So recently I finished the books I was reading and though I am still entrenched in "The Brothers Karamazov" I am on page 53 of 833 and am seriously wondering if I have the stamina for it right now. Wondering if anyone out there has a recommendation??
Read more...As I wrote about in my last post, a longing for adventure is hard wired into each of our souls. I believe that this longing is intimately connected with our view of the world around us. Our sense of adventure is directly proportional to the mystery we allow to exist in the world around us. This is not a fool's mystery that could be explained but instead is not, this is genuine mystery, the unknown, ideas and concepts that are beyond us and therefore draw us out into a story much larger and more grand than are own. A story that encompasses ours but is not limited to its confines.
As we began to lose our sense of wonder and awe, the world became automated, robotic, predictable even - except that its not. Somewhere along the way mysteries were studied, dissected, analyzed and put back together so that we could build formulas in an attempt to remove elements of the unknown - except we now know less than we knew then. We fear mystery. We avoid the unknown.
I know I do - my actions declare rather boldly that I would prefer to control life rather than experience it. I try to fit God into my pocket to be carried around like a talisman instead of seeing Him as a shepherd, One who longs to guide and direct me along the path of my life. The concept that our life on this Earth is one of mystery is unsettling to us because to grasp the mysterious life requires us to fully trust. Adventure cannot be had in a controlled environment - doesn't work that way. Control negates adventure. Mystery is the petri dish whereby adventure can be cultivated - without mystery there is no adventure to embark on.
Oftentimes we choose to control our lives because when we have control, we cannot be caught off guard or surprised, but rather remain in the driver's seat always knowing. Why is it such a big deal for us to always know? Knowledge is powerful but not singularly. Knowing what you will do in ten years can be helpful, but it can also be limiting. This is one of my greatest struggles. I want to know where my foot is going to land before I pick it up to take a step. I think that by knowing, somehow I will gain power over the successfullness of the outcome and therefore miss most of the entire point. My Father is less interested in where my foot is going to land and is more interested in whether or not I will try to take a step - where that step takes me is secondary. The point is the step, the point is the journey, the point is the process of learning to trust enough to take a step and not know where the next one will take you. Peter would never have gotten out of the boat had he worried himself with where he was going to put his foot (on top of the water ended up working out just fine). If he had worried about where he was going to step, he would have deduced that his foot had nowhere to go and therefore he could not possibly take a step. Instead, he saw Christ, chose to follow and allowed Him to take care of the rest.
This sounds warm and fuzzy but I do not intend it to sound that way. Trust is ugly, faith is awfully messy at times because it requires that we voluntarily release control and choose vulnerability, something our society has not trained us to do. In our me-first culture, nothing is more counterintuitive than choosing to be vulnerable, than choosing to embrace the unknown in hopes that you will be met there. Our inability to be self sufficient demostrates our great need - our striving to run solo anyways demonstrates our great pride and desire for control, but taking an opportunity to relinquish control, to choose surrender, to choose to embrace the unknown demostrates our profoundly unique ability to trust. To trust is to embrace mystery, to embrace mystery is to open oneself to an opportunity for adventure.
I was working on my next blog this morning while Olivia happily crawled around the carpet squealing and looking at everything she could feast her eyes on. She would touch the wall ever so deliberately as if she was trying to determine exactly how it felt and as she went from one item to the next, her eyes slowly fixed upon the door that was cracked partially open. The opening was maybe an inch wide but it was like a screaming invitation to an adventure, to something grand, to the unknown. Olivia quickly began making her way over to the door that was ajar and as she drew near she slowed and peaked inside ever so cautiously to see what lay behind the door. She gently urged the door open and made her way inside where a wonderland of amusement, mystery, and excitement awaited her. She found her way to...her room.
My daughter's sense of adventure is alive and well and her ripe imagination allows everything in her world to experienced to the fullest. I can remember times in my life when I viewed my life as an adventure. A time when the happenings of my day were significant on a more reaching scale than my own mere amusement, a time when it seemed there were invitations to grandeur around every corner and a time when I felt alive. I think I see my life a bit less like an adventure now. If I had to describe that time with an image, I felt like I was standing on a mountain overlooking an open plain, and now I still feel like I am on the mountain only I have lost the horizon and am looking only at the ground in front of me. I need to look up, I need to see where I am going, but I fear that breaking from my current state may leave me realizing I have lost my way.
My heart longs for a new adventure - life has been so full this past year with us buying a house, having a baby, working, and gettting used to being parents. For awhile, it seemed that the adventure would be becoming parents - but that's missing the mark. Where it is wild and crazy being a parent, the adventure for Ang and I must lie in doing something, in being a part of something truly grand and worthwhile.
