Makenzie & Friends - 8th Grade Dance

Even Mystery

Even mystery has a stone on which to kneel.

Seeing

I thank God today for the ability to see. 

I was out running this morning through the woods, down a path that meandered a course along a local stream.  The landscape was whipped from yesterday’s endless winds, but the morning was winning back its beauty as everything relaxed back into its slow, more regular reach for the skies.  The stream was full and coursing along in the places it falls, in others just pacing as the terrain allowed.  Suddenly a huge span of wings filled the waters’ surface as a giant heron slowed ascended just above the trickling below to escape any possible danger from me.  It flew slowly and silently, hovering over the middle of the stream, as if anticipating to someday hang in perfect balance in the capture of some professional photographers' gallery.  As it flew out of sight, I murmured ‘Thank You’ to God for the ability to see such a thing.

I came around another bend in the trail and the picture before simply repeated itself again down yet another stretch of the winding watery path.  I thought knowing such a thing happens whether I am the one to see it or not deepens a sense of something within me.  My seeing also led to my knowing something, something bigger than my routine sense of things, something I had not quite yet known before.  I felt like a student in one of God’s many schools, this time the session being held in the natural classroom that He made.

A third time I came upon the great bird, now just standing still in the middle of the creek.  He watching me this time, poised but perhaps more tolerant of my presence because I had presented him no danger up until now.  I ran by with not one movement on his part, except for the slow darting of his eye to retain his sense of knowing something.  What a dance this had become between me and the natural world.

What a gift my eye-sight was to a deeper knowledge, that I fit in a much larger order of the things of God. 

I thanked God again for allowing me to 'see'.

Tomorrow and Today

I am struck again today at 2 seemingly opposite things:

- That I regularly live trying to anticipate the future
- That the future is completely unknown

I cannot know what lies ahead – good or ill.  Yet I try to anticipate everything I can about the possibilities of both.  But the effort is largely ill-founded and largely a waste of energy.

I noticed this again today while running; realizing that I can only thank God for the beauty of the day outside and for the ability he has given me to simply notice it, to enjoy it … to see it, smell it, feel it, taste it, hear it, sense it.  I then thought about my yesterdays, in light of my experience today and realized that God is both taking care of me now (today) and that He has done so in all my yesterdays (the past).  Why then would I worry about the future?  Is the future any more in my hands than today is, than yesterday was?  What makes me think I can manage the future, especially when I realize I haven’t controlled much of anything up to this point?  In fact, the worry about getting through tomorrow seems to do little more than detract from my ‘today’, and my awareness that He is taking care of me in ways well beyond what I can imagine.

The only thing I need to do is the only thing I can do – trust Him…today.

A life un-preoccupied with the future is a life that is finally free.

Earnie Harwell - Farewell

I don't profess to be a 'huge' baseball fan, but I do remember many many nights going to sleep to Earnie's voice.  His passing brought back many childhood memories that only his voice captured.

There was something magical about life (radio) before 'everything was televised'.

Tigers legend instilled love of baseball

Not What We Expect

I was thinking today that when we have the courage to pray for God's expansion in our lives, we don't have in mind that His answer often is to provide humility...so that His kind of expansion can occur.  Even less do we expect the contexts where humility is often provided...in the destruction of parts of ourselves that we are working hard to expand.

The Christian must be consumed by the conviction of the infinite beauty of holiness and the infinite damnability of sin.

-- Thomas Carlyle

Opposites

The opposite of joy is not sorrow. It is unbelief.

-- Leslie Weatherhead

Less

The more I feel responsible for, the less free I seem to be.

More

The more I do, the more I think I'm responsible for.

Damage

Sin in life has damaged us all. So now what? What is productive about comparing our damage? If this is a given, what cliff are we looking over?

Like Pouring Light into Your Soul

Can't really say enough about the redemption that drips from a recent letter from Linford Detweiler of the band Over the Rhine. If something could drip with redemption, I would say this is pretty darn close!

Spring has come.... The grass is green, the silver maples have their leaves, our part of the earth has tilted back toward the sun, which seems to take pleasure now in drenching the house in morning light. If you stand on the porch, close your eyes, turn your face toward the sun and let it shine on your eyelids, if you breathe deeply, it feels like someone is pouring a pitcher of light directly into your soul.

The birds are drunk on spring, flirting, nesting, singing. Our lone tupelo tree has new eager buds that make it look like a candelabra full of tiny green candles. My mother says if you pay attention it’s like watching the world being created all over again right in front of your eyes.

Yes, we are feeling adventurous. (Maybe adventure is simply paying attention to the part of you that wants to be created all over again.)

We believe making music has something to do with what we were put on this earth to do. If we leave our songs alone, they call to us until we come back to where we belong. When we live in the sweet spot of that calling, it gives others (you?) permission to discover the sweet spot of your own calling and live there.

Karin and I have been writing our new songs for a good while now. I suppose many of them are understated glimpses into the people we are (so far) and the people we long to be and the difference that lies between.

-- Linford Detweiler

Let's make a record!

Weight

Good outweighs bad...by a long shot. But bad's weight will still kill you...and only good can lift you back to life.

Beloved, I Urge You

Beloved, I urge you as aliens and exiles to abstain from the desires of the flesh that wage war against the soul.

-- 1 Peter 2:11

Disaster

You will be graced with the disaster your soul requires to find it’s way home. 

