A good paper on why it is so hard to be good

This is a recent article published in the main Burnside Writers Collective site, as opposed to the blog. I think it hits home both the importance of small groups that do more than (or instead of) intellectual study, but also why we fail so often at changing bad patterns or removing bad actions from our lives. it's worth reading.

Getting back on track

Regret is one of the hardest things I deal with in my life. Daily I might regret something I said to A* or how I yelled at Amelia instead of disciplining her more patiently. Longer term I regret how much I neglect my faith and writing, especially since I have this cool tool called an iPod
Touch that has a blog app, through which I'm writing now in the comfort of my bed. It really is no excuse for me not to take advantage. I can even read a book on it!

Another regret came to me at work while I was cleaning my desk and found my folder from my interview of a job I gotnbut had to turn down for reasons seemingly outside of our control. The regret comes from wondering if those reasons were really as great as the experts told us. I have to believe they were or else i'll go crazy. Or worse I'll not take another chance, which is what I wonder I might be falling into.

Sometime last week I became dissatisfied (finally) with my lack of Bible reading. While chatting with a friend, he keeps asking me where I see God leading me/us and I can't really answer him anymore because I don't really know. I'm not really looking as much as I should be.

So I decided I would start reading scrtipture regularly again, but the first hurdle is always where to start? Something led my head to Psalm 119. I have had verse 11 memorized since I was a kid, so I thought maybe I should start there, after all the first part is about studying God's word so we don't sin against him and if we aren't sinning against him then we are likely on his path.

So I started tonight with verses 1-20. I want go to through this slowly and with meditation. Reading in the Message version, verses 5-6 ring clearly:

"oh, that my steps might be steady, keeping to the course you set;
then I'd never have any regrets in comparing my life to your counsel."

It is a mighty high desire, but a pure desire that I wish I could have daily. Sadly I know how truly little I ask for God's counsel. But in the coming weeks and months if I don't seek God's counsel, I will have regrets no matter what decisions are made. That is somethingI don't want anymore.

Community

Want to know what is most important to me, my life, and my sense of spirituality? It only takes a look at this word cloud analysis from the posts of this blog.


I really am hoping to get back to writing here more regularly.

Lost joy

Why is it that you never can see that you've passed the tipping point of losing joy? By the time that you recognize that joy has slipped from your daily life, or that activity that always lifted you up, or even the place of solace and peace.

It's killing me inside right now to realize just how much joy I've lost. And it's entirely my fault. I had re surgery that put me on crutches, made me helpless for too long, and created a burden greater than expected, greater than is reasonable.

I haven't been able to be the doer I was and still want to be. I haven't been able to be the father I need to be. I haven't been the lover and husband I've always desired to be. In the midst of all this, I've stopped writing, I've stopped dreaming, I've stopped hoping.

This was supposed to be the best time for this "inconvenience"; it couldn't have been worse. This was supposed to be 4-6 weeks; it will be 8+. This supposed to heal me; instead it had wounded the ones I love most. And I can't even contemplate how long that recovery will take.

In the midst of all this is another life decision. At this point I don't know that we could ever make such a decision. Good things might just be too hard to come by right now.

Last week I watched Michael J Fox's special on optimism based on his latest book. I was/am intrigued by his investigations of other people and other cultures and other life-changing decisions that people have made optimistically or have brought a renewed or simply new sense of optimism to their life. I'm setting out to write about this for my BWC column, but I was struck by the clear absense of any religious faith. That isn't to say the people in the documentary don't have a faith, because some clearly did, but none of them expressed that as the foundation of their optimism. Instead: community. More to think on in that; in general and for me specifically where i'm at.

sad endings kill me

A* and I watched Marley and Me tonight. (Cannarf rating: +3) It is a good movie with a tough ending. I won't ruin it for anyone, but even I should have known (yet didn't think about it until halfway through) that a movie about a dog likely ends a certain way. It killed me. Two nights in a row that I've just sobbed - ok, bawled my eyes out on this very couch I'm also writing. I think the long recovery of my knee surgery is adding more emotional energy to everything else going on.

Ok, I might ruin the ending for you so if you don't want to know anything, don't read any further. Seriously. Stop. Alright, I warned you. As John Grogan was dealing with saying goodbye to Marley, I was immediately transported in my mind's eye to January 2, 2007: the day we said goodbye to Luigi. Exactly like the movie in that A* stayed home with Amelia and I took Luigi, but unlike the movie where Luigi wasn't ending his life, just starting a new chapter with a new family.

