The rain drops seem to be falling this morning slower than ever before. Somehow life has taken one of the most subtle turns. And though the sun has yet to break through, I know that there is a peace that sustains me beyond the climates and conditions. These are some of the better days of my life, and where it goes from here leaves me curiously breathless. Everything around me says that I don't deserve to rejoice. But for the first time in a while, I am going to hold onto this with everything that I am. None of us wants to embrace the storms that have become so commonplace in our souls. So why do we regret seeing such beauty break into our lives at the outset of such? None of my words can piece together the stillness in my heart. I know this - I am alive... and blessed to be here. My eyes are covered... my face upwardly takes it all in, as if to listen with all five of my senses... arms outstretched in unflinching vulnerability. I have been catching myself taking much deeper breaths lately, as if to capture the taste of what is all around me. I want this - what lies right before me - with all that I have to offer. I seemingly may run from these moments, but in reality, I know that they are not fleeting... though life would attempt to convince me otherwise. Nothing assures me that this will remain, outside of a faith in that which escapes my hold. This is love and life and laughter, all offering themselves to me in doses that lift me above these dark skies. Sense and reason make a mess of it all, though I don't have the luxury of casting them off. This I know: I refuse to make excuses for why I will not let myself be beautifully overwhelmed by all of it.
Tuesday, February 28, 2006
.: some of the better days :.
The rain drops seem to be falling this morning slower than ever before. Somehow life has taken one of the most subtle turns. And though the sun has yet to break through, I know that there is a peace that sustains me beyond the climates and conditions. These are some of the better days of my life, and where it goes from here leaves me curiously breathless. Everything around me says that I don't deserve to rejoice. But for the first time in a while, I am going to hold onto this with everything that I am. None of us wants to embrace the storms that have become so commonplace in our souls. So why do we regret seeing such beauty break into our lives at the outset of such? None of my words can piece together the stillness in my heart. I know this - I am alive... and blessed to be here. My eyes are covered... my face upwardly takes it all in, as if to listen with all five of my senses... arms outstretched in unflinching vulnerability. I have been catching myself taking much deeper breaths lately, as if to capture the taste of what is all around me. I want this - what lies right before me - with all that I have to offer. I seemingly may run from these moments, but in reality, I know that they are not fleeting... though life would attempt to convince me otherwise. Nothing assures me that this will remain, outside of a faith in that which escapes my hold. This is love and life and laughter, all offering themselves to me in doses that lift me above these dark skies. Sense and reason make a mess of it all, though I don't have the luxury of casting them off. This I know: I refuse to make excuses for why I will not let myself be beautifully overwhelmed by all of it.
Thursday, February 23, 2006
.: reading week :.
Free at last!
Free at last!
Thank God Almighty!
I am free at last!
(Don't expect much from me while I am on vacation... not to say that I have been offering much anyways!)
Free at last!
Thank God Almighty!
I am free at last!
(Don't expect much from me while I am on vacation... not to say that I have been offering much anyways!)
Thursday, February 16, 2006
.: say hello, wave goodbye :.
What with being involved in two different places - Regent in Vancouver and back home in Mount Vernon - I often feel like I have the best of both worlds. It just seems that I have the constant joy of showing up, whether it be with my family or my roommates, and getting a warm welcome. In both of these places, I am made to feel like a king. Simply by entering back into that "community" of people once again, I feel the deepest of feelings... like I matter to those people. And yes, I do... and they also deeply matter to me! But it just seems that I love that "hello", to the point that I so often feel oblivious to the "goodbye" that it cost me to be in that place. Below the surface of such warm feelings is the desire to always be somewhere new. Why is it that I so often grow tired of wherever I am at any given moment, even if it be ever so slightly? Why do I love traveling, and even more what awaits me once I get there? Why do I love having a space that only I can fill... even a variety of spaces? What is stirring within me that causes me to enjoy absense, and could it be simply because, as the proverb predicts, it makes the hearts of loved ones grow fonder... for me? And possibly, I may carry a fear within me that I may overstay my welcome somewhere. But to always have a means of escape, a promise that should things go bad, I can bail and cast my lot in with another group for as long as necessary. Neither situation (school nor home) is so bad that I ever find myself running from either place. Rather it seems like I live as the child who runs from ride to ride within an amusement park, anticipating some new joy or experience that will shadow the previous one. But am I possibly so unsatisifed with things as they are that I have to mix life up at such a pace and degree that I keep myself so amused, lest I ever become fully aware of its actual finiteness or failings?
