Dancing with Time

In life we experience change on the journey. Sometimes the path is clear, sometimes the path is hidden. Like a mist swallowing the landscape around us the future is there to swallow us on the journey. We are made to dance with time. As we become more adept at cultivating change, the dance changes. As we learn to keep step with the music of time our character changes. God is teaching us how to dance, molding us to the music of time. Change is inevitable. We are made for change.
Our attitude becomes vital to our dancing in time. Being out of step with the music often takes the form of not recognizing the purpose of time and of the dance. Being out of step with the music often means we are unable to adapt within ourselves to the changing beat. Our attitudes become out of step with reality. The journey can be miserable or it can be joyful all depending upon our attitude.
What does the dance look like? How am I flowing with the music? Am I out of step with time or is time a tool in my growth? What lies ahead of me on the journey? Am I prepared with my attitudes?

inbetween creativity

Life is often lived inbetween and this is where we create our attitudes. In our culture of busyness there is always a need for balance, for solitude, for silence, for time to digest and process our thoughts and meditations. When this is absent, we become obsessive, we become agitated by the smallest things, and we become stressed. There is a need to come away from all our busyness. We often think of the method of coming away is by entering into another form of busyness, such as, going to a movie, watching a video, playing some sport, going on a travel vacation or enjoying some hobby. This is good, but not as good as the regular practice of using the inbetween times for your own encouragement, thought processing and stress resolution. The inbetween times are the times or spaces we are inbetween our regular activities and programs of life. If we looked at it using the seasons it would be the space between the seasons of life. So how do we use these spaces for our benefit? We use them as spaces of solitude and silence where we can get away by ourselves for the purpose of defining the busyness around us and processing our emotions, the incoming information, our purpose in life, our spiritual being, our relationships. Whether it be walking from activity to activity, or driving, or washing dishes, whatever the space between looks like, it is useful space for our personal meditation and awareness of ourselves. This space throughout our day gives us time to get in touch with ourselves and where we are at. It is surprising how much space in a day we can use of these inbetween times to nourish and re energize our soul. It is these inbetween times which form our attitudes and help us walk in wholesome relationships. Learn to take these times and make them an essential time for processing the world around you!

Raindrops

Yesterday the rain fell. Yesterday the sun shone. Yesterday the rainbow filled one wholes section of the sky. Today the rain is but a memory playing on the background of my busy mind and i"m wondering what i learned in the rain. One question that keeps niggling is the idea of how many raindrops will get me soaked. One raindrop has hardly any effect on making me wet. Even a few do very little. But as more fall i tend to get wet. It seems there is strength in numbers. People are kind of a bit like raindrops. One person can have some effect on your direction in life. Several may have more of effect. When there are many it is a lot less likely for you to go any other direction because you will be swimming against the current.

mystery and routine

Mystery is a concept that we deal with on a daily basis and it takes hold of our minds. We are enthralled with every kind of mystery, the largest ones and the smallest ones. Mystery can lead us to choices that make us more godly or to choices that take us away from God. We always want to know, to find, to discover, to feel, to experience what is not known, what is mystery. In God's Word, He wants to take us into the mystery of His Being, to discover Him. He wants us to discover who we really are and what our purpose is in life. He wants us to be alive to His mystery. In our world we are faced with all kinds of mystery which draw us away from God when we choose not to follow Him. Our self centeredness takes us onto trails which lead to pride, excitement, and finally emptiness in losing the wonder of God. In losing touch with this wonder we become slaves to our own desire for mystery, whether it be in power, in materialism, in sexuality, in subterfuge, in obsession. Where God wants us to have freedom in discovering His mysteries, we choose rooms with bars in discovering the common mysteries of our lust. In not reaching out for the newness God gives every day we reach into the desires of our daily culture. In not reaching for the Word of God, we end up reaching into our selfish heart to take the world's offerings for building our foundation. How are we building into our character for eternity? How are we at journeying into God's mystery and leaving the world's routine behind? How are we becoming renewed in the mystery of His Kingdom? When you step outside your door today what mystery awaits your inquiring mind?

