The terror of dying

(A follow up to my last post written on the plane)

When I came out to my office this morning, it had frozen over night and so I needed to make a fire in my wood stove to warm things up. I was once again faced with death as I found a little sparrow had fallen down the chimney, while I was away in Vancouver seeing my Dad.

Unable to to escape back up, it had made it through the flu system and into the firebox, where it was able to see the office windows through the glass wood stove door. The poor thing was able to see the sunlight, trees and freedom, but was trapped in an iron prison, full of ashes from the last fire.

I could tell it had fought to get up the chimney: there was soot from the pipes blown out from the joint at the top of the stove. But unable to spread it's wings in the six inch pipe, it must have had to give up and try to find another way out. Or perhaps it was exhausted or injured, as it struggled. Inside he might have felt forced to choose the only path available, and followed the smell of fresh air coming from the damper, until he made his way through to the firebox.

I'm not even sure how he made any progress out of the pipe and into the firebox, given there is no clear path, or open hole. He must have struggled, terrified and clueless to the right way to go. Feeling his way along.

Inside the firebox, there was a lot of evidence of the ashes that had been blown around as he desperately tried to escape. The outside was right over there! He could see it through the glass door, not even 10 feet away. He had made it through the dark pipes, just one more impossible obstacle, and freedom!

I can't imagine the desperation: trapped, confused. Why did he even chose to go that way in the first place? Seemed like a good idea, I guess. With no idea of the consequences, he was now a prisoner in a dark, lonely place he never bargained for. How unfair is that? It is unfair, isn't it?

I hope he understands that I feel the tragedy of this all. I think it's unfair, yet God gave him, and us all, the freedom to get hurt as we fight forces none of use understand when we start out. Why does it have to be so hard?

Somehow, I hope he knows that I understand at least a bit, even though we're so different. Perhaps he does, somehow. I will never know.

How do you avoid a wasted life?

Visiting my father this weekend brought the topic up. He is, unfortunately, quite sick to the point of spending most of the time just resting, in pain, looking forward to a simple meal at the seniors residence. That's it.

He rather surprised me when he emphatically told me how guilty he was of not spending more time with family, and instead wasting time doing a job he wasn't suited for.

A) He took care of the needs of our family, quite well. That counts.
B) He's always been quite clear in choosing what he wanted to do, and did it.
C) It probably is not fair to yourself to question you life, at a time like this.

I can see the fact that we choose things that we wish we did different when we get to the consequences later. Hind sight is 20/20. We all want our cake and to eat it too. Perhaps we generally favor the short term though, and down play the cost for later, since consequences are a long time in the future?

I guess I'm wondering why we don't take the bigger picture more seriously. You are going to have to pay: at some point. Do you really want to defer that to the end of your life? Under the best circumstances, with failing health everything is very stress full, confusing and slightly addled. It really is not the time to decide pay the price of regretful decisions.

So decide everyday, what matters, and choose that, whatever the cost. Don't play games with yourself, and others. If you are not sure what it is you might regret then, you really should work on that, or it's gonna get messy. To achieve peace, you will have to own and accept your choices, including the ones you avoided.

That will certainly add to life and liveliness now and later, you will become more consistent as a person, and not have to live with regret and guilt.

Can sadness be good?

Is there a good kind of sadness??

My brother John, sister in law Jocelyn, niece Nicole and nephew Ben just left after a week of fun and activity. It was a great time. Train rides, lots of food I had fun cooking, adventures on the prairies, a rodeo and even replacing our back door and working on the man cave with some great timbers John and I bought from a sawmill. Mike, Jeanette and Rachael even joined in!! Man! A busy week, but full of laughter and memories. The kids had a great time playing. John and I laughed ourselves silly as we tore a large hole in the house, and put up some very manly timbers.

They just pulled out, back off on their long way home. People crying and it feels like half of the crew just left leaving a very large vacuum. We're all at loose ends now: no one sure what to do, lots clean up to do, projects to get too and deathly quiet. Is this what parents go through all the time with an empty nest? How on earth is this supposed to be good?

It really sucks, that they had to go. But parties have to come to an end.

Maybe feeling really sad helps you to realize how great it all was. It must be selfish, somehow, because there is no reason to feel bad. I had a years worth of fun, my major 'on vaccation' reno goals have already been met and exceeded, and I even have time left over to start moping up details that are left over. A great vacation, already. Let's face it, to keep that up for another week would probably leave me in the hospital from either exhaustion, some other kind of poisoning or crushed by having a rough sawn timber landing on me as I feel off a ladder laughing too hard.

No, this kind of sadness from deep inside points to how great community can be as people choose to care for each other, and be cared about. There is a good bit of risk of the unknown mixed in there too as people have to figure out how we're going to get along, which could have gone bad. We're family after all! But there wasn't anything bad, and now a deep hole which makes a guy realize just how huge a good time can really be.

Life and community is great. Although the sadness stings, and will for a while, it feels really sweet. And that's the kinds of sweetness in life that money can't buy.

