
As long as I can remember, I have had a shared thing, something that I worked on or did with someone else in which both were actively involved in the event towards something else. Playing outdoors, role playing, band, drama, The Firm (and its 52 predecessors), worship team, teaching - for well over 35 years I have had activities in my life that have been shared with at least one other person (or in some cases, 100).
But surely you have activities, you may ask? You seem to be busy. And I am. I have many things that I do - and that I enjoy doing. The difficulty is that they are projects that are essentially individual in nature. Even those that I do in a group - Iaijutsu, Highland Athletics - are performed in the context of an individual. And the others - cheese or mead or writing - are all completely within the context of one person - me - doing the activity.
Why does this matter? Because having a shared activity means that one has someone to share the activity with - the interests, the growth, the doing of it. One has someone to bounce information and knowledge off of, someone who can directly appreciate the failures and successes that one meets. A shared activity means the drudgery becomes a little lighter and the victories become a little lighter.
But most of all it means a shared soul - that in at least on aspect of one's life, one gets to share a sliver of someone else's soul, their inner most being. Because true love of a subject and sharing it is really the act of opening up one's inner self - one's deepest interests and desires - to someone else. When we truly share an activity with another, we can let our guards down in a way that is both intimate and enchanting.
Not so with regular life, of course. Too often regular life becomes a series of events in which we bounce off others like marbles in a bag, each of our lives impacting another as we chase our own goals, sometimes almost immune to the impact that we have on others and too busy in what we are doing and pursuing to move beyond our hard outer shell. It is only in sharing activities with others, having a project or goal or unifying theme outside of ourselves, that hardness of our outer selves can soften.
And this is what I have realized I am missing.
Monday, June 23, 2014
De-Consuming Myself
I had to de-consume myself last night.
As I lay there in bed last night, I carefully took all of the fantasy lives I have accumulated, all of the little secret things I have placed here and there in my mind, those things that I cling to into the dark moments of my soul, placed them into small boats on the river of my consciousness, and sent them sailing downstream over the horizon of my wakefulness.
Why? I came under a heavy burden of realization yesterday, the realization that my life had become exclusively about me - and not about God and others at all.
Everything I seemed to do always seemed to somehow be done to further my own wants or desires - or best case, was done with double motives in mind, both my own and someone else's. That is a great move if the idea is to make yourself look better and further your own ends. It is a miserable move if you are called to serve others and glorify God - and seek His holiness and righteousness.
Why? Because everything becomes consumed with you, what it does for you, how it makes you feel. Individuals become caricatures of themselves in your dreams as the center of attention is you - never others.
"Seek you first His Kingdom and His Righteousness" said Christ. "Be ye holy, for I am holy" said God - yet in seeking my own best interests I seek neither God nor holiness but rather my own comfort and satisfaction and reward.
And so I loaded everything up last night and sent it downstream.
After the last one drifted over the edge of my consciousness, there was a mingling of solitude and panic. The solitude was simply from the emptiness of having everything and everyone moved on. The panic came myself: "Who is going to look after you? What if seeking God's holiness and Kingdom and the best interests of others leaves you with no fulfillment at all?"
The correct answer is, of course, that God will provide. The actual answer, the one I could give myself, was not nearly that full of faith but was much more of "Then that is the way that it is".
The water of my consciousness is smooth and calm now, with scarcely a ripple across it. One can almost hear the sound of loons as they prepare for their evening flight across the purple sky, anticipating the stars which I could have never seen if I continued to look down - and at myself.
As I lay there in bed last night, I carefully took all of the fantasy lives I have accumulated, all of the little secret things I have placed here and there in my mind, those things that I cling to into the dark moments of my soul, placed them into small boats on the river of my consciousness, and sent them sailing downstream over the horizon of my wakefulness.
Why? I came under a heavy burden of realization yesterday, the realization that my life had become exclusively about me - and not about God and others at all.
Everything I seemed to do always seemed to somehow be done to further my own wants or desires - or best case, was done with double motives in mind, both my own and someone else's. That is a great move if the idea is to make yourself look better and further your own ends. It is a miserable move if you are called to serve others and glorify God - and seek His holiness and righteousness.
Why? Because everything becomes consumed with you, what it does for you, how it makes you feel. Individuals become caricatures of themselves in your dreams as the center of attention is you - never others.
"Seek you first His Kingdom and His Righteousness" said Christ. "Be ye holy, for I am holy" said God - yet in seeking my own best interests I seek neither God nor holiness but rather my own comfort and satisfaction and reward.
And so I loaded everything up last night and sent it downstream.
After the last one drifted over the edge of my consciousness, there was a mingling of solitude and panic. The solitude was simply from the emptiness of having everything and everyone moved on. The panic came myself: "Who is going to look after you? What if seeking God's holiness and Kingdom and the best interests of others leaves you with no fulfillment at all?"
The correct answer is, of course, that God will provide. The actual answer, the one I could give myself, was not nearly that full of faith but was much more of "Then that is the way that it is".
