Looking For The Long Ride

I don’t know about you, but I have to admit—post mid-life—that I still
enter each day thinking that this might be the one when I get “it” all
together. When all the pieces fit and life’s puzzle has been solved—at
least to my satisfaction. And truth be known, each day I feel that I
fall a little further behind in the very things it would take to
accomplish this gargantuan feat.

It is almost to
the point where I don’t even like to think about it anymore and
conversely it is what often gets me out of bed in the middle of the
night—this thought that I might have missed it or am not trying hard
enough to make it happen—this “figure-it-out-and-be-the-head-and-not-the-tail-thing.

Deuteronomy 28:13
“The LORD will make you the head and not the tail, and you only will be above, and you will not be underneath, if you listen to the commandments of the LORD your God, which I charge you today, to observe them carefully…”

In my last post I talked about creativity and the dry feeling that comes upon us when we don’t feel that particular spark of energy flowing through us.

Wikipedia tells me that creativity is:

Creativity (or “creativeness”) is a mental process involving the generation of new ideas or concepts, or new associations of the creative mind between existing ideas or concepts.

So, is there really much of a difference, from a physical time and space aspect, between yesterday and today—other than our perception of what is happening in our minds?

Today, I am fully convinced that there are many things that can play havoc with our creativity—the first of which is a mind full of stuff that hasn’t been properly filed away. Each degree of unsettledness produces an equal amount of mental detritus that will literally float around until we filter it off.

Based on an experience that I had the other day, I will also posit that we carry around a lot more extra, and therefore draining baggage, than we suspect.

I was reading a inspirational business book called “Don’t Let Others Rent Space In Your Head” when, as I reflected on a paragraph just processed, I became equally aware of the fact that I was also, simultaneously, thinking about something else entirely different from what I was reading. It was as if I became acutely aware of a movie playing in the background of my consciousness. I was in the movie, but it was portraying a much different “reality” than the one that I am currently living in and aware of. I then began to realize that I have been “servicing” these fracture realities for most of my life. Now I seem to understand why I like sitting around airports and in large public parks absorbed in “people watching”. I need cast members for all the movies I have running in my brain. The tall ones and the short ones and the various nationalities—they all have a place to fill.

You may think that I have gone off the deep end, but when I explained this to my church fellowship last Sunday, they all nodded their heads and seemed to understand what I was talking about—kind of like they had all experienced some of the same type of fractures in their lives as well.

Shortly after I became cognizant of my many realities and the energy they each took to sustain their separate story lines, I said a short prayer along with a verbal affirmation and asked that what was many would become just one. I want to be a whole person—not someone divided up into so many pieces—pieces that once may have helped me make it through a hard time or two but now only serve to keep me weighed down and worn out.

I can certainly imagine dealing with a Terry who is not a system of complex coping mechanisms each serving to keep me busy and feeling like I can make it through the day. Being deep is one thing—being broken up into many subterranean pieces another.

I am sure there is more to this story than what meets my eye at this point—however, it is getting late and there is more to think about and do before bedtime. Hope you have enjoyed the ride.

It is kind of hard to take sometimes when you catch yourself thinking that you haven’t had an original thought in what might be several weeks (if one were “into” keeping track of such things).

You might argue that this is really not the case and you would probably be partially right. There is “original” and then there is ORIGINAL. And the difference is often in the way we look at thoughts and creativity and so forth in the first place.

I have spent the past several weeks reading a lot of poetry—books that I picked up on sale at Black Bear Books, Mosaic Bookstore and a couple of not-so-local Barnes and Noble stores. I look for books that speak to me off the shelf and say…”take me home and you will not regret it.” I tend toward smaller volumes page-wise, which I can read from cover to cover in under a week of off and on attention. I now know that no matter how good the poet, I tend to get a little weary of reading the same book of poetry when I know there are two hundred more pages to go. Yet I often fall for the economy of scale, selected works type of books, because of their perceived value—yet if you never finish the book then that reasoning is hardly something to take to the bank.