-- Tim Farrington

Aligator Walking!

Forfeit Grace?

Those who cling to worthless idols
       forfeit the grace that could be theirs.

-- Jonah 2:8

Since We Are Free...

It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.

-- Galatians 5:1

The work has been done...that is a huge relief, that things don't hang in the balance because of something we must still do. So what does it look like to 'not let ourselves be burdened again'? What is the yoke of slavery? Where does the metaphor apply specifically in my life, in your life?

Don't Forget to Grieve

Those of us who inhabit the sphere of “American Christianity” live in a world that doesn’t know when, how, or even why to grieve. For us, Christianity is about victory, it’s about feeling better about ourselves. It’s upbeat, inspiring, short, and peppy. I know one pastor of a large church who once asked his worship leaders not to play any songs written in a minor key. Too much of a downer.

-- Bob Hyatt

For more, click here.

The Truth

The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.

-- Flannery O'Connor

Liberty

Liberty means responsibility.  That is why most men dread it.

-- George Bernard Shaw

In light of the role of 'responsibility' in The Shack, I have found myself intrigued by the possibility of any potential comeback for it. I would feel a bit more comfortable with something like the words 'allows for' or 'accommodates' in place of 'means' in the quote above.  But, I'm still young....

Brokering Goodness

I want to stop brokering goodness with God...from God and wherever else I think it is.  I want to yield completely to God's goodness, the only real goodness there is, whether it feels like goodness to me or not.

BigTen 2010 Basketball Tourney

Lets Not Be Afraid To Look

Lets not be afraid to look at everything that has brought us to where we are now and trust that we will soon see in it the guiding hand of a loving God.

-- Henri Nouwen

Humility

God uses life to offer humility to everyone.

What Is In Us

We must lay before Him what is in us, not what ought to be in us.

-- C.S. Lewis

Melissa Pritchard on Life and Writing

Several ideas resonate with me from this interview with Melissa Pritchard...mostly things that I cannot yet fully put words to. The ones below are sprinkled throughout the interview, referenced in full by the link below.  I'll enjoy musing opportunities on these over the next few runs of mine.

I believe greatness of soul demands sacrifice, and sacrifice implies the death or deaths of the smaller self, of the overcoat of ego, of the shield of good opinion.
...

I was drawn by the idea that mysticism may more accurately partake of the nature of reality than we, in our deadening, pedestrian habits, do.
...

...let go of your dull, safe, unilateral reality—cross into the light, the vibration of light, move in circles, by spinning, into divine mystery, into the elusive, prodigious stream of creation.
...

I had liked the archbishop, and the fact of his precipitous, very public fall from grace did not disillusion me; it deepened my conviction that compassion, a tender understanding the complex and sometimes tragic contradictions in human beings, was central to the importance and power of storytelling.

-- Melissa Pritchard, Image Interview

Accept It, Knowing...

Accept as good whatever happens to you or affects you, knowing that nothing happens without God.

-- The Didache

Funeral & Forgiveness

Have you seen the posts at "Dawn's Random Acts of Thought"? I particularly like this one:

Beware of refusing to go to the funeral
of your own independence.

-- Oswald Chambers

And from our friend, Dick Rooker:

Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.

-- Mark Twain

Secret of Faith

The great secret of a life of faith is to hang upon Jesus daily; to go to Him in every trial; to cast upon Him every burden; to take the infirmity, the corruption, the cross, as it rises, simply and immediately to Jesus.

-- Octavius Winslow

Notice the difference in this approach to life compared to the one Tiger described.  Where did he turn (and we turn)?  Where does faith ask us to turn?

I Deserve

I thought I could get away with whatever I wanted to. I felt that I had worked hard throughout my entire life and deserved to enjoy all the temptations around me. Thanks to money and fame I didn't have to go far to find them. I was wrong. I was foolish. I didn't get to play by different rules.

-- Tiger Woods


I have noticed that along with the things I work hard at...is a belief at times that I, too, deserve something. This seems pretty profound...a misunderstanding to be sure, but something of a great discovery about the vagaries of the ways we seek our independence.

Every Single Piece of You

God is going to redeem every single piece of you…He just is not going to submit his plan for doing so for your approval.

Pessimism

The nice part about being a pessimist is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised.
 
-- George F. Will

Bald Eagles Presiding Over Winona Lake

More Winona eagle pics here....

Conclusions

I’ve reached all kinds of conclusions about you…because of all my conclusions about myself.

Unquenchably...His Work

The love I bear Christ is but a faint and feeble spark, but it is an emanation from himself:  He kindled it and he keeps it alive; and because it is his work, I trust many waters shall not quench it.

-- John Newton

Mashed Potatoes of Emptiness

More often than not, but not every time, I wake up with a fairly clear list of the ‘get tos’ I want for the ensuing day.  Things to think about, things or people to pursue, thoughts to jot down, things to get done – things I just want or need to ‘get to’.  More often than not, by the end of the day, something has mashed most of those things together into some kind of mush that makes it very difficult to return to any constructive activity related to my original morning plans.  At best only one thing still has a shape…and even then it is difficult to apply the kind of energy that is needed to do much about it.  Perhaps this is just plain ole tiredness.  I don’t like to admit that, but it could be true.  It feels to me though that it is a little more about something else…like an exhaustion result of so much stuff that has just run through my mind and body for the waking hours since sleep last jiggled things back into a recognizable shape and form.

