Sabotage

All Satan can do (and he is pretty effective, in the short-run) is try to sabotage the goodness and harmonies God has created...which lead us to worship Him.

New Weariness

Every increased possession loads us with new weariness.

-- John Ruskin

Nothing Is...

Nothing is...mine.

Jammin'

Not Available

The busier I get, the less available I am to myself and to God within me. The less available I am to these things, the more critical I become of others. The more critical I am of others, the more angry I become...at them, at myself for being so, at nearly everything that doesn't cooperate with my agendas.

When I sense the latter, I look at how busy I have let myself become again...and make it a point to stop -- to go running in the woods, to sit down and look at something for longer than usual, to lay purposely in bed and not start on my list.

...guess what I did this morning?

Idea Camera

'Saturday Mornings' is like a camera; it takes pictures of ideas.

Threats

It often escapes us (me included) that the greatest thing we need at times of fear and worry is our awareness that He is with us...and not that we need relief from the threat.

Cultivated

What is valued in one’s country is what will be cultivated.

-- Plato

What do we cultivate?  ...especially in light of yesterday's post?

Un-Human

My kids rarely actually speak to someone in person. They use text messaging, Facebook, instant messaging, e-mail, and Twitter.

-- Fred N. Blitt, Legal Collection Advisor

"Rarely speak...in person"? Do we know the damage we are creating? This is not just technology, there is something un-human at work here.

Grievances and Grows

Have you ever noticed yourself slightly less enchanted with something than someone else is. Or how easy it is for such a thing to grow into something you resent...about that thing or even that person. This almost naturally then gives way to a kind of record-keeping about it, in order to maintain your position and your distance really from it (and, from them as well).

Equally, have you ever noticed that when you join someone in that thing that something unexpected happens, that your complaints and judgments start to wither. That something else grows, for that person, as well as for what they are doing.

Nothing ousts the sense of Gods presence so thoroughly as the souls dialogues with itself - when there are grumblings, grievances, etc.

-- Friedrich von Hgel

First

A (very) short poem:

You first.

By Myself

There can be no maturity in the spiritual life, no obedience in following Jesus, no wholeness in the Christian life apart from an immersion and embrace of community. I am not myself by myself. Community, not the highly vaunted individualism of our culture, is the setting in which Christ matures us.

-- Eugene Peterson

The line that jumps out at me here is 'I am not myself by myself'. ...some would argue mightily with this. But, I think this is worth serious consideration.

Toil and Becoming

The highest reward for man's toil is not what he gets for it, but what he becomes by it.

-- John Ruskin

Reminds me of this one.

Numbers

Never worry about numbers.
Help one person at a time,
and always start with
the person nearest you.

-- Mother Teresa

So lose yourself.

Wonder

You can't help but wonder about some big stuff after looking at things like this.  Who thinks of stuff like this to flaunt about at us?

I don't think there is any better worship than wonder.

-- Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz

Lose Yourself

The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.

-- Gandhi

Wrapped Up

When a man is wrapped up in himself, he makes a pretty small package.

-- John Ruskin

Draw us, Father, to the bigger, in you. We are made in your image, to be wrapped up in you.

Drawn

We are drawn to what makes us feel alive.

Good things...and bad things...can make us feel alive.

Lord, cause me to be drawn to what truly makes me alive.

Speech with the Holy One

For most of us, . . . entry into the Psalms requires a real change of pace. It asks us to depart from the closely managed world of public survival, to move into the open, frightening, healing world of speech with the Holy One.

-- Walter Brueggemann

Reaches So Far

Of all the pulpits from which human voice is ever sent forth, there is none from which it reaches so far as from the grave.

-- John Ruskin

A helpful perspective regarding time, in light of yesterday's post.

First Day of My 50th Year

Today is the first day of my 50th year of life and so I am returning to the topic on the last day of my 49th -- Why Am I?

Why am I...

...capable of so much violence (actual or just in thought), perversion, self-indulgence, prejudice?

Why am I...

...in that same person beckoned in the morning by the sun rising over the horizon?

Why am I...this strange and unwieldy combination.

Perhaps another question will lead us to the answer to this one...

