internet/politics

Lent Day 27 – (23 for me)

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It’s late but I wanted to check in before I hit the hay.  My daughter set up a puzzle on the kitchen table tonight and did a fair bit of it before she went to bed.  It’s a 500 piece puzzle so it’s substantial – not the kind of puzzle you finish in less than an hour.  So I sat down to put in a few pieces.  This is a dangerous thing for me.  I love doing puzzles.

There’s this thing that happens with me when I sit down to do puzzles.  I sit down and I look for pieces, scanning back and forth across the surface, and I think.  As I search, my mind wanders and ponders various things.  I have imaginary conversations and debates with people.

As I was going through this tonight, I thought that it would be fun to try and take some of my thoughts and put them down in a post instead of letting them float off into the ether as I usually do.

But then, as I was thinking about that, I was thinking about the fact that I was thinking about the Trump administration and one particular item that popped up and caught my eye in the last couple of days.  I felt that it’s probably not a good idea to put too many of those thoughts into posts.  I want to fight that urge.  Enough people are saying enough things about it all that I don’t need to add my voice.

But I do find myself longing to draw people together.  With social media, there’s so much opportunity for people of different stripes to toss digital grenades at each other.  There’s so many zingers and mic drops flying all over the place that it’s hard to stay on top of things.  Often, as I observe a particular thread with people challenging other people, I find myself wishing that I could somehow get the people together and help them to debate or to argue better.

This is a very strange thought because I’m not very good at debating.  I’m terrible at arguing.  I’ve very slow on my feet and so I avoid it if at all possible.  I also don’t like conflict (which is perhaps why I find myself wanting to bring people together) so I don’t want to push my point.  I worry about offending.  I want to listen and so I may ease off on pushing my point to try and understand someone else’s side.

But when I observe other people arguing I enjoy looking at the argument from above to try and see how they might be able to resolve their differences and I find that often people are arguing about the wrong things.

If an atheist and a theist were having an argument, they might argue about beliefs, or the fallibility or infallibility of a holy book or something like that.  These are all very interesting things to debate, but really, there’s no point in debating them between a theist and an atheist, because if your assumption is that there is no God, then of course these beliefs and stories will look ridiculous, but if your assumption is that there is a divine being with infinite power residing within the universe, then these things suddenly become very plausible.  If you’re going to have an argument, argue about the existence of the divine – argue about the possibility that energy has a consciousness (that’s a weird one – I just made it up).  Argue about the origins of the universe – where mass and energy came from.

It seems like people love to act incredulous and insult each other on social media when it comes to something like politics and I look at it and I think to myself, “If you just took a few minutes and tried to imagine what it would be like to hold the same base assumptions as this other person, then maybe they wouldn’t seem to be so idiotic.  Maybe you might see the situation from a new angle and might be able to frame your point in a new way – maybe you might even be able to frame it in such a way that the other person might be able to hear you.

It’s a bit of a pipe dream perhaps.  So many of these debates are so polarized – it’s more about cogently expressing anger than it is about trying to convince someone of something – or at least, I don’t imagine that people genuinely think that the person they’re insulting is going to listen.  And of course, there’s all the people who are lying badly and transparently so.  It’s like watching a child try to steal a cookie right in front of you.  There’s no thought of trying to debate that sort of thing.

Now, I should be clear that I’m thinking of things on twitter where people respond to someone else’s tweet, not necessarily for the other person’s sake, but for the sake of their followers – people who are already convinced.  It’s more of a, “Can you believe this?” kind of tweet.  I doubt that there are many people out there who actually think that a person with a million twitter followers is going to read, consider and be moved by their two line zinger.

I just know for myself, if I was going to get into an argument on twitter, I would actually want to figure out the point we actually disagreed on and talk about that.  I would want to understand the other person and to be heard myself.  More than anything, I think I would want to come closer together – to increase understanding.

Like I said, I don’t get into debates much, and I certainly don’t think that I’ll be joining twitter any time soon.  It’s probably best to stick with puzzles.

 

 

addiction/habit/hope/time/Uncategorized

Lent Day 26 – (22 for me)

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I’m still thinking through what I wrote last night.  I’m not ready to make any grand commitments, but I’m thinking about it.  It’s Thursday morning and I’m up early (not as early as my alarm was set, but early) and I’m writing.  I feel so much better than two days ago and it appears that the chest cough which appeared to be brewing will not take hold.  Thank you God!

