Two interesting thoughts have come to mind of late: 1) the idea of order and authority and 2) consciousness and genius.

Order and Authority

Over the past 6 months I have had a driving desire to create order in my life. If you know me at all, order, or at least, organization, is not one of my hallmark traits. Well, that is changing, and, it's changing in a big way. When we moved into our current house we had stuff that had been in boxes since we moved to Dallas that, before that, had been in boxes from our house in Baton Rouge that, before that...well, you get the drift.

After having grown tired of not being able to find things and just getting fed up with clutter, I began to sort through paper, stuff folders, label, filter, file...you got, organize. In this process, and here's the heart of this post, I began to see how much easier certain aspects of life could be. Finding paperwork was not a struggle. Keeping things orderly was much easier. Yet, deeper than that, I realized that I found a growing awareness of control over the affairs of my life.

This awareness led me to connect the notion that we are only able to get promoted to the next level once we have mastered our current level. This sounds much less profound out of context than it is for me while I'm realizing it. Translating this to the spiritual arena, I am creating order in my life. Once I reach the level of order I am meant to have in my life, I will then be ready to move to the next level where I shall find new things that have to be ordered. Yet, in this process, I am learning the importance of order and maintaining order.

To me this is an awesome realization because I connect the idea of kosmos, as Gregory Vlastos discusses it, as being an active force. In Scripture, an amazing act of God was the creation and sustaining of order. Paul commends his audience in Colossians 2:5 saying, "I delight to see how orderly you are". In this sense, Paul is referring to the act of arranging in order. It is an act of establishment.

Perhaps that is the deep-seated joy I feel, a settling, a call to rest. Granted, order is not only something that must be established, but it must also be maintained regularly. Until this point in my life I only saw order as a moment in time, and, in a way, there is no continuous order. But now, I see order and an ongoing necessity, and this has helped to understand how believers must actively establish their authority over their lives. Unless this authority, this order, is constantly maintained our blessing becomes a curse. Without exercising the authority God calls of those he blesses, we can easily become overwhelmed by his provision and lose the right to continue growing in our calling.

I thank God for blessing, for the transfer of his wealth, but I thank God more so for the ability and wisdom to know how to receive and possess the blessing he pours out. Without improvements to my character, to my soul, I could never truly receive what he has called me to do because I would not be demonstrating his active/act of order. We are called to grow in our understanding of God and, in this case, I believe the only way I could fully appreciate God's mystery of order was to learn it firsthand.

Consciousness and Genius

I often marvel at people like Mozart who could hear a symphony and identify the most minute of misplayed notes amongst a sea of music without err or effort. People like Shakespeare whose rhapsodic use of language is unlike any others that has come since in the English language...or Van Gogh, whose art transcends the boundaries of two dimensions, colors and a canvas. These creators, these innovators have always possessed an air of otherworldliness, superhuman powers and amazing abilities for me.

That people such as these exist and do remarkable, often incomprehensible, things is hardly groundbreaking. But, understanding what it is like to be them, to glimpse through their minds for just a moment, that would be profound, life-altering and magnificent. One aspect of the works and lives of these men is captured in the abnormal degree of presence they possess in their works. They can command and communicate through their works such a high degree of depth and reality that it simply escapes the reach of comparison when we try to hold other, similar works next to them.

How do they do it? Remember entire scores for symphonies, or, like Joyce spouting Shakespeare to a copy to avoid getting a ticket, recall entire chapters of writing without effort...how do they do that? Part of it is engrossment and the degree of awareness these men possess. You cannot create or express such detail in work unless you know it is there. To be aware of the depth and magnitude of detail these works often embody is not normal. Indeed, that is a major key in knowing how to grasp what these men and women are doing. They see more than others so they can say and show more than others. That major realization helped me to get a grip on what lies at the heart of seeing like a genius.

But, what in the world does awareness have to do with genius? Unless I can begin to cultivate an increasing degree of awareness I will never grow closer to understanding how the greatest of great minds grasp things. Yet, in all this I have to constantly know, some people can simply do things others will never be able to. I can never play basketball like Michael Jordan or speak 24 languages like Marx's mentor. I can, however, grow in these areas...and knowing that greater awareness makes for greater realization is one of the most important things I can understand in that process.

Ordinary people can do this...at least they can grow in their awareness. For example, take people who are caught in life-threatening situations, a robbery, or, life-changing situations, a wedding. Often times people remember every detail of these events. Colors are brighter, smells become permanently planted in the brain, certain phrases spoken in these moments can be perfectly recalled years later. This altered state of consciousness is nothing new, but it is something most people do not tap into on a regular basis. That is what training is for.

Children can often tap into these trancelike states easily. Baby Einstein movies, Disney movies, certain music, sights and sounds enrapture children and completely absorb them. These things embrace their young minds and brains. Likewise, we too can becomes completely absorbed in experiences, but we have to regress to a place where we can move into that impressionable state. Geniuses, returning to the point at hand, often access this realm more easily because their abilities afford them the luxury of not having to contend with day-to-day life.

In fact, being abnormal in this respect often cultivates the ability to live on the cusp of all-consuming consciousness and ordinary consciousness. Since many geniuses are prodigious and have their way of life embraced early on, the membranes of consciousness typically reserved for childhood are not strengthened as they are in others and their youthful ability to vacillate between creativity and normalcy remains strong as long as they continue to develop and use their abilities.

Since the impediments of normal development are often pardoned as being unnecessary for these children they are given sort of a free reign in this arena. With the rest of us, however, we have to unlearn ourselves. We have to push, prod and stretch the parts of ourselves that have become rigid, calloused, inflexible. Sometimes these are ideas or beliefs, such as, "I can't possibly ever understand art like Picasso." At other times, we have to force ourselves into new areas, like finding that thing which totally engrosses us. It may not be easy, and will take us through many things, but, when we do find it, will speak to us like nothing else has, like a voice heard long ago, whispering, "I'm glad to see you, welcome home." We can all grow to where we were and, in the process, open the door to where we're supposed to go.

I am firmly convinced that every single person has a unique purpose for being alive. That is part of God's plan. It requires us to realize we need others at all times, but to also realize others need us as well. With this balance in mind, I see that unique purpose, that genius of the individual, as being a source of great power. We can see that we have some unique and special thing to offer the world. We, in a way, are geniuses of ourselves. As such, we have an awareness, a giftedness that no one else can possibly have. That is what we have to contribute to the world in a way no Mozart or Einstein could ever match. Our calling is the power of our genius.

The most challenging obstacle is to not get caught up in the trap of comparing our calling with other's calling. Paul talks about this in 1 Corinthians 12. We are each called for a special purpose and trying to be something we are not called to be not only prevents us from achieving God's will for us, it also prevents others from achieving their destiny because you're out there trying to their job and not doing your own. So, being aware of your call allows God's kingdom to grow even faster because we are working with others in way that not only allows other's strengths to shine, but, in the process, allows ours to grow with theirs in a way nothing else can come close to matching.