It is now about 10:10 on Thursday evening after a normal but full day of activities.  It’s been a little while since I have written here, if only because I have failed to make the time.  It has been a busy week, as it has been a busy day, and I have had plenty I’ve wanted to write about, but every time I’ve faced this empty text box, everything I wanted to write about has just drained from my head.  It’s been a week of good experiences and a range of feelings.

Tonight after work I was happy to meet my parents for dinner at our favorite restaurant, La Salita, where we caught up for a bit.  My parents are gracious and listen to me ramble.  I know they are interested in what I share for the most part, but I do have an awareness, a sense, that I tend to ramble.  They are gracious to strive and follow me.

After dinner, I went to the small group I have been attending from Sagebrush Highland.  It is good going to this group for some fellowship and some heart focus on God and His word during the week, but I have to admit I still feel pangs of hurt and of alienation when I leave work on Thursday nights and I know G. and the Living Free people are gathering at the main campus, and I cannot go to that any more.  I miss her, and I also have recognized how deeply roots of that friendship drove into my heart, and what a hole was made with her evacuation from my life.  I am better this month than I was a month ago, but seeing the size of the loss of the friendship that I thought was real and somewhat deep, I am still bewildered and aching.  I miss her, but for that to mean anything, she would have to miss me as well, and I have seen no signs of that, as I suspect I never well.  That is another side of loving someone, I guess: if they say “Leave me alone”, then to give them what they want, you do it.  I don’t know.  I have never been good at figuring this stuff out.

The study was good tonight, if only that it helped me to suspend the prattle that drones in my head and monotonizes life.  Spending time in the Bible and discussing it with others always awakens my spirit somewhat, helping me to forget present concerns and obligations.  God reminds me in these moments that each of our lives is really here for something more, for something better, and that the more and better lies in our living in and from Him.  How easily I forget each day that He intends for us to find joy and pleasure in being through shared existence with Him.  I have to be reminded regularly that I am not supposed to go at this life alone.

We have been walking through the Beatitudes in Matthew 5, reflecting on Jesus’ words about how life is in the Kingdom of Heaven.  Meekness, mercy, poorness in spirit, peacemaking, and purity of heart are all traits of the believer which Jesus extols and explains.  These are the traits He came to give to those who would choose to walk with Him, gifts rendered by His Spirit when we might let Him have free reign in our lives.  My favorite of the evening was “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”  Those who see God have pure hearts.  Those whose hearts are pure see God.  What was it that Kierkegaard said, echoed by Jack Palance in Cityslickers?  “Purity of heart is to will one thing.”  A good word for the evening. After the study, I hung around and talked a bit with group mate John about life and woodworking and food, and then headed on home.  It’s been a good evening.

The rest of the week has had its high and low moments.  I’ve struggled with a range of physical symptoms ranging from abdominal pain and random muscle aches to tingling extremities and light headedness, all of which have come on since Christmas and have felt amplified this week.  I dealt with something similar two years or so ago and went to a number of doctors to try and find some explanation for my weird body sensations, all of whom found nothing specifically wrong with me.  I will see a new doctor again soon and start asking questions again.  In my humanness my mind leaps to the worst of all explanations.  I am reminded that I am God’s, however, and as such, whatever comes down the pike will be manageable because He is Emmanuel, God with me.  We’ll round this corner soon enough.

An enjoyable aside came this week when out of the blue late Monday afternoon I got a call from On Location Casting, and they were seeking extras for Tuesday’s filming of scenes from a new “In Plain Sight” episode.  My boss, who has graciously encouraged my acting career by letting me take off two other times to be in this show, gave me a quick green light to bail on a normal work day to spend another day on set as an extra. So Tuesday, I got to play actor for a day.  I’ll summarize that experience in another post.

I’ve been reading Donald Miller’s “Through Painted Deserts” the last few weeks as a follow up to his “A Million Miles…” from last year, and I finished it on Tuesday evening while waiting to act.  Basically, Don and his friend Paul leave Houston in a VW bus and drive up to Oregon after seeing the Grand Canyon.  It’s a road trip book, and Don takes time in it to just write his observations about life on the road, about the need to leave where you are sometimes, about where he came from and about what he thought about as the two dudes travelled.  It wasn’t a heavy book, but I liked it, because I like the way Don writes.  He writes like he thinks, and his words often come out like a river flowing down a channel, or at other moments like a herd of elk running across a plain, or like stars spinning in the sky.  Don writes with energy and color and direction, and his words are playful and solid and rideable, like those dangling chairs on modern roller coasters.  I like to read his stuff because it makes me feel like I am going somewhere.  And I just wish and want to write more like he does.

Sometimes I wish I could just stop wanting.  Sometimes it seems like we have become so wired to want, to have to have what we think we have to have to make us happy, to make us worthwhile, to make us better, to make us more powerful, to make us feel less pressure, or more peace, or nothing at all.  Sometimes I just feel like a big want- and then I feel bad because I want to not want so much.  We usually want when we have a heck of a lot more than we need, and we want because it’s what were supposed to do- it’s a habit.  We’re supposed to keep chasing, seeking, stalking, tracking, climbing, securing, advancing, winning- it’s those things that will make us better, stronger, happier, more desirable, more worthwhile, more valuable.  And then we get, and we get, and we get- and we keep wanting.  Want never lets us be, unless we consciously tell it to let us be.  But who wants to do that?

Still, it’s hard to love when you are driven around by want.  Somebody stop this bus and let me off.  Maybe it’s the wanting that is killing us all.

And yet, can we ever not want?

Lord, help me to want less, and to just want the right things.  I so often want the wrong things. Teach me contentment.

Tomorrow is Friday.  Another week is ending. Soon, another month will end, and then another year.  Be careful to use your time wisely, the Word says.

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.” Purity of heart is to will one thing. Lord, help me to find the one thing, and to keep my heart on it- help me to keep my heart on You.