Time to consider in a new season

In preparing my new fashion blog, updating my LinkedIn, and researching designers instead of philosophers, my personal study and blog has taken a hit. In working on physical alchemy - transforming my career path - my spiritual alchemy has taken a back seat. Now I am working on giving more time to my regenerative work, because I simply don't feel good without it.

I received a powerful message today that it's time to tune into the stillness where God resides. Lately I've been moving frenetically, and while I was conscious to invite God into my life sporadically throughout my days while hoping that my works would bear the fruit I crave, it hasn't been sustainable. Instead of travelling into that centre where there is complete love, I was orbiting along the periphery, and in that there were always conditions attached that I required for a satisfying day.

My breath has been cut off for months - my entire life source! In tending to the rich, I left my nourishment behind, because I believed I couldn't move fast enough to do both a good job and maintain my connection to my spiritual practice, which comes firstly from my breath.

Time is money, that is a fact which I have learnt, and for some reason, I thought I couldn't work hard enough or fast enough and still breathe freely at the same time. I held my breath for the entire fall and winter seasons, and last week when I tried to get back to square breathing (inhale, hold, exhale, hold), my heartbeat sped up because there was resistance. It felt like a psychic attack. How did I get so far off track?

Now I am returning to a place of calmness where all inspiration and sustenance are drawn from. This rebound to reconnect is incredibly challenging because time isn't just money - it is a condition placed on all life and I have found that I cannot manage it. As I revisit spiritual alchemy, I learn balance. I learn reverence for all the parts of a day that need attention. What needs to be changed or modified in my life to ensure that I am moving at a healthy pace and that my material, spiritual, and emotional needs are met?

Spring is here and it is time for renewal. I know what I need to do, and life really isn't that complicated. I am powerless over time, but I can still work in accordance with it: I can learn how to master what time I am given. This new season, it will be the rebirth of my breath and my connection to God, or to Life Source.

February is the coldest month

Since January 2011, I have posted at least one article per month. At times I chose a blog interface where the side of the homepage showed each year active, and viewers could see every month under the year, denoting articles. I felt a sense of accomplishment and pride. For February 2019 however, there will not be any articles displaying. This is because after a disappointing start to the new year in January, and a new assignment that kept me from my computer, I really only communicated through poems. And rather graphic ones, at that. I realized near the end of the month, I wasn't comfortable keeping them up, and so they are no longer available for viewing.

When I looked at my dashboard upon preparing for this entry, not entirely sure the direction of the piece, I could see five drafts posted in February, two of them works in progress from the end of December - all poems. I have always loved poetry; my dream in high school was to be studied as a writer and my fear was not being appreciated until postmortem. But I had a very long hiatus from writing poetry, since the end of high school. This is for various reasons, but what brought me back to writing poetry was the death of a best friend in 2013, which broke my heart into multiple pieces, all representing different parts of what I grieved. My sorrow closed all of my feelings in, and writing out key words in a gentle rhythm was the only way I could in a quiet way during a vulnerable time express my pain.

As the years went on, I realized poetry was the best way for me to, in a safe, healthy, creative, and satisfying way, release feelings of rejection, loss, and staticity. So to see that I will not be posting any pieces for February because they were all poems, which I decided through healing in the latter part of the month were no longer cohesive to this blog, I now reflect on this seeming failure to not maintain my status quo after many years.

But was it a failure? Of course not. I wrote prolifically, and a couple of those pieces I am proud of, but for now they are for my memory only. I believe writing poetry is the most pure and basic way to reach the end goal of catharsis and if it's a good piece, others will in some way relate to it, and maybe even take a phrase to go along with them on this trek through the wilderness toward liberation from stress.

Walking in conviction

I have a wonderful new friend who is from a strict Muslim country, and when discussing my plans for my day off today, I felt that I might have made him nervous when I said that my meeting with my priest has been rescheduled. I am certain he was a little set off, and even defensive, as he went on to talk about atheist philosophers and the doctrine of absurdism.

So after promptly wishing each other a good day I later followed up with him, asking if he was disturbed, and he said whatever makes me happy is good, and it made me consider the idea of happiness, and how our beliefs and values contribute to that.

