the wonderful, awful truth about me and you

love.
in love.
what does the even mean?

what sets apart love from in love? I feel like the more i understand about caring deeply for my friends the less weight i put into this idea of being 'in love'. Perhaps because it seems to single out truly great love as a singular, one-time-magical experience, which I am not inclined to believe in. I think, perhaps, that this idea of 'in love' categorizes those uniquely blessed individuals for whom great love is mutual and affected....but there are so many other deeply powerful, moving, significant, painful, and life changing loves to know in a lifetime. The other problem I have with this idea of being at one time in love is the presumption that you can then then perhaps at a later date be out of that same love; which begs the question of 'What is the substance of that type of "in then out" love?

If you can quit love....or rather quit loving someone....was it really love you had for the person in the first place? Maybe it was something else altogether.

We like how someone makes us feel, or how they make us think, or the things we do with them, or the things they do for us. Perhaps their character traits (honesty, ambition, humility, dedication) or their personality type (relaxed, funny, creative, spontaneous) are the things that we get really attached to in this process of falling in love? These attachments to the pieces which make up a given person formulate the inspiration necessary for things like commitment and sacrifice and other expressions of love....but like the traits or characteristics which can change as a life moves and grows....does this kind of love ultimately come and go?

If we realize these things we are so attached to are changeable, that these things we we were so passionately drawn "in" to are now "out" of the picture are we then "out" of the love we once ardently claimed to be "in"?

Is it a place, this "in love" that we can be also "out" of it....or is the status misnamed because we are perhaps "with love" and then "without it" as our needs and desires are either met or unmet in the course of a relationship or a lifetime?

What I am asking is how often do we truly love a person and not just their parts and peices? Of course it is a person's character and personality that are attractive and interactive in any relationship. If, however, a person is the object of true love and they, the whole person, are loved wouldn't this kind of love remain even as the landscape of the personality weathers and shifts? Even affection can change understandably and attraction is certainly a whimsical part of our souls but real, honest love is made up of more than these things and a person is always made up of much more than just the things about them that we like.

How rare it is to meet a naked soul? How beautiful and awful to see the landscape of the human condition laid bare in all its grace and imperfection? How intimidating to be faced with the realities of just how many of our weaknesses are the same and how much of our molding has yet to reach any point of usefulness? To truly see another human being as they are, the attractive parts and the mess all in the same glance, and to then give of yourself with the same honesty is, in my opinion, the stuff "in love" just might be made of. Although, I'm still not convinced it's aptly named. Perhaps "about love" or "having great love" or "true love" would work because it is complete and if possessed by someone I don't think it's a something that can ever be lost.

This isn't really where I thought I was going with these thoughts but it occurs to me now (again) and also perhaps for the first time how it is that God loves me. We experience love in this life as the very changeable, whimsical, in and then out again affections of the either lightly committed or the passionately obsessed and so our understanding which is based on our experiences with one another indicates that there is a constant fluctuation of the quantity of love made available in any relationship at a given time. This is because, like I said before, we tend to react and respond and make or withhold our gestures of love based on what parts of a person we see at the moment which either serve our needs and desires ... or don't. God, however, sees us at all times - completely. So, with all the knowledge and perspective necessary to make a lasting conclusion, his declaration of love for us does, in fact, have the potential to be completely reliable. This discussion of credibility need not even mention the dedication to proving his intentions for us God made through what Jesus did in his life.

Can we then love completely when we only know in part? I think yes. I think this is great love. This is the love that chooses to love and commit to an entire being, not just as the parts that are lovable. It's being brave enough to really look and really see someone and to give and sacrifice both because of and in spite of everything that person was, is or will become. Granted, I don't think any among us possess the grace or strength needed to love and live this way with even one other person for an entire lifetime, but I think it's exactly what God had in mind when He decided to make us like His son. His grace makes us able to look at one another and see through His eyes, which are filled with love big enough and strong enough for the complete (albeit messy) version of each of us, so that we can be the outpouring of that great love in each others' lives.

I could, perhaps, love you well and serve you and even sacrifice for you if I hold in the foreground of my image of you only that which I admire. I could give my best in exchange for yours and we could feel love and affirmation and even happiness together. Time, however, is much stronger than you or I and no one can foresee the events that can sweep in and change the makeup of a person who you know and love well.