Coals getting ready for aged tenderloin

Adds life and liveliness: oh yeah......... I don't think anyone can dispute that!

This is really neat...

This java app digs through an RSS feed, and assembles a composite image. Check out the blog as a composite image from http://wordle.net/

The destructiveness of fear

As Mike has articulated:

The reality of life is suffering.
The reaction to suffering is fear.
The response to fear is the choice to either trust or control.
The effect of control is to propagate suffering.
The result of trust is transformation.
The mechanism of transformation is death.
The opportunity of death is resurrection.
The outcome of resurrection is true life.

Fear is a crippling problem we all deal with, and most of us (dare I say we
all?) don't even know we are reacting in fear to events. When we do, the
life robbing dominoes quickly begin to fall. Worse yet, we don't just rob
ourselves of life and liveliness, the effects propagate and start robbing
life and liveliness from everyone around us.

Parents that live with fear teach their kids that fearing is normal.
Children learn to unconsciously accept fear, and it is normal to fear. They
begin to define how they are going to live our their entire lives based on
fear.

Corporations that fear create cultures at work that then operate on fear.
Decisions are made accepting fear that ultimately affect how staff are
treated and limited in success and liveliness due to the fear that the
company has accepted. Worse, many companies propagate fear in a way to
control staff and customers, defining what is accepted and using fear to
maximize their sales.

My Dad is visiting right now (pictured), and it occurs to me that one of the great
things my father did for me as a kid, was to live fearless. Sure, you can
poke holes into things that happened and find failures: he's only human.
I'm sure some would say that there are consequences to living fearless, and
they would be right. If you own your life and fears, you force others to
deal with their own anxieties.

But I credit my father with giving me a sense of fearlessness that has
helped me. Yet, when I get all balled up and take the time to sort out why
I'm whacked out, you can always trace issues back to fear, and my lack of
control over something that I simply cannot control.

Many would also say that we have to accept and deal with some fears. Fear
is valid! Well no, being sensible by weighing fears and making good
decisions is really a lot of effort, but is what we have to do. Once you
sort out what you need to own, make your own choices for what you want, then
the fear is gone. You choose, and liveliness abounds. Fear, and trusting
God cannot coexist, without taking away your trust in God. Why would we do
that?

I would suggest that if you believe that fear is OK, you are not free. And
you disagree with Christ.

John 8:36 (New International Version)
36 So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.

ADDED NOTE:

Just a note on the consequences of avoiding dealing with fear.

It occurs to me that we only have 2 choices here: ignore self awareness about the subconscious fears that define you, or a *LOT* of hard word to begin to understand how fear defines you.

By choosing the former, you cannot care fully for those around you, and must protect yourself and withdraw. You end up isolated and in a position of hardening yourself to the hurt you inflict on others.

The later is a lot of work, but is where you enable meaningful relationships with others and genuinely are able to care about them.

What if there is proof that Jesus was the Jewish messiah?

I think it's fair to say that most Church going Christians understand something of the Jewish history, as least as far as the Old Testament goes, and the tension that Christ, or the Messiah brought. I think most people understand that at the time of Christ, the Jewish people were looking for their Messiah to come. Christ's coming was foretold in the old testament which was studied as a core part of the culture and recognized to be coming, prompting the wise men to visit Christ at his birth. I think it's fair to say that 'the coming Messiah' was pretty much common knowledge.

I've heard it explained that under the oppression of the Romans many Jewish faithful were focused on (doomed to fail) incremental political change and were simply wanting to be freed from political oppression. That of course is a huge misunderstanding of what Christ was trying to do. Christ wasn't here to control, he was here to give his life away. I've even heard it suggested that Judas' motivation for betrayal might have been to spur on Christ to make His move to politically set the Jewish people free. Ooops.

If Jesus really was the Messiah, why did the people of the day have such a hard time changing gears and ended up 'missing it'? I'm afraid it's just the same struggle that we all face: It's just really hard for anyone to realize that things around you don't need to change: what needs to change is inside us.

I would be fascinated to read about anyone in the Jewish community that has wrestled with this and wondered in retrospect if Christ was it. With all the weight of 2000 years of Jewish tradition, this would be very hard to even contemplate, perhaps not even possible if for no other reason than there is no hard proof documentation linking Jesus Christ to the long awaited Messiah.

Until now, perhaps.

A tablet said to date back to the first century BC could redefine links between the Christian and Jewish religions by predicting a messiah who would rise again after three days.

Israel Knohl, a biblical studies professor at Jerusalem's Hebrew University, said his interpretation of the Hebrew text on the tablet could "overturn the vision we have of the historic personality of Jesus" Christ.

"This text could be the missing link between Judaism and Christianity in so far as it roots the Christian belief in the resurrection of the messiah in Jewish tradition," he told AFP.

The amazing thing here is the fact that the text pre-dates Christ, but clearly points out the 3 days of death then resurrection. Historically, there is nothing directly linking Jesus as the Messiah, other than Christ's claims and the witness of others, which is has been discounted. This text as part of the Jewish tradition links the messiah with 3 days of death and resurrection before Jesus comes. Wow.