Grateful!

Posted: July 18, 2016 in beautiful
Tags: , , , , , ,
0

God is a fabulous interior designer.

His color palate beauties the red dragonfly, decorates the yellow lantana, covers the blue sky and decks out your lovely freckled, tanish cheeks.

His scale is grand, yet intimate — the sun, a perfectly fine-tuned distance for life to thrive; the stars  beyond our grasp yet in our sight; your fingers, just the right length to hold in mine.

God sets the gold standard for art.

His rhythms are found in a billion blades of green grass, a billion blue waves on the shore, a thousand glowing, self-organizing sand dunes, the even measure of your ever-present breath.

His transitions — take sea, shore, sand and rocky cliff —  the sky! Your toes, you ankles, your knees and curving, lovely hips.

He is the master of the focal point — bright white moon, gold sun on clouds, tip of sugar pine, your gorgeous green eyes.

His balance is perfect, whorl of red rose, the even length of your tapered, tanned legs, the sparkling river, the white rapids, the black round-rocked shore.

He is great at line and form — the jut of your cute nose, the majestic summit of Everest, the rolling velds of South Africa, an Okapi’s hind legs.

Everyday we step out into an art circle tour.

Reality is the Louvre — times a billion.

We live and move and have our being within the ambit of his every morphing craft, his living, breathing, changing oeuvre.

I see it; I’m grateful.

Hang On!

Posted: July 14, 2016 in goodness, relationships
Tags: , , , , , ,
0

The other day someone told me, “I feel like I have tried so hard to do everything right, but I still haven’t gotten what I want — or what I so badly need.”

Bingo! Yeah, I have sometimes felt that way too.

Then the person said, “Why not just give up, quit trying to be right, and just do what other people are doing?”

Yeah, I have felt that weary-of-doing-the-right thing too. And I have felt that might-as-well-just give-up-now, good-egg pouting, righteous-fruit-despairing type thing.

What to do?

First, I’d say keep the big picture in mind, the long-journey in mind, keep the game plan right smack dab in front of you. Being good, doing right, living according to your values will take time to show off it’s value and yield its reward.

But that reward, when it comes, maybe months or even years down the road will be sweet and tasty — and worth the wait.

Hang on; doing the right thing pays off — over time. Good things take time.

It took so long for me as a credentialed teacher to really become a good teacher — years of practice, failure, tying again, showing up for class with a knot in my stomach, until one day — I led that great discussion on that great novel and made that great homework assignment and knew, I had really taught them well.

Hang on! It took years for my wife and I to develop a truly good relationship, lots of fights, hurts, make-ups,  forgiving and being forgiven, getting counseling, until we got it, mostly, kind of  — peace, love, power to do the right thing for each other, self-control, deep emotional connection.

Good things are seldom gotten easily. The good is always hard won, and yet the good-good is so very good when earned by a long moral march in the right direction. And when you get there, to something good you have long longed for, you will be glad you didn’t cheat your way there, or bribe your way there,  or immoralize your way there so that you are left with an uneasy heart or regretful mind, or nothing that is really good at all. We are capable of ruining what is good by how we get it.

Yeah, that is the reality to face on this issue. Doing the wrong things to get the right thing doesn’t work. It doesn’t get you the right things. Right begets right. Wrong leads to wrong.

In career, taking short cuts will lead to incompetence, and forcing your way to the top will leave a sad trail of bodies behind you.

In relationships, doing wrong to get to right often leads leads to a poor fit —  that we don’t see until too late — to a poor match and to the painful reality that it didn’t work and we are right back where we started, ten years later, but now brutally damaged.

Hang on. Doing right, being good — it pays off. Good isn’t a panacea. We must not treat it as such. We don’t get everything we want in life no matter how we live. And being good is not some nifty tool, we use to manipulate others or God to give us what we want.

Good is good, and good is and has it own reward. Good produces good; it produces good people, people in charge of themselves, able to exercise control, able to love, and able to do so much good for others.

Doing the right thing isn’t a shield against all pain or disappointment or loss, but it is the proven, safe route up the great eight thousand meter mountain of life to the gorgeous view from the top.

