Let me tell you about my day... Let's do it thematically - 1. Coffee, 2. Letting things go, 3. Sympathizing with addicts because I am one, 4. Feeling like I need to go on a run
1. Good coffee tastes like hot earth. Medium temperature coffee is just that - medium, average. It's like: 'Ok... I guess I just drank some coffee, but I might as well have been drinking air.' Medium temperature coffee makes the coffee not important, taken for granted. Hot coffee makes you say something like, 'I have something here... it's hot and significant!'
The taste of earth, I mean coffee, makes me feel like I am walking the streets of Toronto like I did one day last fall with Dani, like I am waiting to see Arcade Fire in Berkeley, like I am traveling across country...
My coffee is already cooling now. It's hard to appreciate things that are average. Instead of having something else say - "Stop and take notice!!", you are then responsible for your own awareness, your own savoring... See! Even after I just wrote that I downed the rest of my coffee.
2. I am not working today and I did not work yesterday. This is significant because this has not happened for sometime. Yesterday and today I have actually kept myself quite busy with many things, too much left-over anxiety from my now old Preschool teaching job. The day was finally too unaverage though for me not to take notice of it. My body feels good, my head in particular after having an earlier headache. It feels as good as a head does after a brain freeze. The juxtaposing normality of it feels so sweet. Like salt bringing out flavor.
3. I am just beginning to fight off the lingering effects of my Preschool/Bright Horizons teaching anxiety. It had started to feel so normal, like an old comfortable, reliable shoe, but yet even thinking about the job now makes my eyes glaze over. It had been hard to even drink the air that was in front of you.
Not too far away from me are nine kids sitting, standing as though they were taking up space at a high school between classes. They are talking but their only distinguishable words from my distance are: 'sucks', *uck', and 'dipsh*t'. That is honestly all I am hearing right now! 3/9 are smoking. A skater kid comes by. Now its 4/10. 1/10 looks like he is in 5th grade and 5/10 look like they could be aged 14 or 32...
I wonder if cigarettes taste like earth. I wonder if a good cigarette can be savored if it is significant enough. I am thinking certain words of theirs are being decibally emphasized because those are most significant... As I savor coffee I am more inclined to savor life. Cigarettes are at least 10 dollars (I don't know how much they really cost) of significance, and that is a lot for a high schooler the last time I checked. Maybe one of them is the working mom/dad and the cost is not that burdensome... some of them could honestly be in high school or not by a decade...
4. I think we innately look for significance in life. We seek it out. Some might be tired of looking and have momentarily stopped, but to the degree that you are alive, to that same degree we all want our coffee to be hot. In this we are made aware, in this we start breathing the oxygen instead of being forced to down it.
I want God to weigh on me right now because He is the most significant thing I know of, but I don't know how to make it happen because it usually does so unexpectedly - like in the shower, after running recently to where my lungs hurt, in the middle of tending to three kids crying for three different reasons at the Preschool, etc... But it does happen. God does show up and wakes me up. His significance floors me and for that moment, at least, I am undone. For that moment I am opened up to the world because I am not standing in the way, I am on the ground. I am made aware of what is already happening...
God is the hottest coffee I know and my truest parts are addicted to that significance. I often lose my train of thought though and get distracted. I often like less significant things because they feel more comfortable, but then more significant things wake me up to my senses, to more of what is going on... And since I can't control God to have Him weigh on me in a moment's notice, I have decided that I am going to try to have things I have read from the Bible recently weigh on me today because they have reminded me of God's significance and not my own, that significance/glory that moves you into His movement, His shalom (I talked about shalom last post so I won't get into it now)... And one more thing before I list weights I want to put on myself today, I think most things that make me forget about myself are tangible movements of God/His visible glory (I have talked about glory also in other posts...)
1. Jesus said once that you won't understand what He was saying until you actually did it
2. Isaiah 58:6b "remove the chains that bind people"
3. Duet. 7 - God loves His people just because He loves them
4. the end of Job, Job 40:2
5. Psalm 103
I don't have much that I have to for the rest of the day and I am still awake from the coffee to feel like I actually want to go for a run. I did recently run into God (no pun intended) on a run, so I am thinking that is a good place to start??... I am told though that God is everywhere and so then maybe the times when His significance bares down on us so that we are made to feel His glory are moments His of grace. Grace for our heads to be forced up and out of the pit we dig ourselves into in the hoe-hum, comfortable, easy lives we lead.
I want to be ready. I want to be ready for these moments of grace. I want to always have my cup ready. And I think I know its God when He does not let me keep my cup full, but helps me pour it out on others, knocking it out of my hand if He must, because coffee becomes cold if you keep it too long, if you just hold on to it...
I think the Bible is kind of like a coffee sleeve. It keeps me holding onto the significance until it is time to be poured out. I am sure God's significance is everywhere, but only in the Bible have I been able to find a way to make sense of all of that significance and find a way to pour it out to where it's not just about me and my cries of significance as I spill the hot coffee all over me (if I don't have the coffee sleeve) saying, "WOW, OW! That was significantly hot!!" I am sure many others may believe it was hot for me, but nothing felt hot to them. I am sure the temperature was very average without feeling the coffee and the sounds somewhat annoying... I don't know why, but I have found God's love to cry out to be communal, the love loses significance if it is just for me or about me... maybe it is because of God's trinitarian nature...
Lord, your significance burns me. I am scared of myself comfortably numb and neutral to life, the way I often find myself in, because in that I don't really feel love for others, I am mainly thinking of myself, not aware of what is around me. But when your significance burns me, I burn for others... Maybe this awareness is a moment of your grace. Maybe you are weighing down on me right now... All I know is that I feel like I am burning for other people right now, and I don't know how to not keep it just to myself. Break me, burn me, and leave a mark so I cannot help but display your significance... I am sure you would never leave me or anyone to keep your significance to their selves and I am sure I am just saying this for my own benefit... (maybe that is the essence of prayer, an exercise in becoming aware of you Lord, maybe prayer is moments of grace from you... thank you, thank you, thank you...)... ok... I think I am going to go running now.
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