Retreat

No longer being bucked and billowed by a stormy sea, I feel like a boulder in a sand garden, slowly settling into the proper place. . . the locus of balance, harmony and freedom through disciplined self-enslavement.
I don't know exactly why we are where we are at this time, but I feel certain it has to do with learning a lesson about service and the value of serving no matter the size or aim of the effort. I don't necessarily feel passionate about our church or its primary missions but perhaps that's the point.
Perhaps I'm still immature enough that a better spiritual environment would mislead and distract me.
In the meantime, I DO envy the emerging church people. . . it's a well intentioned movement on the whole and though I'm sure there are weak points, they think alot. That's more than most can say.

The reset button spoke up today

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/26/education/edlife/26medicalschool.html

Phenomenal article!

A university education (specifically in the sciences), by its nature, directs an individual toward formula and pre-determined structure and away from any ability to create.
The reason: I'm not sure. . . probably too many to name
It is a developed and mature human being who can see past this structure to find an art in education.
I'm not sure that I'm that person. . . yet

Passion
This is why we do what we do. Without passion, there may as well be no purpose; for a purpose that does not encite passion is no purpose worth having.
How to channel passion into a daily life?

Routine is my enemy

Every moment is sacred and so should be embraced with unending passion, reverence and joy. It is a fantastic gift to be given each moment and all that is sacred within it. It is a far more rare gift to be able to appreciate this.

What am I passionate about? I recite it every day. . .

The pressure I put on myself was related to an overcoming of passion by the immature desire to prove something or to succeed.

Success is doing what my purpose demands of me with the passion that it deserves.

The Fat Kid On the Other End of the See-saw

I don't want to participate in the cliche mumbo jumbo but at the same time, I don't want to neglect an open, free and unashamed relationship with Jesus.
I've been hiding from my brothers and sisters. I don't want them to see me.
Why can't it just be me and the strangers. I feel more comfortable with them.
Is that wrong?
I would like to find a balance. . .
. . . a way to operate in and not of.
The words just keep getting me all tangled up. They won't stop coming - like the last level of Tetris, right before "game over."
I keep getting close but the words keep repelling me with magnetic force as inherent as the charges of water molecules. I can't change them, I can't avoid them. . . they wash my desire to partake in the Kingdom away like the greasy remains of tonight's dinner.

That fat kid just keeps laughing. I don't want to play with him anymore, but who else is there?