Category: Individuality

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Runner

Well, this was certainly an interesting ten days. I am not sure what I expected, exactly, in the middle of a busy-busy stretch. Holiday weeks are always busier at the shop and this one included inventory deliveries as well as lots of folks to serve. I write that and I smile. It’s true, I really do think of the galleries as places of ministry as well as places of commerce, of sales. Art ministers. I watch it happen over and over. And I love that. I am so grateful that my commerce-life revolves around beauty and talent and investment in the gifts given. I love that.

So in a traditional sort of Vision Quest, the quester would debrief, so to speak. Come to the tribal or traditional equivalent of a spiritual director, report in, and seek feedback. Sometimes that feedback would be revelation, a new name, or confirmation of what the quester discerned. So here I am, coming to You. What stood out? That is the question first asked.

Well, one big thing unfolded over a couple of days. I went looking for the mama bear and four cubs, whom I did not get a clear view of, and instead was startled near dusk by a deer I obviously startled first, because she darted out from the brush in front of my car and then raced ahead down the road. Gosh, she was fast! Then she bounded off to the other side of the road and I lost sight of her. The whole thing made me recall a name I thought You spoke to me maybe 30 years ago–Running Deer. And a line from a poem that is from 2007, “footprints like hearts through my day”–because deer’s hoof prints are in fact heart-shaped. Maybe I will put the whole poem here. 

The Wood Between The Worlds

You are always

Breathing out

Largesse

I inhale hurriedly

The ten thousand things

Scarcely notice

Your breath, my life

You wait

Slow still center

I come to ground

Gently deciduous

Float leaflike

Your breath

CS Lewis says

Nothing much happens

Look again

Nothing

Much happens

The trees go on growing

I follow

Footprints like hearts

Through my day

You breathe out

I breathe in

Connected

There. That makes me happy.

 

Why? Why does that make you happy?

Because it’s the real me. It is how I feel, how I think.

This quest was all about authenticity, finding and owning your authentic self.

Yes, well, after that whole deer episode, a couple days later I was driving on the beach road, and up ahead of me was what looked like a school activity or athletic bus, pulled over, half on and half off the road. I skirted around it, no problem, but in huge letters across the back of the bus were the words Running Deer. THAT got my attention! So I have been trying to think, running from what? Running to what? And You said, running with whom?

And what do you think is your answer?

I think I am running from how I actually feel, a lot of the time. I am trying to be responsible and diligent and on top of things; I feel disorganized and frustrated and stressed, and honestly, I miss being outside. But You said this time was to help restore my writer. So what does Running Deer have to do with that?

You don’t write because writing is all about feeling for you. It is not so much about thought–it used to be, but not anymore. You have made a shift from what you think to what you feel, and because you are so used to hiding what you feel, you have put a straitjacket on your writing self. And speaking of thinking, you THINK no one cares what you think or feel. And you are so mistaken. You could not be more mistaken. I care. I, the Lord of the Universe, care what you think, and I care what you feel. You want so much not to offend anyone, and to be as loving as you can to everyone. That is what you feel. You want to give everyone, anyone, another chance, a break, a massive break. That is what you feel. You get frustrated, as you said, and then you take your frustration out on yourself for not doing more, not being more, when what is really the issue is that you see folks around you who don’t seem to care even half as much as you do. You see that, and you think, how could they waste this life? How could they waste this day? How could they waste this minute? And you have been reluctant to name your frustration, because you want so much to give them, all of them, another chance.

Don’t they get that, God? Another chance, I mean. 

Yes of course. Always. But that doesn’t mean you need to consume yourself with their choices. It is essential that you begin to name, to yourself in My Presence, how you really feel. That is not judging, that is not criticizing, especially if you never verbalize it beyond the page, the private page with Me. But you need to be more honest. It is not that you lie, it is that you are trying to hard to be who you think I want you to be, instead of just being the glorious creation you already are. What did you read this week?

