Where is my toothbrush? Where is my black shirt? And, seriously? I didn't bring the right shoes. In fact, did I bring any shoes at all?
Traveling for my job has complicated my life. Not really, but it has made it exceedingly clear that efficient packing is definitely not within my strongest skill set. Forgetting one seemingly insignificant item can put a damper on a whole trip and it seems that somehow everywhere I go, I find a way to forget something just pertinent enough to inconvenience some aspect of the travel. I like to blame this on airport security and their crazy 3 oz. and ziploc baggy rule, but when I get real honest with myself I can't really blame them for forgetting such things as underwear or adequate form of identification.
Needless to say, the preparation for and the actuality of living out of a suitcase has sort of a glamorous and exciting sound to it, but in the thick of it, is rather taxing on all fronts: emotionally, physically, and organizationally.
Every morning while on the road, I awake and the schedule of the day immediatley looms over me like a heavy, daunting mist of chaos. But with each task accomplished throughout the day, it is a step closer to the end of the trip. A step closer to the goal -- accomplishing all the interactions and activities necessary to return home. Back to normalcy. Back to consistency. Back to familiarity. Knowing I am going home once I accomplish the goal of the trip makes the duties of the day that much more exceedingly easy to get through.
Thus, I have decided that living in such a transistory state -- suitcase living -- is largely metaphorical for the life we live here on earth.
We are told that this earth is not really our home in Scripture and we are basically just travelers and foreigners in this land. Each day and each task accomplished is a step closer to home. A step towards spending the rest of unchartered eternity of time with our Father.
When I'm on the road living out of my suitcase, the mentaility is one that is confident that this trip will come to an end. Never once when I was on the road did I ever find myself wondering if I was ever going home, it was an obvious given. Similarily, living as a traveler on this earth, I should never live my day to day life like I'm not sure whether or not I'm ever going to get to go home or place more precedence on the temporal location rather than the final. Signed, sealed, and delivered ... It's already a done deal where I'm headed. My tasks, my job, my friends, my relationships, and my day-to-day are not my final goal or destination. I'm just a traveler. Living out of a suitcase.
And seriously, I need a packing assistant.
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Failure.To.Act.
If there is one thing I am guilty of through and through, it is procrastination. I often pawn it off as the “journalistic technique” within me: wait until the last minute and then work like crazy under pressure to make the deadline. But, when I’m honest with myself, there is something deeper that is creating this pattern of delay. I find myself putting off things only to never complete them. Then upon realization that I failed to act on something that I knew clearly I probably should have, I attempt to take on more in order to neutralize the negative effects of not doing the previous thing. However, at that point, I am overwhelmed and begin procrastinating the new tasks and the vicious cycle continues! Consequently, the things that I know I want to do often never get done and the guilt levels rise to astronomic levels.
I am reminded of the Apostle Paul’s timeless lament:
“For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice!”
Essentially, Paul was describing the quandary that is my life and, unless you’re Jesus, probably yours too to an extent.
In our apple pie American culture, we are busy bodies. Every where we look – including our churches today – we are accosted by flashy … stuff! It seems like everything and everybody is trying to get our attention to transfer to their particular agenda. Buy this. Sell that. Say this. Don’t say that. Sign here. Try this. Eat that. Tap the Rockies, etc. Consequently, we take on the same mentality within ourselves in order to counteract what is going on in front of us. We create our own agendas and attempt to accomplish them often in our own strength. We may not even realize it, but we are constantly moving, constantly achieving, constantly looking for the next apple to bite. (Is that an expression? Whatever, it is now and probably worthy of an urbandictionary.com entry.) However, in the midst of all this fast-paced goal-attaining behavior, we often become desensitized to our Jesus-prescribed goal: Being the salt and light of the earth.
In a sermon I heard today at church, Michael (our pastor) reminded us that we do not have to somehow strive to become the “salt” and “light” of the world, we merely are. It is a state of being. A state of being the divine manifestation of God’s glory and splendor to the rest of the world. However, we can become useless (or unseasoned) salt by becoming tainted or defiled. For me, the primary mode in which I have been rendered “unseasoned” is this procrastination disorder I alluded to. I busy myself with activities that are in hindsight entirely inconsequential and neglect things and people that God has placed in my midst. I have been strongly confronted with the fact that while I can talk a great game of Christianity and faith, the implementation of said game has been weak at best in recent months.
