Infobesity

We are so informed that we can’t be bothered. Catherine Collins British Dietetic Association

Brian just sent me a link to Tim Challies blog (here) and I found this great quote within a quote from John Naish's book Enough. We need and I think I need to learn his lesson of when enough is enough. Challies notes that Golden Labrador Retrievers are a dog that has a far bigger eyes than stomach and not a lot of sense. It will eat too much, throw up and then eat again. The dog will repeat this cycle.

... while we are given more information than ever about healthy eating, our consumption of fresh food has fallen. This is partly because we are too busy getting and spending to enjoy the simple pleasures of cooking.

One of the lessons coming at me from counseling and spiritual direction is that I know a lot but am lousy at actually practicing it or applying it in the real world. I know what I need to do but don't do it or use it or applying to wisdom. I consume information in large quantities but the issue is application. I hurt Iris yesterday because I had too much information to give rather than love and support. There is so much information out there but in fact it's more about learning lessons not consuming. It's more about digesting and not merely filling our stomachs. Otherwise we're (or at least I am) no better than a Golden Labrador Retriever.

The Minor Third

I think most people recognize that songs and music in the minor key are sadder than the major key. The first though I've had is how often are contemporary worship songs in a minor key. If we go back to the Victorian hymnbooks I can recall easily the presence of these especially in the Easter passion season leading up to Easter Sunday. Just a quick reflection as I've been sorting CDs to keep, Fauré Requiem the transitions between major and minors is startling and emotive. The transition in the last two movements Libera Me, in a minor key in a lower octave, to In Paradisum, in a major key in a high voice, is positively sublime.

The minor third is the clue to understanding sadness. Meagan Curtis of Tufts University has found the minor third progression is not merely a musical thing but occurs in human speech patterns portraying sadness. (At least in American English). So here I return to my old question so why isn't anyone writing worship songs with minor thirds or minor keys and if I've missed them why aren't we using them? Life has its joys and sadness, light and darkness.

Pay it Forward

You don't pay love back; you pay it forward. Lily Hardy Hammond In the Garden of Delight

Why do we do things for other people? Perhaps we do it for a return or for the feel good factor. Few of us are like philanthropists giving fortunes away like Charles Saatchi of the Advertising company who has just given away a complete art collection and museum to go with it and doesn't want it named after him. So why do we do things for other people. I've just found that Jane Siberry, a Canadian singer who I've known about for a while, has made her complete music catalogue available on the internet [here]. I'm surprised in this world of copyright and intellectual property and possessing stuff to find this generosity. (Note there's a lot of traffic and you'll have to try quite a few times to grab a file before succeeeding.)

On the webpage she says free, enjoy and pay it forward. What is pay it forward? Wikipedia says ""pay it forward" is used to describe the concept of asking that a good turn be repaid by having it done to others instead." In other words pay back is never to the giver but to someone else. Strangely I think I've been living a bit that way. I do stuff for people with the hope they'll learn to help others. There's been a number of interesting spinoffs recorded in Wikipedia including a project from the Oprah Winfry Show, but what they fail to address the the fundamental motivation and the value behind the giving. I believe pay it forward contains a wish to change the world's values.

This is not that different to altruism where someone sacrifices their own life to protect the lives of others. Though Richard Dawkin's would probably want to put a different twist to this especially to die or sacrifice for your kin or family but at the core of the Christian faith is one of sacrifice for strangers and the estranged i.e. those far away. Postmodern philosopher Derrida struggled with the idea of the gift as unconditional, perhaps even grace as unconditional is a problem because it always carrys with it a call to pay it forward. This is so true if we take seriously the parable of forgiven debts.

I said you did not have to pay back a cent. Don't you think you should show pity to someone else, as I did to you? Matt 18:32-33

Sleep calls

I am emotionally tired even exhausted. Love may be patient and kind but it demands and delivers both joy and sadness in the same moment. After far too many years she has given me courage to face the dentist albeit a sedation dentist. This is liable to be expensive but the fear is tangibly real and why I have avoided it for so long.