All of the memories of Marley that flash through the next scenes flashed for me memories of Luigi, a dog that sometimes we thought could have been the worst dog in the world - a title Marley got a number of times. Peeing on the piano leg, humping on the stranger's leg, escaping from the yard and then magically reappearing hours later, taking off after a squirrel across streets, jumping on Amelia as a baby - all of these frustrated us.

But then there was those big brown eyes as he lay his snout between his front paws, completely stretched out on the floor or bed, or curling up to one of us when we were sad - especially Andrea, or sleeping at our feet in bed, or on his back in full glory with his teeth showing a silly, gravity-induced grin while snoring - all of these enriched our joy of him. He would never fetch, rarely sit on command, and never stopped peeing in that one spot. He would bark incessantly at the neighbors, he would bark agressively at other dogs; he would love you the moment you came in the door.

Though we gave him up for the right reason (mostly Amelia and our future as parents) and we have said over and over again that we are glad we made that decision, all though the movie, and especially at the end, I miss him so much. The raw emotions I had on that last day are still (despite my best efforts) fresh inside of me. Those seeds of doubt crop up every time they are refreshed by something like this movie. But as I re-read that post from over two years ago, I was reminded that Tayte is just a little older than what Amelia was then. And he is giving us those same toothless grins that she did that day to me. With that, I am reminded that while Marley and Me is titled and seemingly centered around a dog, it is really about the life of a family, and the real frustrations and joys that comes with family. And that doesn't kill me at all, but strengthens me and gives me more life.

Proud

Tonight while at small group, sitting at the kitchen table, I watched my daughter walk past into the living room of our hosts. She walked right up to the piano, climbed onto the bench, flipped through the music book on the console and started to play the piano. She'd play a few notes, stop, and then flip to another song and start playing again. It made me smile so much that this was her own interest, her own motivation.

Later I watched as she lounged on a kids couch with her friend Zoe watching Little Einsteins doing motions together ( pat, clap, pat, clap ) and saying along with the TV "Blastoff!". She was so adorable, so growing up.

As a few tears slide down my right cheek, I had to write, as I told her before tucking her in bed, that I am so proud of her - and I'm so blessed to be her daddy.

Wasting good writing time

I am home on the couch for at least two weeks recovering from major knee surgery. I have been saying to A* for a number of weeks (months?) that I need to get back to writing regularly. I'm literally limited to the couch to keep my leg elevated and even have possible inspiration of percocet. So this post is meant to be a catalyst, hopefully, to encourage me to restart a regular writing discipline.

Community

"The gift of community is that each one of us is absolved of the burden of completeness. In and of ourselves at every moment we can lean on one another for the elements we lack." - Rev. Keyes, Everwood Season 1 Episode 8

I don't think I've ever heard a more fitting definition of community than this statement as I was watching episodes of Everwood on my laptop while traveling home on the train from Rhode Island. It epitomizes many of the emotions I felt this week while away from home. It is true whether the community is as small as two or as large as can be imagined. It is heightened within our faith organization, as we few families attempt to come together in a regular and organized manner.

But the heightened sense does not make the building of community easier. And in fact, it is likely only heightened in the ones who have carried the burden of completeness for so long. I wonder now if one can get to the place of belief that such burden will never be lifted from our shoulders; that completeness will never be restored.

I don't wonder that blindly, in all honesty, I wonder that in the midst of experience that gave me a glimpse as powerful as alcohol poured directly on a wound. And I process this with the knowledge that within my only true community, a different and heavier burden is being carried. There is no absolution for either of us alone, and even together we must carefully address each other's burdens without adding to it from our own.

That takes a commitment with such demand that we often don't risk taking the chance, instead convincing ourselves that there is little to no hope can be gained and only more burden will result. If I take 20 figurative steps back, I hope that, like Doctor Andrew Brown in Everwoof, I, too, can look up to the sky and admit that I just have nothing left. I have nothing left of my own sense of how to become complete, and often my ignorance as evidence of the need to lean harder on the one I love. At the very same moment I must also be able to support the lean from my love, and I think it is precisely this moment we must be very careful to allow the other that leaning post.

This is the reality of community. This is the sadness of lack of community I identify with right this very moment and have been feeling longer that i've wanted to admit.