Exposure: Week One

Weekly Exposure Challenge #1:

A picture of yourself with fifteen facts about yourself.

1. I am a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ. He is my hope and my trust. If you cannot tell that by the way I treat you, please let me know.

2. I have never resided farther than a two-hour drive from my hometown.

3. My address and phone number have been the same now for more than half of my life, and I have lived here longer than I did in my hometown.

4. I have a boy’s name. That has not been easy.

5. At the time I had my third child, three full generations of my relatives were alive: all four grandparents, both parents, all four of my siblings, their spouses and their children, all eight aunts and uncles and their spouses, all twenty-two cousins, their spouses and their children, my spouse, and all of my children. I felt very untouched by death and very blessed. ~ I lost my mother three years ago. That has been the deepest sorrow of my life. I now feel very touched by death, yet still very blessed.

6. Though I rarely cry, I often feel like it.

7. I love music. I love to listen, to sing, to compose, and to play (piano and guitar). I excel at none of it – but I enjoy all of it immensely.

8. I talk too much. It has been costly.

9. I think constantly; I think metaphorically a large percentage of that time; I think of my life as successive seasons or chapters. See what I mean? *smile*

10. I hate farewells.

11. Please do not ask me to bake brownies. I cannot, therefore I will not. I will not bake them in a house. I will not bake them with a mouse. I would not, could not in a tree. Not in a car! You let me be! (My apologies to Dr. Suess.)

12. I would rather be blind than deaf.

13. I resist change. That is probably an understatement.

14. I consider myself neither beautiful nor ugly. I prefer to use the term, “presentable.” This bothers some -- I realize that. They love me.

15. I only really like chocolate when I’m eating through it to get to something inside, something like dried fruit or malted milk balls. Licorice, never covered in chocolate, is my favorite candy. Cadbury flakes would be the exception -- yummy!

SELF

The body is a house of many windows:
there we all sit, showing ourselves
and crying on the passers-by to come and love us.

~Robert Louis Stevenson

There are at least two kinds of cowards.
One kind always lives with himself, afraid to face the world.
The other kind lives with the world, afraid to face himself.

~Roscoe Snowden

It's like, at the end, there's this surprise quiz: am I proud of me?
I gave my life to become the person I am right now!
Was it worth what I paid?

~Richard Bach

Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man -
the biography of the man himself cannot be written.

~Mark Twain

There is as much difference between us and ourselves
as between us and others.

~Michel de Montaigne

~End Quote

Intent

Keep your heart with all diligence,

for out of it spring the issues of life.

~Proverbs 4:23

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What is the quality of your intent?

Certain people have a way of saying things that shake us at the core. Even when the words do not seem harsh or offensive, the impact is shattering. What we could be experiencing is the intent behind the words. When we intend to do good, we do. When we intend to do harm, it happens. What each of us must come to realize is that our intent always comes through. We cannot sugarcoat the feelings in our heart of hearts. The emotion is the energy that motivates. We cannot ignore what we really want to create. We should be honest and do it the way we feel it. What we owe to ourselves and everyone around is to examine the reasons of our true intent.

My intent will be evident in the results.

~Thurgood Marshall

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For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.

A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good things, and an evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth evil things.

~Matthew 12: 34, 35

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In general, I am not a fan of Thurgood Marshall. In fact, I disagree with part of the statement I quoted, if I understand it correctly. He seems to imply that there can be no such thing as misunderstanding another person's intent -- what a dangerous assumption/conclusion. Perhaps his use of the word "always" is too all-encompassing for me.

However, his first three sentences are the ones I am truly pondering. What he suggests could account for those times in which it is difficult to pinpoint why a particular interchange of words leaves one feeling troubled without apparent explanation. Without proof, so to speak.

His concluding call to "examine the reasons of our true intent" is certainly a worthy one -- self-examination under the prompting and guidance of the Holy Spirit. No fear there. My Comforter has my heart safely in His care.

