In the Morning When I Rise

“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the ax.” ~Abraham Lincoln "Wax on, wax off" ~Mr. Miyagi God forbid we make a mistake! In the information age, it seems all the more compelling that we should never come into error. We have all of history as a basis for our decisions, how could it be that we repeat a mistake of a time past, one documented in bits accessible within milliseconds by Google search? There is a logic to that, but most would agree that, for humans, the appropriate orientation is to err.  I begin here, in error, because it is perhaps the place that I get tripped up so often. My wife has called me an "end game" thinker. My head is in the future. And I have made plans and interiorly navigated a path (only known to me) to that end, despite who might be the people that need to bring us to the end, or any of the contingencies that will be encountered to shape the actual "road to the end".  I hate the idea ...

I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. Phil 4:11 The  Lord  is my shepherd; I shall not want. Psalm 23:1 “It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.” ~ CS Lewis, The Weight of Glory I am not certain, at this moment, how need, want, and desire relate to each other, but I have cleared a small passage of time to consider. Keys, in the way that women who care about you will do, was critical of my passiveness and indirectness. She's right. I tend to make recommendations by implication ("here's a potential problem"), rather than directly stating what I think should be done, and I tend to allow th...

Gratitude and humility are inseparable, you know. ~Gary Black (Southland Church) https://southland.church/devotions/show-week/thats-not-fair-the-greatest-one-is-the-humble-one We celebrate the tree that stretches to the sky, but it is the ground that we should ultimately thank. ~Becky Chambers, To Be Taught, if Fortunate I haven't written for a bit of time. I was starting to wonder if this pursuit was worth it, to write a passage twice a week. I was wondering if I might switch to something shorter and daily. I still wonder that, but this morning, whether to encourage me to continue in my previous pursuit or because I needed the message I do not know, I received a message fairly loud and clear: the inextricable relationship between humility and gratitude. You cannot have one without the other.  In a burst of pride I was eager to find where I had written on this before, thinking, "I've probably written about this several times", and I may have written about it somewhere...

This morning in the wee hours I was thinking about work and work people. I was thinking about why Dr. Rob got to be principal and I didn't. What were my failings, what were my trappings? Oh, my thoughts weren't specifically about "what makes him better than me", but the self-reflection was about us in contrast, most likely. As I was considering, I had a thought whiz in that I thought indicated growth on my part. I thought, if it came down to it being necessary, and Dr. Rob were getting into a battle of wills, that I might say something like, "how many times have you been a jerk with me? You really have to start to answer that question and figure out why or it could end up being a hindrance to you." As usual, it sounded right in my head, but the context of the situation made it seem plausible to say it, and have it be received. But the critical factor in it being received well, if at all, would have been in its power to convince Dr. Rob that it was really in ...

In reading Peterson's Traveling Light and thinking about the freedom way I'm bringing into focus some bad habits of mine. As I reflected on what to consider, I latched onto self-consciousness vs self-awareness; my initial thinking went something like this- self-consciousness... bad, self-awareness... good. Self-consciousness being that state of being tripped up and hindered with unnecessary rumination about yourself, and self-awareness being the useful guide of knowing yourself and how you show up in a setting. As I read through articles comparing the two I found myself confirmed in my position, but also walked away with some useful advice for using SC to inform SA. Getting in touch with your body was one that I found most compelling. If we seek to be singularly human, that means continuity between our body and our minds. In Becky Chambers' second book there is a scene where Cidra is in dialogue with an Andrisk tattoo artist, who is explaining why she thinks tattoos a...