Look Beyond

The Unthinkable

Well, it happened.  I promise you, I've spent a lot of time thinking about ways to prevent it from happening.  But I could only come up with one possible scenario, and that one was even more unthinkable than the event I've been wanting to prevent.  It's one thing to be taken surprise by something that quietly approaches and overtakes you without warning.  One can understand why an event like that is difficult to stop.  But that's not the case with what happened to me today.  I knew it was coming.  I've known for quite some time.  Years.  Decades.  And with all of this advance warning.  Still, I remained helpless.  It was around midnight last night that I finally surrendered to what must be.  I stopped reading.  I touched the lamp on my nightstand to dismiss its light.  I let out a sigh of resignation as I pulled the covers up around me.  And I allowed myself to drift into the final hours of sleep before the dawning of the unthinkable.

And now, nine hours later, I am 40.  Yesterday I was 39.

This birthday has been accompanied by flashbacks.  I've been listening to a lot of 80's music the past few weeks.  I've had memories from high school awaken that I hadn't before entertained.  I've had vivid flashbacks of scenes from the past eighteen years of marriage.  I actually woke up one morning recently and before opening my eyes and with bizarre clarity felt like I was in my bedroom in Jackson, Tennessee in 1997.  I think the song that came on with the clock radio sparked the flashback.

Every time Lynn has asked me, these past few weeks, what I wanted for my birthday, I've replied by asking her for a "Wayback Machine."

Well, she gave me my present yesterday.  It wasn't a "Wayback Machine."  Instead, it was a book that I have been wanting for quite some time called, Dead Heat, by Joel Rosenberg.  It's a book about the future.  She also gave me a movie I've been wanting.  The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, a classic about four children who step into another world and discover their true destiny and take their rightful place in in the heroic roles meant just for them.

I think her gifts are important ones for me.  I could spend a whole lot of time thinking about the past, reminiscing, fantasizing about going back, and regretting the bad choices.  What's done is done.  I can't do anything about it.  However, what will be, will be.  And it is in the realm of what will be in which I still have the ability to decide well, create beautifully, act with kindness, and discover who I am meant to be.

And the crafting of that future begins with today.  I sit here, on the back porch, eating cream-of-wheat with my wife, surrounded by the audio-visual symphony of creation, at the crossroads of yesterday and tomorrow.  Later today we'll begin the next forty by spending time with our friends over dinner and at the movies.

It's a good day.

Making Peace With Your Past

I don't know if they still produce the segment, as I have stopped watching the CBS news in favor of ABC.  But one of the segments I most enjoyed was, "Everybody Has a Story."  The host of the segment would throw a dart at a map of the U.S., travel to the town struck by the dart, randomly choose a name out of the phone book, meet that person to learn their story, and then tell it during the broadcast.

I have a story.  So do you. My story is about 40 years long.  Yours may only be ten.  Or it may be 80.  As long as we're both breathing, both stories continue to unfold.  And like any well-written novel, the future chapters will unfold out of and be built upon the ones that have already been written.   That's all well and good when the chapters already written are good, and pleasant, and tell a happy story destined for a happy ending.  But for most of us, that story isn't reality.  All of us have at least one chapter that is devastating, painful, and one that we wish had never been written.  Most of us probably have more than just one. Just as the future chapters unfold out of the good and pleasant ones, they also will unfold out of the painful ones.  And the content of those future chapters will depend a great deal upon what you do with the unpleasant ones.

Some of us will allow the unpleasant chapters to tower above and cast their shadow over the the pleasant ones.  And we'll allow that subplot to become the main plot of our life story with every future chapter being sprinkled with the residue of pain, anger, and bitterness.  But then there are some who will take the time and do the work to make peace with their past, and end up with a much better ending.

To make peace with your past requires that you first group the painful events of yesterday into two categories.  There are those events which you are responsible for bringing about through bad choices born out of a lack of wisdom, judgment, and/or character.  And there are those events which befell you through no action of your own.  These events happened to you either through the bad choices of others, or the simple reality of a world that is broken on every possible level.

You can probably point with ease to the pain brought about by your own bad choices.  When you finish reading this, take some time to reflect on those bad choices and the consequences they birthed into your life.  Write them down on a piece of paper.  Then, take a second sheet of paper and write a letter of apology to yourself.  Pour your heart into it just as you would if you were writing to another person whom you had terribly injured.  The rest is up to you.  You can choose to forgive.  Or you can hold on to your self-anger.  If you choose to forgive, take the list of offenses and burn it.  And then put the apology letter away someplace.  Any time that you begin to feel self-hatred re-emerging out of the memories of the past, retrieve the letter, read it, and remember that you had chosen to forgive.

