Progress is Overrated

We have become so focused on progress, as if everything can be overcome.  We can get perpetually better, more able to solve problems...more able to win, with the benefits of progress.  Until we realize somewhere along this path, that progress isn't really what we thought it was.  It really doesn't overcome everything, or solve or change everything afterall.  We find that there are things that we just have to live with, learn to live with.

Perhaps, we should trade in our infatuation for progress for the things we learn along the way that help us to cope with what is not getting better; for the things that help us lean more into what is beside or within us than what is behind us.  Perhaps the good habits of life that instruct us how to be alive with what is are more helpful to us than getting beyond our problems and inconveniences.  Perhaps they lead us to the understanding of Who is with us in an ever-changing, unchanging world.

I think the saying goes, 'the more things change, the more they stay the same'.

Progress is illusive...and over-rated.

The Deadening of Flat

It seems to me that one of the great risks of the electronic age is that it flattens our world, our deeper sense of things.  Notice things like the emotion you feel when you move from the flat screens of our lives to the world of nature; sight, sound, smell, feeling -- things like coolness, wind, moisture, etc. You can almost taste the difference and we often feel a deep yearning for more of it.

...like the dawning of the morning sun over a ridge, the warmth and the perking up it creates for everything in its splash.
...like the sound of a waterfall that makes you 'have' to go find it.
...like fallen leaves crunching under your feet against the earth as you hike.
...like the brilliant white of a new blanket of snow, especially when the sun turns it's flakes to diamonds.

Something about an electronic life seems to deaden something within us that wants to be alive.

Satisfaction

Find satisfaction in Him who made you, and only then find satisfaction in yourself as a part of His creation.

-- St. Augustine

Gratitudes: Reflections on 25 Years of Marriage

As I reflect on a journey of 25 years now with my wife, a few things seem to stand out a bit from the fabric of it all.  I am grateful for the deepenings that these many gifts have brought:

Things about love / marriage:

• I had notions of marriage which were unrealistic, but they were tied to things that were important for me to recognize.
• I really had no real idea of what it means to love someone, in deeply sacrificial ways.
• I discovered that I wanted marriage (Tami, actually) to fill things inside of me, to take care of things inside of me that only God could take care of.
• I cannot maintain an image of myself (for myself or for my wife) that will engender (or require) love.  Love can only be offered, without requirement.
• My ability to love is not contingent upon my understanding of the love I receive.
• Being loved is not contingent upon my being viewed as right.
• I can love at nearly any cost and therefore I don't need to defend myself (in order to preserve my notion of the love I want or think I deserve).  
• Most of a life of love is facing a common direction and walking towards it together, not towards each other (though that, too, is allowed at times).
• Sex is what the 'knowers' said it was, a by-product of something else, and only occasionally a path towards it.  And, that it is not what those-who-don't-know say it is.
• Joining each other in the simplest of things send some of the most powerful messages to each other -- presence (as some have called it).
• There had to be space for things to go on that had nothing to do with me...things that Tami was working through, that I was threatened by, things that threatened my sense of the ideals I was seeking.
• There are few things more powerful than forgiveness.
• Things take time, in order to be seen clearly.
• We have only just begun to live, even as the things that seemed like 'life' wither away.

Things about myself:

• Many of my needs / desires were highly cloaked (mostly from myself, but also from others).
• I really needed Tami to come through for me when in fact she really didn't.
• Not nearly as much was about me as I assumed (and therefore that I am in even less control of anything than I realized, less able to make anything good happen than I suspected).
• I am by nature completely consumed with myself.  That to be unconsumed requires kinds of death to myself.
• It took a desperation of myself to free my grip on my expectations of my wife.
• Desire cannot be suppressed or managed.
• Anger is an important signal of something.  That it calls me towards something.
• I never thought I was good enough and that I, in fact, am not, but that is more OK than I thought it was.
• 'No' is OK, and so is the disappointment of others.
• I must accept my design, not try to design myself.
• Pursuing God and how and what He has made me for (strength) frees up my wife to allow God to pursue her -- she doesn't have to operate from the pressure to take care of me...which will lead to a natural and healthy way of contributing to my care.

Things about friendship / community:

• Willingness for exposure to community was (is) a critical path towards life for me
• What deep and spiritual friendship is -- that words are really important and that presence is even more important
• Feeling abandoned and being abandoned are two different things -- I have never been abandoned
• Staying with community has been a life-line to learning these things about my marriage, myself, Tami, God, etc.