Last night, for example, I just could not get to anything other than physical movement.  I was aware of wanting many things, wanting to get to many things, but even my attempts more often than not left me staring for minutes on end.  This morning, however, few things look like last evening’s mashed potatoes.  And, like the freshness of the morning’s sun on our new fallen snow, I feel ready to go. 

I do catch a whiff of last night’s starch though, and one morsel of truth lingers.  That there is an energy that is self-perpetuating about the activity and fill of life…and when that subsides, we must not try to jolt it back into gear.  There is something very valuable about waiting in an open space in our lives…something important about feeling emptiness.  It is as real and important as the constantness of being full. 

I wanted to find a jolt last night and abiding with all of my ‘options’ was a pervading sense that I need to remain…empty.  Such remaining allows something else to happen, other things to be detected that are often overwhelmed by our busyness, an acknowledgement of a dependence we so unconsciously avoid.  Emptiness is a good thing, a very good thing.  And, all the versions of 5-hour energy drinks that we now have in our society, should really be avoided.

There is a time for everything…and this is the time to be empty, to be alone, to feel ache in it.

Anxious; why?

And which of you by being anxious can add a cubit to his span of life? If then you are not able to do as small a thing as that, why are you anxious about the rest?

-- Luke 12:25-26

Save or Savor

AS WE LAY IN BED this morning, Norma asked what I was going to do today. “Save the world,” I replied in a deadpan voice. “Did you say ‘save,’” she asked, “or ‘savor’?” I laughed. “Try ‘savor,’?” she said.

-- Sy Safransky, Sy Safransky's Notebook

Whence and the Keeper

The Milky Way was created
by a herd of white horses
set loose, rearing and kicking,
galloping through the desert night,
leaving their white hoof prints
by the thousands upon thousands
across the empty black sands.

The Milky Way is a river of rising
rapids and frothy currents cresting
around bends, surging over white
boulders. It is a bridge of shining
ice cracking to pieces, slivers, chips,
gems, above a bottomless gorge.

That glowing arc, that band
of light is as ceremonious
as a congregation of luminous
plankton in a swirl of ocean current.
It is as devoted as a prayer
of pilgrims with lighted lanterns
moving across a barren valley
and up a steep mountain
to a future shrine.

Everything I see of the heavens,
I know by the earth. The Milky
Way is a pinwheel with four
spiraling arms composed of young
blue stars, old red stars at its bulging
center, and older citizen stars
of the ancient halo surrounding.

It protests war like a highway
of crushed and shattered bones,
promises like an avenue
of white violets and Easter lilies
laid for a passing corpse, floats
like a field of dandelion hairs
and spinning milkweed wings
scattered by a gust of cosmic
wind, sinks casually like coins
and strings of pearls tossed
from a carnival barge into the night.
By the earth I see whatever I see.

-- Pattiann Rogers

...from Image journal, Issue 63

Listen

The first duty of love - is to listen.

-- Paul Tillich

I wonder if the listening required is a listening to life and to those in it, as if to live with the desire to have an understanding of it…not unlike listening to a person, not unlike loving a person.

What's Missing & What's Present

As much as there is in the 1 Cor 13 passage on love (see below), I'm struck by is 'not' there...and what is not there seems to lead to a different orientation to the things that are there.

So, what isn't there?  One thing, on the order of our common cultural diet, seems to not be related to what we should do...to love.  We often look at something like this and only have enough interest to pursue what the 'actions' are...to determine whether or not those appear worth doing.  When I consider the pieces of this passage and the tenor of them combined, I am struck by...what love isn't, what it doesn't do.  The actions implied seem to be un-named and likely to flow out of out of something else.  We want a list, which it looks like it is, but even more, we want a list of things we can do...in an effort, I'm afraid, to force an outcome we imagine.  This description of love seems to avoid offering this to us.

What is there?  I'm also struck by loves disposition, what it seems to have to believe.  Like 'what isn't there', this description's 'To Do' items are equally non-specific in terms of specific tasks and tend to reference things that defy specific time-frames. It feels like love described here is something that results from something believed in, something dependent on a long-term view, something that is not abated by short-term circumstances.  Love here seems to come from...understanding, not from feedback, not from results.

While we want something to do, love wants us to know something, to believe in something, to pursue something...all the way to the end.  The kind of thing that perseverance needs...to continue despite reasons not to, despite the ease of typical responses to life and the hard things in it...love compels us to.

Perhaps the standard that is often set by this passage is not so much the perfection of accomplishing such things as it is in the believing what it takes...to stick to something (someone?), through think and thin, because it knows where it is headed.  Love never gives up...is both the introduction and conclusion.

Q&A: Love

Q:  Is 'love' an idea or a person?

A:  God is love.

Gran Torino

Bitterness & Confession.
Prejudice & Love.
Life & Death.

...one of my Top 10 movies.