Love has been long in the coming some 20 years, in fact longer than when I last saw the dentist. I am happy after months of struggling with my emotions and my Christmas cactus has come into bloom to celebrate. But how can I tell those around me? It's been tough and I have leaked some information already but this is the beginning of my public declaration. Someone has truly touched my heart and brought significant changes. I am trying to keep tidy and wash dishes, cook food at home, keep up with my laundry, eat healthily and in fact have lost over 7 pounds in weight!

She has been there in all my recent moments of need. Thanks be to God.

Thanksgiving

Today I give thanks for so many things perhaps the clearing and new aspects rising in my life as I make space in the apartment. Putting in 12 hours and producing a startling meal for 120 people was a crazy journey and yet it went well. I give thanks to God for Natalie and Andrew without whom it would not have happened. For Rosanne and others who pulled everything through and worked so hard.

Probably most of all I I give thanks that I can have a sense of gratitude for life itself. Even though my vertigo has come back and my back doesn't work properly and occasionally I fall over because my balance isn't working quite right, somehow I am glad I can feel good, sometimes feel sad , feel the pain and struggles of others. Recently I learned about the struggles of others who have been deeply affected by the insensitive remarks of siblings and sense of worthlessness. Yet I had cause to learn in a recent Bible study that not are we loved by God but precious for God has put his image in/on us.

I am so tired at the moment I'm going to bed now...

moving in the right direction

I've bought an electric toothbrush. The first time I've owned one but perhaps a little late because of the condition of my teeth. Somehow I've really got to get enough courage to find a dentist and start the long course of treatment. I'm blessed with a benefits plan that covers sedation but still have to find that important movement in myself.

I have to find a dentist. A tiny step but huge for me as I deal with my fear of dentists. The electric toothbrush is too little too late but still a step in the right direction.

There is that Chinese saying that the journey of a thousand li begins with one step. I would add in the right direction.

As I prepare to speak for a church conference, I am pondering issues for Christians around image. How Western culture and many others affected by it are now an image culture. The trouble with image culture is its superficiality. It's all about looking right and sounding right but not about character and substance. Dealing with the core nature of the human person. Perhaps we are less a culture fixated with idols things that replace God and now focused on self and image. (see video series Century of the Self here) Yet perhaps we should be icons either in the classical spiritual sense of windows through which others can see God or in computer terms as points which lead to or represent a program or file in a visible way.

RIP Auntie Olive

After ten and a half weeks in hospital with a slow slow decline, my Auntie Olive has passed away. She looked after me as a small child and told me that she'd toilet trained me and used to also remind me that I ran around her home banging my spoon saying 'Da da da da'. (That was a long time ago!) Also Auntie Olive's family housed my mother with before getting married and she introduced my future godmother. She was an incredibly patient and gentle woman.

It is in loss we only really find what we value. Mentoring and having good role models is something frequently missing in our world. I will not forget Auntie Olive for the model of care she provided for me.

Hope and care

Care is something other than cure. Cure means "change." A doctor, a lawyer, a minister, a social worker-they all want to use their professional skills to bring about changes in people's lives. They get paid for whatever kind of cure they can bring about. But cure, desirable as it may be, can easily become violent, manipulative, and even destructive if it does not grow out of care. Care is being with, crying out with, suffering with, feeling with. Care is compassion. It is claiming the truth that the other person is my brother or sister, human, mortal, vulnerable, like I am. Henri J.M. Nouwen's Bread for the Journey.

Over the last few days I've been watching the Live 8 DVDs and was caught by one moment when Bob Geldof explained the origins of Live Aid in the response to famine and crisis in replaying a 20 year old video. It ended pausing on this starving little girl. He said something like 'Don't let people tell you that you can't make a difference! You can." There appeared on stage that child grown up into a young woman.

