Intense Concentration

Jonathan Edwards once said that the spiritual journey requires an "intense concentration on God's point of view." Such concentration, he said, will "cause an intense narrowing of all our interests on earth, and an immense broadening of our interests in heaven." - Closer Walk, by Jonathan Edwards.

Art

Art is only art when you know it really well.

Apart

"A cynic is just someone with a broken heart. Things tear apart, and the easiest response is to tear something else down."

~ Jon Foreman

To Accept Grace is to Admit Failure

From Max Lucado's "In the Eye of the Storm":

If only, when God smiles and says we are saved, we'd salute him, thank him, and live like those who have just received a gift from the commander in chief.

We seldom do that, though. We prefer to get salvation the old-fashioned way: We earn it. To accept grace is to admit failure, a step we are hesitant to take. We opt to impress God with how good we are rather than confessing how great he is. We dizzy ourselves with doctrine. Burden ourselves with rules. Think that God will smile on our efforts.

He doesn't.

God's smile is not for the healthy hiker who boasts that he made the journey alone. It is, instead, for the crippled leper who begs God for a back on which to ride.

Saturday

Because that is what love does

“Why do you love someone who is such a screw-up?  After all the things I’ve felt in my heart toward you and all the accusations I made, why would you even bother to keep trying to get through to me?”

“Because that is what love does,” answered Papa.  “Remember, Mackenzie, I don’t wonder what you will do or what choices you will make.  I already know.  Let’s say, for example, I am trying to teach you how not to hide inside of lies, hypothetically of course.” she said with a wink.  “And let’s say that I know it will take you forty-seven situations and events before you will actually hear me—that is, before you will hear clearly enough to agree with me and change.  So when you don’t hear me the first time, I’m not frustrated or disappointed, I’m thrilled.  Only forty-six more times to go.  And that first time will be a building block to construct a bridge of healing that one day-that today—you will walk across.”

~ The Shack, by WM. Paul Young

What I See Are People

"It is a picture of my bride, the Church: individuals who together form a spiritual city with a living river flowing through the middle, and on both shores trees growing with fruit that will heal the hurt and sorrows of the nations. And this city is always open, and each gate into it is made of a single pearl..." He opened one eye and looked at Mack. "That would be me!" He saw Mack's question and explained, "Pearls, Mack. The only precious stone made by pain, suffering and--finally--death."

"I get it. You are the way in, but--" Mack paused, searching for the right words. "You're talking about the church as this woman you're in love with; I'm pretty sure I haven't met her." He turned away slightly. "She's not the place I go on Sundays," Mack said more to himself, unsure if that was safe to say out loud.

"Mack, that's because you're only seeing the institution, a man-made system. That's not what I came to build. What I see are people and their live, a living breathing community of all those who love me, not building and programs."

Mack was a bit taken aback to hear Jesus talking about "church" this way, but then again, it didn't really surprise him. It was a relief. "So how do I become part of that church?" he asked. "This woman you seem to be so gaga over."

"It's simple, Mack." It's all about relationships and simply sharing life. What we are doing right now--just doing this--and being open and available to others around us. My church is all about people and life is all about relationships. You can't build it. It's my job and I'm actually pretty good at it."

~ The Shack, WM . Paul Young

Just a little bit

"The darkness hides the true size of fears and lies and regrets," Jesus explained. " The truth is they are more shadow than reality, so they seem bigger in the dark. When the light shines into the places they live inside you, you start to see them for what they are."

"But why do we keep all that crap inside?" Mack asked.

"Because we believe it's safer there. And, sometimes, when you're a kid trying to survive, it really is safer there. Then you grow up on the outside, but on the inside you're still that kid in the dark cave surrounded by monsters, and out of habit you keep adding to your collection. We all collect things we value, you know?"

"So, how does that change, you know, for somebody who's lost in the dark like me?" said Mack.

"Most often, pretty slowly," Jesus answered. "Remember, you can't do it alone. Some folks try with all kinds of coping mechanisms and mental games. But the monsters are still there, just waiting for the chance to come out."

"So what do I do now?"

"What you're already doing, Mack, learning to live loved. It's not an easy concept for humans. You have a hard time sharing anything." He chuckled and continued. "So, yes, what we desire is for you to 're-turn' to us, and then we come and make our home inside you, and then we share. The friendship is not real, not merely imagined. We're meant to experience this life, your life, together, in a dialogue, sharing the journey. You get to share in our wisdom and learn to love with our love, and we get....to hear you grumble and grip and complain, and..." :)

...

Jesus said: "Let me show you. Just keep giving me the little bit you have, and together we'll watch it grow."

~ "The Shack", by WM. Paul Young.

