Validation

A need I've spent too many years trying to wish away is my need for validation. I don't know what my resistence to external forms of corraboration is about. From one perspective, there is wisdom in a good reality check. In another sense, though, it feels like all legitimizing powers belong to others. Like I need permission to proceed.
Perhaps the fallacious permission language arises from where I look for validation not that I look for validation. When I desire validation in someone else's eyes, I am inadvertently accepting their beliefs and values over my own. I give away my power. Diminshed responsibility always undermines dignity. Not good.
If I remain the responsible party, then validating or conflicting evidence is nothing more than valuable data for enhancing my stewardship. I remain in charge and empowered to make my next decision, however difficult, however unusual. Good stuff.

Self Spectrum

self awareness - intentional –proactive –responsible –seeking –insightful –grief

self consciousness - incidental –reactive –responsive –learning - inspirational - repentance

self orientation - unconscious –passive –irresponsible –complaining –blind –denial

Work as Life

Refreshing to gather this weekend with others who also view daily work as the context of mission and the expression of our service to God. A mission for which the clergy do not equip us except to warn us against locating too much of our time, energy or love there. "Danger! Danger!" A service to God which competes with their church-based programs for which there are never enough arms and legs.
This weekend I broke bread with those who are affirming, "Opportunity! Opportunity!" I conversed with those who knew they had much more to offer to the advancement of God's kingdom than functioning as someone else's arms and legs. I did theology with life's practioners instead of preachers or academics.
Great weekend.

Real Connections

Connections find their richness in their simplicity. Being nothing more and nothing less than ourselves. People at peace with others being nothing more and nothing less than themselves.
Then people go and change. Enhancing or diminishing their own capacities to experience life. Being ourselves and accepting others then involves supporting or resisting these changes. (Hopefully supporting life enhancing change and resisting life diminishing change.)
Conceptually pure orthodoxies sneak in and capture our attention, with the result that we filter out the people in our lives. We can no longer see each other as we are. We see each other only in terms of what we are not. Connections lose their simplicity and ultimately their richness. In the upholding of the ideal connection, we lose the only connections we have access to, the messy, real ones.

Easter Risings

And so not even death itself could foil the triumph of God in Jesus. Though the forces of darkness and evil continue to wreak havoc and dominate the human story, we pin our hopes on one particular empty tomb and the vindication of God's commitment to his children to which it points.
While possibly surpassed by the incarnation as miracles go, it stands alone in history in the force of its implications for human life and hope. Today is the anniversary of when Jesus made the world safe—not from the presence and effects of evil—but from the judgment of God for being those who tolerate and perpetrate evil.
We find ourselves free to do our living out in the light, without shame or fear, in a spacious realm called grace. So we too rise each day and live the gift which are our lives alongside, undergirded and surrounded by the living God.

Exile of Isolation

I may feel alone, but I am not alone. By that I mean I am not alone in my aloneness.
I am not as different as I may like to think. My isolation is shared by many. We are a generation where vast numbers of us walk anonymously among the throngs. Frenzied activity experienced by many, shared by few.
Key for me is acknowledging that what I thought was unique to me and increased my distance from others, ironically could be the very point of connection that could draw me closer to others.
The itinerent who reaches over and touches those he meets along the way. In those touches binding himself with unseen cords in a web of connection no building could contain, no language could categorize, no power could threaten, no organization could encompass.
My own exile notwithstanding, the promised land could be as close as the reach of one's fingertips.

Nouwen Insight

My friend, John, sent me the following words of Henri Nouwen, and I set them out for you. I see something new every time I read it.

A man with hopes does not get tangled up with concerns for how his wishes will be fulfilled. So, too, his prayer is not directed toward the gift, but toward the one who gives it. His is not a question of having a wish come true but of expressing an unlimited faith in the giver of good things. You wish that . . . but you hope for . . . For the prayer of hope, it is essential that there are no guarantees asked, no conditions posed, and no proofs demanded, only that you expect everything from the other without binding him in any way. Hope is based on the premise that the other gives only what is good. Hope includes an openness by which you wait for the other to make his loving promise come true, even though you never know when, where, or how this might happen.

Words Give Pause

Time, energy and creativity are precious commodities. I'd probably juxtapose them with whim, inertia and formula.
I certainly desire to apply them with intention, wisdom and love. The trick is making the desire more than just so many words. How much of my time, energy and creativity would people describe as characterized by intention, wisdom and love?
Whim, inertia and formula, on the other hand, reflect a sort of wastefulness, if not outright disregard, for what is most valuable even to me. A form of being disoriented while believing one is perfectly oriented. On track, but no longer aware of which track. Riding the latest wave without acknowledging the underlying tidal currents.
Time, energy, creativity.
Intention, wisdom, love.
Words over which to pause.

