A Change in Pace

The heat of bright summer sun left the air feeling burnt and crisp as darkness dawned across the horizon. The smell of heat was thick and soaked into the mood of evening—a lazy eased back calm. Too hot to be in a hurry, the default relaxed mode was a well-deserved break from the hurry that brimmed in all’s hearts since spring had unfolded its arms towards the sky in months already past. A mellow rhythm of night crickets and frogs steadily droned in an evening that otherwise sat contemplatively and reflected on the year so far. The sweltering heat of the day was the needed forced reprieve from toil that would never have dared be and for that reason was a welcome trial of endurance that only necessity could muster the strength to bear. So within the infinite folds of disposed to-do lists that littered the roads of productivity in the past months, today was marked by a pause, a breath and a sigh that glided soothingly out of the lungs. Like the period at the end of a sentence, so was the day; marking the end of a thought—spring and early summer—but also signaling that more was yet to come. The winding road of summer winds on into the future—but perhaps the pace will be set by sunrise and sunset now.

A Prayer

You my Father are the foundation of strength that upholds me in the day of my trouble.

Your mercy is forever and your grace sweeps away my iniquity from me.

Your tender, nurturing arms enfold me, they lift me up, raise my spirit within me.

Where darkness and despair creep in to swallow me up, when my heart falters within me,

You reach through the trouble and bring triumph to my side and place it in my hand.

In the cool shade of your steadfast light I abide in a powerful peace of heart.

You do not forsake your children in their days of need; you come to them with unmatchable might and make war on their behalf.

When waves rear their heads to push me down, there is calm waters within your harbor.

Searching the full depth of your love is the labor of a lifetime and brings great joy and strength within.

To seek out your instruction is the greatest honor to kings, yet given to the lowliest the low.

Start of a Story

Like hot water percolating through coffee grounds, customers filtered through the Saturday filled store, each as diverse and unique as no one fully recognized. Each one was so confined to the busy preoccupations of his or her own small lives and absorbed with the simple affairs thereof that they did not take great notice of anyone in particular beyond what was necessary to navigating through the bustle. In some ways it was good, necessary to function even, in most ways though it was sad that it’s possible and typical to be entirely isolated from humans while surrounded by them. It’s all very understandable but no less sad; just as it’s very understandable to pick out one cute dog from a pound while leaving fifty more to suffer the fate of ugly dogs. Understandable it may be, but ideal—far from it.

Amid the maze of walled off hearts that occupy a large busy store, there is always a few outliers that toe about. It’s very possible—even likely—that in a given store at a given time, those outliers will not meet, or if by chance they would meet, that no really noteworthy exchange would occur. If by rare chance those who are open and living in the world—all of the world rather than mentally distant and partitioned away—then there is the very real possibility that something important can happen. Of course there is no guarantee that something important will happen, there is merely the possibility. Anything can happen from big events like meeting your new last name to the small events like discovering a way to remove paint from carpet using Saddle-soap. Of course those are only some positive outcomes that could result from being open and aware of people; the other side of the coin of course is that being open means being open to the possibility of the negatives. There is always a trade-off and a risk to anything. I would submit that it is worth the risk, many disagree with however.

On one particular day, contrary to probability’s stance that mundane is a standard that overwhelms the hope of the atypical like a daisy is overwhelmed by a landslide, two particular outliers just so happened to engage one another. What follows is the interaction between those two which I have taken the liberty to transcribe as an unbiased, third-party bystander. I have also set forth what I believe is an accurate narration of the event, though it is surly filtered through the bias of my perspective. I have taken no simple liberties and maintained a strong grasp of the honest presentation of this event with the intent that while showing this face without any makeup and looking into the eyes of a possible reality that exists for some and is waiting to be made by others, the truth that good rests not fare from reach within the average day will be realized.

Risking Regret

I’m just going to say it, let the weight of my heart convey it

Spill everything out and just hope that you don’t betray it

Maybe it’s what you want to hear, or maybe it’s a living fear

No matter what happens now, at least you were here

I hope you don’t run away, suddenly run out of anything to say

Leave me in yesterday, pick up and run the other way

Love is about risking regret, sometimes driving a reckless heart right into the sunset

And give and take, and taking nothing but bad and giving up what we had

Even about being willing to be truly be mad at me

Look out for me, stop and see when there’s something sad in me

Being able to find forgiveness as fast as tears can rebound

Getting lost in the good that’s made, made to be found

So please excuse me for choosing you for everyday

You have the power to shake me and misuse me in every way

The pain of losing something is at least filled with memories

And that’s gain compared to pain of feeling only misery 

I’m brave enough to tell the truth, face the tidal wave

Look you in the eyes and say the words I’ve tried to save

I love you so much more than I thought I ever could

I love you so much that I can’t ignore it even if I should

A Memory of You and I

It was a time outside of time, and so it was neither the best nor the worst of times. I can’t say where it fits within the many frames of moments that fill a life because it is not included in the frames. There is nothing to compare what it was to what other things are—it was different from them all—and so one of a kind.