We all hope to and I want to leave something behind in this world. I don't have a spouse nor a family but I want to make a difference. So often it isn't by doing anything but simply listening. My heart hurts when hear the pain of someone and I know I can do nothing but listen and pray with them. In that moment there is hope - I pray there is hope.

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune--without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

Emily Dickinson

The elders

The signing of the 15 September agreement raised hopes in Zimbabwe and around the world, but the failure to implement it in good faith and create a workable power sharing government is leading to despair and accelerating the crisis. Regardless of the challenges in implementing the agreement, all parties should now make the welfare of the people their first priority and put an end to the unnecessary suffering of millions. Jimmy Carter - Elders in South Africa

The Elders, former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, former United States President Jimmy Carter and international advocate for women's and children's rights Dr Graça Machel have completed their assessment even though denied entrance to Zimbabwe itself. My own struggles pale into nothingness when I read and follow the reports.

We knew when we planned this trip that the situation in Zimbabwe was serious. What we have learned in the past few days is shocking. It is not just the extent of Zimbabwe's humanitarian crisis, but the speed of deterioration in the past few weeks that is most worrying. The scale, depth and urgency of the situation are underreported. Kofi Annan

It seems to me that if things could take a turn for the worse they have. The basic infrastructure is now collapsing so sanitation and safe water are no longer available and cholera is looming as an epidemic. Perspective is such an important thing for me. A global vision is essential to put often our petty little worries into an appropriate scale. Our backyard should be the world. We don't need anymore more proof that people's greed and hunger for position and power is always bad. I still wonder what happened to government as servant of the people.

There are those who are the elder statemen and women who have in their latter years maintained honour and service such a Annan and Carter and those who just want to hang onto their own little territory like Robert Mugabe.

Why do the wicked live on, growing old and increasing in power? Job 21:7

health and health

It's the curse of modern life. We eat too much and don't take enough exercise to burn off the calories. ... If this trend continues, by 2050 nine out of 10 adults and two thirds of all children will be overweight or obese. ... Obesity is the biggest health challenge we face. British Health secretary Alan Johnson

Over 2.4 million Canadians suffer from diabetes and up to six million more have prediabetes. If not treated one quarter of the six million will have diabetes within three to five years. In the UK it is predicted that by 2050 , 90 percent of adults will be obese. Physical health is linked to spiritual health. Laziness is both a physical and a spiritual one. Spiritual gluttony and physical gluttony are real problems, in fact sin.

In an earlier posting I pointed to John Cassian who mentioned gluttony as a problem for monks but spiritual gluttony is also an issue. St. John of the Cross, in The Dark Night of the Soul tackles spiritual gluttony. He explains that it is the disposition of those who, in prayer and other faith acts are always in search of sweetness, which we might call the emotional high. Spiritual gluttony occurs when people do spiritual or religious things because of some consolation or delight they get from the activity and so the pleasure becomes the end of the action instead of God. The greatest issue comes with novelty and newer is better thinking because the assumption is that the new thing gives more pleasure than the old.

There is also a very real danger of spiritual obesity or spiritual diabetes for this generation. In the obsession of worship and prayer with emotional highs and pleasure and it's associative newer is better we are in danger of being consumed by our own sugaryness. Richard Foster suggests in Freedom of Simplicity rather than going into worship in a place one rather should bring worship into life. "Have you ever tried to live out your day so that you fill each moment with the thought of God? I do not mean you cease normal activity. Oh No! Just the opposite. bring God into each activity, infusing it with divine Light." We need to take both our physical and spiritual lives seriously. Even eating can become a spiritual activity, one of worship.

Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sister, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship. Rom 12:1

People who reflect

The more we become people of action and responsibility in our community, the more we must become people of contemplation. If we do not nurture our deep emotional life in prayer hidden in God, if we do not spend time in silence and if we do not know how to take time from the presence of our brothers and sisters, we risk becoming embittered. It is only to the extent that we nurture our own hearts that we can keep interior freedom. People who are hyperactive, fleeing from their deep selves and their wound, become tyrannical and their exercise of responsibility only creates conflict Jean Vanier, Community and Commitment

L'Arche is a inspiration to us and a challenge. Jean Vanier's vision of community is one of value but conscious that busyness is our worst enemy. Friday I has a good long conversation with a Chinese scholar about love and duty and how they are basically two ways of looking at or two sides of the same thing. We had been talking about schoolmates and where they had ended up and about a family who had given up everything to care for a child with a degenerative muscle disorder instead of sending him off to an institution. I pointed out that frequently humans in every society aren't good at looking after their disadvantaged or disabled even in our own country accessibility is built into building codes. However if no-one had taking the time with Stephen Hawking then theoretical science would be a poorer place. I am not making any comments about his faith or lack of it but he is valued despite disability. Perhaps his disability forced deeper and deeper reflection because he cannot really flee from himself nor distract himself.

We also had cause to look at happiness and discuss its relationship to satisfaction. Life can be disappointing and even cruel. Life circumstances can make us perhaps embarrassed but if we are truly happy then you cannot be ashamed, only embarrassed. We need to nurture our own hearts to find this kind of freedom. This week I've meditated and also contemplated the phrase God's eternal love in 1 Kings 10:9 Strangely I have been singing his love endure for ever for years but the phrase has been partially or completely meaningless until recently when I began to embrace the emotional consequences and the life orientation that flows from that. Perhaps because the Queen of Sheba said this to Solomon is why I pause and wonder. Perhaps because God's love is for all of us.

Because of the LORD's eternal love for Israel, he has made you king, to maintain justice and righteousness. 1 Kings 10:9

Presuppostions and Preunderstandings

Every people group of different cultures brings their preunderstanding to the biblical text they are reading. ... [However unlike preunderstanding,] Presupposition is not something we want to renegotiate as we read the text. It is different from preunderstanding that need to be changed. Joey @ Missions and Theology

I find Joey's reflection helpful as I have been thinking about the dangers of syncretism in spiritual practices. Objectivity is impossible rather everything in done in relationship with God even the thinking, however there seems to me that there are non-negotiables which Joey names as presuppositions. (read more of these in relationship to the biblical text here)

My friend Carlin's call towards transcendence still keeps me thinking. It is possible even within contemporary rock/pop based Christian worship but calls for a careful craft. two Sundays ago I tried to contribute that aspect within the worship set with my cello in a brief 2 bar solo. I think I managed it for a moment to point to the beyond, the wholly other, God. After all isn't our presupposition that the goal of worship is the recognition of God as God? The problem is that our preunderstandings get in the way and drawn into the mechanics of performance and confusing our meeting the divine with emotionalism. Intimacy with God is inevitably within the mysterious vastness of God otherwise we merely domesticate God down to our size.

Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised in the city of our God, in the mountain of his holiness. Beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth, is mount Zion, on the sides of the north, the city of the great King. God is known in her palaces for a refuge. Psalm 48:1-3

Hope and hope

I have had so many thoughts about hope and it's importance. But hope requires faith/trust and therefore there is an integral gap between guarantees and wishes. This gap is vulnerability which brings out our need for faith and hope.

In many conversations this week - especially in the last 3 days - I've realized that hope colours a black and white world. A black and white world only sees things one way, for the optimist everything is rosy and pain and disappointment don't exist or at least are denied. For those for whom nothing good ever seems to happen, it is very difficult to find hope to hold onto. But hope can produce a little colour in a black and white world. Much of my work seems to be helping people find this little glimpse of colour in the black and whiteness. To avoid being a hypocrite, I am forced also to find moments of colour in my own life. If I am to be present to others then I must also work out of the presence of God in my own life. God must be a reality in my own life.

Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling. Phil 2:12

I'm tired

A crazy week with the end of the conference, then into the craziness which is student orientation and trying to sort out my own life and having my goddaughter and family spin through in the middle of it all. I have just chilled ready to be frozen, 8 litres of chili half meat and half vegetarian as the turnout to our little puzzle trail was lower than expected.