What about the pain brought about through the actions of others or the random assaults from a broken world?  I want to encourage you to view them as the necessary, scattered threads of a beautiful tapestry.  They were horrible and devastating.  But they are not the sum total of your life.  They are just a few of the many threads that make up your life.  And those few threads have the power to teach you, to strengthen you, and to build into your soul both the wisdom and the character to not only deal with your own pain in a healthy way, but to help others through their pain as well.  To return to our novel analogy, the few lines of pain throughout the chapters of your life - as devastating as they may be - can give way to a beautiful ending of redemption for yourself and for the other characters in your story.

Lonely Looking Sky

Lonely looking sky, lonely sky
Lonely looking sky
And bein' lonely
Makes you wonder why
Makes you wonder why
Lonely looking sky
Lonely looking sky
Lonely looking sky

Lonely looking night, lonely night,
Lonely looking night
And bein' lonely
Never made it right
Never made it right
Lonely looking night
Lonely looking night
Lonely looking night

Sleep, we sleep
For we may dream
While we may
Dream we dream
For we may wake
One more day, one more day

Glory looking day
Glory day, Glory looking day
And all it's glory
Told a simple way
Behold it if you may
Glory looking day
Glory looking day
On lonely looking sky

Prayer and Spiritual Wellness

I suppose people in every religion pray.  If there is a deity in whom you've decided to place your belief, it would make sense that communication with that deity would be an important component of your relationship with him/her/it.

I can only speak about prayer as someone who believes that Jesus Christ is the deity and as someone who has placed supreme value on being in relationship with him and reflecting his nature to the world around me.  That's a long way of saying that my perspective on prayer is "Christian," however I try to avoid calling myself a "Christian" because that word comes with so much baggage that in no way reflects the Christ whom we worship.

We heard a sermon recently on the power of prayer that left us feeling frustrated and elicited a robust conversation among some in our small group.   Though I'm not so sure that this is what the preacher meant to say, it seemed to communicate that the "answers" to our prayers are contingent upon our performance as people.  God will answer your prayers if you're good enough, if you're fervent enough, and if you have enough faith.  That idea was troubling for some of us because it sets us up for a blow back of self-condemnation and shame when the outcomes for which we pray do not happen.

Someone in our small group offered this illustration.  A godly young man with a young wife and newborn child (they were part of our church for a while) was killed in battle in Iraq last week.  Meanwhile, the 3rd Infantry Brigade from nearby Fort Benning are streaming back home after a 15 month deployment.  Thousands of family members are rejoicing, as their loved ones disembark the plane, that their prayers for protection "worked."  But what about the young man who was blown up?  Did the prayers of his wife and their godly friends not "work?"  And if not, why?  Was his wife not good enough?  Was she not fervent enough?  Did she not have enough faith?

Tying the outcomes of prayer to the quality of the pray-ers character and the quality of the prayers themselves is problematic to me. 

I shared with our small group that my prayer life has changed in recent years.  I no longer spend a lot of time praying for outcomes.  The reason is simple.  As a finite human being I do not have the omniscience to know which outcome is the correct outcome in a given situation.  I think that there is more going on behind the veil that separates the natural from the spirit realm than we could ever comprehend.  And when we locate the time and energy of our prayers in a set of desired outcomes, we're going to be left confounded much of the time.

My prayer life has, instead, become one in which I simply invite God to be present in my life, and in the situations, events, and circumstances with which my heart and mind are occupied.  I want to learn to walk with God through circumstances, rather than simply calling upon him to change circumstances that may be unpleasant or protect me from circumstances that I would rather not face.  Because he has very clearly promised to us that he would never leave us - that he would be with us always - prayer is no longer a request for an outcome that either is or is not answered.  It is a journey together through pleasant and unpleasant places with a God who has promised to never deviate from his character of love, goodness, grace, and mercy.

Soul Friends and Spiritual Wellness

For many years now I've had a deep appreciation for the ancient Celtic people of the British Islands who emerged from Druidism to become followers of Jesus Christ.  What was unique about the Celts was that their Christian spirituality emerged and flourished without being impacted by the institutional Roman church (until the devastating 7th-century Synod of Whitby.)  They were distinctly not Catholic or protestant.  They were simply followers of Jesus.  As such, they enjoyed rich, meaningful components of their faith that have since been lost to us in the Catholic or protestant systems.