It is officially Spring now, and it certainly feels like it here in Toronto.  I fully expect that we are past the point of having another last gasp snow storm.  It’s always possible that it could snow in April, but nothing to be concerned about.  It was 7 degrees the last two mornings and I toyed with biking to work in shorts.  A big part of that consideration is that the pants I had been biking in through the winter now have such a big rip in the seat that it’s too obvious for me to wear to work, even if I change immediately upon arrival.  Sometimes it’s possible to wear a pair of pants with a rip between the legs because it’s so small that people can’t see it when you’re walking around.

But the rip has grown and I need something new to bike in.  So, while I experimented, I felt that 7 degrees was too cold and I put my leggings on.  I suppose I could wear leggings on their own, but I just don’t like that.  It feels undignified.  I know that many people do this and it is generally accepted as an acceptable form of clothing, but I do not enjoy wearing them on their own so I pull my shorts on over top.  It makes me feel like a member of Pearl Jam or some other grunge band circa 1991, so that’s kind of cool…for a forty year old guy with a family who works as a civil servant…I change when I get to work.

But anyway, it really is feeling like Spring, and I like that.  I was thinking how in September when it feels like the summer has ended, it is easy to lament the shortness of summer, but right at this moment I feel like we are beginning the long slow approach to summer, and I for one am going to savour it.  The weather is still lovely at the end of September so that’s six months to look forward to.

I know that there will likely be a lot of rain in April and I will forget about the feeling of -5 degree weather and I will look ahead longingly to the mid to high-teens, but the days are getting longer and there’s that hint of the sweet smell of Spring approaching us.  I feel like there’s hope to be found in the very air.

Even in January, I hold on to the fact that the days are getting slightly longer day by day.  It’s a slow progression in that cold dark month, but it’s a steady one, and now that we’re in the rapid growth, is so much easier to get excited – at least for me.

…and the day goes by.

It’s night now.  I’m just finishing this up so I can go to bed.  It’s amazing how much things can change over the course of a day.  Since I wrote what I wrote this morning, the temperature has dropped and it’s snowed all evening.

I also feel worse and I stayed up too late.  I was sitting here getting my music ready for Sunday when I got distracted by some other things.  Sometimes you just have to laugh.  I finally went up to bed…(it was chess problems – I was doing some chess problems) and I realized I didn’t finish this post.  Then it’s palm to face and I have to shake my head.

I haven’t hit my ceiling yet.  I think I have a ways to go.  Spring is certainly coming, but sometimes it’s seven degrees forward and five degrees back.

 

failure/self improvement

Lent Day 25 – (Day 21 for me)

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I’m losing ground.  Another day lost yesterday.  I haven’t gotten up early one day this week and last night I barely made it bed by 9:30.  I felt wretched all day but I needed to spend some time planning for Sunday because I’m going to be leading worship.  I just wanted to lie down and go to sleep which makes effective planning that much more difficult, but I got it done and fell into bed – no blog post for the day.

Maybe I’m too gracious to myself.  Perhaps if I was more of a slave driver, I would get more accomplished.  Perhaps I would have gotten that blog post finished.  Perhaps I would just be more miserable.  It’s easy to give a pass to yourself when you’re sick, and it’s often wise to give such a pass.  It’s wise to rest when you’re feeling sick.  It’s also easy to use legitimate reasons for rest to let other things slide.

I would hesitate to point my finger at someone else when it comes to this.  You want people to feel free to take rest when they need it, but I think it’s worthwhile to think about it on my own part.  If I’m going to be completely honest I feel pretty comfortable with missing a day of my Lent commitment.  It doesn’t bother me in the way that I actually get physically troubled by it.  If I let down someone in my family, I would be really bothered by that.  It would be very upsetting.  But this isn’t like that.

What if I had made a commitment to a high profile blog and they were paying me to post every day of Lent?  What if I had contractual obligations to post each and every day (except for Sunday)?  I think I would have approached my day a little differently.  I think that I would approach each day of this commitment a little differently.  I think I would be on track.

