It seems to me, in this time and space, that one must choose things that are important. An example, solitude. In the swirl of noise almost constantly surrounding us, I'm thinking we have to decide to move towards it - to choose it. In the end, solitude may do the choosing for us, but it is very patient…waiting for us to choose it. It seems that our world is bent on noise, noise organized and noise unorganized…but really anything that will keep us moving toward something or away from something else. To stop, to choose quiet, in fact seems to require a conscious choice. Otherwise, it feels like a nearly constant scream of ‘hey, look at me’, ‘notice what I am doing’, ‘look what’s on’, ‘listen to me’, ‘watch me’, ‘go here’, ‘go there’, ‘do this’, ‘do that’…is all around us, surrounding us. In one of the gaps it can’t fully fill in, we have to ask what we are trying to avoid by filling ourselves up so much with stuff, with activity, with constancy? …why? with more than ever to do, more than ever to consume, do we actually hear and feel the phrase, ‘I’m bored.’
Perhaps we are looking for something; something we can’t find in the places we are looking, something that we’re being told is ‘over here’, when really it is ‘over there’…looking for something ‘outside ourselves’ that is really ‘inside ourselves’, something that is man-made, rather than something not made by man.
Go sit in the woods for 2 hours and watch what happens to yourself internally. Notice the battle that emerges in your mind in the first hour, but gut it out…and then notice what is emerging in your spirit. Tempted to consider that perhaps noise is selling us something more than toxic? Turn it off, get away from it, be quiet. Take the long walk you need. Take a long trip into nature. Notice, for one thing, that it’s not selling you anything (this is a wonderful place to be, all by itself)…it just exists and quietly points to something…not trying to get you to notice, just waiting until you do.
Nourishment. What in our time and space actually comes anywhere near this word, this idea? Nearly nothing…seeks nourishment, nearly everything seeks consumption and the craving to move on to the next thing. If you don’t believe me now, call me in 20 years when the lack of nourishment has left nothing but the brown and worn husk of empty being.
Nature seeks to nourish you; God does really, through it. Allow it...by choosing it. You will be choosing a lot more than you realize.
Friday, May 22, 2009
Sunday, May 17, 2009
The Draw of Honest Christian Human-beings
There’s nothing quite as drawing as an honest Christian human-being. Why does this seem to be the case? In part, because it seems like many who think of themselves as Christians, don’t seem very honest about very much. And, even before I start down the road of appearing (even to myself) to not being one of ‘these’ people, I have to be honest and admit that this only makes sense to the degree that I myself acknowledge that am often not very honest. At the very least my honesty is quite selective. So I can accuse no one without accusing myself.
That being said, though, I think Christians often fit quite nicely with many people who simply do not want to face the realities of this world, both the world inside them and the world outside them. I think an honest Christian human-being is often quite near the end of their rope in terms of what they live with day in and day out, recognizing in human terms how precarious things are…how unlike the false reality marketed by our culture things really are. Our cultural falseness, our un-reality, leads straight away from where the desperateness of real reality leads us. We are alive and we are in constant danger one way or another, and we must admit this against a culture that refuses to do so.
The irony is that in all of its falseness, our world is so addicted to so many things, to so many kinds of escape; how could we even imagine it to be telling us the truth about how good things are. Honesty, in part, is about acknowledging this, naming it, speaking it out loud, if not for the ears of my own heart, then for the ears of others.
…and it is in the so doing, that we realize the more accurate position of our humanity and, perhaps even more importantly, our need…our natural, real and true state of dependence. Our desire for true love, is recognized substantially on the cusp of our desperation. This is a Love that we cannot provide for ourselves, that can only be provided for us. And only by someone who can really love like this – God himself.
A lack of honesty, though, skips over all of this…and misses nearly everything we truly need.
There was nothing left of me. I had drifted so far away from God and every stabilizing force in my life that I felt there was no hope…My separation from Him, the deepest and most ravaging of the various kinds of loneliness I'd felt over the years, seemed finally complete. It wasn't. I thought I'd left Him, but He hadn't left me. I felt something very powerful start to happen to me, a sensation of utter peace, clarity, and sobriety. Then my mind started focusing on God.
-- Johnny Cash
I think that if God forgives us we must forgive ourselves.
