Off The Shelf

After gathering dust on the shelf for over 14 years, I finally selected a book I purchased on Leadership. It professed to help people become servant leaders, a topic I have longed to understand more fully and practice more regularly. After completing it, I couldn’t help but wonder why it took me so long to pull it down off the shelf.

I realized an important truth: If you want a book to teach you something, you need to read it!

The many nutrition and physical fitness books I own can do nothing about my soft belly and high cholesterol if they remain on the shelf. The books on financial management will not help me balance my checkbook if left unread. And the many books on prayer cannot help me create a deep spiritual life if left on the shelf.

Recovery circles remind us that someone needs to become “sick and tired of being sick and tired” before he or she can get sober. They also teach the definition of insanity as doing the same behavior but expecting a different result. I think the wisdom of recovery speaks to all of us who own books we have not read, and long for lives we do not lead. At some point, we need to get sick and tired enough to reach up, select the book, and learn something new.

While shopping the other night, I watched as a number of people selected Bibles for graduation and first communion gifts. I remember when I received such a gift. In fact, I still have the Bible. It’s on my shelf, next to many other Bibles, sitting like a museum piece waiting for me to open it.

Frost Heaves

Sorry for the Brushstroke interruption, but they are back and I hope you will enjoy them once again. CB

I once lived in the land of frost heaves, a phenomenon of earth expansion and constriction that causes roads to buckle. Like a child kicking away the covers, the earth tries to breath and in so doing disrupts humanity’s attempt to control. The results can jar the most solid automobiles, and on a recent trip home they jarred me to see something spiritual.

Since I can remember, I have sought certainty. I find great comfort in knowing where I am and where I'm going. A clearly marked road provides comfort and security. Yes, I enjoy spontaneity, taking a less traveled route, as long as I know the traditional route is there. In musical terms, I love a variation on a theme as long as I know the theme.

But the frost heaves of a recent trip reminded me that, like the earth, my spiritual life is a living thing. It breathes. It expands and contracts and might well cause the road on which I am traveling to buckle. Rather than bemoan the disruption, I think spiritual frost heaves are God’s way to jar or awaken us. If nothing else, they can remind us that we are traveling and should stay away. They may even be an invitation to change our route.

At times of seasonal change, may we breathe in and out, expand and contract, and kick away those old ways that no longer fit.

Turning heads and hearts

Like many, I began thinking about the New Year a few weeks ago and compiled a list of ways I wanted to change and grow in 2014. In the past, I have had varying degrees of success with resolutions, but I still get excited when looking to the future and imagining what could come from a new start. Each year, my excited heart beats with increased hope, but, with my inevitable stumbles, I often lose faith by March and can’t remember one goal or resolution by June.

This year I’m trying something new. I am being kinder to myself. Yes, I still have a list of things I want to do, or not do, but instead of using the list as a personal ruler to measure and judge, I have decided to think of the list and my hope for change in a new way. 

This year, I have made only one resolution: to turn my head and heart in a different direction.  The items on my list are not the focus, the new direction is.  Like a finger pointing, I am to follow its guidance and not focus on the finger itself. As a result, I may not achieve some or all of the things on my list with perfection, but, if I use them to guide me, I will “stumble in the right direction,” as they say in the rooms of recovery. The stumbling, I believe, is not nearly as important as the right direction.

So, as we begin our journey through a new year, I wonder if it might serve us all well to step back from the this and that’s on our list of resolutions and ask a more fundamental question: In what direction do we wish to head this year? I suspect if we turn our heads and hearts in a new direction, many of the things on our list will be achieved.