As these bones gather dust
Of one kind or another
Drawn to the magic
Of my youth
And the jubilation
Of my children’s laughter
We find ourselves at the
Rollercoaster.
My brain says yes
But these bones
Protest, decry injustice
Demand a refund
And refuse to
Propel me forward…
Grinding this enjoyment
To a halt, I sit next
To the old men, sipping
Coffee, snapping pictures
Of grandchildren on this ride
And the realization hits me
I have a toe firmly
Planted in the grave…
I hope my foot isn’t next 😉
Blog
Are you restless? (confronting restlessness)
Don’t be ashamed to admit it. Being restless can be a real motivator to get on with something that you’ve been putting off for years. It is the belief of many that after the close of a year and the beginning of a new one this sense of restlessness increases in frequency in the population of our country. But let me ask the important question…why? Why do we experience such feelings of uneasiness, discontent and restlessness? Sometimes this occurs all at once, and other times these feelings incrementally increase, building until sleepless night occur, stress is induced and we find ourselves questioning our occupations, general happiness and a other facets of our lives. If left unchecked this once innocuous emotion can rule our lives leading us into depression and in the need of professional counseling.
So why does restlessness occur?
Here are a couple of reasons:
1) Complacency (An Internal Struggle): just living to get by isn’t living at all. Sometimes as humans we settle into a comfortable routine, and what I’ve learned in life about routines is that if there isn’t an element of challenge attached to those routines what begins to form is uneasiness, then restlessness soon takes its place and either it spurs one to change or an emotion of lost identity ensues taking the individual into depression. Complacency is dangerous, its more than pure laziness its in a real sense a relinquishing of humanity, in other words its giving up and assuming an apathetic response to all areas of living.
The Remedy:
Change your routine. Find things to challenge you. Read books that not only encourages but pushes you to live better, healthier lives both physically and spiritually.
2) Disillusionment (An External source) Perhaps its in your work place and or your boss/employer. Perhaps its found in your financial state, you feel slighted or wronged. Maybe its in your government, or local communities.
Disillusionment can cause us to assume an identity of restlessness out of our own sense of injustice or betrayal. We feel nothing we can do will change our circumstances because we have no power to change anything in “our world” and our environment. Discontent gives way again to restlessness and soon we are in that apathetic response to the world us and we just don’t care anymore.
The Remedy: Perhaps a different line of work. I realize the economy and current market doesn’t bode well for this suggestion, but a sense of ownership can renew our world view and our role in it. Self worth is attached to our sense of achievement whether we like it or not. If we don’t feel we can contribute to a specific problem or challenge the natural instinct is to withdraw from that problem and our powerless view of ourselves only lends itself to furthering this sense of restlessness.
Another remedy would be to focus on problems or challenges that you can change or accomplish something positive. Sometimes we have this grandiose idea that we can change the world and so we attempt to take on more than we are capable of at that time…its also known as “biting off more than you can chew”. Instead we need to focus on the smaller victories and take smaller bites, so to speak. This is an incremental change in our world view, life is a journey that requires us to pace ourselves like a marathon instead of a sprint.
Are you restless at the start of 2013? Is it an internal type of restlessness, or an external type? Sometimes it can be both too. These are just a few remedy’s that are common sense and maybe will eliminate that restless spirit in you. It is understood that there are more ways to confront and address restlessness…these are just a few suggestions.
Lastly: take a vacation, get away for a weekend, or sleep a little more. Try eating a low fat diet, and exercise which has been known to increase the “good” emotions firing in your brain. Realize that restlessness relates to both your physical body as well as your emotional and spiritual side as well.
Where ever you are today, I hope that you may find rest.
Winter’s Farm House
When the winter winds
Howl beneath the
Bluster of the moonlight
And the snow forms
Sand dunes upon
The frosty plains below
Across the alabaster fields
Dormant and solemn
The little farm house
Stands tall beneath
The dancing pines
Caught by the songs
Of the solstice hour
As they whistle along
To the nameless yet
Ancient tune.
Alone in the forest of snow
And ice
The little farm house
Paint, peeling timeless
Victorian white
Now drab and dingy
After countless harvests,
Famine, the lean years
And the farming family
From birth to empty nest
Not silent after
Seventy years
Orphaned in a potter’s field
Muted against a world
In constant motion
Seeking ever forward
As the old farm house
Has nothing but its past
And old measurements
Of growing children
Long departed
Deep in their heavenly
Sleep on other plots
In other fields miles away
But on this blustery night
A single curtain
Blows in a broken window
Frame…waving
To long lost souls
Under a solstice moon
Of winter.
