A Pilgrims Way

Came accross this while reading “That Hideous Strenght” and thought it was pretty awesome.

Do you place yourself in the obedience, said the Director, in the obedience to Maleldil?

Sir, said Jane, I know nothing of Maleldil. But I place myself in obedience to you.

It is enough for the present, said the Director. This is the courtesy of Deep Heaven: that when you mean well, He always takes you to have meant better than you knew. It will not be enough for always. He is very jealous. He will have you for no one but Himself in the end. But for tonight, it is enough.

This is the craziest business ever I heard of, said Macphee.

I agree with Macphee, God’s grace and understanding of us is pretty crazy. I love the thought that God knows the intent of our hearts and basically credits us for more than what we mean or intend.

At the closing part of Chapter 1 Nouwen now moves into ways people can break out of these “cocoons”. Nouwen calls these ways “Experimental Transcendence”.

The first way Nouwen describes is the “Mystical Way”. The mystical way is the inner way, looking inward through meditation/contemplation/prayer. Searching for the connection to the “Unseen”, the “Source of being”. Trying to move away from the false realities that surround us and towards what is truly real.

To me it’s one word - Centered. He’s talking about finding your center. Finding the one thing/place/person that is true and real. Life gets you out of balance and out of whack. Life pulls you in so many directions. Life is filled with so many false realities. We need to be pulled back to the center to be reoriented, refocused, and re-energized.

Upon being centered, Nouwen makes a reference to not being certain about past or future, but certain you have a place in the story. I’m also reminded about a book I read by John Elderidge years ago, I think “Sacred Romance” maybe “Wild at Heart”. Elderidge talked about understanding in the Grand Story, we are not the lead actors. Truth be told we play small bit parts. When we focus only on the small dramas that make up our lives we lose focus on the much larger narrative. Realizing this world and everything in it is God’s, its all by him, for him, and about him. He’s the real star of the show. That’s helped me find the center when I get out of whack. That brings me back to reality. Acts 17:28 - for in him we live, and move, and have our being.

Here’s a great quote from Nouwen regarding this Mystical Way, once someone has reached the center place and transcended all the junk…

“There he comes to the shocking, but at the same time self-evident insight that prayer is not a pious decoration of life, but the breath of human existence.”

Wow! That hit home for me. I’ve always and even to this day viewed prayer as window dressing for the spiritually mature/elite. It’s a place I’ve always wanted to visit, but never been able to venture. It feels like my passports always being revoked. I know I’ve heard it before and it’s not new but prayer needs to be the “breath of [our] human
existence”.

Great song along that lines if you haven’t heard it - “Breathing the breath” by Matt Redman

Sorry for the long and wandering post.

Traveling on,

Rich

I stumbled across the info about this movie and now I’m pretty excited about it coming out. The movie is called Amazing Grace and it opens in theaters on 2/23/07 in the UK. I hope it’s going to be released in the US. If not I’ll have to check it out on DVD. Anyway here’s some info on the movie check it out.

http://www.amazinggracemovie.com/

The Movie is “based on the life of antislavery pioneer William Wilberforce…”who, as a Member of Parliament, navigated the world of 18th Century backroom politics to end the slave trade in the British Empire. John Newton, a confidante of Wilberforce who inspires him to pursue a life of service to humanity. William Pitt the Younger, England’s youngest ever Prime Minister at the age of 24, who encourages his friend Wilberforce to take up the fight to outlaw slavery and supports him in his struggles in Parliament.” “Elected to the House of Commons at the age of 21, and on his way to a successful political career, Wilberforce, over the course of two decades, took on the English establishment and persuaded those in power to end the inhumane trade of slavery.”

The site also has some interesting info about “The Amazing Change” campaign, which focuses on abolishing modern slavery. According to the website there are still over 27 million slaves in the world today. Unbelievable!

So I got a new camera for Christmas. It’s a Panasonic DMC-FZ7. Now that I have a nice camera I just need to learn how to use it. I’m available for lessons…anybody???

Here are some pics I took with it today.

Christmas is over. Can we finally relax? I’m heading back to work tomorrow, now I can finally take a break. (Take a look at this picture - see what Christmas did to me. And yes that is some type of food on my face.)

My son and I were travelling in the car today and we had quite the interesting conversation. He has recently come into a large sum of money from a friend of the family ($10) and he is dying to spend it. He had his heart set on buying those $4 xbox games from Burger King. When I refused to allow him to buy the games he became quite upset.

My rational was…Christmas is coming in three days, you don’t know what you’re getting, wait until after Christmas and you can use your money on whatever you want to by that you still want.

His rational was…I have $10 dollars of my own money, I want to spend it now. In addition he said, “You and mom didn’t know I wanted the Burger King games so I know you didn’t get them for me”.