The water of my consciousness is smooth and calm now, with scarcely a ripple across it. One can almost hear the sound of loons as they prepare for their evening flight across the purple sky, anticipating the stars which I could have never seen if I continued to look down - and at myself.
Friday, June 20, 2014
Thursday, June 19, 2014
A Run Down Memory Lane
Running this morning for some reason put me into the mind of The Firm. I suddenly realized it was a little over 10 years ago that I decided to stop everything I was doing - had done for the previous 8 years - and try something new.
I remember the night so clearly that Himself and I walked around and around the track at our local middle school as we did almost every night, talking and dreaming about the plans we would have and what we would do. I remember that precise moment where He said that the time to choose was now: I was either with Him or He would move on without me, now hard feelings. And I remember in that night being swept away by the hopefulness and dreams of what could be, if I was only willing to dream hard enough.
But dreams, as it turns out, are not enough to make something happen on their own.
The money I used to fund it is long gone, as is the house we bought in hopes that we would become accustomed to that lifestyle (sold at a loss, prevented us from buying another for five years). Every single thing associated with The Firm after I walked away has gone as well, with only a single thing - a handcrafted short sword I bought with my first real estate check - as a reminder that I worked in Real Estate at all. We indirectly ended up halfway from where I grew up as a result. Of those great and mighty dreams, not a shred remains.
And those fears of being left behind? I cannot say that they have all come true, but what I can say is that the relationship which created that need has long since traveled on. I am sure we track each other out the corner of our eyes, as you would any acquaintance of old - but the old special relationship, the sort of "best life friend" portion went long ago.
And so the thing that seemed to matter so much, that I was willing to bet my livelihood and the life of my family on, came to naught. The (let us be honest) admiration I secretly craved, the dream I shared, has become moonbeams and ash in a sense Himself did move on to different things and I am essentially in the same place that I was 10 years ago.
The lingering questions remain: Was it truly worth it? Or does where you are now tell you that all that valued was valued incorrectly?
I remember the night so clearly that Himself and I walked around and around the track at our local middle school as we did almost every night, talking and dreaming about the plans we would have and what we would do. I remember that precise moment where He said that the time to choose was now: I was either with Him or He would move on without me, now hard feelings. And I remember in that night being swept away by the hopefulness and dreams of what could be, if I was only willing to dream hard enough.
But dreams, as it turns out, are not enough to make something happen on their own.
The money I used to fund it is long gone, as is the house we bought in hopes that we would become accustomed to that lifestyle (sold at a loss, prevented us from buying another for five years). Every single thing associated with The Firm after I walked away has gone as well, with only a single thing - a handcrafted short sword I bought with my first real estate check - as a reminder that I worked in Real Estate at all. We indirectly ended up halfway from where I grew up as a result. Of those great and mighty dreams, not a shred remains.
And those fears of being left behind? I cannot say that they have all come true, but what I can say is that the relationship which created that need has long since traveled on. I am sure we track each other out the corner of our eyes, as you would any acquaintance of old - but the old special relationship, the sort of "best life friend" portion went long ago.
And so the thing that seemed to matter so much, that I was willing to bet my livelihood and the life of my family on, came to naught. The (let us be honest) admiration I secretly craved, the dream I shared, has become moonbeams and ash in a sense Himself did move on to different things and I am essentially in the same place that I was 10 years ago.
The lingering questions remain: Was it truly worth it? Or does where you are now tell you that all that valued was valued incorrectly?
Wednesday, June 18, 2014
Tuesday, June 17, 2014
Realizing The Hand of God
Sometimes you have a quick view into the inner workings of God, how sometimes things you wonder why they happened reveal themselves. It occurred (as it occasionally does) this week - and the realization of it took my breath away.
It was another one of those social media fishing expeditions that I am prone to wander off on from time to time when I get to wondering about people and where their lives went - a little looking here, a little looking there, and suddenly I find a trove of what has gone on in the lives of others since we parted.
In this case it was one of those moments where one suddenly realizes "Oh, that is why that happened" - a separation which occurred when two lives ended up taking very different paths. "That is why that happened" you say to yourself, perhaps after years of wondering why events occurred: was it something that you did? Something that you said? Should you have fought harder for it, made more attempts?
It is sobering - and indeed more than a little frightening - to see God's hand moving in those moments, to realize that He is active in one's life in ways that one would not consider. Problems or issues were headed off years before that could even consciously exist (not that this is meant in anything like a superiority complex - I am not better than anyone else in these matters; surely has God has preserved others from me as well).
It heartens me to know that God is paying that kind of attention, that He is (through no merit of my own) looking out for myself in ways I do not even yet know issues of yet.
"A man's steps are ordered by the LORD; how then can man understand his way?" - Proverbs 20:24
It was another one of those social media fishing expeditions that I am prone to wander off on from time to time when I get to wondering about people and where their lives went - a little looking here, a little looking there, and suddenly I find a trove of what has gone on in the lives of others since we parted.
