Which One's Me?

Looking like the world, commodifying or branding ourselves in its continually shifting image, is all the rage. The question is, Should we Christians adopt the same prevailing attitudes and outward appearances as everyone else? Or is this "conformity" a catalyst of defeat in disguise that really says, Getting you to like and accept me is more important than anything [?].

What’s scary is that by constantly re-shaping who we are in order to put others (and ourselves) at ease, we run the real risk of losing our Christian identity, authenticity, our mantle of saving power … our faith. In a world rampant with anti-Christian ideals the pressure is continually on us to blend into the background (and hide there.) But if we absent ourselves from the frontline opportunities where soul-winning is often easiest, how can we hope to serve or supply the deeper works of conversion that follow?

I’m not saying dressing a certain way alone dulls the spirit, but I do believe that “relevance” can be a huge excuse to stop or not start doing what we are called and meant to do.

With strengthened faith and trust in God's availing grace (believing we get the spiritual gifts we need as we need them), Christians can relevantly & successfully witness Salvation in word, character & spirit ... and power ... to those around them. Desiring the truth comes first. Conforming to it in loving obedience is second. Willingness, availability, expectation and persistence follows.

Spiritual progress accrues rapidly in the maturing believer where one is fervent & unafraid. But calling ourselves “Christian” while remaining indistinguishable from those around us thwarts growth, making us and our message impotent.

Be in the world but not of it, Jesus said. And for good reason. 

Courage, my love.

See New

Blissful Beginnings 1

What if we stopped trying to wriggle out of everything unpleasant and started accepting whatever comes our way as just some indispensable part of the big plan? (God speaks in all things, after all).

What if instead of endlessly buffing our exteriors, we started living out a fuller life experience from within?

And what if, instead of being increasingly bi-polar in our contradictions we started striving instead for a more level existence, securing our emotions on to something bigger than other people, events, conditions and feelings?

And what if each of us stopped playing the stupid roles we play in the complicit conspiracy of “more” by accepting “less” and pursuing the treasure it offers hidden deep within its folds?  

I’ve heard it floated before that God continually gives us what we want [correction, demand] until we become so sick and crazy we just can’t take it anymore.

Which is another way of saying, Ultimately, freedom apart from God isn’t possible. Freedom as it’s idealized in Western culture isn’t freedom at all but acute selfishness exercised as self-immolation. And that’s because true freedom isn't “apart from” but rather means “belonging to” ... God’s extended family in Christ, through the offertory of oneself in cooperation with Him for loving others.

The prince of this world is a liar. The world looks like him. And if we're not careful, so will we.

Reach Me

Hey Music Lover,

You can reach me at membertosmile@yahoo.ca

By all means, pls keep commenting! MTS is undergoing a gradual build-up to what I hope will eventually become a blog-space with something actually relevant and useful to offer.

Right now, it's all mostly off-the-cuff commentary (with a lot of fine-tuning as you know), but as soon as I can I will introduce topical themes that showcase the wisdom [hopefully] of a saving faith for this time.

I would love to start discussions and even, eventually, allow other people to post their thoughts as well.

My developing vision for MTS is to simply to bring truth to bear on areas of life where the truth is being lost.

Where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more.

I have always believed (and I'm guessing that you agree) that everybody really wants what God wants for them. They just don't know they do.

Hopefully, MTS can help spread the light.

-- m1230

Better Life, the Hard Way

When the going gets tough, we grow.

Interesting how the richest times in Holy Scripture aren't the times when the big miracle comes, but the times leading up to it.

The time after the miracle is what I call the big sigh of relief moment [BSORM], the place where we set foot safely on the opposite side of a swollen river, check to make sure we’re still in one piece (grin appreciatively), and start off again.

The time before the miracle [TBTM] is where we’re stuck or hurt or blind or lost. It’s where all the windows become doors and the doors become walls. The place where life isn’t working, or it is,… but not the way we want it to.

Everybody loves the BSORM; it's a happy ending of sorts. It’s a place we all want to get to (and stay as long as possible). Whereas nobody willingly enters the “crappy life” tunnel. Although it seems we all have to visit there at some point.

And maybe that’s not such a bad thing.

Scripture teaches us that when people get chewed up by the mill of life and pray to God to deliver them, that they get what they pray for,… eventually.

God always comes through, but usually only after He either adds something on or takes something else away. Meanwhile these trials & turbulations, sown into hard ground and watered by our bitter tears, these times almost always become the hallmark turning points in our trajectory, where (often unknown to us and with the help of the Holy Spirit) we re-calibrate our aim and make it “true.”  