Anyway—I have been reading a woman poet named Sharon Olds—my latest find and now favorite writer in the modern school of poetry I admire and aspire to be a part of sometimes.

What sets her apart from many other poets is her ability to take a moment or particular movement of time and play it back to the reader in a way that it becomes noticeable—and in so doing creating a sense of destiny and beauty that is often quickly by-passed on a daily basis.

As I read, I remembered thinking that it had been some time since I had seen my life in this way—some time since I had felt I had anything worthwhile to say or even blog about—my guitar rests in its case and my fiddle has not seen the light of day or night in some time. I feel dry and don’t know why.

To top it off, I awoke during the night two or three days ago with the image of a faucet in front of me. Somehow I knew that it was empty and went back to sleep hoping that my “real” well in the back yard wasn’t having problems. Pumps are not cheap and not having any water in your house is a real drag.

In the light of day, and in talking with my wife, I realized that the faucet picture was a visual image from God or my subconscious (or both) letting me know of my earthly state. Then I wasn’t so much concerned about this information as much as I was to the reason behind my seeming lack of creative spark.

This led in turn to my thinking about what creativity is in the first place and why does it seem to ebb and flow and even get stopped up. As my Irish friend Robert would say, my well is “bunged” up. And then, in an honest and transparent moment I realized that a web design job that I have not finished and which I probably should not have taken in the first place was at the top of my list for creative well stoppers. It is not like me to let something drag on indefinitely (although I do drag-g-g from time to time). And as to why I have been avoiding this particular job—well that remains between my wife and I.

Suffice it to say, I have been more than a little frustrated with my lack of passion lately but understand even writing about it today is perhaps a way to begin the trip back to wherever it is I feel like I need to be—or am more comfortable with.

Sometimes we need to let go of what we think we know in order to grow into a deeper and much fuller understanding of love and life and community.

I now know that I like women poets because they seem to be more in touch with feelings than us guys. They can talk about birth and death and sex and living and art in such a way as to help me see the marvelous mystery of what God has created around us. I find that I like the way they look at me—much in the same way I might look at myself—when and if I were ever into looking. A well-rounded women poet is hard to beat—one without an axe to grind but one with an itch to discover what it is that makes us operate in the ways we do. Like reading an owners manual—you always find out something new about something old.

And maybe that is the cure for a bunged up well—read the owners manual (you are free to pick) and find out how to get the dirt out and start the water flowing again. I can already feel it beginning to trickle up—can’t you?

I once worked for a semi-weekly newspaper and I remember my editor making a deal with me about the column that I wrote called, “Just Common“. I had recently become a Christian and so much of the meat of what I wrote about in this column had to do with themes that resonated with that new found lifestyle.

He told me that I could write anything I wanted to in the Tuesday paper, but that in Thursday’s issue I had to write about the rest of life—mostly meaning to him at the time politics and so forth. I guess he was looking for more serious editorial content to balance out the nuggets of wisdom I was gleaning from reading Paul and the rest of the New Testament authors.

It was a compromise I was more than happy to make and the rest, as they say, is history. Aside from a few yellowed newspaper sheets I have in a box in the basement, that time and those writings are more or less gone forever.

Which brings me to this entry—my last effort being somewhat serious, this outing will be more of what you have come to expect from the long ride guy.

Several weeks ago I picked my wife up in Winston Salem after having spent time with my daughter in Raleigh. We meet halfway and since they were caught in some traffic, I got to spend a little more time than usual in one of my favorite haunts—the Barnes and Noble bookstore just off the I-40 expressway. It is right by a Macaroni Grill but that is another story.

The extra time I had was spent in the poetry section looking for a title or two that would jump out at me crying “read me—read me” in that small voice that only readers of poetry and other book-store browsers can relate to.

