Sunday, February 23, 2020

Mindfulness - Memorial

What should I mind?

It is a question I have been asking myself lately. I pick it apart into the different interpretations and layers of what and how I should answer. 

"Mind (1) - memory"
a) Recollection: 
What should I remember? Memory is a curious thing, depending on the lens and emotional ties I have to the setting. There are depressions in my mind like a record, times when I made a mistake or miscalculated an action. Times when I should have kept my mouth shut, others where I should have said something, & in my hesitation missed my window of relevance. There are memories of which I am fond, when I managed to be present for something wonderful. Scenes that play before my inner vision, causing me to wince or smile accordingly.

b) Power of remembering/c) Retention in memory: 
What should I keep fixed in my memory going forward? How should and will I focus upon and deal with these records I hold. There are people and places which I treasured, but have lost the rhythm to sync comfortably with where I am and where I was. How to bridge these gaps and use what I've experienced to build new memories.

"Mind (2) - Commemoration."
This definition focuses on celebrating or consecrating a past event. What important things have happened that I want to hold sacred and whole.  Occasionally, I want to whimsically declare a certain day as worth remembering as an annual event. But I forget to write it down as so, or even if I do, I often misplaced the notation. Besides, there are enough official days celebrating something or another. Every day is special to some group for some reason. Whether it be "talk like a pirate", "bacon", "pancake", or the often invoked "opposite day." These everyday celebrations are often forgettable as well. I looked up today out of curiosity. Apparently, the historical website saw fit to say that in 1985, Indiana University basketball coach Bob Knight threw a chair during a game. In 1919, Benito Mussolini formed the Fascist Party. As history goes on, something interesting will occur on any given day. But what should be recognized? I have a while to figure this out, and if I keep aware, this may grow into a offhand hobby.

"Mind (3) Opinion."
I don't know. I saw this in a draft on the same day in 2020, from initial thoughts in 2015. I don't know why I didn't publish this. It is very on brand for me still. My opinions have likely changed in the intervening years, but my approach in analyzing them has remained consistent. Most of my opinions are connections looking for conclusions and avoiding contradictions. I should generate more of them as an exercise & perhaps share less than I do in their formation period. The seeds of the ideas should grow at their own pace & time & not be rushed along before they are ready. Otherwise they might be choked & lost among weeds of doubts and/or wither under the harsh scrutiny of full daylight.
It is my opinion now in 2020 with hindsight that I should have published this five years ago. But time will prove whether it is better for the delay. Words can find their mark in their own timing. I hope this proves encouraging & helpful to you, my reader, as this reminder has been to me.

Wednesday, February 19, 2020

Rocks - Rivers

I recently got to catch up with an old friend I haven't been able to see in a while. It was nice to reconnect & see areas where we have both grown & been excited about each other's steps in life.

My friend is a rock, and I am a river. He holds the line firm with a face of stone looking into the future. Time may wear at him, but he stands & resists it hardily. If you chip away at him, pebbles of wisdom & layers drop off. It is a challenge to try to go deeper with him. Not because he is shallow, but because he makes you work out an approach for how to break through. Making sure that you are using good & worthy tools of questions. He will challenge weaker efforts to breach him as laughably insufficient & not well thought out. But his layers are analytical & lovely, and reward long efforts & exposure to his presence.

I am a river. I go for the lowest common denominator & my thoughts stream from there. I will wear people down patiently with a steady flow of words. I want to give words of life & affirmation, but if I am not careful, I can overwhelm my audience with too much information. Often I am content to burble cheerfully along, carving a rut forward along my path over time, recycling water & words through gassing off my mouth & accepting new information & feedback to add depth to my memory's banks. I can get held up by roadblocks & resistance, frustrated that I cannot break through to a person or overcome a problem. My focus collects in these problem areas of my flow being broken, I redouble my efforts to pressure through. Sometimes I succeed, other times, that wall holds firm & I end up getting sidetracked & pressing off on a different tangent to work around the edges of the conflict to a different destination.

It is a go

Friday, February 14, 2020

Workout - Jesus

As I have mentioned before, I enjoy running & doing obstacle course events. I find the running portions much easier than upper body challenges. I am disproportionate & play to my natural strengths for as far as my legs will carry me. When I bother to work out, the bulk of it is cardio, as conditioning towards what my edge often is is easier to sharpen my speed and endurance.

However, one of my friends has patiently persisted in asking me why I have not taken on the services of a personal trainer. This might provide an avenue by which I could correct my imbalance of focus and guide me towards getting to the peak of my potential performance. To reach the top, rather than just being content to hustle with my bottom limbs pulling the weight. They told me last night, "Kaleb, I know that you CAN finish these events. I have seen you do things out of a sheer force of will. But the question you need to ask yourself is 'How hard do you want to make it for yourself to finish?"

