It occurs to me…

Photo taken on a recent run around the lake.

I read this on a candy wrapper recently – calories AND wisdom: “Always make your past self jealous.”  It reminded me of the line from Sammy Kershaw’s Better Than I Used To Be song I wrote about recently: “I’m learning who I’ve been ain’t who I gotta be.”

It is surprisingly easy to forget that who we’ve been ain’t who we gotta be, that we constantly have within us the power to make our past selves jealous.  It never really strays too far from Paul and Romans 12:2 – “be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”

One of my favorite meditations today from Oswald Chambers’ My Utmost For His Highest:

“We have to take ourselves by the scruff of the neck and shake ourselves, and we will find that we can do what we said we could not.  The curse with most of us is that we won’t.  The Christian life is one of incarnate spiritual pluck.”

First, I like this because it seems so out of character for Chambers.  His encouragement rarely takes this form.  But mostly I like the phrase – “incarnate spiritual pluck” as a reminder that sometimes, often even, I need to reach beyond myself and rely not only on my “pluck” but on the “incarnate spiritual pluck” available to me.  Just a reminder, I guess, of Matthew 19:26: “With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible.”

From the Prodigal Son parable, Luke 15:14: “And when he had spent it all, there arose a mighty famine in that land; and he began to be in want.”

Today, the irony of the “and he began to be in want” hit me.  Hell, the younger son had been living in want.  He was living in want when he asked his father to “give me the portion of goods that falleth to me,” and certainly well before that.  Yet he remained in want even when he got what he wanted.  The fullness of the irony comes around when we realize that it was not until he had lost it all, come to his senses, swallowed his pride, and returned home to his father, that his want abated — which takes us back to Epicurus: “Nothing is enough for the man to whom enough is too little.

I became reacquainted recently with a song that rolled around on my playlist, and which I actually posted on a couple of years back.  The song was written by Ashley Gorley and Bryan Simpson.  Sammy Kershaw put it out in 2010, to no particular success/acclaim (though I prefer his version) and then a few months later Tim McGraw recorded it and it became a hit – go figure.  The first lines pulls you in – “I know how to hold a grudge.  I can burn a bridge up in smoke.”  It is all, of course, a set up for the simple tag line that strikes me as something that is a good reminder of my classification as a work in progress: “I ain’t as good as I’m gonna get, but I’m better than I used to be.”  Somehow, I can see Paul (Romans 12:2 Paul, post road-to-Corinth Paul) having this in regular rotation on his playlist.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPwAKwwu1m0

I confess to taking some enjoyment in observing a clash between two experts on the subject of our stuff, or perhaps better stated, our relationship to our stuff.  Today, I reread Heather Havrilesky’s essay, Stuff, in which she (at least partly) takes on Marie Kondo and Kondo’s wildly popular book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up.  In the essay, Havrilesky comments on the Kondo theme of getting rid of any of your stuff that doesn’t “spark joy:”

“The question isn’t whether or not your stuff sparks joy.  The question is: Can you spark joy all by yourself?  Do you remember how that feels?”  In making her point, Havrilesky relates the story of her deceased father’s wallet that sits in the top drawer of her desk.

“Every few months, I pull it out and look at his money: $26 – a twenty (dated 1990), a five (1993) and a one (1988).  When this cash was in my dad’s wallet, he was fifty-six years old.  Along with that $26, he had a retirement fund, several investment properties, a condo, a brand-new Lexus coupe, and a small piece of paper stuck to his dresser mirror on which he had scrawled a reminder, in black ballpoint pen: ‘All of heaven is within you.’”

…

“My father’s wallet reminds me that nothing lasts.  Just when you are starting to get comfortable, you disappear.   And maybe only one or two of your things will seem important enough to someone else when you’re gone.”

“That’s sad, but it’s also a reason to wake up to the enormity of the moment, to the unbelievable gift of being alive, right now.  You don’t need more than this.  All of heaven is within you.”

Indeed, all of heaven is within us – within all of us.  Granted, some days it takes much more effort than others to find it, but still, it is there, in me, in them – yes, even in THAT person.  Things come and go, but that heaven within us, thankfully, remains. Now THAT sparks joy!

Conundrum – (noun) an intricate and difficult problem.

“Do not judge, or you too will be judged.  For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”  Matthew 7:1

Houston, we have a conundrum!

“Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God – this is your spiritual act of worship.  Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.  Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – his good, pleasing, and perfect will.”

Romans 12:1-2.

‘Cause it just feels good to read and remember that from time to time, particularly the “renewing of the mind” part!

“More than anything else, we have to imagine a different kind of life, a different way of living.  We have to reject the shiny, shallow future that will never come, and locate ourselves in the current, flawed moment.”  Heather Havrilesky, What If This Were Enough

“Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”  Paul, Romans 12:2

Two similar admonitions, nearly 2,000 years apart.  It occurs to me that the “pattern of this world” had a significant head start on me.  To make matters worse, it seems unfair that I first had to acquire the “pattern of this world” only to then learn that I need to shed it.  I best get busy.

This bit of conversation from the Broken Record podcast involving to legendary music producers:

Rick Rubin: “There is something about people playing together [at the same time, as opposed to one recording over the recording of the other] that no amount of getting it right counters the energy of the interaction

T. Bone Burnett: Yeah, perfection is a second-rate idea. The computer is able to put out perfect music all day long but its not really as interesting.”

I so love that “perfection is a second-rate idea” comment.  I am not a musician or music producer so can’t comment intelligently on their observations beyond noting that live performances (even recordings of live performances) can have that “energy of the interaction” that makes the recording feel better in ways I can’t really explain.  Call me an old-fashioned Luddite, but it occurs to me, and what I can and will comment on, is that to me this same phenomenon seems to be true of digital/social media communication as compared to real live communications — as in people listening/talking TO one another and not AT one another through some electronic means.  Dare I say it – Facebook and Instagram are wildly successful second-rate ideas.