To the Full

Yearly Ritual

I don't have many rituals. One that I do have is going to Butter Baked Goods on Dunbar every year when I renew my car insurance. They no longer make my cookie of choice - the raspberry dream - but there is always something fitting to celebrate yet another year gone past.

Do you know that I love you?

"You cannot produce trust, just as you cannot “do” humility. It either is or is not. Trust is the fruit of a relationship in which you know you are loved. Because you do not know that I love you, you cannot trust me."

~ The Shack, by WM. Paul Young.

The Only Way Out is In

To study God--to really study God or spend time with him--is to study one's self.

I have seen a counsellor for years. I'll often bring up my complaints of God with my counsellor and she never lets the conversation stay there. She always brings it back to me, my life now and my childhood. Through this I've learned countless things, things that--if I look at them closely--reveal my belief or lack thereof in God. The choices I make each day, the panic I feel, the anger I harbour at life and people: all of it points to God.

It is odd--and maddening--for me to hear Christians criticize or look down upon Psychology. How can you criticize the practice of something that is so undeniably connected to who God is? He created us, our minds, our hearts and our emotions. So why would the self-study of us be a bad thing?

Because it's painful.

Finding out what you really believe can be awful. Uncovering who you really are is worse. But, as someone I know always says, "the only way out is in."

Nothing else in my life has come close to revealing more about God than psychology has. Seeing a counsellor, investigating the pain deep down, seeing life-experiences for what they really are--these things point me to God.

Now I'll be honest: they also point me away from Him. But, after running fast and long away and feeling worse and worse, I am forced to run back.

Now this takes much more than me...thinking. It takes others. There are a handful of people in my life that keep me 'in' - fighting for more. They keep me running and ask me questions I couldn't dream of posing on my own. Sure - they make me want to take boxing lessons too, but it's for my own good and ultimately for my world's own good. But just like the only way out, I also have to let them in.

I used to be jealous of people that don't seem to need any deep help. You know who they are. They don't have big questions and have no need for big answers.

But now I know that they are actually missing out.

Where You Are

If you can be unhappy anywhere, can you be happy anywhere?

My Insides Are Awake

Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.

- Carl Jung

Why So Ironic?

I read an article in Relevant Magazine recently on the nature of our generation being uncharacteristically sarcastic and culturally ironic:

"There are reasons for our embrace of irony.  We grew up in a world where earnestness failed us.  Cold Wars were waged very sincerely, ideologies were bandied about with the best of intentions.  Our parents married and divorced in all earnestness, and wide swaths of American homes were devastated by the sort of domestic disharmony that shattered any pretension of white-picket-fence-perfection.  Meanwhile, we grew up in a constant flux of advertising and brand messaging.  The conglomerates cornered the markets, the ad agencies figured us out and MTV sucked our souls dry.  But we also became savvy, and with the Internet and all the wiki-democratization it offered, it became easier to see through the charades of various culture industries and power-wielding hegemonies.  Flaws were exposed, seedy schemes revealed amid the formerly shrouded machinations of "the man."  Nothing was sacred anymore, and all was ridiculous." - by Brett McCracken, The Rise of the Ironic Class, Relevant Magazine, May-June 2009

Waiting 'til it hurts

I've been having problems with my back for the past two years.  Initiated by years of computer work and stress, the pain can often get to the point where I am nauseous and have a headache that simply won't go away.

The funny thing is that I know the solution: do my stretches regularly and exercise to strengthen my core.  

But I wait.  I don't do my stretches or strengthen my core.  I live counting on the fact that I feel good now, so I'll feel good later.  When the pain comes, I then get frustrated and angry, wondering why I am 'chosen' the be the one in so much pain.   

I'd like to say that my back pain is the only case of this controlled ignorant invincibility.  It isn't.

I've realized lately that, in so many things, I change only when it hurts.  I get up in the morning, make my coffee, and then choose to watch TV during breakfast over reading my bible because 'I'm okay today'.  I then work all day, never stopping to pray or rest to hear God because today is a good day and I 'don't need him' or am 'okay on my own.'

Then I break.  It's been building the whole time--pangs of fear, pride, anger or whatever, that show up throughout each hour. And it wasn't painful, so I didn't notice it, never mind talk to God about it.  

I'm realizing that that there are prompts in my day that I ignore: prompts that say "all is not well in this moment."  I need to listen to those prompts because that is God in me saying, "hey, you need me now....not just later."  

It's time to do those stretches now, to strengthen my core when it doesn't hurt, no matter how inconvenient it feels at the time.  Sure, that doesn't mean I can avoid pain altogether.  But it does mean that God is in everything, trying to give me what I need in every instance, even when I ignore him.

I know this is a lesson I'll spend the rest of my life trying to learn.