What then? Fall out of love? Pick up the pieces and move on? Or could we choose to see from the very beginning the real, broken, messy, potential for greatness and failure that is another person and to love them with God, not just with God's blessing?

Love. In love. Great love. In and out of love ? How can these things be? You will always be you and I will always be me, regardless of what version of me I become I will never, in fact, be other than myself. And so, if you love me now, truly, for all that I am, was and will be ... can that be lost?

the equation of a soul

i am the sum of all my years

i am you plus me plus time

there is context to my concepts

i am born of moments that are only mine

and all of these things were given

yet all of these moments were mine

choices, mine

I am the sum of all my choices

consequences and celebrations of not quite getting it right

of trying again

of doing it better next time

I am who I am for you

near you

with you

... on being 24

this year had a theme

it was a year of firsts

here are a few i that can remember

while 24 I ... for the first time

* purchased my own vehicle

* rented my own hotel room

* went to a chiropractor

* drank a domestic beer

* painted my toe nails red

* ate at Taco Johns

* rode in a cop car

* was kissed

* rode a black diamond & double black diamond run

* hiked 15 miles in one day

* went kayaking

* learned to shot gun a beer

* hit a deer (5 point buck!)

* had my own rental car

* ate bear meat

* got a sunburn from the snow

* had a hang over at work

* bought a Mac

* tried and landed a jump snowboarding

* started my own business

* purchased a piece of musical equipment (1/4" cable)

* drank too much whiskey

* sang in a band regularly

* attended a movie premier

* snowboarded in jeans

* was in my sibling's wedding

* felt like a local in Bigfork

* didn't write a single song (first time since I was 11)

* owned a season pass to a ski resort

* finished a mixed media painting

* wore heels to work, voluntarily

* went to a park specifically to throw a frisbee

* owned my own pass to Glacier Park

* dressed up as three separate things, at three separate halloween parties

* went tent camping with my whole family

* i know there were more, it was a full year... but this is the mental list i've kept along the way

Today's Food for Thought

Idealistic people cannot be relational people.

Relational people will not be idealistic.

Relationships are the sole substance of the Kingdom of God on earth and they must exist in reality, not in ideals imposed upon reality.

What a relief then it should be for the religious person to be freed from their religion which is based in ideology and then welcomed into the Kingdom of God which is our reality. What joy because not only is this reality a freedom for the soul but it is in fact a tangible experience with the divine which we can cry and eat and pray and dance and fight and live with made of the very real, raw, and often messy people we are surrounded by daily.

If my energies can be spent searching for a way to love a person in their current status rather than needlessly attempting to bring them into a more "ideal" state (which is likely to be neither beneficial nor required for true Kingdom life) how much greater trust will I then be challenged to develop in the source of that Love, my Creator, to use my efforts to show love in a way specific to each individual as a catalyst for a true Love revelation which then can change a life? This trust and attention to unconditionally loving the individual is both more fulfilling and more successful than the religious approach of trying to change a person first in the hope that it will then produce a revelation of Love.

"Love one another as I have loved you" was Jesus' commandment to us. The ONLY one really. And in this one directive we are afforded the freedom to BE as we are instead of fighting the hopeless battle to conform to religious ideologies. Love is as different as the people who share it and as individual as the person who is blessed to receive it. If then we are only called to love and everything else is subject to this one thing then we must accept the divinely creative individuality of the people who make up the Kingdom of God instead expecting that the Kingdom somehow standardizes the individual into a specific type of being with a limited set of traits.

It's freeing and challenging and hopeful and overwhelming all at the same time and I am SO grateful that God designed me from conception to play my own role in His Kingdom instead of requiring that I fit a mold made to stifle individuality at the moment I chose to follow Him.

"Sameness is yucky" said someone this morning while we were talking about this very thing and I couldn't agree more. A moment's consideration for the complexity to which God has designed us as individuals (DNA) or even a brief look at how many variation there are to any one single species in nature (how many kinds of roses are there?) and I think you'll see that God agrees.

to you again, as always

do you remember when we were kings and heros and artists and young?

what are these now, our current clothes, of thieves and slaves and foes?

who dressed and redressed me in all my naked shame?

i called you friend and my hazy mind left in the wake of the war that is life has not yet covered my memory of you

it is not for me

you are not for me

you are not even for this world

but you are forgettable because you have in fact forgotten yourself

and i grieve

not for your pity, not to your shame

but to your once bright flame and the future it held

i call out

i cry

not to you

not for myself

but to the wind and the sky and the oceans

all big enough to hold the dream that was you

but all to wild and vast to contain

the only sin...

