Maybe you’re like me. At times pushed to the point of torment with the burden of trying to make sense out of life. Most of the time the puzzle seems absurd. I know that I don’t have all the pieces, but still, the gaps can be overwhelming. Yet I know that somehow it all fits together. So I fumble along, trying to gain perspective into the purpose of my life.
Although I’m accustomed to this struggle, lately I do not feel qualified to ask such questions. I think of Stephen Hawking, debatably the greatest mind of the day. His conclusion to my questions is that we are indeed created by design, but because there is no possible way to know what purpose are creator designed us for, we might as well be an evolutionary accident without meaning. I feel if there is any genius within me, it cannot compare to his. Therefore, who am I to believe that I can possibly come to any other conclusion?

Yet I am pressed to believe differently. I wonder if Hawking has fallen in to the same curse as Herman Hess’s Siddhartha. A brilliant mind, that set out to satisfy a seemingly insatiable desire for wholeness. His mind was sharp, and the intensity of his searching could not be matched by any other. He spent most of his life in vain, building both treasure and understanding, in attempts to satisfy his craving. He boasted about how his life was like a rock falling through the water, always finding the fastest way, while others drift slowly to the bottom. In the end, it was through walking away from all he had gained to find his nirvana. When another pilgrim searching for peace found him, and asked him secret to his peace, his response was something like this, “your problem is exactly what you are doing, searching. When you search intently for something, you are only looking for one thing.” The reality is that it doesn’t matter how fast you can go, if you’re going in the wrong direction, it is the slower people who are in the lead. I can’t say for sure, maybe Hawking will find his nirvana through exhaustive calculations and quantum physics in the end, but I think he might have to walk away from his current path and pursue a new direction to find his peace.

I think it is amazing how great minds are humbled in their lack of wholeness. How men like Stephen Hawking feel the need to embark on a spiritual journey. In doing so, that admit that even though they have learned most things, but they have not learned what is most important. They have gained their world and now face losing their soul, so they change course.

What presses me forward is the invested dignity in being called to sonship. I feel like this is my only qualifier for attempting these thoughts. I believe with Hawking that we were created by design, but I also believe we were created in His image. When an artist creates something in his image, we can say it is like him, but not identical. However, I believe that the creator was not satisfied for us to be merely in his likeness, so he sent us his identical. For what is created by the artists hands cannot be identical, only what is begotten can be identical. The creator sent His son. Although our side of the offer was weakened, the covenant was strengthened, and dignity was extended.

Although I feel almost completely ignorant of these things, and I don’t know exactly what my purpose of being here is, I know I am created with love and intent. Although I can’t fully know him, I know He is good, and in His likeness good satisfies me more than evil. I also know that I betray His image and likeness with evil, and yet He extends me sonship, He extends me grace. What is more, I know that I need my creator, and even though He created me with purpose, He does not need me as I need Him. In fact, I can’t be sure He needs me at all. He is with me. Why is He with me? The grace involved is staggering, and He pursues further. Knowing this unreciprocated relationship is based entirely on grace, it makes it easy for me to love my creator. I truly hope I have something of value to give to Him.

So I think. My consciousness slurred by both arrogance and inadequacy. There is another voice. One that tells me that the answers I seek are not in consciousness alone, and that consciousness stems from the heart. Just as I must intellectually deduct meaning from breaking down my reality, so my heart must also be broken. For the voice told me a secret, that the answers I seek lie both outside, and within. The outside demands you understand the world, while all the inside requires a humble, soft heart that sets out to understand oneself. I’m not sure what is more difficult. Like Kant, I want those two things to consume me. I want that to be my fascination – The stary host above, and the moral code within.
I know that my nirvana doesn’t lie in one thing, but a dynamic of my world around me, and all that is within me, moving in perfect harmony in relation to my creator. Although this sounds unachievable, and it might very well be, I get these moments that tell me differently. These moments are so rich, that it seems like the whole universe is conspiring together to tell me that I am loved and that everything makes sense. These moments can seem fleeting, but I found the link between them. The task of making sense of all things is impossible, however, there is one name that encompasses all things. One name that brings order to the disarray of my universe. One name that brings me peace.