On the other hand, if I had this obligation hanging over me would I feel as free to write in the way that I’m feeling free to write at the moment?  I’m really enjoying the freedom I feel to write, and I also feel that this commitment, even if it’s not strong enough to spur me to meet the commitment every day, is spurring me to a new level.  I’ve posted far more regularly than ever – by far.  I’m finding a rhythm that I always felt was lacking.  I’m feeling like there is a momentum.  These are good things.

But could they be better?  There is a point of perfect balance.  There must be.  If I committed to writing two posts a day and I forced myself to meet that commitment, then I would probably have a lot of bad posts.  I’m not sure how that would go for me.  I don’t think it would be a good thing.  So there’s a limit.  There’s a ceiling.  You can push yourself too far.

Maybe this is the thing that I’m trying to get at in my own way.  There is a limit and there is a ceiling, but I’m not currently pushing it.  I’m not testing it.  I’ve risen up over the past few weeks and I’ve found it exciting and inspiring, but am I perhaps giving myself too much slack?  Could I be pushing myself further.

I think I could.  I do think that there’s the potential for more.  I think there’s room to be ambitious.  As long as you’ve got the freedom to push and to fail and to say, “I think that was too much,” then why not set the bar a little bit higher.

I need to think about this.  What’s the bar going to be?  I can certainly commit to not missing any more days, but maybe there’s even more I could do?  I do have a full time job, but I don’t make use of my breaks…that’s an area of growth.  I could probably find fifteen minutes to half an hour in the evening for two or three days during the week and I could dedicate that to working on the house – the unfinished trim on the windows in my daughter’s room stare at me solemnly on occasion and I wonder how long it will be before I finish them.

What is my ceiling?  What say I keep trying to find it?  I think I’ll have to sleep on this one, but stay tuned.  I think that this bears exploration.

discontent/internet/politics/Uncategorized

Lent Day 23 – (20 for me)

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I’m running sluggish today.  I woke up at 5 with a sore throat so I gargled with salt water and went back to bed.  It just doesn’t seem to make sense to get up early to write when I’m getting sick and probably the thing I need most is sleep to get better and make the best use of my time.

I still feel lousy and I’m using up book writing time to finish this post, so I think I’ll make it a cursory reflection on the state of things.

Besides being sick, I’m feeling pretty good.  The weekend was good.  I followed through on my commitment to stay off twitter and youtube (at least for political commentary…actually I don’t think I went on at all).  I found myself wanting to check a number of times, but I stayed strong and my life is none the worse for it.  I got a post done on Saturday and got a little bit more sleep.

This morning I went right back onto twitter to catch up.  I think I’m okay with that until this whole twisted saga comes to some kind of a conclusion.  But I’m going to work harder to set my boundaries around my time.  No more checking for tonight and no political commentaries.  I think I’m caught up on all the buzz.

I find it interesting sometimes to take a look at some of the twitter feeds or news sites from the far right side of things.  It’s crazy how differently people are seeing the same events.  It’s extremely polarized (to put it mildly).  Something happens and one side says, “Proof of wrongdoing!” and the other side says, “Vindicated!  We told you so.”

Surely there is a place where people can agree on facts.  Surely people can admit that there are some things that are true and some things that are not.

I suppose if you’ve got a big tree in your yard, someone can say that they hate the tree, and someone else can say that they love the tree.  Someone can say that the tree should be cut down because it might be rotten on the inside, while someone else could say that the tree is an important part of the area, giving shade, providing the biological function that trees do and just giving a bit of character to the neighbourhood.  You could ignore the tree and talk about how the grass is dying underneath it.  You could talk about the tree that used to grow across the street.  You could say all those things, and apart from the possibility of rot, there’s not much to argue about…but you could certainly argue about all those things if you wanted to.

It’s a tree and there’s no denying that fact, but you don’t have to talk about that tree in a certain way.  You can talk about it however you want.  If it comes down to an argument over whether to cut the tree down or to let it grow, if it’s a decision based on the number of people who support any particular option, then facts really don’t matter – if all you want is to win the battle of wills, the only thing that matters is getting enough people on your side.  Maybe cutting down the tree is going to be disastrous, no matter how you do it – maybe letting it grow will be disastrous – maybe it has a diseased core and it will soon fall on your house.  But if you really really want to win the argument it’s possible you could miss such a fact and throw your lot into the wrong camp.

