another heart

If you are a recent visitor and find this image intriguing,
the March 27, April 3, and April 10 archives
have more pictures in a similar style.
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Whatd'ya Mean, "Eats Like a Bird?"

7:00 AM ----------------------- 5:00 PM

Heart Reflected

I was lying in bed reading and when I looked up there was a heart reflected on the ceiling. It wasn't quite as mysterious as I first thought as my wife had left a heart shaped mirror on a table by the window. But, still, it was cool. The blinds gave it a pattern that looked interesting enough that I had to go get my camera. Then, of course, I had to play with it in Photoshop.

Old Friend

Secret Performance

If a guitar is played in the woods and there is no one there to hear, is it a performance?

I love to play the guitar. I never had the money and have never made the time to take lessons, but I’ve been blessed with a modicum of ability enough to have gained monstrous amounts of enjoyment from it. But I’ve only rarely found a niche where anybody else wanted to hear what I had, so most of my playing has been by myself. I’ve struggled with that for many years, but lately have had a good deal of peace about it. Last night at the grocery store, I happened to run into a friend from the school who is coordinating the summer chapels. He asked if I would lead the singing time one day next week. Okay, yeah, if I’m asked to play I won’t turn it down. I needed to work out how to play one of the requested songs so early this morning after getting my wife off to work with two hot eggs in her tummy, I figured I better get out the guitar and get my fingers used to the strings again after they have been lifting heavy boxes for the last month or so. I sat in the bedroom and let my hands get acquainted once again with my dear old friend, Martin D-18. My soon-to-be daughter in law had crashed in the living room after going to a late movie with my son last night. I was playing softly so as not to wake her, but it was so early and she seemed really deep in the ozone so I didn’t think she’d be disturbed. Later, as I was typing my last post, she got up and wandered into the kitchen and told me how much she enjoyed hearing my playing. She said she was lying there, waking up, hoping I wouldn’t stop. Wow. Nobody has ever said that to me before. You just never know what someone will appreciate.

high value commodity: shelving

Househusband

I’m experiencing something new. My dear spouse is working two part-time jobs this summer equaling full-time employment. I am in that wonderful envelope of the academic year when I still get paychecks but have several summer months of freedom. We have been quite mobile during our 25 years of marriage and my wife has born the lion’s share of the burden of packing, unpacking, and getting resettled in each new place. This time it was different. We had more time than usual for the actual moving so in lieu of the usual rental of a big truck, I transported our junk across town in our SUV with a trailer in tow. A few friends dropped in to help along the way but most of it I did alone. And, as it was only reasonable since she was working and I was off, I did most of the unpacking and getting us settled in the apartment. A couple of days ago I hit a major milestone – I got the last box unpacked. Well, there are still a few boxes, but they are out of sight and we aren’t tripping over them. Yesterday I hung mirrors and a key rack on the walls, fixed a couple of broken lamps and a figurine that was a casualty of the move. Some cabinet door handles that were purchased before we moved to our last house five years ago finally got installed yesterday. And several evenings I’ve had dinner on the table when my weary woman came through the door ready to collapse. Day before yesterday I took on a little project with the goal of having it done by the time she came home. I built a shelf unit that goes around and over the toilet in our tiny bathroom, claiming precious utility from the wasted space above the tank. I bought the materials, cut and assembled the parts, got two coats of paint on it and had it in place in time to surprise her. It didn’t turn out as perfect as I would have liked, but, hey, there’s a lot to do around a household and, dang it, I got the sucker done. I’m finding myself puttering in the kitchen, a little obsessive about keeping the sink cleaned out and getting dishes and pans into the dishwasher. It’s amazing how fast a day can go by when you really get domestic. It’s a good lesson for me.