Oh yes! That quote! So it came in an email from Richard Rohr, whose writing I like very much, but the quote itself came from Dr. Howard Thurman. “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” And then, I was placing a re-order with ceramic artisans for lamps and plaques, and they had a word plaque with that exact quote! So I took that as a confirmation.

You have answered this before. It is time for you to answer this again. Not here, not right now. Over the course of the next week. Keep breathing in the question and breathing out your answer: what makes you come alive, Eve? You think you know the answer. Don’t just think. Feel. What makes you come alive?

 

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The Missing Piece

Lord, you started to say something this morning as I was getting ready to leave the house, and I found it extraordinary, and I kind of cut You off, because I was so afraid I would forget it, and I wanted to write it down. So can we start that whole conversation again, please? I was trying to wrap my mind around uniqueness versus self-centeredness, and that is when You interrupted.

Yes, you were thinking, as you often do, in dualities. Selfish or self-centered versus self-sacrificing or self-denying.

Yes, that was it! And You said there was a Third Way! Please, tell me again.

I told you to think about a jigsaw puzzle. Being selfish or self-centered would be like thinking you are the most important piece in the puzzle. Being self-sacrificing or self-denying in this sense does not mean putting the needs of someone else ahead of your own, which you all need to do from time to time, but not always, or in every single circumstance. Being self-denying as it relates to the puzzle would be to say, my piece is not important at all. The puzzle doesn’t need my piece.

The truth is, every piece is important to the puzzle. Have you ever tried to complete a jigsaw puzzle with pieces missing? Isn’t it frustrating until you figure out that not all the pieces are in the box? And if you get nearly finished and then discover a piece is missing, don’t you feel a great sense of let-down, of frustration, because without that one missing piece, the puzzle is incomplete.

Further, by trying so hard to be inconspicuous, even absent, that missing piece actually becomes, in a negative sense, the first thing you notice when you look at the puzzle in its entirety. You notice what is missing, not all the pieces that are there, in their places. You notice the lack first. By trying to be of no importance, the missing piece actually becomes the most important.

But what happens when every piece is in its place? The whole puzzle fits together, no matter how many pieces there are, no matter how intricate the pattern or design. Each tiny piece is essential to complete the pattern and to create the whole.

If everyone simply accepted this fact, that every piece is essential and important, that everyone has a unique contribution to make, and gifts to share with the world, what a different world you would inhabit!! No one would be trying to occupy the wrong space. No one would be vying for a larger or more important position. Every piece would be revered if only everyone had as a goal completing the whole picture. There would be no war and no enmity, for the purpose of completing the pattern would predominate over every other concern.

So do not worry about taking up more space, or less space, or no space. Take your place, fit yourself in to My Grand Design, and watch everything fall into place, like pieces of a puzzle, all around you.

But Lord, what if some pieces won’t play? I mean, what if some demand a larger share of the puzzle, or refuse to be a part of it at all, even if their motives for refusal are shyness, or fear, or even, they have been told they mustn’t take any public place? 

Don’t worry about other pieces. Just diligently search to find your own niche, your own place, and your own shape there. Complete your part of the puzzle in real time, in the time given to you. Do your part in making the picture beautifully and wonderfully complete.

So, Lord…I had this idea, what photograph to make to accompany this, and it is a Lion puzzle I have, which I thought was neat, because of the Chronicles of Narnia, and Aslan, so I chose it, and set up the image and realized after I clicked my shutter that the gap formed shows a heart! A heart on its side.

Yes, that was My little gift to you tonight. Can you dare to believe that you, as an individual and as a stand-in, as it were, for every human on the planet, that you complete My Heart? It’s true. Every human, as each one becomes his or her best self, completes My Heart, fills in the gaps that My Love has created specifically for them to find and fill. My Love is fully complete, you see, when it is received and shared.

God, You are amazing. Thank You.

