Elastic Horizons

I call them elastic because depending on which aspect of life I am looking at they are either shrinking or expanding.

My horizon in the current house I am living in has shrunk mightily.  I find a distaste for sleeping/living in my bedroom any more.  I could say it was bad memories, etc., that keep me out, but the plain fact is that I just don't feel like staying in that room any more.  Instead I sleep on my massage table in my office with my amethyst biomat under me and several warm blankies over me.  

Some areas of the home are definitely uncomfortable to me because of past associations, but in other ways as I clean out the debris of the last 17 and a half years, I seem to reclaiming more of it just before I leave it forever.  

I am very much looking forward to the new house we are going into.  It will be mine to fashion into not only a place to stay, but a nest.  It is rather like being given a fresh blank canvas and a new set of paints and brushes and being encouraged to go at it.  I'm free to make of it what I want.

Yesterday I spent some time in several furniture stores doing a bit of window shopping with the idea of getting a few items that will help to make the new place more useable and homey.  One of the things I am looking for is a china cabinet/hutch.  I'll need the space to store my good dishes that have been packed away for the last 19 years since I had no place to put them.    Then there are the window coverings that I will need as well.  And what do I want to retain in the way of decorative items or do I want to start fresh?

It's funny to me how God can sometimes move me.  This summer I discovered the authoress, Nora Roberts, and since then I have been hooked on her books.  There is invariably some "fast forward" scenes of sex that I tend to skip because I don't need to get worked up and then frustrated because of no lawful outlet for all the worked-upedness.  However, I like her stories because the heroines are usually punchy, independent women who appear to know their own minds, tend to be entrepreneurial, and are able to exist without a man defining their existence for them.   The latest one I read was called Black Rose and was about a woman of the same age that I am who was widowed, divorced and now on her own.  She had worked hard and built a successful gardening center on the grounds of her family's ancestral home.  What really grabbed me was that the heroine, though dealing with issues from the past, was firmly grounded in the present and was dealing with life on her own terms.  She wasn't some incomplete lost soul without a man.  She had a life and she was living it.  And the relationship she eventually gets involved in didn't require her to sacrifice her values, her personality, or her goals.  

Anyhow, said book started me thinking along the lines that it is time that I started that same walk.  I need to stay grounded in the present -- not raging and bitter over the past and things I can't change, and not living in the future that may never happen.  Instead, I need to stay in today and do what is in front of me, and moreover, take pleasure in it.  

Sufficient unto today is the evil or pleasure thereof.

Hell Hath No Fury

I used to think that the adage about hell having no fury like a woman scorned referred to a woman who experienced rejection at the beginning of a relationship.  However, practical experience has given me insight to see that the rage that I am now experiencing comes from the systemic and ongoing rejection and scorn that I received over the last 28 years.  

I'll be glad when I am done processing this and can leave it behind me.

Not Part of the Club Anymore 

One of my favorite blogs to read is Douglas Wilson's "Blog and Mablog."  I like Doug's blog because it is thought provoking in a practical way.  So much of what he says is not merely something to intellectualize over, but it has a practical impact on how I think or how I act.   I sometimes peruse the other blogs on his sidebar when I have a few minutes.  Several years ago I was in the thick of reformed circles and discussion groups and liked following some of the various controversies and argumentation that surrounded them.  Today I find I have little taste for any of it and it doesn't seem to matter if it is reformed,  Baptist,  Anabaptist, or whatever the particular denominational stripe or group may be.  So much of it appears to me to be hot air and it wearies me.

I can't change what happened to me in my last church.  And I lack the motivation to change the way I feel about it too.  Instead I just want to be a follower of Christ, not of any particular denomination or group (though I am attending a local congregation), and I am making it more of my business to just concentrate on the actual following of Christ as opposed to taking doctrinal stands on one side or the other of any particular divide.  

That doesn't mean that I consider doctrine unimportant.  However, it should be something that informs our practice instead of a vehicle for intellectual jousting.  How many angels dance on the head of a pin has no practical implications for how I live my life.  Nor does infralapsarianism versus supralapsarianism or the ordo salutis.

Coldplay - Viva La Vida

Emotionally Intelligent Anger is ...

"...the rare skill to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way."   ~ Aristotle

Now how many of us can do that???

Never loved her

Loved her not

Petals swirl and fall

Twenty-eight years vanish gone

Never to return

Twelve tokens of affection

Birthed in sorrow

With small protection

Never loved them

Loved them not

Watch the cradle fall

Never sweetheart

Never dear

Only owned and ruled by fear

Never loved her

Loved her not

Vows abused and mind untaught

Bonds lie broken, tears drip hot

Buried marriage, left to rot

Never loved her

Loved her not.

Big and Little Things

I was reading some thoughts Douglas Wilson had on Romans 14:1-4 today. It reminded me of something that I experienced in the small unnamed micro-denominational cult-like church I used to attend. One of the comments made by the teaching elder was "Who are we to decide what is or is not important in terms of doctrine" and it occurred to me that this particular stance was one of the things that drove our group to the extremes it held as well as its eventual implosion.

If we lose the ability or refuse to make the distinction between big and little things, first and second things, or foundational truths and things indifferent, then everything becomes a big issue and a hill worth dying on. Furthermore, it forces you to take hard stances precisely where we should be cutting one another some slack. Practical Christian and grace-based living is thereby transformed into rigid and judgmental religion that makes a practice of condemning everything that doesn't conform to its version of holiness. Being right is paramount and woe to any who cross the line.

Christians are not forbidden to judge. In fact, we are commanded to "judge righteous judgement" in John 7:24. Wisdom requires that we be able to discern between the things that are vital and things that are indifferent and thereby avoid unnecessary and divisive controversies.

Metamorphosis

For my first posting on this blog, I think it is only fair to post a poem I wrote a short time ago which encapsulates the process I have been working through.

Not who I was
Nor yet what I shall be
I swing here
Caught in transition
Neither fish nor fowl
Becoming

Struggling
Against past bonds
Yet on the cusp
I catch a glimpse
Out the corner of my eye
Brilliant colors
A wet wing
Folded neatly against my body

Some day
Soon
The cocoon will lie empty
I'll stretch those wings
And take flight