In this case it was one of those moments where one suddenly realizes "Oh, that is why that happened" - a separation which occurred when two lives ended up taking very different paths. "That is why that happened" you say to yourself, perhaps after years of wondering why events occurred: was it something that you did? Something that you said? Should you have fought harder for it, made more attempts?
It is sobering - and indeed more than a little frightening - to see God's hand moving in those moments, to realize that He is active in one's life in ways that one would not consider. Problems or issues were headed off years before that could even consciously exist (not that this is meant in anything like a superiority complex - I am not better than anyone else in these matters; surely has God has preserved others from me as well).
It heartens me to know that God is paying that kind of attention, that He is (through no merit of my own) looking out for myself in ways I do not even yet know issues of yet.
"A man's steps are ordered by the LORD; how then can man understand his way?" - Proverbs 20:24
Monday, June 16, 2014
A Failure of Subject
So today is yet another one of those days when the cursor is just sitting there at me blinking, wondering if I am going to write anything.
I hate it, of course. There it sits blinking on and off, black and white, the visible/invisible line between myself and my writing. Although it is really not between me and my writing at all. It is not as if the cursor is the thing that prevents me from finding my inner muse, it is myself.
There are mornings like this, of course, where the brain has nothing to offer and creativity flicker has taken leave and gone to where such creative things go for the winter. I wish I knew where it went - it is not as if I had have plenty on my mind or other things that needed writing about. But for some reason, all of this has disappeared at the very moment I need it to use, leaving me with only a bit of a headache and a blinking cursor.
It happens, of course. I just need to reconcile myself to this, let it go as I would let a bad throw go, and start over tomorrow, confident that a new thought will present itself for consideration.
But in the back of my mind I still wonder: where did it go? Because if I could only find that place and recapture it, how wonderful would that be?
I hate it, of course. There it sits blinking on and off, black and white, the visible/invisible line between myself and my writing. Although it is really not between me and my writing at all. It is not as if the cursor is the thing that prevents me from finding my inner muse, it is myself.
There are mornings like this, of course, where the brain has nothing to offer and creativity flicker has taken leave and gone to where such creative things go for the winter. I wish I knew where it went - it is not as if I had have plenty on my mind or other things that needed writing about. But for some reason, all of this has disappeared at the very moment I need it to use, leaving me with only a bit of a headache and a blinking cursor.
It happens, of course. I just need to reconcile myself to this, let it go as I would let a bad throw go, and start over tomorrow, confident that a new thought will present itself for consideration.
But in the back of my mind I still wonder: where did it go? Because if I could only find that place and recapture it, how wonderful would that be?
Friday, June 13, 2014
Just Run
Putting aside time
and ignoring the distance,
I become the wind.
This morning I just ran.
I put aside the timer. I put aside the distance counting. I just went out and ran this morning.
Why? Because I realized this morning that I starting to flag in my running - and that is not a good thing. I need to keep up with it, get better at it, continue to do it, when in fact all I am finding is that my enthusiasm is waning a little more every day.
As pondered this in the morning as I prepared to run I realized that part of the issue was that it was become a regimented activity for me: get ready at a certain time, run the course I always run, look at my time and enter it, and carry on. No sense of fun there. No sense of seeing something different or getting better at something. Just day in, day out, mechanical running.
That is not a good development.
In order to have the desire to become more skilled at anything, one must have some level of fun involved with the thing: one has to want to do it. One has to have some level of "Hey, I enjoy this" and sometimes just do it for the sheer pleasure of doing it. Without that, the activity will simply become a duty - and duties, as well know, will be cast off as soon as we no longer have to do them.
So I just ran.
I will enter a distance of course and some kind of time, but that is it. I will not check to see my splits or averages. I will just glory in the fact that after an evening of pounding rain I arose and saw the clouds and sun - and just ran.
and ignoring the distance,
I become the wind.
This morning I just ran.
I put aside the timer. I put aside the distance counting. I just went out and ran this morning.
Why? Because I realized this morning that I starting to flag in my running - and that is not a good thing. I need to keep up with it, get better at it, continue to do it, when in fact all I am finding is that my enthusiasm is waning a little more every day.
As pondered this in the morning as I prepared to run I realized that part of the issue was that it was become a regimented activity for me: get ready at a certain time, run the course I always run, look at my time and enter it, and carry on. No sense of fun there. No sense of seeing something different or getting better at something. Just day in, day out, mechanical running.
That is not a good development.
In order to have the desire to become more skilled at anything, one must have some level of fun involved with the thing: one has to want to do it. One has to have some level of "Hey, I enjoy this" and sometimes just do it for the sheer pleasure of doing it. Without that, the activity will simply become a duty - and duties, as well know, will be cast off as soon as we no longer have to do them.
So I just ran.
I will enter a distance of course and some kind of time, but that is it. I will not check to see my splits or averages. I will just glory in the fact that after an evening of pounding rain I arose and saw the clouds and sun - and just ran.
