Rabbit Trails and Spiderwebs

Habakkuk – A story for today. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVSTKpJBq-8   Only 4 min…. Listen to the first 2 min Amazing Grace: a story to sing… start at 33 sec in… to 2:07. Can you sing the story of Jesus? Habakkuk is a prophet that tells the story of a people in distressing times.  This is not the Amazing Grace story of your Grandma…   This is a story of corruption, injustice and out of control heathens…. It is a story of a man and his God and an honest cry to understand what is going on and the feeling of abandonment.  Of being alone in a wilderness that he doesn’t understand nor feels secure about his future.  It is my favorite book in the Bible, and that should tell you much about me…. Hab: 1: 1-4  Question… Are you paying attention?  This place is a mess and you seem absent!  This lament is honest, heartfelt, direct, an accusation, questioning, nearly angry.  Is this how you pray? It is a place of honest conversation with the God of the Universe that you disagree with about how

  On Divorce   This is not a complete work, but a few observations.   It is not all personal, but it is all true.   It is about the parts that move, and the ones that don’t.   The issue, at its core, is that of failure.   Failure to listen, failure to tell.   Failure to hear what is not said, and to do things that drive you to the edge of hope or fear.   The church doesn’t know what to do with it.   Society doesn’t know what to do with it.   Those that are adamant about how correct they are, are the most afraid of it happening to them.   Our friends are unclear about what to do with it when it happens.   Most of the time it is only a trail of loss and the crumbs of our past strewn along as we go.   The rending of the fabric of our relationships and lives is a sound you cannot not remember.   You can imagine the lamb that has it's tail docked and has to re-orient its life and adapt to the new reality.   No one wins, but some have hope of the pain stopping, and the possibility of

Crucible Why is it always a surprise how hot things get and so quickly? Crisis builds slowly and then all of a sudden it is intense and endless.  The story is always the same.  Things are simply going the way things go, and then three separate decisions combine and all hell is raging and your hair is on fire.  It comes as a surprise, or I would have been prepared.  Why am I surprised, again? Friends suck, that is why it hurts.  That is why you are not prepared.  That is why you were guarded.  How then did it happen again?  What did you miss, that let them get past the barriers?  The heat will not let up, this I know from the last time.  Ok, the last several times… Here I am, in the vessel filled with the debris of many bad decisions.  Good parts and bad.  Broken and whole.  The heat will melt it all into a soup that will easily pour into a new mold.  First will come the flux that grabs what I thought was important and take it away.  It has happened time and again and it is the same eve

If you look down and the path you are on is clear, then someone else made it for you.  This may be news to you, or perhaps not.  It seems axiomatic in some ways.  School, college, internship or first job will all have a well-worn path that many have trotted before you.  Some are so well travelled that they are paved.  A paved path is neither wrong nor bad, it simply “is”.  For some that don’t ponder about it, the path is clear all the way through retirement and a condo in a warm climate. There are times that we are confronted with the fork in the road, and we may choose the “path less traveled” which makes all the difference, therefore. However can be simply less traveled and at times challenging and even scarry.  Perhaps even dangerous and threatening to us or our companions, not to mention the finances or the real possibility of failure and starting over.  Ignominy, ruined reputation, betrayal, divorce, alone, these and many more are the options that come our way.  We may be starting

 Before Christmas Sometime before Christmas I sent a note. One of the reasons was to let that person know that they are worthy of the time and the effort to send a piece of paper through the mail. To give a moment of reflection, and to get something in the mail other than junk or a bill. We seldom get these anymore and it is a good habit to begin anew. Sometime before the list of people that we send cards to and get cards from, shift the paradigm. Think of the one that you think of often and send anything to seldom. Think of those that have been in the “year of firsts”. You know, the first “something” after the event that forever changed their lives. Regardless if it is a marriage or a birth, a divorce or a death, their lives are rolling through the list of “firsts” and it is different for them. It could be the same for you. Your first day of retirement or limping with the new set of circumstances from the last bit of trauma. We all know someone in this place. The “First” something

