The Way of Being Lost

Cutting Loose

Sometimes from sorrow, for no reason,
you sing. For no reason, you accept
the way of being lost, cutting loose
from all else and electing a world
where you go where you want to.

Arbitrary, a sound comes, a reminder
that a steady center is holding
all else. If you listen, that sound
will tell you where it is and you
can slide your way past trouble.

Certain twisted monsters
always bar the path — but that’s when
you get going best, glad to be lost,
learning how real it is
here on earth, again and again.

—William Stafford, The Way It Is: New and Selected Poems

5 x 5 Method

Unseen Things

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.  ~Hebrews 11:1

So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.  ~2 Corinthians 4:18

Reboot

In the past week, two people have told me that they are leaving behind the world of self-employment and being their own boss.  In both cases, the combination of stress and lack of financial payoff were causing them to abandon their dreams or at least back-burner them for an indefinite length of time.

The cost of those dreams can outweigh the benefits.  The stress alone can kill you.  Tasks you thought you could manage alone get too time consuming to manage alone.  People can let you down.  Clients can be unreasonable.  Communication becomes a chore.  Everything takes longer than you thought and "setting your own schedule" becomes working 24/7.  Personal finances and business finances can get blurred.  It is rare that a body can juggle all that without incident.  Life IS surprises.  Life is all about plan B.  

The skill you love to do must be balanced with self-promotion and professional development.

And on and on...

So it is time for a reboot.

Unnecessary definition: That is computer vernacular for shutting down and starting over.  Information and programs get a fresh start up, a new running of the commands that make them perform- updates and deletions get reshuffled.  Inexplicable ghosts in the machine can be ironed out.  Sometimes that is just the trick.

Except this time it's your life.

You have more invested in that.  It feels catastrophic.  It feels like a failure.  Humbling...no, humiliating.

Yet on the other side of the reboot there is hope.  Realignment.  Restoration.  It could take time before you find 'normal" again.  You might never regain the same boldness that led you off on the road less traveled, or you might, depending on how you process the journey.  You have unlimited reboots, you don't have unlimited time.

Like a Shepherd

A shepherd (or a pastor) is a being who exists to gather the flock.  He is not the charismatic one, or the ultra gifted one.  He has a sensitivity for the lost, the broken, the lonely.  He is not the public speaker or the one at the center of attention- the vision-caster:  he is the wounded healer, the one with his eye toward the person on the fringe.  He sees the potential and longs to see it encouraged and fulfilled.  I keep saying "he" but it is just as likely to be a "she".  She is the person who remembers to pray, to send a note, to ask about what is happening since you last talked.  Walking like a shepherd is a calling.

Let Life Be An Adventure

"Quit living as if the purpose of life is to arrive safely at death. Set God-sized goals. Pursue God ordained passions. Go after a dream that is destined to fail without divine intervention. Keep asking questions. Keep making mistakes. Keep seeking God. Stop pointing out problems and become part of the solution. Stop repeating the past and start creating the future. Stop playing it safe and start taking risks. Expand your horizons. Accumulate experiences. Enjoy the journey." -Mark Batterson

I remember stumbling upon a nugget as I read "Your Money or Your Life" by  Vicki Robin and Joe Dominguez some years ago: "Some people in striving to make a living, forget to live.  They are, in truth, making a dying."

Lately, I have developed a desire to travel the world.  My wife and I have become fans of the travel shows introducing us to far away lands and stoked a wanderlust to explore and experience our world, different cultures and abandon our safe little bubble.  This is new.  I have had a below average curiosity for travel, it just seemed so frivolous.  Now I sense an adventure and growth to be had out there.

We are discovering new gifts that we wish to use and they allow us mobility; for myself it is writing, for my wife, it is photography.  For both of us, ministry and serving others is drawing us out as well.

It is one thing to be talking and dreaming about adventures, it is quite another to hop over the back fence with a knapsack and kick off like a vagabond, taking the journey literally.  Time will tell if wanderlust become real travel or just a mild case of tourism.

A Normal Life

Look into her eyes for a moment.  Look for her soul.  Can you see the pain?  Can you imagine her day at school?  Can you hear her asking "Why me, God?"

I feel bad for people who have skin conditions, burn scars, birthmarks, odd body shapes, deformities, etc. Because no matter what the character of the human being we all naturally flinch inwardly, react badly, and feel uncomfortable around them, and make a judgement based on appearances. I don't know if it can be helped, frankly, and I know that they can pick that up (I pick up attitudes and judgements people make about my weight). It makes no difference how many times others say, "Oh beauty is on the inside" -but if we are honest, we must admit that how people respond to us (involuntarily or not) has an impact on our image, value and eventually on our character (as we learn to cope with the rejection). It is something like the saying, "sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me," which is totally false. No matter how bold a face we put on it, most of us would rather be stoned to death than endure the cumulative effects of unkind words we have suffered in this life.

Let's face it. Unless you are physically standard (not making others uncomfortable) you will be bullied, made to feel ugly, awkward and in general, made to feel unwelcomed. It doesn't matter if the message comes from a the barrage of beautiful people in the media or from the annoying kid who sits behind you on the school bus. No amount of repeating "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder" can undo the suffering that one endures mentally and that makes them an easy mark for someone looking to score a laugh at other's expense. I wish I could wave a magic wand and make everyone look "normal" so they could live a less painful life.  I wish I could change that human shallowness that has us treat some people as less worthy because of exterior factors.

I hope someday medical technology will allow and humanity will realize that no one should have to suffer that anguish.