It makes perfect sense to adopt the attitude, if it makes you happy, go for it. But nothing is without limit. When I trespass on someone's security, I am no longer in the "right" to do what makes me "happy". My faith and commitment to my religion is generally an autonomous one. I very rarely make my affiliation public and I most certainly don't try to convince others to see things "my" way, unless I am writing something of an evangelical nature, and in that regards people can simply choose to not click on my links.

I am so grateful to have the Bible as a measuring stick. I live in my head a lot of the time, or in a community of like-minded people. A hive mentality can be just as misconceiving as a lone mind, so I always go back to the Bible to ensure it connects, and then I know it's true.

Of course it hurts when my convictions are confronted. I was in the spirituality section last week buying a book by C.H. Spurgeon and I recalled the memes I see where "The Bible" is in the fictional section. But this is where we, as believers, must train. We must be ready for the onfalls, which will happen, and happen without warning.

To have faith is to have strength, it is to remain steadfast in the face of adversity and to remain connected to our values in the waves of weakheartedness. It is to show confidence under pressure, and will in fact be demonstrated though success of various forms in mundane existence.

This is a reason why, as I mentioned in yesterday's piece, it is so important for me to read the Bible from front to back, because I require the fine details for when I am met with doubt, from within or without. There are some horrific events in the Bible, as well as sublime stories that don't make much sense, so I am in no way baffled as to why, especially in today's cultural revolution and the hyper security in our social media climate, that more and more people are not only leaving their family traditions, but actively opposing them.

Still, there are a few of us who continue to study, and who actually take the actions too. Prayer, fasting, meditation....that which are crucial for any revelation that is required for continuity, but also for the spiritual discipline to have the agility to stand up to opposition. Opposition that I do believe is not usually made in malice, but in frustration.

I'm back to chatting with my new friend; we have found different topics - literature and dance. He talks about Russian and French novelists and I respond with Russian and French ballet companies :) There is no reason why we who walk with Christ need to compromise. Ever. If a timeout is needed, by all means, that is in all likelihood God's will to refuel us with new inspiration anyway. May the peace of the Lord be with you always.

After the storm

After a month of spiritual confusion and sorrow, righteous conviction, restitution and finally reconciliation, I am on a huge roll of unification with God and my peers. It is a reboot and I knew it was coming, but wasn't expecting the peace that would accompany it. But with this serenity comes a sort of naivety that all can be rainbows, and I use this word with complete intent.

I am behind my One Year Bible readings and with renewed energy am (attempting) to catch up now. The Word of God is strong in this segment on my Path and I don't want to jump ahead to the current day. I want to really chronologically read the Bible, so when I am inspired by evangelists, or any sermons for that matter, I can feel confident that I know the context of the passages used, and that their teachings can be trusted.

So in my serene little bubble this morning I struggled to read about God's regret for humankind in Genesis chapter 6, and I had to stop as Noah was introduced into the epic. Mankind has acted out of control, and is about to be violently wiped out. But then within a minute, I thought of the moments when I am not serene. I recalled the violence that lurks below the surface, when my instincts are threatened. A wild horse still needing to be broken to a state of humility where I can give to God that which I use to take with force.

And this is not about self-flagellation, this is evidence of the state in daily existence, should we be so fortunate as to really be a part of life. When resources are absent or low, the untamed nature arises, and great evils are committed. But there is a hope that comes in the form of reflection, discipline, sacrifice, and committed connection to self and others. This is a training that can instead surface in times when instincts are threatened.

This doesn't mean that I am righteous, it doesn't mean that I am cured of a soul sickness that plagues all people, but it does mean that I have a chance at not only choosing God in times of trouble, but in fact being diverted from difficulty and obsession altogether. I can learn to live on less, talk less, judge others less, and fight my own faults less. For me this is the true meaning of contentment, and are methods that I can use when I am feeling inadequate, other-than, and fearful.

Apprehension and conflict, which come in the form of anything imaginable, are lurking around every corner. But with God and friends who have the same goals, I wonder if it is possible to create and reside in a world that supports harmony and justice.

The Blackness

I couldn't make a place for you where
you would want to return
And so I set off on my own way
Determined to endure.

