Evidence of Cat Dancing

For years when Dooley was young and the pond was frozen, I'd catch him chasing leaves (or imaginary fragments of fascination) over the ice.  He seemed to take great joy in sliding, pouncing, and creeping up on his prey on this unusual surface.  But like so many cats, if he suspected anyone witnessing him frolicking with such abandon, he stopped and acted like he would never participate in such undignified behavior.  Sort of like Fonzie.

But Dooley is older now and he doesn't go outside much.  Yet Tuesday I noticed these:

A definite pattern led up these random paw prints on the ice.

Perhaps Dooley is out there dancing when no one is looking.

It's easy to feel jaded about Christmas.  Maybe we think if we believe such an unlikely story of a virgin giving birth to the Messiah of the world, we'll be seen as undignified, incapable of doing something so very ordinary and silly.

But who would make up such an outlandish tail?

Doesn't our heart yearn to have wonder and mystery?  To think maybe there is in fact a God so very powerful that He does miracles?  A God so loving that he would sacrifice his own son for a bunch of ungrateful people?

Love can make us dance, just as wonder tickles our toes with chilling sensations.

So go ahead.  Dance.  No one is watching.

And wonders of His Love..

And wonders of His Love...

And wonders, wonders, of His Love.

Racing Out on Uneven Ground

Before I could stop her, Tilly raced out to chase the birds resting in the field.

Recently, the farmers tilled up the soil, and it was extremely lumpy.  However, Tilly, being a dog who doesn't exactly evaluate conditions, assumed the ground was as even as it's always been and set out at high speeds to pursue the birds.

While Tilly is generally terrible at listening to me, the one command she obeys well is the "Come" command.  I yelled and she stopped and returned, but not before knocking her doggie elbows and came back with a limp.  Fortunately, there was no lasting damage.  I knew this immediately because Tilly is a wimp and very vocal about any pain she has.  And since she wasn't wimpering and being dramatic, I knew she'd live to annoy me another day.

How many times do we pursue something at a dead run, not considering the terrain and consequences?  I don't know about you, but occasionally I toss my normal level headed thinking in order to pursue some "flights of fancy" (as a friend put it).  Inevitably, this results in a figurative twisted ankle and pain.  And yet I don't seem to recall this the next time opportunity arises.  I set out on uneven ground.

Unlike me, an almighty Savior knows about our temptations and trials.  He knows what it is like to be weak.  While Jesus withstood the most unfair situations and the most alluring temptations, He remembered what His Father was about, kept His mission in mind, and thought of Others (that's us, y'all) before Himself.

We may be weak, but we are understood by our Creator.  He evens out the tough trials, even when we've raced out in front of Him.

There is Thanksgiving.  There is Christmas, the Joy of New Life. 

May it be yours, as much as it is mine.

She Drives Me Crazy

(Cue the Fine Young Cannibals Tune)

Of course, this refers to the "I'm-eight-years-old-but-still-act-like-I'm-six-months-old" Matilda.

Happily, I do not know which boy-band character that toy is supposed to resemble.  And of course Tilly doesn't care whose face she chews.  This applies to humans as well as stuffed animals.

Despite a basic obedience class and eight years of consistent rule reinforcement, Tilly knows when she can ignore very specific instructions.  She's smart enough to know the expectation, and savvy enough to know that if I'm not hovering over her and following her around, she can get away with devouring that which is not food.  So what if it may result in parasites, not to mention toxic fumes, she wants what she wants.

I no longer need coffee because every day begins with my calm tone quickly turning to shrill and barely contained shrieks and hisses at Tilly provide enough adrenalin to wake me up.  It's exhausting and it doesn't exactly do much for creating and maintaining a warm bond.

"Why do you insist on doing what you know you should not do?" I ask, only to hear the same question echo back to me.  Hasn't God asked me the same thing?  Why DO I choose to follow my own way, specifically ignoring that which may harm me, because it's not what I want? 

Unlike me, God, having that whole long-suffering thing, doesn't lose his temper, yell shrill comments and come unglued (ahem).  He knows we are weak.  Hopefully, we realize he is forgiving.  Hopefully, we realize that real change only comes from relying on Him to create the internal work we can't really do ourselves.

While I, at times (many), can't understand why Tilly willfully disobeys me, it doesn't take much for me to realize I am guilty of the same tendencies.  It's not one of the things I'd like to have in common with my dog.  I'd rather it be charm and enthusiasm, though she has very little of the first and too much of the second.