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Search me, O God, and know my heart;
Try me, and know my anxieties;
And see if there is any wicked way in me,
And lead me in the way everlasting.
~Psalm 139: 23, 24

~End Quote

Restore

My daughter leaned into the study, "Mom, does restoring your iTouch erase everything? It keeps asking me, 'Are you sure you want to do this?' -- but it's not like I have a choice . . ."

Restore! What a metaphor for this word nerd!

Are you sure you want to "restore?" Think about it. Do you have a choice?

What if you could truly restore your life, or some facet of it, to the "factory settings" -- the way things were before little bits and bytes of corruption crept into the code . . .

I submit that when it's time to restore, we really have no choice. Bless God, who alone holds that precious code and knows how to restore with gentleness!

[insert cleansing breath]

Oh, I think it best that I leave the metaphor before I muck up anything worth contemplating. Perhaps it is too late. ;-/ I leave it with you to draw your own thoughts from it.

In the meantime . . .

Want to consider another metaphor with me? (It's not another of my weak little stabs at figurative language, I promise.) When is the last time you read Psalm 23 and asked the LORD to make it fresh for you? To see Him in all His tenderness as your Shepherd?

"He restores my soul . . ." That is where I began; but as I read, the entire psalm came alive for me, phrase by phrase.

Restore. No longer a metaphor.



~ End Quote



* For the hapless reader who stumbles upon this page and chooses to extract some spiritual significance from the metaphor, let me be quick to say that I'm implying no original innocence or basic goodness in the natural state of mankind. Pardon my need to clarify and the brief station identification. ;-)

Recipes

Memory is a peculiar thing, sometimes gentle and consoling, other times so painful. What a trigger of emotions it is! I suppose that's a given, and not terribly profound, but I'm really not trying to be profound.

This week, my friend lost her mom, and in listening to her speak from the depths of her loss, I heard myself. I don't just remember myself saying the very things she was saying -- I still say them now, three years after my own mother passed away.

For example, one thing that I feel so often is the desire -- the deep and intense longing -- to ask her questions. [Oh, Liz, I know you understand this.] Thankfully, my mother shared her thoughts with me freely and abundantly -- told me stories about herself and how she faced the many stages of her life with their varied joys and challenges, told me what it was like to mother me (poor soul), told me what her thoughts were about being a wife, a daughter, a niece, a mom . . . oh, my . . . she had answers for everything. I didn't always agree with her, but she had answers. More often than not, she had the answers. I am so grateful.

The most painful reality in all of this is that some of those answers were known only to her. And now they are gone with her. Just like that.

The day after I heard Liz's news, my dad called:"Hey! Do you remember how Mama used to bake chicken? I have the recipe, but it's incomplete." He continued telling me every detail of that recipe, and everything he could remember about that silly chicken dish, while my eyes filled with tears. I could have handled it on some other day, but not on that one. I was so glad he kept talking!

This morning I spoke with another friend who is also deeply saddened by Liz's loss. Ann began to speak of her own mother, whom she lost 20 years ago. She described the ache that just surfaced when she could not find (I should not have been surprised) -- one of her mother's recipes. ;-(

I have shared in the past about a special journal that my mother kept. Unlike her private journals, this one was written to be shared. Tonight I was poking through it and paused on a question that asked, "What was your favorite meal when you were a child? What made it your favorite?" Right there in the middle of the page was a recipe for chili. Of course.

I wonder how many daughters have felt the same over something as simple as a recipe? I wonder how many still reach for the phone when they just need to know? In so many ways, I find myself saying,

"I have the recipe, but it's incomplete."

~ End Quote

Face to Face

The Face

Traveler of the great divides
Vagrant on a path to life

Everyday feels a little closer
To where it is that you're headed for
Given to a hope of so much more

For every time you fall apart
There'll be a soul to guide your journey
But if you choose to turn away
There in the mirror
You'll see my face
You'll see my face

Think you're on this road alone
Looking for a truth untold

Many times you've been close to breaking
Giving up and letting go
Something inside tells you it's not over

For every time you fall apart
There'll be a soul to guide your journey
But if you choose to turn away
There in the mirror
You'll see my face

And when the world crowds your space
Remember days when noise was silent
No empty vows, loveless displays
Just a sense of knowing
You'd see my face
You'd see my face

Want to know my hope?

