The concept speaks to a number of situations. It's a common adage that applies to the idea of keeping on moving forward in life, whether in a specific situation or in general. In the world of modeling, it's a tip they give you while walking the catwalk, because the motion of placing one foot directly in front of the other keeps your line straight and also makes the hips swing. In a worst case scenario, you walk the white line, one foot in front of the other, to prove to the nice man in the badge that you are not, in fact, drunk. :)
It's not that I had any particularly profound thought on this phrase, other than its connotations of propelling oneself forward through difficulty, but it made me think of the many situations where the same phrase could mean such dramatically different things. Does it mean perseverance? Looking sexy? NOT looking intoxicated? Will it get you arrested, or famous, or just to tomorrow?
Whether it is the subtly shaded meanings of a phrase, or teasing out the honest truth behind the most common of words, our lives are full of opportunities for taking chances, putting ourselves out there and seeing what it's all about. What does it all mean?
Why are we here??
Do you want the secret to life? Here it is, listen closely...fall in love with one thing every day. Passionately. Doesn't matter what it is. Could be a person, a picture, a color, a smell. Love it passionately, experience the amazing feeling of loving something, and then do that everyday. We were created for the purpose of love. I think living out our greater purpose makes life so much more than it could be otherwise.
When we spend each day putting one foot in front of the other, eyes fixed squarely on love, the words themselves fade to grey and what appears instead is the brightly illuminated joy of living in concert with our own being. We live, each step pushing us forward, hips swaying, intoxicated with the heady fragrance of peace. We immerse ourselves in what is created, and in the One who created it, and we become all the words, all the phrases, all the meanings...because we have chosen to walk, one foot in front of the other, squarely into the arms of I AM.
Friday, June 25, 2010
Monday, June 21, 2010
God is a bringer.
No one shoot me for my choice of grammar in the headline. I'm not even sure "bringer" is a word technically, but for my own purposes it is for the moment. A bringer. One who brings.
God is a wise God, beyond all other superlatives we might assign Him. His wisdom is born of love, a desire to see us brought to our potential in Him. There's the bringing thing. He is not one to force a point or to cause a ruckus to make something manifest. Not that He's beyond doing something big...that's not the point. The point is that He never uses the big thing He does to drive you to do something. He simply lets the truth be manifest in the fullness of a situation and lets you take it from there. He never forces, He woos...He brings. He brings us to the truth. He brings us in to His heart. He brings us to Himself. Never drags, never takes. Brings. Allures. Moment to moment, He gives us glimpses of something that is indefinable, beyond the connotations that the word "eternity" confers, because it's so much more than that. The love of God is more than the love we know from person to person. God's love is the very thing that binds the universe together. It IS. In the really big sense of the word.
I have been able as of late to perceive God's way of bringing me to truth in a million little ways. He knows that I'm too simple to have it blasted at me. I need to see it revealed, bit by bit, to understand the immensity of it.
Everything is perfect. It's hard, so, so hard, to understand that. We think of sin and evil and say, well, of course it's not perfect. Humanity certainly isn't. In the hands of God, however, everything is perfect. He knows the ending and works it all out. Perfect. In our weakness He is made strong. Perfect. We sin and He triumphs because of it. Perfect. One great day this will all make perfect sense to us, but for now we have our faith, and it's perfect. Just the way He intended it to be. Bringing us to Him, moment by moment, a graceful dance choreographed by a God whose love is so immense that He had to create dancers just so someone could watch the moves and be amazed.
God is a wise God, beyond all other superlatives we might assign Him. His wisdom is born of love, a desire to see us brought to our potential in Him. There's the bringing thing. He is not one to force a point or to cause a ruckus to make something manifest. Not that He's beyond doing something big...that's not the point. The point is that He never uses the big thing He does to drive you to do something. He simply lets the truth be manifest in the fullness of a situation and lets you take it from there. He never forces, He woos...He brings. He brings us to the truth. He brings us in to His heart. He brings us to Himself. Never drags, never takes. Brings. Allures. Moment to moment, He gives us glimpses of something that is indefinable, beyond the connotations that the word "eternity" confers, because it's so much more than that. The love of God is more than the love we know from person to person. God's love is the very thing that binds the universe together. It IS. In the really big sense of the word.
