New directions

I found this quote just the other day from a book called, “The Art of Living: Simple Wisdom for the Self,”by Nadine Crenshaw. She writes, “Or we may move from temporary goal to temporary goal. As a door opens, we slip through it, and in that room we look for another door. We see only the walls that enclose us, and it isn’t clear until we see the next door opening that something else is possible.” (p.91)   She is speaking to my heart. I feel transitory, displaced both geographically and spiritually. Put in that light, much of my adult life has been moving from room to room, from open doors to other open doors.

One of my biggest obstacles has been focusing on those things that I really want and expect to achieve. Sometimes I find that I’m being too self-centered if I focus on those goals. Other times I find that my focus blurs out so quickly, and I’m lost looking through several lenses at the same time.

“When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.”  Mark Twain.

“The best way out is always through.”  Robert Frost.

How to measure wealth

I found this quote today: “Measure wealth not by the things you have, but by the things you have for which you would not take money.”

Sail away from the safe harbour

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”   Mark Twain

When I first read this quote by Mark Twain, I felt a warming sense of peace. The words spoke to my very own lengthy journey of travel overseas. For me, these opportunities to uproot, leave, and set foot on foreign soils, is too great an opportunity to forego. Although twenty years is a long time from now, I think it’s entirely possible that I will look back on these experiences with more fondness than aversion.

I certainly feel displaced. This feeling of geographical, cultural and social displacement has been prolonged this time, making for a hazy acculturation period. More often than not, we find ourselves longing to be back in the security of our previous lives, and the comfort that was afforded us there. I suppose we will find those comforts once more, only a little further along on our journey.

What I love about Mark Twain’s quote is the sense of challenge and voyage. Travel by intercontinental airlines probably doesn’t capture the sense of unknown that travel by sea offers: “throw off the bowlines”…”sail away from safe harbours”….”catch the trade winds”…

Thoughts at 4:52 AM in the Morning

I am thankful for my wife and children.

I am thankful for having the resources to type this post.

I am thankful that I am loved.

I am thankful for abilities, skills, and talents, that I uniquely possess.

I am thankful that God will never leave me or foresake me.

I am thankful that I have the freedom to explore this world.

I am thankful that I can write, read, and think.

What are you thankful for?

A list of questions to ask yourself (at least once in your lifetime!)

Once the philosopher, always the philosopher!

I’ve decided to compile a list of questions that I’ve either come across on my own, or from readings, mainly to stir some fiery introspection. Here they are, in no particular order.

1. What most excites you about the world?

2. What is my own personal mission statement?

3. Who is living the life that you most envy? Describe what that life might be like.

4. If money were no object, what would you be doing with your life?

5. If you could be ten times bolder, what would you be doing with your life?

6. Imagine it’s Wednesday morning at 9AM. Transport yourself three years into the future. What would you be doing at this moment?

7. Imagine you’ve retired. What would you tell someone on a park bench that you’re most proud of?

8. Do your closest family members and friends know that you love them? When was the last time you told them directly, face-to-face?

World’s Largest Radio-Controlled Airplane

I found this video of the world’s largest radio-controlled airplane. It’s a magnificent display of hobby, passion, engineering, and design. The liftoff and landing are spectacular.

Between the dreaming and the coming true

What an awesome title for a book: “Between the dreaming and the coming true: The road home to God,” by Robert Benson (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1996).

This book leaped off the shelf while I leisurely browsed for books at the library. The jacket cover doesn’t do the book justice, mainly because the book is so intimate, so quiet and intelligent, so eloquently poetic. The jacket cover makes it sound like a self-help book, when it really isn’t, at least in my opinion.

The book is about one man’s life/spiritual journey, and how he chooses to see God in the most minute or simplest details of everyday life. More importantly, for myself that is, he tries to define that sense of longing for home that I suffer from. Well, suffer might not be the right word. I wrestle in many ways with the entire notion of home, and what constitutes a home, and how I might be defined or not defined by my home.

