two lenses

I have two lenses through which I can view my world.

They're very different.

I can look at life as a
position to be defended

or as an
adventure to be explored.

The first lens feeds a bubbling undercurrent of anxiety.

The second opens me up to new worlds
and recovers my smile.

A thousand voices tell me to choose the first lens, because the world is a hard place and it will steal what you've been given--the millisecond you're not vigilant.

One Voice tells me to toss that worthless, blurred-up lens of anxious grasping, and start the adventure.

As a person of faith, I must believe I'm not locked in by DNA or past history or the dire warnings of the world.

So... I can choose which lens I look through.

Which will it be today?

the twenty minute window

A word with power is a word that comes from silence. 

So say the Egyptian Desert Fathers of the third century A.D. 

So says one of my old spiritual mentors, the late Henri J. M. Nouwen.

So says the life and speech of Mama Maggie of Cairo, one of my new spiritual mentors.

Our world is wordy, says Nouwen, and we all know that. A conflicting, chaotic rush of verbage. Often we are word-saturated and we tune it all out.  Often it won't let us ignore it.

Where is silence to be found? 

For me it’s a window of about twenty minutes in the early dawn.  Before the dog rushes in, tail flying, near missing my coffee.  Before news and music and blogs and vehicle engine noise rush into my world. 

For those early twenty minutes, I am relatively still.  Sometimes, as Mama Maggie prescribed, I silence my thoughts; listen to my heartbeat.  Then I listen to my spirit.

Then...I silence my own spirit, and try to listen to God’s Spirit.  It’s hard to sort out what exactly is happening in those moments—what are brain synapses firing, what is sleepy REM half-dreaming, what is  true listening, and whether I’m listening to myself, or to God.

But I believe that

in the heavenlies

at the recesses of the dawn

God, always attentive

is sorting that out for me,

or in spite of me.

I do know I get blips, impressions.  I probably receive them throughout the day, carefully customized for me from the Creator.  Spoken in love to me. 

Do I hear them?  Sometimes. But the highest probability of my hearing them is in that sacred early morning twenty minute window--

when I’m still and listening

when the car engines are not humming

when the school buses haven’t arrived

when the sunrise is still a distance away

when silence

calls.

Is there a place, 

a time in your day or evening, 

in your world, 

to listen 

in silence 

to the Great Creator?

sing out loud

Do what you love to do.... a lot.


This is what I sense from You, God, this morning.  


Because You made me to gravitate toward certain lifegiving arts, recreations and adventures-- why would I not engage in what you pull me toward with such joy and vigor?


I'm sitting in a Caribou café, and at the checkout, on a little card, I saw the phrase, Sing out loud.  After I forced myself not to think of it as a marketing slogan, I saw something real and deep in it.


Sing out loud... like... for the sheer joy of it.


Singing (when you're not a professional singer, and if you have no aspiration to be one, and/or it's not all about impressing your friends or wanting to be a rock star) is a sign of inner well being, of a basic happiness.


Remember the old show song from the musical Oklahoma?  Oh what a beautiful morning... sang Curly, the leading man.   He was just grooving, enjoying the cornfields, and the haze on the meadow, and he opened up those vocal cords and let it fly.  The old baritone sang it out and it rang through the cornfields, or...OK... the sound stage.


Why would we not sing out loud for the joy of it, as a gratitude?


Maybe because we're not that happy. Or we're scared, or stressed.  Or we just don't have time to be that free and relaxed in spirit.


Singing, or writing, or playing volleyball, or biking, or board games, or hiking, or playing banjo...exulting in what we can do since we have the ability and health to do it--for the sheer joy of it, brings health to our bones and joy to You, God, who made us, as You take pleasure in our joy, like we take pleasure and delight in the joy in the posture and play of our children or our pets when they are clearly happy and at ease with the world and comfortable in their skin.


But when these pastimes, these natural expressions, become a performance, they can become something less real than when they were done for their own sake, and out of pure gratitude.  And then it becomes about us, and what people think of us, and it's just one more stress-producer.  Defeats the whole purpose.  


Becomes a little idolatry.


It's too easy in this world to go sad;  too easy for healthy people with a good life, to go dark. I'm sure that breaks Your heart.


So... reminder for me for today--
When I can, why would I not breathe and enjoy and make Your heart warm,  and sing out loud-- for You, just for the sake of the ability to do so, for the cornstalks, for the haze on the meadow, for having basic health, and because I'm blessed with people who I love and who love me?

Cain and me

Now Abel kept flocks, and Cain worked the soil. 3 In the course of time Cain brought some of the fruits of the soil as an offering to the lord. 4 And Abel also brought an offering—fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock. The lord looked with favor on Abel and his offering, 5 but on Cain and his offering he did not look with favor. So Cain was very angry, and his face was downcast.

6 Then the lord said to Cain, "Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? 7 If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it."    Genesis 4:2-6

Lord of all perfection of design, wild art and heart-stopping beauty, some offerings You accept and look on with favor, and some You don't.  If we were to get angry at the lack of delight and support from You upon our offering, maybe there is something mucking it up, either in the offering itself, or in the spirit in which it’s given, thus tainting the gift.


Maybe it’s something lurking in our lives, our attitude, our relationships.  Maybe it’s greed, or selfishness. Maybe it’s a spirit of self-elevation, pride in our stratospheric position, scrapping competition for your favor, ego gone wild.

Sin is crouching at our door, like a wildcat, says the Lord.


Licking its chops,
sharpening its eye,
instinctively knowing our abilities and our vulnerabilities,
wanting to have us,
and eat us alive.

Like Obiwan Kenobi, or Mr. Miagi, You spoke to Cain:

It desires to have you, young Jedi,

but you must master it.

Cain had enough anger and jealousy in him to kill. Much like Joseph’s brothers years later.  Enough envy to murder.  God, You saw that and favored the other, the one who was pure.  You did not support envy. 

So the question hangs out there for artists, or leaders or influencers:


Is inflammable ego, or smoldering envy, crouching at the door of our inner house, of our bodies, our spirits?

Somehow we need to learn to show up in our world stripped of the toxins, as servants only.


Open handed inner poverty.


The goal is to be able to say in truth:


Nothing in my hand I bring except a desire to help and to serve.  If I be exalted, God keep my soul pure of pride.  If I be abased, I serve at the pleasure of my Lord, whether in the highest elevation or the lowest abyss.

God, giver of my joy, enabler of the work of my hands, is there anything within me that might taint my gift, my sacrifice to You?  What might make it unacceptable and not at all delightful to You--You whom I so want to please?