Love is...Patient

I’m in a hurry a lot.  I find myself often thinking that I could get more done IF it didn’t take me so long to get from A to B.  So I tend to run from place to place, to work, from work.  This morning I was running back from my workout feeling some time pressure to get home faster, in order to make breakfast on time for the kids.  I’d gotten up a bit later than usual, worked out faster than normal and was now trying to get home more quickly…thinking if I ran a little faster, I could be home more quickly…wishing I could ‘transport’ myself, so that it would be faster.  I then realized I couldn’t run that much faster anyway and, afterall, it would only save me a minute or two.  Besides what would be lost in a minute or two?  Perhaps there is a reason why I have to put up with time…the time it takes to do things, to get places.  What is behind my impatience with time anyway?

It dawns on me that there is an assumption I am making about what all I need to get done…and that there might be far less that needs to get done than I tend to think.  My mind, with the benefit of my running time, wanders to my recent contemplations on love and I notice something familiar about this situation and how I tend to view love.  For example, I often think that love is something that I need to do better and learn faster.  Why is that?  Would love even conform to such a thing…as compression?  There is, afterall, something elusive about love…as if it is not to be fully captured…especially not by hurrying to it, hurrying through it.

It strikes me that one of the pre-dominant challenges of love is that it is something that you have to wait for, wait in.  And then, my mind pops, “Love is patient.”  What does it take to be patient?  Experience mostly; whatever it takes, it seems to take a while.  Why experience?  Because experience gives us understanding.  It teaches us to be willing to be patient, to wait, because it knows something important happens in the process of waiting.  I suspect we have to experience the limitations of hurry and the benefits of the lessons time teaches us.  And as we learn, we are willing to wait because we know it is better to do so…to trust in something happening that you can’t see in any given moment.  Love is patient.

And, I am thankful, even if prematurely, for the limitations of hurrying…that time has much to teach us, that minutes don’t matter as much as we think, that an inconveniently longer than desired run can give me the many gifts of thought, and wonderings, and waitings on God for His timing in things.

Love loves when...

Love loves when it is not loved back.

How can it do this?  …because it knows it is loved by another who loves when He is not loved back.

Love always trusts...

Love always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Is trust the root of protects, hopes, perseveres?  In other words, can I protect something that I don't trust?  Can I hope or offer hope in something I don't trust?  Can I really persevere without trust?

What does love trust in?  In the likelihood of something turning out the way I want it to?  In the innate goodness of another person?  In my own ability to hold on to it?  ...I'm guessing that in order to do all of these things (or any of them), I have to ultimately trust in something else...something other than these things.

Love never fails...

Love never fails – 1 Corinthians 13:8.  I feel a bit snagged by the absolute nature of this statement, but suspect that it is meant to be encouraging, at the very least not defeating.  What is the import of this truth about love, for me today?

New Old Law

We reach for a new law, often through the muck of an ever-present old one.  And, as we do, we discover that the ‘new law’ is really the oldest one – the law of love, as so eloquently put in the now annually fading echo of the Christmas song, “Oh Holy Night”.  The middle-law, the one we feel entrenched in now, is the law of independence.  Its requirement is to ‘Be Independent’…do not put yourself at the risk of dependence on something else, much less others.  The odd thing, and one that seems to take a while for us to detect, is that it comes guised in false wrapping – for by being ‘independent’, it instructs that we will have something we want, namely freedom.  And in so doing, it attempts to subtly distort the freedom to ‘love’.

But, as we all come to know, this is not the way.  Our dependence on God is what leads us to the older and more true law.  The scent of ‘Be Independent’ is everywhere now, without and within.  Help me learn to detect the real flavor of the ‘Be Dependent’, rather the false aroma of ‘Be Independent’, to know what real love is…through the freedom to do it.

Being Human and Loving

I am both surprised and disappointed at the regularity and rate of change within myself.  Why would I even be surprised or disappointed by such things?  Largely, I’m guessing, it is because so often I feel so out of control of what is happening…and my ability to understand it seems so limited.  Further, I’m guessing I’m only now embracing some things that it means to be human, by acknowledging more ways that I am human…and limited in my ability to control much of life, much less myself.

What brought this to light recently is my awareness of how selfish I am, how much love can escape me when I don’t feel loved.  How much I am unable to steel myself in ‘love’ against the failures of my own ability to love well.  Of course, it is possible that I don’t really understand much about love at all.   And so, my mind recalls some of the summarized descriptors of love in I Corinthians 13.  Because of some of the old ways and some of the new ways I have become aware (again) of my failures to love, I’ve decided to try to read and contemplate this passage again each day for 39 days.  Why 39?  Because it is one less than 40 days…and 40 days seems to be a popular euphemism for making something successful.  While I probably do more than I think, I really don’t want to be successful at love…as much as I want to love better, in part by understanding it differently than the regular diet of love definition I absorb from the world.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

New Year

What will a new year bring?  Unanticipated suffering or surprising ease.  Health or physical descent.  Or, rather than either extreme, will it bring something in between.  And, with any of these paths, will the thing we don't expect accompany it?  I hope for a deeper trust -- in God, in others, in myself.  I know the probable path that hope will lead me and the thought of it makes me shrink back a bit into something more familiar...even as I don't want as much of what is familiar as I do of what isn't.  Such odd juxtapositions within me...enough to make me feel strange at times, at others enough to make me feel like the living I'm doing is just beginning.

I don't want pain and I don't want to cause it, but both will happen.  Can I believe that the joys that often accompany such things will outlast what will turn out more to be inconveniences than anything else?  I hope I have faith enough to find out.  Even as I hope, I know that I am being given it...despite the evidence that can worthily damn me.  For that truth, for that good, for surpassing greatness I step forward...into a new year.