I have been able as of late to perceive God's way of bringing me to truth in a million little ways. He knows that I'm too simple to have it blasted at me. I need to see it revealed, bit by bit, to understand the immensity of it.
Everything is perfect. It's hard, so, so hard, to understand that. We think of sin and evil and say, well, of course it's not perfect. Humanity certainly isn't. In the hands of God, however, everything is perfect. He knows the ending and works it all out. Perfect. In our weakness He is made strong. Perfect. We sin and He triumphs because of it. Perfect. One great day this will all make perfect sense to us, but for now we have our faith, and it's perfect. Just the way He intended it to be. Bringing us to Him, moment by moment, a graceful dance choreographed by a God whose love is so immense that He had to create dancers just so someone could watch the moves and be amazed.
Father's Day
Today at Mass we said a prayer for all the departed fathers. That was good.
We all lose things in this life...some losses greater than others. From the void created by those things that leave us can spring up strength, passion, fortitude, and, sometimes, even peace.
I was reminded of a blog entry I wrote on my old Xanga when Daddy died. For some reason I remember writing this better than I even remember his funeral.
Written March 27, 2006
54 degrees, and partly cloudy.
At least that is what the weather channel said, matter-of-fact meteorological observations that seemed to be a strange headline for this little tableau. I sat quietly beside my father, now a drying husk rasping for uneven breaths, holding his hand and feeling a peculiar still smallness in the moment.
I have a soul that is hard as steel. I am the one people turn to in crisis, the lee of the stone, the one who will not bend in tempests. It is amazing how something so small as a whispered request can take the iron resolve of one and break it cleanly. My father's little gravel voice came to me and asked me to give him a kiss. I did, holding him close to me in my arms. It was the first time I think my father ever asked me to kiss him in the entirety of my life. It will be the last.
I wept bitterly at times over the last two days, periodically allowing myself to experience moments of grief, knowing without really knowing the empty that is coming. The first time I have to clean a room where my father's things will remain in his stead, shirts and knick knacks, his shampoo and electric razor. They will remind me of the fact that he will never again have need of them in this place.
There is an echo that lingers after a person dies, a hollow sound in a room once filled with them. I can hear it already in my mind, feel the unoccupied space like the vibrations of a television in an empty room.
My daddy called me Pete. Somehow it's the only part of me that ever made sense.
We all lose things in this life...some losses greater than others. From the void created by those things that leave us can spring up strength, passion, fortitude, and, sometimes, even peace.
I was reminded of a blog entry I wrote on my old Xanga when Daddy died. For some reason I remember writing this better than I even remember his funeral.
Written March 27, 2006
54 degrees, and partly cloudy.
At least that is what the weather channel said, matter-of-fact meteorological observations that seemed to be a strange headline for this little tableau. I sat quietly beside my father, now a drying husk rasping for uneven breaths, holding his hand and feeling a peculiar still smallness in the moment.
I have a soul that is hard as steel. I am the one people turn to in crisis, the lee of the stone, the one who will not bend in tempests. It is amazing how something so small as a whispered request can take the iron resolve of one and break it cleanly. My father's little gravel voice came to me and asked me to give him a kiss. I did, holding him close to me in my arms. It was the first time I think my father ever asked me to kiss him in the entirety of my life. It will be the last.
I wept bitterly at times over the last two days, periodically allowing myself to experience moments of grief, knowing without really knowing the empty that is coming. The first time I have to clean a room where my father's things will remain in his stead, shirts and knick knacks, his shampoo and electric razor. They will remind me of the fact that he will never again have need of them in this place.
There is an echo that lingers after a person dies, a hollow sound in a room once filled with them. I can hear it already in my mind, feel the unoccupied space like the vibrations of a television in an empty room.