Today I have to see about a car repair and some other manly pursuits. Need some motorcycle tires and to find a printer driver for my daughter’s new windfall, an HP Designjet large format printer that one of her bosses gave her after upgrading to a newer one. The kind of chores I’m more accustomed to. But I hope I can keep some of this mother hen vibe going after I’m back into my busy school year routine. I love making my wife happy and being domestic seems to have the desired effect. Okay, gotta get off this computer and get a load of laundry going.

Osprey

Heroes on the Wing

When I was in college my best buddy was making his student project film about falconry. Another student at our school who lived at home with his family had some kind of license to care for wildlife and would rehabilitate injured birds. He had a little owl for a while. But my buddy got interested in doing his film when this fellow had a red tail hawk and was attempting to teach it to hunt. He had the hood and the big glove and the whole deal. Dave got some great shots of the bird being released. She would fly around the back yard and take off over the trees. And it was very dramatic when she would return, wings spread wide, talons stretched down and open and alight back on the trainer’s arm. I got to wear the glove once and feel the mass and movement of that beautiful creature and those claws gripping my arm through the leather. That may have been when I fell in love with raptors in general and hawks in particular. Somewhere I have a photo of Dave and me with camera and light meter standing with the trainer and his hawk, Tosh, on a rock face high on the side of a mountain. Wish I could find it. The story has an unsatisfying end. Before Dave could finish his filming, the hawk apparently tired of the whole deal and decided not to come back one day. That was the end of "The Essence of Falconry." It would have been a cool film.

(note: It's been eight months since this post and I finally did come across the image and a few others so here they are. I remembered wrong, though. It seems the bird was already gone at this point. The shots made were a vain attempt to finish the film.)

We lived in Florida for a number of years. What a great place for bird lovers that state is. In certain seasons, for months at a time, osprey would eat on a branch in a tree in our backyard every morning and evening. They would catch a fish in a nearby lake, then swoop down over the pond next to our house, usually making a circle or two to check out whether things were quiet around their intended dining spot, then land on this certain horizontal limb that was unusually clear of obstructions. They would spend a half hour or so devouring the entire fish and finally fly off. Once in a while you would get to see one hunting at a lake, demonstrating amazing sight and coordination by shooting down, flaring over the water and snatching a fish from just under the surface as if it were trying to cooperate with the process. I noticed that when the actual snatch is made, the bird doesn't have the benefit of it's keen eyesight. They don't look down and back but do it by timing and feel. Fabulous birds they are. The osprey eats nothing but fish, earning it the nickname of “fish hawk.” Eagles, on the other hand, are opportunists.

We lived in central Florida and between our town and the next one happens to be the densest concentration of bald eagles outside of Alaska. There were far fewer than osprey, but seeing them was not uncommon. They would often soar curiously high, even higher than the buzzards. They would always engender a bit of national pride when they were close enough to see the regal white head. But eagles became a tainted hero to me. It turns out they are not real picky about what they eat. And, perhaps like our politicians in this way, are not always honorable in going about getting what they want.

One afternoon our osprey friend came soaring overhead as usual with his fish dangling from one talon. But he was maneuvering faster and more erratically than usual. There was an eagle chasing him. A second osprey, also with a fish was in the air nearby. The eagle and osprey number one performed a spectacular dogfight over the street and several front yards. They banked and spiraled and dove and flapped for height as if putting on an air show for the neighborhood. They had FAA low altitude aerobatic waivers as the stunting was at times no more than ten feet above the ground. The osprey was getting the worst of it as it had the burden of the fish to deal with. The eagle was trying it’s best to steal supper. Now I know the eagle is perfectly capable of heading over to the lake and getting his own fish. I was thinking that this attempt at thievery was costing far more energy than it would take to just go get his own meal. But the eagle kept at it. Eventually a really close pass unnerved the osprey and it dropped the fish in the grass in front of me. The scoundrel of an eagle ignored this completely and took off after the second osprey and proceeded to dogfight that one until it too dropped it’s fish. Mr. eagle also let that one go to waste and all three left the area empty handed. It was all spectacular to watch and great fun, but it sort of marred my image of the noble eagle.