Thursday, June 12, 2014
Bella The Great
Bella the Great is sitting on my lap as I type this.
Her emergence from her cage has been extraordinary. We have had her since 2007, a mini-lop purchased for a 4-H project that never really took off, and in all of that time she never wanted to get out of her cage. We began keeping the cage door open because it was inconvenient in the morning - and she did nothing. In fact, she fought whenever someone would have to remove her from the cage for its cleaning. She never wanted to be held and only pet on her terms, when she came up to the cage door.
Until about 3 weeks ago, when she just spontaneously jumped out of the cage and started running around.
Now she has become almost a tyrant in her quest for freedom. Every morning, as soon as she sees the light go on, she starts gnawing at the cage door (it is closed now, of course), demanding to be let out. When it opens she immediately hops out and begins hopping about. She seems to have a circuit: first the family room in which she is in, then out to the living room to hop around the perimeter before she plops down on the tile or carpet by the entry way.
When I come to sit down in my chair she will hop over and look up; sometimes she tries to climb my leg for attention, sometimes she just hops up in the chair and makes that sort of sound only a rabbit can make. She sometimes just sits there demanding to be pet; at other times she makes a quick circuit over my lap to the other side and then hops back down and carries along her way. Just now, she hopped up, sat to my side as I pet her, gave me a couple of bunny kisses (Rabbit for "I Love You") and then hopped back down on her business.
This is an unlooked for gift, something that I had expected after years of having her and trying to convince her that we did not really seek to harm her but wanted to love her. Suddenly, it seems, those years of trying have finally paid off, and we are beneficiary of the love of a happy rabbit.
Her emergence from her cage has been extraordinary. We have had her since 2007, a mini-lop purchased for a 4-H project that never really took off, and in all of that time she never wanted to get out of her cage. We began keeping the cage door open because it was inconvenient in the morning - and she did nothing. In fact, she fought whenever someone would have to remove her from the cage for its cleaning. She never wanted to be held and only pet on her terms, when she came up to the cage door.
Until about 3 weeks ago, when she just spontaneously jumped out of the cage and started running around.
Now she has become almost a tyrant in her quest for freedom. Every morning, as soon as she sees the light go on, she starts gnawing at the cage door (it is closed now, of course), demanding to be let out. When it opens she immediately hops out and begins hopping about. She seems to have a circuit: first the family room in which she is in, then out to the living room to hop around the perimeter before she plops down on the tile or carpet by the entry way.
When I come to sit down in my chair she will hop over and look up; sometimes she tries to climb my leg for attention, sometimes she just hops up in the chair and makes that sort of sound only a rabbit can make. She sometimes just sits there demanding to be pet; at other times she makes a quick circuit over my lap to the other side and then hops back down and carries along her way. Just now, she hopped up, sat to my side as I pet her, gave me a couple of bunny kisses (Rabbit for "I Love You") and then hopped back down on her business.
This is an unlooked for gift, something that I had expected after years of having her and trying to convince her that we did not really seek to harm her but wanted to love her. Suddenly, it seems, those years of trying have finally paid off, and we are beneficiary of the love of a happy rabbit.
Wednesday, June 11, 2014
Tuesday, June 10, 2014
Shielding Ourselves From Others
How often I fail.
Sometimes it feels as it my personal life is just a series of failures as I sort of lurch from disaster to disaster. You would not know this from looking on the outside, of course: you would just see me with my usual demeanor, laughing and carrying on as I try to get this thing accomplished or that thing done. But inside it so often feels that there is a battlefield of choices and ideas going on, and too often I feel I am on the wrong side of them.
It makes me wonder what life would be like if the contents of our minds and hearts were as audible and visible as the expressions on our faces. What would people think? How the illusions we have of each other would be ripped away in the reality of how we actually go about our daily lives?
It gives me pause as to why God never gave us the gift of telepathy. You would think that this would be an excellent thing - mind to mind instant contact in a way that would enable people to to truly know each other. Instead we kind of wander through words and thoughts and actions, hoping that we both express what we are trying to express and not reveal the rest of it. Perhaps the lack of telepathy is an outcome of The Fall, a privilege that we are now denied. Or perhaps it is simply a protection God put into place to protect us from having to regularly engage others in an overwhelming assault of our selves.
I have often said - and believe - that a truly successful personal life would be the one in which my outer and inner selves are the same. I sometimes wonder if that is really possible, if in fact the outer self helps to buffer others from what is truly going on inside of us.
To protect others from our own demons. And shield us from our own failures.
Sometimes it feels as it my personal life is just a series of failures as I sort of lurch from disaster to disaster. You would not know this from looking on the outside, of course: you would just see me with my usual demeanor, laughing and carrying on as I try to get this thing accomplished or that thing done. But inside it so often feels that there is a battlefield of choices and ideas going on, and too often I feel I am on the wrong side of them.
