Motivation

There are a few things that can motivate you. I know I have experienced three forces that have determined the majority of my movements and actions: fear, guilt, and love. The first two are great motivators if you are just judging by their shear force and influence. But they are terrible motivators as well, because they do not produce anything but more of themselves. They do not inspire and they do not create.

Love is the greatest motivator because it has the ability to be influential, inspirational, and creative. The problem with love is that it is so difficult for a human heart to grab onto. It is much easier to hold onto fear or guilt because then you can always be sizing up and protecting yourself from threat. With love, you must be willing to let go of managing threat (which is always present) and shift your eyes to something positive in yourself and someone else, something you desire to move toward, rather than away from.

A Friend

I have to try to turn you on to one of my friends' artwork. Here (next to this post) is one of the paintings I like the best. I mean seriously, if he was not my friend, I think I would still love his work. It's stunning how great it is, so take a minute and look at it. You can find more of it here at http://jackbaumgartner.wordpress.com/. Once you're there, click on the pages at the right to look at the work. You don't see stuff like this everyday, especially here in middle-America. No one takes the time to do this sort of stuff anymore - puts this sort of heart, thought, effort, and detail into their work. In this age when we are inundated with fast-moving, quickly rendered digital graphics, it's nice to see the real deal. Enjoy.

Simplicity

It's hard to live a simple life in the middle of all this crap. Just try to be silent for like a few minutes and you'll see what I mean. Unless you're in the middle of nowhere, there's always something around making noise. And here in these United States, we have instant access to almost everything in the world. I mean, if I want to watch a killer whale jumping on a guy, I can. That's cool, but it also means that things start to lose their novelty pretty quick. If I can have anything I want, it all becomes fairly meaningless and I start looking for something that does hold some value.

Before I start sounding any more like Ecclesiastes, I want to say that there is some stuff worth living for. You just have to dig out from all the other stuff to find it. No, getting stuff and more stuff is not the meaning of life. The goal is to have some life-changing experiences with God and people. For that, you have to be quiet, get everything else quiet, and listen.

Slow and Steady

Transformation usually happens very subtly and slowly. If it's true that transformation should happen from the inside out, that makes sense. You could make a huge change in your thinking or the direction of your heart and your hair would look the same, you would still drive the same car, and you would probably still have the same amount of money. There wouldn't be any outward dividends for a while. But soon, hopefully you would start to do some things differently. Hopefully you would feel better and start to treat others better.

Two things I need to do differently because of this concept: 1. Be more patient with others - they could be transforming right before my eyes and the fruit could be coming later and not be visible yet. I don't want to kill it. And 2. I need to be quiet and still and wait for what God wants to change, subtly, in my life. I can look at others all I want. There's still a bunch of stuff about me that needs to change.

Look Closely

I can't get it out of my head that Christianity is this sort of rebellious, underground thing. Jesus went around telling people not to tell others who he was (What? So, you could actually be doing what Jesus told you not to do by telling others about him?) and also, there were a lot of people who did not know Jesus was God. Think about that for a minute - Jesus could have shown people quite handily that he was God (doing a lot more cool tricks would have been one way), but the jury is still out on the whole God-man thing for a lot of people.

It's amazing because the whole premise of Christianity (and the story of the world) is fairly obvious - God was and is, he created the earth and everything in it, man chose to betray him, God spent a lot of time and energy trying to redeem him. God kind of has a corner on the market. He is the only true God. He could choose the straightforward way of revealing himself, but he doesn't. He chooses to be rather subversive. You could actually be face-to-face with him and not even know it. That's how under-the-radar God chooses to be.

Unbelievable, because we spend all this time trying to bring God to the surface for people, using his name a lot, building buildings supposedly in his honor, lobbying for what we think he might, and expanding our empires in his name. All the while, God is probably roaming the streets somewhere, rummaging through a trash can for some food.

The Lost Art of Listening

It's safe to say that there is more to most people than meets the eye. I mean sure, some people operate at a very "safe" level, meaning that they work very hard at pushing down any feelings or thoughts that surface that might give away anything too close to their hearts. Even so, I'd say that most people - given a safe place and at least one person interested enough to pry a little bit - will let fly that they have some inner experience that is different than what they normally present to the world.

What this means for each of us then, I guess, is that it is important to try and meet the conditions necessary to create a safe space for others, and then to be caring enough to honor that person's experience. I'm serious - it's not just for therapists and counselor-types. You can do it. Just listen, keep your mouth shut about it afterwards, and be respectful of how you think that person might want you to treat the information (I think Jesus said something about that). Think about it, be trustworthy, be patient, and don't assume people want advice. Just listen. What this also means is that we should really stop making assumptions about what people are thinking and feeling and ask. My guess is you're looking for someone to do the same for you.

My Self

There's a very important concept I really was supposed to have learned a long time ago. It's self-control and the basic idea is evident in the term - you can't control other people; you can only control yourself. My elementary school teachers were all busy trying to get us to keep our hands to ourselves, to keep our eyes on our own papers, and to not tattle on others. I remember there was this one time I had my name written on the board for talking when it was clear that the girl sitting next to me was talking to me and I was just listening, responding quite minimally.

It's really easy to blame your problems on others. And it's easy to start thinking that if the world was different, you'd be a lot happier. And while I haven't given up on trying to change the world (I'm actually an active protester to the way the world works now), I also know that the only one I can control is myself. The only deeds I can apologize for are my own. The only one I can open up for transformation is myself. I find that I have a lot more control when I stop trying to change things I can't change.