The osprey and the hawk don’t have the eagle’s reputation and symbolism to live up to. They are sort of secondary in the raptor status hierarchy. That may be why I like them more. Let somebody else deal with the potshots that the leader always attracts. I’ll trade the fancy white head feathers for being left alone to do my thing under the radar any day.

It's good to be at the top of the food chain.

Fearfully and Wonderfully Made

This morning I dropped off some stuff at the Goodwill. As I exited, two hawks came flying by under the sidewalk awning and landed on a display rack in front of the Dollar Store. They were about ten feet away from me. The first one had a rat in his talon and was screeching at the second one which had been hot on his tail. A lady walked out of the store and passed about four feet away without seeing them. I pointed and said "Mam, look!" She tried to ignore me at first, then finally looked and was shocked. We stood there watching these unusual visitors who seemed to have no fear of us or to care one way or the other that they were in highly irregular habitat. Their whole deal was this rat one had that the other wanted. A couple more people happened along and we stood around these regal animals in awe. Somebody said, "Should we be afraid of them?" It was so incongruous for them to be there it was confusing. One doesn't often get a chance to see a bird of prey that close. They are surprisingly big and the way they move seems so alien. Their eyes dart about and are full of fire. The hook beaks hang open when they're up tight and kind of pulse a little bit with each breath. It seems their metabolism is so frenetic that they are living in fast motion even when standing still. The wings are so beautiful, the big talons and beak so powerful. It's fantastic to see details like the leg feathers up close. I was a little confused at first, as they looked like red tails, but they had all these stripes on their tails. Hmmm. Then it hit me that they were behaving like juvenile birds. Looked it up and sure enough, red tail hawks have stripes, or "bands," on their tails until they do this big molt at two years and loose them. So these were probably siblings scuffling over something the way all siblings do. And they hadn't yet quite figured out that they should keep these squabbles away from humans. After they finally took off, they went up on the roof for a while and a third one was up there. What a treat. So sorry I didn't have my camera in the car, but I found a picture for you. I drove away and started thinking about fear again. Young birds often seem to have little fear of people. Somehow they learn it as they get older. When we humans are young we fear all kinds of things we needn't, like strange foods, and don't fear things we should, like hot stoves. When we get older, the list of what we should fear and what we need not fear changes. But I'm thinking that just like when we're kids, we so often we get the lists turned around. In any case, I got up close and personal with critters that stare at you and evoke fear, delight, excitement, and awe at the same time. They can take your breath away with their beauty but it’s obvious they could hurt you if they were so inclined. You want to get closer and to step away at the same time. A reflection of their Creator’s glory that is seldom seen. Wow!

Fear

I tried to get a shot of the whole coffee clutch of birds hanging out at the trendy new feeder and sitting around on the branches. I tried to make a blind for my camera, but every time it made even a focusing sound, most of them would flit away. Part of me wishes they would not fear me and would accept my gracious hospitality without anxiety. So we would just be able to enjoy each other. But another part of me knows that fear of man is what keeps them alive and safe. When a bear or gator looses its fear of man, it often becomes necessary to destroy it. Birds that loose their fear can become pests and despised. Love of the wildlife means we need to make sure they continue to fear us to a significant extent. It hit me that God probably doesn’t really want us to fear him, but he knows we must or face mortal danger. There is a tension and a sorrow in the distance caused by love.

Bon Apetit

Birdy Starbucks

I could sure go for a venti millet with a sprinkle of sunflower on top.