Sanctuary

Sanctuary, a place of refuge or protection, is sought after space in a world of confusion and activity. Who are the people in your life who provide a space of sanctuary? Who is it that you feel safe and protected around? Who is it that you can be yourself around and feel you are able to say what you feel, able to question, able to share your most intimate thoughts? Where is that place of safety, hope and love? Where are you able to express yourself most honestly and most openly? In the Bible the idea of sanctuary is expressed in the being of God. Psalm 46 states 'God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble...' In the New Testament God's presense is evident in His people, the Body of Christ. Sanctuary then becomes, not a place, but a people. This is where sanctuary is found, in the people of God. This is where there is safety and protection. This is where you can be who God made you to be. This is where you can share who you are and find acceptance and love and joy.

continuous rain

Bird voices pierce the sound of continuous falling rain and the echoes of yesterday haunt my errant way. There is intimacy in the rain. Rain clothes the landacape with a blanket of freshness, freeing the earth to breath anew leaving the dust of time to dilute and run off into the void. We often sit in silence and listen to the earth dancing in the music of the rain. We often sit in silence wondering if the dreams encountered in the rain are real or illusionary. We often sit in silence. What does the silence bring? What hopes are alive in the silence? What direction does the silence take? Who do we go through the silence with on our journey through time?
The rain is filled with purpose. Working together the raindrops unite and reveal the wonder of life. One raindrop has so little impact, but many raindrops working together change the world around them. What impact on change do we have on our journey through time, like the one raindrop or the rain?

aromas and questions for the day

How do we deal with the odours of the world? In our world we tend to hide ourselves a lot. We hide behind the latest fashions. We hide behind the latest perfumes, toothpaste flavours and deodarant of the week. We hide our thoughts behind the latest music fads. We hide behind the latest information that peeks out of the forest. What if everyone walked around naked in a lot of areas? How would we then percieve each other and is that important or not? Is image more important than substance? And what is the substance of our lives? Do we bring about with us an aroma of life or do we bring the odour of death? What do we give to others?
Does the Word of God have anything to do with this aroma of life? What are the inputs in our lives that make us real? What are the inputs in our lives that shrink us into hiding?

room as idea

Room as an idea flows easily through space as i sit in familiar surroundings waiting for the future. The rooms we inhabit usually have boundaries of some kind and we sit there and wonder what is on the outside or we rearrange the inside to suit us. The room as idea is a different kind of room we create for ourselves in such a way that the boundaries consist of our fears and our freedoms. with some of us the boundaries are very tight, with some of us there are less boundaries. It is our relationships that are most affected by the type of rooms we build. . .rooms built with fear are rooms which have very rigid boundaries, rooms built with freedom are rooms which people like to enter in.

drowning and dancing

The sun is shining, the sky is blue, and there is a bird making its home in the side of our house. Our cats from inside the windows looking out are tweetering at the birds. The birds take no notice, knowing that the cats are enclosed in a safe environment. Sometimes we are like the birds where the worries of the world take us into freedom. Sometimes we are like the cats wanting what we can't have and with cultural visions always in front of us wanting those things all the more. i read a quote 'drowning in the shallows of space and time', which got me thinking about the depth of my life. Am i dancing in God's presense or am i drowning in a culture that is wearing down my soul.