Thank you Jesus.

"I don't have many questions,
that you cannot answer.
I'm kinda simple that way."

Josh Ritter.

And so I walk down a another street unsatisfied. Despite recent disappointments, I find another restaurant close by. This one is fancier, offering a much more elaborate menu. I briefly wait in the entrance before I am seated and a menu is placed before me.

I am approached by a waiter, and I patiently wait as he rattles off his memorized list of specials. The list is exhaustive and it's hard to keep my pose. I want to be polite and let him finish. But I have to be honest with myself, I really only have one thing on my mind, and I knew it before the waiter even opened his mouth...

What I want isn't on the menu, as least not today.

In the end, to his disappointment, I tell him that I'm fine and a coffee will do.

The reality is that I am fine. I might even be great. Life has once again taken some strange paths and led me to an intersection so peculiarly 'right' that it has to be divine. I feel as if I moving away from months of searching because I've had some strange encounter with truth. A new struggle emerges as I need to let go of some of the 'unknowns' in my life, and once again accept something concrete. Not that I fully understand what this transition means, but one thing I do know is that spiritually, I'm moving in a different direction because I have been confronted by the truth.

For all this, I am very thankful. In the midst of this I express my discontent... it's not that I'm unhappy with life, it's just that sometimes, I really want someone to share it with... but if it's not on the menu, there isn't much i can do but enjoy my coffee.

Thanks for reading.

Life gets hard. Love can be brutal... Change is necessary. Logical deduction causes us to sit back and weigh out the pros and cons, and make a decision... then face confusion head on as our stomach turns and mind races. Good decisions don't always cut that string attached to a switch, wired to the heart, ready to be pulled. When abruptly triggered, it causes the heart to miss just one beat... which is just enough to bring you spiraling back to that exact moment when you carefully placed all those pros and cons on to the scale... and you can't help but wonder if the scale was off.

I think our logic is off, and it leaves us uncertain.
"I made the right decision, right?"
Maybe we could benefit from the logic of the economist. That we derive value, based not simply on pros and cons, but on scarcity and real cost. That a resources value is based on how renewable, hard to find, how limited it is, and if there are any close substitutes. Then on top of that, the real cost of time and energy involved in the searching for this resource. If you think of life that way, I'm pretty sure you'll find that love is more scarce than anticipated, and grossly undervalued. Even the most tainted of loves... the most dysfunctional... if there is any true substance of love, any morsel, then the value is undefined... because the real cost of healing is always underestimated, and you can never get it back, but instead you hope for a better close substitute. One that is a little more sustainable.

Thinking of things like this, and of addiction, disturbs me. What makes me think of these kinds of things? What binds people to an insatiable itch. An itch they can never scratch enough. They scratch away, just to try to feel normal, or to feel nothing. The goal is always to try to get back to a point where life made sense, and everything was okay.

I think this is kinda what Jesus was talking about when He spoke about the faith like a child. How peace comes from the simplicity of true acceptance in things greater than us, and how little control we have. Taking life and love at face value, with no need to doubt. Pure love. Pure joy. Pure laughter. Pure trust. Not ignorant, but beautifully aware, that uncertainty is okay, because love is real and underlines everything you know.

I think that at some point we all lose the magic of youth. Then most people spend the rest of their lives trying to get back to that beautiful simplicity... where it was so easy to love and laugh and trust and share and play. Some turn to substances, others to intellect and arts... then down the road they trade those for materialistic ambitions... where midlife crisis's are inevitable, as true values are never achieved, and they only get fuzzier and less defined... more confusing and complicated.

In all my searching, I've seen much beauty, and know of a cure. I wish I could stand at street corners and hand it out to everyone... but sometimes it's such a large pill to swallow. Even for myself, as it truly means giving up, letting go... raising your hands to someone much bigger than yourself, and believing that they will pick you up... and make you able to love, trust, and laugh.

