Turning the Page

It’s Hard to Put into Words

There is an internal world to every one of us with words that need sharing, but it’s hard to put into words, so we need someone safe to help us.
They wanted him to tell them what was going on inside, but it felt more like he was in the corner of a boxing ring and they were ready to punch.
When you’re in that kind of space, everything can either shut down or liven up.
For some, they will fight, others will flee, then for others, they will freeze. No words, no expression, just a closed and bolt shut door to the inside of the soul.
It’s then impossible to put anything into words.
I think men, in particular, find it difficult to put complex soul stuff into words. They may want to, but they just don’t know how, especially under the threat of potential getting it wrong. So they shut down.
The ‘going quiet’ becomes a default setting as they try to work it out themselves.
Society breeds into men that should have it all together, to have all the answers and be quick in response. They that are the achiever’s, problem solvers, and heroes on white horses wearing superman capes.
Yet, in reality, all men, if they are honest, have a quivering jelly like heart that wrestles every day with intangibles.
 
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They make me feel

They make me feel … (add in your emotional extreme), but there is a space between stimulus and response. Use it.
I was watching the news the other night and the first item was about a mother complaining about how a politician made her daughter feel. She claimed that the politician was a bully and had threatened her daughter.
I don’t know the full details, but it was the words ‘made her feel’ that grabbed my attention.
These words always do, and I always skip back to the quote from Eleanor Roosevelt.
No one can make you feel inferior without your consent. Eleanor Roosevelt
This belief, that my feelings are under the control of others, is prevalent in our culture.
Listen to these pop songs
You make me feel like a natural woman (Arethra Franklin)
You make me feel like dancing (Leo Sayer)
You make me feel like I’m alive again (Cold play)
You make me feel like a fool (Frankie Cosmos)
You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)
From these songs, that we sing into our psyche, they seem to say that our feelings are hard-wired to the actions of others.
Certainly others can influence how we feel, but can anyone make us feel certain things?
 
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Finding that Still Small Voice

It’s a noisy world with lots of stressors wanting our attention, but there is a still small voice longing to be heard, so quiet yourself and listen.
I have a pendulum clock on a bookshelf near me.
Yesterday, I noticed the pendulum was swinging back and forth freely, but now it’s barely moving.
The only sound I can hear is a little ‘click’ sound coming from it.
In the background, a car passes by, an early bird Tui makes a small announcement to the day.
But is there silence in my brain?
Thoughts whirl. The usual ones.
My pendulum thoughts have begun to swing for another day.
Have you ever simply stopped and noticed the thoughts that seem to dominate the playground of your mind?
Some thoughts you have are so familiar that they have dug thinking tracks deep and wide into the physical networks of your brain.
In the noise, I long for a still, small voice.
 
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Risking a Sacred Conversation

Risking a Sacred Conversation
EDIT
 
We all want to be known, held and loved, but to find this requires a level of risk to have a sacred conversation. Are you ready for that?
 
I once had a conversation with someone, what I would call a sacred conversation, and they couldn’t handle the fire.
They couldn’t handle the heat of what I shared. I could hardly handle it myself, and I was hoping they could help.
But they were too caught up in rules, regulations, and fire extinguishers.
Not everyone can handle the fire. Not everyone has hands that can hold molten lava words. Some can, most can’t, and that’s actually ok.
But for some of the deep burning coals that we carry in our lives, we need someone who will risk coming near our fire. Some conversations are sacred moments where angels hold their breath to see what will proceed.
These sacred conversations are always risky.
So risky that you won’t be able to come near them without the divestment of footwear.
 
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Opened Too Early

There is a time for everything, and some things get opened too early, but there is hope, and God can bring release and recovery.
 
They had been opened too soon. They weren’t ready yet.
Her deep beauty had not been allowed to fully mature, but now it had been opened.
They had told him that this was love. Told him lies that, maybe, they had heard themselves at the same tender age. From this interruption to normal, healthy development, he would never fully move into his world the way intended. Never with the confidence about who he was and what he was about.
They both now had a poison injected into their being. Their ‘human being’ and this affected all their doing.
Interrupted and injected.
Everyone of us has had times of an interruption. Something has cut across our path and caused normal health development to cease, to take a different route, to go off track.
A lie has been injected into our thinking. ‘There is no beauty to you’ ‘You have no purpose’
A rose
As I sit here writing, I look outside and see a rosebush. It’s springtime, and it is pushing out lush new growth from the hard pruning I gave it in the winter.
I can see the beginnings of a flower. It’s a small ball the size of a marble.
It’s coming. I know it is. That small ball will swell from the inside out. It will soon be the size of a golf ball.
There is a temptation to force it open. To peel back the green calyx surrounding and covering the beauty. ‘I want that beauty and I want it now.’
But no, I wait and let it come naturally. Let it emerge in its own way.
That rose bush has been through a lot of rough weather recently. A few days ago it was pelted with hail. Then wild winds thrashed at it.
The growth continued. It may have slowed, but it continued pushing with a cell multiplication that would astound us.
One day, very soon, the yellow colours will explode out into the world. Fragrance will fill the air.
It will shout ‘Look at me’ and I will come and soak in the scent of its glory. Bees will visit, wander around its stamens, collect some nectar, pollen and be on their way.
Angels will sing, parties will explode out of nothingness. God will say it is good.
I know people like this rose. They are at various stages of revelation.
Some hold the calyx around them tight. They have built walls high and strong. They don’t want anyone seeing in.
Maybe because someone has awakened them too early.
The words ‘damaged goods’ is heard so often that I consider opening a repair shop. Perhaps this website is a bit like that. A place of renovation from the inside out.
 