Of all that I could give to you,
now lost along the way;
Like the deadened lilies of my youth
How could it not have been the same.

So adieu to you, how I wish I left
with a semblance of a grace
but that is how it ends sometimes,
when a girl has been misplaced.

When faith is not enough

Today's My Utmost for His Highest reading talks about God's provision for us - that we do not need to worry about our needs in our day-to-day living:

"Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?" Matthew 6.28-30

And yet Oswald Chambers teaches by way of this passage that when we let the cares of the world in, we do not permit the grace of God to enter us, thereby not receiving what we need, or blessed to experience abundance, either.

But for the mentally ill, who cannot simply think their way into happiness, or relinquish what little, if any, constructive instinct they hold, in trustful abandonment to God, being able to follow Jesus is impossible.

So what is the solution? What I have found is that accepting my devastating mistakes, I can then finally allow God's radiance to permeate me, and then I can experience peace. Jesus said that he came to give us peace that the world does not know (John 14.27), but for the afflicted who cannot reason accordingly, that peace is evasive, even though a person might truly want to yoke with Christ.

We think that if we admit a mistake, we forever seal it into our being, chaining ourselves to it; but really the opposite is true. When admitting a mistake, we are then ready to be made anew, rebuilt in God's fashion. In confession we are actually freed of error: God wipes our slate clean (Hebrews 10.16-18).

When I admit my delinquencies, they no longer have power over me. When there is an ownership I have the right to give it away, because it is mine to give. And when I do give it to God I become brand new. And that is true love of God:

"Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God." - Romans 12.2

I can't renew my mind by faith alone, because my mind is debased. But when I can say to anyone who is willing to listen, yes,  I missed the mark, that is when I can be accountable and someone who God wants me to be - a disciple who can practice real worship, real renewal to a pre-fallen time. And that, dear friends, is for us all. It is real redemption demonstrated through a peace that this world cannot give. Amen.

Memories of the West

I have a disease of perception. It is the Great Deceit that first plagued the world from the very beginning. It has manifested most noticeably with the complete inability to recognize my blessings. To never have enough, to never get what I wanted. And it is true, there was lack, many times over. But I always came through, I always got what I needed in the last analysis.

And today, with a broken heart and spirit, I recognize the incredible gift I was given in my life, which was to go to one of the best post-secondary institutions in the country. But at the time, I didn't know it. I knew the campus was beautiful, I relished in being viewed as smart when I went back home to Toronto, hiding that I was scraping by with D and C averages. But again, the prestige wasn't enough. I was one year older than my peers after upgrading my high school diploma, and I buried that insecurity for my entire first year. I also acted out routinely, actually thinking that I was hiding it, doing things with people who I had no business doing things with, instead of staying safe in residence and building real friendships that could have lasted a lifetime.

But I think the worst was feeling not good enough. And looking back now I can clearly see that I had squandered the best opportunity I have ever had in my life, but my perception was so skewed that I was utterly oblivious to my good fortune at that time.

I wasn't in business or the sciences, which were the elite and popular programs, respectively, and so in my mind, I was not as good as my peers. But today I know this was in my head. Now that my disease is in remission, I can see how well I had it. I studied my passion at a stunning Ivy League school. And while I was tormented for not being in the "right" buildings on campus, it dawned on me the other day that the buildings that I was in are the landmark colleges on campus. They are the ones that are featured in every article that the university puts out. It's not the science buildings, it's not even the famous business school - it's the arts and humanities buildings.

I really shouldn't be so shocked at my insanity though. The Serpent is the craftiest of all God's creatures and he tricked even the most pure and beautiful of God's design. So how could I, in the pinnacle of my infection, have recognized it, let alone resisted it. It's times like these, the world doesn't make sense - how corruption can consume. But it's also times like these I see the grace of God shining down on me. I was never really hurt: I wasn't ostracized, I wasn't arrested, I wasn't expelled, and though it took some extra years, I did end up graduating.

It has taken fifteen years to have forgiven myself for my absurd behaviour and missed opportunities, but now I remember the beauty of that enchanted world, a campus that was unto its own, a city. A fairy tale that I intuitively knew I was living in. Today I know through and through that I was truly a part of that community, and that glory. And now it is a part of me. Amen.