Want to know my expectation?

Want to know what I want to see in the mirror?

My soul, wait silently for God alone,
For my expectation is from Him.

~Psalm 62:5

Beloved, now we are children of God;

and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be,

but we know that when He is revealed,

we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.

~1 John 3:2

As for me, I will see Your face in righteousness;
I shall be satisfied when I awake in Your likeness.

~Psalm 17:15

For now we see in a mirror, dimly,

but then face to face.
Now I know in part,

but then I shall know just as I also am known.

~I Corinthians 13:12

Oh, come...

~ End Quote

Glasses

Look at life through the windshield, not the rear-view mirror.
~ Byrd Baggett

Sound advice? The photo might suggest otherwise! ;-)

More on this . . . I think we need both glances, that both have great purpose. In between the two glasses, though, we have our "now" -- and what a gift that is.

I'll be back with a plethora of quotes and more thoughts, but before I close, just one more thing to ponder:

If I am going to focus on the windshield, I'll try to regularly wash off the bugs first. Agreed?

~ End Quote

To Peel or Not to Peel

Quoting Mr. Harris, again:

The personality of a man is not an apple to be polished, but a banana to be peeled. And the reason we remain so far from one another, the reason we neither communicate nor interact in any real way, is that most of us spend our lives in polishing rather than peeling.

Man's lifelong task is simply one, but it is not simple: to remove the discrepancy between his outer self and his inner self, to get rid of the "persona" that divides his authentic self from the world. This persona is like the peeling on a banana: it is something built up to protect from bruises and injury. It is not the real person, but sometimes (if the fear of injury remains too great) it becomes a lifelong substitute for the person.

The "authentic personality" knows that he is like a banana, and knows that only as he peels himself down to his individuated self can he reach out and make contact with his fellows by what Father Goldbrunner calls "the sheer maturity of his humanity." Only when he himself is detached from his defensive armoring can he then awaken a true response in his dialog with others.

Most of us, however, think in terms of the apple, not the banana. We spend our lives in shining the surface, in making it rosy and gleaming, in perfecting the "image." But the image is not the apple, which may be wormy and rotten to the taste.

Almost everything in modern life is devoted to the polishing process, and little to the peeling process. It is the surface personality that we work on -- the appearance, the clothes, the manners, the geniality. In short, the salesmanship: we are selling the package, not the product.

There is a vast disparity between our outer and inner selves; in many of us, the real person never comes to life at all, never reveals itself, never knows itself. It lives through its functions, it lives as a type, a response to an environment, and dies without ever having found it's true existence. This, and not unhappiness, is the tragedy of life; this, and not "selfishness," is what causes human misery.

So long as we live behind the peeling, we can have no genuine encounter with the world. So long as we go on polishing, we sacrifice the substance for the image -- until, at last, there is no substance left. What is all the good of our "individualism," if it means merely the freedom to be like everybody else, the liberty to remain secure within the peeling?

~ End Quote

Perspective

~End Quote

Early Breath

Old year to my left
New one to my right
I paused to check the old
Before I took my flight

I stopped to once consider
All that passed before me now
I let it wash and cover me
And furrowed, then, my brow

The old was not all pretty
The old was not unmixed
Within it stood a million moments
Placed in time and fixed

Yet there among the tarnished
Bright gems were sparkling still
And steadily my brow began
To soften at their will

I doffed the introspection
I straightened, head held high
My gaze was set -- my wings were still
With purpose . . . time to fly

~End Quote (self)

[photo: Louisiana State Capitol]

Paralyzing Verbosity

~ End Quote

Full Heart, Empty Page

The writer's joy is the thought
that can become emotion,
the emotion that can
wholly become a thought.
~ Thomas Mann






The setting: Filled with what I think are thoughts that I want to share, I sit down to write, and suddenly I am staring at a blank page – sometimes I stare at it for a very long time. I type a little, delete some or all, type some more, and edit, edit, edit. At times, I don’t even get that far – it’s just me, my full heart, and my empty page. I have never been concise, but it seems that the older I get, the more difficult it is for me to pin down exactly what I want to say, regardless of the length of my writing. My handwritten letters didn’t get edited, and they seemed to be far more successful than my email endeavors at communicating how I feel. What gives?

