Friday, January 14, 2011

Dehydration and the Unrelenting Symptoms of Fatigue.

I am weary.

In every sense of the word. I am tired and tried, confused and mislead. I have come across a land I do not know and I have tried to guess the eating habits of creatures I have never seen. I have tried to exist in a culture I am unfamiliar with; one I have never seen. I have found no sanctuary in this land.

I have been ignorant enough to think that I understand foreign soil without ever getting it under my fingernails. And now that I have let it stain the wrinkles on my tired hands, I’m still not sure of the place where I stand. I’ve looked up and seen the seeds I have sown, but the first stages of the crop are yielding a different kind of harvest, one I did not expect to stow in my storehouse.

The clouds have not parted, the Light has not shone brightly, but it is not quite eve yet. And while I sit and look out across the work of my hand, I see a return that only those with eyes to See would acknowledge as important. My mouth is parched with Thirst and my eyelids like heavy velvet curtains. Every movement seems to take more energy than normal. Thoughts of a lighter day take up sword and stand firm on the Rock against the nasty arrows of self-doubt and withering worthlessness.

But when I go to lay my head to rest, I give thanks for the space to expand and contract given to those closest to me.

And when I wake in the morning, I give thanks for another day and the new mercy a new day brings.

But still the symptoms cease to relent. So I drink, still, from the deep Waters and pray for nourishment to come.

Friday, January 7, 2011

Escape Routes and Rabbit Holes

Whenever I get into deep thought, the path I usually follow goes to deep for even my own comprehension. The best way to describe it is mystery scouting. I love finding mysteries and when I think of them, I sit back and take apart every last screw. Like when I look at man made systems, I love taking them apart. Board, by screw by washer by weld. Most of the time, I end up just leaving the mess and just give up, thinking to myself, "Well, we're all going down in flames so it doesn't surprise me that this is such a mess anyways."

At some points, the absurd complexity of the world really bothers me. Like those itches you get in your heel that seem to be something deep down, tickling your bone. This insatiable nagging of the "human cause". And then, I turn off NPR, leave my cell phone and go for a walk along a trail.

And everything becomes clear again.


Things as simple as looking at the trees lining the boulevard outside the window of my office. I look at them and praise God that I don't have it all figured out. And that He does. The gnarled trees look like the twisted nerve endings embedded within each of my fingertips that send sensory signals to the brain, saying, the space bar is here, the comma button here, and the "A" key, over there, underneath the left pinky.

And it sets my wandering mind out to sea on another adventure, determined to find natures workings and their similarities to the human body. Or even just the similarities in a tree, even. Give it Light, Sun and some good soil and it grows.

Over time, it probably doesn't notice just how tall it grows, or how deep its roots dive into the earth. Or how it's life is drawn into those green leaves. How it starts so small and how the veins in those leaves make it grow bigger, stronger, and eventually turn their wisest shades of red, orange and yellow and fall. All to be completely broken apart and fed back into the soil that nourishes the roots that rip up sidewalks that help grow the tree taller and wider and bigger. And that produces the fruit that comes from the flower that came from the branch with the leaves that provides the shade that covers us as we step over that one crack from the root, where the leaf fell.

And to think, we walk by these giants, or even the beginning stages of these natural phenomenons, and don't think twice. Because we are to busy analyzing the world of Man.


Everyone has the ignorance. Including myself. And daily, I remind myself, this is not about me. And hourly I fight with myself. We can learn so much about the Creator when we look at His Creation. Everyone of us has some aspect of nature that absolutely floors us. And if not, go find it. Even city's have sunsets.

Be weary, however, I am not advocating worshiping nature, I'm advocating wondering at it and at how it came to be. It is difficult for me to look out at anything natural, dead or alive, and believe it was produced on it's own. I love chasing it back to it's moment of birth because there are no nuts and bolts, there are no screws, no metal holding it together. Just nature.

Just a Voice in the vast Darkness so powerful that from It's breath, an entire Natural world was created.

And to think, the human heart is vastly more complicated than any natural object...

Selah.