the words

the words of the spirit are alive and active, ever advancing in all directions, incisive, divisive, binding, separating, discerning, exposing, energizing …….. not rolling off the recitational treadmill of human tongues driven by passionless religion ....... not locked up in industrial printers ink or fenced in by numerical grid references and impaled indelibly on strips of mashed up, dried out dead trees

ion quest

The intimacy of Your detail
Is painted with bold sweeping strokes
The broadness of Your truth
With the fine point of the pen

The flow of your thoughts
Cascade in a trickle
The object of your attention
blends into focus
When will we ever get to truly know?

what fool

what fool would tear down

and humble what god has exalted?

what fool would exalt what god has torn down?

what idiot would brazenly grasp at crumbs?

the scatterings from beneath the table of the poor,

whilst there is a banquet spread

elaborately, generously and purposely prepared for those called to partake.

not by human stature

but by wisdom, grace and truth

lest any should gloat . . . .

lest any should bloat . . . .

oh lord, i can only humble myself

i am but a man

and always shall be.

but in the hand of god

may i prove faithful.

may i prove silent in my speech

and bold in my silence,

productive in my rest

and empty in my own efforts

standing under love

I had a discussion the other day with some friends and the interpretation of “love” came up in the conversation.
Perhaps we have been clouded in our understanding of what love is. Perhaps we have been bombarded with Hollywood’s portrayal (or should we say betrayal) of love. What if we saw love as simply being the resonance with things? What if love really means harmony? The love of or for someone else would then be seen as the way we harmonise or flow with them. The way we accommodate them into our world, making space for them and flowing together?
When we feel a connection with someone whether it is romantic or not we tend to want to make space for the person, for the relationship, for what resonates between us. We make space to flow with them.
Maybe this is real love?
To extend this to greater things like the universe, peace, life, and death, even God, perhaps we can say resonance with life is love for life. Maybe love for God is the way we are able to resonate with the finely tuned creation around us. People, the earth, animate and inanimate things, all these are the manifestation of a creative act and are all good and in harmony (at least that is what is recorded as God’s declaration of the creative act in the Genesis account). Perhaps it’s when this is contradicted that the trouble begins? What if the judgment of God were not an act of personal attack on the created order or on individuals but a direct consequence of the created order being violated? Could it be that when we violate this perfect order we personally reap the consequences of our actions?
It also says that God cannot be mocked and that we will reap what we sow. Selfish, self-centred actions are contrary to harmony and resonance. Could the distortion of our environment as a result of intentional or unintentional deviance from this God created order be the tangible judgment of God?
Perhaps the dissonance we feel is linked directly to the domain we occupy? We can either occupy our space legitimately or illegitimately. If we are to live in harmony with ourselves, others and our environment we are in need of being respectful of the space we occupy. If this is violated we are automatically in disequilibrium. And we clash with ourselves, others and our environment. One could possibly even say that we become a cancer in that space.

Maybe love is being ecologically aware and respectful?
“ecology” in the dictionary is defined as 1. a. The science of the relationships between organisms and their environments. Also called bionomics.
b. The relationship between organisms and their environment.
2. The branch of sociology that is concerned with studying the relationships between human groups and their physical and social environments. Also called human ecology.
3. The study of the detrimental effects of modern civilization on the environment, with a view toward prevention or reversal through conservation. Also called human ecology.
The origins of the word are given as: [German Ökologie : Greek oikos, house;  German -logie, study (from Greek -logi, -logy).]

Could this suggest reference to the “house” of God? His dwelling place, his order?

If God has set in place a divinely ordered creational expression our highest response would be to understand (stand under) this reality and resonate with the purposes of God. If we deviate from this we ‘miss the mark’ (sin)

Maybe love is not a feeling but an understanding?

In his mind he had been there – he was sure he had, but he hadn’t

The travel agent never really left his office. He devoted himself to the study of all the possible destinations available. He was a busy man. He spend virtually all his time going through glossy books filled with glossy pictures of wonderful, glossy places. He constantly read through reams and reams of detailed information. He devoured the details published in text about every conceivable angle on all of the most amazing trips. He read through the many different ways one could get to these destinations. He became an expert in all aspects of the travel experience, the best available routes, all the possible connecting points, even the costs structures of each journey with all the necessary travel documents needed to cross each and every border. He had indexed all the significant places of interest. It was a huge and time consuming exercise. Many who had traveled before had taken pictures of their journeys. Many of these records were in glowing colour, some even in hi-tech 3-D, many had even taken detailed video footage sometimes even with recorded commentary included as they journaled their delightful experiences. He had even developed a photographic memory of the photographs he had studied.
He loved his job and it captured his passion. His mind was filled with details of so many possibilities. He so wanted to encourage as many as possible to go. In his mind he had been there himself – he was sure he had been there himself, but he hadn’t. …… isn’t he a bit like you and me?