My daddy called me Pete. Somehow it's the only part of me that ever made sense.
Saturday, June 19, 2010
To hope, perchance to sleep...or maybe not.
Insomnia is a flat-out demon from Hell itself. It is also, on occasion, a blessing. The constant, wearing fatigue is always with you, but the quiet in the night when all the world sleeps is also the only alone time I ever really have. I chat with friends, read, spend time in prayer (unfortunately not as much of this as I should). It's a high price to pay for solitude.
There is a beautiful cacophony in the slumber of others. I hear my dog snore occasionally. As I write this, a fly is dying somewhere in my kitchen...I hear the intermittent angry buzzing of an insect whose flight has failed. The condenser coil of the refrigerator kicks on with a metallic shudder. I peek into my daughter's room to hear her heavy, measured breathing. Between these notes of nighttime is a lovely, booming quiet. Do you know that sound...the quiet so profound as to be almost tangible? I like to close my eyes and feel the sounds, the buzz of the fly and the snoring dog and the crickets outside and the adolescent dream-sighs and the silence. It's thick like a blanket, almost rough on the back of your neck.
During the nights I cannot sleep, the blanket-quiet smothers me, letting my mind race in the soundless spaces. At other times it is almost a welcome friend, absorbing me into a place where the random din of life after dark is a familiar comfort.
I want to sleep, and the angry dying fly is nearing its own. I will sink into the pillow, imagine blue sky melting into blue water, and count the cadence of the waves. Perhaps I can float into the tidewaters of a pleasant dream.
There is a beautiful cacophony in the slumber of others. I hear my dog snore occasionally. As I write this, a fly is dying somewhere in my kitchen...I hear the intermittent angry buzzing of an insect whose flight has failed. The condenser coil of the refrigerator kicks on with a metallic shudder. I peek into my daughter's room to hear her heavy, measured breathing. Between these notes of nighttime is a lovely, booming quiet. Do you know that sound...the quiet so profound as to be almost tangible? I like to close my eyes and feel the sounds, the buzz of the fly and the snoring dog and the crickets outside and the adolescent dream-sighs and the silence. It's thick like a blanket, almost rough on the back of your neck.
During the nights I cannot sleep, the blanket-quiet smothers me, letting my mind race in the soundless spaces. At other times it is almost a welcome friend, absorbing me into a place where the random din of life after dark is a familiar comfort.
I want to sleep, and the angry dying fly is nearing its own. I will sink into the pillow, imagine blue sky melting into blue water, and count the cadence of the waves. Perhaps I can float into the tidewaters of a pleasant dream.
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
The thought that prompted the blog relocation, and other stuff.
Well, the thought that really prompted the blog relocation is "tumblr kinda sucks," but that really wasn't what I was referring to in this particular instance. :)
For those of you know know me reasonably well, you know that I have arthritis. Over the last year or two it has gotten to be quite bad, making the use of my hands and wrists difficult on occasion. Especially after my car accident, my knees are in horrible shape. The twinges of pain that I get have become a little prompting to me to give them to God as an offering. This thought led me to a reflection on pain that I had read recently, which also included the pains of the psyche. Like the little engine that could, the ole brain started chugging along that path, thinking of my various failures and repeated sins, and I thought, briefly, "I really struggle with that." Then it hit me, and I stopped.
I struggle.
Well, doofus, the Spirit says. That's your problem right there.
When it comes down to it, our basic failures in this life all come down to pride. I know best. I can do it. I don't need help. A litany of I's and me's that end in a sentence with no punctuation. No matter what particular area of life we are currently addressing, pride cuts a swath through pretty much all of it.
I thought about the areas of my life where I see the most room for improvement, the things about myself I would like to see grow in the spiritual life, the rough edges that need polish. It occurred to me that the reason that I seem to fail at most of these endeavours is because I think I am the one who can fix them.
