Fear the final frontier

My life has been a rocket-ship of God moments. The phrase:  "somewhere between terror and exhilaration" seem to describe it best so far.  I shrink away from attempting to tell people about the emotions and experiences, because it is too much to tell and too hard to believe. 

Yesterday while hurtling toward heaven; I was at a meeting where a prophesy over a dying boy was fulfilled through the stumbling of three independent people. While at this meeting we heard and saw the power of God and we saw how He had used our attempts to follow Him.  I caught a glimpse of just how enormous the project is and how small we are in the scheme of things. One of my more pragmatic friends said the following of the meeting:  "That was the first time I understood the fear that you guys talk about." 

I am finding that in between Terror and Exhilaration is faith.

In the Bible there is a story about a mustard seed.  God says if you have faith as small as a mustard seed you can move mountains. We are seeing mountains move all on their own. We are watching the living Creator God reveal Himself to and through His people. What an amazing time to be alive and in His service!

These ideas and events are way too big for any one of us. Even if there were tens of thousands of people involved we could not do what He is doing. The fear/terror comes from recognizing that we are not in control. The exhilaration comes from the realization that God is right here. The only power we have is over our ability to say, "Yes Lord".  Then that power is fulfilled as we put our weight behind the "Yes" and move.  It may be easier to move a mountain, than to move our hearts.  

Blind in Besthaida

I have been thinking about vision and focus for most of my life. I have over 20 years in optics and know the functions of light and lens. For the past 11 years I have been helping people through Touched Twice United. It is a movement based on how Jesus helped the blind man from Bethsaida in Mark 8. 

Here some people believe that Jesus has the power to heal. Heal blind eyes and broken lives. 

Some people think that Jesus has the power to fix the unfixable.  Some people believe. 

As I sit here today it seems as if the majority of people believe that the government has that power. I feel as we are no longer slipping away, but we are running. 

I once was blind. I was unable to see as my lens for viewing the world was just that, mine.  I was singularly concerned about me. I would see people bent and distorted just as I was. I would project my bent everywhere I looked and then was affirmed based on my blindness. I found myself helpless and hopeless. I was facing the loss of my father, the loss of a marriage and the loss of my perception of control. I was lost in my blindness and desperate for help.

I found myself powerless to change the things that were broken. All the world views I had found were equally without power. I discovered that there was a way of looking at the world that changed my hopelessness and gave me access to more power than I could hope for or imagine. I once was blind and now I see...

Instead of changing your location, exchange lens through witch you see. Instead of the opaque choose the translucent. Instead of dark shields choose full spectrum. Open your eyes to the projection that is coming from with in. 

Ultimately our illusion is that we have control of anything other than ourselves. We can influence the world. We can modify behaviors, but we need to be transformed from the inside out. When we see that we are powerless to control things outside of ourselves, then we are free to live the lives we dream of. When we are willing to surrender our perspectives, we can gain pure clarity. 

Throughout the struggle.

Why is it that no matter how hard I try, I never seem to be able to stop hurting the people that I say I love the most? I can struggle to avoid the big mistakes only to wallow into some lesser version. Why? What is the point? If I am constantly going to opt for mistakes, why try at all? 

I yell at my kids, get huffy with my wife, am rude to a story clerk or just kick the dog. Doing all of these things would seem to point to an unresolved issue somewhere. Might be my parents dumped me on my head, could be that I was held too much or not enough. My father was Polish and as everyone knows the Polish people are bland and helpless... (Just a joke) 

I see a larger than me and my family struggle that continues to rage on. I see people are struggling to become. Struggling to become more loving, more giving, more caring and more forgiving. Yet these same people stumble along with me. Is this evidence of birds of a feather? Are there groups of people who are able to be free from these types of behaviors and never make these kinds of mistakes?  

Is it the struggle that unites us? What if the divide is simply those of us who refuse to believe it has to be this way or that we are doomed to these tendencies verses those who are resined to remain the way they are? If that is true than help me to keep on struggling. 

I think Dylan Thomas said it better.

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night. 

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,

Because their words had forked no lightning they

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright

Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight

And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight

Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,

Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

The Camaraderie of Healing

In a New Your Times story,

(http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/17/health/17case.html)

Caitlin Kelly writes about her experience with physical therapy to recover from injury. With PT the patient is expected to suffer through the recovery process in a room with other people. She also recognized that no one is immune from this experience. People of all ages, all walks of life can be found here. Suffering the humiliation of the struggle to heal. 

