simplicity and complexity

In our image conscious world we like to make everything from animal behaviour to relationships look simple. With television, advertising, movies, and various cultural inputs everything looks well shaped and comlete in the settings they are given. Our culture which is technologically complex makes the things we have to use simple, such as phones, automobiles, radios. It is easy to become drivers, couch potatoes, internet gurus, etc. And it all looks so simple. Yet behind all this image and completeness there are complex sets of behaviours and relationships and yet these are the things that we don't take the time to deal with in our lives. Relationships with others are what last into eternity yet we put more time into our appetites for experience and accomplishment than we do into our relationships which have the most complexity.
A friend of mine was going to the store to buy listerine as i was thinking about simplicity and complexity. Listerine became the focus of my thinking as listerine was a symbol of this image of simplicity. We think listerine will help us become more acceptable, more likeable, with whiter teeth less cavities, better breath, and teeth which others would envy. Listerine would be the vehicle to change how others see us (and smell us) and make it easier for others to relate to us. Yet will it change our attitudes? Will it change how we see others? Will it change the inner self? How does the image we have of ourselves affect the image others have of us? How does small changes in our outside image affect our inner being in eternity? What is the difference from changing from the inside out or changing from the outside in? These questions give me the idea of some of the complexity to all this but at the same time we crave simplicity and postitive flowing relationships. What are the symbols and processes that affect how i think about others on my daily journey?

Observing Dead Fish

Our team at work is going to see the salmon spawning on Monday. In a way it is a place to observe fish dying at the end of their life cycle and a place of dead fish. This may seem like an unlikely place for people to meet together and visit but purpose in life is found in the most unlikely places. Growth is often found not as much in the pleasure centered activities as in the meaning centered activities. In building relationships we need to be able to come alongside each other not only in the joys of life but in the sorrows and crises of life.
In the river we see the fish accomplishing their destiny, fulfilling their purpose. Here we see meaning in terms of fish meaning. Here we can talk about the parallels of meaning and purpose in our lives and the deeper sense of what we do to apply and accomplish meaning in our lives. All of us tend to carry with us the corpses of dead things which we think will embellish who we are and what we are here for. Relationships help us to identify and bury these dead things (whether attitudes or the excesses of our material world or unreliable knowledge) and give us the freedom to be who we were made to be. Looking at and meditating on dead fish together help to build trust and help us bond together making us a more cohesive, caring group who will be able to impact our world beneficially in our work environment and in this life. The fish leave behind them the seeds of new life and their genetic code to carry on their identity in this world. What will we leave behind when we are at the point of our 'spawning ground'? What are the seeds we leave behind in this world? How are we leaving our 'genetic code' in the lives of the people we impact every day? Are we fulfilling the purpose for which we were originally created? Are we learning from dead fish or are we dead to the life of this world?
There are interesting facets to the lives of these fish. They give all their energy and effort, their lives to get to the spawning ground just to die. They give everything they have to fulfill this purpose. Do we have anything in our lives that we would give so much in order to have that purpose fulfilled in our lives? Jesus said 'If anyone wishes to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life shall lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake, he is the one who will save it. For what is a man profited if he gains the whole world, and loses or forfeits himself?' In light of this quotation how am I fulfilling the purpose God has given me in this life? Am I willing to sacrifice myself to fulfill my purpose on earth and leave Godseeds in the lives of others?
Dead fish are not just dead fish. Dead fish are there for our imagination and for our creativity in living. Dead fish build character and cause growth. Dead fish make life more meaningful.

journeyings

Traveling in a state of wonder with music playing from the rocks, trees and streams, my mind contemplates the strange ways that the beings of twoworlds seem to interact. The sources of behavior are so often hidden in the mists, where just like in the mountains only the treetops can be seen, from the mind only the tops of conversation can be seen and the communication is hidden in the silences of solitude. Expressions of the journey can only be extracted in the aura of relationship. Relationship in solitude. What does this look like on the journey and how are we to access intimacy in such secret surroundings?