You know you’re in the TBTM because it feels like the end.

Trust, don't be afraid. It’s really ABNB— code for, A Brand New Beginning.

Brrring-brrring ... Brrring-brrring ...

Hey Music Lover, I don't know how to reply to my comments. Next time, pls leave an email.

-- m1230

Arrrriba!!

Working on another Start-up idea which I can't share at the moment. One of the fun things about starting something is that you get to name it too. So I sat in Starbucks today talking to the baristas and just jotting down whatever flashes of inspiration came to mind. And believe it or not, the prhase “Hot Tamale!” popped into my brain, which is goofy and kinda fun and totally silly.

And then I thought, How many times have I actually encountered the phrase, “Hot Tamale!” in my life? I'm sure I remember watching cartoons as a kid and seeing the plural form of that infamous Mexican phrase plastered across some sort of wooden shingle, as the little (Warner Bros.) mouse in the Sombrero scampers by ...

It’s incredible how much cultural shrapnel we have floating around upstairs.

Now I get why the Church recommends fasting.

Behold, you are ...

I am an inveterate re-poster. I work on things over and over until my inner-sense tells me it's time to let it go. This isn't something I can really change. It's the way I am. God has given me an eye to see what can be, and in my humanity, requires that I struggle to make it so.

When I was younger this was torment. I was always in a hurry to be rich, popular, famous, or at least elsewhere. I wanted everything to wrap up easily and effortlessly. Years of laborious trial and error brought me to a different conclusion. And to Christ.

Now I’m older and more experienced; thankfully, I've rubbed most of the bark off the tree of self-criticism. Now it’s a joy and a privilege to earn a living with my imagination (well, a living may be stretching it), and I realize, finally, though I still have so many limitations, how blessed I am to be me. 

I truly am a new creation.

Such is the saving power of God.

2 Corintihians 5:17 "Behold you are a new creation; The old has past, the new has come ... "

Creative Fix: 2

But if I say, "I will not remember Him Or speak anymore in His name," Then in my heart it becomes like a burning fire shut up in my bones; And I am weary of holding it in, And I cannot endure it. [The Book of Jeremiah Chapter 20, Verse 9]

... before Jesus that is, before we heard Him knocking and let Him in …

… that’s what it was like, I remember.

But now it's different. Different mainly because it’s impossible to accept Christ and remain unchanged.
 
For when faith comes it brings the spark – the good seed – of creation, of God’s saving grace and the prompting to go ye forth and prosper now, for Him and for others as well as ourselves.

We become or start to become what we’ve always really been: a crop seed designed to achieve the full and complete purpose given it; a seed that lays it’s roots down deep in order to reach higher and higher.

In the process we become little creators too. Not because we want to be God (we don’t want that anymore), but because we want to be like Him, honor Him, resemble Him, serve Him.

Because we have to. Because the fire tells us so. And because the healing coursing thru us frees our heart to say, “Yes.”

And so motivations change. We still feed the need to aspire and contribute, but now to please, not to prove. And step-by-step we turn from our scared and selfish ways into builders of something much more vital & alive that seems to get bigger the more we love.

It doesn’t happen overnight, I know, because I’m not nearly all there yet. But it comes. Brightly.

God turns all things to good for those who believe …

Creative Fix: 1

[Welcome Music Lover, Hey Stefa]

The currency of ideas and making ourselves feel better.

I was born to create. Actually I was born-again to create.

It's in me, like some passionate affliction, this unresolved need, to do something smart, streamlined, beautiful: something wanted and valued.

The challenge is sometimes visual, sometimes conceptual. Always personal. Whatever it is at root, this need to improve on existing things drives and feeds me; it's my oxygen and blood. It gives the cry of Jeremiah in me somewhere else to go.

At least I think so.

+ and - 

On the minus-side, the constant striving for affirmation (which is what it is, really) can be exhausting. On the plus-side, you might just get to remake life into something useful, something maybe a little bit more than it was even just a few moments ago.

But I wonder: What are these ambitions anyway if not some kind’a primal screaming out in some sense of past unfulfillments? Like paying for a debt that can never be repaid, I believe we can’t let go of the need to prove ourselves because we can't or won't allow for the hurt places to be healed over, for our heart to be made satisfied and whole ...

... At least that's how it is before ....

Home and Away

In my previous post (Inny or Outy?), I made the general observation is that we often struggle with our home and away selves. By that I mean, we can be loving to strangers and unusually strange to those we love.