The BBC report that French researchers claim that peoples who were part of the Roman Empire are less likely to have the CCR5-delta32 gene variant, which offers some protection against HIV. But this is not necessarily intrinsic to interbreeding rather the Romans could have introduced an unknown disease which people with the CCR5-Delta32 variant were susceptible. Here I'm reminded of something I read that survivors of the global epidemic of the Spanish Flu which decimated populations after World War One still carry dramatic levels of antibodies. Perhaps an earlier version of Spanish Flu struck down those carrying the critic gene removing an important part of the population.

Meeting and talking this week I have been exploring deep human inclinations such as to choose the bad even when we know the good and how the human psyche needs hope and how grace can upset us because it is undeserved. As I think how we dealt with stress in the past reflects how we continue to see stress now, so now many conversations this week still bring me back to basics, I teach what I most need to learn. Stress may empower and give life if I face my God, and stress may drain me where I try and find resources in myself. I need hope and understanding and so I try to give that to the many around me and those I meet. Where do you turn in stress?

Some happier news

Last Friday I wrote about my friend's daughter who was sick with dengue fever which took her father's godson's life. At last some good news that her blood platelet levels are what they should be and she has recovered and is going back to school. A frightening time if you are a parent.

Today I learned about the pain of Alzheimers, not for the person who has it but for the family. We talk about the sufferer as the patient but they have memory loss, cannot do things, lose language and lose all sense of place and time. But family has to live with the memories as they were, the things they did and said and know that the present time is nothing like the past. However even here there can be moments of grace a minute or two of recognition and memory.

Recently I started thinking again of M who died in February taking her own life. It's strange the depression and desolation has changed in my memory. It is almost a year since I met her for the first time on campus and she breezed into life at the college. She was not able to receive or accept the love and care offered by so many and although there is some heartache there is also a feeling of hope and new life, no paralysis but reaching for new life and new hope and new purpose. I remember her well and her memory drives me out there again.

Day 12 and What shape is your spirituality?

Have you listened to others pray? Have you noted how they refer to God? Do you listen to yourself? Often this says a lot about someone's theology of who God is. Very early in theological studies I was exposed to Trinitarian theology, it's implications in ethics, theological anthropology and theology. In fact it impinges in all areas of doctrine. Yet many people have a very narrow vision and often than not, it isn't trinitarian because at least one of the persons is missing.

I bit the bullet yesterday and worked hard to clear a line of boxes in the bedroom. I emptied 4 of them and sorted or disposed of contents. There were phone bills from 2002 onwards and all manner of bits and pieces. I am trying to experience God in the cleaning and tidying but it is a struggle. However the exercise of will is an important lesson and I am trying not the shirk the need to focus and not to run away. (taking a lesson from John Cassian.) However I have been thinking and realizing that I don't see God as a critical task master/parent but more as strengthener or encourager. God is less and less distant and more an accepted norm of every day life.

Candeo recently blogged about failure and its importance. I wonder whether we need both the little failures and the acknowledgment of little successes to remove fear of failure. In Christian classical spirituality these elements are known as desolations and consolations. In the times when we feel failures and feel God is far away we need the memory of God being close and active to carry us through. These days I have had my good moments and bad moments and I still moving forwards slowly. However most of all I need the encouragement of others to keep going, to keep moving forwards. Trinity is essentially a mysterious relationship full of paradoxes which we need to hold together and yet also this relationship is perhaps what it is to be humans together and in the image of God.

God said, "Let us make human beings in our image, in our likeness... Genesis 1:26

Acedia and Day 8 of the great cleanup

OUR sixth combat is with what the Greeks call acedia, which we may term weariness or distress of heart. This is akin to gloominess, ... It also makes the man lazy and sluggish about all manner of work which has to be done within the enclosure of his dormitory. It does not suffer him to stay in his cell, or to take any pains about reading, and he often groans because he can do no good while he stays there, and complains and sighs because he can bear no spiritual fruit so long as he is joined to that society; and he complains that he is cut off from spiritual gain, and is of no use in the place, ... John Cassian Institutes

I have written a little about acedia earlier back in September last year. (here) But as I struggle with trying to keep myself cleaning up so then the reflections on slovenliness continue to follow on. Our physical, emotional and spiritual lives are intrinsically linked.