One thing that I have learned in the last year is that our relationship with God is meant to be filial and is ordered toward one thing: joy. My repeated faceplants in life haven't brought me any joy, to be certain. What can bring me joy is to take the hand of my Father, giving Him the small soft smile of a little girl, and ask Him to fix the boo boos. He will do it, with delight. He begs us over and over to ask Him for help, to let Him do things for us, because He can. What seems like a strong character trait in determined self-reliance is, instead, an obstinate denial of allowing God to do what He desires. I mean, do we really think about it like this? 'Yeah, God, I know You want to help me and all, but really, I got this.' Of course not. But that is, in essence, exactly what we are saying.
I can't fix my faults. I can't fix anything. My hands are tired, and they ache, and my grip is weakening by the day. I limp along on a knee that burns when the nerves fire. Despite all this, though, if I simply look to Abba, Daddy, and say, please Daddy, fix it...He will give me all the adoring smiles He can, kiss the top of my head, and make it all better. Will the scar go away? No, that is part of what it is to be human. But the wound will heal, and in its place will be a little teardrop-shaped reminder of how I was once broken, but Daddy put me back together.
Our heart scars are kisses from Jesus.
I am my Father's daughter, and, praised be God, my struggles were never mine to begin with. I emerge from them as from quicksand, only by relinquishing the fight and reaching out for the open hand that will take me safely home.
For those of you know know me reasonably well, you know that I have arthritis. Over the last year or two it has gotten to be quite bad, making the use of my hands and wrists difficult on occasion. Especially after my car accident, my knees are in horrible shape. The twinges of pain that I get have become a little prompting to me to give them to God as an offering. This thought led me to a reflection on pain that I had read recently, which also included the pains of the psyche. Like the little engine that could, the ole brain started chugging along that path, thinking of my various failures and repeated sins, and I thought, briefly, "I really struggle with that." Then it hit me, and I stopped.
I struggle.
Well, doofus, the Spirit says. That's your problem right there.
When it comes down to it, our basic failures in this life all come down to pride. I know best. I can do it. I don't need help. A litany of I's and me's that end in a sentence with no punctuation. No matter what particular area of life we are currently addressing, pride cuts a swath through pretty much all of it.
I thought about the areas of my life where I see the most room for improvement, the things about myself I would like to see grow in the spiritual life, the rough edges that need polish. It occurred to me that the reason that I seem to fail at most of these endeavours is because I think I am the one who can fix them.
One thing that I have learned in the last year is that our relationship with God is meant to be filial and is ordered toward one thing: joy. My repeated faceplants in life haven't brought me any joy, to be certain. What can bring me joy is to take the hand of my Father, giving Him the small soft smile of a little girl, and ask Him to fix the boo boos. He will do it, with delight. He begs us over and over to ask Him for help, to let Him do things for us, because He can. What seems like a strong character trait in determined self-reliance is, instead, an obstinate denial of allowing God to do what He desires. I mean, do we really think about it like this? 'Yeah, God, I know You want to help me and all, but really, I got this.' Of course not. But that is, in essence, exactly what we are saying.
I can't fix my faults. I can't fix anything. My hands are tired, and they ache, and my grip is weakening by the day. I limp along on a knee that burns when the nerves fire. Despite all this, though, if I simply look to Abba, Daddy, and say, please Daddy, fix it...He will give me all the adoring smiles He can, kiss the top of my head, and make it all better. Will the scar go away? No, that is part of what it is to be human. But the wound will heal, and in its place will be a little teardrop-shaped reminder of how I was once broken, but Daddy put me back together.
Our heart scars are kisses from Jesus.
I am my Father's daughter, and, praised be God, my struggles were never mine to begin with. I emerge from them as from quicksand, only by relinquishing the fight and reaching out for the open hand that will take me safely home.
So I moved my blog.
The tumblr blog that I had was kinda pointless, because no one could comment on it. I enjoy learning what people think, so that format didn't do so great for me. I am not planning on reposting what I had over there unless something is specifically requested. Anywho, here I am now, and you can feel free to comment away. :)
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