Believing a Better Story

"He is the 'Other' who is searching for you.

he has always been searching for you.

And you, too, are looking for the 'Other',

even when-and it often happens-you feel you are

doing something quite different."

-The God Who Comes, Carlo Carretto

I find it hard to deal with myself in certain moments when I become one of those people who are annoyed by life. One of those who let a negative story of unwanted circumstances dominate their life. Here, all I see is the negative. I have reason to complain about something at any moment. 

The first thing I bring up in a casual conversation?

-How bad traffic was.

-How a coworker really ticked me off.

-How that same coworker "ruined" my day.

-How annoyed I am at my car.

-How annoyed I am at my neighbor.

-How annoyed I am at my beard, or my dogs or how cold it is outside.

-How irritated I am at my past, present and future.

It looks as if I really have nothing I enjoy in life. I find excitement, joy, pleasure, fun, contentment in nothing. For even in the absence of my complaining (if everything's going okay), I'm still not happy.

Even as I'm scribbling this all down though, I realize how overanalyzing my complaints is making me think negatively about my own negativity! Dangit... May I have more grace for myself, and for the complainers in this world. 

...

We create the stories we live in.  Stories of defeat. Stories of hope. Stories of overwhelming circumstances. Stories of resilience. Will I be present to the present, opening myself up to the invisible moments full of connection, goodness, love, hope and deep meaningful belonging?

The answer to how we are doing may have a lot more to do with how we are believing and telling our story than with how the actual events of the story are unfolding...

Therefore, may you believe a better story. 

And may you begin to tell it well.

The Dawn of Becoming

...You know that feeling you get sometimes between like 5:30-6:00 in the morning?

The feeling you get when everything is on the brink of awakening. Everything is still asleep, yet on the outskirts of dawning--of becoming. There's this great, yet subtle, deep stirring of anticipation.

The day is coming.

It's just begun.

Anything is possible.

Something great is awaiting you.

"The opportunity of a lifetime must be seized within the lifetime of the opportunity."
-Leonard Ravenhill

May you awaken to the dawn of something new.
May you step out onto the journey of becoming.

You were meant for more.
You will be made into more.
You are more.

2011 Goals

Get a Mustard Tree tattoo

Secure a summer job

Choose a Graduate Counseling Program for Fall 2012

Work out consistently

Participate in the Church calendar seasons (specifically Lent)

Pray the Hours consistently

WRITE more; Write the Story of My Life

Read more; Before buying another book, read the majority of what I already have

Learn a song on the piano

Explore more creative outlets

Sing more

Allow this list to be fluid. Trying to maintain consistency, while understanding that new adventures may be added, and some deleted.

For times of longing in the midst of your Plan B

"...You have seen my affliction, you have known the distress of my soul." Ps. 31:7-8

I know I've been better than I am. But I know I can be better than I've been. I now put my trust in you...even when "...my life is spent with sorrow, and my years with sighing."

My pastor once said, "God cares more about your character than He does your comfort." I've been thinking about that a lot lately. Not because I've realized that truth deep in my heart or because I have awesome character or because I'm trying to be more contemplative and think about what I've heard. No. The fact is that phrase has been ringing in my ears ever since I heard it because I don't wanna believe it. When life faces you with a job that drains you emotionally, with loneliness and a lack of (or lack of the 'feeling of') belonging...when life smacks you in the face with bills and expenses beyond your control or family complexities too dysfunctional to even talk about...when life whispers lies to you of your not being good enough, deceiving your heart even on a good day...when all these things happen and your mind is shattered and your heart exhausted from the fight of trying to prove yourself, the struggle of trying to mend every relationship, fix every problem... when all this is happening--I wanna believe God cares about my comfort. I wanna believe he wants to just make everything perfect for me. I wanna believe he wants to just change my circumstances so I'm completely happy. I don't wanna believe he cares more about my character than my comfort or my circumstances. I don't wanna believe that all the crap that is happening around us can actually make us better. That all the stress, all the hardship and all the heartache can somehow shape us into better people with minds more whole and hearts better equipped for love.

