Over the past six weeks, I have being doing the Body For Life program, in a highly overdue project to regain my physical fitness. I was hungrily looking forward to gaining something that resembles pectoral muscles, and maybe develop "abs," instead of my former, singular "ab."
But, man, this process takes way longer than I thought.
Of course, the lack of seeing the results that I want to see doesn't diminish the glimpses of progress I occasionally do witness, usually the morning after I get back from working the upper body, when my muscles have a little more blood pumping through them. I hear we males have this "issue" anyway, where we look in the mirror and almost always think that we're pretty much the bomb-dot-com. I don't know why that is -- maybe it's physiological, or some kind of DSM-IV category -- but suffice to say that I rarely have a less-than-glowing review of my reflection ready to print.
Kinda full of myself, I guess.
I'd never really thought about that phrase before this morning: "full of myself". I mean, really thought about it. But this morning, for whatever reason, I was keenly aware that I was entirely full of myself, in the "no room for anything else" sense.
And that bothered me.
I don't want to be so crowded with myself that I cannot even find room for others in my margins. I don't want my world to be filled with clones of me. I don't want my bus to be standing room only. I don't want to be filled to the brim of nothing but me, me, me.
I want to be able to give, generously and passionately.
But who would even want what I have to give? Someone I consider to be very wise once said that we do and say is actually just a reflection, an extension, of what's going on inside us. So, if that's the case, who's going to want more of me: sick and ugly and only taken with, well, me?
I'm fairly certain that swallowing too much narcissism will make us throw up; maybe a little regurgitation is exactly what I need. Maybe I can fill up on something else.
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I guess you could say that I've been practicing "The Secret" for the last couple months. Kind of.
I'd been meaning to watch/read/experience the "magic" for probably almost a year now, and also been putting it off, putting it off, blah blah. But when I flew back to Colorado for Gabe's wedding in April, in a stroke of brilliance (or habit), I took my blessed MacBook on the plane, and decided to buck up and watch the damn thing.
Despite the apparent torture required to catalyze my viewing, I really did enjoy it. It was inspirational and empowering, if not occasionally hokey.
So, when I arrived back at LAX, Allison and I got into one of those little deathtraps they call "airport shuttles" so we could get back to the parking lot where we left our car. We lugged our borderline-weight-limit Samsonite up both little shuttle stairs and heaved it onto the storage shelving. On my way in, I noticed that Jesus was going to be our driver.
Of course, he was a hispanic gentleman — correct pronunciation: Hey-soos — but as I normally feel just a little scared for my freakin' life when circling the Los Angeles airport (if you've ever done it, you know what I mean), I instantly felt a little better knowing that the Savior would be my driver that day.
But it turns out that Jesus' driving: not so good.
He screamed around corners, scraping bumpers and inciting all sorts of hostile honking. He ran red lights and stopped abruptly, causing baggage to fly angrily off the rack.
With my newfound Secret, I, of course, was "attracting" safety.
Pure, unadulterated safety.
I caught the gaze of the middle-aged business-suited gentlemen across from me, and knew he was thinking the same thing I was: "Sorry I didn't learn your name before we both died in a horrific shuttle crash."
Things I never thought I'd say: "Man, Jesus needs to go to driving school."
But I made it out alive... guess The Secret works. ;-)
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A couple nights ago, some of my good friends and coworkers attended a post traumatic stress (PTS) informational workshop/presentation for families of war veterans. They went to support the efforts of an amazing man in our community that works to help said vets.
Result: they went in jaded, and came out different.
Nutshell of what they learned: war changes a person. Always, irrevocably, negatively.
I was impacted by their debriefings in a number of ways, but most jarringly with the question: "Why, based on the unquestionable harm done to soldiers by simply participating in combat, isn't there a response to the war movement that pursues nonviolent means to accomplish change?"
Of course there are groups of people who protest wars, and of course there are countless studies about the effects of war on a person's humanity (NOTE: read this), but why have I never heard of any correlation between the two?
Perhaps I haven't been listening. God knows I'm horribly, inexcusably preoccupied with myself most of the time, though I'm trying to become less so.
I guess I'd just like to see a bit more consideration made towards these things... it seems like the responsible response.
OTHER THINGS TO READ:
Brian McLaren: Sorrow Can Make Us Better, Not Bitter
Jim Wallis: 'No One Deserves a Tragedy'
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When you live in the desert, you try to get out whenever you can.
"Yesterday Morning" by Matt Wertz
As per our usual weekly arrangement, I accompanied my lovely wife on her ride down to acting class on Tuesday night. (And by "accompanied," of course I mean drove the hour-plus ride and she took a nice peaceful nap in the passenger seat.) Matt Wertz came on, track three of my latest mix, singing "Yesterday Morning" (click play above if you'd like a soundtrack). Great song, yes, but it was the timbre of the tune that teleported me. It somehow sent me back to my college days with that familiar nostalgic jangle of acoustic guitar pop/rock that was all the rage some 4-8 years ago. The noises coming from my stereo just sounded like college, if that makes any sense.
Instantly I was 18, a guitar neophyte, learning hammer-ons and new chords, and volunteering to work with the high-schoolers at a local church. I was full of life, full of new knowledge from stimulating university classes, and, to be honest, pretty full of myself. I was living at home with my parents, and friends wth all sorts of people that I no longer talk to... not on purpose, though. It just, well, happens.
I was reliving my experiences, but something wasn't right. Something wasn't the same. Something had changed.
The answer came out of nowhere, like an email from the aether -- it was me.
In these years that separate the me of then from the me of now, the sound hasn't changed, but I have.
I realized then that I'm not much different from the earth upon which I live. All around me, as I drove, were rolling hills, made of dust and silt and compound organic matter-type things, forming layers upon layers as time rolls on. The earth never stays the same, either. Winds blow, storms come, things die, things are born; the earth is stretched in constant tension between death and rebirth... and we're just the same.
The music -- Wertz's song was recorded in early 2001, the end of my sophomore year of college -- hasn't changed. It's fixed, static, recorded, done.
But I'm not.
Layer upon layer of dirt, of silt -- blankets of life and death -- are constantly laid upon us as we get older. In many ways, we'll never be free in the sense that we were "back then." Concerns and troubles seem to plague us as we age; more is added to more, and as much as we sometimes want to, we cannot shed our experiences like a winter coat in springtime. The heaviness of life is battering ram, juggling act, and weightlifting contest, and the intensity of the game never seems to slacken.
I wonder if becoming an adult just means somehow learning to live with the weight of all this... gravity.
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