disillusioned

most of us have experienced disillusionment. Even if we can’t recall the experience we often hear of someone who says they are disillusioned. Disillusionment can cause devastation. Many who express disillusionment have felt let down by people through some sort of experience. A cheating partner, lover, or a liar can be extremely difficult to get over once the deviance and betrayal is exposed. After the initial shock disillusionment sets in, often leaving the victim almost in a state of total collapse. I have heard of people who claim to be disillusioned by God or the church, or by some institution like marriage, a political party or a social club. Some express disillusionment with men or women. I have even heard of people who claim to be disillusioned with life. These people often feel severely let down and usually they express great pain and discomfort, even torment in their situation.
I love words and the meanings they convey. My mind naturally gravitates to the possible applications of words. I love to know the origins of a word or saying so the concept of disillusionment jumped out at me and I decided to check it out just for fun. I was amazed at what was obvious in the meaning of the word. It changed a lot of things in my mind.
I logged on to http://www.thefreedictionary.com/ and typed in “disillusioned”. This is what I got straight off the bat: [To free or deprive of illusion. n. 1. The act of disenchanting. 2. The condition or fact of being disenchanted. adj. having lost one's ideals, illusions, or false ideas about someone or something; disenchanted]
Isn’t that fascinating?
Now to my mind to be enchanted means to be under some sort of spell. In other words to be bewitched. I dug a little bit deeper and found out that the origins of the word comes from Latin meaning: action of mocking, from ‘illudere’ or ‘incantare’- to mock at. All this suggests the action of deceiving, the state or fact of being intellectually deceived or misled, even made a fool of.
To be under an illusion means that one is under the perception of something objectively existing in such a way as to cause misinterpretation of its actual nature.
So, what pain do we feel when we are disillusioned. The pain of perceived betrayal is very real and hard to bare. But maybe it doesn’t stop there? Could it be that the trauma we experience is the pain we feel being pressed into releasing our own make-believe world? An imaginary world we seem now to have lost as a result of the perceived betrayal? Could it be possible that the pain we experience be that of our being exposed not so much by the ‘perpetrator’ but by our own folly? Perhaps that might be just a little harsh, but it is worthy of serious evaluation.
In short, when we begin to understand the real meaning of the word, disillusionment is, amidst the huge discomfort, a good state to be in. Disillusionment is at least potentially, the start of a process of having the illusions in our lives weeded out and destroyed.
Perhaps we should rejoice when we are disillusioned as it could very well be the beginning of clarity of mind for us pertaining to our thinking and/or our environment.

hippy marrow returns

Hippy marrow returns

A nephew of mine recently celebrated his birthday. As is the usual custom on facebook friends and family sent congratulations and many exchanges flowed. Now my mind has its own little expanding universe and in keeping with it’s own intra-galactic orbits, black holes, births and deaths of stars, and other mostly inexplicable phenomena it naturally spat out a spontaneous and as usual, a somewhat spooneristic play on words and images that resulted in a birthday message to him that went something like this:

hippy marrow returns!!
instead of just tying another yellow ribbon round the old oak tree
you've managed to lay another ring around the trunk of life
no more barking up the wrong tree now : )
happy birthday dude!!
Lloyd

And then, just as I had pressed the send button my intra galaxy went into its usual wham-bam, bigbang walkabout for an eternal micro second and the birthday wish suddenly exploded outwards in all directions and the simple salutation turned into a wonderful thought process which had me tearing away at high speed like a little human Hubble Telescope. It suddenly dawned on me as I sped past multitudes of other intra-constellations that in these days of global political, social, ecological and economic meltdown we seem to be coming to a very sticky end. Sort of much like tearing down a highway at full speed and suddenly realising that the sign we just zipped by looked ominously like a cul-de-sac warning and not an Autobahn go-as-fast-as-you-can encouragement.
I was born in 1960 so I can legitimately call myself a child of the 60’s but I did not see or experience the hippy movement first-hand. I was too young and also, I was born in South Africa which at the time was having its own little revolution which in hindsight can clearly be seen and renamed as the “Dippy” movement. But I digress a little. From what I have picked up about that wonderful hippy time is that a few dissonant individuals became a groundswell of some magnitude that challenged the status quo and made a global impact. In some ways a Pandora’s box was opened but in many other ways a new way of thinking about things was unleashed and things changed dramatically. Many of the participants in this movement went on to be key players in many strategic fields of life. Great breakthroughs and creative inventions were made, and many are still with us in some form or another today. The pros and cons are for another discussion but perhaps one of the things we can learn from is that a similar situation exists now that was the soil for the hippy movement back then. A system was seen to be failing hopelessly and a few people felt moved to attempt to do something about it. Against all odds action was taken and at the risk of life and limb something started and a revolution resulted. There was a marrow in the bones of many of those hippy’s. Maybe that’s just what we need right now? Where are those with steel in their hearts and purpose in their minds? Where are those prophetic little voices who will spark into flame the beginnings of a solution that evades us all at this point. Stupidity is doing the same thing and expecting different results. It’s got to be fresh and inspired. It’s got to be radical and dangerous. Instead of a feel-good tree with 100 comforting yellow ribbons wrapped around its swelling trunk perhaps the bark needs to be loud and snapping at the heels of corruptive mediocrity and stagnant political wishful thinking.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful to read a bold news headline across the face of global media that reads, “HIPPY MARROW RETURNS!!”