I have explained away my reasons for not hiring a trainer before, which will soon follow and be elaborated upon, but this query stuck with me. I have encountered it in another area of my life in regards to my faith, and my answers were ever, "As hard as it needs to be as long as I am the one finishing." My friend is not a Christian, and I am, & I realize that the same struggles I have had in my spiritual habits are ones I must revisit in my physical habits as well.

Reason #1: I am stubborn and have an intense desire within me to want to work out my own salvation through sweat, blood, and tears. Whether it causes me pain, suffering, and effort, I long to be able to beat myself into submission and perfection with my own hands. Like Aaron Burr in Hamilton, "I am an original, I am inimitable." But you get nothing for it if you just wait for it to happen. It is only when I reach the edge of my abilities and become frustrated that I recognize the benefit of someone else possibly helping me to overcome this barrier of my own limitations. Christ did this for me with extreme patience, while I whaled at the walls in vain. But it was only when I gave up and looked heavenward that I was truly ready to accept that I couldn't do it on my own. I value the things I work for, and until I am able to appreciate the work it takes I am apt to be a little ungracious of the value of the help offered.

Reason #2: I don't feel comfortable asking for help if I believe the task is something I can do myself. I am aware that this is a selfish, proud, and vainglorious thought, but one I need to rediscover and relearn multiple times in my life. I insist on breaking myself first to find that I need to be fixed in my habits. I have learned better habits through exhausting the potential of lesser ones and firmly setting them aside. When I was younger, I had a short fuse, and I prayed about it. I burned to please and self-destructed when I did not manage to accomplish that which I wished. I hated myself and felt that God would never love me when I couldn't manage to do good like He was asking. These self-destruction breakdowns managed to hurt others as well as myself, and gradually God helped me to be more gracious towards others, and eventually myself. It was in my teens that I went through a study of Romans and the doctrine of grace really landed home for me. That God would call me His son and love me and adopt me as his namesake before I did anything worthy of love is very freeing. That I don't have to impress Him, but that I might share the same gift of grace with others that was granted to me is much easier. I now want to rejoice in successes far more than to focus upon my failings as stumbles along the way. It is a walk with Christ, and though I found it more difficult to manage as a spiritual and physical toddler, I don't think as much about my falls, or even my walking unless someone brings my attention to how curious a thing balance is for bipedal creatures. But I want to climb and swing well as well as just run, and a trainer might guide me physically as Christ has helped me spiritually. It requires that I humble myself and ask for help.

Reason #3: I have commitment issues. I tend to be hesitant to commit to new things because I am prone to hyper-focusing on them to the exclusion and ignorance of all else. Once I decide to do something, I pour my energy into it until it exhausts me or I am exhausted of it. Moderation is a problem for me, as I don't always balance things well. If I juggle too many commitments, I will tire myself out or not pay sufficient attention to keep all the objects in the air, and things will tend to drop off around me. For me to take working out seriously, I will have to reexamine the place I have allotted to it in my life as "something to pursue in free time when I am feeling up to it" to "Something I am actively setting time aside to pursue." And it is bothersome to spend money on things I do not use. I already do that with streaming subscriptions to entertainment. People used to put their money where their focus was, but there are ever so many things to focus on these days, so money often is lost through distraction. All the same, I didn't like the idea of paying for a trainer if my commitment is half-hearted and distracted. I was the same with my faith as well - I didn't want to become a member of a church because I did not see a need to attach my name to any one congregation over another. We are one body in Christ, why should it matter if I sign in your ledger? I should go where the Spirit leads me to go and seek pasture for where my spiritual needs are fed. However, I did join a church this past year, and I did it for the benefit of not seeking my own benefit, but out of a conviction that I should be held accountable by a body of believers to serving the benefit of others. Things are ever so much easier for me when I am not solely focused on myself and am looking inward for fulfillment, but looking outward for how I could grow and that growth could feed and support others who need shelter, comfort, and sustenance. Perhaps working with a trainer would not be only for the benefits to my physical fitness and abilities for glorying in God's creation to my full potential, but also that I might have the energy to better serve others by this training of strength and endurance.

My friend knows through experience how much a personal trainer has improved their physical life and habits, and is an evangelist extolling the virtues and benefits he has found through it. I feel the same way about Christ and His role in redeeming my life and habits. We both see how our surrendering our wills to a greater and wiser person's guidance has exponentially grown our achieving of our potentials, and wish each other would join our journey so that we might better keep pace in our walks and runs with common experience and recognition.

But these were the reasons which held me back in committing fully in my faith, and I will have to examine in considering my commitment level to a healthier lifestyle which would be easier with a trainer to keep me accountable and aware.

"I don't want to pay the cost if I am not serious." Both in my salvation and in my fitness.

"Change of lifestyle would be too hard or undesirable."
This is a difficulty of vision and taste. God has helped me with changing my tastes from poorer choices to better ones. It is usually through replacement and refocusing on something that is better and more fulfilling that I tend to drop and/or forget to maintain the unsustainable and draining areas of my life.