Winter Doldrums
The sound of the snow
crunching under my feet
the frozen toes and
this loss of heat
has me shaking in my car
and dreams of traveling afar
far away from here.
I can not contain this
migrant heart
when winds of change
begin to start
and here on
an indistinct day
when storms blow in
and make me say
“I’m far too long
on winter’s day.”
A ray of light
on silver thread
finding some joy
when joy is dead
my hand outstretched
and open wide
Lord help me brave
this wintry tide.
A Resolutely Hopeful New Year?
It’s about to happen again. Those promises spoken under the breath. The pleading to one’s self to do better this time. The clean slate, slightly dusty, chalky residue coating it still as it reminds us there’s still something left of yester-year just above the surface. It’s about to happen again. The ‘Y’ down the street will see an influx of travelers, the “magic” pill company will peddle its ’emperor’s new clothes’ gig for another year. The husband will promise to be a better father, and spouse, while the wife will promise not to feel so guilty about piling laundry and late slightly under cooked meals.
Do I sound a little cynical? Perhaps so. Although perhaps it’s a little too close to home for most of us. Perhaps as people toast to the close of another year, silencing the book at the very last page of the very last chapter, there is that one small word that eclipses the disappointments. It’s a relatively small word, though it promises to mend the broken fences and extinguish the fully engulfed bridges. It’s a word that sends butter flies in flight in the stomach and rekindles the yearnings of the youthful child in us all to be good little boys and girls…or to die trying. Perhaps as the final page, though yellowed and singed, is turned we are drawn to the “what could be’s” of tomorrow. Perhaps the “maybe’s” once again carry promises far more inviting than the “should have’s” of our last year’s yesterdays. So as we turn that final crinkly, protesting, crusty page, closing its book, pushing it aside and picking up our tomorrow’s, that word escapes our lips once again in our maybe’s and our want to be’s. Hope. It’s what allows us to strive to improve upon. It’s what motivates us to flee our regrets, divorcing our estranged worries and fears and embrace the hopes and reigniting the dreams once again.
Perhaps resolutions aren’t all bad…perhaps the light at the end of the tunnel isn’t a train at all, but the warmth of a brand new day inviting us to part take in it. This is my way of wishing you a happy new year, embrace it well, drink deeply in its promises and just maybe that child in us is right after all …you can be a better little boy or little girl in the new year. Here’s to Hope, may it become deeply rooted in us all in the coming year. Not just ‘Hope’ in and of itself, but Hope in something far beyond our grasp and understanding. A hope that stems from the Author and Creator of this life. An Alpha and Omega kind of hope, one that isn’t shaken at the gusts and gales of a single day, but remains rooted in us all so that we can resolutely say at the end of this year’s pages we are ready, come what may!
-Best of wishes as you embrace that hope once again. 
Inside the cabin
Curtains drawn
in windows of white
Reflecting the
Large flakes of snow
falling
Silently
Piling up
in its window frames
Frosting the sill.
While still
Outside on the edge
Of Indian lake
Ice has formed
miles down the road
A bell tolls
calling for its
Lost souls
Somewhere out across
The little bay
Dark and foreboding
A dog barks
Forlorn, seemingly alone…
Snow crunches
Under these cold feet
I Yearn to go
Back inside
As the invitation
Of warmth calls to me
From the tangerine
lighted windows.
This is winter
Placing its
Frosted lips
Giving tepid kisses
On faces and heart
Shivering to the bone.
Traveling on Christmas
The after Christmas drive is always an event strewn with crabby motorists, crappy greasy spoons only open because no other place is available and they’re looking to make a quick buck on the naïve and the desperate. Somewhere down the road an eagle soars, free, uninhibited by the holiday traffic…focused instead on a helpless meal grazing in the snow fallen fields below.
Rushing onward on this two lane road at 55 miles an hour, cooped up like caged lab rats who cant get along, while the cage smells of old coffee, fastfood and dirty feet. Some where along the many snow covered miles a singer on the radio sang about being ‘home for the holidays’ and perhaps “home” at this point in the journey is a welcome sign advertising clean bathrooms and fresh coffee, because at the moment this yule tide trek seems to never end. If I hear the phrase “are we almost there” one more time, it will be too soon as we count the endless line of naked trees along the silent snowmobile tracked shoulder of the highway.