No doubt, I long for "home"... though I find I rarely, if ever, dream about it. I long for something - anything - new. And I long to be with those who accept me... ones who will receive me time and time again. Never have I had it so good that I have various places that involve me - even require me at some level. But not one of them leaves me truly satisifed, for at every corner is the potential for them to turn sour and expose how they cannot come through for me as I have been hoping for for some time now. Better to keep my options open, I guess.
Monday, February 13, 2006
.: avoiding the errors :.
Why am I so susceptible to people, pastors, professors, that offer such neatly packaged systems of life? Answer: I want life to be simple and manageable and predictable... at least at some level. It just seems that time and time again, I hear someone relate to how we ought to live as human beings, as Christians, as (fill in the blank), and what they are saying seems to make such perfect sense of the chaos that I find myself in daily. And I draw a line in the sand and proclaim, "Yes, this is the way that we were meant to live!". And then somewhere along the way, I somehow manage to come to my senses and realize in some way that this system has missed something. This particular way of managing life and love and relationships and personal elements has left something out. Or even worse, it bears some sort of fatal flaw. And sadly enough, another person comes along just in the nick of time to offer a new system for the old one that I just scraped.
The reality that I am just waking to is that I have paid the price repeatedly for pushing all I am in on one way of "doing it"... doing life itself. Like clockwork, that way of micromanaging the dynamics that I struggle with falls miserably short, it blows up in my face, and the pieces I hold in my hands mirror the shame and embarrassment that have become such common companions in my journey towards fuller life. I want so deeply to break free from all these things, but I am slowly but surely discovering that what exists at the core of my very nature is the demand to find a way to escape pain and frustration and such costly errors of language and motion. I get so frustrated with myself for ever having believed those people that I once trusted and esteemed... and frustrated that I fell for it. As the days and years go by, seemingly at a pace that has slipped through my controlling hands, I am finding that the voices that I willfully choose to embrace are fewer and fewer. You can only be conned so many times before you grow to trust only yourself and a select few, who in all reality you have very little reason to make excuse for, but you seemingly do so anyways.
The beauty of this life (only in the sense that I am choosing to now see it as such) is that even as I write these words, they are most likely coming from my freshest system, which (thankfully) bears a shelf life that is shorter than the ones previous. Yes, once again, I will wake up all over again and reject the whole thing somewhere down the road! Nevertheless, there is life out there to discover... or better yet to happen upon and be caught off guard by. And something says at a life beyond reason that it looks like a life that simply, restfully, continually, remains in a person rather than a defined position. But all along the way, I am seeing myself to be a person who will attempt various shortcuts to reaching my destination apart from any degree of straining and hurting and backtracking. Yes, I will end up there, ultimately by means beyond my human limits. And hopefully I will take hold of the grace that awaits me in each new rejection of the past. For in that lies the source of a life that lies beyond all contemporary patterns of attempted perfection.
The reality that I am just waking to is that I have paid the price repeatedly for pushing all I am in on one way of "doing it"... doing life itself. Like clockwork, that way of micromanaging the dynamics that I struggle with falls miserably short, it blows up in my face, and the pieces I hold in my hands mirror the shame and embarrassment that have become such common companions in my journey towards fuller life. I want so deeply to break free from all these things, but I am slowly but surely discovering that what exists at the core of my very nature is the demand to find a way to escape pain and frustration and such costly errors of language and motion. I get so frustrated with myself for ever having believed those people that I once trusted and esteemed... and frustrated that I fell for it. As the days and years go by, seemingly at a pace that has slipped through my controlling hands, I am finding that the voices that I willfully choose to embrace are fewer and fewer. You can only be conned so many times before you grow to trust only yourself and a select few, who in all reality you have very little reason to make excuse for, but you seemingly do so anyways.
The beauty of this life (only in the sense that I am choosing to now see it as such) is that even as I write these words, they are most likely coming from my freshest system, which (thankfully) bears a shelf life that is shorter than the ones previous. Yes, once again, I will wake up all over again and reject the whole thing somewhere down the road! Nevertheless, there is life out there to discover... or better yet to happen upon and be caught off guard by. And something says at a life beyond reason that it looks like a life that simply, restfully, continually, remains in a person rather than a defined position. But all along the way, I am seeing myself to be a person who will attempt various shortcuts to reaching my destination apart from any degree of straining and hurting and backtracking. Yes, I will end up there, ultimately by means beyond my human limits. And hopefully I will take hold of the grace that awaits me in each new rejection of the past. For in that lies the source of a life that lies beyond all contemporary patterns of attempted perfection.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
