Telling your body it is spring time.
Viewing entries by
Sarah Landolt
Loved at first sight.
Arranging the thoughts of our heart and the heart of our thoughts to act in an orderly manner in the heat and heart of chaos.
Sweat grands.
Tying a mellow ribbon around the old oak tree.
The apple of the eye that became a lump in the throat.
From a creative standpoint, giving into giving up a dream is one of the easiest, yet most painful and frustrating acts in one's life. By giving up a dream, I don't mean putting off the important parts of life to chase a fantasy, I mean giving up that creative side that one can carry until it's possible to live out in whatever form it takes. Many never truly enter their dream because the belief is that once they enter, the dream is corrupted because of how poorly they view themselves in combination with not knowing their true selves. It takes courage, the purest form of courage, to continue to carry and or enter because one must get to the heart of one's soul to live there. Without that self-soul knowledge, you cannot possess the dream because it possesses and controls you in such a way that you have try to force it or escape it.
Forcing or escaping it creates a false sense of loneliness where one then finds multiple ways to fill the hole of the dream that lives in me. Delays (that the pain & frustration cover up) by my ways deny my soulful experience of the strength needed to enter that dream or skillfully develop myself for it to unfold by creative acts of my time. Thus I'm using my creative power to destroy, rather than create, something in me, others, or both because of the anger that develops.
Some of the greatest guilt comes from this type of anger which underlies the pain and frustration demonstrated by most who say they are hurting and frustrated. This anger prevents them from seeing their true self and living out their dream that I call unrealized potential.
Yet there seems no way out. Or is there?
To be continued (observed)..
After watching the trailer to Hunger Games in which the young male character Peter said that he wanted to show that they didn't own him after being picked to represent District 12, he said "If I am going to die, I want to still be me." As strange as it sounds, a line from the Night Before Christmas came to mind. "When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,".
In Hunger Games, it explains being trained in the art of survival rather than survival only.
I watched my father die that way- in a valiant death by disease. It has had a lasting profound effect on me to this day.
How does wonder get restored in a way that allows me to see each day in anticipation of not only Christmas(life), but even Easter(death and life) so that the sense of wonder is restored in such a way that I become more of myself to live and die the same me? Through willingness and readiness to suffer.
This week I came to recognize that hunger shows us something much deeper- that we're alive-alive as who we truly are- and to valiantly live in the art of survival where we do not fear death in such a way that it takes away the wonder of who we are.
Hunger. The hidden story underlying hunger.
A parrot in eagle's clothing. Speaks without observing in real time. Full of conflict rather than conflict resolution.
Do I figure out something in order to enjoy it, him, or her or do I enjoy it, him, or her in order to figure it out? So which is a good figure or should I say figuring? Trying to understand is the intent to be enlightened but the greater desire is to know, not understand. To seek to know brings the primary strengthening joy to lead into an action to do next that brings understanding. This leads to greater desire to know with greater joy and strength to continue to act with more patience and compassion while anticipating greater understanding to come.
I then begin to look forward to someone or thing with lessening dread and negative fear. Go figure.
As I "figure" out an example of this, what comes to mind is a common problem I see happening so often in conversations. Someone brings up a problem and begins to share their story. Hearing the story sparks an interest to see the problem clearly understood with a solution. However, this is at the expense of hearing the hidden story underlying the story being told, not just the problem that is only now seen.
Much of the response given is rarely applicable to the hidden story because the desire to know someone is often second in importance to the desire to understand someone (with the problem being presented as part of the story). Since many demand that they be understood, we are used to seeing something as a problem to be understood rather than a person with a deeper story to be known. The deeper knowing is where the understanding begins because of the emotional ties required that give the sense of being esteemed, valued, respected, and loved.
A great figure of speech for this is to listen more and speak less, but with more meaning to the person in the hidden story. The tendency is to disrespect, project, dissect, & neglect rather than to hear more after saying tell me more.
“I don’t know what to do.” This is a statement I hear every day more than once. Then I hear “I’ve got to figure it out somehow”. I call this drawing a blank or the "Gap Theory." Something seems to be missing. But is it? What if something isn’t missing?