Why are other things what they are?


Why does a placid lake whisper 'peace' so softly, yet so loudly?

Why does morning mist linger over it so mysteriously?

Why do streams which feed it make a rippling sound?

Why does the cardinal have such brilliant red to flash?

Why does the tree have to grow so slowly, imperceptibly?

Why does it appear as nothing but dead month after winter-month only to explode with foliage in a matter of weeks...for a hundred years?

Why does the lace of a flower float so beautifully above its supporting green?

Why...

     do daisies face the same direction?
     does the yellow iris yelp its color?
     does the purple iris moan with delight?

Why do many docks have so many patient kayaks aboard them?

Why does the empty park sometimes fill with a whole town?
     while at other times do families of geese wander within it so freely?

Why do people walk 4 dogs at a time?
     or puppies lick you the way they do?
     do cats stare?

Why does color beg?

...and these are just the things I 'why-ed' when I was out early this morning.  Imagine the rest of them!

Everything is made for a reason, a unique reason, but a shared reason.
I am, too.

My 'whys' merge when I wonder about myself in light of the something more and larger that is going on in life.

When I see all these things, a mosaic emerges.  And, it's image says, "you are blessed...to be a part of all of this...joy".

So I join it,

and, in doing so, find out really...why I am.

Why...Am I?

...crashing can lead to an important question:

Why Am I?

Crash

...and, therefore, we must crash into ourselves at one point or another.

Terrible Within

I don't give people drugs because they need to find The Terrible within.

-- a doctor

Forces of Ourselves

We are forces of ourselves.

The good, the bad;

and we can't get away
from ourselves.

...whether we want to,
or others want us to.

We are who we are,
forces
of ourselves.

Hills of Purple

We all see the soul of God coming over different 'hills'.  But, my oh my, does it ever shout!

...here is more purple.

Soul of God

Where others see but the dawn coming over the hill, I see the soul of God shouting for joy.

-- William Blake

I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed--and gazed--but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

-- William Wordsworth

This concludes my 'week' of poetry (guess it was longer than that). Must say it 'danced' with me, leaving me with a question, one that I will probably come back to a few times before the end of things:

'What is poetry?'

I'm still drawn to the notions with which I began this time -- poetry is a means of alluding to things like beauty, sadness, transcendence....

Too Low

The greater danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high
and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.

-- Michelangelo

Why Not?

Someone may ask you a 'why would you...' type of question. Maybe they have already...or will some day.

What kind of person, or thinking, or sensitivity, does it take to respond (after some pause) with...

...'why not?'

All That is Gold Does Not Glitter

All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.

-- John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

There Are Many, But Only One

The following came to me one recent morning when I was running on an indoor track at a time too early to mention. The trailing slumber, and probably the night before's ice cream were chanting throughout my body that there was no way I could complete the normal 32 laps. When my body took over my mind, it kept pointing out how many laps remained...how impossible it would be to make it all the way...that day. And, it struck me, as I simply plodded on, that all I could really do was run the current lap. And then, the next one came and I did the same thing, thinking the same thing. And, before I knew it, I had run 10 laps...and counting.

Focusing on the likelihoods of the future was disabling something in me. When I focused on the only lap I could run, the current one, I found myself continuing. 20. Then 30. Only 2 to go. I ran faster....

How much like life, I thought, is this lesson. When I try to grasp the whole thing, especially the future, I become too aware of impossibility, of unlikelihood. When I focus on one choice, like one lap, at a time. Slowly a life gets built. And, I learn that I can do things I didn't think I could do.


There Are Many, But Only One.

Like choices, there are many laps in life.
We count them.
We predict them.
And, in doing so, we can miss the one we're on.

Do we predict
because we have counted?
Asking, can we make it?
Will I have enough...to finish?

There is something fearful
fueling all our predicting
which disables something
about this one.
For I can only run the lap I am on.

Each lap can be run,
but only one at a time
as we learn to lean on
Another source within
to accumulate the growing many.

...and that IS enough
to make it,
to make it all the way;
starting with the only one,
the lap (or choice) I'm on.
This one.