In flux

I'm about to make some life choices and I don't know which way I should lean. In the Fall the structure will change, my community will evolve and spread across the nation even more, and I will begin to stretch my mind again in a formal setting. I'm excited.

At the same time, though, I feel like I need to wait until then to make my path solid and clear. The negative side of community: choices impact everyone. There are times when I sincerely think I should weed out the destructive parts of my communal garden and completely replant. How much suffering should one person undergo because of the missteps of someone else? How long must I wait for a partnership that does service to my goals and ambitions? Dreams were not made to be abandoned--they were given to achieve.

While I wait I have painted myself into a sanctuary. My room has tree limbs and organic shapes to remind me that at any time I can enter the personal place of peace inside and escape the issues that make me feel overwhelmed. Internally there is a hush, a calm, that gives me confidence that with enough effort and self awareness I can bring the inner garden outward. That is the essence of peace, to first make my life a cultivated sanctuary where I can enter and experience true acceptance and love and then extend that calm. World peace starts with my everyday.

What I was made for

I wasn't made to be God. Although there's the expectation for that, I am not good enough and truthfully don't want to be. I want to be content being what I was created for: life. The gritty, dirty, confusing stuff. The stuff that is solidly imperfect and definitely me. I can't claim that anyone made it but me, the conflicts, the messes. But they're mine, I made them, and without them I would have nothing to offer Providence as a gift on an old alter. Well worn but never dusty, I use that place to get it out, all the truth and all the inward material no one wants to see or believe. All the confusion. I used to expect things to be solved there, loose ends to be tied and puzzles to find their exact place. But that's not the point- the point is for me to realize that I am the puzzle, the pieces, the process. I am not seeking to find a way out of the struggle, but the realize that my place is in it. Because it's what I was made to be.

No one would believe me

If you had been a part of the last month, you wouldn't believe me when I talk about peace. You wouldn't buy the whole redemption story or the idea of a speedy and dramatic recovery from selfishness or anger. You wouldn't believe that the blind could see or the lame could walk (or make good jokes). You wouldn't let me finish the story before letting me know that I was being idealistic and setting myself up for deeper or more lasting hurts. You might tell me that changes like that can't happen overnight, or even over a hospitalized weekend, but the light I though had permanently dimmed is somehow brighter than ever.

The story is true. The broken can be made whole in one moment. The persecutor can in one blinding encounter be totally transformed into a person with little resemblance to the former. It turns out the Biblical story has basis in life, real life, not just as a metaphor.

So for the skeptics, cynics, believers, and independents, this is my verbal recognition that I really don't know anything about life, love, godliness, or redemption until someone much greater than me steps in to my grey and paints in some color.

Thank you Brian, for willingly facing humiliation to make things right. It looks very much to me right now like the Cross.