I started a new blog to allow me to keep track of my computer related ramblings. The don't really seem to fit here any longer. It can be located at: http://learningpcs.blogspot.com Take a look if you're interested.

While posting on an interesting topic I had confessed my own 2-year old temper in matters of spirituality. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. I'm immature and will grow up in time. In the middle of my musings, I did, however, come to realize a little connection. For a long time, the idea of being and action had the wrong framework for me. In philosophy there is a long tradition of author's taking another thinker's work and tweaking it to make some ignored or, if not completely abused, at least, under-stated point. Sartre's "Being and nothingness" is probably the most famous, but, there are at least two other spin-offs I can think of immediately. Whitehead's "Process and being", Heidigger's "Being and Time" This whole school of philosophy deals with ontology. That's the ten-dollar word for the "study of being".

Enough of that rabbit trail. From the philosopher's war of being I gathered the basic idea that being is a passive act. Of course, if I reread these works, I would most likely realize I am projecting a personal perspective onto their works. It's been a while since I read any of these works, but, the lingering effect is that of passivity. When I came to start reading the Bible deeply, I saw verses like, "Be still and know that I am God" (Psalm 46:10) that probably reinforced a somewhat questionable idea of God's desire or intention for passivity. In the context of this verse, yes, passivity was at least until I saw what I saw tonight, a misrepresentation of what I believe God truly wants.

Now, my caveat here, ok, my outright disclaimer, is that I am not pretending like I do have the answer yet. Just the realization that I need to look in a different direction. So, that direction is... If we are to be passive, as my initial thought would have lent me to reason out, we would be incapable, by definition, of doing anything. Now, I know God can, and, does, more than we can ever comprehend. But, He doesn't and, by design, isn't supposed to do it all. Ergo, it can't be complete passivity.

Hmmm, what then? So, I can do it all; i.e., I'm not God. The converse is also true; I can't do nothing. Well, that makes it tricky doesn't it. I can't pout and grow at the same time. What does that leave for me to do? Act and be. Now that kind of tweaks my brain. It used to be an either/or scenario. I could act or be, not possibly both. As I showed above, that's illogical. Reconciling how to act and be is a totally new framework for thinking about life. "Being in God", with all its embedded, personal meanings and private significance, implied, in the past, total passivity. Acting carried with it the negative meaning of "selfish" activity. I have heard that we are to surrender to God so He can be in complete control of our lives.

Sounds great. The reality, however, differs from the rosy colored dream my hope had tied itself to. Perhaps, fantasy is a better word. Nonetheless, I am coming to see that God's prompting me, nudging me to rearrange my ideas a bit. Or a lot, as the case may be. He wants something infinitely more challenging than the "surrender" of passivity. God wants me, I believe God wants all of us, to surrender, not to give up and do nothing. To act but to act as He would have us act. In a sense, He wants us to do as He wants us to do. Imagine giving up yourself so completely that you do nothing, that is to say, you make no decisions, but, rather, carry out the decisions of another.

You see, it isn't inactivity of body he wants, it's inactivity of soul. He wants us to submit our will, not our lives. He needs our lives if we are to embody His will. We all are made to glorify God with our unique calling. And, only by living as we were created to live and be, can we fully allow God to carry out His plan. As I write this I am hearing in the back of my mind the nagging voice of the cynic, the critic and the theologically minded pointing out that we do not add to God. God is omnipotent, omniscient, etc. Yeah, He's all-everything. I see it another way. If we fully submit ourselves, we add nothing to God. Instead, we detract nothing from His plan if we do as much as we can. Yet, if we do not submit ourselves, we can prevent God's plan from being as full as it could be by preventing our portion of the plan from being carried out.

Coming back from that little rabbit trail, I sense that the war of free will is the heart of the matter here. If God could replace my will with His, what would my life be like? I believe that is what God longs for us to do. Now, I can hear others ask, why would someone do that? I completely believe God's plan is the perfect plan, the following of which brings the greatest possible fulfillment in one's life. Like the detraction comment above, our life is full to the degree to which we follow God's plan. Obviously, my spiritual pouting is slowing me down. God, of course, can use all things for good. That doesn't make my tantrum okay. Just a beautiful facet of grace I thank Him for about 50 times a day.

So, that leaves me with this blank slate called my life. I stand in this moment with a past, from which to draw experiences and a future, onto which I can choose to either continue to project myself...or, I can begin to let God show me what He wants me to see. To do this, I have to let God choose for me. I cannot not choose for myself. So, to make different choices, I have to rely on someone other than myself. (I guess I am invoking the idea of otherness here.) It really is, at its core, a paradox, an impossibility. It reveals an area where God must act. I, by the nature of the situation, cannot do it for myself. So, I turn here to another person. Of course, that person, can be human (as many people turn to) or non-human, angelic, demonic, etc. That being said, being and acting is a supernatural challenge. Being oneself, and an expression of another's will at the same time, is an eternal complexity I am only beginning to comprehend God wants me to fully embrace.

He works in obvious, mysterious ways

One thing I love about God is how much he talks to us. No, not the "burning bush" kind of talking, or, the angels coming in the middle of the night. The quiet whispers reach me more often than the special effects kind of visit that most people think of when considering God's interaction in their lives.

In the past month our church has been giving an awesome series of sermons on happiness. To be precise, the pursuit of happiness. I've blogged on this before, but, there have been some redefinitions and quite a few ahas as a result of the series. I want to devote an entire post to that all on its own. The main thing here is that unhappiness has been a companion of mine for some time. Not one I welcome, but, rather, seem to be burdened with on a rather permanent basis.

