Thursday, June 22, 2006

headwaters (river, part three)

Have you visited the headwaters of your defining dream? Have you made an inner pilgrimage to the birthplace of the vision that shapes your intentions?

It’s not an easy hike. Sometimes you come across dams you’ve built to block to flow of your own calling. Sometimes you encounter a culvert of pollutants you’ve allowed to empty into your passion.

But eventually you make it back to the simple source. A wellspring of clear water bubbling up from your soul-dirt... The Spirit flowing from your deep places...

Your family, your friends, your community need the living water that is meant to flow from you. You’re an integral part of a relational ecosystem.

Friday, June 16, 2006

equity

“Teach me to number my days.”

I’ve been making a concerted effort to consistently reassess my time equity. What do I have to work with? How am I spending it, investing it, wasting it, enjoying it...?

In 2016, how will I feel about the way I spent 2006?

Tuesday, June 06, 2006

river (part two)

Riverbanks make a river possible. Limitations facilitate flow.

Riverbanks aren’t absolutely rigid; they aren’t permanently fixed. Flow affects limitations.

The reciprocity of a river and its banks teaches me things about the paradoxes of faith-life: focused and flowing -- settled and questing...

The current is power, direction, intention, movement... submitting to boundaries.

The banks are shape, form, structure, support... organic and malleable, responding to the stream of change.

Thursday, June 01, 2006

river (part one)

Has a more inspiring description of worship ever been conceived than Ezekiel 47:1-12?

Water flows from under the altar, out of the temple, increasing exponentially until it is a great river. It flows eastward into the Dead Sea, transforming the brine into freshwater. (Interestingly, the marshes are left salty; presumably as a source of preservative and seasoning.)

The formerly “dead” sea becomes as full of fish as the Mediterranean. The riverbanks are lined with trees bearing nutritional and medicinal fruit. The picture is of lavish abundance – of fullness and healing.

This transformative power floods from the temple - the iconic center of worship in Ezekiel’s culture. He’s portraying a world profoundly changed by, and a way of life instigated and sustained by worship.