I am happy to report that I found a couple of poets that I had never read or even heard of and have enjoyed their company the past couple of weeks. One poet, Jane Kenyon, was married to a guy I met while at Michigan State University. His name is Donald Hall and he is a poet and author of the book entitled, “The Ox Cart Man” which is one of my all time favorite childrens’ books.

Jane is not with us now but has left a small body of work that speaks of the rural experience in a way that I have found quite refreshing. One poem in particular grabbed my attention and is the foundation behind the thought for this entry. The poem is entitled simply “Wash” and goes like this:

All day the blanket snapped and swelled
on the line, roused by a hot spring wind….

Clouds rose over the mountain….At dusk
I took the blanket in, and we slept,
restless, under its fragrant weight.

Jane Kenyon – Wash

This is what I call a poetic moment—one that Jane grabbed from the many that float by us everyday. The very thought of those sheets soaking up the atmosphere around them and then you or me falling asleep between them is an event that is so soft and so quiet that most will never experience it.

But this is reality—if we really are honest with ourselves—and a reality that often slips by in a storm of busyness that seems to fill our every waking moment.

How much more pleasant would our lives be if we would but take the time to filter a few of these picture poems through our consciousness  on a daily basis. We could revolutionize our lives to the point where our relationships to the world around us and the people we meet would be a novel such as the world has never read.

Just as we don’t really appreciate the rainy days until we have had several months of drought, our lives have mostly been lived on a level of just getting by rather than in the throes of romance or adventure, intrigue, joy or hope.

Not that every moment is golden or even has the potential to reach a poetic crescendo, but there are more of them than there are not. And that’s a ride I would like to take.

In the past few days I have been given pause to ruminate on the current price of food, the price of gas, 401K’s and the so-called “Green” initiative that seems to be coming at us—as consumers—from every possible angle.

During my daily perusal of the USA Today, I found that even the “experts” can’t agree on why gas prices are so high. Some have speculated that the price is being driven artificially high due to stock market investments. Some say it is the simple economic forces of supply and demand that have pushed the price of regular to four dollars a gallon and above in many parts of the USA.

The Saudi’s (when interviewed) have said that they are producing enough crude and really don’t know why prices are so high. In a lunch-time conversation I had with a co-worker, he told me that China and India and other emerging industrial countries are buying all the oil they can get and that in his mind there is not enough supply. Yet there are no lines at the gas stations as I pass by them in my trips to a from town. They do seem to always have more cars pumping gas than I can ever remember.

However, all this speculation aside, just dealing with the price of gas is like scratching an itch and not ever getting to the point of what is causing it. And in my mind, what is causing the itch is hidden so deep as to be almost impossible to find.

My thoughts today are that as a culture of people, we have become used to having most anything that we have desired and this has brought us to a time in history where our options are about to be defined for us rather than us setting our own course.

As I write this, I remember a friend of mine had one of the first Honda Civic cars produced in 1973. It cost about $2,200 and got up to 40mpg on the highway according to Wikipedia. And I would have to say that since that day, we have gone backwards in gas mileage instead of forward—manufacturers are even telling the government that the mandated 35 mpg goal for 2010 cars is unrealistic and will put to much pressure on an industry already under the gun. And is it their greed or our need for bigger cars that got us here. Just asking.

Driving around town today, I thought about the Burger King motto of “Have It Your Way” begun in 1974. It was a great marketing idea that played upon our need to control our environment. Apple’s i Tunes and I pod have since redefined this very basic concept—have your own music when you want it—download a song or an album and turn on and tune out. I have to watch mingling my metaphors here since I was in San Francisco during the Timothy Leary days.

As I began this thoughtful journey a few days ago I realized that there are many directions this could take. If we were sitting face to face I think I could explain to you my thoughts in just  a few minutes. Writing them down has become almost to labor intensive. Yet I know there is a thread of truth about where we are as a culture hiding just around the next paragraph—so I push on.

