So, I’ve been in a bit of a slump…thinking lots of different things…feeling lots of different things…wishing I could figure it all out…name it, put it in a box, and put it on the shelf labelled, “case closed”.  But I can’t.  Life has not been that neat and tidy of late.  Not that it ever really is.

Margaret Wheatley writes in her book, Finding Our Way, “…we are being called to encounter life as it is: uncontrollable, unpredictable, messy, surprising, erratic.”

Yeah…that about sums it up.

In the midst of this, I am feeling called to think about what it means to fully engage in life and I am struggling.  There are so many that call us to live out our dreams, as if the only things stopping us are our perspectives and choices.  The thought is, our dreams can become reality if we want them too.  I’m not so sure.  There are limits and a certain emptiness to reality witnessed to by the innate sense within that says things are not as they should be, and will not be, no matter what we do.  We are forced, by the nature of this world and of the human condition, to live in a creative tension between what life is and what we wish it to be.  We live with a groaning in our beings that will not be answered…not now.  In the Greek scriptures Paul writes to the Christian believers in Rome, “We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.  Not only so, but we ourselves…groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption, the redemption of our bodies.”

Sometimes, there are no words, no neat categories, no nice labels, to explain life.  Just groans. 

I’ve been meditating for weeks now on a recitation titled I Arise, one line at a time.  I was stuck for the longest time on, “Christ on my left”, not sure what to do with it.  As I spent time in review today, I came across what I had finally written, and it still fits for where I am at now.  I had the picture of one who is strong helping another who is weak and wounded.  The strong one comes in on the left of the wounded – their own right side, the side of strength, upholding the side of weakness.  Christ on my left means his right side is nearest to my left side – his strength meeting my weakness.  I like that.  I need that.

I live in a world that I don’t really know how to respond to most days.  Sometimes I feel so incredibly vulnerable and out of control…which is good, because that is reality.  We are incredibly vulnerable and out of control and a reminder of that is brought to us at the end of everyday when we go to bed.  The act of sleeping is a complete relinquishment of control even if getting to sleep first means fretting and anxious thoughts and attempts to resolve things in our minds, only to finally fall asleep out of exhaustion.  Once asleep, we are completely unaware, completely out of control.  Sleep is a simple grace given to us everyday to remind us of the lack of control we really have.  And somehow the world keeps going while we are asleep.  Makes my daytime struggles seem so foolish…comical even.  If I could learn to rest in my vulnerability during the day, I would truly know living a life of rest.  That would be amazing! 

I’ve been talking about taking the fences off my playground…seeing life beyond the familiar…and it has struck me that the first thing that happens when you take down fences is seeing what the fences helped you forget…life is  uncontrollable, unpredictable, messy, surprising, and erratic.  This has been unsettling and the dust is still flying and my vulnerability looms large…but I have “Christ on my left” – his strength meeting my weakness.