"I love me, I'd like you to love me too."

I just started reading  "Stuff My Father Never Told Me About Relationships" by Patrick Dodson a few days ago and it has already given me a stomach full of food for thought.

For instance, what a buzz kill on an otherwise feel-good crush or casual flirtation to ask yourself exactly what motivates you to be attracted to so-and-so over there, or to want to be in a serious relationship with this person only to realize that in your list of 10 reasons, 9 of them are likely to be selfish. It is sobering to say the least. Before you can even begin to think about loving someone you have to admit to yourself that your motivations are likely self-serving and have little to do with the unique identity of the object of your attraction.

I'm not in the business of seeking a life for myself where I am not challenged, but one where I can honestly stomach being faced with my own ugliness. I'm not looking for a comfortable place where I am built up in my ego instead of being championed in my true identity in Christ. Above all I certainly don't want to live a life that I have falsely convinced myself is loving towards others only to find that I am spending myself...on myself. Filling my own needs, bypassing the intimacy Jesus offers through inter-dependance on him and ultimately being a relational vacuum to the ones I claim to serve - it's no way to live.

As noble as my intentions may be, it doesn't make the soul I see in the mirror any less shocking when my eyes are open wide enough to see the selfishness through the guise of loving. Selfless love, unconditional respect, regard and affection, committed service to another's needs and best interest - that's love you make, not love you take.

It's just one more step in my journey to make love happen for someone else, instead of waiting around waiting for "love" to happen to me. Gandi said we should "Be the change we want to see in the world" which must include giving the love you wish to gain, instead of striving to obtain it.

I'd like my life to say "I love you." No conditions. Instead of "I love me and I'd like you to love me too" (Dodson's summary of the motivation behind self serving "love") and giving just enough pseudo-love to convince someone to buy the line.

My longings, desires and needs really are between me and my God. I have no business getting involved with another person so I can put my needs in their hands - it's selfish, and being human like me they'll let me down eventually and I'll just try it with someone else.

Thank you Jesus for taking me on a journey of learning how to love like you that will take my entire life to scratch the surface of. How kind of you not to leave me in the deception of believing that anyone besides you can fill my heart and complete my life. You are my home, you are my purpose, you are my source and my strength. Now and in the future would you shape me to be a daughter, a wife, a mother, a sister, a friend and a fellow sojourner in community who can give in relationships instead of take as I  spend my life learning to serve and share love the way you did, from a place of abundance, not out of need.

nearly time to go

oh how you would seduce me
with your high and crystal bright blue skies
your thick air summer nights when the horizon glows and the clouds flicker

when the city hums and I feel the still warm pavement underfoot
a mile above the sea with a sea of stars close enough to touch greeting me at a tilt of my chin

how you would seduce me
you would convince me to stay
with your inviting violence in the surprising outbreaks of thunder and rain
always intermingled with sunshine
leaving the freshness of wet pavement and warm earth
all in an intoxicating assault on my senses

alas for all your enticing I am still the ever leaving one

forgive my infidelity because I also love another
another sky, another scented breeze, another skyline
with daylight which causes twilight to last for hours
of endless streams and painted nights
of comforting grey on green in the wetness of a cool morning
and of all the shades in between when the light bends just so

oh colorado how you would seduce me
convincing me to stay
enticing me to linger in the richness of a warm and welcoming semi-night
oh how torn a heart can be with love and again love as its choice of directions

and here I am divided; breathing in deep
delighted in the timid produce of the skies
intrigued by the brilliant flashings across the now open plains
forgive me, my dishonesty would run deep if I said you were my only

but this I can promise,
I will return
and your imposing peaks,
your hard rock canyons
your dry and windswept foothills
they will be to me the most comforting arms of welcome

until then
seduce me in our remaining hours
and this memory I will take with me

colorado

I will miss you

thoughts for thursday

How am I? Contemplative. Not as if I've carved out enough time in my brain or my schedule yet to be so, I am however, at the very least feeling compelled to be contemplative. The state of my mind is very much like the subtle rocking from side to side that one feels in their boat just before the wind picks up and changes direction.Whether that change be in speed or stability or merely the position of the sails and rudder a shift in the wind always brings change. This shift in my life feels the same way that the air does when the sun disappears behind the mountains back home and creates a new wind on the lake where I sail bringing with it the scent of day-warmed earth out onto the water. With that thermal always comes a change, whether it be breeze or gale, where there was before sunset an otherwise steady climate. My climate has been, if nothing else, steady for the last few months. Steadily busy, steadily challenging and satisfying to say steadily productive. But now, today, this week, now I begin to feel the shift.

It seems appropriate that the seasons are changing in my life as the weather turns from winter to spring and I love how in Colorado this change happens in the same dramatic fashion as young lovers staging a public breakup or perhaps more like a class clown getting his last few tricks in before his captive audience as he's expelled to the principles office. Ahhh, spring storms! My life changes just like the seasons I think, with nearly as much regularity and often with the same lack of participation on my behalf as a tree has with the falling and sprouting again of its leaves. Just as I find myself in a season where my heart seems open to receive love and feels warm enough to give it away without hesitation there comes a shift and the next thing I know I'm again waking up with the spring looking back on what seems to have been a cold and closed season that has passed me by without my permission or even my awareness. The bloom of my life goes to sleep under the snow-like blanket of busyness, broken-hearted withdrawal or some such love-cooling weather pattern. If there is one thing that should live in perpetual spring, summer and fall but never winter it is my heart. It is these winters that store up for me regrets and that is bitter produce to harvest.

Perhaps spending time in Colorado has effected my soul for the better by giving me the example of seasons where even the coldest days are still brilliant with sunshine and the snowiest storms are followed by the mysterious revealing of greener grasses beneath the snow than there was before the blanket fell. Hmm...I like the idea that the seasons of my soul could be a little more like that. Regardless of this predictable winter's return all I have is hope for the eventuation that perpetual summer will one day be alive in my heart. For I find that I am constantly in awe of how this constantly breaking mechanism inside my chest has been mended and crushed and reshaped and broken and mended over and over again and there have somehow been much needed improvements and priceless additions as a result of the brokenness every time. It would seem that the one doing these repairs is infinitely creative and impressive in the work that He does.

What reshaping is ahead of me next I have only to wonder over. If there has been any consistency to the theme of my breaking and remakings of the past it is that the latest version of my heart is always a little more pliable and a little less cold than the last and now I can be stretched and there is endurance within me and with it my capability to burn more fiercely in the hot seasons. I could be discouraged that after years of making what feels like the same journey I am once again discovering that there are cold, solitary places in my heart where I undoubtedly shun even the unconditional love my maker would have me know, and certainly I keep other love out as well. And yet I know how far I've come and how gentle a journey I have been allowed to take, slow as any child on unsteady feet may be, and I realize with joy that this season is less bitter and more sweet than was the one before and someday....someday I will run in the endless summer of my soul and all the cold will be gone.

Until then I will set my eyes on the coming wind and wait with more excitement than apprehension to see what remaking will be done this time around...

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