We are at a place in history, as least in my humble opinion where there is really no clear choice for president. What can either of these men, who desire the nation’s most prestigious job, really do about what needs to be taken care of.

Can they change the way we think—or at least modify what it is we think that we are entitled to as a group of people, one nation under God, etc.

Back in the day, I watched another presidential race being run on the television. I heard this 1976 era Jimmy Carter tell me and the rest of the viewing audience that he was all about giving us tax credits for equipping our houses with solar cells and that we should do all we can to develop other sources of energy—I think we all knew by this time that oil was not a renewable source of power and that to continue as a people group we would have to come up with something.

I had been raised a Republican and at that point decided to vote for Carter who was not. Long story short, 32 years later, where are all these practical ways of conserving what fuel we have left and discovering new energy sources.

Now-a-days, it is vogue for industrial types to talk about their “going green” efforts as if putting a bandage on the wound is something to be proud of—and don’t get me wrong—we need green initiatives. But how many lights do we have to turn off and how low do our thermostats have to go before we make a dent in the damage that we have already sustained during the past 50 years of growth economy. While the rich got richer and the poor got even more poor, industry has paid these same spokespeople millions and billions to make the bottom line look good for the annual stockholders meeting. Sports stars are getting rich while America gets heavier in front of their 42 and 52 inch, super high-def, wide screen, wall-mounted monitors that pass for televisions these days. (Wouldn’t it be great to have one too!)

We live with the fact that once prices go up, they rarely, if ever, go back down. Remember the sugar shortage of 1975. The price never went back down to what it was before the shortage. The same goes for coffee, tea and all that other good stuff we like to eat and drink. As I see it, it will take a long time for our paychecks to catch up with these rising prices and more than likely, they never will quite make it.

At some point we are told that social security (which I personally have paid into since my first real, $1.25 an hour janitorial job in the summer of 1965) won’t be enough to live on when we retire. So we invest (wisely I might add) in IRA’s and 401K’s only to see their value go kaput with the rest of the stock market. Yes we are buying more shares but please let me know when it is time to cash out and take the 10% penalty hit. I will be ready.

These are just a few thoughts on an otherwise thoughtless rainy day. I firmly believe that as a man thinks, so he is and that things are not beyond repair—that the liberal press will do all it can to post the most depressing news until the election is over. But I know this as well—four dollar a gallon gas is the least of the problems faced by this country and others. A holistic medical rule of thumb is that it will take twice as long to heal as it did to get sick in the first place. But if we don’t start today as a community to address some of what we face, we will never have the chance to get to where I believe it is we can really be environmentally and socially.

Lets ride this one together.

As many who have followed my “long ride”
journey over the past year-and-a-half know, I began blogging shortly
after my wife and I left the church we had been a part of after
twenty-two years. That decision and what has followed would fill many
books if I had the where with all to take our adventure into that
arena. Suffice it to say, there have been ups and downs and periods of
great clarity along with that foggy feeling that sometimes surrounds us
in our day to day life.

Lately, the journey has taken on new dimensions—almost like the Dylan Thomas verse that says:
The force that through the green fuse drives the flower—we have been driven into many deep places that have brought peace and subsequent reconciliation.

In 1 John 2:27 we read:  As for you, the anointing which you received from Him abides in you,
and you have no need for anyone to teach you; but as His anointing
teaches you about all things, and is true and is not a lie, and just as
it has taught you, you abide in Him.

Have you ever bought and begun to read a book that came highly recommended and only made it through the first few chapters even though the subject was engaging and the writing well crafted. I would suspect that we all have at one time or another. And I am equally sure that there are many reasons for not finishing a book beginning with what I believe is perhaps the most frequent (in my case at least): it is just not your time to be reading that particular book.

Enjoy your ride and be on the lookout for the unexpected.