It makes me wonder what life would be like if the contents of our minds and hearts were as audible and visible as the expressions on our faces. What would people think? How the illusions we have of each other would be ripped away in the reality of how we actually go about our daily lives?
It gives me pause as to why God never gave us the gift of telepathy. You would think that this would be an excellent thing - mind to mind instant contact in a way that would enable people to to truly know each other. Instead we kind of wander through words and thoughts and actions, hoping that we both express what we are trying to express and not reveal the rest of it. Perhaps the lack of telepathy is an outcome of The Fall, a privilege that we are now denied. Or perhaps it is simply a protection God put into place to protect us from having to regularly engage others in an overwhelming assault of our selves.
I have often said - and believe - that a truly successful personal life would be the one in which my outer and inner selves are the same. I sometimes wonder if that is really possible, if in fact the outer self helps to buffer others from what is truly going on inside of us.
To protect others from our own demons. And shield us from our own failures.
Monday, June 09, 2014
Rotten Habits
Today in my morning pages (the three pages in my journal I am trying to write every morning) one of the questions from The Artist's Way" I had to consider was "What are three rotten habits - obvious and subtle - that you have? What is the payoff from them?" Wow, I thought to myself - that is going to be fairly hard to come up with - not so much that I do not have them but rather that I will not be able to find a theme amongst the three of each.
I was wrong.
Three obvious rotten habits:
1) Spending time surfing the Internet reading instead of doing something productive.
2) Letting myself that this will take so long to do that I put off doing them.
3) Putting off tomorrow what I could do today.
Payoff: I do not actually have to take action on anything and by not taking action, I cannot fail.
Three subtle rotten habits:
1) Not speaking up when I should.
2) Not defending my position when I should.
3) Being flippant when I should be serious.
Payoff: People will never think ill of me or my opinions or criticize me.
In looking at these in a printed form, I see a trend. In both cases, I end up trying to not do or say anything, because I am worried about failing (by action or opinion). I find that interesting in that I knew that my fear of failure and criticism was high - but not that high.
What to do? The first three are relatively easy to consider: act. Time your Internet. Instead of thinking about what doing something, do it. And do it as soon as you realize it, not tomorrow.
The other three are more difficult because they involve self image, not action. How does I overcome the need to be liked - or rather, the incessant need in my case? How does I stand one's ground intellectually? And how does I accept that flippant is not always the way to be?
What are your rotten habits? And what payoff do you get?
I was wrong.
Three obvious rotten habits:
1) Spending time surfing the Internet reading instead of doing something productive.
2) Letting myself that this will take so long to do that I put off doing them.
3) Putting off tomorrow what I could do today.
Payoff: I do not actually have to take action on anything and by not taking action, I cannot fail.
Three subtle rotten habits:
1) Not speaking up when I should.
2) Not defending my position when I should.
3) Being flippant when I should be serious.
Payoff: People will never think ill of me or my opinions or criticize me.
In looking at these in a printed form, I see a trend. In both cases, I end up trying to not do or say anything, because I am worried about failing (by action or opinion). I find that interesting in that I knew that my fear of failure and criticism was high - but not that high.
What to do? The first three are relatively easy to consider: act. Time your Internet. Instead of thinking about what doing something, do it. And do it as soon as you realize it, not tomorrow.
The other three are more difficult because they involve self image, not action. How does I overcome the need to be liked - or rather, the incessant need in my case? How does I stand one's ground intellectually? And how does I accept that flippant is not always the way to be?
What are your rotten habits? And what payoff do you get?
Friday, June 06, 2014
Best Day of My Life
One of the advantages of being slightly behind the popular culture scene is that you find things that are relatively recent but have had enough time that the bad material has settled out. Such is the song "Best Day of My Life" by American Authors. I have been somewhat surprised by my reaction to it, one of delight. Why?
1) I love the message of the song. What would life be like if every morning we woke up and said "This is going to be the best day of my life?" Every day?
2) It has a banjo. That moves it to the top of the list. Nothing wrong with banjos.
The best line of the song? "But all the possibilities, no limits just epiphanies".
The lyrics:
I stretched my hands out to the sky
We danced with monsters through the night
Wo-oah-oah-oah-oah-oh-oh
Oah-oah-oah-oah-oah-oh-oh
But all the possibilities
No limits just epiphanies
Wo-oah-oah-oah-oah-oh-oh
Oah-oah-oah-oah-oah-oh-oh
This is gonna be, this is gonna be, this is gonna be
The best day of my life
Everything is looking up
Everybody up now
1) I love the message of the song. What would life be like if every morning we woke up and said "This is going to be the best day of my life?" Every day?
2) It has a banjo. That moves it to the top of the list. Nothing wrong with banjos.
The best line of the song? "But all the possibilities, no limits just epiphanies".