The thing that made us decide to take this particular apartment we are in is the view out the windows. Amazingly, they don’t look out onto a parking lot or at other apartments. All of them, which look out two different directions, have a view of greenspace with grass and trees. It’s quite pleasant for an apartment. Just outside our bedroom window is a small tree that we kind of have a view inside of, almost like a little canopy. And there is a bush nearby. One of the first mornings here there were lots of birds hanging out in this area, at least six or seven species at the same time. This spot is a perfect hang out for birds. It has just the right mixture of cover and openness and plenty of seating available on the various sized branches. It struck me that it is about as appealing to avians as a Starbucks is to humans. We thought it would be a good place to put a feeder, so I got one and a bag of seed to fill it with. Then I watched. No birds for days. Strange. Sometimes the best market research comes up with a dud location. Maybe we should have played safe and put it next to the McDonald’s down the street. Then yesterday I saw a little sparrow sampling the goodies. Word travels fast because today we had lots of customers. On the feeder, on the ground going after the inevitable leftovers, and others waiting around on the branches for a table. Around the corner above the patio are hanging a couple of hummingbird feeders. My daughter says she saw one come by the other day, but I’ve yet to see one here. You just never can tell how the restaurant business is going to go.

Dotterel

Plover

Pintail

Infinity Protected

Bill Bright

Another relational thought.

This was to be a part of the last post, but it got too long. At the end of “Blue Like Jazz,” Miller mentions a story involving Bill Bright. The story tells of him being asked what Jesus meant to him and his response being just weeping, unable to speak. That is the Bill Bright I remember. I had the distinct privilege of being with the man many times while I was with Campus Crusade for Christ. Working with the headquarters-based video department, I videotaped him from time to time in his office or in some far flung corner of the world. A man in love with Jesus like nobody else I have ever met. And this was not an emotional, wild eyed televangelist type fellow. Dr. Bright was a quiet, dignified, quite formal man. He almost always wore a suit and tie. Seeing him in slacks and any kind of pull-over shirt was extremely unusual. He was about as buttoned down as a man can get. He came to faith through a Presbyterian tradition. He knew and was highly respected by presidents and dignitaries and spent time with the highest social strata of countless different countries. But when he started talking about Jesus, he would get misty eyed and go on like a star-struck lover trying to be as poetic as he could but just being overcome by the thought of his beloved.

Bill Bright was a businessman before he started Campus Crusade for Christ. In the early days he supported all the staff with the proceeds of his company. But soon he realized that this would limit the potential growth of the organization so switched to everyone raising their own support, including himself. It has been said that the key to the incredible growth of Campus Crusade to tens of thousands of staff members around the world was this change in financial strategy. I can’t deny that it would not have been possible otherwise, but having been through that system, I have to say that it is badly, if not mortally broken. That is the subject of one or more books, let alone a blog post, so I’ll not go there at the moment. But today it hit me that this wasn’t the secret at all. What made Campus Crusade for Christ grow like kudzu was Bill’s love of Jesus. It was infectious and made everyone around him want to serve the Master with everything they had.

Continuum

One must respond to Donald Miller’s “Blue Like Jazz.” It certainly is a refreshing take on what it means to follow Jesus Christ. Here is a writer who gets away from formula writing which it seems encompasses most of the literature we would classify as “Christian.” The occasional writer who manages to get out of the proverbial box and give us a new take may end up with iconic status or be dismissed as a passing fad. In any case, I and it seems multitudes of others have had a belly full of formulas and party line and long for realness. Miller is nothing else if not real. Like him or not, what you get is his real deal. Except that I deduce that some of the realness actually got edited out for being a bit over-the-top raw. I say that because he used the phrase “what the hell” a couple of times on his web page but that doesn’t appear anywhere in the two books I read. I would bet $100 that this phrase salted the original manuscripts. So, the most real stuff we have available to us probably isn’t as real as reality, but a company has to sell books. Don’t mean to bash the publisher here as they really took a risk publishing this stuff and I applaud them for it. I am going to get to corporate mentality here. It just goes to show that even things we most directly stand against can seep into our modus operandi in subtle ways.

Anyway, Miller’s books are all about relationships and a couple of things that stuck with me after reading him involved people he mentions and so I felt good that maybe I caught some of the relational mindset as that is not my default mode. I do better with dealing with things than people normally, though I value the relational very much and try to be more that way.

