Shoes In The Back Hall

We have a back hall in our home.  A space between our family room and our garage.  We use this space more than we do our front door.  Each day we travel "to" and "from" using this space.  It is a transient space.  A space created to usher from one place to the next.  This space is also small; so narrow that if the backdoor and closet door are both open one cannot pass through.

This transient space often becomes a bottleneck for us.  Coming home with arms full of groceries: crowded space.  3 school kids trying to get out the door with backpacks, instruments, and lunches in tow: crowded space. 

Yesterday when I came home (through the usual, narrow, crowded passage-way) I was held up by my kids' shoes scattered and clogging up the hallway (I had difficulty getting the door all the way open because of their shoes).  My initial reaction was to holler (out of frustration) at the kids to come clean up their shoes and "put them away properly" (like I've told them so many times before!).  Yet I held on for a moment.  No hollering came.  Instead I was graced by something else: vision to see what I usually miss.

In that moment I heard God remind me, "There will be a day, not too far off, when you will long to trip over your kids' shoes."

In that moment I found myself pausing.  Stopping and really seeing what is.

That was the "long, loving look" that Walter Burghardt talks about.  The privilege to see scattered shoes as more than a nuisance, inconvenience, and obstacle to my final arrival home.  I was reminded of the joy my kids bring me, reminded of all the places their shoes take them, and reminded of how small their feet were when they were born.

I was reminded that cumbersome spaces of transition are often a gift.

May you be given the capacity to look deeply into the cluttered, disorganized, confining, transition of life; that you might be overwhelmed with the truth that even there, you are home.

The Destructive Self

We have all been designed to create in this life.  To fashion ideas into realities, to explore new thoughts, and to live lives that outwardly express the true inner self.

We marvel at those who who bring their art to life.  Musicians, Painters, and Poets.  We long to express ourselves in such a beautiful and constructive manner.

Because we don't know how to express ourselves (perhaps we really do know how, but choose not to for fear of what it will cost us) we live inwardly conflicted lives.  We secretly wrestle, quietly scream, and inwardly go to war.  We can't make sense of the tension and cannot express ourselves in the manner of the true Artist and so what comes from our hands is nothing short of destruction.

It may come through throwing the tools when you can't get the swing-set constructed just right or the tearing up of the canvas when the picture wasn't getting flushed out the way you envisioned.  It may come through hateful words when you and another fail to see each other fully, or worse, it may come into being when you strike another because they have unknowingly reflected to much of your worse self.

We destroy when the frustration of "what we wish to be is not what is" breaks past our capacity to hold it safely.

We destroy because the old container clearly does not work anymore and birthing the new is too labor-some.

These expressed fits of aggravation reveal something to us:

Our petulance for destruction is bound in our longing to create.

Please do not be startled anymore by the self that wants to scream, throw, and smash (do not bury it away, pretending that only the pietist within you exists).  Yet do not indulge it because of its ease; the unleashed destruction will only become amplified.  Instead, listen to it.  Invite it to sit and be still.  Let it, without fear, become a teacher for you; usher it to the light.

For it is an indicator that there is creative work yet to be done.

It Would Do You Well To Be Bored

We place a high value on having something to do, staying busy, and being entertained.  As a result we fill our time with activities, scroll through Facebook updates to "see what's going on", and play mindless games on our iPads.  We are constantly filling our minds in the name of productivity but really we have fallen for  one of the greatest myths of the 21st Century.

Boredom should be avoided.

As a parent I hear the "boredom complaint" from my kids and I am quick to offer resolutions.  However I'm not sure this is the best remedy.  When quick solutions to boredom are offered no real thinking has to be done.  When 2 friends, a ball, and boredom are involved the sky is the limit on the kind of games that can be created.  Boredom isn't something to be fixed or avoided it is the space that can begin to incubate the next fresh idea.

If we allow it, boredom can become an ally in our pursuit of creativity and fresh thinking.

Boredom, once thought to be the no-man's-land where ideas go to die, might really be the lab where things are tinkered with and new combinations are discovered.