The ‘Found’ and the Times Lost

“[Humanity’s] whole life is a continual contradiction of what they know to be their duty. In every department of life they act in defiant opposition to the dictates of their conscience and their common sense.”

~Leo Tolstoy (adapted for gender inclusiveness).

Failure becomes us, and often. Despite our better judgment—even to the trilling moment—we find that though we maybe ‘found’ we’re intrepidly lost in the paling madness of momentary life in the world. A second is all it takes.

It contains all of us, beyond the perfections we otherwise strive for.

There is More

There bodes upon us the haling, creasing, nails-down-a-blackboard shriek—come home to awareness, and turn! There is something altogether better...

This better thing is a call to all—at all times—and it will always be.

God knows, and so do we—if we’ll enquire deep enough with God—how inherently flawed we are, not only to fail, but to not succeed toward the life of grace through which we’re called—all of us.

The Antithesis of Discipleship

In centuries past, and certainly in Jesus’ time, discipleship was a black ‘n’ white affair. People followed or they didn’t. There was no mid-way ground.

Bringing this into a postmodern time in this present age we find that people invent their own forms of discipleship, taking their ‘little bit’ of Jesus—exempting the ‘cumbersome’ whole—as if to customise God to their own requirements (a.k.a. personalities or desires).

This is the folly that leads to the state that Tolstoy has described at top. At a heavenly level it’s nonsensical. Like cause and effect we find we’ll run against God when we take selectively of the blessings of his provision.

This is not so much a hard word as much as it’s true. Again, it’s a personal word for each of us, for all-time.

Jesus – All or Nothing

Jesus presents himself—consistently through the gospels, and as he’s known through life—as a Saviour who must be followed without reservation. This is about knowing him so well, through the gently affirming, conforming and lovingly-chastening Spirit, that we have a clear knowledge of God’s will—and we do it, obeying via instinct i.e. without a great deal of indecisive thought.

The will of God can only be known through knowing God, investing in reading Scripture, through prayer, through love, grace and good works of truth. God reveals himself more and more to us via these, and more. The more we invest, the more we know God.

Jesus. All or nothing. Black ‘n’ white. No holds barred.

When we surrender our entire lives to him, only then will we begin to experience his fullness. If we’ve lived a reserved-faith, or even backslidden, whatever we’ve known to this point is little compared to the power we’re about to become ensconced with when we commit fully to him.

© 2010 S. J. Wickham.

Further Reading: Dallas Willard, The Spirit of the Disciplines – Understanding How God Changes Lives (New York, New York: HarperOne, 1988), pp. 262-63.

Embracing Opportunity in the Midst of Crisis

“The real task is to be prophetic, not pedantic; to search for contradictions that matter—and matter not to us but to the people we are engaging.”

~Os Guinness.

We live in the midst of crisis. And this statement is not just hatched in the context of the 21st Century—it’s relevant to any age, for there’s nothing new regarding the features of humanity’s ‘reign,’ i.e. the use and abuse of this planet, since the Fall was propagated via the disobedience of Adam and Eve.

The relevance here, however, is personal.

To make the right sort of difference in life—a loving difference for God—requires us to bond adherently to truth, despite ourselves.

Where we don’t make a pact with and for the truth, we blaspheme life and the Life Force behind it all.

Postmodernism Isn’t the First Horror Against Truth

Guinness points out in his book, Time for Truth, that G.K. Chesterton encountered a very similar world to ours—one estranged to the truth—as a young student in the early 1890s; a world “swirling with decadence, cynicism, and pessimism.”[1]

I’m still horribly amazed at how grating some so-called learned people are in the application of their wisdom (for it is not God’s). These profane the privilege of knowledge, using it arrogantly and negatively—against the very people they’re intended to bless by their wisdom.

God always intends we use our wisdom to serve others. That’s primary. To serve others is to serve God.

But, some separatist people take great delight in bestowing upon others only the vitriol their dark-hearted learnedness affords. A little bit of knowledge is hence dangerous—it’s used by childish and hurt hands; hands not happy or acquainted with the truth. In this way, they use their gift against God, and inevitably against themselves also. It spins back and smacks them on their own faces.

This is never more evidently seen than in their blindly tepid misery by which they’re known; unhappy and unfriendly they generally are—for they bless no-one, least of which themselves.