In a more articulate fashion, Brennan Manning puts it this way:
“What we do about the lordship of Jesus is a better indication of our faith than what we think. This is what the world wants from our rhetoric, what the man of God longs for in a shepherd – someone daring enough to be different, humble enough to make mistakes, wild enough to be burned in the fire of love, real enough to make others see how phony we are.”
God’s glory and character is meant to be manifested to the world in a large part through His followers. So many of us – including myself – miss this because we are procrastinating doing what He has asked of us and instead remain preoccupied with our own manufactured so-called necessities of life. However, when it comes time to talk about our faith we can definitely project what we know is the right thing to articulate. But as we all know, we can all be well-rehearsed in the semantics of our faith and still fail to act.
I am reminded of the Apostle Paul’s timeless lament:
“For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice!”
Essentially, Paul was describing the quandary that is my life and, unless you’re Jesus, probably yours too to an extent.
In our apple pie American culture, we are busy bodies. Every where we look – including our churches today – we are accosted by flashy … stuff! It seems like everything and everybody is trying to get our attention to transfer to their particular agenda. Buy this. Sell that. Say this. Don’t say that. Sign here. Try this. Eat that. Tap the Rockies, etc. Consequently, we take on the same mentality within ourselves in order to counteract what is going on in front of us. We create our own agendas and attempt to accomplish them often in our own strength. We may not even realize it, but we are constantly moving, constantly achieving, constantly looking for the next apple to bite. (Is that an expression? Whatever, it is now and probably worthy of an urbandictionary.com entry.) However, in the midst of all this fast-paced goal-attaining behavior, we often become desensitized to our Jesus-prescribed goal: Being the salt and light of the earth.
In a sermon I heard today at church, Michael (our pastor) reminded us that we do not have to somehow strive to become the “salt” and “light” of the world, we merely are. It is a state of being. A state of being the divine manifestation of God’s glory and splendor to the rest of the world. However, we can become useless (or unseasoned) salt by becoming tainted or defiled. For me, the primary mode in which I have been rendered “unseasoned” is this procrastination disorder I alluded to. I busy myself with activities that are in hindsight entirely inconsequential and neglect things and people that God has placed in my midst. I have been strongly confronted with the fact that while I can talk a great game of Christianity and faith, the implementation of said game has been weak at best in recent months.
In a more articulate fashion, Brennan Manning puts it this way:
“What we do about the lordship of Jesus is a better indication of our faith than what we think. This is what the world wants from our rhetoric, what the man of God longs for in a shepherd – someone daring enough to be different, humble enough to make mistakes, wild enough to be burned in the fire of love, real enough to make others see how phony we are.”
God’s glory and character is meant to be manifested to the world in a large part through His followers. So many of us – including myself – miss this because we are procrastinating doing what He has asked of us and instead remain preoccupied with our own manufactured so-called necessities of life. However, when it comes time to talk about our faith we can definitely project what we know is the right thing to articulate. But as we all know, we can all be well-rehearsed in the semantics of our faith and still fail to act.
Friday, October 5, 2007
Finding Home ...
A quick trip back to Los Angeles, a long overdue read of Brennan Manning’s "Ragamuffin Gospel," a long run on the beach, and a good glass of wine has caused me to tackle the feat of breaking a long pause in my writing. So, with the break in the silence, I thought I would start this site up so that I would maybe actually stick to writing consistently again.
There is something about writing that keeps one honest and in tune with oneself. So, as much as I hate the term "blogging," (it sort of reminds of those ridiculous "pogs" that were somehow popular once) I’m jumping on the 21st Century bandwagon and blabbing off to the universe on an obscure web site. But, hey, who knows, someone might read this one day and say to themselves "wow, what a masterpiece!" or better yet, "wow, what a colossal waste of my time!" Either way, someone will have read it, and the blogging world is a better place because of it.
I moved to Colorado from LA about 10 months ago and since then a whirlwind of God inspired changes has wreaked havoc and joy on my life. Career, education, relationships, location, hobbies, friends, and even dog preferences were turned completely on its head from my short time that I have lived in this beautiful state. But, no matter how stretching, draining, confusing, and frustrating any of the changes that have taken place have been, my trip back to LA clearly confirmed that my move to Colorado was completely Divine. I really have known that all along, but visiting the smog-ridden, cluttered, suffocating city and coming face to face (literally) with some of my old so-felt "demons" confirmed it a hundred times over.
In a way, I kind of felt like getting on a plane to come home to a place that I loved was like giving the middle finger to a city that was emblematic of one of the most trying times in my life. I really have nothing against the city itself, but the memories and habits it evokes deserves "the bird." And by the way, sometimes I truly believe the only expression that is appropriate is the bird. But, for the sake of the airport ground workers, I did not flip off the city from the window of the plane. It was really more just of a mental gesture.