I was asked by a friend recently, "What's the dumbest thing you've ever done?" "Like the biggest sin?" I asked to clarify. "Yeah," they responded.

As I took a moment to tick through the mental list of "don't's" and "bigger don't's" to see which ones I had tried, wanted to try or passed by over the last several years it occurred to me that it was pointless to  categorize things which are all of equal insignificance to God. So instead of searching my memory for my “worst sin” I focused on remembering those times I'd spent with God where I experienced truly memorable repentance.

Before I continue I'll say this about why I deemed my “sin list” as insignificant to God. To Him, I believe, my sins are all equal in weight because he bore each one with the same measure of pain and willingness. Variation in their significance applies more to me; their severity being based mostly on how deep I had to get trapped in them before I once again took hold of grace and passed through them into the freedom that remains available to me from all my sins at all times because of what Jesus did in through his life and death.

Now let me get back to the question.

Which sin then, defined by my standard of depth and hardship above, was the worst I could remember committing? “Where to begin?” I asked myself. 

Who doesn't, at least by their mid-twenties, have a plethora of scenarios to choose from in response to a question like this? Illegal activity of creatively inspired variety, predictable sexual experimentation, substance enhanced diversion from reality, expertly chosen words in the heat of a family feud or a badly ended relationship; they all seemed like applicable options and all were likely choices for exposure in this surprisingly candid conversation. 

However, when I searched my memory for those times when I felt truly repentant those typical scenarios weren't the instances that came to mind. Granted there are, some among those mentioned above, plenty of moments which I am not at all proud of that I have needed forgiveness for but the times when I have truly felt my failure have been much more personal and unique to my own heart. There are so many times when I have run from God in the intimate and challenging moments that are just between us, times when I have wasted the gifts he's given me and so many opportunities to be like him where I have chosen to back away and watch life happen instead of bringing life like he's made me able to. Those are the opportunities I most regret missing. It is in these moments of personal disobedience that I feel the strongest pain of Jesus' longing for my heart, the times when I could choose his life but I choose mine instead.

As the conversation with my friend continued this idea of repenting for "just not loving God enough" seemed very trite and even self-righteous to him. "What is the big deal if the worst thing you have to repent for is just not quite loving God enough?" he asked. 

I'll admit that at the time I did wonder if it wasn't quite pious or self-righteous of me to see things that way. Was I just trying to dress up my selfishness and make it sound like my best attempts at holiness just weren’t "quite" up to par. Such a mild presentation that would be of my secretly dark heart, I thought.  I knew the list of disobedient, selfish moments and bad choices in my life was as long as anyones and it didn't sit well with me at all that a conceivably self-righteous answer was the best conclusion I could come up with in response to this question. Trite sounded like an accurate description of my answer as I thought through the testimonies of so many others and how far in contrast their sins and their redemption seemed from one another. 

I have been around religion and religious people the majority of my life and have learned enough about traditions and rituals to appreciate and respect them but have also learned enough to know that I want my relationship with God to exist as far from their perimeters as possible. I've got enough lists of “ought to do's” and “ought not to do's” that I could probably write my own religious handbook, if I so desired. Though truly the way I strive to live is in such a way that I say as much as I can about what I believe by how I live my life and in this way using as few words as possible on the matter. Love God and love people...more than you love yourself. That sums it all up. 

All the do's and don'ts God ever took the time to explain fall into these two very plainly stated and entirely overwhelming categories. Jesus called these the greatest commandments there are. A while ago I decided there were too many guidelines and grey areas of personal conviction to keep track of in the scope of a lifetime but i knew I could at least start with the two Jesus said mattered the most and work from there. What I have now realized is that these two guidelines make up the substance of all the rest. As if they weren't profound enough in their simplicity these two goals to live life by are completely and irrevocably interconnected. It is impossible to accomplish one without the either, period.

God understood that humans need human interaction. Nearly all of our primary ways of expressing ourselves require interaction with each other on some level. Of course God wants us to express our love for him in tangible ways and at the same time He knows our inherent need to receive love in tangible ways as well. So what does He do? He gives us one another to be both the receivers and the givers of the love He has filled us with. It's tangible, it's real, it is something we can participate in and it truly does cover over a multitude of sins. I'll be the first to admit that I have certainly missed the mark as I've tried, and even more often when I forgot to try at all, loving people as they come my way. I try my best to both see them as Jesus and also see them the way Jesus sees them. 