Whatever side I might stand on when it comes to that tree, I just hope that I’d be able to hear the facts if there were facts that made a clear case either way.  If the tree really needed to be cut down and I loved that tree, I hope that I’d be able to swallow my pride and come around.  I guess it all depends on where you stand.  It might not matter to my neighbours, but maybe it matters a whole lot to the squirrels and the caterpillars who live in that tree – maybe for them it’s a matter of life and death.

Strange times.  I just know that there’s so much noise right now – so much flying back and forth – so many voices – so many loudspeakers, that a person can throw doubt on even the most undeniable of truths.

I don’t feel bad about wanting to follow all the excitement.  It’s interesting.  It’s also important, but I do want to make sure that I can keep it at bay and allow myself to continue to focus on the trees in my own yard.

 

God/Uncategorized

Lent Day 22 – (19 for me)

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I’ll start with a few updates – it’s been a week since we took apart our kitchen to track down the carpenter ants – we haven’t seen a single one since then.  This is a good sign.  This is a battle that may not be done yet, but if there’s more work to be done, we’ve yet to see it.  I’ve heard that carpenter ants can be very very difficult to get rid of, so we’ll celebrate with caution.

The second update is a small one.  I haven’t looked at twitter once today and I haven’t watched anything on YouTube.  I did check CBC news to make sure that nothing pivotal took place, but looking at CBC news is not an issue for me.  My trouble is not with staying current – I think that’s a good thing (in moderation…that’s my problem).

We watched Moana tonight as a family.  It seemed like a good one to watch together.  We don’t have a TV but the kids usually watch a movie on the weekend and we often use that time to get something else done.  They’ve been wanting to watch Moana for a while and we kept telling them that this was one we were going to watch together, so tonight we decided to make it happen.  We all still fit on the couch which is a good thing.  You can’t go too far when you’re gathered around a computer screen on the coffee table.  I suppose there will come a point where they’ll be so big that we’ll need to get a television if we want to watch movies together.  I suppose we could all get our own computers and start the movies at the same time…but that seems complicated and somewhat odd.

So I found myself thinking throughout the movie about the worldview the movie is presenting and how it compares and/or contrasts with my own.  This one was interesting because there was a divine character that guided Moana throughout the movie and helped her to complete a mission.  It resonated with the way I generally think about God.  We have work to do – there are things that we need to pursue and to face, and God guides us and aids us, but doesn’t do it for us.

But then there were other deities, so it didn’t seem to be a fully Christian allegory.  There was a demi-god who had human parents and who had been blessed with divine gifts in order to bless humans, but although the divine mixed with the human might resemble Jesus if you really really really squinted your eyes, it clearly wasn’t that.  In that way it resembled a Greek or a Roman pantheistic realm more than a Christian one.

Now, I’m not suggesting that symbolism somehow needs to be completely Christian in order for me to embrace it.  That would be limiting and unnecessary, but I do like to try and make connections and when something resonates, I like to see if there are other things that connect, and in this case the connections were limited.

So then I was wondering if they were trying to say something about God in the movie, or if it was just an element of the story.

It’s a story of a young woman who sets out to save her people – she’s given a mission from the sea, and bravely sets out to take it on.  There are also elements of identity – the woman must wrestle with the question of who she is and whether she is worthy to undertake this mission.  When thing go badly and she hits a wall, she comes to a crisis and nearly gives up, but it is when she is reminded of who she is – what is her identity, that she is re-energized and decides to carry on with the quest.  (I hope that’s not giving up too much of the movie if you haven’t seen it.  Don’t worry, there’s still so much to be discovered.)

I liked the way that they explored this question of identity.  I feel as if this can be done carelessly in kids movies where the theme can be boiled down to a “you can do whatever you want – follow your dreams” kind of ideal.  That can be nice, but I find it a little simple.  I thought it was going that way – our young heroine was drawn to the sea when her father expressly and firmly forebade her to go out beyond the reef.