I have been more or less faithful to populating this blog since I left the church I had attended for 22 years in October of 2006. Lately, I have had a lot I could say and put into words that would feed the story of my life, but I have not had the where-with-all or freedom (joy) to follow through. To say that I have learned to fly again might be an understatement—I am visiting areas that I only imagined before.

God is helping me to see a new path. There will be more to come.

Thanks for checking in.

Terry

Back in the day (about 1970 to be inexact), a poet named Gil Scott Heron wrote a poem about the black revolution that was taking place in America. The summer of love had had its day and much was happening on the home front. I have the CD of him reciting the poem to music—pre-rap mind you—and it was a real event.

There is a lot I could say about those times but I am having a hard time even finding the shift key on this keyboard—so suffice it to say—the thought occurred to me on the way home from church today about this song in relation to what is happening in Lakeland, Florida.

It is a juxtaposition for sure.

I have watched the revival in Lakeland on my computer many times. It is broadcast every evening on “God TV” from 7 pm until 10 or 11 o’clock. As many as 12 thousand people have turned out on any given night and many salvations and  healings have taken place. Many have taken this awakening back to their hometowns. And that is a good thing.

What I thought the other day is this. As it was in the early church so it will be today. Revival (the revolution) will take place in living rooms and at dinner tables throughout the land. It won’t be televised, it won’t be rehearsed, but it will be “real” and it will take place. I can’t speak to Lakeland or Toronto or other places where the spirit of God breaks out. But I can say that in the end, it will be personal and it will take place all over the land.

What follows is Gil Scott-Heron’s poem from the seventies.

Artist: Gil Scott-Heron
Song: The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

You will not be able to stay home, brother.
You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out.
You will not be able to lose yourself on skag and skip,
Skip out for beer during commercials,
Because the revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be televised.
The revolution will not be brought to you by Xerox
In 4 parts without commercial interruptions.
The revolution will not show you pictures of Nixon
blowing a bugle and leading a charge by John
Mitchell, General Abrams and Spiro Agnew to eat
hog maws confiscated from a Harlem sanctuary.
The revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be brought to you by the
Schaefer Award Theatre and will not star Natalie
Woods and Steve McQueen or Bullwinkle and Julia.
The revolution will not give your mouth sex appeal.
The revolution will not get rid of the nubs.
The revolution will not make you look five pounds
thinner, because the revolution will not be televised, Brother.

There will be no pictures of you and Willie May
pushing that shopping cart down the block on the dead run,
or trying to slide that color television into a stolen ambulance.
NBC will not be able predict the winner at 8:32
or report from 29 districts.
The revolution will not be televised.

There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down
brothers in the instant replay.
There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down
brothers in the instant replay.
There will be no pictures of Whitney Young being
run out of Harlem on a rail with a brand new process.
There will be no slow motion or still life of Roy
Wilkens strolling through Watts in a Red, Black and
Green liberation jumpsuit that he had been saving
For just the proper occasion.

Green Acres, The Beverly Hillbillies, and Hooterville
Junction will no longer be so damned relevant, and
women will not care if Dick finally gets down with
Jane on Search for Tomorrow because Black people
will be in the street looking for a brighter day.
The revolution will not be televised.

There will be no highlights on the eleven o’clock
news and no pictures of hairy armed women
liberationists and Jackie Onassis blowing her nose.
The theme song will not be written by Jim Webb,
Francis Scott Key, nor sung by Glen Campbell, Tom
Jones, Johnny Cash, Englebert Humperdink, or the Rare Earth.
The revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be right back after a message
bbout a white tornado, white lightning, or white people.
You will not have to worry about a dove in your
bedroom, a tiger in your tank, or the giant in your toilet bowl.
The revolution will not go better with Coke.
The revolution will not fight the germs that may cause bad breath.
The revolution will put you in the driver’s seat.

The revolution will not be televised, will not be televised,
will not be televised, will not be televised.
The revolution will be no re-run brothers;
The revolution will be live.