 

 

Discernitude

Posted: July 11, 2016 in responsibilty
Tags: , , , , ,
0

Someone told me last week that because of a decision I made, I would have immediate grief. I didn’t. Maybe they did, but it didn’t much involve them.

They said I wouldn’t be able to sleep. I slept fine. I had made an excellent decision and it had good results.

Sometimes we need to hear something about ourselves, sometimes we need to disagree with what we are told about our selves.

Someone told me recently that they didn’t feel good about how they looked. They look fine. I told them so. Then they agreed. We had a good talk about accepting our wonderful but imperfect bodies.

Sometimes we need to not listen to ourselves. We are wrong. We need to listen to someone else.

Life is constant process of discernment.

But how do we know what is right? When do we trust our own thoughts, when others? Experience, gut, context, speaker, time, education, mental health, intent, sincerity, history — so many factors weigh in.

One thing comes to mind to help. Are the remarks shaming, judgmental, condemning? Then they are very often not to be trusted.

Do the words or thoughts point to solutions, to wise processes, to helpful insights, to understanding, to a positive future. Then often they are good.

Discern; learn.

Don’t Forget To Run

Posted: July 6, 2016 in fun
Tags: , , , , ,
0

I looked out the window at Starbucks and saw them go past, running, one after the other. The big one was first, then the little one. They were laughing as they went along — to nowhere.

The little one had her arms around her waist — which is not efficient or conducive to either staying upright or going fast — but of course she wasn’t thinking about that. Winding around the patio tables and chairs the girls did a circle and then did one again.

Same hair color, same skin color, about a year apart, apparently they were sisters at play. Then mom appeared in my window — looking just like a grownup them — and hovered at the edge of the circuit, protectively, watching over them carefully. No one elses was on the patio. Mom allowed it.

Adults are about going places, acting according to protocol, getting things done. They go Starbucks to get coffee; they sit in the chairs provided; they go to the gym to run. Adults are about doing expected things at expected times in socially acceptable ways — acceptably. They control their impulses, they follow script. Mostly the rest of are glad about this.

Little children — they often do things because they want to when they want to because they feel like it at the moment. They run, on the Starbucks’ patio, and their watchful adults are there with them, teaching them the rules of living — be respectful, be appropriate, be safe, stay calm mostly, like us, unless nobody is around.

We have something to relearn from the children — when our own moms aren’t hovering at the edge of our minds — so that we don’t become too predictable, too restrained, too safe, too appropriate, too uptight, too unfun?

Pleasure, spontaneity, a good time, a wry remark, an impulsive dance or kiss or laugh   — this may be enjoyed in the most ordinary places, with just a little lack of restraint.

Perhaps, maybe, possibly — the next time you just feel like it — run!

Do-Ba-De-Do!

Posted: June 30, 2016 in thriving
Tags: , , , , , , ,
0

Sometimes I write modern soliloquies. A soliloquy is simply a monologue, often found within a drama, that gets at a deep issue in the speaker. It is a heart, alone, but speaking outloud, as it wrestles with an idea, a decision or a need to act.  Shakespeare is the master of this art form. 

The soliloquy below is my  attempt at inspiring myself and all of us to speak — out of our unique person — what is inside of us, to speak with freedom, to speak ideolectically, to improvise, to extemporize, to neologize, to invent words to match our thoughts. I have given this soliloquy a light, jazz-inspired, fun, breezy, slangish feel. To help with this I added some nonsensical syllables, vocables, borrowed from popular songs or just made up. 

Hope you enjoy it and that it inspires you to be you. 

You can find more of my soliloquies at http://www.modernsoliloquies.com 

 

Do-Ba-De-Do!

Speak up more, not less, using your own ideo-vocalized mess.

Soliloquy — in front of yourself and everyone else-a-melse.

Monologue, dog!

You and I can flip-flop nonstop lolly pop but that gets trite fast and then we just so need to speak our favor-ite verbo-bite.

Bebop, hiphop, tipitity-top, slop-a-pop.

Ski-ba-bop-ba-bop-voc; do that thang nonstop.

Be-cause …

We have been flattened by the road-grade blade of the prepaid lexicographers.