But as it happens, the desire she has within her; the desire that goes against her father’s and her villages rules ends up being a desire that dovetails nicely with a mission she is given to save her people.  It’s not just about self-fulfillment, but self-fulfillment through accomplishing something bigger, and not just some mission she’s decided to go after on her own, but that’s been given to her by a greater power – a mission that is needed in order to save her family and her village.

I like that.  I like that my kids are enjoying a movie where the hero or the heroine is being called to higher things and is following the desires of her heart for a greater good.  I’m aware that all these things they watch are sinking subtly into their brains and into their thinking and I must admit that I worry sometimes about how it might be shaping them.  I worry because I have no idea how these things shape our thinking.  I have no idea how all the things I’ve watched and read in my own life have shaped my own thinking.

We try to keep them from the obviously damaging material – try to provide the desired independence bit by bit so they can learn to make good choices and to be healthy and loving people.  But so much of the time there’s no clear sense of how we’re doing, but generally a constant nagging sense that we could be doing better.

So when we watch a movie together that’s just for fun and upon reflection I find that the movie embodies a lot of things I really want to pass on to my kids, it makes me feel really good.  I’ll file this one away – something to refer to when some of these discussions come up at the kitchen table.

I’m not sure if my kids were thinking these things while they were watching the movie, but we were together and enjoying it, and that’s probably the most important thing.  It’s nice that I can do that at the same time as I over-analyze things in my head.  It’s the best of both worlds.

 

 

 

 

addiction/habit/failure/internet/politics/quitting/self improvement/Uncategorized

Lent Day 21 – (18 for me)

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I feel good pretty good today – aside from being tired.  I finished my post last night and went to bed without watching any political videos on Youtube.  That’s kind of a hollow victory because I’ve been following the Trump situation voraciously on twitter.  I don’t have a twitter account, but if you know who you want to follow you can just go directly to their page and see all their tweets without logging in.

There is just so much going on right now.  It’s fascinating and horrifying, but the truth is that I’m not following this out of some deep concern for the world and for the United States.  My interest is not a selfless one.  I’m concerned, but I’m mostly following it like I might follow a TV show.  It’s almost as if Donald Trump is going for ratings.  I don’t think that he is, but if he was he would be doing a pretty good job (TV ratings – not approval ratings).

But, as with so many of my distractions, it uses up time and focus at the expense of other things…and so we reach another one of those uncomfortable moments of truth.  Am I going to write about how “I really should try to this less” or am I going to try and make a change.

…Brian goes to work and comes home and returns to his post…

Well, it seems perfect that I wrote what I wrote this morning, because the day is almost done and I’m sitting down to finish this post after having watched political videos on YouTube for an hour.

Man, talk about having to eat words.  It feels good to come clean about it though, because my initial reaction was to delete the whole thing and start over, “I can’t finish this thing! How embarrassing.”

Well, I am going to finish it.  While it’s tempting to justify it and minimize it, I’m not sure if I want to do that either.  It’s certainly true that there’s worse things that I could be doing for an hour, but I also could use the sleep.  It’s just an escape, and generally sleep is much more useful than escape…generally, not always – but certainly when sleep is needed.  I just can’t tear myself away from this situation.  But I’m going to keep working at it.  I must admit that my efforts in recent weeks have been hollow or non-existent, but this weekend, I’m going to dig in and see how it feels.

Okay…here’s the commitment and we’ll see how it goes.  No twitter or youtube videos this weekend.  I’m going to do it.  I’m making it public and I’m all in.  It’s only two days.  It can’t be that hard.

I think that the problem with the internet is that we get addicted to pushing buttons and seeing something new and when it comes to a big news situation and something like twitter there’s always the potential for something new.  There’s some smart people who post some interesting thing and provide links to a lot of fascinating and thought-provoking stuff, and you get to push buttons in order to get it!  I’ve actually learned a lot about American government and the intelligence agencies.  I can also see how you could sucked into a partisan black hole.  If all you were doing was reading the people you agreed with on Twitter and Facebook, you could get your mind seriously warped.  I check out some of the people who are a bit loopy – you can find them on the right and the left.  It is fascinating stuff!

Now, I say “we get addicted to the internet” because I know that I’m not the only one, but I’m sure there’s a good chance that whoever you are reading this right now, you may not have this problem.  I don’t mean to paint everyone with my big brush.  But I certainly have this thing with information.  I just love pushing buttons.  But giving it up this weekend is actually perfect because tomorrow is Earth Hour, which I’ve always thought was a nice idea, but end up forgetting about it, so maybe this year I’ll remember to shut off the lights AND my computer.