<a href="/files/49366-44812/01_The_Revolution_Will_Not_Be_Televised_1.mp3″>The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

Today began as one of those mornings, where the traffic I found myself in as I took my daughter to school, had me locked into a slower pace than I would have chosen for myself. It was so slow and then slower still—and as I couldn’t find a way out of it—I settled back, and determined not to bump the car in front of me, watched the many drivers talking on their cell-phones, applying makeup and seemingly picking what was left of their sausage biscuit out of their teeth.

Like water finding its’ own level, the motion of the morning rush to school, to work and to parts unknown was measured not so much to annoy me as it was to create a safe zone for each car that took its place in this medley of daily activity.

It is sort of like “The Long Ride” with some significant departures off the beaten path along the way. Not that I intended for any of this to take place—but I guess that is what makes life here on earth interesting and more complex than we could have ever thought or imagined.

And that is mostly the good part.

The past few weeks have been filled with much introspection and discovery about myself and those around me.

I could postulate that this part of the journey began with me reading a book that had been given to my wife by a friend of ours. The conversation went something like this: “I just read a book and I liked it so much I have ordered one for you,” my wife’s friend said. And sure enough, the very next day there was a package on our front porch from Amazon with a hardcover copy of “The Shack” in it. It is always fun to get a gift and even more fun to open a new highly recommended book. And two people reading the same book is a sure test to any relationship—but hey, that is why bookmarks were created in the first place.

The Shack, like any good book, takes you on a ride that you never imagined you would be taking. It is the story of a father’s pain, his traveling a traumatic path for much too long and his headlong encounter with the trinity of God the Father, the Son and of course the Holy Spirit. In the process he finds a freedom that can only be described as supernatural in total essence. It is a story that can send shivers up your back and bring tears to your eyes all in the space of one or two pages or paragraphs. At the end of it all, I felt as though I had been lifted to a new height and that some cobwebs had been removed from my mind and my life.

I don’t think my journey has been changed as much as my perspective about the very same journey has been transfigured somehow. Life is still lived out one footfall in front of another, but what I have the potential to do with each moment is now a bit clearer and not completely hidden behind lots of dark clouds.

Reading The Shack set the stage for what was to happen next—a weekly trip to a church about an hour from Boone where I was invited to play percussion, etc. with a praise team as a part of what is being called “The Kingdom Chronicles.” My farmer friend Alan Smith is directing the Saturday evening get-together’s. I say directing because it is much more than him just leading the meetings, he is much like a conductor in his approach to seeing a group of people come together and get something out of it. In addition to being a dairy farmer, Alan also oversees Stoney Point Christian Publications. Most of the stuff that has been happening in Taylorsville is available online including the music and teaching notes.

Suffice it to say, interacting with these musicians and being given total freedom to create a musical space has been invigorating and very freeing. It has somehow scratched the itch I was feeling creatively and at the same time released me from feeling as though I have to play in order to be accepted—if that makes any sense. In other words, when you get to do what you are created to do, then what you do becomes an offering instead of a point of validation—although you receive ample acceptance in the giving itself.

In the midst of all of this happening in my life, my brother, whom I had not talked with in about five years, called me out of the blue to chat and update me on his where-a-bouts.

Then my uncle from Michigan, my dad’s youngest brother, called and said he would be in town and would I like for him to stop by. It had been many, many years since I had seen him as well and his visit was to play a big role in the healing process I am experiencing in my everyday life.

There is much more to say about all of this but I think I have come to the end of what I can explain in a day. Miracles of all kinds are all around us, we just have to have eyes to see them for them to become a reality in our time and space.

Enjoy your ride today.

I have been re-miss in my blogging duties these past few weeks and for that I ask for your understanding—there has been a lot of stuff going on and I just haven’t had the time time to organize my thoughts enough and put them into words. On the other side of that—I am still trying to make sense of everything that has been happening in my life. Call it blog-block or just a time out—it essentially means the same.