We have been run over by the top-botched, pop-a-voc.

We have suffered weak-a-squeak.

We have sold out for safety and we have shut up way too much because we thought we were stuck-a-muck with duck and cluck.

Nope! Fess; you’ve got that vocable mess!

Unperson; you’ll worsen, but word-dive and jivity jive and you’ll revive.

See!

Be inventy.

Sync with your blink.

Que with your you and do-ba-de-do!

The Dream

Posted: June 24, 2016 in god
Tags: , , , , ,
2

He jostled and flowed within a large crowd. Among them, he was ramped up and impassioned — yes — and even more he was sonant, syllabic and bold-voiced  about the divine excitement. Urgency was on him and he began to speak to the crowd about the ultimate intention, to bring all living things that will into unity with each another.

The crowd grew. He spoke from within it; they moved as one and he advocated the gorgeous, healing, superb vision of unification. They ran after him. He spoke from the heart of a beautiful future where all living things will be respected and loved — he was absolutely sure this would happen. He said that the desire  was that all living things become one.

The separatists were present, and as he concluded his impassioned appeal, they basked naked around him, proud and unashamed in their idealized, politicalized,  spiritual exclusivity — and they smugly opposed what he said.  The pressing crowd, the critical religious elite, him alone and yet among them, there was a kind of dream-like vision stupor present — around Jesus.

I woke this morning to the news that Britian has withdrawn from the European Union and to the continuing news that America is strongly divided on the issue of immigration. A group of Brits, and Americans, want the “strangers” out. There is a growing, angry voice in our nation and our world advocating a new nationalism and a renewed political and social isolationism. This arises from a growing fear of the other, and with it comes the ubiquitous readvocacy of separation on the basis of nationality, belief, race and religion.

In my understanding of God, and Jesus, this trend is not Biblical, and it’s not Christian; it is political and it is worldly. God told Abraham, “all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” From the beginning, God has had an inclusive vision. Paul unabashedly taught the church in Ephesians 1, that God’s will is “to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ.”

Jesus was so open to including people outside his racial and religious circle that he was vehemently criticized, and yet he remained firm that his vision was to gather everyone he could at the banquet, to bring everyone under his wing, to save everyone he could. As a results, and getting this as they did, the early church was multi-ethnic and meta-national to the max because they followed Christ’s command to take the gospel to all nations. The early church overcame their own Jewish exclusivity and took the gospel world-wide. Thank God! In this way, they included us.

So why is there a strong, angry, anti-immigrant voice in America today? It is becuase the modern middle-class is shrinking, and it is fearful of losing its place, and it is mad. Things have changed, people have traveled, there are terrorists among us, we are afraid. We live in a not-brave new world, we live in the era of the  the stanger. To many the world seems and is more dangerous.

I somewhat understand this, but what  I don’t understand is how  Christians, God’s own people, those who have been included by God, lose our vision for what God is all about and join in separatist thinking. God is about salvation, God is about compassion — God is love. God is all about — he always has been — healing and saving anyone who would let him, and this isn’t limited to a particular class, to a certain race, to people of one religion or one nation. God cares for the alien, the stranger, the refugee, the citizen — all. Read the Bible. It says this.

If the people of the world come to our doorstep, if we mingle with the crowd, isn’t this an opportunity to love people who were once far off? Isn’t this an opportunity to fulfill the Great Comission? Have we forgotten Christ’s goal, his purpose and his passion to save, not condemn, the world? Yes, we need to be wise, yes we need to be careful, yes we need to protect the innocent, but yes too, we need to love all people as God does.

Our Chritianity needs to supersede our nationalism. Our mission needs to go beyond our politics and our love needs to quiet our anger and our fears. The Christian calling is to move among the crowd, to connect with people from all backgrounds and to join God’s gorgeous, excited passion to unite all things possible in Christ.  Our Christain dream, our Christian vision — it is for unification, not separation.

Be You; No Less

Posted: June 21, 2016 in becoming, journey
Tags: , , , , , , ,
0

We Americans have a penchant for authenticity, but in reality most of us (me too!) copy, mimic and ape each other constantly. We are  surrounded by each other’s appeals for the authentic (“Get real!”), but we keep selecting the same  cliches, smart phone emojis, Frappuccino drinks, cool Blazers from H&M, semi-serious “Oh my God’s” and binge-watched TV shows as each other.