"What would I lose of time, money, and energy?"
Once again, a problem of focus and emphasis, somewhat negative in tone, but also valid in that in order to pursue some habits, I must choose wisely what is truly important to me lest I lose relationships with family and friends, maintenance on housework, or ability to support other causes I want to further progress. Time is both physically spent and mentally spent, and is not a renewable resource, so I need to pray and consider what best to do with it.

"It works for you, but is not for me."
In terms of spiritual disciplines or physical training regimens, this is a way to politely acknowledge without committing to any change of behavior. Sometimes this is a valid point, but growth is ever possible from wherever I currently am. If my faith were a mustard seed, I could move mountains, but physically, I still have difficulty with chin-ups.

"I can will my own way to greatness"
Without giving appropriate time to properly prepare, the mind may make some headway, but it is made more difficult when other necessities have been neglected. "Wherever you are, be there" as Jim Elliot once said.

Tuesday, February 11, 2020

Suffer - Full

I recently read Everything Happens for A Reason & Other Lies I Believed by Kate Bowler. It opens with a rawness that is like a gut punch to an empty stomach. Tonight, I read the first chapter of One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voscamp. That was a strike to a different area - making contact with a heart full of loss & grief, fit to burst at the slightest touch.

It comes down to the question: "Why would a Good God allow suffering?" I haven't read C.S. Lewis' "A Grief Observed", but his "The Problem of Pain" is one of my favorite works by him for the thoughts it provoked in me to consider. But, in short, the refrain is that pain is much less abstract when it is inflicted on you in your own life.

Pain makes it hard to think clearly about anything except its source. And it is persistent, despite anyone else's efforts to comfort, console, or even try to snap us out of our suffering. It is different when it happens to you.

It is isolating & overwhelming all at once. It would be fascinating if only sone relief could be given from being the focus of the pain. Johnny Cash's cover of Hurt lent a different angle than the original Trent Reznor version. One with the struggles of a young man who is figuring out how to navigate his wreck of a life by relating it to a friend. The other imbued by an old man's mortality & how its current state is not what it once was, and is wondering whether it is worth the effort to continue to fight to maintain a quality of life. Both are about the current struggle, but through the tragedy of a misspent youth fading before it had a chance to bloom, or through the lens of a life in rearview which had potential unrealized & fully realized regrets. The song ends on a strong refrain of defiance in the face of the current tragic state, claiming that if they had another chance, they would choose the same path again. It is beautiful & heartbreaking all at once.

Years ago, I read Edith Schaeffer's "Affliction", and it is unflinching in it's examination of suffering & whether it might have an ultimate purpose in shaping us into better tools for executing God's gracious will. Like a knife being sharpened through grinding, like silver being proved pure through a refiner's fire. I think I should read it again to better refresh my memory on this particular angle.

I don't have answers for the questions of pain & suffering. Sometimes, I don't even have the heart to engage with it even in fiction. I love Laini Taylor's young adult fantasy novels, but after reaching the conclusion of "Strange The Dreamer", I haven't been able to muster faith in the sequel's ability to overcome & redeem a plot point left hanging. And I love her work. I have borrowed the sequel "Muse of Nightmares" twice & have yet to crack the cover. I keep looking at it with longing for my curiosity to be satisfied & rewarded, but I leave it in limbo, because I am not certain that I would be able to shake the world of the book when navigating my daily life outside of it. This is entirely something which is not really happening, but the imagination can amplify even false things to such a scale that the unreality intersects into the real. Words lead to images, which lead to thoughts, and those ideas linger in minds long enough to leave impressions even as the details fade to an absence.

Life features many losses, and in the longing for the missing support, I can be blinded to potential gains & blessings around me which might grant me opportunities for a greater & fuller life to spill over into others with exceeding abundance.

In another group study, I am going through the book of Ecclesiastes. Recently discussing chapter three which famously lists a time & season for all things under the sun. There is a time to rejoice & a time to mourn. A time to embrace & a time to refrain from embracing. And one of the group members is currently going through an acute time of suffering due to a recent event. It is rough, & I recognize the hurt & pain, for which I cannot give reason or proportional comfort. But I can pray that my heavenly Father might grant peace, wisdom, & comfort to navigate the brokenness of this world, and heal our wounds when we encounter its sharp edges from that brokenness.

If you are going through a time of suffering, know that I love you & grieve with you, even if I may not know you personally or well. I just know that Christ died to redeem my life from the wretched wrecks I managed to make of it with my reckless decisions. Out of love, He sought to reshape & reform my pieces into His image. I still have imperfections, but I long for perfection.

I am reminded of a part of a verse from Come Thou Fount of Ev'ry Blessing:
"Jesus sought me when a stranger
Wandering from the fold of God
He, to rescue me from danger
Interposed His precious blood."

And if Christ can love a stranger, I would like to do the same. As a friend once told me "Kyrie Eleison indeed to all of us."  Which is a good Greek reminder to call upon in times of trouble.