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

i repent...

.:forgive me:.

a few nights ago i went to a worship service at the base in Montana. it was so comforting to walk into a place filled with the presence of God and with people who were responding to it.

i miss community, a lot.

i was so comforted by God that night, i couldn't help staying as the service was dismissed but the worship team kept playing.

so there i was, half of the time singing and praying, half of the time just observing people responding to the Spirit in their own unique, oblivious-to-the-world ways. and then it hit me, this overwhelming knowledge that i had much to repent for.

this is what i realized and why it became important for me to share this with everyone.

i have neglected the gifts that God has given me.

i have failed to make holiness a priority in my life.

i have given the opinions and responses of my friends greater weight than God's opinions and responses to my thoughts, my words and my actions.

i know that God has given me a mandate to speak out prophetic words, to lead worship, to call out truth, to wage war on the enemy and to exercise discernment.

i also know that it requires my participation for these things to be made real in my life...and that is where i have failed.

that is why i want to apologize not only to God but to you, my closest friends, my community, my family.

by not allowing the Spirit to move through me in the way i know it does, and desires to always, i feel like i have cheated you.

i have failed to love you to the best of my ability because i haven't been letting God love you through me...i've been trying to do that part on my own.

forgive me.

challenge me.

hold me to my word.

be challenged.

i am left with this lingering sweetness of how gentle the conviction of God can be on a willing heart. even my ability to be willing i give him complete credit for. i am inexcusably and incurably selfish without the Spirit moving in me.

i am also left with many more questions than answers.

how can i stir up the gifts i've been given?

how can i encourage you in the gifts you've been given?

how do i allow for the supernatural to be a constant influence in the very natural and even sometimes mundane pattern of my existence?

holiness. gifts. willingness. awareness. repentance. love. Spirit. life. friends. family. strangers. worship. Jesus. me. you. ??????

thanks for listening.

keep me in your prayers.

i'm wary of the possibility that i could receive revelation and grace in a situation like this and that my response would not exceed the singularity of a response like this to actually become a change in lifestyle.

i never want to be in the presence of God and not leave irrevocably changed.

I realize...things, about myself, when I spend enough time in the in-between-things silence that comes in seasons like this one.

There is no real flow to my life these days, other than the fact that faithfully it is tomorrow every time I wake up, and then it becomes today. And today I get up and go to work, at least for the first several hours.

My feeling of displacement is likely attibuted, at least somewhat, to the increasingly fewer hours of daylight, and my exhaustingly regular habit of waking up and starting my day when those hours have yet to arrive.

Can't people wait till nine a.m. for coffee? I suppose not really.

It's an imbalance, like a string of non-moments attaching themselves to the justification of dollars per hour as I wait for the living part of my life to resume.

Don't get me wrong, I don't mind working. In fact, I like my jobs. Both of them. All three of them (starting tomorow). It's just that the very nature of transition is to feel neither "here nor there", and that is an odd place to be. It leaves me doing niether "this nor that" and feeling oddly neutral. Like I'm in neutral, coasting downhill until I can engage the gears and start my climb into the mountains. This does though bring me to discovering things, about myself mostly.

When given to contemplation I usually go a little stir crazy and try to occupy myself, divert myself, entertain myself....and generally I'm busy enough not to have to try too hard.

However, lately it's been different. I feel alone even when I'm with people, like at work, and it lends to taking the time to actually think and feel what I'm thinking and feeling, instead of being busy enough to "process that eventually" and give my attention to taking care of whomever I might be with.

it's not what you think....

in fact, I've finally realized, it's NEVER what you think.

life, that is. it is neither now, nor will it be in the future what we think.

it's too changeable, too dynamic, too susceptible to the whims and ways of people and weather and the price of tea in China to ever really get your future figured out. we think we know, growing up, what kind of life we will have, what kind of job we will work, what kind of person we will marry, what we'll name our children and what continent we'll give birth to them on....but I believe that the only thing we ever really KNOW about our futures are that they will not be what we think.

I am more emotional, less punctual, more athletic, less driven, more intelligent, less educated, more generous, less wealthy, more adventurous, less mature, more changeable, fragile, compassionate, complex, complete, brave, childlike, and strong while at the same time less certain, worried, self-sufficient, organized and employed than I ever pictured I would be by this time in my life.

on Tuesday I'll be 24. my life today doesn't look anything like I thought it would and neither does my future, or what I can see of it from here.

surprisingly enough...I'm gaining affection for the suspense of it all.

confidence

as is common to my blogging habits I am currently in a coffee shop with a project to get done that i'm either uniterested in or uninspired to begin. today it's the starbucks in Keystone and my Winter newsletter. (in other news, my left pinky toe has fallen asleep, weird.)

there are muscles in my body that are sore today whose existance I had previously taken for granted. I have not, in the past, been a person inclined to trying new things which I'm not confident I'll succeed at. However, yesterday my determination to change that about myself took a good step forward. I stepped all the way out of my comfort zone and where did I find myself? Well, the bunny hill to start out.

After having lived all but a few months of my life in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains I am finally taking the time to enjoy them! I skiied for the first time in eight years over Christmas break, but I've been wanting to learn to snow board for a few years now and I've finally gotten around to it. Part of the reason it took me so long was my above mentioned aversion to failure and pain. Natural instinct, you might think, but not the type of things I want determining my experiences.

Choice is the core substance of any experience and this approach has changed, for me, just about everything. Confidence, in this case, was not something I felt, but something I chose and I believe it made all the difference. Rather than approaching the situation fearing failure, I no longer aknowledged failure as an option. The resulting determination created by this approach of success as the only is clear option in my mind as every sore muscle and bruised joint remind me today.

I am not any sort of snowboarding prodigy or even probably a case of 'natural talent', but I made it down that mountain and I was better at the bottom than I was at the top. I am on a path to learning and improving. Confidence made a huge difference, but it wasn't alone in the equasion of improvement. I made it through the day not without a lot of patience, good teaching and the lent confidence of good friends when my own was waning. This is step one.

Step two will be if I can again muster confidence and determination to again subject myself to the whiplash, whitewash, breath losing, butt bruising experience for a second time, believe again I'll be better at the bottom of the run than when I begin at the top. That can be determined tomorrow.

The significance of the experience, learning to ride, is not nearly as important as the process of actually participating in the process. There have been so many times in the past where fear of failure and pain have stopped me, or caused me to go around, find another way, etc. in my life...and that is not the way I want to spend my days living. While i'm excited about this new skill I'm aquiring, it's really not about snowboarding at all, it's about trying new things and not being afraid, even though it does hurt...it can be worth it.

unprocessed

I have never had so many adjectives to describe myself, to describe my feelings.
Who is this person with emotions that breathe in thick like steam?

Disappointment, frustration, discouragement, anger, confusion
Excitement, peace, anticipation, expectation, hurt, hope....

Never in my life have I tasted so many flavors of life
The richness of it is making me sick
Too much, too quickly, without time in between to catch my breath

Hand on my heart to catch it from falling
Fingers on my wrist to count my racing heartbeat