 

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Seeing Green

God, there is some commercial out now, I can’t even remember what the product is, just the tagline. It says something about finding and celebrating what makes you different. The premise reminds me simultaneously of the Fascinate: Advantage book and personality test by Sally Hogshead and also of the quote about being yourself because everyone else is taken. What got my attention was the way it got my attention! As if there was some layer of meaning or message I need to, well, pay attention to. Something I am not doing, or not doing consistently, or not doing enough. Not a reprimand so much as a course correction, that is what the sense is, emotionally, every time I hear it. So that leads me to ask You, what? What are You trying to say? I know well enough now that You can and will use anything, any opportunity, to emphasize a truth or to draw out of us a question that You really are asking us. So, what?

What, what? The question is clear: what makes you different?

Isn’t that a little like asking what makes my heart sing?

Not necessarily. Humans are big on comparisons, and on contrasts. What makes you different?

I can think of two ways to answer that question. One answer really dovetails with something Pete and I were talking about earlier—once upon a time, seems like long ago and far away, I suffered from depression. I had circumstances to blame, sure, but I also seemed derailed and unable to think clearly, to focus on solutions or even on tasks at hand. I scared myself, actually. And I don’t think the person I was then is the same person I am now. I do think I am different, and what makes me different today, is the kind of relationship I have with You, and how You have led me to focus on gratitude. Honestly, I say it a lot, but it is huge, huge, huge for me. And it has made me a bigger and better version of myself for sure.

 The other sense of the question, which could be worded what makes you unique, is harder for me to answer. I said to Pete last night, something like, isn’t it fun, living with an elf? And then I laughed! I think…I think my trying to stay upbeat and positive, which really is an outgrowth of coming out of that depression years ago, I think that makes me different. Say you grew up in a desert. Lots of drought. Very little rain. Very little green. And then you somehow are transported, or maybe you walk yourself, out of that desert into a much lusher, greener, growing landscape. But you never quite forget drought, forget that others live in that desert. And you meet them every day, people who still live there, in their viewpoint, even though they are surrounded now by this verdant, vibrant life! I think maybe what makes me different is that I can see the desert in the rearview mirror, and I can see it in others’ eyes, and at the same time, I can see the green grassy open fields. It’s almost like a fantasy overlay, God, like parallel universes or something. And I live in the greener one, most of the time. And, ok, here is what makes me different. Not that, not what I have said so far. What makes me different is that I KNOW, I just know, the green world is true. Real. And available. Available to live in. Available to thrive in. And I know it not only for myself, but for everyone around me, and so I try, in my little ways, to mirror that possibility back to those who are still, for whatever reason, living in drought. I think that makes me different.

Do you know what makes the desert bloom? Water. Rain. You know how the verse, she who waters will herself be watered, always resonated with you? Here is a reality some will not understand—I will use many means to communicate with My children. It is no accident, the date of your birth. You are born, for those who pay attention to such things, in Aquarius for a reason. You are a water-bearer. You bear My Living Water, and you carry it to all living things. You carry compassion and hope in very particular ways. You see future potential and possibilities where others see only dead ends. They see a path leading to a wall or a precipice, and you see a path leading to a doorway into expansiveness. They see a trickle and fear it will run dry, and you look upstream to see the spring that feeds the waterfall that plunges into the river that rushes into a meandering stream that eventually narrows to a trickle that nonetheless causes a flower to bloom. You follow the trickle upstream with your eyes and your heart and eventually with your feet and you come to a place of such beauty and power it could generate enough electricity to fuel a city! Your vision of reality is not skewed or distorted as much as it is unbound by time. You see forward. You have been accused of wearing Rose Colored Glasses. They are not rose-colored, they are Risen-Colored, for you have embraced all that resurrection entails, for your own life and for the planet you call home. Remember what I said in Narnia—Father Time was his name while he was sleeping, and now that he is awake, he shall have a new name. You are seeing beyond Time at times. Don’t let that scare you and don’t let that stop you. Your job IS to see, and to share. That’s what makes you different.