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Sitting with Shame

Sitting with shame can suffocate life, but sitting in solidarity with someone in soul talk can break its control.
 
It’s there if you want to hear it. A sneaky, whispery voice from the past.
You hear it in others. They may have said nothing directly to you, but it’s there. Shame is a shadowy character.
It hides in the corners, and under the floorboards. It creeps around trying to be unnoticed.
But you can always guarantee, if given a prod, it will come out and haunt you down.
Shame splices into your soul that you are flawed. Actually, worse than that, it’s more like ‘YOU ARE A FLAW, A MISTAKE, AN UGLY WASTE OF SPACE.’
Shame would never say, with objective honestly, that you have flaws. It always says You are a flaw.
So we sit on a park bench with shame. Like old man or woman, critical of everything you do, they sit next to you mutter reminders.
 
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God is Compassion

It’s a broken world where we desperately need hope, but God is compassion, and so we get to live again.
 
The other day I found some mouse droppings in my kitchen.
Concerned about the hygiene of the kitchen, I set a trap. Peanut butter would be the temptation that little mouse could not refuse.
Off to bed I went and in the middle of the night I heard the mouse trap go off. Snap!
Good, I thought, when I wake up in the morning, I will dispose of the little rodent.
I went back to sleep only to be woken a few hours later with a banging and clattering sound going on under my bed. Annoyed, I got up and looked under my bed and here was the trap and the little mouse with its foot caught in it.
Dilemna! 
What do I do? Do I kill the mouse and if so, how? Do I let it go it and let it live another day? Will it come back?
Then I realised it had actually dragged itself and the trap 12 metres from the kitchen to my bedroom. Amazing, and that it came to the only one that could help it. Another mammal like itself.
It needed help from someone bigger and chose me.
Compassion and pity prodded my heart.
 
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I am Waiting for the Shroud to be Lifted

Something was wrapped over them. A shroud. But there is a waiting to be found and a rich party to one day be found. 
 
There was something draped over them, or at least that was it felt like. A shroud.
What’s a shroud? It’s something that envelopes or obscures.
A shroud of mist can cover the landscape.
A shroud also refers to the burial cloth in which a dead person is wrapped for burial.
Sometimes, as I listen to people, it feels like there is something draped over them. That they have a shroud and my calling is to lift up the shroud, look under, and bring some Spirit resuscitation.
We could call that shroud depression, hopelessness, grief, loss, despair.
We could also call it a grounded awareness of the reality of living in a broken world. A world where broken world decisions keep being made by people like me and you. Decisions and choices that aren’t always inline with God’s kingdom come.
So I sit, listen, grieve and groan.
I pray for a presence of comfort to fill the weary soul. That the shroud wouldn’t suffocate.
I also point people to finding comfort in truth that they can easily digest.
Simple things like …
I am heldI am knownI am loved
Perhaps I could add a fourth
I am waiting
 
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Why Was I Created

It wasn’t random. It wasn’t chance. It wasn’t the roll of some celestial dice or the flip of a coin. Your creation was part of a work of art God has had in mind for all eternity.
I know that’s hard to believe. It seems so vast, immeasurable, and beyond understanding. Mysterious and complex beyond anyone’s ability to grasp into everyday sentences.
If that is true, which I truly believe it is, then why was I created?
I wonder, I pray, I scratch my head and hold the questions up to God.
People send me questions that I in myself don’t have neat, tidy answers. Well, maybe I do, but they probably won’t satisfy or salve a hurting soul.
The recurring answer goes something like this.
We are broken people living in a broken world where broken world decisions and choices are made, but God is in the business of making all things new, so we pray, trust, and hope.
Is that broad enough to envelop your situation?
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Being Faithful with the Little

We often think we can’t do much to change the situations we are in but by being faithful with the little we have we can move mountains. It’s the little things that give you away. 
It seemed such a small thing.
I remember my parents’ daily little habit of reading the Bible. I think they had a daily devotional sitting alongside as they read.
Why I remember this because as a young child I would cuddle in between them as my father would read holy words into the new day.
Little faithful habits build thinking structures that shape the world.
I have written about my mother’s bible faithfully read and little quotes added here and there.
I remember on Sundays going to our place of worship and seeing my father sit in the pew and quietly bow his head in prayer before the service. I’m not sure what he prayed, but maybe it was something like ‘God, I’m here, speak to me.’
My observation of them being faithful with the little taught me a great deal.
Your parents did too. Good and bad. They provided micro-influencers to shape how you see your world and how you understand God.
I believe that how you see God is how you see everything. Never despise the little.
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