One such component of their faith was the nurturing of relationships with what they called, "soul friends."  The Christian world around them at the time proclaimed that the most important relationship one could have was their relationship with the church, her doctrines, and the priest who would administer to them the sacraments.  Outside of this, there could be no relationship with God.  The Celts, on the other hand, understood that their relationship with God did not depend upon any institution or clerical middle-man.  But they did find that their relationship with God was deeply nourished through their relationship with a soul friend.

A soul friend was somebody who was as close to you as a brother or sister.  He was a person who you spent time with, a substantial amount of time, working, playing, eating together, talking, laughing, crying.  The relationship between soul friends was one of such trust that either person could freely share the deepest, darkest secrets of their life without fear of judgment or violation of that trust.  In such a relationship the heart could be laid bare for transformation to occur.  Because there were no secrets between soul friends, neither person could hide within an illusion that they were keeping something hidden from God. 

Soul friends are hard to find in our culture.  We Americans are so individualistic, so busy, and so religious that when we do try to find such relationships we end up with something we like to call "accountability partners."  Our attempt at this is a pitiful caricature of what they enjoyed.  Unlike the relationship with a "soul friend," our "accountability" relationships lead to bondage, guilt, deception, deterioration of friendships and a retreat to isolation.  In the Celtic practice, authentic relationship came first, with trust, vulnerability, honesty, and restoration being a natural fruit of that relationship.

As difficult as it is to cultivate in our culture, it is a component of spiritual wellness that I think we need to work hard to resurrect.  I'm interested to know if any readers are enjoying vital "soul friend" relationships, how you found your soul friend, and how that relationship is lived out from day-to-day.

Financial Wellness in Troubled Times

Unlike many of the bloggers that you'll find in the "self-improvement" genre, I am one who believes that financial wellness has more to do with the state of your heart than the state of your bank account.  I think that the person who is making $25,000 a year can enjoy just as much financial wellness as the person making $250,000 a year.  In fact, I would suggest that it could be easier for the first person to be financially well than the second person.

What is required for financial wellness?  I would begin with the provision of basic human needs.  We all need to eat.  We all need to be clothed.  And we all need to have safe shelter.   From there I would say that the next significant contributor to financial wellness is freedom from debt.  As long as you owe anything to anyone, you are never truly free.  Next would be the practice of saving for tomorrow.  The source of your income today may not be available to you tomorrow.  And finally, freedom from the bondage of consumerism and contentment with what you have are the two guardrails that keep you safely on the road of financial wellness.  Financial wellness really is a condition of the heart.  A heart that craves "things" will sabotage your ability to enjoy life regardless of your income level.

Here is a simple structure for you to follow in budgeting for wellness:

• Live off of no more than 80% of your income.
• Set aside at least 10% of your income into a savings plan.
• Give away at least 10% of your income to those who are in greater need than you.

This simple budgeting principle lived out through a heart that is free from the craving of things and a lifestyle that is not held captive by debt will provide a strong foundation of financial wellness.

But what about our desires to earn more and to create wealth?  Am I saying that these desires are wrong?  Not at all.  Remember what I said, financial wellness is more about the condition of your heart than the condition of your bank account.  If you are able to live debt-free, be content, and follow the budgeting principle above at $250,000 a year, go for it!  Just be aware of the temptations that you will face.  We live in the midst of a system of greed and debt-supported consumption, and the more you earn the more temptation you will face to spend your wealth on the accumulation of things and the financing of debt and less on savings and giving to those in need.

Jonathan - Dear Father

Obstacle Illusion

Lynn and I are planning a vacation for later this year.  We had narrowed it down to either Seattle, Washington or Portland, Maine.  I think we're leaning toward Portland.  It's easy for us to see the vacation in our minds.  There will a long drive up through the eastern US where we'll see cities and countryside that we've never seen before.  We'll spend a couple of days enjoying the coastal town of Portland, perhaps trying Maine lobster for the first time at one of the locally owned restaurants.  I'm sure we'll spend a day in Boston walking the streets where some of the most important events of our nation's history took place.  Another day will be spent in New Hampshire, driving the countryside surrounded by autumn's changing leaves.  A vision for what we'll spend our vacation week doing is pretty clear.  The route is also pretty easy to see (thank you Mapquest).  What are unknown to us at this point, and what will need to be discovered along the way are the obstacles that could, if we allowed them, prevent us from enjoying a nice vacation together.