Branding Alberta

This must've been a fun, but hard, branding project:

I think it is spot on.  The orange colour reminds me of the golden wheat fields and somehow fits Alberta's western flair.  The script is active, yet not too feminine for such a stereotypically masculine province.  And the tagline is so true to the spirit of Albertan life.  In classic "go big or go home" gusto, the provincial government is spending $25 million dollars for the project.  

As a former Calgarian, I just might salute the initiative and go put on my cowboy hat.

Official Royalty

Have you played today?

I'm a bit of a geek when it comes to child psychology.  I find it fascinating.  My love for it all started when I read a book about the impact of no-fault divorce legislation on children.  The book covered the results of a study of a controlled group of kids of divorced parents over the course of 25 years.  It also compared those results with that of children who grew up with unhappy parents that stay together.  

A great new documentary, called "The Lost Adventures of Childhood", covers the role and impact of play - both free and structured - on child development.  It's pretty amazing.  

Free play (without parents, engaged supervisors, rules or structure) allows children to be themselves, take risks, experience uncertainty, get hurt, learn cooperation, be creative and try new things.  Structured play, when the only type of play in a child's life, has been so organized that it is maturing children too early. This includes organized sport and clubs that are so intensive that it emulates the responsibilities of an adult. This creates followers rather than leaders, forces children to be the same or risk losing out, and stunts their ability to succeed later in life.  

I remember playing freely as a kid all the time.  In fact, many of us who did likely have dozens of stories that are retold by their parents today about how we played.  Stories that are funny now because they are uncannily similar to who we are today.  My family's unfinished basement, in fact, became three businesses over the span of two weeks when I was home from school recovering from an appendectomy.  A grocery store, a bank and a law firm.  I made my sister into the stock girl, customer or client and played for hours.  Bossy, enterprising, creative and oddly organized.  Sound familiar?

Check out the documentary if you can. I can't find when it is showing again, but hopefully it will reappear.  And, more importantly, don't get sucked into everything that modern child rearing is today.  Some of its structure is good, of course.  But a lot of it isn't.  When you have kids, let them be....kids.  I feel lucky that my parents did.

Good News

No - no new job yet.  But one of my favorite--and thought no longer--Vancouver events is back.

AND we've got a new radio station coming our way.  

It's great to see some commercial growth happening when so many companies are feeling the pinch...or, if I may, the punch.

Ya gotta love it...

Ya gotta love the social media revolution.  I've been debating the merits of this new medium with friends a lot lately.  I've decided that, when you are a smart and responsible person that watches the potential disadvantages, there really aren't many downfalls to it....especially when you are job hunting.

I've been featured on a acquaintance's blog this past week.  Catherine Ducharme leads Outsidein Communications--a strategic brand and communications company.  Thanks to Peter Reek, I met Catherine for about 10 seconds once and saved her business card.  I've always admired her from afar and watched what projects she led.  She then got my networking, do-you-know-of-any-job-opportunities e-mail, and suddenly she's helping me out and I'm helping her out.  Her "employer branding" blog now uses me as an example of today's job seeker.  While I am that 20-something person for only 37 more days, I hope that I'll always be a smart and savvy professional, and I'm eternally thankful for the nod and the help.  

Ya also gotta love the "shout out" encouraging strangers that pop up every so often.  I've just returned from my late afternoon run.  About 20 feet from leaving my apartment to start, a woman passed me on the sidewalk.  She saw my running attire and shouted, "Good! Yes!"  I laughed out loud because I am usually that "weird" person.  I often don't usually have the guts to shout it out.  I liked it so much that maybe I'll just have the guts next time.

When there is so much not to love right now--the economy, the street violence and those tax forms on your desk--it's sweet to love the simple things. Not as a pep talk in the hopes of drumming up warm fuzzies.  But rather to love and express the little things you really feel lift your spirits.  Ya gotta love it.

The Extremes

I've always been an extreme person.  I'm either blissfully happy or completely depressed.  I either clean my whole apartment or I don't clean it at all.  I love a job or I hate it.  I either love you or would rather not know you at all.  I either relish the fact that I'm an extreme person or deny it completely.  

The funny thing is that I've also always been fascinated by dichotomy's, and often find peace in believing they are true.  If one were to look at this blog or my journals over the years they would see that I use the word dichotomy a lot--usually when I've had a revelation of some kind.  Which makes life damn confusing.  I'm an extremist in a grey world.  

An extremist in the non-fundamental, anti-unibomber, ticked-off-at-Pat Robertson kind of way that is. 

One of my favorite quotes:

"And though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so Truth be in the field, we do injuriously by licensing and prohibiting to misdoubt her strength.  Let her and falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter." (John Milton's "Areopagitica", 1644)

Truth and lies are extremes, but they have to both exist in their extremes in order to have any value, or, ironically, truth to their existence.

