Transitions

This week I am starring-down a transition in life that I am suppose to be ready for.  I've seen it coming.  I've been told about it.  I'm even paying for it!  But I hate it.  My Morgan is going off to college.  Not just 'off ' but way-the-flipping off... 12 hours.  I know... I know... it is suppose to happen... its good for her... and I have been told that soon I may even enjoy it.  But my heart is not comforted by pragmatism.  I miss my little buddy.  I started missing her when she started wearing head-phones,  I grew to miss her when she started dating boys... but now my tears are lined-up waiting for orders to flood my face.

Transitions are a part of life.  It's only in the discovery and embracing of the future that you don't get your heart slammed in the closing door of the past.  The past, good or bad, can only be resolved by present and future moments.  Becoming retro-focused can only bring sorrow and regret.  Memories are just that - memories.  They are the sweet remembrances of the things that once defined your life.  Memories are not the constructs of the future.  Being caught living within them will remove all sure-footing.  Times change, people change... little girls grow up.  Wobbling toddlers become graceful women.  All I have learned is - weather the transition, cherish the past, live the moment, embrace the future.  I have learned that my name is not Morgan, it is Paul.  I must live Paul's life and enjoy watching Morgan living hers.

Beyond You

As life continues to move forward - children leaving home, athletic prowess diminishing, time passing - I have come to discover that the greatest moments are those spent on others.  There is something 'eternity like' in bringing kindness and joy to another person.  And not just another person, but a person that brings you no benefit in return - no payback.  Kindness for pure kindness - no 'thanks', no gratuitous favors in return, no self promotion.  I feel delight in the reception of a gift but I feel fulfillment in the giving of one.  

My speculation of why I feel this way is two fold - point of observation,  nature of creation.  My point of observation has changed over the years.  I have filled my belly of youth with every self promoting pleasure I could ever experience.  Like Solomon, I refused myself nothing.  But now, my heart does not look back to the 'good ole days'.  I look back and miss the moments that could have been used to impact someone's' life.  The 'pleasure quotient' has lost its appeal to me.  Meaning with substance drives my mind today.  Older age has not just stripped my ability for pleasure, it has shown it for what it really is.  Meaning and depth of character and impactful living have replace self-fulfillment.

The second cause for this sense of delight in giving over receiving is our nature by creation.  Since we are created in the image of God, then it stands to reason that some of the image must at times present itself as an echo within us.  I know that that image is marred and eroded but there are times when it speaks to us.  This image of the Self-Sufficient God, Who gives and receives nothing back in want, speaks to us.  We feel the delight of God-Giving.  It is when we give that we resonate with the notes of His Image within us.  In the delight of giving, it is one of the only moments a human being can securely and completely say, "This is what God feels like".

As I begin to understand life 'Beyond Me' I realize that giving in its purest selfless form can only lead to one place - the giving of ones' life.  Jesus took this beyond self.  For He did not give His life for those who wanted it given.  This was not a fireman running into a burning saving a child and returning the child to tearfully grateful parents.  No this is a man that allowed Himself to be bound and throw into the fire by an arsonist crowd - a crowd that took pleasure in the consuming of others yet being unaware they were being saved from the flames that would consume them.  I don't know if I am ready for that kind of giving.  But does anyone ever think they are?

Retiring and wasting away is unacceptable.  Giving is something old age or poverty or success or failure can not stop.  The greatest potential of human life is always possible.

The Timeless songs of James Taylor

Growing up I spent endless hours listening to the sultry broken-hearted songs of James Taylor. I almost knew them all. The neat thing was that he sang about life on Cape Cod and in the Carolinas. We seemed to travel familiar paths. I always wondered how he felt about God. He seemed so contemplative that it must have been a subject of at least one of his songs. Today I found that song - Up From Your Life. It broke my heart.

So much for your moment of prayer, God's not at home there is no there, there.
Lost in the stars, that's what you are, left here on your own.

You can only hope to live on this earth, this here is it, for all it's worth.
Nothing else awaits you, no second birth, no starry crown.

For an unbeliever like you, there's not much they can do that would turn you away.
Though I hate to see you surrender, you need to surrender, we must find you a way to
Look up from your life, up from your life, look on up from your life, look up from your life.

All these years I have gotten lost between the 6 strings of his melody and totally missed his philosophy. This song was sung with all the 'country road' easy but defined a more perilous path. It is one thing to have doubts about existence - but to turn it into a song and then to have that song addressed to the unsuspecting 'easy listener' confounds me. It regrettably reminded me that all things move us in one of two directions - toward God or away from God... even on a country road.

An Imperfect Perception of Perfection

Today is the morning after watching my New England Patriots lose to the NY Giants. They not only lost the Super Bowl but they failed in their quest for perfection. It seems to me that nature itself abhors perfection. Whether found in humanity or the nature of the universe, perfection may be mutated towards but remains ever elusive. The amazing thing is that perfection is not something found in creation but seems to be the aspiration of all creation to achieve. Maybe there is something of perfection that is imprinted within us as a remnant of the image of God. We feel the compulsion to be perfect. Yet, the more we strive for it the more we are left feeling like Tom Brady and the Patriots the morning after. There is something calming to know that we are perfectly loved in this imperfect state of existing. Our hearts will never know grace and mercy greater then when we are loved so completely by God while living in the shadows of our own weaknesses. I'm weary from just watching the football equivalent of perfection. Our hearts can use a rest too. The only perfect place is the love of God.

Faith is not the absence of doubt.

I have found that 3 components operate in the spiritual journey - reason, faith, and doubt. If faith and reason make-up the two blades of a pair of scissors, then doubt is the fulcrum that they pivot on. I have found doubt something to be honest about. Faith is not the ignorance or denying of doubt but the reasonable response to it. I admit my doubts. I do not allow my doubts to remain subterraneanial in my heart. In the open doubt produces sound, underground doubt produces instability. Doubt is part of God's economy of faith. Others refuse and chide its presence, God uses it to cut, to engage faith and reason.