We tend to fall in line.

What is authenticity? It is psychological and social congruency — a robust personal consistency — between what is inside us and what comes out of us. Authentic people are what they profess to be. They are true to themselves, and they are open, real and honest with others. They buy, say, offer and proffer what they truly value.

Lately I’m wanting more and more authenticity — from myself and others. To get that, I’ve been talking to myself, admitting to myself what is true about me, and others, especially being open to admitting my fears, fumblings, successes and regresses so that I can admit them to others.

I like coffee, cars, cats, books, fixing things, staff teams, history, literature, cold cereal and all manner of high-quality verbage. I am afraid of diseases, extremists and old age. I love my job as a pastor. I am so glad I have a resourcer-wife and two lovely daughters. I worry that they will not always be safe. I adore God. I also love myself — sometimes too much. I love to talk to people and make new friends. I love being alone.

To grow in desired authenticity, I’ve also been talking to others without editing as much as I used to. Instead I am trying to tap into what is really going on when I am with them, what I am feeling, what they are feeling, what we are intuiting, what we are apprehending. I am aiming at nothing less than the freedom to say what is semi-true and quasi-tolerable at any given moment, but in ways that are modest, gentle and even loving. Being authentic is no excuse for being cruel, or rude.

Saturday I encougaged a friend to go to counseling. I recently had a conflict with someone who is judgmental. It ended well.  I was patient with a person with memory loss, and I was patient with myself when I locked my keys in my office.

I can be deep; I am capable of crass superficiality. Today I bought a new casual-style blazer at H&M. I too am a member of the fast-fashion herd. At some level, I too am a copycat. Sometimes I buy clothes so that I won’t have to go around naked; sometimes I buy them so that I just might — to some other materialistic person like me — look cool, acceptable, maybe, kind of, like I (perhaps) used to?

The new blazer will look good with my blue and white checked shirt, (the one I used lighter fluid on today to get the gum out out the pocket), my Guess jeans that I bought because I couldn’t fit in my favorite Ring of Fire pair, and my black wingtips that I just had to have last Christmas because my other semi-dressy black shoe had a hole in the sole and someone might see that when I crossed my legs at an event.

I am trying, to live out me, with a modicum of honesty mixed with a preferred style. I drive a high-performance sports car because I really, really, really honestly and truly love to go very fast surrounded by eleven Bose speakers cranked up to full volume, the air conditioner blasting my face off, the mirrors vibrating to the bass, the exhaust growling at the cars I am blowing past and the curbs flying by like party streamers. I’m a resolute car sinner.

I also follow God as hard as I can, reveling in the nonpareil salvation God has offered me in the inimitable Christ and telling everybody I can that God absolutely adores them. At my core I an exhilarated by my everyday experience of God’s super-fast empowerment, his luxurious love, his bright streaming grace and his cranked up favor! God is so cool to me!

What do I recommend to you, you pop culture fanatics, you want-a-be coolios, you flawed authentics, you semi-valid truthers, you fellow hopeful reality-mongers — all you my godly and quasi-godly lovelies?

Be you; no less.

Unperson; you’ll worsen.

Sync, with God — and yourself.

I’m Good with Not Too Righteous

Posted: June 6, 2016 in becoming
Tags: , , , , , ,
0

Do not be overrighteous,
neither be overwise—
why destroy yourself?

Ecc. 7:16

What? The Bible instructs us not to be too righteous!

One commentator gives this explanation:

“Do not be simplistically righteous with the expectation of immediate reward, neither be naively wise, why cause yourself to be astonished that God did not honor your righteous living with immediate blessing?”

That’s a pretty good shot at it. I would add, don’t fool yourself and think that you are righteous when you’re really not, and thereby destroy your humanity with a false coat of painted-on perfection.

And, I’d add on the New Testament view too, that we are made righteous in Christ, and yet, in ourselves, yeah, still not prefect in everyday thought and behavior.