Regardless of what I want to believe, however, life sometimes sucks. And I think we can get into a lot of trouble when we start believing in a God who cares more about our comfort and making us happy than about our character. I think that kind of God would make us all kinda crazy--changing life around all the time so we can experience only elated emotions, and never the awful ones.

Yeah, sometimes life is stupid and nothing seems to make sense. Sometimes you get dealt a bad hand or live in a terribly long season of darkness. But its the times of sorrow that help us appreciate even more the times of joy, right? Its the times of mourning that give us new life in future rejoicings. Its times of loneliness and despair and disinterest and aimlessness that bring us more fully into times of great belonging, of peace and of purposefulness.

So...
-May you, in whatever season you find yourself in, discover a peace that helps you believe life is more than what it seems to be.
-May you find REST in a God who is desperately longing to walk with you in the midst of a stressed out life.
-May you experience your darkness fully, that your coming light will be all the more beautiful.

May you trust firmly. Amen.

Meditation on Solitude

It is a difficult lesson to learn today,
to leave one's friends and family
and deliberately practice the art of solitude
for an hour or a day or a week.
For me, the break is most difficult...

And yet, once it is done,
I find there is a quality to being alone
that is incredible precious.

Life rushes back into the void,
richer,
more vivid,
fuller than before!

-Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Northumbria Community Meditation Day 1, June 1

today's prayer...tomorrow's hope

May You be proved true in all my circumstances
May I trust You with my discontent,
with my frustrations,
with my longing for something else.
Help me to breathe and know--ahhh... its all good.

May you trust him with your past, your present and your future.
May you find the strength to believe in your hearts
that everything's going to be okay.
May you finally say--"ahh..its all good".

Taking Steps Toward Becoming...Taking Steps Toward Servanthood

What does it mean to wash each others feet?

John says that Jesus stood up from the meal to wash the disciples' feet only after he mentions: "Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going back to God...(rose from supper)."-john 13:3

Do we first take intentional steps to work out our identity in God--in who God has named us to be, in who God calls us to be--before we start to be a servant to each other? Do we first make steps toward BECOMING before we effectively begin to pick up the towel and water basin?
















may you begin to find your identity as the beloved.
may you begin to hear g-d's whispers of love.
may you begin the first steps to BECOMING.
may you enter into the life of servanthood.

may you wash each others feet.

amen.

CONFESSION #10: Finding God in Coincidence

Some of you may know that I'm in the current process of looking at graduate programs for Social Work--and that I'm pursuing Counseling through the social work profession.
You may not know, however, that I'm very...VERY impatient. I have an extreme neurosis with my Contentment being completely dependant on my Circumstances. i.e.:
-If I'm hot, I'll be VERY unhappy and will turn the AC on until my toes are frost-bitten.
-If I'm cold, I'll be equally as unhappy and will turn the heat on until I have to strip the majority of my clothes off.
-If I don't like one thing about work, I'll become discontent with all aspects of my job and the company I'm working for and convince myself that ANY other job would be better.
-If I don't like being at home, I'll "need" to go out.
-If I don't like participating in some social function, I'll "need" to be alone.
-If I don't like where I'm at in life, specifically not being currently in graduate school, I'll do ANYTHING to get into a program, just so I can be in school again.

These issues may not seem neurotic enough, for you, to call them extreme. So let me clear it up with one statement:
I AM NEVER CONTENT.
No matter what happens to me, through me, around me...I hold a disgusting discontent toward every factor of my current circumstances.

Now that that is off my chest, and you are aware, to a certain extent, of a portion of my "stuff", let me share something very, VERY promising that I have been learning (even though it has been very, VERY hard for me to pay attention to).

God, knowing my passions, knowing my downfalls and addictions, knowing what brings me delight, knowing what makes me cry, knowing my dysfunction and my potential, knows what is best for me. (And you're saying: "Alex, we've heard that a thousand times" right?). Thank God, I'm finally "hearing" this.