Dust

Dust has settled on my computer keyboard over the last week and i'm not exactly sure how it gets there or where its come from. Its kind of like all these little particles get together and become a blanket of dust. They don't just come all at once but seem to get together over a period of time and just know how to get together to create a blanket. They provide a film which eventually becomes a complete blanket holding on to whatever they connect. They have different characteristics and consistancies but you always know what they are when you see them: dust.
Dust has an uncanny way of affecting the unused, the left behind, the stagnant. I'm not sure how this works on my mind, but a blanket of dustlike material has an almost eery effect on thinking. Things drop into my knowledge base over time and eventually gather together just like dust having an effect like that blanket to direct my thinking in certain ways, not necessarily always in the direction I would have my thinking go. Dust on the mind. A blanket of items which are almost like refuse from the myriad of information I take in each day from technology, from conversations, from fallout from the clouds of peripheral information.
Dust clogs things up over time. One skill to learn is not necessarily how to get rid of all the dust but to rearrange the dust so it becomes useful for the imagination rather than causing a stagnancy.
Dust probably does have some nutrient value for growth but needs to be placed where it can have a positive rather than negative effect. In the same way dust on the brain needs to be harnessed for a positive effect rather than left as a blanket of obstruction. What are the items in my mind that have a destructive effect rather than a constructive process and how can i rearrange this 'dust' of the mind.

odds

Sometimes in life things don't seem to fit together. The world often seems smaller than it is and when we narrow our boundaries we almost disappear. A tree will stay in the same place for years yet with all its changes it will seem to grow far more than we see changes in people. Time will seem short yet often endless. Fitting life into time seems difficult yet i fill life with too many incidentals and outside of our relationships with others not much makes sense. The cold seeps in through windows yet its the windows that open my eyes to the world around me. Today is a new adventure and God will use time to take me through to a new level of awareness in light of my rleationships.

anomalies

After being in Southern California arriving back in the winter is kind of a shock to the system. Its like being in a time capsul for some time and then being ejected into the outer environment and having to deal with the harshness of a new reality which you haven't experienced before. The challenges are great. The mystery is great. It is a little unsettling as the world isn't as known or as cosy as it used to be. When i adapt to the winter, i find it a great place for seeing inside. Solitude and silence create a great atmosphere for change, for internal readjustment, for new dreams and direction. Sometimes contentment breeds stagnation. Change is vital to life and to contiued growth and adventure in my character. When anomalies show up during my daily mediwalk i understand the value of changing directions. Anomalies occur for the enhancement of my psyche and for renewing the culture of my mind.

Anticipating the Unknown

As i look into the eyes of a new year i find myself filled with excitement and anticipation. In shaping time and space the energies of the old year are almost used up and i am looking forward to new energy for the adventure and projects of the new year in time and space. Looking through the pages of God's conversation to us He says, "We find ourselves standing where we always hoped we might stand—out in the wide open spaces of God’s grace and glory, standing tall and shouting our praise." (The Message) This is where i want to find myself come January, shaping time and space in the wide open spaces of God's grace and glory. How am i going to mold and shape space in my life this way? How am i going to change my lifestyle so as to live in these wide open spaces. Later on it says that "we cant round up enough containers to hold everything God generously pours into our lives through the Holy Spirit."
Shaping time with God's love in mind, shaping time with relevance in mind, shaping time with the needs of others in mind, shaping time with forethought and destinations in mind, shaping time in mind. Shaping space with simplicity, shaping space with thought of how my space impacts my world, shaping space with how i fill the space impacts the relevance i have in this world. Looking at how this shaping is to be lived in the atmosphere of the wide open spaces of God's grace and glory.
In looking into the swirling mists of the new year i see the potential and the opportunity of how my space and time can make a difference and cause clarity in the lives of those around me. I can see how my shaping time and space will affect my immediate culture and the dreams of those i bounce off and impact. The shape affects my dreams, direction, destination on the journey through the new year. I am looking forward to starting the new year with a new determination to take hold of my dreams on the journey.
As i work through these processes of planning shape i have to keep in mind that i am working in these open spaces of God's grace and glory.