This weird inversion is more common, I think, than the common cold. It’s in us to want to be attractive to and accepted by the people we meet, partly because every new contact or repeat encounter is another opportunity to build-out or reaffirm the very best version of ourselves. 

Which feels good.

Home, by contrast, is where our grit is, where hope & self-belief can wear down on an unremitting diet of old judgments that makes it hard to be our best, or even just better.

Loving distantly works then because, like television, the boring parts are cut out, we rarely overstay our welcome, and we get to be special on our own terms.

While loving those we live with can feel an awful lot like work.

We need to open the spiritual windows at home, let in some fresh air and permit ourselves to be who we really know & want ourselves to be regardless of how others desire or refuse to see us.

Maybe if our Renovator friend did a little more of the "do" things once in a while, he'd have a happier home to come home to.

Isn't the same true for us?

Both/And ...  Man, I totally need to take note.

Paul sowed, Apollo watered, but God gives the increase ...

Inny or Outy?

How weird is it for a professional encourager to attend counseling sessions for relationship help with his closest intimates?

Well, it's normal to the degree that we can't always see the forest for the trees (the trees being the people we wake up with) no matter how hard we want to; and it's normal also to the degree that it should be normal to want to help others whether near or far. But just how prevalent is this problem of dualism and what does it have to say about our true nature or at least our hidden deficits?

By my own admission, loving other people comes pretty easy. Loving my family likewise. But relentless interaction or at least the constant rubbing of those parts that interact can play hell with ones ability to respond to every need for perfect charity with anything even approaching perfection.

I am perfect in intent and I have perfect hindsight. It’s in the middle things can get ugly.

So, I guess the question is, Can or should we bail another’s boat whilst sinking in our own?

Gratefully, I believe the answer is not either/or, but—both/and.

The work of faith never really ends or even rests. The need for healing is only slightly more critical than breathing. And that need, as it attaches itself to us (for as long as the relationship lasts), or pours out of our side into some newly created mini-me that shares and expresses the source of our need in his or her own unique way, well that need becomes a bramble bush of thorns often; thorns that latch on and tear away at our desire for easy-neat conclusions as we try not to see them or shrug them off believing that wishful thinking alone is enough to take them away.

Like tires, people need balancing. And more often than not we have to pay from the deepest part of us, from the no-place place of exhausted personal assets, to even up accounts.

It's painful. Which is why distant, unfettered love is so attractive.

Selfishly, we all long for clarity, single-mindedness, detachment, for touching down lightly for as long as we want and then lifting off again. No muss or fuss.

And part of what makes this attractive is our remembered experience of living at home.

But this notion of "right" while it can feel right, isn't right.

It's like the story of the successful Renovator, who works diligently to complete his client projects while leaving all the home stuff his wife wants perpetually half-done ... 

Story it up with RSS ...

Feeling better just got easier with RSS (by Feedburner).

Will it make a difference? Will you?

Sorry, that's kinda lippy. What I means is, I believe if we walk together every day in some better direction than the one you're leaning in now, then, well, anything can happen ...

... Anything good that is ...

 ... and that decision's yours.

Now, I'm still new to all this and if any of you out there have any direction to offer regarding wider distribution of this blog, please let me know. I'm here twice a day (early morning and evenings after the kiddies go to bed) and promise to try and respond fast to any suggestion, comment or criticism.

-- m1230

The Encourager 2: Upsiding the Downside

With sin & selfishness snuffing out so much hope, getting a positive word from anyone is pretty rare indeed. Growing up can be especially hard. People have expectations of you, mixed in with their fears (in most cases), and they tend to hand off to us what got handed on to them.

Hurting people hurt people …

So for the most part, parents just don't really know how to nurture the beauty and innocence of their kids past the toddler stage. At some point, the "life lessons" kick in; that’s where they start to tighten the screws to make sure we get a hold of life before it grabs a hold of us.

So part of the need for encouragement comes from the negative-space of our missing out on what we naturally hunger for. Encouragement beams us back again to that sunny place and in a flash of uncertain acceptance, helps us believe, if even only for a second, that we might actually be who we thought we were. Fleeting as a truth can sometimes be, it helps us feel whole again.

God doesn’t want us to live under the tyranny of anything. That’s why He sent Jesus.

He’s our Salvager. Airlifting us from the hard places, the dark places, the bad places and sad places into light and love and fearless possibility again.

Encouragement starts with people and passes perfectly on to Him.

Be encouraged.

The Encourager

Who doesn't want to feel great, or at least better?