In my constant searching for the next best thing, in my forever longing for something else, something more, something better than my current circumstance, I've been hearing God whisper "wait...just wait". And so my first response being, "WAIT?! I CAN'T WAIT!"; God continues to respond with "wait...i'm sufficient...wait".

So I've been "waiting" a bit this morning. Trying to be still and contemplate God's presence and his sufficiency. Many things come up as I sit in the stillness:
-God's been calling for me to wait on him for a long, long time now. Through his whispers, through litanies, through the psalms, and through words of mentors, this has been revealed.
-God will provide. My work, my education, my necessities, etc.--God has always provided and will continue to help me process through (and guide) the steps ahead for school and for work.
-God uses times of "coincidence". Twice this week I have found myself where I did not intend to go and have found something valuable there:
1. The other day in the library, I went the opposite way of the exit just to look at what books were over there. I found several books in that section on Integrating Spirituality with Counseling 2. Today at work, sitting in a different section of the Clinic's waiting room, I came across a Sojourners magazine with tons of lists of schools that offer dual programs for MDIV/MSW.
Whether or not God intended for me to find these things, believing that he's been pursuing me to wait...I can't help but think he might have had something to do with these recent "coincidences". I'm deciding, I think, to look more into Master's programs with an integration for spirituality in social work practice instead of being satisfied with the school I originally applied to. So for now, I'm going to wait.

May you take time to listen to the inner whispers.
May you begin to find contentment in something greater than your circumstances.
May you begin to fall in love with a God who calls you to something purposeful.

May you begin to wait.

CONFESSION #9: The Road Ahead and Sabbath Keeping

I've been on a defining road for the past year. A road of change.
Doing a semester in Costa Rica, sharing a home in Mount Vernon with a wonderful couple and now sharing a home in Nashville have all created both safe and challenging environments.
It has been a road of recovery.
A road mostly full of excitement and life and contentment and wonder about the future.
More recently, however, that wonder has grown into worry, the contentment into discontent and the excitement into distaste.

I am, as Ruth Haley Barton says, "dangerously tired." I am in dire need of a sabbath rest--a sabbath rhythm in my week. I never thought husband-ing, bread winning, soul searching, rhythm keeping, trying-to-stay-content-ing would be so exhausting. There has been pressure..more than I've been prepared to handle on my own.

And so I'm coming to this place on the road where the sun has been set for far too long, the dryness in the land is way too...dry.

Physically, emotionally, relationally: drained, exhausted, worn out, emptied.

Withered.

The road ahead though, with promise of a true REST through the Sabbath seems very different than its been recently.
Its a bit scary to begin entering into this new rhythm of sabbath keeping. Its kind of frightening to really step back for one day in my week, and in my core believe, that my world isn't going to fall apart without me actively participating in it... To honestly hold in my core that God has been taking care me, and therefore can now also, take care of me. To trust that while I rest, things really will be okay. To live in a posture of respect of a God who would create something so beautiful as a time of rest. So it will be hard I think.
But how desperate I am for rest, for replenishment.
"Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." -matt 11:28

So may you begin to think about the Sabbath in your own life.

May you begin to wrestle with trusting Jesus more fully in the pressures of your day.

May the road ahead, for you, be very, very different.

Incohesive Ramblings on The Way I Look At My Neighbor

Why do I categorize people?
Why do I assume things about them?
Why is it so easy for me to pick which stranger I could connect with...which one with whom I could not?