Don refers to Ravi Zacharias in passing at one or two points. I don’t remember the exact context. I tried to find the passages this morning but couldn’t. No search feature available, unfortunately. In my dichotomous thinking, the thought of Ravi Zacharias set up a continuum in my mind with mysticism on one end and apologetics on the other. Zacharias is one of the great apologists for the Christian faith of our day. He is a brilliant man whose life is about articulating compelling intellectual, logical reasons for believing that Jesus is who he said he was and that the record we have of the whole deal in the Bible is actually truth. The apologist comes at Christianity from the angle of “is it true or not?” If it is true, then the only logical response is to live in a way compatible with it or be completely intellectually dishonest with one’s self or be insane.

The apologist looks at most of what we call evangelism in our day as presenting the Gospel as an answer to meeting felt needs. Your life is crummy, Jesus is the answer. Truth is somewhat cheapened because it doesn’t matter so much if it is true or not as long as it meets my felt need. Listen to John Travolta or Tom Cruise talk about Scientology and it makes sense that they believe in it because it is meeting their felt needs. Whether or not it is true is not really the point. We present Christ to the world using much the same marketing plan. But the strategy falls apart when you run into the rare person who seems to be happy with his or her life apart from Jesus. Self deceit notwithstanding, some folks profess this condition. If there is no felt need, and we are offering solutions to felt needs, then we have nothing to offer. Truth, on the other hand, is it’s own reward. It doesn’t matter what I need or want, a thing is either true or not on it’s own. The problem is that so many want to just swallow the blue pill. It doesn’t matter what is true as long as I make it through the day feeling okay.

Miller spends a good bit of time dealing with the mystical. He kind of dismisses the art and science of Christian apologetics as ending up in a spitting contest to see who is the smartest. He has a point. I have been around at least one very smart apologist who played that role well. Several times in my work I had occasion to spend time with another man who is on the short list of famous apologists of our time. He is brilliant and I admire him greatly. He is one of my modern day heroes of the faith. But I have to say after being near him, that he just lacked warmness. I think he could use a bit more of the mystical. He expended great energy reaching out to people. I would have to say he is extremely gracious. So much so that I tended to doubt it could possibly be completely genuine. He is a world-class glad-hander, smiling and saying the right words to make people feel they are valued and appreciated. But the few times I talked with him directly, I realized he was not listening. It was amazing and a true privilege to eat a meal at a table with him or hang out, but the man is so full of ideas that the flow out of him is endless. He has to take input somehow as his thoughts are full of observation, but one-on-one it’s like he has a disability. He can’t seem to hear anybody. It was like a friend of mine said of another famous Christian writer he grew up around of whom he said, “it’s like he’s always writing a book in his head.” So, though he is still a hero of mine, he is not a guy I think I could be very good friends with. In fact, though I also spent some time around guys who were supposed to be some of his best friends, I wondered whether he really had any truly close friends. I wondered if he even knew what it was like to have a really close friendship, one that went two ways. And frankly, I felt sorry for him. But I digress.

Miller tells of being compelled to believe in Jesus. It fits in with the concept of predestination pretty well. Bottom line, the reasons for belief he lays out are pretty weak intellectually. There is basically no compelling argument offered. It is all about the mystical. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not disparaging what he has to say. It is good stuff. I’m not going to reiterate a lot here. My point is the continuum I mentioned.

So, on one end we have the mystical aspects of faith and the stuff about Jesus we just can’t quite quantify. There are concepts like the Bible being the “living word of God,” a unique book that has boundless depths of more to offer, peeling away like skins on an onion every time I come back to it. The entirety of God and Jesus and Christianity and the Biblical record is about the supernatural. About reality outside of what we know. Everything about Jesus’ life, our hope for life after death, it’s all about the supernatural. So in that sense, one cannot be a Christian without being a mystic.