God, You told me a few nights ago that You aren’t in absolute control, in the ways we might think, or want You to be. So how can I see beyond Time if everything is random, if nothing is in Your control. I mean, how can anyone see? Or know? It doesn’t make sense.

I didn’t say nothing was in My Control. I said not everything was in My Control. Imagine this. Imagine a landlord with a set of keys, each key opening a door in a building he owns. That landlord doesn’t control what happens in each of those separate units, especially if the inhabitants want nothing to do with him, except to begrudgingly pay their rent, and to be left alone. Imagine further that some of those tenants don’t take great care of their units. The landlord winds up getting blamed for the state of the living space, when the tenants themselves have created a lot of the issues they then have to deal with. Now imagine a friend of the landlord comes to live in the building. They greet each other in the hallway; they share meals in the friend’s apartment; they do things together whenever they can. The friend takes great care of his unit, in part because that is his inclination, and in part because he does have this close relationship with the owner. His view of the landlord, of the building, and of the world at large, will be far different than the view held by the aloof renter down the hall. You are like that friend. Now imagine sitting down on a regular basis with the owner of the building, who shares his ideas and plans for the space as well as his hopes and dreams for other properties around the city. Imagine that landlord talking about building a whole community around principles of sharing resources and green space and parks and conveniences located nearby. Wouldn’t the friend get excited? Wouldn’t the friend want to live there? Wouldn’t the friend want to be a part of the development and the planning, if he were invited to be? Again, wouldn’t his view of the future, as well as of the present day, be far different than the view held by the more aloof tenant? And if he were able to somehow change the viewpoint of that aloof tenant, wouldn’t that be incredible and fabulous work?

That is the way in which you see the world I, Myself, hope for. That is the way in which you have a part in building that world, what I have called My Kingdom. See forward. Hearken to Jeremiah’s words, which you love so much, and which promise you that I do have plans, and they include giving you both hope and a future. Another way to say that is, to grant you true hope, not a mockery of hope that disappoints by never being fulfilled.

Gosh, God, You have given me a ton to think about. And all of a sudden I am tired, with that tiredness that comes from letting go.

Yes, this is enough to talk about at one sitting. Go rest now. And remember, I shall never run out of things to tell you or share with you. Our Companionship is Eternal. Never shall you tire of Me, and never shall I tire of you. So rest in that truth for tonight.

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Peace Shield

Lord, I’ve had seasons, years I mean, where music was front and center. And it flowed, it poured forth, in lyric and melody, songs, lots and lots of songs. And I have had much briefer seasons, often when I was out of work sick, when poetry came. Poem after poem, and the joy in that, in the midst of not feeling well, this explosion of poetic creativity, only to go silent again once I got well and the pace of daily life resumed. I’ve had seasons of writing prose, creative nonfiction, essays, stories for children, all kinds of prose, and again, some door shuts and all is quiet. Now I have enjoyed twelve years, it will be twelve this summer, of a visual photographic life, and I believe it has lasted so long precisely because it is part of my livelihood now, so I have reasons to keep going, and permission. Permission from myself, from those closest to me, from Pete. Permission to spend the time to hone the craft part, and to spend the time for the “right place, right time” part. I haven’t had the chance to allot that sort of time to writing for a long time. Ditto music. Something had to give, for photography to take its place. So I guess I want to know if it is possible for me to have both, to do both, to write and photograph, to write music (more than I do now, driving to work, in snatches) and photography. I don’t want to lose photography, lose my visual sensitivity. How can I have both? Won’t I have to give up one or the other?

That question is like asking Me if you will lost My Voice, the tangible sense of My Presence, because you love a person on earth, or even an animal. There is room in you for both. You’ve thought not, and been taught not, but you don’t have to choose between loving Me and loving them. You don’t have to choose loving Me only vicariously through loving them. Yes, I have called you–all of you–to love each other, but I also called you first to love Me. So it is with what you call your writer-self, your musician-self, your artist-self, your photographer-self, and yes, your business-owner-self. You have needed integration in order to live the expansion I planned for you.