So, here I am in Colorado having the time of my life and I feel home. God has sincerely provided in all aspects of life here for me. Lately, however, I have been challenged to look inwardly for that feeling of "home" instead of mere physical location. I may be happy about where I live, but He has forced me to ask myself where am I really living in my heart, soul, and mind. Brennan Manning gives a beautiful perspective of this idea in his book I’m reading:
"In our society we have many homeless people sleeping not only on the streets, in shelters or in welfare hotels, but vagabonds who are in flight, who never come home to themselves … They have become strangers to themselves, people who have an address but are never at home, who never hear the voice of love or experience the freedom of God’s children."
I think Manning nails it here. There are so many of us that are such vagabonds in our hearts, souls, and minds never allowing love and grace to truly grant us freedom from ourselves. It’s so easy to enslave ourselves without realizing it with fears, insecurities, overly-analytical processing, and lofty stipulations, but what God offers us as His children is a HOME void of all those things. (I realize that all this sounds very Christian jargon-y, but it all just came out suddenly. Apologies.)
Regardless, I have a lot to learn on this particular subject and I’m looking forward to finishing Manning’s book. It feels good to be writing again. I just hope it doesn’t take another trip to LA, a book, a run, and wine to do the trick. I’m going to be broke if that is the case.
Also, I had written a title before I wrote this blurb and now I realize that I have gotten off on such a tangent that the title no longer makes sense. Changing it now.
Note to self: write title post writing the blog.
There is something about writing that keeps one honest and in tune with oneself. So, as much as I hate the term "blogging," (it sort of reminds of those ridiculous "pogs" that were somehow popular once) I’m jumping on the 21st Century bandwagon and blabbing off to the universe on an obscure web site. But, hey, who knows, someone might read this one day and say to themselves "wow, what a masterpiece!" or better yet, "wow, what a colossal waste of my time!" Either way, someone will have read it, and the blogging world is a better place because of it.
I moved to Colorado from LA about 10 months ago and since then a whirlwind of God inspired changes has wreaked havoc and joy on my life. Career, education, relationships, location, hobbies, friends, and even dog preferences were turned completely on its head from my short time that I have lived in this beautiful state. But, no matter how stretching, draining, confusing, and frustrating any of the changes that have taken place have been, my trip back to LA clearly confirmed that my move to Colorado was completely Divine. I really have known that all along, but visiting the smog-ridden, cluttered, suffocating city and coming face to face (literally) with some of my old so-felt "demons" confirmed it a hundred times over.
In a way, I kind of felt like getting on a plane to come home to a place that I loved was like giving the middle finger to a city that was emblematic of one of the most trying times in my life. I really have nothing against the city itself, but the memories and habits it evokes deserves "the bird." And by the way, sometimes I truly believe the only expression that is appropriate is the bird. But, for the sake of the airport ground workers, I did not flip off the city from the window of the plane. It was really more just of a mental gesture.
So, here I am in Colorado having the time of my life and I feel home. God has sincerely provided in all aspects of life here for me. Lately, however, I have been challenged to look inwardly for that feeling of "home" instead of mere physical location. I may be happy about where I live, but He has forced me to ask myself where am I really living in my heart, soul, and mind. Brennan Manning gives a beautiful perspective of this idea in his book I’m reading:
"In our society we have many homeless people sleeping not only on the streets, in shelters or in welfare hotels, but vagabonds who are in flight, who never come home to themselves … They have become strangers to themselves, people who have an address but are never at home, who never hear the voice of love or experience the freedom of God’s children."
I think Manning nails it here. There are so many of us that are such vagabonds in our hearts, souls, and minds never allowing love and grace to truly grant us freedom from ourselves. It’s so easy to enslave ourselves without realizing it with fears, insecurities, overly-analytical processing, and lofty stipulations, but what God offers us as His children is a HOME void of all those things. (I realize that all this sounds very Christian jargon-y, but it all just came out suddenly. Apologies.)
Regardless, I have a lot to learn on this particular subject and I’m looking forward to finishing Manning’s book. It feels good to be writing again. I just hope it doesn’t take another trip to LA, a book, a run, and wine to do the trick. I’m going to be broke if that is the case.
Also, I had written a title before I wrote this blurb and now I realize that I have gotten off on such a tangent that the title no longer makes sense. Changing it now.
Note to self: write title post writing the blog.
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