All the "don'ts" I have tried, or made bad habits of along the way, which I regret are my human moments of missing my goal of loving God because they somehow result in me mistreating people in the process. As I learn to ask myself what would be most loving for others, considering them first like Jesus did, I no longer need rules to determine sinful and righteous behavior. My guidelines are simple; Love God, love people.

As I process this boiling down I've done of my religious education and as I examine how, reduced by time and tears and truth, it has led me to the path of experiencing God for myself I can say that my answer to the question which inspired this introspection is still the same. However, I am not so embarrassed or discouraged by my conclusion as I was before. 

If I fail in my pursuit of the greatest commandment ever given, to love God, then it makes sense that for this failure I would need the most significant repentance. For in all the foolish, selfish or impulsive expressions of my identity or my immature misadventures that lead to sinful things and things that interrupt the intimacy Jesus worked so hard to make available to me, I have not known a single instance when God's mercy didn't gently guide me back to rest in Him with grace and tenderness . However, when my heart becomes callous and I no longer see the people around me as the body of Christ which I am designed to love and live for, when I am not giving out the love that Jesus took pain to pour out on me then yes, it requires brokenness to bring me to repentnce and it holds much greater heaviness on my heart when I do not. I pray that I never lose understanding of the weight of my own redemption. 

It seemed trite, at the time, to think that I could say only that I had not, from time to time, loved God enough. However, if I love Him with any less than my life completely I should not waste my life trying at all because I am not, if fact, alive at all if I am apart from His love.

old flames..

in the explosion that is first emotion

first love

there are marks made

in the deepest parts of our souls

the parts that were sleeping before the fire

and sometimes

with time

flames fade

and winds blow away ashes of the past

yet latent

buried and often forgotten

first love still smolders

still heats its core

and scorches the again sleeping soul

yes, flames burn out

but sometimes

like a sleeping sun

nearly dead, nearly cold

they smolder

awake now and again cold deep heart

breath fire

what radio can do to my morning...

This song is currently wrecking my world...so good.
Have a listen, have a cry...whatever you need.

.: LET IT BE ME :. Ray LaMontagne

There may come a time, a time in everyones life
where nothin seems to go your way
where nothing seems to turn out right
there may come a time, you just cant seem to find your place
for every door you open, seems like they get two slammed in your face

thats when you need someone,
someone that you, you can call.
and when all your faith is gone
feels like you cant go on
let it be me
let it be me
if its a friend that you need
let it be me
let it be me

feels like your always comin' up last
pockets full of nothin and you got no cash
no matter where you turn you aint got no place to stand
reach out for something and they slap your hand
now i remember all to well
just how it feels to be all alone
you feel like you'd give anything
for just a little place you can call your own

thats when you need someone,
someone that you can call
and when all your faith is gone
feels like you can't go on
let it be me
let it be me
if its a friend you need
let it be me
let it be me

jittery

early mornings.
sitting still.
coffee with shots of espresso in them for lunch.
the last two hours of work.
being on the phone all day.
having better things to do.
plenty on my mind, no brain space to process.

this combination has me toe tapping, finger drumming and trying not to count the minutes.

love:hate relationship

hope

my constant light and most mysterious darkness

it compells me to look forward where no definition can be found in the haze

comfort and peace and inspiration go by the same name

as do frustration, despair and the constant fear of failure

hope

it tells me that love can last

and it tells me to try again when love doesn't

it tells me to reach up and reach out

when my hands find empty air and when my blind attempts retrieve reward

it refuses to allow disappointment to tarnish dreams

and it keeps dreams alive which have been buried too long



hope drags me kicking and screaming towards a light too beautiful to be real

hope finds me beaming and laughing when i find myself proven wrong again

it tells me that risk is worth it

it makes me grind my teeth and beg to be left alone

it reminds me that my life is for living

and it takes all i have not to throw it out with my doubts

i love it because it believes in people the way my heart desperately wants to

i hate it because it keeps me believing even when i'm completely broken

i love it because it sees miracles instead of coincidences

i hate it because it sees the opportunity to try again instead of giving me permission to quit when it hurts


it is a love:hate relationship

my inspiration

my nemesis

my bright light

my dark mystery

hope