Sitting here drinking my venti non-fat mocha, no whip, which assumingly is not fair trade, I've become aware that I'm an ASUMER. Is that even a word? What I mean is that I easily assume things about people. I assume the people next to me are a pretty nice couple-probably no major marrital problems-their faces look content while perusing through separate magazines, taking a break from time to time to comment on what each other is reading. I assume that the guy three tables behind me is either on business or one of those cool emergents with his macbook, black thick-rimmed plastic glasses and grande iced carmel macchiato. I assume some people are friends and they came together. I assume some are lovers. I assume some speak spanish. I assume some english (I was wrong...Danish I think it was). I assumed this one girl was seeking for some verification in life, some type of affirmation. I don't know why. She was super-skinny and carrying a back-pack that weighed at least 1/2 of what she did-back hunched over to support the load and to keep from falling backward. I assumed she was carrying some pretty important stuff, maybe a lucky bowling ball? Maybe a load of her favorite books that she could whip out at any moment to indluge in? What else could she have been carrying in there? I assumed the guy who just passed saw my copy of "I, Francis" sitting on the table and maybe he assumed, "catholic".

I didn't know these things. And actually, I may not Know them at all. Not in the real sense of knowing since they may in fact not even be true.

What if I were to engage in conversation with just one of them? Would my perceptions change? Would my assumptions make me look like an ass? Would they prove me true? Would I learn something new? Would I begin to break down the dividing walls that lead to my assumptions?

Race, clothing, facial expressions, glasses and bookbags, what section of the bookstore they're in, traveling alone or in a group--Everything is external. I base these people's worth, I categorize them, I judge some of them, I admire others, all on their external properties.

I believe that we can get to the place where we look at people and only see something of worth. I believe we can begin to look at an elderly black lady and a 17yo with tattoos on his neck the same way. I believe we can begin to see the beggar, the barista, the child, the wrinkled man, the shopper, ther service worker, the Latino, the German, the Kenyon as human-As a being of heart and mind and not just body.

I believe in the redemption of our minds,
and our heart--not just our actions.
I believe part of becoming fully human is starting to see the true worth of our neighbor.

I'm not sure yet, but I think conversation is going to be one of the best ways to make this happen. Maybe the more we talk to people from a variety of places and ages in life, the easier it will be to disolve some of the separations in our mind and find some common threads in our humanity.

May you look at others differently.

The Hanging Of Blinds or The Rhythm Of Our Becoming

Tonight I hung blinds in our two bedroom windows. We've lived in that room for a month and a half without blinds--Sleeping with one eye closed and the other watching for prey that would test our screens and try to come in (mainly the two kittens who live on our front porch).
I don't know why I didn't put blinds up. I avoided buying them. And i avoided hanging them.
I'm an avoider. A passive creature down to the core.
However...that's beginning to change.
The need to avoid that lingers deep in my soul is being confronted and I'm beginning to confront.
Its scary I'll have to admit. I've never lived on the edge of life to the point of committing such terrifying acts as hanging the blinds.
I'm changing.

Jesus, you know him I think, he lived his life in a certain rhythm.
This rhythm connected him to the Father, renewing his spirit, forming his heart. This inner communion with the Father was evidenced through his actions- the way he spoke to the ugly, the manner in which he felt pity on them, the eyes with which he looked upon the hurting.

Its equally important for us to maintain this rhythm of connection, of continually living/practicing the Presence. For "I am the vine" and we cannot bear if we do not remain in him, if we do not live in him, if we are not nourished by him, if we do not find our identity in who he names us to be.

We are becoming persons. We are not today who we were before.
We do not need more stuff, more involvement, more action, more will-power.
We need more Jesus.

May you find a rhythm in which to access his Presence continually.
May your heart be re-formed. May your mind be re-positioned.
May you engage in what is awaiting you.

May you hang blinds...

CONFESSIONS #6: Thoughts on God in the Imagination

first thought
It is no waste of time to sit and contemplate God's presence.
To sit and imagine his face.
To be still and picture his closeness-
his bodily form resting in your same space-
to envision your Father sitting at the table with you reaching out his hand to yours,
to wait in his presence,
listening,
accepting,
believing,
letting.
Oh, the things that would happen if we took time to be and let them come to us...
allow them to happen in us...
permit Him to affirm them through us.


second thought
The more we operate from the Center,
The more we allow ourselves to be identified/affirmed/accept

ed,
The more we find our being IN him:

...the more he restores to us the masculine will.
The more the feminine intuitive is made real in us--validated...
The more we are INTEGRATED in all facets,
in all our personhood...
The closer we are to BEING.
The more we experience. The more we create.