Truth Bridges the Gap and Must Come First

Learnedness and blessedness are two separate entities that can at once be enjoined, but truth must be embraced—against the current and predilection of any human age—for it to occur.

The motives at the heart level are antecedent to the proper course of wisdom.

Honing In On the Right Contradictions

Differences exist in contradiction, but it takes a Spirit-indwelt wisdom to divine the right contradictions to take notice of and hence respond to—the devil’s playground is the rest. The ‘how’ of response is only then explored after the wheat is sorted first from the chaff.

Lying awake—encapsulating the embraceable contradiction—in any age, is the idea of attaching firstly to truth, conforming the heart in alignment with eternity, and being forever obedient beyond the self. This is truth.

It’s a very simple thing. Only those who love the truth can ever act in wisdom, for they know the way; it’s through loving others in ways that make key differences.

These are the prophetic people of any age; they pass over the pedantic contradictions which only proffer annoyance, only choosing contradictions known to truly betray life within their actual circle of influence.

To these they conspire, pursue, initiate and respond—with committedness second to none. This is the crisis to which their lives attend.

© 2010 S. J. Wickham.

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[1] Os Guinness, Time for Truth – Living Free in a World of Lies, Hype, & Spin (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Books, 2000), p. 93.

‘COULD BE’

Many situations in life are not fixable via one set way of fixing them. There are many ways to the same end.

Options present themselves all the time.

But, the problem overlying ‘the problem,’ i.e. the one(s) we have right now, is we want to justify our preconceptions.

One of my favourite sages, Balthasar Gracian, has said that it’s often good to occasionally reconsider our decisions-of-instinct; even better to have the courage to act on second thoughts—though we should bear in mind that indecision is eventually a nemesis. (Although not deciding for a while is not always indecision!)

The higher mind has about it the ability to consider; saying, “Could be,” in the presence of presented ‘fact,’ which many who use the default less-enquiring lower mind take as simply established. These people would even at times castigate the less enthusiastic enquirer for their ‘lack of faith,’ in not just boldly committing to a view or decision in the light of what seems immediately and blindingly apparent.

The higher mind, therefore, requires the courage-of-confidence to deliver its own verdict, to edict delay, and even be able to sit on the fence for a time. Again, this can be a decisive delay.

There’s nothing like holding out patiently to see how all the cards fall if there is time.

Life is better with options, where they’re available.

© 2010 S. J. Wickham.

LAST GAME

None of us endures for long past our last performance. It’s all we have. It’s not all we are, but it truly is all we have. The performance before the last one is history. Why this is, is a mystery.

Many of us confuse our worth for our roles.

We sense that the value should be in us as people, and not the role we play. But this is a nonsensical approach being that the role is what we’re employed for, paid or otherwise. Even from links of friendship form bonds of expectation, however tacitly applied.

The very last thing we’ve done we’re known for.

We could have played our best game or done our best job two times ago, yet if the last one was an embarrassing fiasco we have little credibility right now to stand upon. The world before us has a short memory and little patience of grace, let alone our own steaming depression. It’s just the way life is.

And yet, our role—over and above the role we think we have—is to overcome this chiding fact and set ourselves over the last ignominy, climbing again aboard the grace-filled chariot of fire to the homeland of relative success. This caters for and smooths the path.

This is real success-living: establishing feet for the tremulous journey and laughing all the way despite occasional feelings of abject discontentment and anguish.

The last game may well be the best way to actualise what we do, but it isn’t who we are. We are people who overcome; another chance is where we put the past well behind us, looking ever forward.

© 2010 S. J. Wickham.

Containing Our Incredulity

We will see—and indeed, some of us have seen—some amazing and awesome and terrible things. In moments of terror we must somehow remain calm, defeating the temptation to gawk, and therefore delay, at those things happening right before our eyes; those things defying, not our senses but, our expectations.

This is about getting our minds right. It’s about staying together and staying focused.

Let us go inside the incredulity.

Going Inside

It is vastly foreign to us, this place, and what is happening to us.

We haven’t perhaps in any way expected it, or at least not at this loaded magnitude or shrill proximity.

