A faith of formulas
Life is complex. The idea that you can break it down or fix it in a few steps is rather silly. The truth is, there are a million steps, and we don’t even know what the steps are, and worse, at any given moment we may not be willing or even able to take them. And, still worse, they are different for you and me and they are always changing. I have come to believe that the sooner we find this truth beautiful, the sooner we will fall in love with the God who keeps shaking things up, keeps changing the path, keeps rocking the boat to test our faith in him. Teaching us not to rely on easy answers, bullet points, magic mantras, or genies in lamps, but rather his guidance, his existence, his mercy and his love. I suppose I believe this is true, but the formulas seem much better than God, because the formulas offer control. And god, well, he is like a person, and people as we all know are complicated.
Scenes
In life, the only way we are able to make meaningful things out of our time is when we step aside from the ordinary and do something memorable. It’s not about a certain action that does it, its the way you go about doing it.
“I don’t think memorable scenes help a story make sense. Other principles accomplish that. What memorable scenes do is punctuate the existing rise and fall of a narrative.” - Donald Miller
“its like those scenes in the bible when God stops people and asks them to build an altar. You’d think he was making them do that for himself. But I don’t think God really gets much from looking at a pile of rocks. Instead I think God wanted his people to build altars for their sake, something that would help them remember the time when they were rescued or when they were given grace.” - Donald Miller
We have to force ourselves to create these scenes. We have to blow up the inner-tubes and head to the river. We have to write that letter and deliver it in person. We have to pull the car off the road and run though the field. We have to put on ridiculous clothes and dance. We have to make altars. We have to encourage each other along the way.
What kind of life are you living?
The ambitions we have will become the stories we live. If you want to know what a person’s story is about, just ask them what they want. If we don’t want anything, we are living boring lives. If we want a roomba vacuum cleaner, we are living stupid stories. If it won’t work in a story, it won’t work in life - Donald miller
Fear
“the most often repeated commandment in the bible is ‘Do not fear.’ it’s in there over two hundred times. That means a couple of things, if you think about it. It means we are going to be afraid, and it means we shouldn’t let fear boss us around. Before I realized we were supposed to fight fear, I thought of fear as a subtle suggestion in our subconscious designed to keep us safe, or more important, keep us from getting humiliated. And I guess it serves that purpose. But fear isn’t only a guide to keep us safe; it’s also a manipulative emotion that can trick us into living a boring life” - Donald Miller
Perspective
In costa rica, employees, by law get a 5% raise every six months. With that kind of increase, what company could afford that?
Why would you hire anyone?
forward
“We all hear voices in our heads and have visions erupting out of our brains that disrupt our daily routine and beg us to tear ourselves away form the mundane life. Something stirs deeply within is, calling us out, inviting us to pursue and discover that which we do not know. All of us are called to a place we have not been. Our lives were always intended to be journeys into the unknown. The invitation is both personal and mystical. No one else may fully understand what you are being called to. You may not even fully understand. The path you must walk may appear to others as strange or unreasonable, but you know there’s more going on than meets the eye. The signs are all around you but even more within you. You are being pulled forward. You are having visions of a life you couldn’t possibly create alone. You are no longer satisfied with where you are, and no you are in a quest for where you do not know. Your soul craves to become, and you will never be satisfied with less” - “Soul Cravings” Edwin McManus.
I don’t think i could have described where i am at more accurately than that. Edwin McManus, in his book Soul Cravings, discusses how once our hearts are stirred, it is impossible to quiet it. When there is nothing going on, we become restless. It’s because we have seen a glimpse of how things could be and we are no longer satisfied with the life we are currently living. Granted, this is a really dangerous way to go through life. It has to be balanced, so that you dont fall into “the grass is always greener” mind set. Because then, no matter where you are, you’re never satisfied.
Right now, i am in this place of transition. I have started my new job which I am enjoying, but it is taking up a lot of my time as i travel to Chicago for 2 weeks for training, and as i adjust to working to 40 hours a week. I immediately think of the john mayer lyric “welcome to the real world, she said to me, condescendingly.” And while i am currently wading through all this new change, something keeps tugging at my heart. What about Costa Rica? What about Costa Rica? And the more i try to push it aside, the more obvious its become. I have decided that i am going to have a full time job and try to launch this non-profit. And that’s what i need to be doing. I didnt think it would be that difficult. It is. But as my job becomes more and more routine, i find more and more time to work on it.
So, as for an update for where i am. I currently have all of the items that the ladies have made and i am in the process of taking photos of them and putting them on my temporary store front which is located on etsy.com. I am also trying to figure out who i am going to hire to build my website, or if i’m going to do it myself. I keep saying to myself, Rome wasn’t built in a day. Yes, i realize that. However, thats also a really great excuse not to do anything, too.
My goal is to get all of the photos taken and uploaded by next week. I am spending the next week of my life in Chicago for training for work. But I am someone that sticks to their word, I said that i would be setting up a non-profit in Costa Rica and that’s exactly what I will be doing. But, contrary to the American way, not everything is done instantly. Setting up a non-profit that will become established and help people for years to come, needs to be done correctly. And not for a second do i believe that God doesn’t know what I am doing, what He is doing, and what’s going on. He knows i would be sitting here, writing this. He knows if I am going to get the photos uploaded when i wanted to. And most importantly, He knows that there isnt a day that goes by when i dont think about my vision and what I am trying to accomplish and it stirs something deep in my soul, and it compels me to act.