-- C.S. Lewis
Honesty leads to something as magnificently wonderful, as profoundly powerful…as forgiveness. The ability forgive oneself is centered again only in something that can’t be provided by ourselves, it is something that we can experience from and with God. But we have to be honest enough to see our need for it. Forgiveness when experienced, is something like the ocean tide, it washes over us, drowning us in mercies and ebbs back to its next destination. We, though, are now part of the ocean that descends on the next person and actually become part of the delivery of it to others. This is part of the power of such a thing like forgiveness.
Honesty then, as a virtue, is a portal to the soul – our own and others – through which the flood waters of forgiveness can flow…to and from us.
To be Christian is to be fundamentally human and to be truly human, you and I must be honest and open to the saving graces of a Loving God. When that happens, we are drawn to people and people are drawn to us.
Be honest.
That being said, though, I think Christians often fit quite nicely with many people who simply do not want to face the realities of this world, both the world inside them and the world outside them. I think an honest Christian human-being is often quite near the end of their rope in terms of what they live with day in and day out, recognizing in human terms how precarious things are…how unlike the false reality marketed by our culture things really are. Our cultural falseness, our un-reality, leads straight away from where the desperateness of real reality leads us. We are alive and we are in constant danger one way or another, and we must admit this against a culture that refuses to do so.
The irony is that in all of its falseness, our world is so addicted to so many things, to so many kinds of escape; how could we even imagine it to be telling us the truth about how good things are. Honesty, in part, is about acknowledging this, naming it, speaking it out loud, if not for the ears of my own heart, then for the ears of others.
…and it is in the so doing, that we realize the more accurate position of our humanity and, perhaps even more importantly, our need…our natural, real and true state of dependence. Our desire for true love, is recognized substantially on the cusp of our desperation. This is a Love that we cannot provide for ourselves, that can only be provided for us. And only by someone who can really love like this – God himself.
A lack of honesty, though, skips over all of this…and misses nearly everything we truly need.
There was nothing left of me. I had drifted so far away from God and every stabilizing force in my life that I felt there was no hope…My separation from Him, the deepest and most ravaging of the various kinds of loneliness I'd felt over the years, seemed finally complete. It wasn't. I thought I'd left Him, but He hadn't left me. I felt something very powerful start to happen to me, a sensation of utter peace, clarity, and sobriety. Then my mind started focusing on God.
-- Johnny Cash
I think that if God forgives us we must forgive ourselves.
-- C.S. Lewis
Honesty leads to something as magnificently wonderful, as profoundly powerful…as forgiveness. The ability forgive oneself is centered again only in something that can’t be provided by ourselves, it is something that we can experience from and with God. But we have to be honest enough to see our need for it. Forgiveness when experienced, is something like the ocean tide, it washes over us, drowning us in mercies and ebbs back to its next destination. We, though, are now part of the ocean that descends on the next person and actually become part of the delivery of it to others. This is part of the power of such a thing like forgiveness.
Honesty then, as a virtue, is a portal to the soul – our own and others – through which the flood waters of forgiveness can flow…to and from us.
To be Christian is to be fundamentally human and to be truly human, you and I must be honest and open to the saving graces of a Loving God. When that happens, we are drawn to people and people are drawn to us.
Be honest.
Friday, May 15, 2009
Mothers Day Bike Ride - 28 Miles
We had a great day biking as a family on Fort Wayne's Rivergreenway on Mothers Day. 'Mom' liked it a lot.
Tuesday, May 05, 2009
Saturday, May 02, 2009
Flat
I’m feeling really flat today…as a person. I felt this coming on yesterday. Perhaps it is because the landscape of my requirement this weekend is fairly open…or perhaps because there is nothing dramatic to anticipate. I feel tempted to find ‘jolt’ in my life. I’m wondering why. I’m reminded of Parker Palmer’s video interview…I am flying too high? Am I trying to? I’m feeling altitude in my attitude. I want to be closer to the ground, to acknowledge the humility I need and treasure, not (I hope) to avoid the pain of crashing, but more to live at my right size…not bigger than I should be. Perhaps this is a healthy kind of 'flat', even if it doesn't feel like it.
…as my emotional energy wanes and I finish even the stumbling nature of this self-identifying writing, the sun has burst into the sky, overcoming the grey of the earlier morning. My spirit is lifting a bit, but warily. What will this day hold?
…as my emotional energy wanes and I finish even the stumbling nature of this self-identifying writing, the sun has burst into the sky, overcoming the grey of the earlier morning. My spirit is lifting a bit, but warily. What will this day hold?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)