Ms Kelly also sees that " healing takes work and it takes time."

Camaraderie is a byproduct in a place where people suffer and reveal their true weaknesses in the effort of attempting to get well. When you see the person who needs help to pull up their pants the raw human condition can unite and inspire us. After a severe injury, people you struggle with care and cheer when you are able to finally sit up without help. Not that its without effort. It is the exposed and common struggle that I believe is powerful.

At Fellowship I believe we see a similar community. Here people drop the facade and reveal their spiritual and emotional struggles. The effort to forgive, or love or give is as real as the struggle to sit up. People in process working things out in community. Trusting, healing, failing and struggling to do it all over again. 

Without ST, Spiritual Therapy the healing will be without restoration.  It is more likely that healing will come with a reduction of the person without the effort to regain freedom from the injury. We become people with a limp, pretending that we are whole and healed.  It reminds me of the Monte Python movie, The Holy Grail. There is a scene where king Arthur has a sword fight with the Black Knight. Arthur continues to cut off the Black Knights arms and legs off while the knight pretends, "Its only a flesh wound!" We have all been wounded and are in need of ST. Some wounds are just more obvious then others. 

I need you in order to see where I am still limping or sometimes hemorrhaging. In a community of authenticity we have the power to heal more fully. Join me in this effort of becoming well. I am struggling to reveal where I am in need of your help. In my heart I know I need to ask you for help. Together we strive. Together we struggle. Together we cheer, and weep and learn and heal. With all my heart I believe that we are truly better together.

Trust as the ultimate form of love?

Andrea asked me last night what I liked the most about being married. This had every feeling of being a trap. Of course I thought a bit before I blurted out, "The Sex!". Then instead I said it was a great question, squirming as I wanted to appear romantic and spiritual. 

The answers all seemed to obvious. Sex, sharing life, kids... As I thought more on the question over my New Orleans pasta, (Duncan Creek Wine Bar & Grill in Chippewa). The thing I appreciate the most about being married is the trust. The trust is what allows for great sex and physical intimacy. Its trust that allows for a physical union where one plus one equals in our case five or nine.  Its trust that fosters the wanting to share the best and worst parts of who we are. 

My question is; is this the kind of love God has for us? Is free will and the entrusting of that gift, (what ever form you believe in), the ultimate form of divine love?  If so what have you done with this love and how do you reflect this to the ones you love?

Emotions verses Circumstances

I get to speak at least once a week to a small audience.  There are times when I hear the response to the stories and the message I am looking to convey. There is a murmur, a sigh, or even more. Then there are those other times when all I hear are crickets. There is a dull muffled sound of a damp towel falling on a pillow. 

I am going to attempt to speak with more emotion and less story. What I mean by this is to share the feelings of inadequacy, hopelessness and failure that accompany that sound. Not everyone knows the feeling of speaking and not being heard. We all know the feelings of failure and disappointment. What if by sharing our feelings people could understand our stories? What if merely allowing ourselves to be exposed are we able to be understood? Is our fear simply walling us off from the people we so desperately want to listen?

Is this going to be the sound of the towel, or am I going to hear something new? What is the sound of being heard? Is it the same for me as it would be for you? Tell me of the feeling when your heart broke, tell me of your shrinking feeling when ever you see her now. Tell me of the terror you experience when you think, they know. If you can not, then I will attempt to try to tell you. I am afraid. 

I refuse to be defined by what I am afraid of. My hearts desire is that I would be identified by what I wanted to believe was possible. 

End times?

I just finished reading the book, Hurtling Toward Oblivion. I am not an end times kind of guy. The idea that we should button up the joint and hold up in the basement has never appealed to me. The events that are happening have had me rethinking my position.

I want to be living life. Not merely existing. I want to pour myself out on the things that matter most to me. People 'should' be the first. What I am discovering is it may be people, just not the people that I say matter.

I invest time into people who want to get better or what to question if they can. I will listen for hours, days and even weeks and months to peoples struggles. People I do not know and who for the most part may not want to know me. What about my own wife and children? Why is it so hard for me to give them anywhere near the same amounts of time?

If things are wrapping up here. How do I want to spend my time? Who do I have a relationships with that needs me and is interested in me?

What if the end of the age is not here? Then what? Will that lesson the feelings of sadness and discord I have between what I say and what I do?

Either way I believe that great and amazing things are happening. If Jesus chooses to come back today or if he simply awakens His people, I want to be investing the time I have with the people who I love. I want to be able to love well and still be the change I wish to see.