The Greatness of Being a Beginner
At times it’s uncomfortable being a beginner. I look at my Italian book and I don’t know how to say anything useful, other than “the dishes are in the kitchen”. Um…where else would they be?
Same thing happens in the pottery studio. I look at the pieces of art made by professionals who use the same studio, and it makes me feel pretty small. I wonder, just how LONG will it take to make something that doesn’t look like an artifact from Pompeii? (post-volcanic eruption, I mean…)
And I won’t get started about fiction-writing. There, the learning curve is so far out, you can’t see the end.
Quotes for the Dream
Today I got into a closet-cleaning mood. I really have to act on it when it happens, because it won’t happen again until the next comet is scheduled to fly by. As I re-organized, a couple of interesting things surfaced. A couple of necklaces I thought I’d lost, and a folded-up piece of paper. I was intrigued. I opened it and it was a copy of some encouraging quotes from different sources. I wrote them down several years ago for a group I wanted to do when I lived in France, a small group of...Limping, Strolling, Running
I was thinking today about the different ways people come to God. Some don’t come until very late, others not at all. But those who come do so in different ways.
First, there’s the limp. Life has beaten us up. We’re emptied out and bruised all over. Maybe not even sure God has noticed or cares, but we still go, limping. Our journey may be slower because of it, but that’s okay. We get there. And we get a lot of TLC along the way. Or maybe limping demands more effort than our strength can supply, so we crawl. I’ve felt like that. I’ve also crawled in the other direction at times, too hurt to look at Him.
The Beauty of Decisions
Years ago a woman at church shared something I have always remembered. She commented on how many decisions we make every day, in the thousands, without even thinking. It struck me how much autonomy we have over our lives in the small and large decisions, and even the automatic ones. So many things we think of as reflexes are really small decisions, made in the blink of an eye.
It got me thinking. Thinking about decisions I make daily, without much thought. Or the ones I give a passing thought, little decisions, seemingly inconsequential. Of course, we cannot agonize over every decision, but if we bring to consciousness some of our knee-jerk decisions, won’t we have less conflict, get more done, stay closer to God during the day, trust more instead of worrying? Wouldn’t we live according to our values more often, weigh the value of spending time with this versus that?
Gets kind of overwhelming, doesn’t it?