Merry Christmas 2009

1 of my Top 4 Christmas songs

I heard the bells on Christmas day
      Their old familiar carols play,
      And wild and sweet the words repeat
      Of peace on earth, good will to men.
And thought how, as the day had come,
      The belfries of all Christendom
      Had rolled along th’ unbroken song
      Of peace on earth, good will to men.
Till ringing, singing on its way
      The world revolved from night to day,
      A voice, a chime, a chant sublime
      Of peace on earth, good will to men.
And in despair I bowed my head:
      “There is no peace on earth,” I said,
      “For hate is strong and mocks the song
      Of peace on earth, good will to men.”
Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
      “God is not dead, nor does He sleep;
      The wrong shall fail, the right prevail
      With peace on earth, good will to men.”

-- Henry W. Longfellow

I must say that this is one of my top 4 ‘Christmas’ songs.  I love the timelessness of the truth, the honesty with which it assesses the state of the world and the hope it speaks of for the prevailing power of God to overcome and establish the peace that all men seek.  I love the movement of the lyrics and the notion of bells that ring of truth.  Of course, not knowing the truth, one would not know of what they ring.  But knowing it brings a sigh of relief to my soul.

By the way, my other 3 (not necessarily in order of priority) are:

• Hallelujah Chorus
• Oh, Holy Night
• Snow Angel

December 2009

...more stuff here.

Where We Least Expect Him

Those who believe in God can never in a way be sure of him again.  Once they have seen him in a stable, they can never be sure where he will appear or to what lengths he will go or to what ludicrous of depths self-humiliation he will descend in his wild pursuit of man. If holiness and the awful power and majesty of God were present in this least auspicious of all events, this birth of a peasant’s child, then there is no place or time so lowly and earthbound but that holiness can be present there too.  And this means that we are never safe, that there is no place where we can hide from God, no place where we are safe from his power to break in two and recreate the human heart because it is just where he seems most helpless that he is most strong, and just where we least expect him that he comes most fully.

-- Frederick Buechner

Busyness -- Not as Good as it Might Seem

Busyness.  There seems to be merit to the notion that busyness is a good thing, to the extent it that complements the notion that “idle time is the devil’s time”.  Perhaps there are other merits, too, to being 'busy' like the accomplishment of things, the production of things, the growth that comes from experiencing different things, from being challenged, from being used up…in good ways.

But lately I have been wondering more about the risks and threats of too much busyness, at least in my own life.  There is something about busyness that is self-perpetuating, like a self-made inertia.  One, in fact, that seems hard to stop or even steer.   It also seems to breed something inside of me that creates distance from myself, from others.  A something that feels like a kind of independence, a self-sufficiency of sorts.  Busyness calls upon something naturally bent towards achieving efficiencies in life, which on the surface don't necessarily seem like a bad thing…but often seem to mask my attempts to control more and more of life.   Where, in fact, have the virtues of efficiency been spawned?  I was wondering recently, for example, where notions of efficiency are honored in things like faith, and in the Scriptures.  Is it ever even mentioned? 

Busyness' off-spring, efficiency, seems to beckon something more deeply in me each time it calls. It seems to try to pack more and more of life into smaller segments of time.  And, it ever so subtlety, at least along the way, seems to turn into a requirement for things to work down to the minute, if not the second.  Something seems awry under such an approach to life, especially when it sneakily become a quest in life.  It isn’t always obvious how it goes about its work, but something is ‘off kilter’.  Busyness seems to leave less room for things that don’t comply with the model…of efficiency, of effectiveness.  It seems to try to intimidate or overshadow things that don’t fit the mold of getting things done, leaving less and less opportunity to recognize the value of mystery, of waiting, of wondering at things that aren’t obvious in deference to things that are, or appear to be. 

I’ve also noticed that it waters in me a root of something that requires something of others that it shouldn’t…the least of which is a kind of expected cooperation with my tightening agenda on things…and the greater of which seems to be a judgment about others that has little room for humility about who they are and that turns them into something of value relative to what I need to get done.  Efficiency seems to deny the virture of patience and the God of it, promoting a false sense of value within that is based on a kind of productivity that God doesn’t seem to recognize as very valuable to our need to learn about our dependence (on Him), rather than our independence. 

Busyness, at least mine, seems to leave a taste in my mouth, an aroma for others that doesn’t draw together…rather, it seems to create distance in nearly all directions inwardly and outwardly.

I am less and less comfortable with the fruits I see of busyness.  I am less and less comfortable with the size I have to remain to be so busy.  I want to be smaller, less important; more willing to respond to promptings within and without...than evaluating such opportunities for their impact on what I need to get done.

Fighting Myself

When I vacillated about my decision to serve the Lord my God, it was I who willed, and I who willed not, and nobody else. I was fighting against myself. All you asked is that I cease to want what I willed, and begin to want what you willed.