I'm not sure what it will take for you to believe in yourself. I know you feel that the cost of change was grossly misrepresented, I understand that. Even if the next steps don't lighten up, trust me, the ones after that will make it all worth while.
Simplicity of heart is on its way.


Truth brings beauty to the motion of life.
I pray that you keep letting the truth in,
and get a glimpse of how beautiful you are.

love

The downward emotion spiral triggered by unknown events has taken me down some strange paths. Each path seems to be connected with my present and some dark distant glow, too far to bring it in to focus. Even though I can't make out any kind of detail, I know what they are, and honestly they are quite intriguing. They pull me in and try to get me to answer their questions. Our past can be a lot to sort out, and has funny ways of demanding our attention.

Tonight things came in to focus. I'm accustomed to clarity being a humbling event, as clarity not only reveals something contrary to my expectations, but shows me that I wasn't even looking in the right direction when it came. My clarity came not from the past, but the aspirations of the future. If anything is worthy to be written, I feel this is it. For despite how others may perceive of me, this is the basis of my security... and I write to remember.

What defines me? What do I value? How do I love?
... How do I want to be loved?

Asking these questions have never made me feel more real. Self awareness can be beautifully reinforcing, but sometimes so rewarding that I loose sight of it's purpose. Self awareness should bring you closer to self actualization. It's in the application, or in the motion of life that we find our being. It's not enough to merely put the pieces together and make the puzzle fit... as rewarding as it is, you need to understand what the puzzles purpose is... then dream about what it could be. Awareness without aspiration is a lost cause whose gains will always be fleeting. The truth is that I have made mistakes, but I aspire to be more than I am. Love is never stagnant, and I live to love.

My conclusion: I spend too much time dissecting my reality, instead of focusing my energy to change my reality into what it should be.

This was partially inspired by a room full of beautiful people and life's subtle smirk at the simplicity of my problems solutions... I think the rest has been in the making for some time. Whatever the case, all these combined to tell me that love, real love, in action, is closer than I realize, should I reach out and grab it.

Some answers cannot be found internally... because they are one step away.

Make tomorrows answers better than todays.


I have a feeling that I'm going to have much to learn from my new big brother. If only I would fight half as hard as he is fighting right now...

Oh all those words I should not know, those doctors wrote on me.
Swell up and from their syllable, won’t let me get to sleep.
The sun will start late and clock out early,
And I’ll drive around and wait for it.
Fallow familiar roads, emptied of every memory,
under a sheet of silence and unmarked snow.

Then idle in some parking lot, smoke half a smoke and ask,
St. Boniface and St. Vital, “preserve me from my past.”
Repair our potholes, prevent plant closures
And if they remember me at all.
Make them remember me,
as more than a queer experiment,
more than a diagram in their quarterly.
Make them remember me.


-The Weakerthans,
Hymn of the medical oddity


I have a problem, but the tricky party is that it never looks like one. It’s like I’m so close to a new revelation that will tell me some secret and bring some light into my disarray. So I take one more step. Not realizing which direction I’m going, as long as it feels closer to my revelation. I keep moving, seemingly directionless, maybe even walking in circles. I get so enthralled with the searching, that I easily overlook the obvious, or simple, or sadly the beautiful answers that are calling out to me. Like an addict, that has his seemingly insatiable itch. He would spend all his days scratching at it, fully aware that it can never be satisfied. Then one day a real cure is offered. The only problem is that he is so used to the scratching, that he would rather itch then not.

The searching process keeps me soft, but I never want to exchange the truth for a lie. As priceless as these steps have been to me… the doors they have opened. I’ve opened up, and changed in so many ways, accepting that I’m often a late adopter on some things that I formerly judged.

So part of my problem is my recent enlightenment. Only really enlightened to the point of some self awareness of dysfunction and longing, but not enlightened enough to really know what to do about it… yet coming to grips with life’s tangles is beautifully liberating.

… Like that street I always avoided. Now I enjoy it. I’ve come to accept my mild infatuation. In fact, I’m okay with keeping it for a while. Even though I don’t know what to do with it.