But, nonetheless, we are here; it may not seem so, yet it is. The mind can comprehend this better, and optimally only, when we negate the overly-emotive heart. It’s too early for the heart just yet. If we let the heart through this door of our consciousness now, we bear it and it’s too much a load to bear just now, with all of what else’s going on otherwise. Undisciplined, it interferes with responsive calculations.

We must save ourselves and our thought for logic. It’s safety that has highest and sole precedence.

A Clear Pathway for Logical Thinking

Logic must grace the freeway at peak-hour with a dedicated lane all its own if possible. It alone, therefore, attends to this full priority situation without encumbrance, free to think and act in accordance with what it senses.

To attend to our own desires or fumbling emotions in urgent moments is a gross luxury none can afford to indulge in, lest a cavalcade of regret festoon its way with calamitous power into our lives afterward.

A Colluding Irony

There is a golden paradox, now, that makes its introduction.

There’s nothing quite like the legislative logical mind under the charge of a harnessed emotive mind—the logical mind directing the body, but the harnessed emotion commanding the overall effort, but to add to the complexity, only in dependence to the logical mind. The emotive mind is a servant leader—obeying the need to command, and commanding then only. It acts for the logical mind and not apart.

The logical mind and the harnessed emotive mind, then, dually report and account to each other in a beautiful interdependence made famous and subservient to the other.

What All the Foregoing Actually Means

When we’re faced with very dire circumstances in life we’re quite normally at odds in how to respond. Dissonance becomes us. Sometimes we lose composure and we react emotionally. At other times, however, we respond in an unsurpassing calmness that we hardly understand. We implicitly know we have to hold it together. And we do.

The abovementioned analysis is based in getting to the latter position of calmness in tumult. If we reflect on situations where the latter characterised our response it might make more sense.

Emergencies are no place for the intrusions of the emotions that must come later in the process so as to attach healthy meaning to the event and what we’ve ‘become’ due to it.

© 2010 S. J. Wickham.

It Is What It Is

It is what it is... and that’s all. But, it positively is everything it is!

It is the truth.

It’s the possession we currently possess—not limited in any way to material possessions, but it’s also our skills, knowledge, experiences, attitudes and values, and a whole lot more. Possession is not ‘nine tenths of the law’ for just little reason. Possession ‘is’ and it becomes everything of meaning.

It’s the present status quo and the situational constructs that embrace us.

It’s the hopes, plans and dreams we hold to (or those that hold us)—those that are creating for us our enduring identities; those forming even as we think and speak.

It’s reliable whilst it doesn’t change—we can safely behold its beauty and majesty right now before change all-too-soon arrives.

This ‘is’ – it’s the Greek ‘is’ i.e. estin – it exists – it bears – it sustains; just now. In certain contexts it is an eternal ‘is’ – for instance, “Worthy is the Lamb,” as set out in Revelation 5:12.

This ‘is’ is quantifiable, observable, containable and undeniable.

It is the firmest of all realities—that which ‘is’ right now.

Take it—it’s yours!

© 2010 S. J. Wickham.

Planning and Instinct – Both/And

Acting in life is best configured via a mix of planning and instinct—not in an either/or fashion, but both/and. Instinct is far more powerful and valuable to us the vast majority of the time—though the effects of planning, on its day, are indispensible for success.

The both/and life is the full and abundant life that God came to give us; but it’s not a life crammed to the brim for the sake of keeping up. It is life crammed to the brim based upon purpose—for when purpose is existent the burdensome feeling of ‘work’ is nullified. Work becomes our meaning and our pleasure.

Life is Much Better Lived on Instinct

Here is implied trust. The instinctual person, skilled at what they do and how they act, trusts themselves at the pointy-ended moment, to deliver what is needed. They trust their God-sponsored instinct. They know that ninety percent of the time they’ll survive by getting it right. The rest is apportioned to a strong sense of God’s grace to forgive—the self. Mistakes test the implied trust, merely honing it, as this trust that instinct relies upon is never really in doubt for those believing God.

Instinct has a far better way of knowing the needs of the moment. It isn’t weighed down by chatter of the mind or the baggage of the heart. It sees, perceives and acts—in powerful simplicity. It is clinical as a process with awakened senses as to the emotional and spiritual needs of the time.

