Processing...

Ok.

So...my wife and I talk about how much we enjoy writing and I know I can be very guilty of spewing out a booko of ideas without ever pursuing the actual activity related to these ideas...so this is my attempt to move forward with an idea.

The idea of writing.

For those who know me, I enjoy the struggle of life. I feel it is central to learning to reunite the spirit and the flesh...the lower and higher parts of our person. the heaven and the earth so to speak.

One of my things I have done this night is taken time to listen to a musician that I have grown to appreciate over the years.

His name is Jason Upton.

I think what I enjoy about his music is that he makes it an aim to stay awake to yearnings of the human heart...and I think there is a conviction that God draws near as he (or I, or anyone else for that matter) draws near by exploring the realms of thought and emotion that is wrapped up in "the heart".

I have noticed in conversations that I have a love / hate relationship with yearning and passion.

Last night I was talking with my father about my suspicions towards passion. How a person's conviction can blind them to consider new information, finding security and safety in their belief...dogmatic is a word that comes to mind.

And yet without passion...life just isn't. it's dull , predictable, calculated, etc.

I yearn for wonder and mystery and yet it frustrates me too.

Just a few moments I had an experience that brings out the conflict.

I received an email from my mother in law inviting me to read the bible in a year.

Now there was a part of me that was excited and hopeful that an opportunity like this would come my way. I say that because I've really wanted to restore the disciplines of prayer, sacred reading, and other Christian practices to my life. And yet not even a chapter in the reading I encounter my roadblock of bitterness.

It happens so quickly while reading the story of Cain and Able...I find myself opening up to the questions of why we are given this story...why it was preserved...what is it suppposed to teach us...and a myriad of questions that usually gives the space to engage God.

And at the same time I hear the voices that try to tell me how simple scriptual reading is and how it should answer things and so and so forth. And the bitterness comes in my longing for that to be true...and yet my experience has not shown biblical reading to simplify my life nor give it simple categories to make sense of the world. Again I realize that this reveals a lack of gratitude for the insight I've gained from biblical reading....along with feeling that I have the infection of entitlement that is so prevelant in our generation.

My pastor Tim was talking to me a while back about how much anger is alive in my generation. And I feel like I know this anger personally...and yet I have hope that somewhere in the midst of the anger is a heart that wants to bleed with passion , be filled with longing , and just simply has become tangled up by the cords of disappointment and unforgiveness.

Life is good on so many dimensions and yet there is the tendency to continually look at what "is not" instead of "what is".

Time with the heart can be tiring...and yet refreshing. with that thought...time for bed.