I might even go to bed early and catch up on some sleep…maybe I shouldn’t let you know that I’m trying this… It’s a process people.  Little by little we make our way forward.

beauty/books/faith/God/Uncategorized

Lent Day 20 – (17 for me – for real this time)

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If you want a really foolproof way to get yourself up in the morning, leave your alarm clock in your pants and then throw your pants on the floor at the foot of your bed.

I think the alarm must have gone off for fifteen seconds before I got my phone out – grabbing for my pants in the dark, proving in vain for the left hand pocket.  I was so tired that I would have gone back to bed if I hadn’t been so embarrassed about letting the alarm go off for so long.  So I went downstairs and snoozed in an armchair for a little while.  I would have gone on the couch but we’re taking care of my sister-in-law’s dog and she was sleeping on the couch.  It just didn’t seem very nice to push a sleeping animal off the couch so that I could use it.

I also discovered that I lost track of where I was in Lent.  I just realized that I skipped day 10!  So my titles have been off by one for a week and a half.  I’m not sure if I should go back and correct them or if I should just leave it.  I think I’ll leave it as a testament to my bad copy-editing.

My son and I have been reading through some George MacDonald books in the last couple of months.  We started with The Princess and the Goblin and now we’re into the Princess and Curdie.  If you’re not familiar with these books, they are well worth the read.  The prose can be difficult at times – it’s almost 150 years old, but if you like the spiritual allegory in C. S. Lewis, then MacDonald is a must-read.

It’s most certainly a reflection of a different time, and much has changed since then, but I find in his books a lack of cynicism that is so refreshing.  The characters have their flaws but they’re from a different era and there is an innocence and a virtue in them that I don’t think you would see in a book written these days.  Now that I start to reflect on books written today, I’m realizing that I don’t actually read very much children’s literature written these days, so I really should limit my commentary on it.

It might be that the characters don’t resemble any of the people that I generally meet these days.  The more I think of it, the more I’m beginning to think that the way they speak to one another is a big part of it.  There’s no sarcasm.  It’s a simpler way of speaking.  All the influence of years and years of television and film characters, and their humour has yet to penetrate their consciousness.

As we were reading through tonight there was a scene where the main character and his father encounter the divine wisdom character – the great-great-grandmother, an ancient and mysterious woman who appears in many different forms and shines light into darkness in more ways than one, giving direction and guidance to our heroes.

The way that MacDonald uses his stories to talk about God in an indirect, and yet very clear way inspires me.  It made me think about my post last night and how this period of time in my life when I am wrestling with uncertainty and hoping for a breakthrough in my work presents me with a great opportunity.

If I can learn to let go of outcomes and pour myself into the process without worrying about where I’m going or how it’s going to turn out at this point, I can learn and experience what it means and what it feels like to trust God and to follow his leading.  (I should point out that I think my wife tried to say this to me last night but I don’t think I heard her very well – sorry hon!)  It’s such an intangible thing, this act of putting trust in the divine – I feel like I’ve grasped it completely one moment only to doubt it the next.  I feel like I’m enveloped in the love of God one day only to feel distant and down the next.

MacDonald captures this so beautifully in the character of the great-great-grandmother.  It’s as if he is saying, “This is real!  Faith is real, but hang on because you’re going to be talking yourself out of it, the day after tomorrow.”  The way he does it is so lovely.

I have such a hard time talking about faith and about the reality of God in my life and how it impacts me.  Whenever I begin to do it I am often dismayed to find that it sounds hollow to me – it sounds to me like the words of someone who is working too hard to convince someone else of things unseen.  But the words of MacDonald inspire me to believe that it can be done.  There is a way to capture the unseen and the spiritual with words.

God, if I could do that, even a little bit, through all this, then I would be a happy man indeed.

 

discontent/failure/God/hope/prayer/Uncategorized

Lent Day 20 – (17 for me)

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This is attempt number four at a post coming from the weekend.  I started one on Sunday and then another one on Monday, then I finished one yesterday but then I started another one this morning before starting this one tonight.  Besides the one from yesterday, I couldn’t bring myself to finish any of the others, but hopefully I’ll be able to turn the trick with this one.