To which I responded, “Son don’t you think your mom and I know you well enough to know what you want without you even asking?” (The truth is we’ve already bought the game for him… he didn’t even have to ask. I wanted to tell him so bad…but he has to wait the payoff on Christmas will be so much better. He’ll be so happy, so suprised. He’ll have joy and we’ll share that joy together.)

Conner: No response…deep thought… “But it’s my money and I want it now”

I said, “Son, don’t you trust me?”

Conner: “Yes, I trust you…but…”

I said, “If you trust me there’s no buts.”

Conner: “Yes, I trust you…but…”

I interuppted again

Conner: “Dad you’re making me mad”

I said, “You’re making me sad, what’s worse?”

Conner: Long pause….deep thought…muffled tones…. “being sad”

End of conversation

During my conversation with Conner I had the eeire feeling I’ve been down this path before. I’ve heard the same rational, same reasoning except the words were coming out of my mouth directed towards my father.

How many times have I questioned God’s goodness? How many times have I wanted things my way, right now and refuse to accept no or wait for an answer? God has tryed to tell me just wait…I’ve gotter a better plan…and it will cost you much less. He’s said, you’ll be happy, trust me. I know you better then you think. How many times have I failed to trust him or try to put conditions on my trust? How many times have I ended up frustrated and mad and felt justified, while God was broken hearted and sad. I understand his hurt a little better now. I think he wants to tell me, he wants to spill the beans. But I think he also feels like I did about Conner. One day soon you will experience the joy I have set aside for you and when the right time comes we’ll share that joy together.

Long pause…deep thougths…muffled tones…

Sorry Dad for making you sad. Help me to trust you more.

Rich

I had an interesting conversation with someone at work today about Christmas traditions. We were talking about the process of buying presents for our wives (to which I had nothing to say) and he told me what he and his wife do and I thought it was an awesome idea.

Each year he and his wife decide on a theme to buy presents for each other. For example - This years theme was “Gifts that remind us of when we dated”. The gift doesn’t have to be big or expensive, but simply something that represents the theme. So each year they get their presents and after the kids have gone to bed on Christmas Eve they open them up together. And remember…

I love stories…especially love stories…and I think the retelling of stories is one of the most important things we can do. We need to remember, we need to be reminded of how we met, how we feel, how we loved and how we’ve grown. We need to tell and retell the story of our love of each other to our kids, friends, family and even ourselves.

I liked the idea so much I might even talk to my wife about adopting the practice in our home. But the whole thing got me thinking about Christmas traditions. We don’t have many Christmas traditions in our family. I’m sure there are some other great ones out there like my friends from work.

Does anyone have any special Christmas traditions they could pass along?

P.S. - Andrea I love you and thanks for putting up with my non-Christmas spirit.

Love,

The Grinch (Rich)

I had to leave really early this morning on a long trip for work. I’m not very awake in the morning so I wanted to try and find something that kept my attention and kept me awake. So I downloaded some podcasts and set off.

I’ve tried listening to podcasts before, but I’ve never been able to find ones I enjoyed listening to on a regular basis. One of the problems for me is just the complete breakdown of thought and conversation. Don’t get me wrong that can be great when you are enjoying who you’re listening to. It’s like you eavesdropping on a dinner conversation or something. But at other times I get completely annoyed and hit the fast forward arrow.

Today I found a couple of Podcasts I enjoyed.

The RELEVANT Podcast - from RELEVANT magizine/website.

TWIT - This week in Tech. With one of my favorite Tech experts Leo Laporte, Patrick, Kevin formerly of Tech TV Screen Savers. (I loved that show and was so ticked when G4 bought them out)

The Official Lost Podcast - With the executive producers of my favorite show Lost. The latest podcast answered some viewer questions and gave some hints as to what to expect from the show when it returns from hiatus. (BTW - has anyone watched Daybreak? I have completely boycotted that show in return for delaying LOST)

Mars Hill Bible Church (Grand Rapids, MI) - The podcast are generally sermons from the church from my favorite speaker (Other then my own pastor of course) Rob Bell.

Late addition…

Pray-As-You-G0 - This is about a 15 minute guided prayer involving some contemplative music, scripture reading, thoughts and directions about how to pray. Very awesome. Highly recomened especially if prayer time doesn’t come easy.

Does anyone else have any Podcasts they enjoy listening to that they would recomend?

Still taking my time through chapter one as Nouwen discusses the problems with “Nuclear Man”. FYI -I hate the term Nuclear Man. The book was published in the 70’s so maybe there was a fixation with Nuclear possibilities (i.e Cold war and everything). Anyway…

In the section searching for a new immortality Nouwen brought up a good point that I had to stop and think on for a while. To summarize he said,

Our sense of immortality is our source of creativity.

What do you think?