stock
i found myself thinking that it would sure be convenient if i didn't have to deal with person X anymore. i was on a morning run when i thought this.
kinda cool that God gets up early and runs with you because he knows that there is a greater chance of getting through to you then.
so God is running alongside me, and doesn't seem particularly out of breath. he opens his mouth and the same voice that is described by scientists as 'the big bang' whispers an idea to my heart. here's where i paraphrase a personal word from God into manspeak...
removing one person from your life won't make the inconvenience of all humankind go away. there will always be someone else who steps in to take the place of the actor you've just fired. this life-drama is full of countless characters and many of them are stock. removing one face and one name from the playbill does not remove the stock character from the show, it only redirects the script for awhile in order for the new character to show his or her most obvious colours before things continue on again much as before. like some unending daytime drama that cycles again and again through mild variations within the individual episodes from one season to the next, the bigger story drives forward seemingly unaffected by changes in cast and crew and the occasional rewrite. it is more important to the larger story for the principal to develop and grow in response to the stuff thrown his or her way, than it is for the principal to be emotionally sedentary and relationally static.
in other words, you're going to have to love your way through this one in order for any longterm change to take place. the fact that you can even think in terms of 'person X' suggests that the faces and names are not important... what is important is how you grow through this or that in order to prevent a recycling of the same old dialogue and the same old plot. the old definition of insanity fits here: doing the same things in the same way but expecting different results is folly.
now the big question: what kind of stock character are you in the life-dramas of others?
i hate it when God talks to me that way. i would probably run more, but the truth is a heavy burden to carry with you great distances.
***
if i was blessed with words of sublime articulation
but was full of intellect instead of love
what a din with my words would begin
and how lengthy the silence above
if i could fathom even the deepest truths of the heavens
but remained withdrawn and shallow face to face
how pointless the talk that accompanied the walk
and how fruitless these branches of grace
Labels: conflict, relationship
posted by jollybeggar at
6:27 PM
2 Comments:
Hmmph, life, don't talk to me about life.
I can't help but think that it is the principle who is to change and not the supporting actors. Life....
The weird part is we are clay jars constantly being remolded. Man, it seems like everyday there is another thing being heated or broken and recast.
Unfortunately at this point in my life I think I feel more like the Statue of David by Michaelangelo then I feel like Michaelangelo.
Apparently MA went to the marble mines to find his own marble for his sculpting. In the process he had to accept a flawed piece of marble. The story goes on to say that the piece, maybe a ton or so if not a little more, stood quietly in its corner.
MA, I imagine is looking and looking thinking "What am I going to do with this lopsided grained thing?" Well, the rest is history, or life.
MA used the grain to enable him to put the tension in David's pose. He is then asked how he carved David. His answer is priceless: "I took away the extra bits."
There are too many times when I feel like a flawed piece of flesh that is having sugery to remove the baggage and other crap. Having the master sculptor's chisel on my body does not feel the best.
Let the sculpter sculpt. That is what he does. You will feel broken at times but I think we tend to confuse it with wholeness.
May the grace of Jesus be with you.
i have made it my practice to never debate life and its mysteries with anyone who has a brain the size of a planet! oh where would we be without the legacy of douglas adams?
***
anyway yeah, the 'divine M' buonarrati was an inspiration to anyone who puts their mentoring hand to the realization of others' potential. his technique has been described as 'liberating the figure from the marble' as if there was a thing of beauty trapped within a solid slab of rock that only he could see.
although scripture uses the potter's hand/ clay pot analogy a lot to explore how God shapes lives into implements of God, i really like the scultor analogy, simply because of its violence. it is not that i find a picture of God hammering away at my life particularly endearing... it is more that i really warm to the idea of a God that desperately bashes away at all of the stuff that encases the me that only he can see- as if he is on a rescue mission to dig me out of my own rubble before i run out of air.
images of 9-11 and suicide bombings come to mind for me here, except that in this picture of life, i am one of the terrorists and one who has love greater than any of my human sociopolitical, religious or revolutionary agendas is digging me out of the building that i have just destroyed on top of me.
***
remember two things:
1) the chisel never touched the body of david- it knocked all that was NOT the body of david away.
2) MB's david has been held for centuries as the ultimate realization of the male form... body builders (before the steroid-enhanced pro-wrestlers of today) pursued the muscular mass/definition and balance of david as the measure by which they judged their own progress...
cuz he was, like, really built, eh?
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