I have been in church since I was born. And I have been fairly mobile most of my life. We moved a number of times when I was a kid and a whole bunch of times during my adulthood. And we spent a couple of years doing the support raising thing which ran us around to countless churches, mission conferences, and so on. So I’ve been in lots of churches. Quite a variety of denominations and traditions. It’s ironic how evangelical churches shy away from the mystical. There is plenty of lip service paid to it, but in real life, day to day activity, it is all but denied. It makes sense when you look at some traditions that lift up the mystical with great pomp and circumstance, towering cathedrals and flowing robes, but pitiful emptiness echoing throughout. And then there are the televangelists trying to sell snake oil to everybody. It makes the idea of the mystical an embarrassing absurdity.

Moving along, one would think that the discomfort level with mysticism would push someone toward the other end of my continuum, which would be to embrace logic and apologetics. And some get into it deeply. But, by and large, the average church-goer warming a pew on Sunday morning can offer little “reason for the hope that lies within you,” let alone a grasp for the contents of “Evidence That Demands a Verdict.”

The point of my blithering here is that it seems to me, in a broad sense, that the evangelical church is not even on this continuum. So where is it? My answer is cynical and I welcome comments to make me see things in a more compassionate way. But it seems to me the church has gotten distracted from presenting the braid of mysticism and logic wrapping around and through each other and is chasing supply and demand driven by marketing. The corporatization of the church has brought it down to the level of something that conveniently fits into our lives rather than something that towers above them. The Bible clearly shows us that being a disciple of Jesus is the opposite of convenient. Paul’s idea of us being “of all men most miserable” if not for the hope of existence beyond this life is completely incompatible with the church as corporation.

Well this certainly has gotten long. If a sign of good writing is getting big ideas into a small amount of words, then this is an excellent example of the opposite. If you have born with me this long, I’d certainly appreciate your response.

(note: Much of this thought is thanks to the influence of Dr. J.P. Moreland.)

Hello my wife

To the lurkers: My wife is reading my blog. This post is directly to her. Why don't I just tell her this face to face? Communicating through writing just does something different for us that even being in the same room together does not. I hate being far away from her, but those times we are forced to communicate through writing can be really good. My wife is currently taken by speaking through text messaging on our phones. From a technologically logical standpoint this may seem a bit ridiculous. We have a system that allows for full duplex voice communication and a plan that allows unlimited talk time between us for no extra charge. The text messages, on the other had, much simpler in terms of techno-hoops to jump through, costs a few cents per message and requires much navigating around the little phone keypad to enter the truncated messages. But it works for her, and now that I leave my logic aside and go with the emotional component that, undeniably is there and different, it works for me too. All that to say, you are welcome to read this, but I'm speaking directly to her. If you do, you may get a glimpse of what I am learning about going with what relationally works vs. going with what makes sense to me.

Hello, my wife!
I'm on a Donald Miller binge, as you know. Catching up with all my friends who read "Blue Like Jazz" years ago. I feel like I'm reading most of it for the second time after hearing all the passages you read to me and after all the talk among so many about it's contents. I just read the long soliloquy from the play excerpt in the "Romance" chapter. He talks about the great gravity that draws lovers together then speaks of the great troubling truth that no matter how close you get, you can never get completely there. There is always a place you just can't get to. Always something you can't quite know or be sure of. He goes into the foolishness of thinking we can redeem each other and that only God can completely, purely, and totally satisfyingly love us. But he also spends a lot of the book contemplating the value of relationship and community and how being alone will drive a person crazy and we were made to be with each other. Being with companions of various closeness is what lets us know the difference between reality and getting lost in our own minds. In the play, the lover speaking to his sleeping spouse finally ends up in frustration saying, "This deed is unattainable! We cannot know each other!" I have come to that same frustration with you many times. But then he ends with a familiar resolution. "I will love you, as sure as He has loved me. I will discover what I can discover and though you remain a mystery, save God's own knowledge, what I disclose of you I will keep in the warmest chamber of my heart, the very chamber where God has stowed Himself in me. And I will do this to my death, and to death it may bring me..." "I will stop expecting your love, demanding your love, trading for your love, gaming for your love. I will simply love. I am giving myself to you, and tomorrow I will do it again. I suppose the clock itself will wear thin its time before I am ended at this altar of dying and dying again."