The world is filled with people just waiting for someone to believe in them.

But why is it that other people have to factor in to this at all? Why can't we just rev ourselves up all alone?

Or, shouldn't my faith in God be enough?

It's funny how, speaking from my own experience, other people can just light up my board.

They bring something I don't have usually just when I need it. Often they don't know that. Sometimes they just say a couple of words, that's it. Other times it spills out of them. The point is God often uses people to give me the lift I need, and many of my biggest gains continue to come this way.

Are you encouraged? You should be. If not let me tell you what I know even if I don't know you: You are totally amazing, tons more than you can fathom even on your best day.

It's time to stop listening to the laundry list of personal improvements you need to make inside your head and start believing that right now is filled with stars.

It’s true: The truth is bigger than all your secret fears and compensations. So shed them, get on the Rock and throw down your gauntlet of love to the world.

You don't have to be afraid or perfect.

Talk about freedom ...

Fire Within

Props to Kathryn and Michael for breaking bread with me, and listening.

Someday the whole story will come out.

The act of refinement – call it Refiner’s fire – can turn you into broken glass. On legs.

You stumble around, carrying within you this act of spiritual conquest, the battle that brings (eventual) victory, feeling everything intensely; the hope, the heartbreak, the gratitude …

… the discouragement so bleak at times you wonder, If this is how God treats His friends …

A guy I knew once said that St. Therese the little flower was neurotic. I replied that this was false. She wasn’t neurotic, she was engaged directly with God who had to do stuff, burn stuff, break stuff, make stuff. It wasn’t neurosis, but the poetic power of the Holy Spirit revealing, exposing, the inner-working miracle.

It’s always easier to see things when they're happening to someone else.

I hate this. But (I can't believe I'm saying it) I wouldn’t change it for the world.

July 11, 1953

My mom and dad would have been married 54-years today. 

Mom died in '01 and Dad in '03. And in between we lost my sister's 
husband Maurice. So a tough run.

My mom was super-woman. She made life run effortlessly. I lived in a museum growing up, everything perfectly in place. She worked so hard at it, and I never understood it. I do now.

I know how tough it was for her growing up. She wanted to make up for that and fought everyday to erase the "mess" behind her. But stuff like that you can't ever really get on top of.

Dad was quiet, gifted. They were both beautiful and made life beautiful for us. They met when Mom was 14 and Dad was 17. The loved each other from the start and never quit.

We used to marvel at their love. I never saw anything like it; I probably never will. Grace, respect, duty, a love for life, travel, great food, and too often too much wine. That was them.

I'll have to get a picture up, just to remind myself what we had.

Which Way is Up?

Gotta love the journey. It’s all about discovery, right? Figuring out the right way after learning what not to do, where not to go.

Eventually all the wandering wears us down. But where to next?

The beauty of faith is that we find out life isn’t just a series of random collisions, but about people searching in different ways for their deeper purpose, which can’t really be uncovered on our own at all but only properly in Christ.

After we learn that (hopefully) we then get to play a unique role in this personal unfurling that tells us who we really are and who we’re truly meant to be.

Getting right with God opens the door. Then come the steps, spiritual actions in the form of our authentic response to this loving God who wants to reveal our inner gold and how to spend it.

The only way I know how to get there is through prayer.

And that requires humility.

Praying and asking for humility first makes it all flow, as in, “Well Lord, I admit I need you, now show me the way.”

Couldn’t be simpler. But as a friend of mine said, simple isn’t always easy.

... Show Off ...

 

Recent Gig

 

Totally "Unhealthy" DM Piece

 

Saracen Blade

I found a jpeg of Frank yerby's "The Saracen Blade" on-line. It's the first real novel I read. My Dad gave it to me when I was about 12. He said it would help me go to sleep at night.

Not really, I couldn't put it down.

I plan to hand it off to my oldest this summer. Maybe we'll read it together.

There's just something about your first great read. Does anyone even remember Frank Yerby?

Good night Pietro, wherever you are.

Dig. This. Road.

Emmaus. What does it mean? And why does it mean it?

What does the mystery teach us? And what, exactly, is our "take-away?" supposed to be?

I had a kinda mystical run-through, or script-session, about 3:30 this morning on the subject. Couldn't sleep. My mind whorled like a carousel as I tried and failed to muster up a decent course of action for today at a time when the only thing concrete under my feet seems to be the white strip that bifurcates the green postage stamp the builders call our "front yard."

So anyway, the Road.