The good news is there is hope for Tilly, like a shorter leash and supervision.  There's hope for me too, like keeping myself more closely tethered to God.  There's hope for you too.

What Dazzles Us

Foster was an awesome dog.  If there ever was a dog who could dazzle you with attitude and fun, he was The Dog.

What dazzles you? 

When I look at social media, nearly every post is a result of someone being dazzled, whether it be by an amazingly decadent food recipe, a household hint, the stunning beauty of perfect children, and even the politicians who promise and lie.

We are dazzled.

What happens when we are so taken with a person, a place, a food, a new phone, that we are blinded to everything else?  Generally, it results in a myopic view of our family/church/restaurant/music group/cat/dog/love interest/book/exercise class/political figure/political party/civic organization...

You get the idea.

Temporary blindness to reality is not always terrible.  Reality is sometimes terrible, and a small break and diversion may help.  And not everything that dazzles us is bad. However, our reaction, our "bedazzledness", endangers our good sense and level reaction.

Yet what is worthy of our awe and admiration is the Glory of God.  Often the things that grab our attention hold some element that is a tiny reflection of God's glory, whether it be power, beauty, peace, etc.  But as a Perfect God, His creation is flawless.  His Truth is pure.  His Sovereign Goodness shines so bright that all else is in shadow.  Our reaction rarely will get us in trouble because it often comes from the purest part of ourselves as we experience Perfection.

Being dazzled, to me, smacks a bit of being fooled.  That doesn't happen when God's Glory infiltrates our being, our friends, and even the view out the front door.  There is no falsehood there.  Truth is Truth and Truth is beauty, and more than anything, it is worthy of our bent knees.

Why The Shadow?

Is it Batman?

No, it's Carbon.  Lurking.  It's what Carbon does best.

When we are children, our shadows are our friends.  We may walk, run, or try to trick our shadow. It is a source of wonder and joy. But as we get older, we fear shadows.  We suspect evil and ill intent, sometimes even of our own.

A shadow is the dark area that comes between a body and rays of light and a surface.

C.S. Lewis had much to say about shadows.  Here is a quote from "The Great Divorce."

"Will you come with me to the mountains?  It will hurt at first, until your feet are hardened.  Reality is harsh to the feet of shadows.  But will you come?"

While I'm no Lewis scholar, what I know from reading the book, and my own inclination toward safe living is this is a call to step into the light, even though it is not safe and it often is unknown and unfamiliar.  Even if you've followed God your entire life, sometimes He'll surprise you in ways that aren't entirely pleasant.  Sometimes we retreat to the shadows.

Keep your head down.  Maybe He won't see you.  Then you won't get hurt.

That is not living, that is just surviving to limp through the next day.

We choose safety, or a vice, or something that doesn't look like a vice, but serves as one, to hide from living a life with Christ.  I mean, how exactly do we do that anyway?  It's not following the Golden Rule or doing church-y thing.

We want to DO more than we want to BE.  We want to quantify life, show results on a chart.  But wild God isn't one for the bottom line.  God's economy is different from ours.  And it's really annoying not to know it, only occasionally getting a glimpse of what it might be.

"Abide with me," Jesus tells us.  Other than the Dude abiding, I don't know of too many people who abide a whole lot, do you?

The Message version of the Bible in John 15:5 goes on in later verses to say, "...If you make yourselves home with me and my words are at home with you, you can be sure that whatever you ask will be listened to and acted upon."

What?  Abiding gets us an audience with the King.  The Creator of the Universe. 

There is no glory in the shadows and certainly none from living there.

Come into the Light.  The mystery is good, the company perfect.



When Things Go Sour

Emmit has been dealing with a sour stomach since Saturday.  I'll spare you the details.  You're welcome.

He resisted eating anything, which is impressive considering this guy's an omnivore (hint: how he got to this point to begin with).  Of course it was a three day weekend but he managed to stay hydrated and was in the vet Tuesday.  When further attempts at eating and getting him to take his medication down his gullet failed, back to the vet's office yesterday, which resulted in failure as well.

Finally, after continued resistance this morning, he rallied just before noon and gulped down some chicken.  And I snuck some medicine in some cheese that he previously refused.  With the help of the muzzle, at least some of the liquid medicine got in (most was spit out, but some had to go in, didn't it?).

As the tech said, "If we could only tell them that the medicine would make them feel better."