Let me think about adventures for a second...what makes a great adventure? A great adventure has an interesting plot, something captivating and compelling; it has a series of obstacles that must be overcome (nothing great enough to be deemed an adventure comes without resistance right!), there must be a company of people (a brotherhood, companion, company, someone to share the journey with), it must be something worth laying everything on the line for - there must be a risk/reward in there somewhere and an adventure must change the adventurer in some way. No great adventure leaves a person unchanged. I want this. I want an adventure. I love my family and I like our life well enough at times but it leaves me yearning for something that really gets my blood pumping, something that compels me and something that I feel like is worthy of the short amount of time we have here on Earth.
I want to feel like Olivia must have felt when she saw that door cracked open. Curiosity, wonder, mystery - these things gripped her little heart and she went searching for what lay behind the door.
I want that anticipation. I want that sense of intrigue. I want that adventure. That's my prayer.
Our idea of time has gotten me thinking lately. I have been paying closer attention to the metaphors we use to discuss time and its place in our day to day lives. By nature, metaphors reveal and conceal things - basically they describe things but not perfectly or completely. By drawing comparisons between time and other things, we learn more about some aspects of time but also realize that by shedding light on some aspects of time we cast a shadow on others. The dynamic is at work the most when we try to describe elements of our lives that are somewhat abstract, intangible, or difficult to grasp.
So back to time. We frequently use the metaphor, "time is money." Think about how many money metaphors we use when talking about time. To name a few, "how should I spend my time,"I want to invest my time in important matters,"I can save time by doing it a different way, "I need to better manage my time." There are hundreds of different ways we utilize the metaphor "time is money." I catch myself using this metaphor multiple times everyday, but I finally stopped to wonder one day - Is that really true? Do I really think of time and money as being that similar? In our society we are really focused on getting ahead, on making money, and therefore tend to be materialistic by nature. I wonder if this idea of time is driven by our materialism. I want to think of my time as something to enjoy, to experience, to exist in - not something to spend because then I am concerned with the return on my investment. Namely, that whatever of whoever I spend my time on must make it worthwhile by giving me a return.
I am not sure how to think about time, but I know it requires more thoughtfulness on my part. I wonder too, if we feel unproductive in part because of how we think about time as something we spend, invest, or use. Therefore if we are not spending, investing or using it in a way that yields a return, it seems like a waste. That sounds like a far cry from love and an even further cry from my heart.
When did we lose our sense of wonder? When did we start looking at a sunset and forget to actually see it? I watch Olivia and she is fascinated by the strangest things. She can't get enough of ears and feet lately. She shrieks when she sees them and will climb over anything and everything to get a closer look or taste :) Watching her experience her world for the "first" time makes me think, when did my world become so drab? Feet and ears don't fascinate me anymore, well except for the ears of old men when they get huge, hairy and kind of floppy (its a badge of honor I look forward to carrying)- I just learned the other day that your ears never stop growing, I wonder why. My world has become normal, I daresay even mundane at times - that is CRAZY. How can a world full of beauty and mystery become commonplace?
One of my favorite documentaries is the Planet Earth series. The series takes the viewer to places all over Earth - places I could never even imagine seeing. One episode explores the depths of the oceans, where new species continue to be discovered every year. Strange animals live there, with glowing translucent features, and appendages that appear to be straight out of a bad sci-fi movie. Another explores the great rivers of the world and in particular shows rivers running red in Alaska as millions of salmon return to the exact location their lives began in order to spawn. It is one of the most incredible feats in all creation right alongside the migration of millions of animals across the deserts and savannahs of Africa. I am inspired to go and see for myself. I realize how little of this world I have seen with my own eyes and I am propelled towards visions of seeing the sunset across the ocean, and watching it rise across the crest of a mountain - to see the Grand Canyon, the Great Wall, the Pyramids in Egypt, to see an Elephant in the wild, or a great migration of birds. I am reminded of how little my world is when I think of how little I have seen. Those are only places and things don't even get me started on the different people groups of this world - beauty in every corner of the earth.
I fear that I get up everyday and look at the world around me and am no longer astonished by what I see. Olivia lives in a state of nearly eternal surprise...and delight. She stops everything to examine a doorknob, and is taken back by the sound of rain hitting a window. When she sees a person she has never seen before she begins to study their features and with a squeal, she announces her presence. Something just does not add up. If the world is truly full of beauty and mystery, and yet my vantage point yields normalcy and boredom - something is off, broken perhaps. I think its me. I think I may be broken. I know I may never look at a doorknob the way Olivia does, but I sense I may be seriously lacking some imagination when it comes to the world around me. Where did my imagination go? Unfortunately because I am often so self absorbed I miss something incredible because it does not fit into my ideals. I think the next time it rains, I will try to be less annoyed at getting wet and instead experience the sillyness of water falling from the sky.