I’m going to copy out an excerpt that illustrates Benson’s beautiful writing when he describes his home (I apologize if I’ve broken copyright laws by typing this out, but it really needs to be out there).

“We had been traveling for a while, one of those seasons where you are home just long enough to repack and leave town again for a few days, and I was awakened one morning by the suddenly unfamiliar sounds of my own house. They were simple sounds, in their usual pattern, generally unnoticed and unremarked. I lay there in the darkness, trying to decide how quickly to move out of the bed and into the day, and suddenly the chorus began.

     The coffeemaker switched on in the kitchen, and I heard the water bubbling its way up and into the basket and down into the pot. Old and heavy cats dropped to the floor in the room where they sleep, and then came the sounds of their pwas softly brushing on the door. My bare feet brushed across the hardwood floor, and the doorknob clicked as I opened it. The bedclothes rustled and the mattress squeaked as the lady I share this home with rolled over and snuggled down into the covers as I left the room.

     I heard the first cup of coffee being stirred with a tinkling sound. The sound of cars going by in the semidarkness, carrying those whose livelihoods depend on their arriving at some appointed place hardly before the day has begun. The rustling of pages in a book, the sound of a pen scratching back and forth across a page I am trying to convert into a reasonable facsimile of the story of yesterday’s portion of my own journey. The chatter of birds at the feeders that surround our house, chatter that removes any doubt that God has let there be light and this day is now to be entered into in full measure.

     Later there is a set of sweet sighs and murmurs and the first whispered greetings shared between me and another in the Eden into which we have been born this new day. Later there will be the clatter of dishes and the zipping up of clothes and briefcases and purses and coasts. There will be snatches of conversation about yesterday and this afternoon and what we are going to do a wekk from Thursday. And the sound of a kiss and a little giggle and the closing of a door and the sound of a car in the drive.

      It is a three-hour symphony that is repeated almost every day of my life. And when I will let it, it reminds me that I am home, that I have a place, that a world that is mine to wander and wonder through has been created out of the darkness and the void and the deep once again.

     The Reverned Buechner implores us to listen to our lives, to the very sound of them, for that is where, “if God speaks to us at a ll in this world…it is into our personal lives that he speaks.” We need only listen to our own lives, I think, to hear the sond of creation and compassion and companionship. It is in our lives that we can hear that there is a place for us among the many rooms of the Father’s house. It is in our lives that we hear that God is with us still, and speaks even yet.” (pp.52-54)

I loved the way Benson described this symphony of his everyday life, the very delicate sounds of an old cat’s paws, the bubbling of a reliable coffeemaker, or the sound of a car leaving the driveway. These are familiar sounds in my own life, and the way he amplified these common, everyday sounds, into beautiful prose made me read and re-read the passage again. And as I re-read the passage, other sounds filled my own personal symphony: my son’s early morning sounds and words from his crib, the quick steps and stomping of feet as he races into our room, or the gentle murmurs that translate as answers to routine questions we ask him each day.

I love Buechner’s quote that by listening to these amplified sounds in our lives (though not exclusively), we might hear God’s voice. I don’t know about the theology of this, but I do think that God’s presence is probably more pronounced in the common, rather than in the sudden. That is to say, we might find more of Him by looking at our personal, daily lives, than by rearing our heads at distant signposts or sudden miracles.

Another point that needs unpacking is the title, and how it relates to the (long!) passage I just quoted. In his introduction, Benson uses an African parable to illustrate the polarity embedded in the title: “There is a Dream dreaming of us.”

For Benson, the Dreamer is God, who had us his mind, who brought us into creation, and in a sense, to make us come true. So in asking one of the deepest questions of humankind, “Why am I here?” Benson has woven this African parable into the biblical answer.