You have thought your spiritual and your creative sides were like cousins, and that both were related only distantly to what you call your business-self. But you are not schizophrenic. You are not separate identities or even separate roles. You are yourself–complex, multifaceted, and finally shining in all directions.

We talked recently about the Four Directions, about you walking counter-clockwise on the Wheel. Let’s think of the Four Directions in another way.

Your East is your visual self. All you see and how you respond to all you see, the light.

Your West is your audial self, all you hear within. Music and story flow from your West, a deeply creative space in you.

Your South is your loving self, all your relationships lived out–including those with animals both domestic and wild.

Your North is your thinking self, your academic side, your mathematical and yes your organized self, how you organize or prioritize data. Your business sense comes from here.

I Am in you in all of these directions. I Am both Center and the very form that unites them. They are a Cross. They are also at their fullest expression a Circle. They are a Peace Shield. No more tugging or fighting within you. That pulls the wheel off balance, out of round.

You shall both see–and express–and hear–and express.

Feel and touch–and express. Think and synthesize–and express. It is bigger than you though.

It is not that I Am giving you a Shield.

It is that you, yourself, your life expressed, you ARE a Peace Shield. Have I not told you this before?

Uhh, I am not sure. I think so. I don’t remember.

Remember. Remember everything you need to remember. The Red Fox has come, from what you call east, wearing gunfire, to free the west, the gray/black fox, the hearer of you. For all you have heard from Me here, as story and song and writing, you will hear even more. And this twinning, sight with sound will be fully joined with Heart and Mind, and all united and spinning, like your world spins, and in spinning circles, like your earth circles, sustained by Me and held in balance and beauty by Me as well. Blue is for sky and for water. Blue overarches the keen, sharp peaks of your ind and undergirds the soft gentle growing and sharing, the touching and being touched, the giving and receiving green of your south. These are your colors.

You know now that black is really not black per se, it has all the other colors, sometimes with coppers and golds, as a kitty’s fur. Sometimes it has shimmering purples and iridescent greens like Blackbird’s feathers. The deepest ocean creatures still carry light within themselves as bioluminescence. So you carry My light deep within you.

This is your True Purpose, this integration, these multiple expressions. This way of hearing and seeing, and what you hear and what you see, all True. I have spoken over you as you slept. Now you are awake. Now it is time to arise. Don’t be anxious any more over anyone else’s anxiety, don’t be burdened for their concerns. If fighting stallions were to charge over the dunes, Fox would hear and see and feel them coming. She would know to either go deep within her den of safety–which is another way to say, come here to Me–or she would move to another spot, another vantage point, and wait there–which is another way to say, live Peace out in your world. Carry the Calm I have gifted you with.

You have gifted me with Calm? But…but…but what about my pinball brain?

You know now to remember the Shield. Yes, you spin, beautifully so. You take many strands and spin and weave a whole. That work flows best from an inner calm of assurance.

Lord, I am picturing a shield, with arrows going north/south and east/west. They look like a compass.

Yes, you live True North–and also True South and True East and True West.

Yours is a Shield of Peace, a Shield of Purpose, a Shield of Love and a Shield of Light. Sleep easy. You are, as you say sometimes, both guided and guarded. You can rest.

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Bedrock

One of the AlAnon questions I need to remember is, do you fail to recognize your accomplishments? I used to make myself a celebratory cup of special tea; now I reach for coffee’s caffeine as fuel to do more, not to stop and relish what I just did. I think about it, then turn aside as if I haven’t really earned it. Says who, and by what criteria? When I say yes, but…I am engaging in dialog with the wrong conversational partner. And I never need to say yes in any context to that voice.