On the one hand, my wife—who knows me as well as anyone—says that I am stuck in the past. And in a sense she is right—although I would beg to differ with her that I am really just using the past as a literary vehicle to move into and explain today and the future. Yet she is right. I am stuck and have been for some time.

God designed me to be a plane that flies into the heavenly realms and I have spent a lot of my life on the tarmac moving this way and that without ever making it to the runway itself. (Can You Relate?)

In the past couple of weeks, I have taken a call from my brother who I have not talked with in several years. I have been visited by my Michigan uncle and cousin who I haven’t seen since the early nineties. I have also been invited to play music with a praise and worship team that I have admired for several years.

And that is just the beginning.

Having been a Christian for most of my adult life, I have come to the awareness that what seems random at the time it is happening is often a part of what might be called a “grander scheme” of things. While I can’t connect every dot together to form a picture of my life and show how everything relates to one another, the feeling of destiny is often just under the surface of my day to day existence.

Life is filled with what I have termed “window of opportunity” times. These are distinct moments when we can step from one level of reality into another—from one place of being into the next life moment. Often the keys to unlocking this window or door are presented to us in a subtle way or can occur in one of those “light bulb” moments.

In all of this I am not talking about getting that car or bike or fishing pole that you have always wanted—I am mostly referring to human potential and the steps we take that lead us into becoming a person of maturity.

It is my belief at this time that we were created by God to live a life of substance and purpose and that each of us has a destiny—so to speak—built into our very DNA. A plan and purpose that only we can uniquely fulfill. We are not cookie cutter creatures that come out of the oven all looking the same but very distinct creations with the potential to become beings that interact very deeply with everyone and all that surrounds us.

Everything that we do creatively is an attempt to connect with and add meaning and comprehension to our journey here on earth. And this creativity is not just limited to the arts but includes science and math and yes, even the psychology of our everyday encounters with one another.

All this having been said—it is also my belief that we can get stuck in certain areas of personal growth and if not released can end our lives never having fully lived or reached the potential that was in our original design. Hopefully as you read these words and my attempt to explain the last few weeks of my life, you can pick up on the thoughts that are not written down—the spirit of what is being said that exists in the space between the very words themselves.

As a I alluded to earlier, we are beings that were created to fly in heavenly places and yet spend most of our time scratching around on the ground looking for food like chickens. Events in our lives that have gone unresolved have clipped our wings in a spiritual sense and when left, all piled up inside, kept us from fully being all that we were created to be.

This is sort of abstract thinking to the degree I have not given an event or moment in time to pin this all to. For the sake of clarity, lets just say that when I was a child, parts of who I was becoming stopped growing because of some external event or trauma. Fast forward to adulthood and I can only reach my full potential to the degree that these areas of wounding are healed and put behind me. I firmly believe that we are all works in progress and that God has never stopped interacting in our lives to bring us into this fully alive maturity. He knows our needs even before we ask. He knows where we have stopped up places in our innermost being and has never quit working to bring events and circumstances into our lives that will facilitate our breakthroughs. There is a plan and purpose for each of our lives and until we discover this plan we will never fly as high as we were intended to. That there are windows and doors that show up in our lives and lead us to discovery of self and one another is a gift from God to a people that were created in the very image of this self-same God.

I don’t want to remain on the ground, weighed down by all the baggage that life can heap on us—crippled inside by all the hurts and wounds that I have not been willing to let go of for whatever reason. Life on this earth is short and I for one am tired of only feeling half-full.

During these trying times, I believe that for those who seek, we are being given a “heavenly” opportunity to unload all the baggage that has kept us from soaring. What we have carried around to our detriment for all these years can be unloaded in a matter of minutes if we are listening in the spiritual realm and take the time to respond. Only when we are free and living fully alive can we then take that same presence into our relationships and the lives of those around us.