It's much the same in life.  I think most of us enter adulthood with a picture of what we want our life to be.  We have interests, passions, dreams, and abilities and in our heart all of these things fit together into a life vision.  But I also think that there are far too many of us who, midway through life, would admit that reality has fallen far short of our dreams.  When asked why, we will most likely point to and speak of all the "obstacles" along the way that have stopped us in our tracks and locked us into an existence of daily survival with the stuff of our dreams being little more than a faint memory.

To those who would say that the above statement is true of his or her life, I want to boldly suggest that the only real obstacle that any of us can point to is the obstacle of self.  Sure, there are circumstances and events that get in the way of every person who is pursuing the life of their dreams with some of those circumstances and events being tragic, heart-breaking, and mind-bending.  But the power of these obstacles to reduce your life to mere existence is an illusion.

Obstacles in life have two purposes.  Some obstacles are meant to be overcome and through the overcoming we find deeply hidden riches of character and perseverance that required the difficulty of the obstacle for them to be unearthed.  Consider the young boy, abandoned by his father and left to a life of poverty with his mother working two minimum wage jobs just trying to make ends meet.  He had a dream of going to college and now his only chance of realizing that dream is through a scholarship.  He refuses to dance along to the tune of shattered dreams, studies, rises to the top of his class, and graduates with a full-ride scholarship to the school of his choice.  Not only has he achieved his dream, but in so doing he is more prepared for academic excellence than the rich kid who will endure college as an obligatory gesture to his parents.

Obstacles also serve another purpose, and that is the purpose of redirection.  When we encounter seemingly insurmountable circumstances, we have the choice of either sitting down in the road in the shadow of the obstacle wishing that life wasn't killing our dreams.  Or we can find an alternate route.  One of my dreams in life is to be a published author.  A reality I face is that it is nearly impossible for an unknown writer to have a manuscript picked up by a publishing house.  For several years I allowed that to quench my dreams.   But now, thanks to technology, I can self-publish and market my book to a global audience without a publishing house taking a cut of the earnings.  In so doing, not only will I have found a way around the obstacle, but I will also learn things about publishing and marketing that I probably wouldn't have learned through the traditional route.

I'll leave you with this challenge.  Make some time today to find a quiet place where you can reach back into the dusty, dark corners of your abandoned dreams, and bring them into the light for another look.  As you do, recall the circumstances and events that prompted you to abandon them.  Could those obstacles have been overcome?  Could there have been another route to your dreams?  If the answer is yes to either question, then maybe it's time to permanently move those dreams out of the dark, dirty attic and set them on the fireplace mantle where they will always be in sight.

In future posts I'll talk about some of the obstacles that we most often point to as dream-killers.  In the meantime, what are some obstacles you have faced?  How have they kept you from your dreams?  How have you overcome or circumvented those obstacles?  Let's talk about it and learn from one another.  Comments are open.

Significance

"Significance has never been about behavior." ~William P. Young
Author of The Shack

The Necessary Fragility of Paradigms

As you ponder and dream about the ways in which you desire to live your life - a life in which you become all you were created to become and make the world a better place by serving humanity - there will inevitably be those around you who won't get it.  The things you talk about, the ideas you have, the path you try to follow day-by-day will all bump against the paradigm through which they view the world.  Worry not, dear friend.  consider the following letter from Martin Van Buren to president Andrew Jackson.

January 31, 1829
Martin Van Buren
Governor of New York

To President Jackson:

The canal system of this country is being threatened by a new form of transportation known as "railroads."  The federal government must preserve the canals for the following reasons:

One.  If canal boats are supplanted by "railroads," serious unemployment will result.  Captains, cooks, drivers, hostelers, repairmen, and dock tenders will be left without means of livelihood, not to mention the numerous farmers now employed in growing hay for the horses.

Two.  Boat builders would suffer and towline, whip and harnass makers would be left destitute.

Three.  Canal boats are absolutely essential to the defense of the United States.  In the event of the expected trouble with England, the Erie Canal would be the only means by which we could ever move the supplies so vital to waging modern war.

As you may well know, Mr. President, "railroad" carriages are pulled at the enormous speed of fifteen miles per hour by "engines" which, in addition to endangering life and limb of passengers, roar and snort their way through the countryside, setting fire to crops, scaring livestock and frightening women and children.  The Almighty surely never intended that people should travel at such breakneck speed.