I was biking home from work tonight and realized that I feel like I have a chip on my shoulder.  I’m bent out of shape and I’m not even sure why.  I talked about this yesterday and I think I gave the impression that I was able to take care of it with a little reflection, but it clearly wasn’t a lasting solution – which shouldn’t be a surprise.  When it comes to leaning on God for support it’s not the kind of thing that you go in for every three months for a top-up.

Sometimes I’ll find myself on my bike and it’s like I’m looking to get mad at somebody – I want to yell at them and blow off some steam.  I generally don’t, but I’ve got this mindset like everybody is out to cut me off or to give me grief.  It’s ridiculous.  It’s a terrible way to bike.  I had to take a deep breath and just slow down.

By the end of the day I found myself in prayer asking for strength.  There are so many Psalms and passages that speak of God being our strength – leaning on God – taking refuge in God.  Sometimes I stop and I think to myself, “what does that really mean?  How do you actually lean on God?  How does that work in practice?”

Well, today, it looked like me praying and asking God to be my strength and just like to let go of the chip and to make room for God to come in.  My bike ride home was much better but I suspect that this may need to be my prayer and my practice for a little while.

If I’m going to be completely honest I think that what is at the root of my troubled state of mind is my trip home this weekend.  I spent the weekend with my parents, and I want to be very clear that it’s not because of anything that anyone said or did.  It was a good visit, but I think that there’s something about being in the house where I grew up that takes me back in time to a place in my life where I saw my life and the world in a certain way.

And now, when I go back I am reminded that I’m not in that place anymore.  I’ve left it behind.  I’m some twenty years removed and I’m not where I hoped I’d be when I set out into the world on my own.  That glorious homecoming I suppose that I dreamed of has yet to take place.  In some ways I feel the same as I did when I left – which is strange because I’m not the same.

It’s funny, because I had a really great weekend with my family.  It was fun and we spent some quality time together.  I’m hoping that in the coming months I can make more time to spend with my family, but at the same time that will mean that I’m also going to spend more time facing my own history, and the disappointment with where I am at this point in my life.

I know that I’m only forty.  There is still a lot of time.  There is a lot to be done.  There’s much to look forward to.  I’m certainly impatient to move forward on all of the things I’ve been working on, but there’s also fear that when I finally finish them that they will not measure up to my hopes.

I don’t know if I’m one of those people from one of those generations that has an inflated sense of his place in the world – I certainly felt like I was on a journey when I was a young man.  I felt like I was heading somewhere, and while I certainly have achieved a lot of things in a lot of areas, I also feel like I’m well short of making the mark I always thought I’d make in this world.  So as I move forward in time past the age of 40, I’m wrestling with the fear that maybe I’m not headed somewhere in the way I thought I was – maybe I’m not going to make the mark I thought I would.

If this is the case, then I will most certainly be fine.  I’m a little bit like George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life.  I’m not headed to the bridge.  I don’t have a date with Clarence.  I’ve seen that movie many times and I know what I’ve got.  I’ve reached my hand into my pocket to find Zuzu’s petals so so many times.  It’s good.  It’s wonderful.  I know it, but if things aren’t going to turn out the way I thought they would, I still have to come to terms with it.  It makes me grumpy and irritable sometimes.

But nothing is settled yet.  There’s lots of time.  Things are still open.  And so I write, even if I don’t know who’s going to read it and how they’ll feel about it.  And I pray.  “Give me strength, God.  Be my strength, God.  Thank you, God, for everything you’ve given and everything that’s still to come.”

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Lent Day 19 – (16 for me)

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I’m almost half-way through and I’m starting to slip!  That’s two in a row that I’ve missed.  I’m not going to lament my missed opportunities but I am going to carry on.  I still have the hope that I can catch up somehow.  I could cheat and just toss off a few quick posts, but I’ll set that option aside for an eleventh hour possibility.

I started writing a post on Sunday afternoon and then again yesterday morning, but I didn’t finish either of them and I don’t think I will.  There are times when I sit down to write and it feels very hollow.  I find myself writing words because I can and because I’ve dedicated some time to doing it, but it feels laboured and forced.

