small changes

Sometimes it's the little changes that really let the Light shine through. I just experienced one of those. Whee!

I was revisiting a yoga DVD I haven't been acquainted with recently, Yoga Beauty Body by Ana Brett and Ravi Singh. Really nice but also decently challenging today. It was near the end of the video, and we were doing an exercise where, sitting cross legged, you hold your arms out to the side and rotate them in big circles backwards. With your middle fingers pointed out, eyes closed, and doing breath of fire.

So there I was, moving in the pose. And of course on the video, they're chatting about how this exercise is helpful for the lymphatic system that drains through the shoulders as well as for the heart. They added that there are lots of emotional blockages in the shoulder and heart region, and that this can help them, too. La la la. Heard it all before...

...but it caught my attention this time because I noticed something that wasn't there. A blockage has been removed since the last time I did this (it's been a while). A big blockage. An important one. It's funny how we're all one piece, and what manifests in your body is coming from what's going on in your emotions, will, etc. In the past when I had done this exercise, there was a point where the arms were going up and back where it was like a snag every time, especially on the left side. It was slightly annoying, slightly frustrating. But I'd push through it because it wasn't physical pain, it was... odd. And while I was pushing through it, I could feel my face contorting because of this snag; I felt the internal struggle presenting itself on my visage. (How often do you get to use the word visage? Score.)

And lo and behold, I just finished that very DVD tonight, and there was NO SNAG!!! Totally clean. Amazing! But it wasn't like there was just the absence of a snag- this is God at work, and He gives. He is completely generous. Besides the gift of my awareness of this development, I discovered a growing light, and it effortlessly danced onto my face in the form of a smile. And it kept growing. And in my spirit, I saw a picture of a heart, previously broken, now bound up and healed, with rays of light shooting through it. YES!

And I just kept smiling and smiling. God is so good.

LOVE!

I just read this today, and it really grabbed me. I want to share it- Enjoy!
(It's a great preparation for what will be a very different and immensely wonderful Valentine's day for me. I'm excited to see just what will happen!) 

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Saturday, January 29, 2011

The Point of All Living

I love watching a herd of horses grazing in an open pasture, or running free across the wide, sage-covered plateaus in Montana. I love hiking in the high country when the wildflowers are blooming-the purple lupine and the Indian paintbrush when it's turning magenta. I love thunder clouds, massive ones. My family loves to sit outside on summer nights and watch the lightning, hear the thunder as a storm rolls in across Colorado. I love water, too-the ocean, streams, lakes, rivers, waterfalls, rain. I love jumping off high rocks into lakes with my boys. I love old barns, windmills, the West. I love vineyards. I love it when Stasi is loving something, love watching her delight. I love my boys. I love God.


Everything you love is what makes a life worth living. Take a moment, set down the book, and make a list of all the things you love. Don't edit yourself; don't worry about prioritizing or anything of that sort. Simply think of all the things you love. Whether it's the people in your life or the things that bring you joy or the places that are dear to you or your God, you could not love them if you did not have a heart. Loving requires a heart alive and awake and free. A life filled with loving is a life most like the one that God lives, which is life as it was meant to be (Eph. 5:1-2).


Of all the things that are required of us in this life, which is the most important? What is the real point of our existence? Jesus was confronted with the question point-blank one day, and he boiled it all down to two things: loving God and loving others. Do this, he said, and you will find the purpose of your life. Everything else will fall into place. Somewhere down inside we know it's true; we know love is the point. We know if we could truly love, and be loved, and never lose love, we would finally be happy. And is it even possible to love without your heart?


(Waking the Dead , 47-48)

the lightest burden

I've been chewing on this post for the better part of October, and a solid friend of mine subtly requested a blog post. So I thought I'd go ahead and put it out there before bed tonight.

I am about to embark on my last week as a seasonal employee of Tree & Leaf Farm. It's been an incredibly intense 5-month experience. I've never worked so hard in my life. I've never felt such negativity directed at me because of my performance, although conditions have improved quite a bit recently. What can I say? I've always moved slowly, just ask my mother. I have to say that I rarely do things I'm not good at, and this commercial farming game is not something I'm naturally good at or, at a fundamental level, interested in (except market... I shall miss you, Mt. Pleasant market!). I've become much faster and a much harder worker, but the feeling of being distinctly less than has colored each and every one of my days here. Almost everyone I've worked with is faster than me, pays appropriate (but not too much) attention to detail, and is more efficient. Every day I see; every day I know. And it's hurt. A lot. It's not been entirely uncommon for me to find myself at lunch or after work, lying on my bed, crying, sometimes unexpectedly. It has not been a daisy walk.

And yet one day early this month, my perspective changed. Like a feather it drifted down to me while I was washing potatoes: Jesus wasn't good at everything either. He wasn't highly regarded and accomplished. He didn't fit in. Most people saw Him as a wacko. Maybe he would have made a slow farm worker too. He was not a jock, not consumed with being a cutting-edge farmer, or proving himself in the market. I'm not sure how to describe how this epiphany has affected me. but it has certainly afforded me some personal freedom, freedom on the inside. His burden is light; His yoke is easy. I don't feel the pressure that I used to, and yet I feel like I'm working pretty well. I still have to work just as hard, but I don't feel entirely driven by fear. Perhaps part of that is the end of the season sweetness- having less work to do, knowing that it's almost over, that I will soon be spat out of the machine. But Jesus has given me a light burden, and I think now I'm beginning to learn how to accept it and live out of it.

ground zero

I read Ecclesiastes and got mad. It didn't even agree with itself- it's an absurd book. I wanted to know who wrote it and why, where in his life he was when he wrote it, and how much wine he'd drunk. To give you a small slice of the reason for my complaint, Eccl. 7:3 states, "Frustration is better than laughter, because a sad face is good for the heart" (TNIV), but in Eccl. 9:7 I find this: "Go, eat your food with gladness, and drink your wine with a joyful heart, for God has already approved what you do." And over and over again the writer keeps saying how meaningless this life is. Meaningless, all is meaningless. I don't like that. I want to believe that what I do matters, that life is not meaningless, that this will all make sense someday.

The TNIV didn't tell me any background on the book's origins, and Bible Gateway didn't either, so I went for The Message. As I read the description of Ecclesiastes, it was like everything I had been clinging to, trying for, wanting - what I thought was my whole world - just fell. It collapsed like a house of cards. From the point of view of the introduction's author, the main point of Ecclesiastes is the futility of life, of our actions, of all our trying to be something else or something better. The goals I set don't actually guarantee success; my optimism is not everlasting. In short, I can't live this life by myself or on my own terms. It was the most sobering experience I've had in a long while, like a fast of the heart.

I lay in my room at my own personal ground zero and stared at the ceiling, knowing that God is it. It was a completely different experience for me. Instead of being obsessed with my own welfare, or lost in illusion, or paralyzed with fear, I sat in freedom. I was still. I know He is God. Fear is useless. Despair, needless. What else is there but God? Nothing. Lots of meaningless stuff, but God is the only thing with real substance.

I really needed the reminder. I feel like I've been off track lately, not listening or even trying to. I feel purged, clean- like there's been a clearing within me. Since emerging from my room, I've gone about the house focusing more on God. When my focus drifts downward, and I get tense, I find I have inevitably forgotten God. Then I lift my head, my shoulders lose their tension, and I am again at peace. It's this constant reminder of God that centers me, renews my perspective, helps me see the reason for Jews to hang the Mezuzah next to their doors.