no deal

Some day they'll open up your world
Shake it down on a drawing board
Do their best to change you
They still can't erase you... "Hand Me Down" Matchbox 20

God must have incredible eyes.  To be able to see past all the numbers and probabilities like that.  To be able to see how we will fall so far and so hard, and yet still have the nearly insane capacity to get up again and again.

I saw "Billy Jack" when I was about ten years old.  I saw "The Hiding Place" before that.  I think my mom took me to it when I was five or maybe seven.  Today, something like that might be considered abuse.  Truth telling feels like that sometimes.  I am not sure which came first--the impression those two stories had on my identity or the identity that greeted them when they arrived.

The picture above has been on this site for a long time.  On the one hand, I feel a little bad about this because I used to work hard to match the picture with the blog entry.  But today it feels kind of right.  That strange looking bucket of bolts is the "Serenity."  It is the ship from the film of the same name, inspired by the brief TV series, "Firefly."  The ship carries a modest crew.  Seven (or eight if you count Inara) live on board the Serenity.  They live in-between.  They neither serve the empire nor are they overtly raging against it.  Being an outlier is not easy but it does have it's benefits.  Hence the name of the ship.

The ships captain is Mal Reynolds, a very human ex-soldier who has seen and suffered enough of the trappings of waging someone else's war.  He does his best to keep his ship and friends clear of the prying eyes of the empire and the trouble of such entanglements.

Romans 13 (by no means my favorite chapter of the Bible) states, "owe nothing to anyone except to love one another. for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law."  Wisdom, indeed, in a world where debt binds tightly,  and so undermines serenity.  

In the film, there comes a time when Mal has to make a hard decision.  It is Hollywood in that regard.  But the story doesn't end with the battle, but with its conclusion when Serenity takes to flight again.  And the handful of in-betweeners are allowed to be, and to go their way into the multiverses without the chains and prying eyes of someone else's defining.

Here's a blessing:  A live version of "Hand Me Down."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HZ3dS-GnuA

Advent Wisdom

I have a friend.  At least I think that I do.  She and I seem to flit in and out of one another's lives from time to time.  She has a deep wisdom that has been forged over time.  It has been forged in experience as well as knowledge--the kind that is gained through reading and handed on from generation to generation.

Wisdom is something that is hard to measure.  It's is a treasure.  But treasures can become diminished if they cannot be rightly (and lightly) carried.  On the one hand, it is good to be wise and wisdom is one of those things that carries you, especially in those more difficult stretches.  However, it can also feel like a burden.  Like a backpack that you take with you even when you are going on a short hike.  Like a reliable backpack, experience and knowledge are not easily set aside, even in moments of rest.  But that can be cumbersome at times, a bit like bringing an encyclopedia to book club.

Sometimes we need to just be.  Just sit and laugh and enjoy the moment.  This too is wisdom, though wisdom of a different kind, I think.

Advent is a season of preparation.  The wise (like the wise men) follow the star.  Yet, when they arrive, they find a very modest scene.  They set down their gifts and humble themselves before the mystery.  As far as we know, they do not feel the need to speak or expand on all the lessons that their wisdom has taught them.  It is apparently enough simply to be there.  And to offer their respective gifts.

Today I am thinking of my friend.  I am thinking of her journey and of mine.  I know that we carry our blessings and that they are sometimes burdens.  I know that we both want to carry wisdom rightly and lightly.  And I hope for both of us to find those moments where we are blessed to simply be there.

May we all be blessed as we once again prepare ourselves for the mystery of the ages.

Distance

I was half the naked distance between hell and heaven's ceiling and he almost pulled me under... Indigo Girls, "Prince of Darkness"
It seems rather remarkable that in the span of my lifetime, time and distance have come to mean everything and nothing.
What I mean by this is that there was a time in which both of these things seemed to be impossible. Impossible to comprehend and impossible to conquer. And now, it would seem that both are immensely overrated.
When I think about time today, I think about illusion. Earthbound time is something that does seem to demand our attention and devotion. Though I am not sure that it deserves it. Ultimately, it seems that the only power that anything really has is the power that we give to it. In this regard, our slavery to the clock is like staying in a prison that has no walls. A lot of my life feels like that these days. Still working on taking those first few steps out of the cage. Oh, and it appears to be a bird cage. Who knew?
Distance... another illusion. Or maybe just a misunderstood mystery. How far is it to the Sun? How far is it anywhere, really? I've been trying to get to California for six months. I think it might be closer to the Sun. O.K., forget the metaphysics. Just try to wrap your head around the science (or pseudo-science). We have all heard that analogy of the football field and the tennis ball or golf ball or whatever. No? They say that, proportionately, an atom is, for all meaningful purposes, really just empty space. According to the analogy, the neutron can be likened to a tennis ball in the middle of a football field and the electron/s that orbit/s around it are equivalent to a running track encircling that football field. In other words, it's just this energy field that appears to be solid but really it is just empty space--though, importantly, it is energized empty space.
It is possible to hear these kinds of things that keep them safely categorized in something called, "Physics" or "Quantum Mechanics," and never consider what this might mean in terms of spirit and spirituality. But why would we want to do that? Why would we not wonder how all this relates to us and our day to day lives? BTW, I do not have the answer to that question, but I do believe that it is a worthwhile question.
And I believe that by asking it, we might find ourselves surprised. It may well be that in the pursuit of an answer to time and distance, we might innocently find some other answers to some other questions that have troubled us all our lives. One of my favorite examples here is the question, "where did it go?" Where did that moment go? Where did that special someone go? Where did that opportunity go? Is it really gone, or is it just hiding out of our present vision?
My place is of the sun and this place is of the dark,
and I do not feel the romance I, I do not catch the spark...
Indigo Girls, "Prince of Darkness."

Stretching

Everywhere I look, it seems that things are stretching and trying to grow. Or, they are being held back because of some resisting force. It is, as if our very beings are struggling to become something more, but there is also aspects within us that are anxious and, therefore sometimes working against us. The same is true for the collective, though it is harder to see and slower in coming. Recently, I heard a metaphor likening our experience to that of a rubber band--at one point being pulled and thinned and then returning to a more settled stasis. While the analogy is overly simple, it does provide a way to explain what many people are feeling. As that rubber band (our experience of growth or change) stretches, it can feel either freeing or dislocating, depending on the way we perceive what is happening. And then when the it returns (when our perception and/or experience of all this stabilizes), the anxiety fades. But what has happened in the process is that the rubber band has actually returned to a "new normal." That is, even though the greater stress is gone, the impact remains. The stretching has had a lasting impact, even if it is not immediately detectable. Additionally, the change--even though it may be extremely slight has, in turn, created a possibility (or, more likely, a range of possibilities) that was not there before. I am not sure how this will strike the reader. Simply talking about this might add to the stress. However, my hope is that it will provide a means of explaining what some people are experiencing. I also hope that by speaking about it, we can get a better handle on what it means--or might mean--and how we can proactively relate to this. For what I am talking about about might not be simply happening "to" us. It might be something that we are more actively involved with than we realize. In terms of traditional theology, what I am talking about here is free will. We tend to think about free will in terms of individual choices and that is certainly not wrong. However, what we do not necessarily think much about is how all those individual choices add up and where they ultimately lead us. Think about it in terms of prayer. Prayer is not merely request. It is intent. It is an effort to pull or push the rubber band in a certain direction. Of course, this is somewhat alarming to consider because we pray to God an trust that God knows what best to do with our prayers. But what happens when God gets many prayers--many efforts to stretch--in a a certain direction? What happens then? (I am still working on this... so don't be put off by what appears to be a sudden conclusion)