It may be difficult to say exactly what it was or when it was, but I can tell you where it was. It was between my heart and yours. It was a feeling that transcended all others ever felt before. The world, the wind, the very moment that it occurred within, were all whisked away and dissolved into a distant background to the timeless unique moment. The moments that preceded the feeling were just normal moments. But then, every single moment up to that event if compared to it are really nothing at all. That is why it does not fit into the category of moments. It’s not fair to every other moment to make them compete with something that has no counterpart to compete with. Looked at by themselves, the moments around it were actually very good moments. I’m not trying to say that the preceding moments were bad. No, the preceding moments deserve credit for being truly good moments as far as moments are considered.

But that is all just a side-step from what this is all about. I don’t want to get distracted by moments. There is a time and a place to talk about the many moments that fill the albums of life, but I don’t wish to speak about those now.

I want to tell you about the time outside of time that the above paragraph was just a momentarily distraction from. The time outside of time. Yes. That is what you need to know about. I’ve never experienced a timeless moment in time before. And I had only ever hoped to dream about them. I thought that the dream of the experience would be as close as I could ever hope to get to anything so close to perfect. But, sometimes good things happen when unexpected—a truth for which I am indebtedly grateful to. Someday I wish to thank in person who is responsible for such things, but again, that is a thing for future time.

It’s difficult to talk about the time outside of time. It’s really a contradiction of all that is familiar. Because it is a one of a kind, kind of event, I think that it deserves its own set of words to describe it to you. I think that I should write a whole new language just to describe it to you. But I can’t always do the ideal as much as I would love to and as much as this timeless moment deserves it, I can’t. But I will do my very best. Maybe I will even do a bit better than my best. I shall try with all of my capacity that there is to offer.

I said at the beginning that the time outside of time occurred between us. That it did! Yes, at the time I didn’t know it or expect it. Everything was just like it always is. But then, I came around the corner and you were there. Even then, I didn’t realize that there was anything special happening. At first, you were just one of many people that filled a busy street. There were people everywhere. It is always difficult to see just one person out of a crowed for me. If there were a way to measure the probability of you and I out of all of them, the numbers would scold the thought of you and I. But, the moments outside of moments was larger than anything numbers could ever pretend to express.

It was not me, that I know. There was no reason that me being my normal me would ever have been enough. There was something big at work. I came around the corner, and you did too. In the hundreds of other times that I had ever gone around a corner and done the very same thing, I always would have just side-stepped without even looking at who I was sidestepping around, but not in that instance. For whatever reason, I stopped. Just forgot about everything.

You came around the corner too. You could just as easily sidestepped me as I was likely to sidestep you. Just keep on walking from point A to point B and never known that you were stepping around a once ina history timeless moment. You could have done the same thing as usual, but you looked right into my eyes that were looking right into your eyes. You and I. Two paths didn’t cross, they did not merge, they ran right into each other. Our eyes met and for me it was as though our futures collided so perfectly that they perfectly melded together.

That is when the timeless moment happened where my love that had been waiting found its heart. Right there in the middle of so much, you and I. Right there where no one ever expects to find love. You and I.

That is what it was from my perspective. There was me stuck in the middle of life that moved on day by day, hour by hour. Then there was there on the corner. You and I. That is my perspective on us meeting. I don’t know if that is the way you felt on that day. Looking into your eyes right there was looking into infinity. I knew what you would say, but I asked anyway. Conversation and laughter came as easily, but it was unnecessary. Everything That needed to be said could be said in a look, a smile, or a glance into each other’s eyes. From then on, every single day even when I have forget to say it, I still remember us. I still remember there. I still remember where. I remember the details. I remember the color of your hair as the sun touched a few strands, I remember the way the wind tossed it after you ran your fingers through it. I remember the smell of the market booths along the sides of the streets. I can remember the red dress that you wore swayed and danced in the breeze like flame around your legs. I can replay it in my head and count the number of times you blinked. I think I can even hear the sound of my breath leaving me as I saw you for the first time. But I can’t remember the time, just the timelessness of it.

Many years have come and gone, but that memory where you and I met and stepped forward from there together, I’ve not forgotten. After all these years together, you and I is still the sweetest memory—a memory that we are still making every day. A memory of joy and tears and pain and hope and laughter and love. A memory of life and forgiveness. A memory of you and I.

Commit to Hope

Could-be is always just a decision or two away; it just takes committing enough hope to it and opening yourself up to the disappointment of not getting it to the point where you reach for it with enough energy, focus, action to get it. Doubt, a form of fear, is one of the strongest producers of regret; it works to push away the convicting passion that will drive us into the arms of achievement. It separates us from our goals by weakening us to not go all-in for what we are wanting, and most all important things require an all-in or all-out attitude to ever be accomplished in full. So, in order to exchange could-be for is we must root out our doubt and commit fully to what we want in hope and effort until we have it. Double-minded is doubly ineffective. 