Imagine the beauty when the created finally begin to pick up the pieces, and create.

The Issue Is Not the Issue: thankfulness as a posture.

In this season it has been taught to me the reality of our ingratuitous heart and its centrality to the circumstantial nature of our complaints.
Holy One, grant unto me, unto us, a thankful heart.

Thank you for the stuff I have that I don't need.
Thank you for a bed, a closet full of clothes, a TV, movies, books and furniture.
...stuff I have that I don't need.
Thank you for a house to live in, a room with space for all my stuff, a living room, a shower, a kitchen and a yard--a little space to get outside of myself and experience a touch of creation.
...stuff I have that I don't need.
Thank you for a rational mind, some knowledge, a little bit of wisdom and lots of learning.
...stuff I have that I don't need.

Thank you for the things that I have but that I don't deserve.
Thank you for a semi-healthy body with a pumping heart, an ounce of capacity for loving and a seeing into the deeper things.
...things that I have but that I don't deserve.
Thank you for my emotional faculties as well.
Thank you for a beautiful wife who knows and has experienced my innermost darkness yet still has the capacity to think I'm worth something.
...things that I have but that I don't deserve.
Thank you for an invitation into the Community when all I had ever known was familial dysfunction.
Thank you for a mother, a father, a sister and extended family who are still living.
...things that I have but that I don't deserve.
Thank you for relationships that are deep--touching the soul--and those that are not.
Thank you for a mentor, friend and brother who sees a little bit of something in me to affirm.
...things that I have but that I don't deserve.

Thank you for realities that are accessible to us even though we don't understand them fully.
Thank you for the possibility to know you, to live with you, to be with you without any shame.
...realities that are accessible to us even though we don't understand them fully.
Thank you for freedom from sin, from sexual dysfunction, from bad habits, death cycles and ignorance.
Thank you for healing.
Thank you for rythms in which we can access your grace.
...realities that are accessible to us even though we don't understand them fully.
Thank you for the possibility of enjoying life, of living life, of experiencing life.
Thank you for the actuality of being a blessing instead of a cursing.
...realities that are accessible to us even though we don't understand them fully.

Thank you for things of the past, things of today, and those of the future as well.
May we be proved blameless in your sight.

On the Topic of the Coming Christ

Jesus is bigger than I let him be maybe.
He's definitely a lot bigger than he seems.
If Jesus is who the Bible says he is, he has to be way more different than we see him.
Way more active
Way more present
Way gentler
Way more human-esque
Way more God-like
Way more compassionate
Way more understanding.
Way more ready to transform,
to change,
to impart wisdom,
to give his Spirit,
to end suffering,
to heal,
to send us out.
Way more loving than we think about.

But does our limited thinking limit his power? Limit his presence in our lives? Limit his healing? Limit his love? His transformation?

The laziness of my mind wants to answer 'NO'...wants to believe that whether we realize it or not, the power of the presence of Christ is forever active, forever pressing on our souls.

But does that make it true? Does Christ forcefully flood our existence with his presence?
Does he just change us without us ever getting to know him?

I don't know.... I don't know.

But I read once that God's presence is like the sunlight enveloping a flower. That its just there...always there...filling every surface area and doing lots of changing on the inside.
The flower has no choice but to accept the sun's life-giving rays.

The heart is a little different than the flower though, huh? It has a choice. It has the ability to stay shut, to not let the presence of the Son affect it. Or it can open up and take in all the Son has to offer, being changed and made new and full of life.

Maybe at times we have the door shut. I think I do a lot.
Other times I think I can see when I've had the door open.

But GOD, whether my heart was open or shut, was always there. He has always been surrounding me, waiting for me to let him come in more and more.

He's never moved. He's never changed.

We have to believe He's so much more than we've let him be. We have to believe he's better than the circumstances of our hearts' door. We have to believe he's more.

Because he is....
He's more.