What a journey this life of ours is, heh!? Six weeks go by since last posting and every time it came to my mind it just seemed like the blog thing had played itself out. It felt (feels?) like I processed and regurgitated some past life things and I had said what was there to say. Trying to talk about the present is such a different animal. I keep thinking that I lack enough clarity or perspective on 'now' stuff to even attempt writing about it...like everything is quite jello-like/ever morphing and anything I might have to say would just be obviated within days or weeks anyway so why even go there. Kind of like the weather, if you don't like today's come back tomorrow...it will be different.
But I'm back today clattering the keyboard because a passionate breeze has captured my attention and I want to pay it heed...to give it some expression, to breathe some life into it. Why? Because it seems just too vital to let it pass and die a natural death. Or worse, to intentionally assassinate it and bury it in the great graveyard of personal disappointments and various failures to launch.
I hurt.....Deep inside I ache. I am aware even of rage. I want more! I must have more! (Just above I said a "passionate breeze has captured my attention". Breeze my ass, it feels more like a frightening tsunami.) I seemed to have stopped just long enough to look inside my rumbling book of life and came away seeing something that just can't go on. I have been living way too long with an attitude of resignation. Somewhere along the path I exchanged daring to desire for the mere discipline of duty. My dutifulness feels not longer sufficient to support life. On the contrary, it squelches it like a dry wind eventually snuffs out the delicate wildflower.
Frankly, I don't see what I am muttering about clearly at all. I feel like a blind man aware he has landed in a not-good-room but clueless just how to find his way out. He taps madly at the confining walls looking for an exit. Similarly, I tap at these lettered keys looking to express what feels elusive, even dangerous.
In just a few months, at least technically, I qualify for early retirement benefits from SS (funny, that's what the Nazi's elite troops were known by).The fact that something about that is comforting pisses me off royally! The resigned me hears the siren call of this particular exit strategy and hungers for something it represents. For the game to be over, for the striving and scrabbling for survival to fade to black. To somehow magically be transported to Playa del Carmen to endlessly gaze at the mesmerizing blue of the Caribbean. Heh, nothing really wrong with all of that on one level but it's not where my true heart lies. I don't want my main desire to be for some kind of cessation! The system of the world feels like it would have me consider being shelved, to take my place in some obscure SKU location in a spent-life warehouse somewhere and live off the best memories I am able to pitifully dredge up. No life in that. It is mislabelled...it's death!
There are questions that are like diagnostic litmus indicators for me. "What makes you come alive?" "What are your passions?" "What do you dream about?" OUCH!! OW! They hurt! The poser in me can come up with answers that sound valid enough but the true me recognizes that my answer drawers are really quite empty in these categories. It feels like they have been robbed, plundered by the stuff of life. No, that's not quite right. That sounds like I've been victimized by some force outside me. More accurately, I have emptied those dream and passion drawers as a twisted strategic response to the lies I have been bamboozled by, the agreements I have made.
Regardless, I am aware that I have been dreamless too long. I have squelched desire too long. It is not in line with how I believe my Creator intended it to be for me. He came that I might have life and to have it abundantly. I confess that I have become aware that I am famished for more life! I must have more life! Jesus, you are the source of my life...that is not religious, that is fact. Here my cry Father and show me where I have missed your yellow brick trail. I fear I have abandoned desire and called it sanctification. Father me along in my desire to re-appropiate your heart vitality, a fresh sense of joy that has been lost. Keep me from prematurely burying this desire to desire for fear of disappointment. Forgive me for not trusting you fully, for my unbelief, for my fear that you are in someway indifferent towards all this. I throw myself into your arms Lord...I am as desperate for what you mean by 'life' as a drowning man for oxygen.
Come Lord Jesus come!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
i hear you jim, and i admire the way you refuse to let "the poser" have his way. i'd love to hear what dreams emerge when the dust of the tsunami settles.
some times we are just more aware of each precious breath of life... even more so of the deeper kind you are speaking of here James. Life.to.the.full. my simple prayer for you my friend is that. more dream-come-true kinds of breath. love you more with each one and each thing we face. and i just took a really deep full one thinking of what is to come. for ever. bless you. sorry if this is scattered. but i know you understand.
Terri,
Hearing from you is such a treat...makes me realize afresh how much I miss hearing your "voice". Praying that your deep waters don't play too rough with your tender soul....
Di, you mystic at heart, full of so much more than can find sufficient expression. It will truly be something when on that day what smolders within you finds full freedom and is fanned into full flame!
ok jim. sounds like a mid life crisis to me?? which is no joke, actually. or maybe, just maybe, what you are seeing as an "exit strategy" is really the once-in-a-lifetime chance to be really free to find new dreams. shuck off the expectations of having to even answer the questions (you know the ones - what do you do? what are your dreams? what are your passions - which are all usually related to how we make a living or for sure what we "do") as if we could really find language for any dream actually worth having.
"eyes have not seen nor ears heard" what HE has in store.
i had this powerful dream the other night, and i think i saw the holy city. it was no big center of activity - very tall buildings, made of large bricks, vining flowers and plants and huge, breathtakingly beautiful birds. and a peaceful but somewhat swift river in the middle (think Vienna or something)down which I was being transported somehow (after a few seconds i didn't care HOW, i just sat back to enjoy it. and the soundtrack was "offering" by Ravi Shankar, by the way) ok, the point is, in that moment, i just allowed myself to "be", gave up that drive to "do" and let God show off His amazing creativity to me. and i felt more fitted to my purpose in those few minutes than ever before.
and of course the next day i have to go back to the awake world and find "something to do with all my might". this world is just a mess, is what I think. no wonder we feel frustrated and penned in and desparate to get out. yet here we are.
i guess the comfort is that we are not alone in it, and it WILL come to an end. in the meantime, i think it's a good thing to allow ourselves to 'practice' for heaven.
done rambling now. for what it's worth.
peace, brother.
Marcell,
Thanks so much for your words. It's funny how these blogs go...you commit something to writing which freezes it in time and yet we move along. Not so sure I qualify for a "mid-life" crisis anymore but the crisis part was accurate. Felt like I had run out of energy to keep going in the "not yet" part. Wanted to put on some new layers of the "already" as the damp coldness of this fallen world was seeping too deep into my bones.
I loved your "holy city" dream. Especially that peaceful yet swift river where you were willing to stop doing in order to just be. I so apprceciate you my sister in this sojourn! Come here to "ramble" anytime!
Ps. Was there the smell of incense by any chance in accompaniment to Ravi Shankar?
Post a Comment