What do I do then? I fill in the blank; i.e. I personally draw the blank as a creative act, the blank doesn’t draw itself or reveal itself as empty because something is missing. By acting on what is not missing, I will, as a result, change the way I speak and enable myself to see something (at least as far as the headlights on a car reveal at night.) The lights on my car aren’t missing even though it’s dark and I don’t fear what is ahead because I have decided to go rather than "just going."
So what was really missing? My decision to go, not the going. If I go without choosing, only going because I feel I have to, I have no meaning until some outcome. However, by then (by the time there is some outcome) I'm often so miserable that I can’t enjoy it or see the meaning in what was done/has occurred. Because of this I have to look for something else to replace what seemed to be missing in attempt to feel better.
So what was really missing? I was missing. I was missing because the decision was necessary to obtain the meaning in the act of going, not the going. The going brings understanding, but without the decision, there is no meaning to me, only the act exists without a living encounter for me.
I must decide to draw the blank as " creative act in thought", choose to fill it in, and go with the meaning.
Life will then discover you so that you are no longer missing.
Go to the gap and fill it. Blankety-blank…
We tend to look outward first in trying to get over something that we can't seem to get over. If that doesn’t work we look in the mirror. If that doesn’t work we look inward until we get past the harsh “Win a few, lose a few” attitude to compassion. Moved by this inward compassion the darkest clouds open up. The ways' words are often in the Word's way. The wayward is inward. He came to save the wayward within.
Overcome! is to come over. Cross! The words of the cross are compassion and patience, first toward myself as the least of these.
To begin again within is to step into what had already begun.
Today my dad would have been 80 years old. He was born this day in 1931 and passed away at the young age of 62. I've been thinking since yesterday about what I might write about him and even now as I sit at the computer, words are hard to come by. Through the years as I've compared other fathers to mine, I've only found myself wishing their children could experience even a taste of the one I had--because of who and what my dad was to and for me. Many of my friends called my father their father, if they were ever in need or trouble. Our home was a safe haven for the kids in my class.
If there ever was an opportunity to use a model for fatherhood to a son, it was he. I look back on my childhood never wondering why I missed out on anything. He was the consumate father and man. A man's man. A son's father.
The last several years of my life have been spent raising 3 daughters and mentoring scores of other young men and women in ways that I was taught by dad. He gave me the example and shoulders to stand on while living that out in my own ways. I couldn't mentor the way I do without growing up under him and later being given other mentors in my late 30s through the present time. Virtually every day in my imagination, I see my father with those I meet as if he's there instead of me. The power he instilled in me has given me a stamina with others that often surprises me.
I always wanted to be like him when I grew up, yet he taught me I would never grow up being like him, but being me. That took into my 30s and early 40s to understand. I thought it was about success, but you don't have to grow up like your father or anyone else to have that. I found out it was through failure that I would learn who I really was rather than what I could do or be or imitate.
All I can end with is: Wow! Dad. You were, therefore I am.
Lore passed away 7 years ago today a few minutes after we had talked on the phone. I was waiting for her to call me back. She hung up to talk with my mother who just came in. It was unexpected though she had suffered physically for many years and suffered financially without health insurance. I often spoke with her about the woman in Mark 5 who was in a similar position. I sent her the 9th chaper in the Pursuit of God by Tozier when she was around 35. It's titled Meekness and Rest and is one of the most powerful chapters written in any book outside of scripture to me. To see her embrace her faith and her own beauty at even deeper levels after reading that was stunning.
Lore's faith was as real as anyone that I had known. The two ministers who spoke at her funeral each prayed for the faith she displayed in her life and suffering. The intimacy I shared with her was unparalled in unconditional love and tenderness. Nothing had to be hidden. Laughter was a part of joy and sorrow that kept a vital balance internally and eternally for her and me even if temporarily lost by feelings or circumstances.
Even to this day I continually think of her when I try to imagine what it's like to be away from the body and with our Lord spoken of by Paul in 2 Corinthians 5. Knowing whom she is with is how that imagination transcends doubt into hopeful anticipation. Through Lore to Christ is how my mind is often comforted or stabilized on any given day.
She was 43 with the heart and imagination of a child we're called through to Christ. The fountain of her youth never stop flowing by tears and laughter, repentence and forgiveness.
Memories of her put her as the woman in the mirror when I am unable to find the man in the mirror who has the son in him.