And isn't that true for us too?  Maybe not you.  You probably have it all together.  But me, it's true for me.  I often turn up my nose at what's good for me.  I suspect there's a magic capsule in that tasty cheese cube and refuse it.  Trying to jam some truth serum down my throat?  I'll spit it right back at you.

Often people (again, not you, but me, and maybe some others) wonder why God lets horrible tragedies happen.  That's more than I can address in one blog post (or ten), but some of those tragedies are what we've brought down on our own heads.  Many times we've been warned ahead of time that we are heading for a brick wall.  We are sick and we refuse our meds.  We just keep going on, certain we know better.

Then we hit that wall.  Our disease grows.

What is the answer? 

God's word has centuries of sound advice on how to live.  We can choose to flaunt it.  We can do our own thing.  Free will means the freedom to make bad choices.

But a good choice is to turn back to the Lord when we are sick and broken (you can go when you're well too).  It's not rules that make us better but God's mercy and love that heals.  Forgiveness is a special kind of freedom.  We can bypass the legalism/license tight rope by remembering whose we are, why we are here, and living freely in that love.

Life can be sour.  It can also be bittersweet.  A land of milk and honey awaits.  Live eternally now.

The Terrible Inconvenience of Reality

When he was only three months old, Foster stood on the edge of the back deck, surveying his domain.  He looked right, looked left, then jumped off the edge.  Straight down.  About six feet.  Fortunately, he was unharmed, though a bit surprised to learn that he was not invincible.

I looked at him, shook my head, and said, “I know.  I get it.  Me too.”

Foster swaggered when he walked with a confidence he could back up with strength and attitude.  Only when he overplayed his dominance with another dog who was tired of his nonsense did he experience his comeuppance.  That dog kicked his little dingo butt.  Though he got a scrape or two, his pride was undone.  He simply couldn’t believe he was beatable.

I know.  I get it.  Me too.

Most dogs play on an equal plane, many assessing those around them before engaging.  The less confident may crawl, expose their bellies, and submit first, showing their willingness to get along at all costs.

Then, there’s Foster.

Then, there’s me.

It’s possible to have an overblown sense of ego as much as there is undervaluing ourselves.  Too much self-esteem?  Yes!  Too little?  Same. 

Sometimes our sense of who we are, what we can do, how others see us, and our skills leap off the edge of the deck and land in harsh truth.  In a culture that treats truth like a commodity to be amended, revamped, and resold, we tend to think that how we feel is truth. 

But only Truth is Truth.

Jesus calls us.  He tells us our condition.  We are created in the very image of God.  We are valued more than anything else on the planet.  We are worth dying for, despite that other component of terrible reality – we kind of suck.  We constantly make choices that land us in peril, even when it may take us years to realize it.  Whether it is outright theft or coveting another person’s anything or hating someone with the heat of a thousand suns, we mess up.  Even if we value ourselves as God sees us, we often value others much less. 

“Consider others more highly than yourselves.”  Jesus said that.  My response tends to be, “But Jesus, have you MET the others?  They are really annoying.  Why would I consider them BETTER than me?  Look at me – I’ve got it together and I am kind and practically sin-free, really.”

Ahem.

The Terrible Inconvenience of Reality is that….it’s an equal playing field.  The whole “the ground at the foot of the cross is level” thing is for real. 

Walking in our identity in Christ means a proper assessment of ourselves – we mustn’t undervalue the awesome creation of whose we are and we mustn’t base our confidence on anything other than His Love for us. 

It’s not so easy as repeating over and over, “Yes, Jesus loves me.”  I mean, that’s good and I’m all for it and if it works for you, please do it.  But for most of us, we can’t simply read a truth and instantly change our behavior or thought processes.  Sometimes it takes a bending of the knee, a humble, helpless prayer, and more than a few tears.

The good news is God works really well with helplessness.  Yes, that state we all resist with dug in fingernails is exactly where God makes some of his amazing changes in us that we can’t do ourselves.

Remember not to cower through life.  There is plenty of scary stuff in our world, but it’s not what controls the world.  Remember not to boast through life.  Sure, you’re great and I’m great (probably even greater haha) but there are the fragile among us on whom we ought not trample, and it's entirely possible that we aren't as fantastic as we think we are (?!).

Sauntering with the confidence of love is allowed. Remember whose you are.  That Reality may be inconvenient when compared with our own attitudes, but walking in truth is the way to true freedom.  And that is worth having.