Things about Tami:

• I am deeply loved by my wife, in the ways that she is capable of loving me.  That to require something different, to require different ways of loving me is a violation of something within her.
• Genuine wonder about my wife really frees me up from evaluating my relationship based on what I get out of it.
• Tami has a deep and profound beauty that is uniquely constructed for her and for her to offer to her world
• I have come to love the way she gives herself away
• I can join that beauty and seek ways to breath life into it
• She is courageous to look at herself as the Spirit prompts her
• I am deeply grateful for Tami's integrity and the desire within her to follow God

Things about God:

• I can trust God (especially over longer periods of time that I would have guessed) to allow her, to teach her how to love me the way I need to be loved (as opposed to the way I want to be loved). -- we often fought about this early on
• I can fully trust what God is up to in my wife, even when I don't recognize what it is.
• It took the likely destruction of normal and good things in life to help me see past my expectations out of life.
• Whatever I thought I was losing, I was gaining far more
• I must fight with God more than I fight with my wife.  And, when I am fighting with her more than Him, something is wrong.
• Grieving needs to be among my greater muscles.
• Being willing to grieve was more important than trying to resolve something.
• God is very firm, gentle (even when harsh), but very firm and that this is a good thing, something that I can rely on, relax in.  
• I can wait for God, in me, in my wife, in my kids.  
• As my notions of Him got sorted out, He was way ahead of me and that I need to trust Him almost all the time with almost everything.
• God uses an awful lot of the normal experiences of life to teach us what we really need to know.
• I have no idea how much goodness God has ready for me and that, therefore, it is rather silly to try to broker for it.  That the world has no idea about this kind of goodness.

If there is one word that captures how I reflect on the last 25 years, it would be 'gratitude'.  Gratitude for Tami, gratitude for my spiritual friendship and community, gratitude to God...not only for the abyss' that He preserved me through, but for the joy and beauty and life He has ended up giving me...and giving us together.

Voice Can Come From Pain

"The first time I heard Karin's voice, I knew there was something special there. I loved the fact that her voice came from the place where her pain lived."

-- Linford Detweiler, Interview with host Melissa Block, "All Things Considered"

Glorious New Creation

The Glorious New Creation
For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating; for...read more (it gets even better!).

-- Isaiah 65:17-25

Truth is Bigger

I live with the understanding that truth is bigger than any religion and the world is Gods and everything in it....

-- Rob Bell

Over the Rhine: The Long Surrender

Like every Over the Rhine album, the lyrics plumb the mysteries of love, divine and human, not so much blurring the boundaries as acknowledging that they are inseparable and integrally related. “Undamned” finds Bergquist trading lines with alt-country legend Williams, the verses a confessional catalogue of misplaced passion and rueful regret, but suffused with the knowledge that there is still time to fall back on a love that endures.

Read the rest of the review here...

-- Andy Whitman

Growth and Suffering

I once was part of a survey on spiritual formation. Thousands of people were asked when they grew most spiritually, and what contributed to their growth. The number one contributor to spiritual growth was not transformational teaching. It was not being in a small group. It was not reading deep books. It was not energetic worship experiences. It was not finding meaningful ways to serve. It was suffering. People said they grew more during seasons of loss, pain, and crisis than they did at any other time.

-- John Ortberg

Slow

I've noticed that I'm running a lot. Not the fitness kind (though I am doing a bit of that still, too), but the kind where I move quickly from point A to point B on a regular basis. For example, on my way home from work yesterday, I noticed I was running home. Why was I running? I thought to myself that I just need to walk, but I had to force myself to do it.  Just walk, to go...slow.

Something is a-foot in the sense of urgency I regularly feel. Something that I suspect isn't good. I wonder if I feel too important to something, like I 'need' to get to the next place...like I'm needed at the next place.  How could I even be that important, much less think that I am?  

I'm guessing I am being reminded of the value of 'slow', of pausing, of waiting, of not hurrying to the next thing that needs to be done. I think I'm missing something important in the surprising habit of mine that I've stumbled upon.

Roll Away Your Stone - Mumford & Sons

Roll away your stone I will roll away mine
Together we can see what we will find
Don't leave me alone at this time
For I'm afraid of what I will discover inside

You told me that I would find a home
Within the fragile substance of my soul
And I have filled this void with things unreal
And all the while my character it steals

-- "Roll Away Your Stone", Mumford & Sons

Will of God

The will of God is never exactly what you expect it to be. It may seem to be much worse, but in the end it's going to be a lot better and a lot bigger.

-- Elisabeth Elliot

Blind

In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is stoned to death.

-- Joan D. Vinge

History

History is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind.

-- Edward Gibbon

This certainly seems to be the case; from the human eye, a seemingly quite accurate indictment.  And, the human eye is often not well-trained in seeing beyond itself.  I think, while all of this is going on, that there is another, deeper back-story.  How about you?

Fleet Foxes Announce New Album Details

...and a pre-release video!

New U2 Album in May 2011 Says German Amazon

Humbled

Everyone will be humbled sooner or later.  Better sooner than later.

...nobody gets away with everything for long.