Kindle Fire B0061VVO5S

Goes Without Saying

It really should go without saying

The way I feel is difficult not to show
I thought the look in my eyes had told you so

I doubt I’m the only one here to see it
The way I feel about you is no secret

I thought it was as plain as day obvious
Thought you could see the spark between the two of us,
See the way I feel about you in every heartbeat,

And know the feeling is as strong as concrete

I kept the unspoken truth inside my chest

but the words I hid wouldn't let me rest

Everything I didn’t say, I’m telling you now

These feelings I have are grounded I can vow 

Now is the time to put these feelings into words

It's time to say what I thought your heart overheard

I'll speak it at the top of my lungs, shout it out

Make sure you know your the one I care about

I am as sure as sun for sure falling in love with you
I can’t for a single second stop thinking of you
You're a light feeling in my heart that sings aloud
You sing away all the darkness that I've found

It went without saying, but looking back I’m glad I said it

You may like these, Time is in the Way, The Life We Have if you liked this

Left Behind by Life

Life never passes anyone by—it begs us to run along with it—to be alive. But to truly live is to accept happiness and sadness, pain and joy, peace and fear and every other positive and negative that can fit into the experiences that make any person a living creature. To embrace life is to embrace an arm-full of all things that pertain to living—the good and the bad. For me, I wish my arms were only bigger and stronger to hug two arms-full worth of life. For others though, the small constant wound of not feeling and being those things is more tolerable than the stronger pains of gaining big and losing big. For some it’s better to never gain anything that can be lost than it is to lose what has been gained. Don’t force life to leave you behind—embrace it. After all, only the things worth dying for are the things worth living for.

Made to Fellowship

It’s easy to misplace the positive emphasis and influence that community, fellowship, and camaraderie should have on life behind the busy struggles for success.  It is so easy to get caught up in the up-hill battle for wealth or station or fame. But, the social strengths of the human mind is one of its greatest and most powerfully designed systems that facilitates in what is only recently scientifically understood as nearly an  integration of thoughts and emotions on levels of accurate attunement never before fathomed. It is undeniable that we are designed for communication of thought and emotion more so than any other creature. Through recently made available ways of analyzing brain regions during cognition within social settings, now more than ever, it’s clear—humans are social.

But the new understanding of the brain is a hollow, faceless fact that needs context and application to serve a purpose. There innumerable perspectives from which to think about the impact of having socially designed brains, but looking at it from a biblical vantage-point I believe is the most important place to look.

In a reading of The Word, it is not unclear that God’s direction and purpose always has been for people to be need and be needed by each other. It should not come to a surprise at all to discover that humans are designed to work in social settings. Very little of God’s Word is written directly to an individual. Most all of the scripture is geared to guiding and directing a body or group of people to work together in a harmony of love, will, and purpose in serving their creator. Only in a few instances did God ever direct individual people to do something, and in those cases the direction was usually given to a king or leader to direct a group of people. Think, David, Mosses. In cases like Abraham, God was thinking to the future of His People through Abraham and Sarah.

It would be easy to infer from just this observation that people are designed with the intention of working together. However, God did  not leave it up to us to infer His will in us relying on each other. No, many times has God revealed His will for us to fellowship with one another in His written Word.

--more to follow  

Greatness Thrust Upon Them?

Sometimes I get caught up in the idea that greatness is rooted in singular achievements, but lately I’ve been reconsidering that thought. To be great at anything is never an accident and it never happens all at once. Even in cases where all of a sudden someone is catapulted into the spotlight of success, a closer appraisal of their past always shows a field of preparation fully cultivated and prepared for the time of harvest, which is what is so easy to mistake for greatness. Greatness is actually the thousands of concerted, directed, thought out, and disciplined steps under a single-minded determination. Greatness never falls from the sky. The saying, "Be not afraid of greatness; some are born great, some achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them" by William Shakespeare, says that we can have greatness thrust upon us, as though not by anything we do ourselves.

As great as that quote is, it is not true. Even those who by chance are thrown into a set of circumstances which calls on them to become great can fail to be great. An opportunity to be great is nothing more than a big opportunity to fail unless the person called upon for greatness is able to measure up to the standard placed upon them. In other words, greatness will not be thrust upon anyone without crushing them unless they have already become acclimatized to the mental and physical stress of greatness. They must  have already planted greatness in themselves and completed the effort of cultivating it.

Think of musicians, it is not over night that virtuosity is learned; it takes an estimated ten-thousand hours. To build the world’s largest building is mostly the exact same procedure as it is to build a much smaller building, just more steps and preparation. Artists learn to paint for years and years before painting masterpieces.

So to be great means to, in a way, have tunnel-vision, to look and focus on one thing far away, and to take as many thousands of small steps as it takes to reach the goal. Greatness, then, is an endurance walk. It’s rarely a sprint or a run or a jump. It is one foot in front of the other over and over for as long as it takes. It sounds like long drudgery, but to see greatness from this perspective puts it within the reach of everyone. Everyone has the ability to take small deliberate steps towards greatness. Everyone can become truly great at what they want to.

What do you want to be great at? Start walking. You can.