Passages of Wonder

Sometimes direction in our world is consumed with surviving the culture in which we exist. The culture almost becomes like the atmosphere which we breath and we can't get away from it. Also culture is so difficult to mold and shape from a single entity but it does happen. Each person can carve out their own special ecosystem with that system only impacting a very small sphere of culture. I guess though there can be some impact on attitudes in that small sphere of culture. The other variable which in some ways is dependent and independent of culture is the effect of our relationship with God, our spiritual impact on our world. I wonder how this spiritual relationship can breath life into our culture and into all the different links we have with this complex material/spiritual world. In each of our separate ecosystems our converstation with God will have a concrete and permanent effect on the world around us in such a way as to change us and those around us thus impacting the atmospere which we breath, the culture around us. As I write and think I see how our relationship with eternity can have a great impact on our culture as we are not restricted to a small inert space when we relate to God. The tentacles of our thought and prayer can reach around the world, can reach into the most diverse hollows and closets of time.
This idea of impacting our time is kind of like the emerging conversations from the cold of winter. As the conversations get longer there is a melting of the cold and the emergence of spring, of hope, of change. Sometimes we come into the conversation looking at life as closed and neat and through the passage of wonder find that the conversations of life are open and messy, with continuing adventure and mystery. This is the point at where God enters and impacts our conversation, when our journey is filled with the messiness of adventure, mystery and growth. The unknowns of the future then fill us with hope, realizing that God has planned for us much more than we can see or know at this present time. Grasping the future challenges us to change and grow.

Engaging the void

Sometimes navigating space and time has an absense of the sense of reality which is unusually surreal. When thinking is literally too intense to keep at it, it is time to enter a new environment of mystery. Here is where the void comes in, where the coordinates exist only momentarily and keep changing with the imagination leaving the void, without boundaries, without time. We have a tendancy of making boundaries for our imagination within the walls built by fear and excess. In the void these boundaries disappear along with the coldness of routine and familiarity. The void is made to be filled with whatever wonder is left outside of boundaries, outside of time. Within the void the normal energy used up in navigating time and space in its entirety is put into the imagination. Within the realm of the imagination anything is possible. As the imagination engages the void, the void becomes changed, renewed, warmed. The void becomes an environment where the possible merges the impossible and change becomes the usual. Life is usually lived within time and space but without the imagination the intrigue and excitement is stilled and we are left in a fog with what seems like a mirage. Time and space left without the input of the imagination becomes tenuously vacant and sterile.

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?

Wonder

What place does wonder play on our lives as we journey through the void of daily life? Wonder has to do with the mystery of life, with our imagination, with our attitudes, with the things that we cannot see. What we don't see is often more important than what we can see. Wonder affects us in such a way that takes us out of the mundane moments of life and transports us to a world of delight where anything is possible. Wonder in our lives will bring more passion to our daily routines and relationships. How much awe, how much curiosity, how much of the unknown is pondered in our lives as we travel through our dreams and daily meditations. As I'm sitting here thinking about this idea of wonder a stream of sunlight is passing before my eyes and I'm seeing myriads of dust particles dancing through the lightbeam illuminated and shining as they turn and twist on their journey. Am I illuminated and dancing with wonder on my journey through life or am I hiding in the shadows invisible to the wonders around me?

invisibleness

Yesterday I was at my optomatrist getting my eyes checked out. As he was looking at the back of my eyeballs I asked him if he could take a picture of them and email them to me. He said he could but his camera was broken and he couldnt get a part for it. After that he put these drops in my eyes to make the pupils bigger to check them out. When I left his office he gave me sunglasses so the bright light wouldnt affect me on the outside. Not being used to sunglasses when I went outside I felt invisible. I think the reason I felt invisible was that the colours were all dim and really it was I who wasn't seeing as well, but in my mind the perception was changed so I felt everyone else couldn't see or here me, so off I walked home singing realizing I was invisible.
Sometimes in our world the visible and the invisible connect in really unique ways. What is visible isn't always what is there. There is always more invisible than there is the visible especially with people. Vision takes in a great amount of information but at the same time leaves out a great amount of information. As we're processing the information the visible is a lot easier to process than the invisible. And this is even more true of relationships, kind of like the freudian iceburg.
How am I invisible and how does that affect my relationships?