Another round of ‘eye spy’? I don’t think so…but as these legs ache to touch carpet not supported by four rotating wheels, we watch endless small villages pass in the rear view mirrors with little hint of life, but for the slight wisps of smoke emanating from chimneys in dimly lit homes along this path. But for a brief moment one could imagine living there, hunkered in for the Christmas holiday. The glow of the television flickers as we pass, a gas station on the corner, with attendants at lonely cash registers stares out and sees us as we pass. This is Christmas…from the road…watching it come and go like the train on the tracks…on and on.
Have a safe trip where ever you may find yourself today.
My Christmas Sofa.
The wrapping paper, all ripped from the packaging is strewn on the couch and the floor. The bows have oddly landed on Christmas tree branches, the cat and the carpet. All of the children are exploring their presents, while the dog in the corner gnaws on a Christmas bone. In the twinkling lights of Christmas morning, with presents unwrapped, the tree begging for release and house eviction, and the smell of a cooking roast in the kitchen, the small voice of rest beckons to me. It isn’t very loud, but for a meek whisper which had, for two months, be drowned out by the hustle and bustle of this life. That voice whispers now into my ear, “Christmas is here”, and I find, with eyes drooping, the soft fabric of the living room sofa. That pillow, that had been someone’s seat, though still warm from gift unwrapping, makes a splendid pillow underneath this heavy head. Propping up my feet, following the countless miles of the ebb and flow of this to and fro lifestyle…ah, it feels good! Isn’t it funny how the holidays makes us pace the carpet, chew our nails, sending hyperventilation into the record books (mine was six weeks long this time around)? Now, with calloused feet de-socked and propped, and head upon this pillow still warm…that long winter’s nap calls and finally I will answer her siren’s spell. Some where in the background the noise of the television drones on, children laugh, bicker then laugh again…soon I will drift off, like a Grizzly in the wild into a hibernation state…but for a short time expelling the world, rejecting the pace while matching the tempo of a slumbering heart beat with shallow breaths…maybe a snore will be expelled, who knows?! Though here on my Christmas sofa, I am content to remain for but a moment disconnected, prayerfully undetected…let me slumber but for a bit.
Merry Christmas, and happy new nap…I mean new year!
A Christmas Poem
When the last wrappings
fall from hands of glee
as tinsel strays too
far from the tree
within the delight
and sparkle of the eye
we capture the
mystery of Christmas
When angels adorn
and evergreen’s hung
with songs on our lips
and carols are sung
As family gathers
both near and too far
we honor the Savior
his birth and the star
This Christmas greeting
is sent for us all
the harried, the weary
both big and the small
Christ’s birth to the lowly
redeeming, such grace
salvation for everyone
the whole human race.
See you on December 22nd?
Well some of you might be reading this from a bunker today…ok probably not. Chances are you’re still working, attending school, or whatever you’re doing in your ordinary day. Isn’t it interesting how a calendar created by a long dead civilization has caused so much panic in our world? It probably hasn’t impacted your small corner of the world, but it’s impacted others – just look at the news today to confirm that! But the fact of the matter still remains that most people get a little concerned in the face of complete and total annihilation. I suppose it makes sense, but to me it just seems like needless panic about something none of us has any control over…so why get bent out of shape about it?
Matthew 6:25-34 says; “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? 26 Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.Are you not much more valuable than they? 27 Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?”
These were the words of Jesus, and if he had something to say about worry then I think everyone should pay attention. No matter if it is the impending “end of the world”, or that bill that you’re not sure how is going to get paid. Stop adding worry to your life. Of course Jesus was speaking to the people of His day, the living “worry” was different than it is today but it is still applicable to us here at “doomsday”.
In the old hymn “What a friend we have in Jesus”, there’s a part in the song that say; “Take it to the Lord in Prayer”. Perhaps that’s what you need to do today if there is worry in your life, whether it’s big or small. Take it to Him in prayer, and allow that peace that passes all understanding to break through your worry…and it will.
Enjoy your day…and we’ll see you on December 22nd…right? 😉
Pastor's Ponderings 