Self-Fitting Custom Frames

“Letting go of self is an essential precondition to real seeing”.

- Freeman Patterson

When we hold onto self, our seeing is blurred by all of our baggage, treasures, fears, joys, failures, victories, successes and insecurities.  Life is viewed as either an idealistic possibility that can be reached via self-achievement or as a dead-end road that is ever-constricting until it finds its abrupt end.

From a self-seeing perspective people and creation become just another commodity (objects to our own end; something for us to engulf) or the competitor (afraid they will detract or “take-away” from us we look to destroy).  In either case this vantage point is neither life-giving or creative.

Through our hyper-individualized perspective we lose sight of the big picture.  As a result, we become enthralled with our own achievement and wrecked by our own failure.  This myopic grid, in which we view the world around us, says “it is about you”; about your success, about your joy, about your failure, about your sadness.

But it is not.

It never has been and never will be.

To really see, the myopic grid, the glasses of “self” need to be taken off.  Yet here in lies the problem; we believe we can remove our own glasses.  This, however, is the old self talking. The truth is we cannot remove the self-fitting-custom-frames on our own.

They must be taken off for us.

Like Jesus’ interaction with the blind man, grace must meet us in the most unpredictable of ways and in the most peculiar of forms.  Saliva-made-mud is an unlikely ointment (the antithesis to seeing would be "mud in your eye").  It could be in the form of rejection, a diagnosis, or a heartbreak, but grace will come to you.

In being placed upon you, your likely reaction to the paradox will be, "how is this going to make me see?!?!?".  But the seeing doesn't happen when grace comes (as if our "seeing" could be forced or coerced).  Our seeing comes when, like the blind man, we respond to being sent.

"Having said this, he spit on the ground, made mud with the saliva, and put it on the man's eyes.  'Go,' he told him, 'wash in the Pool of Siloam' (this word means 'Sent').  So the man went and washed, and came home seeing."

May you, when grace comes, stop clinging to your old glasses wishing they could bring the fullness of life into focus.  May you in courage, "Go", "Wash" and be given a vision big enough to take in all you were meant to behold.

The Hero Path

We have only to follow the thread of the hero path.  Where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god; where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outwards, we shall come to the center of our own existence; were we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world.

- Joseph Campbell, The Hero With A Thousand Faces

Proof-Reading

I trust the Author of Creation to pen the story of my life,

it's just that…

I need to look over his shoulder to make sure he is dotting his “i’s” and crossing his “t’s”.

He probably gets annoyed with my hovering,

however…

He doesn’t know how lucky he is to have me as a tutor.

Creative Incarceration

I hope you’re not waiting for permission or approval for your creative expression.  If so, pull up a chair and get comfortable.  If the artist within you is waiting for someone else to let them out then the only thing you can count on is a life-sentence of creative incarceration.

You can blame the creative hold-up on other people’s bureaucracy and “lack of vision”, but really, it’s just your fear that’s keeping you back.

The Disappointment Myth

I’m not sure what it was that opened you up to the world of disappointment.  Perhaps your first taste came when you realized Santa didn’t always bring everything you asked for.  Or maybe it was when you realized there was no man in a red suit and it was your parents all along.  Worse, maybe it came when your Santa-playing-parents told you they were splitting up.

Over the years I’m sure your disappointment has taken on all shapes and sizes.  Some disappointments are very small, like the pickles placed on your “plain” cheeseburger.  Others are incredibly large, like the hole in your heart when a loved one left you.

Regardless, each time disappointment breaks in we feel as though something has been taken from us; a robbery of the worst kind.  It steals our innocence, kidnaps our truest self, and holds for ransom our best assumptions of others and this world. 

Once we are introduced to the world of disappointment many of us never leave.  It becomes our permanent place of residence.  We live in a state of perpetual disappointment for fear that something might capture our heart and affection only to have it swiped from us yet again.  Our instincts for self-preservation kick in and we decide no longer to attach ourselves to hopes, desires, and aspirations.

After all, if dreams are just a lure for the snare of disappointment, then skepticism might just keep us alive.

But that is the myth.

Skepticism may feel like a blanket of security, but it only suffocates the potential for new life to breath.  The strange reality is that the only true way to move out of the world of disappointment is to put yourself back out there; to aspire and hope again, and…

to run the risk of further disappointment.

But, this is where the nature of disappointment is revealed.  Disappointment is not the enemy or adversary.  Instead, disappointment is a gauge…

a barometer of our hope.

Disappointment is the proof that we are a people who take risks; that we are a people who dream.  Proof that we are a people, who in a broken world, believe healing is possible.

May you never be lost in the world of disappointment again.  May your disappointment reveal to you and others that you are someone who believes in the possible.  And may your disappointment be engulfed by the courage to dream again.

...With A Dragon On Top

2 Scoops Of Mint Chocolate Chip With A Dragon On Top

This was my doodle of the day...what is yours?

If you haven't doodled yet...what's keeping you?

When God Decided To Invent

When God decided to invent

everything he took one

breath bigger than a circus tent

and everything began

When man determined to destroy

himself he picked the was

of shall and finding only why

smashed it into because

- E. E. Cummings

It is our nature to want a reason for everything.  We want to know the cause, we want to know the purpose and we want to know where it is all going.  We want to know the “Why?”

And so we search.

We do not handle the “because I said so” of a parent very well; we seek the hidden meaning in each of life’s circumstances and look to crack the code of purpose when life’s movements leave us baffled.

In our frantic pursuit of the "because" we find only Anxious Thoughts and Sleepless Nights.

Yet some things are just as they are; no moralizing needed, no hidden meaning and nothing to decode.  Simply:

Is & Shall

This is the space where exhilarating wonder and breath-holding terror collide.  This is the space where we learn to swim in the deep end of life and are buoyed by the mystery of God.  This is the place where we are most alive.