Greater Than/Less Than = Equality

Our Constitution claims that all men are created equal.  I am going to push back on that a bit and say that all people are NOT created equal. A woman is not as physically strong as a man, A beautiful person is always given preferential treatment over an ugly person, a fit person is preferred over a fat person, Culture and race can create inequality because of different values and morals, physical strengths and weaknesses. susceptibility to illnesses   We are not all born into ideal situations, not all of our parents value education the same,  If everyone was created equal, everyone would get A's in math, science and language arts in school.  For some people living seems to come easy for them.  For others, life is a constant struggle.  We are all equally dependent on others, whether we admit it or not.yet our efforts to level the playing field often miss the mark.  It has been said that, "There is nothing more unequal that our equal treatment of unequal people."


I see efforts to lift others up as decent, courteous, kind and in every man's best interest.  It's not someone else's right to get something from me because they lack it, but if it is in my power to help someone and I don't, then what kind of person am I?
I am not suggesting that everyone has the same meal, the same car, the same house, but that everyone has the opportunity to earn those things.  That everyone has the chance to eat nutritional food and drink clean water and have access to medical care and the freedom to own a home and work a job and benefit from the toil of their own hands.  Justice cannot occur without freedom, so the first step is to ensure that all people have freedom.  Opportunity and peace will follow when freedom brings justice.

Justice is not something that comes from laws and governments, it must come from our hearts.  Rules cannot change the heart.  Selfish hearts cannot bring around equality.  We must love justice enough to lift up one another.  When one person is lifted up all of humanity is lifted up.

Integrity looks like

Maybe it is a midlife crisis, maybe it is traveling an old familiar road and encountering the remains of a few burned bridges, but I find myself examining my life and realizing my actions have not always aligned with my beliefs or my words.  Integrity, like trust, it is a difficult fence to mend.  Integrity is a consistent pattern of ethical actions based on a observable moral code.  The only way to fix inconsistency is with a new track record of honest and habitual behavior that shows you have made a change- that takes time.  Failure in integrity comes when we take short-cuts, show preferential treatment (usually to ourselves) and employ situational ethics to justify avoiding a hard decision.

It takes wisdom to walk away from a temptation.  It takes courage to do the right thing and say no to the easy short-cut.  There is dignity if we will stick to our values and let our life speak that we know who we are in honest integrity.

Image Management

I wish politicians could see how transparent their efforts are to everyone watching

But then, they aren't the only ones trying to manage how others see them, are they?

All of our lies, all of our character assassination is centered on the hopes that it will make us look better, to spin or justify ourselves.  We do this so regularly that it has become a part of our national character.  It is the way of political discourse, the basis for "gotcha journalism", it is part and parcel of advertising, common practice of ladder-climbers in the business world.  More personally, we do this through the way we manicure our lawns, how we dress and the car we choose to drive. The blame, excuses and outright sales job that massages our opinions only fool some of the people some of the time- mostly those who WANT to believe what they are being told.

We make victims of ourselves by denying our shortcomings, blaming others and/or resorting to verbal arsonism to tear down others.  We are not morally tall enough to stand on our own feet so we stand on the backs of whoever may be convenient.

Integrity means that our thoughts, our words and our actions are in alignment with each other.  If you feel guilt as you read this, as I do, that is an acknowledgement that our hands are not clean and we have chose image management over honesty.  To clear our conscious, we can make a list of any offenses we remember and write how to handle it honestly next time.  To make amends we should go to who we offended and confess, ask forgiveness and make amends as much as possible.

Letting the facts speak for themselves requires maturity.  Angling for a position that makes you look good at the another's expense costs us our self-respect and makes us appear desperate.

Integrity

Living true to yourself is living with integrity, that means your thoughts, words and actions are in harmony with each other.  Not that you live by some unteachable spirit, but when your thoughts and beliefs change, your words and most importantly, your actions change to match.

It is easy to think a thought to recognize an idea as noble, and it is easy to espouse an ideal, people do this all the time.  The TEST comes in applying the thoughts and words in action.

One can rant about the government or place of employment at will but when it comes to producing change: will we act?  Will we go beyond our words by running for office or leading a protest?  Would we sacrifice our security by talking to our boss- or even quitting?

Yet this is the essence of integrity.  It starts by thinking honorable and right thoughts.  Left to my own devices, these would be ultimately selfish thoughts.  Because of my faith, I have guidelines laid out by God to give me a plumbline.  I can see that His thoughts are higher than my thoughts and his ways higher than my ways through the narrative of the Bible.  I don't understand much of it, but the parts I do understand are enough to keep me busy the rest of my life.

I have an over-developed sense of justice that borderlines on desire to see things be "fair" (or at least my idea of fair).  In the small short view of a human, that is bound to make me dissatisfied.  I "major in the minors" like politics, materialism, career, building a legacy for myself.  I rant quite a bit about these things when others seem to be working against me (Yes, even God).  So integrity starts in choosing my direction and my battles.  Over-arching themes of faith, simplicity, service, truth, and a belief that something of God lives in all of us, this creates a cognitive structure or ideal, that encapsulates our life scheme.  We already have one of these we have developed over the years, but the components can sometimes conflict (e.g. we believe all life is sacred, but we also carry a gun for protection, or believe in abortion as a right).  These conflicts create tension or cognitive dissonance in our mind which we work to justify using mental gymnastics.  First our thoughts must co-exist peacefully before they become words.

Our words, they are many, and more than our actions, which is a problem.  I sometimes allow my words to compose my thoughts (putting the cart before the horse, so to speak).  Oh, we do love to hear ourselves speak!  At times we can barely wait for another to stop speaking so we can unleash our words.  Often we turn the subject towards ourselves- check yourself in this- you might be surprised.  Our words want to direct us in selfish ways- "out of the heart the mouth speaks" and our heart is often all about us.

The courage to act is the true test of all our thoughts and words.

The Four Agreements