You are tired, yes, but actually very healthy.

Huh?

You keep choosing gratitude. You stubbornly dig to bedrock. And every time, every time, you find there your true self and My great Love. That is the conglomerate of your bedrock, your solid foundation. Not just My great love–for you know that is at the center of every heart, if only everyone would go within to find it. You know that now. But what makes this your bedrock, the key secret ingredient, is you. You, united with My great Love.

Not just My Love for you. Some stop there. Not just My Love for those like you. Some stop there. My great Love for all. That is part of the fusing. Think metaphors for fusing. Think glass–art glass. We are fused. You are changed, transformed–and so is My great Love transformed–transformed, again, into a body I can use, into a soul, into an expression, an outlet in the world. This transfigures you and in turn, your yes transfigures My Love into your day, into your time, into and through your life. Think about fusing. There is more depth, more truth here than you know yet.

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How does Your Garden grow?

Lord, I keep coming back to the third letter of John, in which he pray that his readers would be in good health and prosper, even as their souls prosper. I find so much depth in that thought! Our soul prospers when we are fully connected. Like a garden prospers in the right soil and in the right mix of light and water for whatever the particular plants require to thrive. So that brings up a question–since this is not a cookie-cutter planet, and we aren’t cookie-cutter people, and You aren’t a cookie-cutter God, You relate to us differently, don’t You? I’m hearing Ding-Ding-Ding in my head.

Yes! You understand! This could be the real gift of denominations, and “religious practices” — acknowledging that some humans are shade-loving while others need full sun and still others need a mixture. Some humans, like sea oats, thrive in what other humans would label drought, because those other humans require a lot of water. I Am certainly Big Enough to encompass within Myself every human need. It is only natural that like would gather with like. You don’t berate a hosta plant for wilting atop a sand dune! You plant it in the shady conditions that are most suitable for it to thrive.

But what do you humans do? You gather to yourselves others like you and then you make dogma. You decide that yours is the best–or only valid–location in the Garden. You discount others’ experiences as less-than, or flat-out wrong. Meanwhile, those others are harboring the same thoughts and judgements about your group! And all of you think you are the only ones growing to suit the Master Gardener!

So what are we to do, then?

Make room in your heart for all kinds of plants. Let Me be God over the whole Garden. Learn from one another and respect one another enough to allow those different from you to find their way, their perfect spot. Most of all, love one another. Love one another as I have loved each of you, all of you. Love seeks the other’s best. Love rejoices when the other thrives. Love sees the whole garden and each plant in it as beautiful and essential.

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Road Trip

By the time you read this post, I will be out of town on a buying trip for a few days. While I am sure God will not be silent, and that His Presence is everywhere, I am not certain about internet access or carving out time to post while in the company of others.

I plan to begin posting again just as soon as I return to my home computer, certainly by the middle of next week.

In the meantime, I leave you with these thoughts.

If you are one of my regular daily readers, thank you. I imagine I will have lots to say when I get to sit here again! Maybe these few days are a time to begin a new practice of listening for yourselves. If you don’t already, take the few minutes you might spend reading this blog over the next few days, and instead, write out your own gratitude list. If you already practice gratitude, you might spend this time doing what I have just begun again to do, and write out some affirmations to concentrate on during your day, especially if your day gets busy, or stressful. What are the three most loving, most affirming things you wish someone, Someone, would say to you? Those words that would make your heart sing, somehow convince you that all will be well, or that would give you the direction you need if you are contemplating a choice? Why not write those down, even if they seem as if they are “only” your words, your hopes. And then, look and listen. Look and listen right that minute, look and listen throughout the next day. Do you hear, do you feel, do you see evidence of those words coming back to you in another, deeper, gladder, Truer Voice? I can promise you this: you are more deeply loved than you can imagine. My prayer for you while I am away from my computer for a few days is that this little hiatus will provide you with a personal experience similar to my own, convincing you how wonderful, how beautiful, how sacred, and how special you are to God, and how very much you are loved.