As I've expressed other times, I wish I had said that. It is good to face the fact that you will never fulfill me. You will never satisfy me. God has reserved that place for Himself. But He put us together - gave you to me and me to you. He gave us a big chunk of time, most of our lives, to work out this relationship between us. He gave us to each other for mutual support, care and comfort, and also to learn about ourselves, about what love is, and the many deep truths that the symbolism of our union and our family model for us. Many days we exasperate each other and I wonder why God set us on this course that can so often be frustrating for both of us. But He knows we are slow to get it, at least I am, and he has given us lots of time for the learning. I look back over the years and have to say it is good. Not always fun. Not what I would have chosen. But of incredible, unfathomable value. He is a good father who gives good gifts to us, knowing what is absolutely best for us, making no mistakes. You are the very best gift He has given me. You continue to be a great mystery. For that I am exceedingly happy. I may tire, but I will never get bored with exploring your being. I will never find the end, never get to the bottom. And I'm so glad to have been given a lifetime to try. And that deep, mysterious draw of gravity keeps pulling me in when you come near my orbit. It is a wonder.

Donald Miller

Just finished his book, "Looking for God Knows What." Lots to think about. He crystalizes a lot of things I've been mushily pondering and have been troubled about. This guy needs to be heard. I'm afraid, though, that because of his style, which I thoroughly enjoyed myself, he will be dismissed by many as an iconoclast. His "lifeboat economy" idea is very helpful. I have long eschewed much of that economy, but as I consider, I'm amazed at how much of it I buy into on a daily basis. Now to go back and find a copy of "Blue Like Jazz" to read. This guy is an extremely important writer. I hope he will be taken seriously and not considered a literary fad.

Dichotomy

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who divide people into groups, and those who don't. There are people who make corny jokes, and those who don't appreciate fine humor. Comparison and contrast. Couplets. Pairs. Yin and Yang. I seem to always tend to see everything in twos and go about setting them against each other, making them buddies, or otherwise trying to manipulate or at least figure out the relationships. I've gotta get out of this two-rut. Talk about one-dimensional. Yikes!

Mind and Hands

Many folks who work with their hands need to use their minds more.

Many folks who work with their minds need to use their hands more.

It's been said that as you age and get along in a career, you should get paid more and more for what you know and less and less for what you do. As I get older, it seems what is desired of me more and more is brain work. As I get older, it seems what I want to do more and more is just work with my hands. What kind of person does that make me? Counter productive? Unrealistic? Burned out? Lazy? It's probably just a grass is always greener thing. If I had to work with my hands all day every day, I would probably be pining away about mind numbing boredom and the desire to do something that required more brain power. Oh, to find an equalibrium. But the teeter totter just doesn't want to stay there, does it?

Proportional vs Trigger

Some causes result in proportional effects. A little changes things a little. A lot changes things a lot. A dimmer on low makes the light glow dimly, crank it up and the light shines bright. Some pathogens will make you more sick depending on how much you are exposed to them.

Other causes trigger effects. It matters not if it is a little or a lot, the cause triggers the effect. It's either there or not. A switch is thrown. Power is on or off. A line in the sand is crossed. It wasn't before, now it is. One cell of the virus gets in, and you have the whole deal.