-- St. Augustine

Earnest Enough

Our wilderness experience doesn’t simply tell us how badly we’ve offended God, it’s also a measure of his earnestness when he says, “I will redeem you, I will save you!” How earnest is God in his purpose to redeem us from sin? Earnest enough to subject us to pain that purges us. Earnest enough to put us to grief to open our eyes. Earnest enough to burn into our souls that we aren’t self-sufficient, that we’re totally dependent on him for everything. The wilderness, if we have the heart to bear it and the trust to live in hope there, is another of God’s ways of taking us seriously. So anxious is he to live with and love us that he subjects us to the curse of the wilderness, subjects himself to it as well, and finally, in Jesus Christ, he experiences the curse to the full, drinking the cup, and experiencing in the Son the full meaning of abandonment. That God bothers to do any of that should make us stagger, not only at what it says about him but us. Who are we and who does God intend us to be that he engages with us in these ways?

-- Jim McGuiggan

Bo & Woody

Woody on Bo:

"If 'Bo' is not a winner, I never saw one and I should know. He beat me the last three games we played. We've fought and quarreled for years but we're great friends." [Quoted in The Lantern February 10, 1986.]

Bo on Woody:
"There was plenty to criticize about Woody Hayes. His methods were tough, his temper was, at times, unforgivable. And, unless you knew him or played for him, it is hard to explain why you liked being around the guy. But you didn't just like it, you loved it. He was simply fascinating." [From Bo by "Bo" Schembechler and Mitch Albom.]

UM vs OSU 1934

Beauty is the Salve for Its Own Wound

I feel a strong need to write this morning. A feeling of pent-up-ness surrounds me, daring me to burst towards its suffocation. Expression is demanding my voice.

I so regularly encounter an ache within myself. An ache from incomplete-relating with others, an ache from beauty, an ache for something never quite reached, a ache for something never fully tapped. I think I recognize some of the categories for this ache, but at times when the ache is more overwhelming, I wonder whether or not I know much of anything about it.

I want to respond internally to a tumultuous week of a few highs and what seems like many more lows. At the same time, I feel compelled to watch for today’s sunrise, even as I try to to stay in bed past 6am on a Saturday morning. Beauty calls out to me, piercing the yet dark morning. I woke wondering about the tragedy and power depicted in the film Grand Torino, which I watched last night. So much greatness and beauty in a description of living and dying. As a middle-aged man, I want every young and every old man to see this movie, but I feel a sadness that such truth has to come with such a price tag – through the tragedies of this world.

The horizon is on fire now, with what seems like again unprecedented color. I feel the urge to try to capture just the smallest elements of it with my camera, which I’ve been doing a lot of lately. The pictures are OK, at least in terms of capturing the colors and contrasts of these late fall mornings. But they don’t get enough of what the eye can see, and of what the brain processes for the soul. I stare intently anyway, searching for a frame on it all. It feels too alive to hold, and too free-ranging to fit in to anything square. I am inexplicably drawn in by both the richness and magnitude of its beauty and realize that today’s attempt to frame it is with these words. Much like a lens, though, I feel more of the inadequacy of words than anything else. …another reflection of my oh so common ache.

I love, however, the replenishment such effort brings to my soul, even as it leaves me wounded in its panting for more. What a wonderous beauty God does each day, whether I notice it or not. Whether clouds hide it or not. I can no more capture it than I can get my hands around the sky, but I can enjoy it for its momentary transforming giving-ness to me.

I long to give it (or show it) to someone else. But all those around me slumber on. I feel I would be an imposition by even attempting to share something so sacred. I must almost trust that the giving of it must be as unique to each person around me as it is to me. For all giving comes from God. This must be a part of what glory is. …something I can only join, not create.

I have noticed lately, though, that my own children now rush to bring my attention to sunrises and sunsets. Something must be being transferred. But, I suspect it is largely my own unfettered enjoyment of it that is the magnet to such things in their own souls. I feel an internal smile and I am grateful for the mystery beauty calls forth.

…and this causes something in me to relax over the friendship my ache is becoming.

Beauty is the Salve for Its Own Wound.

Unmitigated Morning

Which part?

Some of what I think and say isn’t really true, I just don’t know which part.

The Range of Nature

...yes, more morning glory here.

Morning...Glory

...yes, more morning glory here.

Kids these Days

...is was great to be together again.

Succulence's Deception

...yes, more tasty colors of fall here.

Amazing Grace!

Click the pic and just listen!

Bonheoffer...Things More Important

Dietrich Bonheoffer, after being in prison for a year, still another hard year away from his execution, forging long letters to his friend Eberhard Brege out of his strong faith, his anxiety, his longing for his fiancée, and terror over the nightly bombings: “There are things more important than self-knowledge.” Yes. An artist who believes this is an artist of faith, even if the faith contains no god.

-- Christian Wiman, Image, 20th Anniversary Issue

Cultivate Emptiness

We humans, somewhere along the way, seem to have picked up the bad habit of trying to get life on our terms, without all the bother of God, the Spirit of Life. We keep trying to be our own gods; and we keep making a sorry mess of it.

We have so little encouragement to cultivate emptiness.

-- Eugene Peterson, from The Wisdom of Each Other

Suspended Buzz

...more photos from VSF Church Camping 2009 here.

Drops of Red

UM vs EMU 2009

...more photos here.

Mystery is not...

Mystery is not the absence of meaning, but the presence of more meaning than we can comprehend.

-- Gabriel Marcel

Truth is Tough

Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; nay, you may kick it about all day like a football, and it will be round and full at evening.

-- Oliver Wendell Holmes

We fumble...with where to put it

Our music is about the realization everyone gets at some point in their lives that the world is broken, and we don't know how to fix it, and the longing we all have for it to be set right - and the ways we fumble when we're trying to work out where to put that longing.