When we live instinctually, trusting our intuition—which, of course, must be piqued, we live obedient to the words of Jesus in Matthew 10:19-20, as he spoke to the disciples about not being concerned about what to say or how to say it in the event of their arrest.

God wants us mentally present, not with minds loaded with preconceived plans.

Yet, If/When We Plan...

Planning, however, is still vital in life. There are always times when we’re to be planning.

Planning is our rear guard. It’s the get-out-of-jail-free-card that we have in our back pockets, forever constantly aware of, in the farther recesses of our minds. It is indispensible; but only from the paradoxical view of hindsight.

It has its moment by way of the things of diligence—our ‘down time’ is planning time. We plan every day, even every spare moment. The mind that has God can learn to juggle instinct and planning quite dynamically.

Bringing the Best of Both Planning and Instinct Together

Knowing the place of both is key, and even better, to be able to swap both at the flip of a coin—interchanging modes of action as if they served us, and us alone—for they do. This mind of ours is ours—let us possess it, then, with the Presence and will of God.

Herein lays the key to remaining agile, nimbly initiating and responding in life like a seasoned jewel thief—but always for morally-worthwhile purposes and purposes of intent.

© 2010 S. J. Wickham.

Forever Renting, Never Buying?

The wonderful tones of Dido are a consummate favourite. Her autobiographically-lyrical, first-person sung, song Life for Rent (2003) peels away at the layers of life, revealing them, for the non-committed person—the fence-sitter—compelling them forward, to ‘buy’ from life.

We’re forgiven for searching and forever not finding, but for those of us who cannot decide for fear of being pole-axed for taking the risks inherent in life, we’re fooled in our stagnant paralysis.

In our standing still, staying out of the cold and rain of life, we’ll deserve nothing more than we’ll inevitably get—lest our complaints, which are also never more so inevitable, in our disempowered, self-imposed ordinances.

Life Rewards Some, Punishes Others

Life repays the purchaser; the person who looks keenly over the vista that is their life-view, considering what ‘investments’ he or she is able to make. All is gain and nothing is loss for these. Ever looking forward they brace with delight all takers and all events, though some bad turns will inevitably cause them to reflect and recoil. They’re human after all.

With the purchases there will be losses. These are not punishments.

Risks are taken and some will not pay off; they’ll be seen in retrospect as unwise. And still the purchaser is well ahead of the renter in life. This has nothing so much to do with actual dwellings—the choice of mortgages over rental agreements—and monetary investment, but it’s more a fact regarding the living of life; sowing into the fabric of action as it pertains to life.

We always must do our analyses, risks versus reward and so forth. And even more certainly we must decide.

What we can do, we do.

Dreaming, Doing and Purpose

I used to be a dreamer—for such a long time—but now I’m a doer. No longer can I stand by and look dreamily on... God has attached purpose to my heart.

We must have purpose—our very own purpose; some intrinsic sense of our life-death vision for life; something that throbs resonantly and deeply within us, urging us on in the energising plenum of our hearts. This purpose feeds us as we enter the furnaces of self doubt, condemnation and ridicule. Purpose gets us through the mightiest challenge to ourselves.

When we take the plunge and make a habit of it, only then can we learn via a very healthy sense of life application. For life is the learning ground. We cannot learn if do not try and fail, and fail again, before eventually succeeding. Success and learning are more folly than failure and learning are. Although we try not to fail, we learn more from failure than success—where we have purpose.

Fail, and fail well.

The applied life is what counts. It’s what God counts on—via his investment of love—as he breathes life into us. We were created to inspire; if not others, then certainly ourselves.

© 2010 S. J. Wickham.

Analysing H.A.L.T. – Simply Living Better

There are many acronyms that give us great clues in our journey toward wisdom, a.k.a. living better. This one is particularly special in that it helps us live a less confused life when hunger, moods, loneliness and tiredness set in. H.A.L.T. means:

H – Hungry

A – Angry

L – Lonely

T – Tired

The key thing in this, for me personally, is not so much when one of these issues crowds into our personal space—it’s when two or more, or worse, when all four of them collude to smash our sense of purpose, hope and spiritual freedom. That’s the watch point.

Multi-Pronged Attacks

Most of us can be completely and unknowingly swept away on a tide insidiously of the H.A.L.T. means.

