Previously, on Joe's Life and Words, I was talking about "readwalking" and creativity and sunsets and wikis.  Now, for the conclusion of my walkin' 'round...

I did see hot air balloons at Noelridge (3), but I was so engrossed in the creativityness that I let them go on their ESE-rly way and kept reading.  When I was done making my ideas stick, I drove over to Ellis Park and switched books.  More Merton journals.  Merton and Ellis go well together.

I'm up to about 1958 or so now.  I noticed a peculiar thing between 1953 and 1957.  In 1953, Merton is positively gushing about how wonderful it is to be in a hermitage, in complete solitude, about how he can be one with God there more than anywhere else, how he would love to just live in that solitude all the time, etc.

But by 1957, he's telling a different story. He's talking more about politics, more about what's going on in the world, more about being involved.  He's talking more about how to know and understand God we must understand Him in part through the community of the Church and also thorough the community of the human race.  That's quite a turnaround.  But it's consistent of what I know of Merton -- that he was a believer in solitude, but he also realized that being part of the community was important too -- "no man is an island."

What I find highly intriguing, though, is the progressing. The journey.  I've begun to realize that many (if not all) of the other Merton books I've read are snapshots.  To start with I just read the books and figured they were "Merton's beliefs".  But that's simplistic.  They are his thoughts and beliefs at a certain point in his journey.  Is it okay to lump them all together?  Maybe.  But by looking at these journals, it sorta opens up a new level of things, because I realize that his views were not constant for his 30 years or so of writing.

Well duh.  No one's views are completely fixed.  If they were, it would probably be a sign of stagnation rather than growth.  So... most non-fiction books are written as snapshots I suppose, "Here's what I think about...sticky ideas", to name a relevant topic from today.  But I wonder if that leaves something to be desired.  Could it be that a book (or writing, or whatever) that shows the progression of thought would be at once more interesting and easier to follow than something that just dumps out the endstate product?

This thought reminded me of blogs.  Blogs can obviously show the progression of ideas over time, at least in one person's mind.  Blogs are really the same as journals, except for the public/private thing.  The more I think about it, the more value I find in blogs. Especially on the increase is my understanding of the value of blogs at work.  Even on work-related topics, employees and managers have things to say, and being able to follow that train of thought as it progresses is valuable, I think.  And a blog makes such progression visible in ways that doesn't really happen otherwise.  (It's tricky to decide how much information should be blogged, but that's way too deep for this entry.)

Anyway...anyway...anyway... I'm learning the value of journey, and particularly of watching that journey transpire in the lives of others.  It's easy to see in Merton, cuz his years go by in a few pages of reading.  For the rest of us, it's harder to see the change and the steps of the journey, but slowly, slowly, the pages are turning, we are becoming "who we are meant to be", and learning, and dreaming, and watching the boats on the sunset-sky-mirroring water, and all that good stuff.

Funny the things I think of while eating lunch at work....

I was thinking about how life goes, how it has its ups and down, and how so many of us find it hard to just trust God that he knows what he's doing.  It reminded me of a dance.

Now, I don't know much about dancing, but I'll pretend I do.  Imagine God as the leader of a dance, and we are each the following partner to God. There may be times when he spins us, dips us, etc.  Think of this first as a physical dance -- in your mind's eye, how long do such potentially scary moves last?  A second?  Two at the most?  Even though we don't necessarily know the next choreographed move, in a typical dance the time goes by so fast that we don't have time to ponder life and doubt that the leader will catch us.

The difference is that the real dance with God is a lifelong dance.  It is swing dancing in slow motion.  Instead of the dips and spins (the scary parts) lasting a second, they may last months -- and since we're human, that gives us plenty of time to have all sorts of doubts and develop all sorts of untrusting attitudes.

So the moral is: it's easy to trust when the timescale is a few seconds.  Our role in the spiritual life is to maintain trust when answers, resolution, peace, whatever may not come immediately, and may not come for an extended period of time.  It's the waiting, the patience, the day-to-day stuff where the battle is won.

Most of you know that stuff has been going on in my life lately, stuff that has obviously brought these thoughts to the forefront in my mind.  However, I trust that you will take my words at face value -- I'm not talking about my situation, or any one particular situation, but I'm hopefully saying words that we can all relate to in our own lives.

What do you think about patience? We talk about patience a lot, but sometimes it's on the order of having patience with our kids when they won't pick up their toys or patience at a stop light.  I'm talking about something a little deeper and long-term than that.

Consider some quotes/lyrics/verses:

• Pastor Randy: The goal of spiritual life is change.
• Michael Card (Maranatha): "It's certain that waiting's the most bitter lesson a believing heart has to learn."
• Sandi Patti (Another Time, Another Place): "So I'm waiting, for another time and another place"
• Romans 8:19: "The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed."
• Galatians 4:19: "...I am again in the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in you..."

I realize some of these lines are referring to a future in heaven, but I want to keep my discussion to what goes on in our lives on this earth. I believe that we are all on a spiritual journey, and where we were in the past is not where we are today, and where we will be tomorrow, though it has not yet been revealed to us, is not where we are today (and we hope with God's help it's a better, deeper, more mature place).

What I think we can gather from the quotes above is again that our lives are meant for change. We can choose to read in to the word change, "Make me do stuff I don't want to do" or "Take my comfort zone away", but we can also see it as "purify my heart", "mature my mindset" -- the opportunity to become who we are meant to be, in God's plan.

What we are left to discuss is the waiting component.  I will assume that you agree with me that change is a blessing God gives us.  But change doesn't happen overnight.  How many people lose hope in life because they don't see the change they wish to see? How many go through their days in a maze of normalness, never thinking about where they came from or where they are going? I pray that we would be alert not just to the day, but also to the season we are in, and to the things God is bringing us to learn.  As we understand more and more how this process works, we can (ideally) choose ways to fill up our time that foster this process.  We obviously can't be in actively-being-tutored mode every second, but we can always have something in the back of our minds (carefully, with discernment) looking for a lesson to be learned in the events of our lives.  And although we probably won't feel like we're growing every day, hopefully in time we can look back down the path and see how much more.. mature.. our thinking and our actions have become.

May we as a community (however you define and bound that community) always be in a state of growth-change, becoming the individuals, families, and communities that God is actively and presently creating us to be.