-- borrowed by OtR from Sara Zarr

Remember, Sinner

Remember, sinner, it is not your hold of Christ that saves you -- it is Christ.

-- C.H. Spurgeon

Savory Salmon's Aging Hues

3D Purple

Dripping Yellow

Nature's Pink

One of the many things in nature that just about can't get any better.

2 Things

Two things I ask of you, O Lord; do not refuse me before I die:
Keep falsehood and lies far from me; give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me only my daily bread. Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you and say, 'Who is the Lord?' Or I may become poor and steal, and so dishonor the name of my God.

-- Proverbs 30:7-8

Chicago from Atop the Sears (Er, Willis) Tower

...more photos here.

The Sway of Fullness

Life once again feels very full. I move back and forth now in a sway between perceiving it to be ‘too full’ and simply a good ‘full life’. I wonder about what makes me perceive it to be one way or the other at any given time. I wonder if my disposition to it stems from either pressure I feel from others (real or not) or pressure I put on myself and that, therefore, the movement in my feelings towards this fullness of life is not really what I think it is. At times I can get quite anxious about this, but usually if I am willing to engage in a process with it, I find that my anxiousness is rooted in a belief that something is ‘up to me’ that in reality, really isn’t up to me. I’m thankful for a process that regularly leads me away from anxiousness and towards a letting go of it, a dependence on something else (someone), if you will.

When I am in or coming out of one of these seasons, I catch myself more often than not thinking that if I didn’t have to spend so much time and emotional energy at work then I could be more of the person I would like to be. I’m guessing at some simple, practical level this is logically true. But I wonder if this assessment and conclusion misses a bigger more significant point. That point being, that perhaps it is less a factor of work being an obstacle and more that it is a pathway. The nirvana that I imagine in a well organized, spacious, and thoughtful life perhaps is not achieved by sedation of certain things that impose themselves on my attention. Perhaps it is the obstacle itself that leads me towards the God that organized, spacious, and thoughtful life would afford.

As I reflect on the notion that God caused the curse in ‘working the field’ for Adam, it seems that it is in the very curse itself that God was creating something for man to find Him. Of course, we can as we regularly do, miss the point of God’s curse and therefore Himself. But I’ve more regularly noticed that a flower seems to grow from the soil of my anxiety over the lack of ability I have to get myself and keep myself in the serenity I desire. I suspect that if could I do it myself, I would again be content to hold on to ‘it’ rather than the one who provides it. This all seems to point to a God who is way ahead of us in understanding what we really need and even want in life. He is orchestrating our existence by creating opportunities that push and draw me to Himself, even through His ‘curses’. My opportunity is to believe that this is true, that it is not up to me to create my utopia or whatever mini-version of it I can concoct, and trust that it is often through the very obstacles that I feel that I find this God. I often try to find a way around such obstacles, when the opportunity is the pathway through them. God knows this. He knows the value of suffering and He lovingly does not relent to my understanding of ‘the better way’ I may be imagining.

So, off I go to another day of work…when I would rather be thinking, resting, or playing in the sunlight of the natural world. There is not only purpose in it, but a pathway to the very deepness I long for in God. Selah.

Mystery & Logic

The Holy Spirit, in the inspiration of scripture, has kept quite a few things out of our purview, to keep us humble and open to mystery. Living with some tension, in mystery, is part of the life of faith, and it’s what keeps us growing. The minute we become dogmatic, we close our minds. There’s a lot to be said for saying, “I don’t know.” Some parents don’t say that to their kids enough.

Image: Speaking of parents, what do you think about parents who say to their kids, “You can be anything you want to be?” Is that a healthy thing?

EP: I think it’s a sick way to instruct our children. One of the important things we learn as human beings is limits: how do we live within limits? A lot of mischief is done in the world by people who want to be big, want to make a lot of money, want a lot of influence. I think it’s a mistake to say that to children. Look at the trouble it’s gotten us into.

The minute we take our humility, our inadequacy, our sense of striving out of the story, we destroy it. There’s no lack of excellence in scripture, and there’s no lack of failure and humility, but they’re all part of our organic whole, which Jesus hold together, with his presence, his forgiveness, his commands, his promises. The minute we start unraveling it, we get into a lot of trouble.

-- Interview with Eugene Peterson, “Image”, Summer 2009


In the main, and from the beginning of time, mysticism has kept men sane. The thing that has driven them mad was logic.

-- G.K. Chesterton

Worship

Worship begins with finding you finding me
and ends with this neverending.

-- Tim Koshnik

Honest Doubt

Honest doubt is different from an ironclad commitment to doubt itself. Honest doubt is painful, but its pain is active rather than passive, purifying rather than stultifying. Far beneath it, no matter how severe its drought, how thoroughly your skepticism seems to have salted the ground of your soul, faith, durable faith, is steadily taking root.

-- Christian Wiman, Harvard Divinity Bulletin

Country Road, Take Me Home...West Virgina

For more scenic views, click here....