I’ve got some flaws; you too; let’s admit them.

I was upset this week with one of my daughters when I should have just kept my cool. She did nothing wrong. I was just impatient. I am not in danger of being overly righteous in the sense of being super good.

Actually, to be honest, I don’t always even always want to be good. I have no desire to be on somebody’s pedestal or my own. I’ll fall off fast. I don’t much like people who think they are above everyone else or myself when I act that way.

That’s probably wrong of me, not to want to be too righteous, or perfect,  perhaps it’s a rationalization for wrong stuff, but I do want to be better than I have been  — a lot, mostly, kind of — and I am very comfortable with being human, which of course I am, which means not perfect.

I guess I’ve gotten to more okay with me not perfect, because I know that I am trying to be right and that when I’m not,  I am loved and forgiven by God and my family.

I’m good with human.

Hope you are too.

Smuzzle Stick!

Posted: May 21, 2016 in restraint, thriving
Tags: , , , , , ,
0

Most of us are afflicted — at least somewhat — with amassitude, anothery and an acute strain of likewiseness.

Last night, for a snack, I took seconds and thirds and a small fourth on some yummy Frosted Mini-Wheats. I added honey and almond milk.  Sweet on sweet, or double sweet.  Yum!

Then I got a yearning to see my Padres hit another home run against the Dodgers so I stayed up late to watch. They did, and again. Watching them play so hard made me tired, so I went to bed happy, and I got double-sleep by rolling over twice this morning and sleeping in.

“Ah and oh,” I love my firsts — and my seconds, sometimes my thirds. But I don’t like it when my waist line increases because of too much sweet cereal, or my sleep cycles are interrupted by too much coffee. I sometimes tend toward a little too much.

Thus and so, mostly and consistently, we are all, at times extendawonkers, increasaboys, supplementicators, expandimongers.

We indulge, then ask politely — sometimes not — for more, more cereal, condiments, compliments, constaments, cashiments, communications, curiosa,

A bit of this is normal, and good, but there is one unpleasant side effect to dipping in again and again and again — insatiably. It’s discontent. And its dissatisfaction. We may feed a human penchant for never-enough. We may become addicted to an incessant always-a-little-more.

What to do?

Don’t push it. Don’t feed, grow and propagate addiction. Be very happy with your one portion, perhaps a small second; be good with good that isn’t jumboed, big-gulped, value-added, honeyed, home-runned or supersized.

I think of Solomon and his erotic poem in the Bible, his sage, “Do not stir up love until it pleases,” smack in the middle of his well-kindled romantic ardor.

Pleasures will come to us when they will come to us, but if we force them we risk ruining them. To be puke-drunken, gorge-mucked, sex-smuckered or gagged-guzzled — it may be fun for some,  kind of, sort of at first (do you think so?), but it’s not that much fun, especially in the end.

Surfeit and its consequences — this is suffered willingly by fools, but the wise moderate, and enjoy life, and contentment. They partake, then they stop and they are happy holding back until the just-right-once-again-moment.

I had one latte this morning, brewed with my favorite, smooth Best Friends blend of Dark Horse coffee and 2% milk. So good!

Nothing in excess; some things not at all.

Smuzzle-stick!

Arks

Posted: May 9, 2016 in beautiful
Tags: , , , , , ,
0

We are all arks. We all carry something through the desert, up the mountain, to the summit, back down into the behavioral ditch.

We carry pain, we carry healing, we carry anger, we carry love, and the people around us feel it, it effects them, they can tell.  The arctic chill — or apricity.

The manna, Aaron’s budding staff, a universal morality   — precious cargo rides in every ark.

Last week I told the clerk who sells me paint, “I love you.”  All the women around her exclaimed, “He said he loves you!” I told my teller at the bank that she was “my favorite.”I told my neighbor I missed him when he was gone.

What do we carry along with us, and what are we giving away? These are choices, what we put in our arks, things of remembrance, things of refinement. These are choices,  what we hand out on the streets, in offices, at home — kinditudes,  affirmisms, gentlements.

Such powerful ark gifts, our sacred haut monde — they are lovely copies and gorgeous shadows of things above.

Older Entries
Newer Entries