Benson reveals to us his fears: “What I fear now is that I will somehow miss what it is that I am supposed to learn here, something important enough that the Dreamer dispatched me, and the rest of us, here to learn. What I fear now is that I will somehow miss the point of living here at all, living here between the dreaming and the coming true.”

This seemingly ethereal notion of living somewhere in constant flux–between the dreaming and the coming true–struck me as vitally important in my personal quest to define a home and to define a purpose (which both relate to a definition of work). Thus, it makes sense to say that I share his fear of missing out on His purposes, or that missing the boat. I fear that the everyday sounds of my life, the predictable rhythm and warm, cozy patterns of my life, are somehow outside of His purposes.

This goes further to suggest that we might see God’s care and grace in our lives in the smallest details. We might see Him in a smile, in a gesture, in an action. We might confuse seeing with looking, for many can look, but few see, which adds to the enigmatic flavor of the book.

(DVD) War Photographer: James Nachtwey

War Photographer is an incredibly moving, challenging, and intelligent documentary film by Christian Frei, and it provides intimate micro-footage of James Nachtwey, the reknowned photographer. Attached to Nachtwey’s camera is a tiny camera that films not only what he sees through his lense(s), but also how he frames his shots through his paces. The intimacy is eerie at times, and Frei often switches between showing the micro-camera’s “in-production view” to the finished prints that Nachtwey has achieved.

The film is intense. I have no other way to describe it. If you’ve never seen a real war zone, the footage and prints that Nachtwey has produced is probably the closest you’ll (need to) get to seeing the aftermath of war. There is so much suffering in the film, an unimagineable kind of suffering and pain that shatters us. A static picture is no longer static in Nachtwey’s work; when juxtaposed with the micro-camera and additional footage provided by another cameraperson, we see how Nachtwey’s immensely important pictures transition into a seemingly different realm of photography.

What struck me most about Frei’s documentary was how Nachtwey was depicted as a quiet, introverted and single-minded. One could sense, in both his interview monologues and in watching him shoot, that Nachtwey’s career has profoundly affected his sense of self, for who would not be affected by the hundreds of thousands of images taken in hundreds of locations? His quiet, intelligent choice of words and post-production details gives us such a deeper understanding of the person who brought the warzones to us in the relative comfort of our living rooms or libraries. The pain that he has witnessed through his lense and as a human being is seemingly taken in, processed, but never lingering too long to create a deeper psychological wound that would never heal.

I watched him move through a warzone with the stealth of a lurking cat, but with a calm that not may humans would have under similar situations.

The Past is Just a Conduit

Have I got a song for you!! “Up and Up” by Relient K. If you’ve heard the accoustic version after years of the electric one, you’ll probably freak out because it is incredible. The range is so different, and the sound is so much more intimate. It makes me think back to the glory days of “unplugged” albumns (Eric Clapton, Nirvana, etc…), and how this totally caught me off guard, effectively floored me with joy.

One of the neat things is to hear the lyrics sung with greater emphasis and clarity: “You see I’m finally catching on to it, the past is just a conduit, and the life there at the end of it is where I’ll be.”

“‘Cause it seems I get so hung up on the history of what’s gone wrong that the hope of a new day is sometimes hard to see.”

I loved the piano and guitar opening, like a gentle conversation flowing in the background; the gradual build up with drums and bass, and then the full band playing out.

Relient K has got to be one of my favorite bands, and on the list of most influential “rock” bands I’ve listened to (Dave Matthews, Chris Tomlin, Matt Redman, are three bands that immediately come to mind).

YouTube has a few of Relient K’s “unplugged” songs:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Za3jn5esbR0 (Who I am hates who I’ve been”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVj8ZxIorUc (Give until there’s nothing left)

Lifechurch

I found these resources at www.lifechurch.tv, which is an awesome site for Christian resources. I love the video clips, the Web 2.0 applications, and the combination of visual, multimedia, and Christian sermons. It’s an awesome site with a depth of resources.