Predictably Unpredictable

I must say that at the very least life is unpredictable. …so much so that I find myself wondering why I try to predict it. I think I really do spend more time and energy trying to anticipate life than I realize. I’m not even ready to say this is a bad habit, or even unhelpful. But I do think it is conspicuous that I work pretty hard at wondering about the future and its impact on me. The thought crossed my mind recently, ‘isn’t it obvious that no one knows the future?’ No one. So…why? Why do I live out of an anticipated future? I suppose I’m going to have to do the honest work of figuring what I mean by this question. For example, I think I often catch myself thinking thoughts like, ‘if I knew what was going to happen, I would…’. If I knew what was going to happen with the economy, I would spend my money differently. If we are headed towards some crisis, where the whole game is changed and money becomes only a commodity of the rich, I would…learn more about gardening, learn a more practical skill that I could use in trade for the things I need in life.

Another one, if I knew more about what was going on for my wife at any given moment, I would be more able to identify how I should ‘be’ towards her going forward. Or, if I knew what was lacking or what was growing in the person of my son, I would be more able to speak into certain things with some certainty. If I knew how long I was going to live, I would know how much money I need and I could think more effectively about the work I am doing, the way I spend my time. If I knew if my parents were going to live a long and healthy productive life, I would know more about how to orient myself towards them. If I knew that they would have an extended battle with mind-altering diseases, I would know more how to prepare. And on and on it goes, limited only by the hours of the day I am awake…and even then my ‘night mind’ seems to continue this effort.

But the obvious thing is, that despite all of the effort to anticipate things that feel important, I have really never known what was coming my way. And, I think in fairness to the whole dynamic of using the experience of my past to predict the future, I have never really seen clearly (if at all) what the past has taught be about what is coming. Even if there are some identifiable patterns them, each day and season, to one extent or another is (relatively speaking) a surprise. What are the implications of this? I suspect there are many, but I only now seem to be getting a glimpse of them.

In yesterday’s entry for example I awoke a mess, emotionally. Tossed around the room of my mind by the strangest of dreams, I yanked myself out of one only to discover how exhausted I had become supposedly ‘sleeping’. It was an undesired start to another day, weary of something before I even started it. ‘How will I make it through this one?’ was the unspoken question before me. But, all I could do was simply to roll out of bed and do the next obvious thing. In this case, brush my teeth.

I had wanted to buy donuts for my department at work, so I did that. I ate a couple myself. I had lots of meetings throughout the day. The weather was truly awesome. I went running, learned of the potential absence of all my children that evening, wondered out loud about a ‘date’ with my wife, learned that one child would be home after all, reached the pre-conclusion that the date I was now looking forward probably wouldn’t happen, discovered that my child’s plans reversed again, went to dinner with my wife, enjoyed great conversation and food, watched the movie ‘Fireproof’, and fell asleep again in the arms of a wife who really loves me. Who knew that all of this would happen with a thousand more details in between…when I awoke that way I did that very morning before?

As I started above, life is at the very least unpredictable. And this description of my experience of just this one day seems to be fairly reflective of many days in my life and of many seasons of my life. I don’t know what is coming in the future.

I also know that the goodness I often am ‘planning’ for myself (anticipating future) is replaced by a goodness of wholly another kind…on-going experience with God. This is slowing changing me from being a planner, a predictor, a self-providing goodness-giver, to being a responder, an acceptor, a willingness-to-wait-for-goodness-receiver. And as I observe just the tips of this ice-berg and relax from the figure-out-the-future-coming approach and to the future-being-given-to-me-one-day-at-a-time approach, something releases within me to do and be the same for others. I can now feel their tensions over the very same kinds of things, in large part, because my own tensions over them are less pre-occupying. This is a wonder to me. The future-anticipating approach is self-fulfillingly self-absorbed. The future-receiving approach is self-givingly other-focused.

It was raining today when I awoke (I nice, soothing rain I must add) and many of my thoughts drained towards what adjustments I would have to make today because of the rain. In the few minutes of this written reflection, the rain has subsided and the sun is poking its face through the clouds. What will this day bring anyway? I just don’t know, but I have a feeling it will be good.

3 Handsome Guys

...well, the 2 on the right anyway...after a recent 5k together in Winona Lake, IN.

Choosing and Chosen

There is a certain similarity between marriage and the Christian religion, which is suggested by the text in our gospel reading: “Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you.” The dominant note at the beginning of marriage is the joy of mutual possessing, of a ‘choosing’ triumphantly accomplished. And this is as it should be. 

So in religion there is at the beginning often a searching and a choosing, an affirming of that good which one may serve with conviction. And this too is as it should be. But in time we see more. We become aware that our seeking and our choosing is not so self-determined as we had thought, but our response to a Seeker who had already found us. We are come to understand that text: "Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you." 

So with marriage we understand more in time. Deeper than the joy of a ‘choosing’ triumphantly fulfilled is the awareness of a need to be met, of a claim acknowledged. Few things are as potent to give meaning to life as the sense of answering a need and fulfilling a responsibility which no one else can meet. 

It is wonderful indeed that we can choose and achieve our choice, but still more wonderful that we are chosen. 

-- Sue Miller, The Story of My Father, homily by my father for my brother’s wedding

Poems

Poems are not words, after all,
but fires for the cold,
ropes let down to the lost,
something as necessary as bread
in the pockets of the hungry.

-- Mary Oliver, A Poetry Handbook

Pictured Rocks 2009

...of course (!), more pics here.

Many eyes go through the meadow, not many see the flowers in it.

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson


What am I looking at today?