John Cassian (circa AD 360-435) is probably the most quoted figure on the subject (actually are far as I can see the only figure I've read to date!) It is his recording of the Desert Fathers' sayings and his influence on St Benedict and subsequent monastic traditions that makes him so important. In his Institutes, Book 10, he give an important illustration from his own life concerning acedia.

WHEN I was beginning my stay in the desert, and had said to Abbot Moses, the chief of all the saints, that I had been terribly troubled yesterday by an attack of acedia, and that I could only be freed from it by running at once to Abbot Paul, he said, “You have not freed yourself from it, but rather have given yourself up to it as its slave and subject. For the enemy will henceforth attack you more strongly as a deserter and runaway, since it has seen that you fled at once when overcome in the conflict: unless on a second occasion when you join battle with it you make up your mind not to dispel its attacks and heats for the moment by deserting your cell, or by the inactivity of sleep, but rather learn to triumph over it by endurance and conflict.” Whence it is proved by experience that a fit of acedia should not be evaded by running away from it, but overcome by resisting it.

In Cassian's writing he indicates some key obstacles for the monks in the spiritual life; gluttony, impurity, covetousness, anger, dejection, acedia, vainglory, and pride. I suspect I have begun to gain insight into why people get stuck in the spiritual lives and it's all to be found here. So its back to work will all my might to clear the kitchen.

Jesus replied, No-one who puts his hand to the plough and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God. Luke 9:62

From South of the border

“I think one of the primary ‘things of ourselves’ that American Christians chase after is financial independence. In fact, most of the books on Christian financial principles in print assume that this is the goal of Christian finance. However, countless verses in the New Testament make it clear that this isn't a Biblical value.” Mark went on to discuss the value of mutual dependence in Christ, a well noted but mostly overlooked principle. Rusty Kelley @ Common Grounds citing Mark Upton

Years ago one of my cousins thinking out loud asked how he could ensure his children didn't get handed everything on a plate. He was concerned that he, himself had to struggle to attain success in his life and he wanted to ensure his children would be strong as well, having the will to reach for and achieve. All this reminds me I've been struggling for a few years trying to understand the empirical connection between an individual's relationship with God and their membership within a community/Body of Christ. This comes to focus again today as I worry about:- those who feel they have to go away on missions find God. Those who rely more on the prayers of their friends than on their relationship with God. Those who come to only half a worship service or those for whom attendance in a communal service Sunday's is optional.

This week I read that Christianity is a social religion to be conducted in community. That is not earth shattering as such but still a good reminder. I suspect that extroverts prefer community in services and prayer meetings and introverts prefer solitude in quiet times and meditation - and the lazy neither. I wrote about slovenliness as few days ago and the remedy is of course will-power. When we are called to love God we are called to love with all our (your) strength. της ισχυος σου tes ischuos sou. What is this strength?

I would disagree in part with what I heard today. Rather than fall into a Greek understanding of human person which has heart(spiritual), soul (emotional), mind (rational), and strength (physical) I would like draw on a stronger theological tradition one where the church realized the importance of the will or will-power - this is our source of strength. This last week my 5 year old godson and his older brother learned about will power (Yes, I was teaching!). Resisting the want to switch on the TV and watch a DVD. I invited them to consider will-power and not simply following their wants. Ironically William, the older brother was the one lacking Will-power however my godson Daniel put up a good fight and beat the want. In the Catholic tradition these wants are distinguished as passions and desires. Desires are what God has placed in our hearts. Passions are what arise out of human wants and needs. Passions are not necessarily bad but like an untamed unbridled horse very risky for rider. (Notice passions are very closely allied to feelings.)