The lyrics:
I had a dream so big and loud
I jumped so high I touched the clouds
Wo-oah-oah-oah-oah-oh-oh
Wo-oah-oah-oah-oah-oh-oh
I jumped so high I touched the clouds
Wo-oah-oah-oah-oah-oh-oh
Wo-oah-oah-oah-oah-oh-oh
I stretched my hands out to the sky
We danced with monsters through the night
Wo-oah-oah-oah-oah-oh-oh
Oah-oah-oah-oah-oah-oh-oh
I'm never gonna look back, woah
I'm never gonna give it up, noo
Please don't wake me now
I'm never gonna give it up, noo
Please don't wake me now
Oo-o-o-o-o-o
This is gonna be the best day of my life
My li-i-i-i-i-ii-ife
Oo-o-o-o-o-oooooo
This is gonna be the best day of my life
My li-i-i-i-i-ii-ife
This is gonna be the best day of my life
My li-i-i-i-i-ii-ife
Oo-o-o-o-o-oooooo
This is gonna be the best day of my life
My li-i-i-i-i-ii-ife
I howled at the moon with friends
And then the sun came crashing in
Wo-oah-oah-oah-oah-oh-oh
Oah-oah-oah-oah-oah-oh-oh
And then the sun came crashing in
Wo-oah-oah-oah-oah-oh-oh
Oah-oah-oah-oah-oah-oh-oh
But all the possibilities
No limits just epiphanies
Wo-oah-oah-oah-oah-oh-oh
Oah-oah-oah-oah-oah-oh-oh
I'm never gonna look back, woah
I'm never gonna give it up, noo
Just don't wake me now
I'm never gonna give it up, noo
Just don't wake me now
Oo-o-o-o-o-o
This is gonna be the best day of my life
My li-i-i-i-i-ii-ife
Oo-o-o-o-o-o
This is gonna be the best day of my life
My li-i-i-i-i-ii-ife
This is gonna be the best day of my life
My li-i-i-i-i-ii-ife
Oo-o-o-o-o-o
This is gonna be the best day of my life
My li-i-i-i-i-ii-ife
I hear it calling outside my window
I feel it in my soul
I feel it in my soul
The stars were burning so bright
The sun was out 'til midnight
I say we lose control
The sun was out 'til midnight
I say we lose control
Oo-o-o-o-o-o
This is gonna be the best day of my life
My li-i-i-i-i-ii-ife
Oo-o-o-o-o-o
This is gonna be the best day of my life
My li-i-i-i-i-ii-ife
This is gonna be the best day of my life
My li-i-i-i-i-ii-ife
Oo-o-o-o-o-o
This is gonna be the best day of my life
My li-i-i-i-i-ii-ife
This is gonna be, this is gonna be, this is gonna be
The best day of my life
Everything is looking up
Everybody up now
Oo-o-o-o-o-o
This is gonna be the best day of my l-ii-fe
My li-i-i-i-i-ii-ife
This is gonna be the best day of my l-ii-fe
My li-i-i-i-i-ii-ife
Thursday, June 05, 2014
Wednesday, June 04, 2014
Finding Courage
Finding courage can be a very difficult thing.
Finding courage is quite easy when it is just for a moment or the nature of the situation is such that is something truly noble. Then one can find one's fear consumed in the moment or overcome with the greatness of the task at hand. In these times courage is at hand like a trusted sword, easily available to draw out and engage.
But courage can be very difficult to find in the daily grind of life, when there is no great event that calls it forth or a truly noble task. Instead, it seems that courage can be required for the simple task of living day to day or facing down the demons of the quiet spaces within our own souls.
It happened to me last night, driving back from class. I suddenly just found myself overwhelmed - almost to tears. Concerning what I do not know that I could tell you - certainly nothing had happened in class to garner this kind of reaction. But there I was, feeling suddenly bereft and alone and wandering, to the point that disconnected from my where and when I stopped at a green light, looking two lights down to the red one I saw in the distance.
It takes a sort of courage at those moments to, the sort of courage to pull one's self back away from the brink and continue to move forward into life. It does not feel like courage, of course: we often associate courage with great feelings of power and fearlessness, while this kind of courage feels like I am just dragging myself out of a pit to stumble forward. But it is a sort of courage none the less - perhaps even more critical than the first sort of courage I wrote about.
For the first sort of courage there is often a sense that the outcome is not necessarily relevant - one could conceivable die or lose a job or even simply be yelled at, but it is subsumed in the overwhelming sense of rightness and doing right and greatness of heart. However the second sort of courage is based not on the moment but on the outcome if one does not take action of courage - the depression that one will slip into, the despair that one will find on the morrow, the emptiness of one's own soul unless the courage is engaged and the sense of defeat is overcome with the thought of "One Day More".
It is the unrecognized sort of courage of course, and hardly the sort of thing any movies will be made of. But that moment of finding courage can become the most important exercise of all - because unlike the courage of the moment, the courage of endurance is habit learned like any other and if faithfully practiced even in the darkest of moments can become a life of courage: not the necessarily the courage of greatness but the courage of pushing forward in the midst of a life which may so often feel like it is collapsing upon itself.
