indulgence

I think I'll blow some stress by indulging in some appalling haiku writing.

laughter floats through walls
not matching the pain inside
sunshine settles my soul

crazy making

My work is all about having the tough conversations. About lovingly and firmly showing people when and where they have the wrong end of the stick. About sticking the pin in the ego balloon. About staying firm so that they can have a melt down.

I almost can't do it. It is sooooo sooo hard and I find it crazy making. Besides all that, it's HARD to do, technique-wise.

What is going on in me that I can't have the hard conversations? What is going on in all of us that make hard conversations so tough? I've been following some threads in the blogosphere lately and the lack of dialogue is appalling. Worse, it is hurtful. I never want to hurt the people that I work with, but they are paying me a lot of money and I feel that it is imperative to let them know when they are going down the wrong path. The problem is, the path is so wide and some of it is valuable creative territory, so it's tough to know when to give the reality checks.

Sigh. It's so tough to know. How do you speak the truth in love when the truth is an amibigous thing (no, I'm not talking religious truth, I'm talking about decisions people need to make about their families and themselves)?

why I love my work

Today's laugh:

"I am not a dead beet dad"

more haiku

I saw the word "splintered" today and wanted to incorporate it into a haiku. Here goes...

all the way back home
the wind chases the tulips;
spring splinters winter

wry smile

This passage from Doris Lessing comes from Karen over at One House:

Of course my friend knows, just as my parents hopefully believed, when I presented them with exactly the same you-are-damned, I-and-my-friends-are-saved pattern, that her daughter will “grow out of it.” The Western world is full of people who’ve been through this experience of being, when young, a member of a group of raving bigots and lunatics, and have emerged from it. I would say that half the people I know in Britain come into this category. But in our case it was political, not religious. Remembering our time of total commitment to a set of dogmas that we now find pathetic, we tend to wear wry smiles.

Meanwhile, we observe later generations going through it and, knowing what we are capable of, fear for them. Perhaps it is not too much to say that in these violent times the kindest, wisest wish we have for the young must be: “We hope that your period of immersion in group lunacy, group self-righteousness, will not coincide with some period of your country’s history when you can put your murderous and stupid ideas into practice.

If you are lucky, you will emerge much enlarged by your experience of what you are capable of in the way of bigotry and intolerance. You will understand absolutely how sane people, in periods of public insanity, can murder, destroy, lie, swear black is white."


Lessing, Doris. Prisons We Choose To Live Inside. Montreal: CBC Enterprises; 1986, p. 34.

today's haiku

alone in a group
silent words clang through the air
clear my blind heart please

5-7-5

I'm taken with the haiku poetry that has been popping up 'round and about these days. Me too, please.

scratchy old guitar
flying like a bird inside
I now grasp freedom

All the way back home

What is it about art that can crack open my heart, sear past the mess and open up the deepest parts of me? I was just looking at some of the art that came out of the emergent conference last week in San Diego and I am totally moved by it. I also just popped over to Rachelle's blog and read about the Lenten tree that their community put together. Add the emerging music concert I went to yesterday and I'm feeling kind of wiggly inside. Art doesn't scratch itches, it creates them. Maybe they are necessary itches, the kind that the Creator wants to scratch.

I really don't have words for my beliefs these day. Art helps give me workable shapes, some out-of-the-corner-of-my-eye insights that bring me slowly closer to this thing that people are calling the Kingdom of God. I'm not sure what to call it, but Right might be close.

Fluency

I have this suspicion that if I could become fluent in a language other than English, I would be able to become a fluent musician as well. I yearn to be able to do something well; to be good at something. To have something within my repertoire where people would say "Lisa is an amazing _____". I can't think of any one thing that I excel at; not one thing that I'm truly skilled at.

I'm stumbling and grumbling this morning. I'm having a tough time being human, being broken, being a work in progress. I'm buying the line that if I was only good at _____, then I'd be a whole human being, someone worth knowing, someone worth being around. It's a tough place to be when you're not sure you want to be around yourself. And damn it, there is no where else to go. Does anyone else want to be their shadow, with the freedom to walk a different path from the shadow caster?

Anyone have any ideas about internal reference points when you are a Christian? Psychologically speaking, healthy people are internally referenced; that is, they find their worth and meaning from inside themselves, not from external source points such as friends, family, accomplishments or the media. The opposite of being internally referenced is, obviously, being externally referenced. Does Christianity tell us that we are externally referenced? That because we are fearfully and wonderfully made and known full well that we are good? If God tells me that I'm valuable, is that an external reference point? What about me? How can I believe that I'm valuable? Just me. Just my opinion about myself. Boy, that's my $64,000 question.

I think maybe my yearning to be fluent, to be skilled, is a big huge mirror pointing to the fact that my real yearning is to believe that I'm valuable. Not because anyone else thinks I'm valuable, but because I believe that about myself. I'm not sure where Jesus/God fit into this. Any suggestions?