We get hungry and we eat anything in sight, many times with vagrant self control. Or we enter into conflict with someone, without remaining aware, and we begin to lose our emotional composure, anger threatening. Perhaps we just feel lonely—we all feel lonely from time to time. Tiredness is something most people battle with, more and more these days if you believe demographical statistics. (One hundred years ago, for instance, people generally slept 8-10 hours a day; these days we get by on 5-7. Seven and a half to eight hours sleep per night is our optimum.)

These above can be one of many ways we’re also spiritually attacked, knocking us clear off centre. We, therefore, should always attend to the antecedents of a healthy life to ward against them.

Now, weave two or more of these into your mind at the same time—impinging on our spirit’s peace—and we have instantly the makings of cognitive chaos, spiralling downward with manifestly bedraggled emotion.

A New Plan – Pack on Some Resilience a.k.a. ‘Mental Toughness’

None of us can truly contend with such a chaotic inner world for long, but much like brain-training we can increase our resilience—much like the elite soldier does. As well we can avoid the stimulus to H.A.L.T. in the first place, as it applies—this being the very best wisdom; prevention better than cure.

Fasting is one way we not only bow before God in sacrificial prayer, but it’s also a discipline, testing our spiritual resolve.

I used to get cranky when I fasted. That was until some in my family let me know. I couldn’t engage in something for God and upset people in the process, so I had to change my approach—I had to become stronger mentally.

When we’re hungry and tired, for instance, our reserves are typically low... anger is not far away, and hence also loneliness, when we’ve beaten everyone off!

If we fast, we fast with intention. We consciously acknowledge the negative power of H.A.L.T. and we then continuously measure and check our feelings and thoughts, and therefore our responses. It’s not easy. To focus continually draws even more energy from an already sugar-depleted brain. Getting to be mentally stronger is never easy—but it is achievable. We can only do this if we’re living a day/moment at a time. I feel it’s impossible otherwise.

Let’s remember that beyond a ‘healthy, wholesome discipline’ as far as training is concerned—remembering that training’s purpose is not to break us, but to prepare us—we’re to avoid the H.A.L.T.’s.

We plan life well so we’re appropriately rested, fed and not anguished, and that we have sufficient friendship and social mixing time (including, fundamentally, our fellowship with God) so that we don’t feel lonely. This is chiefly the heart of wisdom living.

© 2010 S. J. Wickham.

Let’s Ease-up on Ourselves

“What is this self inside us, this silent observer, severe and speechless critic, who can terrorise us, and urge us to futile activity, and in the end, judge us still more severely for the errors into which his own reproaches drove us?

~T.S. Eliot, The Elder Statesman (Faber and Faber, 1958).

WALLOP! And, so we do. This offering above speaks the truth at the heart of the matter.

It speaks self-chastisement; the cup runneth over with vitriol, and all over our beautiful hands, spoiling what remains of the moment—skin as if putrefying. We can but imagine what this dastardly reproach is doing to our precious God-given and God-loved souls.

This self brandishes the white-hot barbed harpoon as a stick and fleeting peace as a carrot—an interminable and impossible compromise—rank unfairness—a disparity to the human spirit.

Where do we get off with our self-condemnation?

God says, “Ease up!”

If our world looks dark right now, is it perhaps time to ease up a touch and allow the sweet and tender breeze to cool our loins?

A leaf out of the Desiderata...

“Beyond a wholesome discipline,

be gentle with yourself.”

© 2010 S. J. Wickham.

BLACK NOISE

Literally the opposite of white noise.

Life screaming at us in our heads.

Times when we’re confounded and otherwise perplexed by the complexities, dissonances and conflict of life—get me?

This is patent chaos. We all deal with it; times it encroaches, twanging at our hearts and minds.

It won’t last.

Not if we do something about it.

It is temporary. And if it isn’t temporary, make it temporary—if you can.

Patience will drive it away, far from our chastened minds and beleaguered hearts.

And if patience alone won’t do it, a life ‘re-structure’ will. Be bold—if you can.

Running with the ebb of life. Run with, not against; not for too long.

Counterbalance the black noise with the white-noised waves. Go to the beach. Walk the dog in a serene setting. Bath the baby to the music of a lullaby. Enjoy the sweetness of nothing for a change.

© 2010 S. J. Wickham.