My write-up in my university yearbook summed up the dichotomy's of lessons learned:

Wait on God, go with your gut

Be independent, permit vulnerability

Say yes, set boundaries

Take risks, we are all just people

Choose joy, live honestly

Confidence determines opportunity, humility breathes freedom

Rest.

I have come to a few conclusions that will spur on to more conclusions, as conclusions always do.

I've been studying the topic of pain lately.  It's biology, how it interplay's with pleasure and how God interacts with it.  I've concluded that pain is necessary for pleasure, that we can't avoid pain and that I spend most of my time trying to avoid it or fearing I won't be able to.  I'm still 0.1% into this study, but so far I really do believe that pain has to be reality in order for pleasure to be reality.  I can't live in either extreme.  I actually am forced to live with both.  A dichotomy I'm not thankful for yet, but know is true.  

After all:

"What is it, therefore, that goes on within the would, since it takes greater delight in things that it loves are found are found or restored to it than if it had always possessed them?"  (Augustine's Confessions)

Forced Free Will

There have been a few times in my life when I've felt like God was making it impossible for me to be able to do anything, except what he wants me to do.  This is one of those times.

I've been really sick for the past week or so while I've been hunting for jobs, networking and planning and researching what I will do next in my professional career.  First a cold, which was bad, but manageable.  Then came pink eye, or eyes, which was far less manageable.  Then came a solid 12 hours of construction in my building which might as well have been in my own living room.  It was so loud I couldn't hear anything but the drilling.  

These external arguably minor challenges mirrored the frustrations I have been feeling and thinking for far longer than this week--about the world, God and myself.  

I've discovered over the past two years who I really am, not who I think I am or want to be.  But who I really am.  A lot of that has to do with really honest people around me telling me what is--people I respect and can't ignore.  

This process has been hard.  So hard that it has made me question what I thought I believed. Unfortunately, or fortunately, this has resulted in a great deal of anger towards God.  

"Why the heck did he create the world like this?

I'd arrive at unsatisfying answers every time. I'd try to talk to God about these questions, but found myself getting more and more angry, and farther away from him.  Until this week.  

This week I've found that my feelings of need are stronger than my questions.  That my anger, while still there, is more quiet than the loud and unavoidable evidence of anger that is all around me.  

And so I am forced to freely choose to believe.  To believe that God is the answer to my need and to believe that He welcomes my questions.  Sure, I've always known this.  But today I feel it.

Back on the external front, I've also surrendered.  Fine, I'm sick.  So I'll stop and rest.  I am forced to lay down and sleep, read or just stare.    I am forced to stop the hunt and rest, knowing that God has a surprise for me in my next steps, a surprise that will still come whether I send out my resume this week or not.  

Why forced?  While I can choose whatever "solution" I want, I still know that Jesus is the answer - no matter how angry at him I might be.  So, I am forced to freely rest and heal.  I am forced to freely go to God with my angry questions.  

Here is a great quote I just found...

"The symptoms and the illness are not the same thing.  The illness exists long before the symptoms.  Rather than being the illness, the symptoms are the beginning of its cures.  The fact that they are unwanted makes them all the more a phenomenon of grace--a gift of God, a message from the unconscious, if you will, to initiate self-examination and repair." - M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled

Resigned to Naivete

I've never been a mid-way kind of girl.  I dive deep.  I don't know how to do anything any other way.  I buy into the story, drink the kool-aid and then sell it.  Every - single - time.  

And every time I believe that it won't change, that the loyalty, that the commitment and the investment won't ever be lost.  And then it happens, again.

I was recently laid off from my job.  For almost two years I believed in the company's vision, gave almost all my time, and definitely all my passion to that team.  And moments after finding out, suddenly all that blood and sweat is all put into a box that goes into storage, seemingly forgotten.

I remember someone sending me this quote by John Wooden a very long time ago:  "It is better to trust and be disappointed occasionally than to distrust and be miserable all the time." 

So I'll dive deep again.  I'm probably lucky that I don't know how to do it any other way.  I'll believe that something won't ever die.  Just so I can live all of life, trust people and trust that my work always is for something, not nothing.   Sometimes naivete is best.

My One Resolve

"I found a seat under an orange tree and opened one of the poetry books I'd purchased yesterday.  Louise Gluck.  I read the first poem in Italian, then in English, and stopped short at this line: 

Dal centro della mia vita venne una grande fontana...

"From the center of my life, there came a great fountain..."

- Elizabeth Gilbert's "Eat Pray Love".

Italy, here I come.

Huh?

How do you be strong, build relationships and get things done at work all at the same time?

Does building working relationships require a softness and intuition that only certain personalities have?

Do you need to be goal-free in conversations to show you care?