I felt like I had nothing.  I felt like the well was dry and I was scooping up mud.  I also didn’t know why I felt so dry, but it happens sometimes.  I suppose I could have forced myself through and posted what I wrote.  It’s not like all my posts are worthy of the Pulitzer Prize – not that they have a Pulitzer for blogs…maybe they qualify for some category but I’m not going to bother looking it up.

Looking back I wish that I had pushed through and got them out.  It’s easy to make a commitment to yourself and then to lose steam.  It’s hard to be accountable to yourself and it’s easy to let things slide, but I feel like there’s great value in pressing forward and making it a practice to honour commitments.

This blog has yet to have a loyal following so it’s easier to slide when I know that there are not going to be legions of disappointed readers.

But I find it interesting that I was so dry yesterday morning and on the day before.  For whatever reason my motivation had ground to a halt.  I couldn’t figure out why.  I wasn’t even really aware that I’d hit a dip until I started to look back on my two laborious efforts to post.

The weekend had been great – I took the kids to my parents while my wife stayed home to work the night shift and to sleep during the day.  I had some trying parenting moments which can be exhausting but I got everybody home without any disasters and we’d had a great time.

Where was the energy?  Where was the renewed purpose?  What happened?  I don’t know.

It’s a winding path that we follow and so often we end up in places we had not expected.  We reach turns in the path that we don’t understand, and so often there is not a lot of time to stop and figure out just exactly how we got here.  Other times, there is time, but out of impatience or maybe even laziness we just push forward in the hopes of sorting things out just be pressing on.

Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t, but I have found that inevitably it is the moments where I make myself stop and collect myself and take time to reflect and to pray that I find my feet again and find the right way forward.

I think that it is very easy to hit a bit of a wilderness period without even really realizing it.  You go through your routine and do the things that you’ve always done, and it happens so slowly and you’re so busy that you haven’t noticed that you’re feeling drained and weary.  There was no trigger.  There was no obvious source of it all – you just ended up there over the course of time.

The only reason I was able to put my finger on it was that I was committing myself to write and so it became quickly apparent that I had nothing.  It’s so easy to just chug along with the gears grinding, which is why it is so important to take the time to reflect and to assess and to reach out for refreshment.  It can make such a difference.

We move forward because that’s what we do.  Momentum carries us forward even if we’re dragging, especially if we’re not even aware of it.  But it’s so much nicer not to drag, so I’m so thankful for the routine that this writing commitment has given me because it allowed me to see what was happening and to get the rejuvenation that I needed.

 

 

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Lent – Day 16 (15 for Me)

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Last night after we had put our kitchen together and I told my wife that I’d never actually finished my post that morning and that I was another day behind in my Lent journey, she suggested that I cheat and post a one-liner.

She didn’t actually say “cheat” but that’s how I interpreted it.  It’s actually a good suggestion, but I think I have a fear that I would get lazy and just start posting a lot of one-line posts only to have a big remorse-filled confession post after a week and a half of that.

But I think I can get away with an in-between post.  This isn’t a one-liner but it’s not a substantive post and it’s only going to take me about five to ten minutes.

As I mentioned with our carpenter ant problem the kitchen was an utter disaster so we spent the whole evening putting it back together.  It’s not easy putting corner cupboards back in place when the counter is already in place, but we managed it, and I was able to get all the screws and bolts I took out back in.  It feels good and we are holding our breaths to see if the ants will re-establish somewhere else.  A house is a big place with a lot of inaccessible nooks and crannies.

I woke up a bit late this morning feeling very tired, but I felt thankful.   I’ve still got a few chunks of expanding foam on my fingers.  I still have to take my tools down into the basement, which is still in a shambles, but despite all the challenges and time spent on unwanted surprises, it’s always better to recognize a new day as a gift.

If you’re not seeing it as a gift, you can’t force it, but when you can actually see that angle, it is a good thing.  When you’re feeling grumpy and bitter, you can’t just will yourself to feel thankful.  You can try to think of all the things you think you ought to feel thankful for, but that may not actually get you there.  But today I feel thankful despite these little bumps.  Being tired has never killed me, and I appreciate this time I have to write.  Today is a gift, and I hope to make the best of it.