Finding courage is quite easy when it is just for a moment or the nature of the situation is such that is something truly noble. Then one can find one's fear consumed in the moment or overcome with the greatness of the task at hand. In these times courage is at hand like a trusted sword, easily available to draw out and engage.
But courage can be very difficult to find in the daily grind of life, when there is no great event that calls it forth or a truly noble task. Instead, it seems that courage can be required for the simple task of living day to day or facing down the demons of the quiet spaces within our own souls.
It happened to me last night, driving back from class. I suddenly just found myself overwhelmed - almost to tears. Concerning what I do not know that I could tell you - certainly nothing had happened in class to garner this kind of reaction. But there I was, feeling suddenly bereft and alone and wandering, to the point that disconnected from my where and when I stopped at a green light, looking two lights down to the red one I saw in the distance.
It takes a sort of courage at those moments to, the sort of courage to pull one's self back away from the brink and continue to move forward into life. It does not feel like courage, of course: we often associate courage with great feelings of power and fearlessness, while this kind of courage feels like I am just dragging myself out of a pit to stumble forward. But it is a sort of courage none the less - perhaps even more critical than the first sort of courage I wrote about.
For the first sort of courage there is often a sense that the outcome is not necessarily relevant - one could conceivable die or lose a job or even simply be yelled at, but it is subsumed in the overwhelming sense of rightness and doing right and greatness of heart. However the second sort of courage is based not on the moment but on the outcome if one does not take action of courage - the depression that one will slip into, the despair that one will find on the morrow, the emptiness of one's own soul unless the courage is engaged and the sense of defeat is overcome with the thought of "One Day More".
It is the unrecognized sort of courage of course, and hardly the sort of thing any movies will be made of. But that moment of finding courage can become the most important exercise of all - because unlike the courage of the moment, the courage of endurance is habit learned like any other and if faithfully practiced even in the darkest of moments can become a life of courage: not the necessarily the courage of greatness but the courage of pushing forward in the midst of a life which may so often feel like it is collapsing upon itself.
Tuesday, June 03, 2014
The Great Quarterly Meeting
Today is the Great Quarterly Meeting.
I remember the first time I had to give one of these. It was back in 2009, shortly after we had moved. I had no idea what I was actually going to have to do. Given guidance and a presentation, I sat and spoke quietly and sweated profusely and got through the meeting. As I recall, I had a fairly high level of terror due to the other people who were present in the room with me - one does not often spend 1.5 hours with virtually all the senior management of a company.
That was 18 meetings ago. Today will be meeting number 19. Do I have the same sense of terror that I did? Not the same sense of terror per se, but certainly a sense of terror as I approach this one as well.
Why? Senior staff can make me nervous. In a sense I am a consumer of their moods and the issues going on in their worlds. For example, they can be very attentive - or very disengaged, depending on what is happening around them. They can move past points that I thought would be critical to discuss - and then spend a great deal of time on something I would not have predicted. And always in the back of my head is the primal fear of being called out for being wrong or incompetent.
Perhaps this is really the source of my fear for these meetings: not that the meeting or information itself is wrong or without value but that I am perceived as being wrong or incorrect. It is that sinking feeling that one gets when in the slide that flashed up on the screen one realizes the spelling error or data error that escaped notice every other time that this document was reviewed. That every secret belief I have of my inability and my lack of knowledge will be put front and center for everyone to see.
I have tried to combat this. I have reviewed and re-reviewed the presentation. I know the data backwards and forwards. And yet, every time I think of doing this, I get a little bit fearful. Because buried beneath this collection of living is a small boy who, somewhere he cannot even fully remember, felt like he was unprepared and got attacked for it.
The meeting will come and go as they always do; the boy, however, remains in the center of my soul, waiting to be answered.
I remember the first time I had to give one of these. It was back in 2009, shortly after we had moved. I had no idea what I was actually going to have to do. Given guidance and a presentation, I sat and spoke quietly and sweated profusely and got through the meeting. As I recall, I had a fairly high level of terror due to the other people who were present in the room with me - one does not often spend 1.5 hours with virtually all the senior management of a company.
That was 18 meetings ago. Today will be meeting number 19. Do I have the same sense of terror that I did? Not the same sense of terror per se, but certainly a sense of terror as I approach this one as well.
Why? Senior staff can make me nervous. In a sense I am a consumer of their moods and the issues going on in their worlds. For example, they can be very attentive - or very disengaged, depending on what is happening around them. They can move past points that I thought would be critical to discuss - and then spend a great deal of time on something I would not have predicted. And always in the back of my head is the primal fear of being called out for being wrong or incompetent.
Perhaps this is really the source of my fear for these meetings: not that the meeting or information itself is wrong or without value but that I am perceived as being wrong or incorrect. It is that sinking feeling that one gets when in the slide that flashed up on the screen one realizes the spelling error or data error that escaped notice every other time that this document was reviewed. That every secret belief I have of my inability and my lack of knowledge will be put front and center for everyone to see.
