You can never compensate - only co- and re-create.

There is no healing or deep, lasting solutions in surface-level thinking, even surface-level religious thinking. The solution is in transformation - not an ego-based compensation, but a spiritually-based co-creation, a God-based re-creation, of what was designed in all along, but needed to be found, which required getting totally lost. It's just wired in us.

And there's a reason for it. It actually sweetens life, to be found and restored, making getting totally lost worth it, and don't worry, you don't have to force it, it'll happen all by itself. But remember, you can resist it (which involves faking it), but like so many of life's inevitables, "resistance is futile."

"And sure as hell this little brat deserved to get spanked. He deserved whatever he got. This is the deluded little rube who really thought the future would be better than the present. Yea, if you just worked hard enough, right. If you just learned enough. Ran fast enough. Everything would turn out right, and your life would amount to something. ... It's hard to swallow, but this is the stupid, lazy ridiculous little kid who just stood shaking, squinting into the glare and the roar, and who thought maybe the future would be brighter. Picture anybody growing up so stupid he didn't know that hope is just another phase you'll grow out of. Who thought you could make something of yourself that would be worthwhile and last forever. It feels stupid even to remember that stuff. It's a wonder he's lived this long, stupid kid. So, if you're going to read this looking for a happy ending, don't. This isn't about somebody brave and kind and dedicated. He isn't anybody you're going to fall in love with. ... So, if you think this story is going to save or inspire you ... If you think anything is going to save or inspire you ... Please consider this your final warning."

-- from the end of the first chapter of Choke, by Chuck Palahniuk



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Red: [Morgan Freeman narrating in "The Shawshank Redemption"] The first night's the toughest, no doubt about it. They march you in naked as the day you were born, skin burning and half blind from that delousing shit they throw on you, and when they put you in that cell... and those bars slam home... that's when you know it's for real. A whole life blown away in the blink of an eye. Nothing left but all the time in the world to think about it.

Red: [to Andy] Let me tell you something my friend. Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane.

Red: [narrating] Andy Dufresne - who crawled through a river of shit and came out clean on the other side.



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"I think hope is always relevant. But I think the problem with hope is that oftentimes we get sold a hope that is only skin-deep, which is an illusion; it’s kind of like a band-aid over a festering, oozing wound. Things’ll get better, you think, and you kiss it and hope it feels better – but the problems still remain and the wars inside us are still going on. And what this album is an attempt to do is to talk about real pain and real loss and the real crap that goes on every day, and then in that context talk about the hope that lies deeper than the wound. That’s kind of what 'The Beautiful Letdown' is all about: the idea that in this terrible, crazy world, there is hope, there is beauty, and it's only reachable deep down, underneath."

-- Interview with Jon Foreman from Switchfoot, May 18th, 2004

"I've got my hand in redemption's side
Whose scars are bigger than these doubts of mine
I'll fit all of these monstrosities inside
and I'll come alive!"

-- Chorus from "Redemption"
in the Album, "Beautiful Letdown,"
by Switchfoot


Yes, I speak from much experience. I tried the work harder, learn more, run faster things, even "succeeded" at them. And ran myself right into the ground, all while looking really good doing it and getting plenty of applause and encouragement. And I also tried the hopeless thing, getting hard and cynical. Equally empty and meaningless. And then I dug down underneath, and ... oh, here He is, and here is Heaven, right here in the midst of this beautiful mess called me.

"God's kingdom is like a treasure hidden in a field for years and then accidentally found by a trespasser. The finder is ecstatic — what a find! — and he proceeds to sell everything he owns to raise money and buy that field."

-- Matthew 13:44 (The Message)

Yes, the treasure was a beautiful field hidden way down underneath the noise of my stressed-out overcompensating life. My awakening heart was the accidental trespasser, and what it found "accidentally" (yes, and it took many so- called "accidents") made me ecstatic beyond words. And now I've sold everything to live right here in this field with the treasure, and I sure as hell ain't moving from this crazy, messy heaven, not until I get to the grand, eternal one.


"One in particular. It's got a long rock wall with a big oak tree at the north end. It's like something out of a Robert Frost poem."

-- from Andy's note to Red, letting him know where he buried the treasure just for him, on the outskirts of a little town in Maine

Ah, Frost's "The Road Not Taken," ... yes, I so relate and resonate ...

and I have taken it, ... and have stayed right there in that field.

And oh what a treasure!

Co-creating my life

"The dance of life and living is not only (or so much) about learning about, finding, or changing/improving yourself, but about co-creating yourself as you already are (who He already made), which happens naturally at the very bottom of yourself (the self you made as a response to your earliest experiences) when you are willing to venture there."

-- Darina Stoyanova

"Men who cannot conceive (co-create with God) a happiness and fulfillment of their own making (fully surrendered to Him) will grudgingly accept and live out a definition of themselves imposed upon them by others, while resenting those same others for their oppression."

-- Earl Shorris, in Scenes from Corporate Life

"God can turn water into wine, but he can’t turn your whine into anything; you must cooperate in being thankfully ready and passionately willing to receive your full entitlement as His child - that is your fullest co-creativity."

-- Unknown

I'm "feeling" a little lonely right now, and a lot broke, as things in my life, home, and cars break down and people seem to be cancelling or blowing off their appointments with me right and left, and contributions are drying up once again. This is so damn hard. I am so not used to feeling so invisible. It goes against my life's overcompensating nature. It seems to be a quarterly phenomenon over the last year. I feel I am being so painfully driven deep down into the depths of myself.

And deep down, I really know the truth about this. It is not a reflection of my value at all, for I am precious to Him. In fact, people's choices about meeting with me have nothing to do with me at all. People have their lives and live them the way they live them and do what they do. He told me to relax about it and not chase after it. He will bring it to me when it's time, and I know what there is for me to do when He does. And with this stand, while being thankfully ready and passionately willing for His every call and nod my way, I will show up with absolutely all of me, dancing with delight, as my True Liberator shows me to myself and invites me to revel in what I see and then let go of it, relying only on what He sees and wishes to express, no matter what appears to be happening on the outside, or what it feels like on the inside.

I am committed to letting Him turn my "water (as fully surrendered blood, sweat, and tears) into wine," rather than me trying to turn my "whine (as fear-based scarcity thinking and manipulation) into a uselessly false sense of worldly security."

Thank You, Father, for the extraordinary opportunity to follow, heal, and serve with my suffering. I trust You, and You have never failed to deliver on that trust, from the first day you swooped in and saved my life and started giving me instructions that made no sense at all. You said that if I wanted a life beyond my wildest dreams, I simply had to give it ALL to you. I have learned that you were freeing me from my very human and intellectual oppression, compassionately and gracefully helping me learn to simply follow instructions without hesitation or question, for my own ultimate benefit.

It's all Yours, Boss!, once again. My commitment to You is to learn how to sink to the depths of myself continuously, so that I can always and in every way "Bee Dazzled" by You! :-)



For some reason, maybe it's the recurrence of my Dad's birthday
(he would have been 78, I think), this photo just reduces me to tears.
He, too, was not meant to fly, and man, did he soar on his way out,
and God, did he pollenate his world, and I am the fruit of that.

Today is also my sister, Nancy's, 52nd birthday. Happy Birthday, Sis!