At the core of my unhappiness is I have come to sense that the path God has me on is not the want I want to be on. Indeed, a few months ago I had to accept the realization that I am an envious Christian. Not good. Amy and I used to go to the same church and we pursued a path down the road of prophetic ministry. Only, she actually got to go down that road while I was stopped and sent a different direction. I hold it not against her in any way. Frustration has been marking my every turn. I want, so badly, to be involved in the kind of things she does. However, I find, instead of grounding myself in a church where revelatory gift is the norm, it is the exception. Instead of getting more involved in what I sense my calling is, I grow bitter about struggling to survive my daily life. Instead of...well, you get the idea. Happiness has not been on my tongue. It has been on my heart however. I long for the joy that comes from not only accepting my position in life, but, praising God, from the depths of my being, for the blessing he has poured out upon me and my family.

So, here I stand. Looking around, wondering where to go. What to do. I am in a job that is good, but, I long for more. I am trying to find ways to help the company grow and become more of what I think I am supposed to be at the same time. Yet, even in this scenario God has hidden surprises for me on an almost daily basis. I work with a couple of guys who are all very sharp at what the do. While sitting at lunch with them I realized, I am very much in what I have been prepared to do! My grandfather was basically a network engineer at Bell South for 35 years. He was a technical wizard in all respects. Since I was a kid I never wanted to go down that road because technology reminded me of business and I hated business. I always wanted to be an artist, a musician, an athlete. Anything but a technologist or a business person. (And, guess what, I work in a technology business.)

At any rate, it became clear that, in spite of my unwillingness to receive the tremendous heritage my grandfather and my father have accumulated in the type of field I am in, I was among people that they would probably have been around. In a way, even though I tried not to end up becoming like them, I am. I am surrounded by people who are gifted with technology. It was a little light bulb to know that I was in a place where I would naturally fit even though I didn't plan or want it. God had led me where I probably should have been all along.

This little realization is one of those moments that stokes the very small flame of hope in my heart. I have come to realize that hope, the kind of hope that I saw and desired in almost every one else at the prophetic arena, typically has to be hyped up. People live in this frenzied "spiritual" state. It's a sort of hyper-real sense of God that is real, but, is extremely hard to cultivate in "normal" life. In a sense, that's why people who truly pursue that type of ministry become unlike the rest of us. At any rate, hearing God say, quietly in the midst of my grumbling, "You're where you're supposed to be and where you're supposed to have been all along" is humbling.

So, I have this one little theme going on in my spirit. A lightly rousing melody of hope. That was lunch. This morning, I have another little nudge. Many years ago I went to school in Memphis and they had a series of organizations that focused on social justice. Real activist types. While there I had an acquaintance who was odd. Gifted in many strange ways. At 18 a local musician. A writer. Counter cultural. He ended up getting a degree in math (my longed for degree). He had the acclaim of professors in spite of his not seeking it. I looked at him, 10 years later, and had a sense of envy.

That was it, envy. I still struggle with desire for things I don't have. Envy. I see this guy and see so much of what I wanted. Or think I wanted. Here I am, struggling to get by, struggling to find identity, struggling to keep my head above water. And I see this guy's picture, covered in tattoos, still walking down his road, calling his own shots, success in his wake. I, nobody, no where. Then, I see amidst my own blinding cloud of temporarily self-absorbed distraction, a wonderful life, my life. The fundamental problem is simple: how to want what I have, not what I don't have. Isn't that always it? We want something we don't have because we think it will bring us happiness. We think the grass on the other side of the fence is what will make us complete, what will make us happy.

But, the green grass theory only goes so far. It doesn't really propose an end. It just proposes another step in the process. Many people argue with Christians when they assert there is a beginning point, the unmoved mover. They don't want to have to accept this type of proposition because it forces them to ask, "Well, what is that?" This naturally leads to the issue of God. If you get people looking at now, at the future, it's a lot easier to get them to lose focus. People stuck in the middle of the fire cope with life. They don't embrace it. They don't grasp the moments they are being given. Instead they try to put themselves somewhere else, somewhere better than where they are then.

By pursing things, futures, better, green grasses, people never set a goal in mind. They find a means to happiness, the temporary fix, as being an end in and of itself, when God should be the end. Even in the moment, God should be the end, the absolute reference point by which we gauge our moors as well as our mores. Happiness, as Jesus shows us in the Beatitudes, doesn't come from getting high on the next best thing. I am beginning to suspect there is so much more to the blessedness we derive from being obedient it's scary. I see the inevitable and I just keep thinking, quietly, unspoken, even to my mind, how long can I put off the inevitable?

God waits for us to truly give Him the okay before we can be ready for Him to come to us. By chasing happiness, we all too often, like children trying to catch butterflies, are never where God can meet us. We have hopped up, run away and not given Him enough time to meet us where we were supposed to be when He asked us to wait. I've heard so many times that we are often the reason we don't progress in God more than we do. I know when I make decisions, almost every little decision to ignore, despise, reject, begrudge God. And, I can't even imagine how He still loves me in my rebellious state.

I pray God can give me the happiness he has in store, provided I am willing to let Him give it to me. I pray I let Him give it to me. I guess part of the mystery is how He can speak to us and yet we choose not to hear him, to turn a deaf ear. There is typically no mystery in God if we allow Him to speak; if we are honest with what He tells us and don't cover it up in smoke, mirrors and lies. It is in us that the mystery lies, why we choose not to live the way God's called us to. The mystery of living with sin and a God who loves us anyway. How can we reconcile this?

Anyone ever hate long drug commercials? I actually started timing them to see how much air time they are buying. The longest one I recently saw was a Lunesta piece: 2:41. Seriously, a commercial that lasts 2 minutes 41 seconds! How insane. It's total brainwashing. Subliminal is so 1940's.