…Or all the awkward connections of people moving in and out of our worlds. They bring an insecurity as you have to figure out why some left and others have entered… and the followings that those changes bring. The people we compare ourselves to as we replace some, then we ourselves get replaced.

… Or most of all, coming to grips with damage caused by this silly process of falling in and out of love. Getting hurt by someone, then turning around and hurting someone else, then watching the net expand as the process repeats itself.

Sometimes I feel like I’m a doctor and at the same time I’m a patient lying down on a bed in a hospital as I examine myself. I examine my patient, and ask him questions about both past injuries and illness. I answer the doctor questions by describing my lingering symptoms as well as new pains. I give my patient my diagnosis about the things still healing and my conclusions as to what these new symptoms might be. Drugs are prescribed and the appointment is adjourned.

I’m pretty accustomed to this process, but recently I’ve found a major flaw. I make a lousy doctor, and wholeness can only come from one physician. Life brings life, and healthy things grow. I’ve been arrogant. I’ve tried to fix myself. Awareness is a vital step, one that has brought indispensable change to my life. However, even if I do not always act on it, I believe that there is one author of life. He is light, and loves to heal. Through Him, love brings true revelation to light. Always healing, always restoring, redemption is still the same price it has always been, a simple declaration of your need for Him.

I need you now.

You speak of much heavier things than I remember. Maybe it's because I finally started to listen. I want you to know that I'm frustrated with you. No matter how hard we all try, we can't make you think of yourself because you're way too busy thinking of others. Even now, you tell me that the doctors gave you two years to live, and one of those years is spent. It used to bother me that you gave up your vision, but now I see that all you've done is focus it. You just need to sort out a few more things. Just a few more things to get done. Your energy is down to about 10%... and you'll spend every bit of it on your family.

We're all stressed out at how stubborn you are. We see you struggle, and want you to relax. But you're a man with a mission. Your body isn't helping much anymore, but it's your mission, and your body, and nobody can take that from you... and besides, you believe in so much more than what meets the eye.

I used to be frustrated with you, but one day, I hope I am the same.

"You need to take it easy, you don't have much life left in you."
"You don't understand, I can't rest now... I only have a little more to give."

Love resounds through the generations, at the same time, it starts fresh every time. You tell me that your addiction was the best thing that happened to you... you only lost 45 years, and after that, what you knew was priceless. I understand that now. What makes a man a man? I can't even get close to pin pointing that answer, but I know that it is some sort of integration of love and responsibility. That lesson always comes at a price. He paid it. He faced his demons.

Some things can't be passed down, only modeled.
I pray that this is never lost.

He was able to help my dad discover this for himself. Tim, I wish he was here to help you discover it for yourself. You're on the right track, and closer than you know. The fight ahead of you, is the most important battle you face... we couldn't be more proud of you. The generations echo that truth more than we your brothers could ever articulate.

If I could trace the line that ran,
between your smile and your slight of hand,
I'd guess that you put something up my sleeve.

-Josh Ritter

Although the connections may seem startling, the dots are just too hard to connect. I don't know how these lines got so tangled over the years... and it seems that as it became harder to make sense of them, confusion set in, and the lines began to break and fade in to thousands of dots... but the dots will never go away. It's amazing how it would take a life time of study to merely decipher a handful of years.

Love is never stagnant. The cool summer morning reminds me of the path traveled and the adventure that is taking place. I sit in my house, surrounded by things I've acquired or renovated. I think about my relationships, my investments, and my pending lawsuit. I've done more than many. However, I know that I will be giving up this treasure for a greater one. As the universe conspires to aid in my success, I know that I'm loved, and my legend will be one of love and sacrifice. Love is only in movement, for love cannot stay still.

As for the dots... I am at peace with them. They are not my enemy, yet befriending them has been one of the most rewarding challenges. They are a part of me, and they help me learn. I am who I am because of grace. The dots spell that out clearer than any line could ever articulate... because here I am.

Purely miraculous.
This intersection is divine.