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New Moon, New Year Wishes

It’s Winter. It’s New Moon. It’s Year End. Shouldn’t New Year wishes be in the realm of possibility? Otherwise isn’t it just wishful thinking?

First, “wishful thinking”—thinking full of positive wishes and longings—is how anything new gets done, how anything gets invented.

Oh! The shadow on the tree out back is an A-OK symbol! I haven’t seen that in months.

Second, wishes are precisely for things or circumstances that seem, either a little or a lot, impossible or improbable or so difficult as to be unachievable. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be wishes—they would be plans, or they would be goals.

The A –OK Symbol has what looks like an arrow up from the thumb, like flicking my forefinger, sending an arrow west. Lord, once upon a time I knew my fresh impact was west. Now? Flicking could also be sending it away, flicking something—a distraction—out of view, so I can concentrate.

That is what you have been doing, flicking your wishes out of the way. They keep resurfacing and you keep finding ways to say no, to ignore them, to deny their very existence.

Isn’t that what a Christian life is about? Denying yourself?

Not if what you are denying is what I’m trying to give you in the first place. Not if “denying yourself” means denying the Self I Am trying to bring forth in you and through your life.

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True Humility

Lord, people are going to think I am crazy, aren’t they?

You will always have some detractors, yes. But if you stay humble and gentle, you will have many, many more whose lives are touched and changed in a good way.

Humble doesn’t mean “Hide.” It doesn’t mean “self-effacing” either. Humble is a Third Way lifestyle: stay connected to Me, believe I Am indeed using you, and stay focused on My Heart to similarly speak to everyone. True humility is rooted in abundance. Of course you are special and unique—and so is your neighbor. And so is everyone in the entire world.

So humility does not say, “oh, I’m nothing special.” True humility says, “yes, I am special—and so are you.” True humility says, “yes, these are my gifts—let’s discover yours.”

Every person’s gift, every person’s path, is tailored to fit, perfectly sized, perfectly designed for maximum fulfillment, maximum joy for that person.

 

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Mapping the Journey

Lord, can You help color in the picture of my life, Eve’s life, being of maximum effect for You? For Your kingdom? I keep coming back in my thought to all You’ve said. I feel a little like a kid playing with the box and not seeing what the amazing thing inside can do!

At least you are playing, you’re engaged—that’s a start. Once play is more comfortable, more of an automatic response, more possibilities will occur to you.

Oh. Oh, okay.

You’ve had such narrow thoughts about ministry. Those thoughts have been very much like playing with the box. They’ve boxed you in and now You are hearing Me calling you to “live outside the box.” What I really mean by that is, take the essence of what once was for you within the box, and live it in the world. Remember your old lyric: “I want to tell all the people I know that they can touch You, Lord.” That’s what I want, too, for you, for your life.

Lord, sometimes I think I’m missing the point and sometimes I think, is this it, this life I live, this is the point. Then I feel this weird combination of feelings, a cross or a mix between relief (it’s ok, I’m doing ok, I’m not disappointing You) and disappointment with myself because this life seems of such little effect compared to

Whoa. Stop right there. “Compared to.” That phrase causes so much trouble for you humans. I don’t want you to compare to or compare with. No one else’s life or experience is to be your mirror. I Am holding your believing mirror. Let Me fill in the map, not of where you have already been, but where you are going. I do want you to have a sense of what, and when. I want you to have Joy in the Journey, and part of that is anticipation. Vision Quests are meant to give vision! I’m not asking you to live in fog. I Am asking you to look to Me and My words to you for your path, your clear path. So let’s define for your life what “maximum effect” is. You’ve been trying to match that to pieces of others’ lives, like a puzzle. I’m going to give you a brand new picture, a brand new map, for your life. Keywords are Joy, and Connection, and Loving-Kindness—all of which bring Peace, as a result.