Facing Facts

Facing facts is easier to recommend than do. When the facts do not reflect well on us, we have varying capacities to acknowledge it. In theory, such difficult facts are valuable experiential data from which to learn, change, and benefit. In actuality, though, we keep running up against our fragile egos, unconscious fears, and limited self-understandings, and find ourselves ignoring, overlooking and just plain not able to see certain facts that seem obvious to others. Such is the case with positive facts that collide with a negative self-understanding also.
The issue becomes one of creating safe spaces within which to consider challenging information about ourselves without having to risk a devastating verdict. Of finding safe relationships wherein we can explore without being judged, categorized, or dismissed. Of learning to see facts as helpful clues to a better self instead of damning evidence of an inadequate self.

Candor Strikes Again

In this age of perception manipulation and the spinning of reality to achieve narrow agendas, a brush with candor comes as a bracing shock. While initially pitying the naive soul who bleeds voluntarily as the sharks circle, we subsequently catch ourselves remarkably refreshed and secretly envious of their courage and integrity.
By candor, I do not mean emotional exhibitionism. Those people whose pain is so deep that they feel compelled to revisit their shame with anyone who will listen.
In the ordinary course of making decisions, though, responding to problems, choosing directions and interacting with others, our confidence, poise and security can either be a mask we put on or a more natural comfort with ourselves, others and the world. When wearing a mask, the risk of being exposed feels enormous. And so we spin, bifurcate, dance and blame—in short expend vast amounts of energy—in order to keep people from noticing that the powerful visage they have come to trust is but an artificial veneer. When we've made our peace with our imperfections, no mistake, failure or offense can bring us down, because we had nothing to hide in the first place. Very freeing.
It is this freedom that arouses envy and admiration. Far from a naive form of self-betrayal made by those unable to maintain their masks, candor is the deliberate communication choice of the free.

Talking Back to Myself

It's one thing to talk to myself—one of my favorite pastimes. More recently, though, I've found it necessary to talk back to myself. I try my best to maintain a respectful tone. But when I catch myself nodding like a wide-eyed child to the outlandish insinuations fear whispers in my ear, it's all I can do to resist breaking out the whipping noodles.
"Do my eyes deceive me?" I retort to the vaguely familiar stranger in the mirror. "Did you really just travel all the way from articulate professional to stuttering novice in the span of one afternoon?"
I've been persuaded by enough friends that the "castigate, humiliate and beat up on myself" strategy for fostering maturing change hasn't been serving me that well. Command and control efforts like "Stop it!" and "Grow up!" haven't produced much in the way of results either.
So I've taken to putting a friendly arm around my own shoulder (less effective in public where not everyone knows it's impolite to stare), and gently, though directly, asking, "Hey buddy, what do you think is going on here?"
"I'm not here to evaluate or judge. Just making myself available to listen and help you think through some of your, shall we say, less than rational behaviors."
I'll let you know how it goes.

Rain Dance

It's pouring. Sheets of water rinsing away the dust and oil, soaking the parched soil, infusing the outstretched roots with life, refreshing my upturned visage with unmitigated wetness and cold.
The spirited dance of raindrops everywhere sparkling with abandon. Reckless and generous, they give and are gone in an instant. The invitation to join the playful expression is almost irresistible. Beauty no imagination could choreograph. Freedom no will can intend. Simplicity with which no soul will be content. Rain dance.

Dealing

Storm clouds nonchalantly gather like loitering thugs looking for an excuse to explode. The traffic continues to race around me oblivious to the darkening sky. Something tells me an umbrella in tow would be in order.
Life's storms no longer being cause for fear. Facts with which to deal. How well do I deal? Or do I merely wait for the facts to be different than they are? Interesting question. I'm not always sure. It's a certainty that with each passing day I take another step toward death. But do I take another step toward life? Do I passively wish for the traffic to carry me through or the storm clouds to refrain from thundering?
I have long forsworn passivity, but when buffeted by the winds, choosing feels differently.

Exploring Motivations

Exploring motivations that are complex and numerous. Not with the intent to resolve or purify, but merely to understand. Understanding offering power to choose more intentionally. To increase in wisdom as one moves toward one's ambitions, instead of one's ambitions magnifying the foolishness of such focused blindness. Such values are not vague niceties for the politely devout, but the anxious realizations of the wounded desperate.
One's capacity to love freely is handicapped by lack of self awareness. Pure motivations are not a prerequisite to powerful love. But ignorance of what colors our choices can be nothing but dangerous.