The world around me screams of beauty. How can I spend even a single moment missing that? I want to regain my sense of wonder; I want to be in awe of something truly grand; I long to be caught up in something far more reaching than my little cubicle of a world. Tonight I will ask the Author for eyes that can see the world He created in all its splendor and glory. I long to be amazed. Tomorrow when I wake I will see the sunrise... perhaps for the first time.
I am weird. I opened at my store today - that's 4am - and yet here I am out to coffee again at 8pm thanks to Ang who is doing bedtime solo tonight with Olivia (Thanks!). There is something about drinking a hot cup of coffee, listening to music, and losing myself in thought. As I relax and allow my mind the room to stretch out, my heart begins to be drawn into another world. I wander off to a place as beautiful as the sun setting across a sky littered with mountains and trees. The music is like a - well normally its a sweet sound but right now its Barbara Streisand - WHAT! How is this playing right now? Well Plan B good thing I have some Death Cab for Cutie (they are not nearly as weird as their name suggests) on my computer - that's more like it. I feel like its a place where my heart can breathe.
In our world quietness is going out of style, right alongside rest. As we cram more into our days and lives we end up with less, we lose the depth that life offers. In a place with no talking, where I am left alone with my thoughts I am slowly lead out to a place of peace, of solitude, of rest, It is often in this place that I sense the words of the Father gently penetrating my heart. Loving, tender, honest words -the kind that resonate deep within and leave me changed, undone. I feel like this when I have my flyfishing gear and I am out in the middle of a river, serenaded by the rushing water, so loud it blocks out every other noise. The river's roar silences the noise in my life in a strange way - freeing me to enjoy the structured cadence of my casting and the way the fly slowly drifts onto the water. When I fish, its rarely about the fish, its more often about the way that fishing quiets my insides, stills my soul, and molds my perspective into that of my Maker.
Rest is critical because it creates space in our lives. We are all too comfortable with no space, no time, no breathing room. We live on the proverbial hamster wheel and seem all too at home there, running at breakneck speed through our life until something intervenes and forces us to stop. I see it everyday at work- the stress, the frenetic frenzied frantic pace of peoples' days and I am no different, but it does make me wonder - for what? For what purpose are we so consumed with activities? What are we afraid of missing out on? What are we afraid of seeing in ourselves if we take the time to stop and look? Certain types of poetry and music function most precisely when natural rests are built in, breathing points, places to stop and allow truth, or beauty, or wonder to set in. God rested in the midst of Creation. Why can't I stop and rest?
If some things are more beautiful with space, with breaks, with rest then I wonder if my life would be richer and more beautiful with a bit of the same medicine. Maybe that's the way it was designed to be - I think I will give that a shot.
Ang and I got in a fight the other day. A fight for each other - not with each other. The best kind of fight you can get into as husband and wife. We talked a lot about dreams and about what stands in our way. She, as always, was unwavering in her support of my dreams and hopes for the future, reaffirming her belief in me and in what my heart longs for. I am amazed by her. The journey of discovering your heart and connecting its longings is filled with potholes, obstacles and resistance - encouragement is essential along the way and she provides it in spades. I am spurred on when I know someone believes in me.
We have been on this walking kick lately (I think we are trying to get out as much as possible before the winter rains set in) and it has been such a great chance for us to talk and discuss ideas and encourage each other. It's not always easy to find time for those things as a new parent. We have both felt pretty overwhelmed at times to the point where it's easy to lose track of things - especially your heart.
As I alluded to in my profile, I am gradually beginning to uncover some areas of my heart that had been collecting dust for awhile. Writing this blog is just one of my attempts to transform the dustbowl into a reservoir. Neglecting my heart was one of the worst decisions I have ever made. Our hearts function like a compass, pointing us in a direction, establishing a course for the days that lie ahead. As I lost track of my heart I struggled to interpret the events in my life and soon was stuck in an existence mentality where days were meant to be "gotten through" instead of enjoyed. Disconnected from my heart, I felt like I was drifting along until finally a deep and pervading space was undeniably prevalent inside of me. The space just sat there, empty - it was the kind of void that can't be filled, save for the genuine longings of your heart. I am still in the middle of the struggle to regain my heart - it is a daily battle - one void of any shortcuts or any attempts to fake. As I draw nearer to the Author of all those yearnings and longings, the space is gradually replaced with hope, anticipation, dreams, creativity, trust, and a newfound awareness of the world around me. I keep thinking I will arrive at some point soon - get to a place where I understand, where my world is full of clarity and where suddenly the puzzle begins to take shape. I am just now beginning to wonder if perhaps that time is not going to come. I think somewhere in the struggle to find my heart, I will begin fighting a different fight. Now that I am rediscovering my heart - the new challenge will be to keep it alive. I know of only one Way.
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