The inner murmur Like the humming of a large machine, we know the sound that it makes.  Not loud, just inexorable.  Not threatening, simply insatiable.  Yours is different than mine, but we both know what it is saying… “I need more from you”, “prove it again”.  And so, we do.  Again.  It has a companion.  Weariness.  Weary from trying and not getting fulfillment.  We may have improved. We may have given our newest “best”, and still, it cries out for more.  The list is filled with many forms of the thing not satisfied, notability, money, power, friends, better friends, work, play, approval from someone of note to us… and still… the level of achievement is not fulfilled from outside.  This is a work from within.  I cannot give it to you, nor can you give it to me. There is a place in the Alcoholics Anonymous program that we can apply here, knowing that whatever it is that I do, it will not be enough, and paradoxically then it is.  I cannot do more, and I am ok with what I have done.  Kno

And Now What will I do?  It seems that a page has turned and the path, while not visible for very far, seems one that is of the sort that I can trod.  This path of the new day, the journey that is not known but is in the known expectation.  I am comfortable with this level of not knowing. It is an adventure that is absent the fear and terror that was the last section I had traveled. Life comes at you, and at times quickly.  It seldom has those signs you would find on a ski slope, the Double Diamond or the Moguls, so you would at least know that you could end up a crumpled mess at the bottom when you started over the edge.  Most of life is missing those types of signs. Gravity is real.  Sometimes you will get a tingle in your skin, if you are paying attention, that something is up… but the rest of life comes without labels and warnings.   Yesterday a 14-year-old girl was walking home from school and was hit by another 14-year-old that was driving with a school permit.  While she is stil

In Times Like These “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…” or so the poet says.  Part of the problem that we confront is that we are new to this part of history, so it feels unknown and scary. When you are confronted with the “unknown” it is called chaos, and out of that comes truth and awareness that is new to you.  It is found when a child is taken to meet a new friend and they are wary of all that is new.  It isn’t new, really, though it may be to the child or to us.  This may be the year of the internet millionaire or the Covid small business death, but it is your year.  Alone in the way that it is yours, and yet collective in that many can tell the same story.  It is the time of our lives. Your story is simply that, your own.  From the beginning of your life through the teaching and experiences that brought you too today, it is specific. Good or bad, long or short.  Well-seasoned, with history as perspective or simply the musings of the narcissist absorbed with you

House of Cards There is a part in the book “A grief observed”, by C.S. Lewis, where he talks about the way mankind creates a structural representation of God that is a house of cards.  God, not being pleased by the misrepresentation of this house, blows a bit of breath on it and it collapses easily.  We respond in horror that our representation is collapsed and are confronted with the knowledge that we have made some error, but then we start again.  The interesting part comes when we realize that we do this with many aspects of our lives.  That we build a structure of expectations for friends, relatives and business actions that conform to that internal sense of things being “right”.  This is then divided into two parts.  The first is the sense of violation when the expectation is not met or worse when it is trampled on purpose and we have been made the one that the joke was played upon.  The second part is when we realize we made the assumptions ourselves and didn’t verify or later cl

Slothfulness – indifference  (Acedia) Seldom heard of, this is actually one of the 7 Deadly Sins.  Acedia is the term first brought about by a monk in 1670, it is often heard by the name of Sloth.  Current use of the term sloth would be understood as the animal that bears its name, or that is the slovenly and unmotivated person.  In the list of the 7 Deadly Sins they all seem to count as behaviors.  Wrath, Greed, Sloth, Pride, Lust, Envy, and Gluttony.  Lust and pride, of course are internal and their fulfillment is found in the actions they produce, but that can also be said of them all.  But to read them you simply pass over the word sloth and perhaps think “indolent” or unfocused on their task.  You would be mistaken. Acedia is a different form of malaise and is at times described as “depression”.  While there is a parallel track of common behaviors and symptoms their actual being and their root causes are different.  Acedia can be found in today’s phrasing as “whatever”.  It shows

 Onions and Friends... The conversation was ranging and enjoyable.  We had been talking for more than an hour, as typical for me, when there was a change in the eye and the tone of the voice.  We had just shifted.  It is not new that this takes place, but it is not always observed by both parties.  The topic is irrelevant, but the process is always the same.  Surprises come as you get closer to the issues that have merit.  We talked and the questions come, and they are joined with the answers.  Ring by ring we proceed. Here is an interesting note.  The rings have a meat layer which is thick, but also a thin membrane which proceeds it.  In a conversation it is the “permission” layer.  That point of vulnerability that must be obtained before going to the actual issue behind it.  Some will not pay attention and will simply blunder past the signals of resistance and the result is a damaged relationship.  There are indeed times and people that are allowed to do this.  They are specific and