Sometimes the things I feel, especially those that I feel most deeply, do not translate perfectly into words. I just don’t believe there exists a measure of words for every feeling. Perhaps there once did; if so, then over time those words have become hollow through overuse, abuse, and/or redefinition – to the extent that they fall short of what I want to say, what I wish I could say, what someone else might long to hear me say.

It’s not that I have not searched my existing vocabulary, ransacked the plethora of thesauri at my disposal, and even prayed. I have wearied myself countless times doing just that; still, despite all of my efforts, I only come close, at best, to finding the words that hold my thoughts. They seem to hover just out of reach like the water and fruit before Tantalus.

[Yes, I know that the analogy is somewhat weak. The comparison begins and ends with the inability to have what is so, so close. I can feel those words, but I cannot reach them. It is maddening.]

Maybe I need music . . .

So, here I sit, writing again . . . hoping that my words represent, at least to some degree, what I am feeling and thinking (about feeling and thinking). At the close of my own meditation, I sought to find what others had to say about my topic . . . something for the header . . . something for the sidebar. I was surprised at what I discovered after I had finished writing.

Enough of me . . . it’s their turn.

~ End Quote


from the sidebar . . .

Words make you think a thought.
Music makes you feel a feeling.
A song makes you feel a thought.
~ E. Y. Harburg

The good writer, the great writer, has what I have called the three S's: the power to see, to sense, and to say. That is, he is perceptive, he is feeling, and he has the power to express in language what he observes and reacts to.
~ Lawrence Clark Powell

Thought is deeper than all speech,
Feeling deeper than all thought;
Souls to souls can never teach
What unto themselves was taught.
~ Christopher Pearse Cranch

Feeling is deep and still;and the word that floats on the surface
Is as the tossing buoy,that betrays where the anchor is hidden.
~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow,
“Evangeline” (pt. II, sc. 2, l. 212)

We should not pretend to understand the world only by the intellect; we apprehend it just as much by feeling. Therefore, the judgment of the intellect is, at best, only the half of truth, and must, if it be honest, also come to an understanding of its inadequacy.
~ Carl Jung

I love writing. I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions.
~ James A. Michener

Constancy

So, reason with me.
What is constant?
What does not change?

It is not that I do not know the answers to my own questions.
It is not that I am unwilling to walk through the inconstancies of my life.
They are to be expected!

Still . . .
I am a creature that resists change.
With every great change, I must always reorient myself. It's my continual, momentous, and spiritual rebooting!
I must always force myself to remember so many things that are more true than my feelings.
I do it, not naturally; yet, by the grace of God, I do it deliberately.

Truly, there is only One who is constant. I will not forget.
Him.
~~~~~~~~~



When I wake, when I sleep
I hear whispers that seek to reach me
My constant One
When I dance, when I weep
Where I run, You are with me

(chorus)
Everyday, every night
After death in this life
You are constantly keeping
In my joy, in my strife
When I taste my desires
I am caught in your eyes holding me
My constant One

When I feast on the words
That You speak, they will feed my hunger
My constant one
Where I lay, when I rest
I will say that I love you
(chorus)

(bridge)
I want to kiss the mouth that soothes me
When the smile has vanished from my face
When I sparkle in the mist that clouds me
Be sure that I am lost in You
Lost without a trace
My constant One
(chorus)

~~~~~~~~

~End Quote

Reflections at Low Tide

'Pure experience' is the name I gave to the immediate flux of life which furnishes the material to our later reflection with its conceptual categories.
~ William James

Taken literally, the phrase “reflections at low tide” is an easy concept to capture:


Without the still, clear waters of low tide, reflections are next to impossible.


Thinking metaphorically, quiet time alone is the necessary and essential “low tide” for proper reflections.


For the time being, I leave you with the literal until I have time to reflect on all that has transpired this week. I am still taking it all in . . .

~ End Quote