oldies radio stations

authority breeds oppression. power breeds abuse. love breeds lust. friendship breeds dependency. confidence breeds pride. how much i desire a contraceptive for evil, this thing we call depravity. to rule justly; to love purely; to stand tall humbly-- all three seemingly oxymoronic on many occasions.
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this road to holiness sometimes seems more like a road to perdition but i'm reminded that his scemes are temporary and the journey rarely matches the destination. the journey is often sufficating... tunnel vision comes to mind...

...i can't help but recall those family road trips to michigan, traveling in the van with the invisible line between my brother and i. we didn't have gameboy and dvd players that attatched to the back of the seat. individual headsets? right... maybe we'd "share" a walkman radio but for the most part i spend my time memorizing the "oldies 104.3" jingle. you can hear it now...or at least i can. and like all other things meantioned earlier (not the same at all), this "family bonding time" breads, what i'd like to call, "at risk creativity".

to give an example... one form of creativity includes a mock kidnapping of my henrietta doll (yes i named her that) and a launching her out the window. how do i respond? by shrieking, "i wanna go home!" over and over again for aproximately 20 minutes. was that going to change anything? no... not really but home seemed closer than michigan plus there was some satisfation achieved through flooding the van with my screams even if it was to merely drown out the beach boys and the four seasons for a moment. that invisible line in the van created a wall that saved me from many things... but also equivoquely damned me: after all it was invisible.

hopefully that story was somewhat entertaining because i don't know how much it really connects to my point. i guess, presently i often feel like i'm in the van again screaming things out like, "i wanna go home" as it seems closer than the destination... in all actuality it might be. oh do my screams resound; the only difference is, i'm not sure what they are drowning out. i'm pretty sure it isn't the beach boys or the 4 seasons. one thing i'm sure of though-- i'm glad i'm not driving. if i were i might have turned around finding myself still without my henrietta doll and without a vacation to boot.

rod stewart's enterprise

oprah tells me to "turn wounds into wisdom". confucius says...."by three methods we may learn wisdom: first, by reflection, which is noblest; second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest." while good ol' st. augustine reminds me that "patience is the companion of wisdom".

who said, "ignorance is bliss"? i'm pretty sure they weren't far off. while i try ferverently to turn wounds into wisdom, i realize how much i really don't know... how much i'm not aware. i'm discovering more and more that awareness is a difficult and painful thing. still there is something in me that won't settle for bliss: this yearning for wisdom.

case and point: a friend tells me... "every six months i look back at were i was six months prior and realize how clueless i was." the funniest thing about it is that she couldn't have done anything about her cluelessness. can you picture it... well i think i'm going to go out and find some wisdom today. i'm going to figure out what is going to own my life for the next six months before hand so that i can prevent it from happening. no, rod stewart isn't singing "i'm glad that i knew what i know now when i was younger". it just doen't work that way. sometimes i ask the question: why the why the h-e not?

even though i see glimpses of how much i'm clueless about right now i can't seem to make myself wiser. i notice things about the way i am and say, "wow that is totally wrong thinking" but when those brief moments escape me i continue to think that way. i wish that i could tap more into what confucius say is the noblest and easiest ways to learn wisdom: reflection and imitation. instead i consantly turn to the bitterness of experience.

the bitterness doesn't only exist in the experience but in the reflection on that experience when phrases enter the mind like... "that was completely wrong advice" or "wow, was i judging that person ignorantly or what?"... or the pride demolishing "i'm wrong a lot more than i think i am". these phrases have been making so many guest appearances in my mind lately that they've seemed to signed a contract and become stars of the show for the next three seasons. i've got a hunch that there isn't going to be a season finale or even a last episode... and a lot of me doens't want there to be one.

it is true... socrates is right... of course he is. i know nothing really but i'm going to keep trying to learn something. in that i realize even more how much i don't know. it sounds defeating, doesn't it? yes and no because i do know something more than i did six months ago. knowledge and wisdom are very different things... which do you chose? most likely it isn't about chosing one or the other. for now James 1:5-7 sounds like a good place to start.