What then of human action within passions ?

"When regulated by reason, and subjected to the control of the will, the passions may be considered good and used as means of acquiring and exercising virtue. ... The flesh and its appetites, if allowed, will throw everything into confusion and vitiate our whole nature by sin and its consequences. It is therefore man's duty to control and regulate it by reason and a strong will aided by God's grace."

Thus enjoying a good cooked meal is not bad. But to overeat is bad. I may have a passion for serving God and even go to India but the desire placed in me is to be with God and bring him to those that need to meet him.

How do I know whether my passions are headed in the right direction? Discernment and communal discernment because self-deception is still very effective. Discernment is a struggle and becomes stronger in community but the community itself needs to want to discern rather than make decisions. We need to get our spirituality out in front not behind us.

Two kinds of loneliness

In the spiritual life we have to make a distinction between two kinds of loneliness. In the first loneliness, we are out of touch with God and experience ourselves as anxiously looking for someone or something that can give us a sense of belonging, intimacy, and home. The second loneliness comes from an intimacy with God that is deeper and greater than our feelings and thoughts can capture. We might think of these two kinds of loneliness as two forms of blindness. The first blindness comes from the absence of light, the second from too much light. The first loneliness we must try to outgrow with faith and hope. The second we must be willing to embrace in love. Henri Nouwen Bread for the Journey

Somehow Nouwen has a way of putting deep things succinctly. I wrote about this this back in January (here) A few days ago I was talking to one international, now back in her home country, who has broken up with her boyfriend of many years. Somehow it is difficult to counsel about the challenge to grow in loneliness when that person is in pain at the loss of security of future, locked in the threat of being unmarried. I found myself for a moment in the conversation and can honestly say that the desire to marry and share a life does not go away nor fade away.

... Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith ...Hebrews 12:1c-2a

Nothing spectacularly different

The missional life is not a life removed from the ordinary. The missional life is nothing special, it’s just embodying and giving expression to “gospel”, gospel centered on Jesus’ life lived in all the everyday contexts and circumstances we find yourselves in, and “yes” most especially in the mess and inadequacy of our own lives being lived in those places – the places of doubt, brokenness, failure, sickness, vulnerability, and powerlessness – in other words, in our simply being human! In our simply being alive and being about life as living persons, not as the “living dead”. This is the spiritual life. This is the missional way. This is the Jesus-way. Paul Fromont

As I catch up with some of my Google reader accounts I was caught by the obviousness of it all. I of course agree whole heartedly and yet at times I don't really live that way sufficiently. I try so hard to do the best possible and desire after the best. it's Ok when I'm working by myself but sometimes when I have to work with others that have radically different working patterns it can bring trouble bubbling up. I plan ahead and work hard at preparing comprehensively. Of course there is nothing wrong with rigor especially in things academic, but many people are procrastinators. Or at least my world seems to be full of procrastinators. The distance between being adequately prepared and last minute is vast for me and narrow for many.

This is one of my crosses to bear. I love to play music and when rehearsals are short and there is no time for fun, I struggle. For me something that doesn't carry intention whether spirit led or person led - ultimately it is ugly and not uplifting. This too is a cross to bear because I want to meet God and have fun, to enjoy being in the presence of God.

I worry. When events are planned I want to work on them for hours and months in advance. Others don't want to start thinking until much closer in time. I'm less scared of failure than in the past as grace has abounded and I realize the gifting that has been lavished on me. Also I recognize some of the best talks or messages I have given have been on the backs of envelopes or improvised! But many hours of listening, thinking, and especially just wondering contributed to those moments. This week I set aside something I have been planning actively for 2 months because it was stressing because others were not ready to move on the matter. I'm willing to live with the potential for failure or incompleteness in order to release the control and and worry. It is no longer mine. I will wait for the others to initiate praying that God will shape and guide them. I have decided tolive in the places of doubt, brokenness, failure, sickness, vulnerability, and powerlessness.