Cleopas and his buddy leave Jerusalem on the 3d day. They didn’t see the risen Christ. So, feeling dejected, let down, and just crummy beyond words, they decide to get out of town.

But the Good Shepherd goes after them.

He walks with them, recounting to them from Scripture His own prophecy (how cool is that?).

Then after, holding the bread of life in His hands, He shows them He is truly with them.

Their belief, like ours, was human and limited. He brought them to new place where they can learn to live and grow without end.

There are many layers here. Enough to write a separate book on altogether. But the gist of it for me is, God is always there.

And it’s in trial, the hard valley usually, where He likes to give the increase.

Such is the mystery.

Bella & Nav: "Stealth Mode"

The Means justify the End

Okay, listen to the following quote.

It's from an obscure title I recently stumbled upon at the back of a goodwill store one lazy Saturday afternoon.

The book is by Boris Simon (no, not the wrestler[?!]) who neatly documents the work of "Abbe Pierre and the Ragpickers of Emmaus," a community of France’s poorest who re-housed the homeless in post WWII France on land built on beggings and the sale of rags and bottles reclaimed from the trash heap.

What strikes me about the book, beside the fact that it was sandwiched between the Danielle Steeles (et al schlock), is how care-worn it is, as though countless individuals picked it up, and once in possession of this remarkable story, knew exactly how to put it down again.

There are many elements in the book that speak to me personally. I am (and remain at heart still) a former missionary who lived in the Holy Land and visited several times with a religious community located on site of the real Emmaus that modeled itself on the justice-leanings of Abbe Pierre.

Emmaus, as described in the New Testament (Lk 24: 13-35), is the famous travelogue after the Crucifixion, when a disguised Jesus joins two despairing believers on their journey from Jerusalem to Emmaus, recounting to them in detail along the way the whole of redemption prophecy and its fulfillment— made miraculously manifest to them at the moment He breaks bread after they arrive at their destination.

So Emmaus is a symbol for making what is dead alive again. Which is probably why the good Abbot picked it for the name of his Start-up.

Here is the quote then:

“The man of mercy and justice has even less power to escape his calling than the artist, the musician, the ambitious or rich man. His passion feeds on that which he finds most constant in this world, that which is most varied and abundant: suffering and injustice. And this will never deceive him as love might deceive a lover. Evil is a sure thing. The man of mercy knows this, yet he will never cease refuting it.”

This quote puts into context not just "sure" Evil and the constant need to rebuke it's wiles and charms, but more powerfully, the surer struggle that brings redemption and reclamation, which we only seem to find on our own personal road to Emmaus …

Fr. Pete ("friend" of Bill W.)
with his kid sis and me.

If it's Tuesday, this must be ...

Made it thru the weekend in one piece. This business, this start-up thing, plays right havoc with everything from the toes up. Even my days off feel heavy and wet.

Not a sou.

Imagine being on the edge of your best, like Icharus (pre-free-fall) and no wind at your back. Now add in doubt (lotsuvit) and subtract faith, and what are you left with?

For me, it's this haunted feeling; a peculiar wonderment. This strange dualism between peace and the screaming heebies.

This morning at Mass I was so incredibly comforted by all the invisible nurse-angels who rush around applying holy salve to wordly wounds. In the presence of Jesus, I dream, sort-of; I sleep, sort-of; and I fight … constantly to stay awake throughout the surgery.

I can see it, because I have eyes to see.

The net of it is, after receiving Him, I always come away feeling better, and this “better” seems to stick around a while, like some Holy Spirit-infused mist, until the real stuff comes bludgeoning back in.

But even then, I’m poked full of God in some big, mystical way, able to carry on.

So I guess even when it's bad, it can still be kinda beautiful.

You?

It is what it isn't.

Hi!, it's Sunday. And I hope these words find you curled up, or at least hunched over, in a safe and happy place.

I am thinking about the work it takes to live out my faith; how incredibly trying it is to face into the moral quagmire and come away with a clean complexion.

The worst thing? As a Catholic, I would say it's this spreading, blighting, relative soup between right and wrong; a murky film that pollutes our ability to clearly see the lines we are meant to walk and live.

Beyond the Church (and I include many Christians here), it's more just this great deception that has taken hold of a generation of people who are absolutely mercenary about what they want, without a clue for what they need.

Check that. The clues are thick as thieves, we just ignore them.

Where do I fit in all of this?

Well I'm somewhere. Aware of the darkening horizon and sinking terrain in both camps. And aware of my need to lob fire-tipped spears at dead and dying hearts ...

... for what it's worth.