"the only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing." ----socrates

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"why are you so petrified of silence? here. can you handel this?"

church services, libraries, crowded coffee shops... how revolutionary to find a peace and a quiet in all of them. how refreshing it has been to hear His voice and for some of the first times in life not be afraid of having nothing to do, not insisting on calling every name on the nokia contact list in attempt to fulfill a hunger for business.

in the midst of this peace and quiet lingers discovery, revelation. discovery of His voice, His love, His grace. revelation that while noise assists giving it also inhibits recieving. the balance remains in question. the quiet brought forth the unexpected this day.... a meditation, a conversation, a book, a slow awareness that this life an everything in it is Someone Else's.

cabinning in the woods may have begun prematurely... that's quite alright.

broken records and leftovers

the broken record plays its familiar songs of "abundant life", being "doers of the word" or how about "finding my identity in Christ". Last time I esablished that I will not be fixing the broken record. But there is hope... prayer! imagine that...

And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and know this love that surpasses knowledge--that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. ~Ephesians 3:17-19,

...i wonder how different we would live our lives if we really grasped how high and deep and long and high the love of Christ was. we would probably stop giving him the leftover minutes in our day... we might not be so self absorbed... we would probably finally realize that he came in order for to have life abundantly instead of the half-life we settle for...

i'm well aware of my leftover sacrifices, my inward magnet and my half-life. yet the record plays, broken, repetitive and often very loud and theres really nothing I can do about it. or is there...

I notice that Paul doesn't yell at the Ephesian telling them to "get it". No he "pray[s] that [we], being rooted and established in love, may have power". interesting how prayer seems to be the answer to my limited understanding... amazing...

while my leftover sacrifices, my inward magnet and my half-life would prabably change if i grasped His love for me, i also know that His love surpasses understanding. the only way that i will grasp it is if Jesus performs some heart surgery on me, gives me a heart like mary, breaking my alabaster jar at his feet instead of my glass of water...

time to do some waiting...

"quick fix"

have you ever tried to fix something major on your car when you haven't even looked at the instruction manuel or taken a mechanics class? what about your computer? as inconvenient, tedious or even painful it may be, instead it is much wiser to call the bodyshop or phone technical support lines, the car is brought in, the computer is sent away and if lucky, the warranty covers the repair charges. But hey, if it's not covered, at least its put into the hands of someone who knows what the heck they are doing.

i think about mary jane, she was 3,000 miles over due on her oil change... way to go ek! why i didn't just bring her in, i'm clueless... maybe it was inconvenience, lack of time, just plain laziness??? She was okay when i finally brought her in. next time... maybe not.

then i think of my computer... we'll call him sigmund for now. sigmund's keyboard doesn't even have the forth letter of his name, "m" because it broke off, probably when i was trying to fix it. amazing how that works... but you better believe that i tried again and again to fix it until it was beyond repair. now i sit and settle for the "m"-less keyboard that yes, i broke but managed to break even more by trying to fix it. funny how i could bring just bring or send it to someone who actually knows how to fix it, maybe even free of charge, but..... i don't.

this sounds all to familiar... me breaking things and well... breaking them more by trying to fix them and put them back together. i could much more "easily" bring them to the One who knows how to fix them. Unlike with cars and computers, i don't know how things i ask Him to fix will look like when he's done. chances are much better than what i imagine. i'm realizing that instead of spending my time ferverently trying to fix things i don't know how to fix, maybe i should spend my time reading the Instruction Manuel or by getting in better contact with the One, who knows what He's doing.

wait there's that voice, "But I can fix it!" no, no you can't. nice try though. someday i'll learn.

half thoughts

"i beg you... to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. don't search for the answers, which could not be given you now, because you would not be able to live them. and the point is, to live perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer." -- rainer maria rilke

i've been trying to use every key to unlock those rooms and have been reading these foreign texts in attempt to move to translate the language into my own. he is the key. he is the translator. many half thoughts and answers have come about from februaary to march. while trying to figure out the other half of the thought and the other half of the answer it has been easy to miss as he's whispering it to me. i didn't hear the whisper, so he has chosen to shout. thank you for shouting sometimes when i refuse to hear. i want to refuse no longer. the wind storm has come. the earthquake has shaken. the fire has burnt (and refined) time to listen for the whisper. time to live my way into the answer, without noticing. time to stop searching for answers and start searching for you. and time to start waiting.