I'm wondering if we, or at least I, treat some causes that should be regarded proportionally as triggers, and other causes that should be regarded triggerly as proportional?

examples:
sin in my life
offenses against me by others
substances I allow into my body
things I do
things I see and hear
attitudes
opinions
beliefs
verbalizing or not verbalizing the above

I have no moral, point, or agenda here. But as I begin to ponder this, I think it has far reaching ramifications to daily living. And the "shoulds" and "should nots" of our moral codes don't always specify which mode is intended. The interpretation differences make for fertile ground for all kinds of disagreement, each side knowing absolutely that they are right with scripture to prove it.

Trust and Hope

There is trust that comes from absolutely knowing.

This kind of trust has no need of hope.

There is trust that comes from confidence.

The knowing is not absolute, so a teaspoon of hope is in order for good measure.

Sometimes trust and hope are operating in equality.

There is trust that is necessary because of having no other choice.

And there is trust that comes from having nothing to lose.

The protagonist is as good as dead, so why not go for it?

It's completely crazy, but at the same time a no-brainer.

You take the leap.

At some point toward the end there, the whole thing morphs from trust into just hope.

The control freak at one end of the spectrum.

The irresponsible, out of control freak at the other end.

What is normal?

What is insanity?

Binocular Vision

As I woke this morning, wondering, as usual, where my glasses were, I got to thinking about depth perception. One lens of my glasses became a casualty of the move when it got scraped on a concrete floor. I need a new prescription anyway, so it's really not a big deal. The blurry scratched spot is right in the middle of my right eye's field of view and seemed to half blind me at first. But in a week or so I have nearly gotten used to it. It's amazing what we can adjust to. Some folks have only one eye and do just fine that way. Some are blind and have a much tougher time of it, but the ones I know move through life with amazing resiliance.

We all know about binocular vision and depth perception. What struck me laying in my waking fog this am was how a mere couple of inches of difference of viewpoint can make such a huge difference. When looking out at a vista of mountain ranges, the couple of inches of separation between my left eye and my right is so tiny as to be statistically non-existent. I have an antique stereoscope - the kind you put the cards in the holder and look through the glasses. One can look at any pair of images on those cards and it is impossible to discern any difference between them.

My point here is that I am myopic. I can only see a situation from my own viewpoint. But someone standing next to me, even with extremely similar values and cultural perspectives, will see the same situation slightly differently. That difference when multiplexed together the way our optic nerves and brains do with the information from our two eyeballs, yields depth of understanding. If I take a situation at what appears to me to be "face value," I will have one, single dimension of understanding of it. "Face value" is a good name, because I see only the surface, one plane, the outside. The thing would look completely different, of course, if I were standing behind it, or far to one side or the other. But a change in perspective of only a couple of inches will yield depth perception and with it insight far beyond what my own view is able to provide. This speaks to the value of relationships and community. It speaks to the value of cross-cultural sensitivity; seeing things from the back side, if you will. But it also speaks greatly to me of the value of comparing and mixing and multiplexing viewpoints with those right next to me. With my wife and closest friends. Our viewpoints may be very similar on some things. But the tiny differences are of tremendous importance to understanding. I want to see my world in rich, 3-D instead of bland flatness. I cannot do that alone.

Cardboard Kingdom

I'm sitting on the living room floor of a two bedroom aparatment surrounded by our earthly belongings in stacks of carboard boxes. It is said that a man's home is his castle. I have quite a fiefdom here. It's somewhat humbling to pack up everything you own and move it from one space to another and realize that most of what you have accumulated in your entire life is stuff many people would probably just throw away. In fact, the process has engendred advice to do just that from more than one family member and other acquaintance. Here we are with another opportunity to be moving along the vector of "greatest in the Kingdom" by being a servant. In this case, serving each other in the immediate famly unit settling into a different living space. The effort to do so has been monstrously huge. And we have done this many times. It's hard to immagine that there are people who have never done this, living their entire lives in one place. Those who have endured war no doubt have the same thoughts about those who have not. Why the goal of following God has led to so much unsettledness and wandering I don't know. But here we go again. Trying to be better stewards of our lives and resources. I hope we get it right this time.