I have tried to combat this. I have reviewed and re-reviewed the presentation. I know the data backwards and forwards. And yet, every time I think of doing this, I get a little bit fearful. Because buried beneath this collection of living is a small boy who, somewhere he cannot even fully remember, felt like he was unprepared and got attacked for it.
The meeting will come and go as they always do; the boy, however, remains in the center of my soul, waiting to be answered.
Monday, June 02, 2014
Sins of Our Own Choosing
We all choose our personal sins.
Not precisely by choice, mind you. We all seem to have predispositions to certain ones. But there are very few of us that can seem to pack all potential sins into one package. And even within that, we tend to have a certain core of sins that we are most likely to fall into or spend most of our time battling.
Interestingly (but perhaps not surprisingly), these tend to be the sins that we do not speak out about. Sure, we can protest something like immorality or excessive greed but we just as soon tend to not focus on the sins that perhaps we practice ourselves: gluttony or gossip or covetousness. In fact, it can often be amazing to what lengths we will go to justify our own sins while still crying out the phrase "Repent, for the Kingdom of God is at Hand" - we will say something like "Well, it is not that I am coveting that car that my friend has, it is just that I really think it is nice and should be something I work towards" while we ignore the fact that the car is on our minds 24 hours a day, filling our thoughts and our aspirations.
We do not fool anyone, of course - especially the world, which has keen antennae for hypocrisy. Put aside the failings of those that cry out against things and then are found to participate in them: just the simple fact that we as Christians portray ourselves to be against sin - but not the sins we like - is enough to destroy our ability to carry a witness forward. To this extent the old phrase is true, "I am okay with Christ - it is His followers that bother me."
We walk a fine line as Christians, moving between the fact that we are saved but not yet yet completely glorified. As a result, we find ourselves in the position of crying out against sin even as we ourselves continue to battle the sin in our lives. But it is one thing to call out against sin in general, while it is another to call out our own sin first while also presenting the Gospel, that all have fallen short of the glory of God (yes, even those of us that are presenting it) and all of us sin - but that there is a way of hope and redemption.
We mistake our roles sometimes: we are not to be traffic officers on the road of life, pulling people over when they exceed the law. Instead, we are to be construction workers and roadside assistance, guiding people around areas where the road is weak or being repaired and fixing their cars when they have a problem and are on the side of the road. The first implies that we are the law. The second implies that we are not the the law but merely helping them to get where they need to go: the road is not ours, the laws are not ours - we use the road and obey the laws as they do. There is no superiority, only assistance and guidance as we all travel the road together.
But to accomplish this - any of this - it takes a simple admission from us: sin is sin. No matter what sin it is. Even if it is the sin of our own choosing.
Not precisely by choice, mind you. We all seem to have predispositions to certain ones. But there are very few of us that can seem to pack all potential sins into one package. And even within that, we tend to have a certain core of sins that we are most likely to fall into or spend most of our time battling.
Interestingly (but perhaps not surprisingly), these tend to be the sins that we do not speak out about. Sure, we can protest something like immorality or excessive greed but we just as soon tend to not focus on the sins that perhaps we practice ourselves: gluttony or gossip or covetousness. In fact, it can often be amazing to what lengths we will go to justify our own sins while still crying out the phrase "Repent, for the Kingdom of God is at Hand" - we will say something like "Well, it is not that I am coveting that car that my friend has, it is just that I really think it is nice and should be something I work towards" while we ignore the fact that the car is on our minds 24 hours a day, filling our thoughts and our aspirations.
We do not fool anyone, of course - especially the world, which has keen antennae for hypocrisy. Put aside the failings of those that cry out against things and then are found to participate in them: just the simple fact that we as Christians portray ourselves to be against sin - but not the sins we like - is enough to destroy our ability to carry a witness forward. To this extent the old phrase is true, "I am okay with Christ - it is His followers that bother me."
We walk a fine line as Christians, moving between the fact that we are saved but not yet yet completely glorified. As a result, we find ourselves in the position of crying out against sin even as we ourselves continue to battle the sin in our lives. But it is one thing to call out against sin in general, while it is another to call out our own sin first while also presenting the Gospel, that all have fallen short of the glory of God (yes, even those of us that are presenting it) and all of us sin - but that there is a way of hope and redemption.
We mistake our roles sometimes: we are not to be traffic officers on the road of life, pulling people over when they exceed the law. Instead, we are to be construction workers and roadside assistance, guiding people around areas where the road is weak or being repaired and fixing their cars when they have a problem and are on the side of the road. The first implies that we are the law. The second implies that we are not the the law but merely helping them to get where they need to go: the road is not ours, the laws are not ours - we use the road and obey the laws as they do. There is no superiority, only assistance and guidance as we all travel the road together.
But to accomplish this - any of this - it takes a simple admission from us: sin is sin. No matter what sin it is. Even if it is the sin of our own choosing.
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