You are currently browsing the Bruce Smith weblog archives for October, 2010.
29. October 2010 by BruceSmith.
Spiritual Agnosia
Ever have a moment when you walk past a mirrored window or a storefront window with just the right amount of light, and you notice this image there, you linger over it for a moment, and then, all of a sudden, Bam!, it hits you, “That’s me!”? Its one of those weird experiences in life that happen ever so often. One would think that we are so accustomed to knowing our own selves that it would register all the time, “That’s an image, a reflection of me…”. But it does not happen that way all the time, and certainly not for everyone. In fact, some people are diagnosed with what doctors call agnosia, the inability to distinguish, recognize or recall faces. Some famous folk like artist Chuck Close, and renown neurologist Oliver Sachs, in fact, have the impairment which results from a lack of development in a certain sector of the brain early on. They can see a face one day, and then, not for the life of them, recognize it or remember it just days, or even hours later. They can make out the general shape of faces at times, but cannot always know or discern all the facial details most of us are accustomed to processing right away. That must drive a person to frustration!
Agnosia. The inability to distinguish or recognize faces. What an interesting dilemma. Looking a person in the eye, the window to the soul, and absorbing a “sense” of the person, writ large by countenance, expression, and gaze, and yet not having the ability to discern reality…utterly frustrating, I’m sure. I cannot help but wonder about the spiritual metaphor which comes to mind. There are many realities staring us in the face every day, the lines distinguishable, yet, in our inability to see or refusal to really look, we cannot grasp what is truly there.
Spiritual agnosia. I think its real, and alive in our culture. We see the effects of life lived apart from God’s agenda relationally, emotionally, financially, sexually, intellectually, and otherwise, yet, in our unwillingness to recognize the truth, we don’t grasp who we have actually become. Moms and dads, ignoring the face of truth so clear and compelling, run from their families when it gets uncomfortable or confining, and run to new faces that promise a false hope. Businessmen, whose hearts and minds have been distorted by the call of riches and recognition, abandon the face of integrity in order to find some perceived quality of life which does not actually exist. We chase a mirage, a shattered visage, in hopes that our blindness will actually make us whole. Women, broken by past choices and past hurts, pursue a false image of hope in destructive and seductive relationships, all the while never recognizing the increasing desperation filling their souls as patterns repeat, patterns of willful agnosia, actual blindness. In choosing not to see what is really there, we choose our fate. We rather choose the mindless hours of television viewing, and allow our kids the same, instead of opening a meaningful book and actually learning. We tag anything resembling mind-work with the label of “boring” and allow our children to embrace the same shallow, future defining perspective. And we wonder why things like WWF Wrestling are the most watched TV programming along with the carnage of reality TV, soaps, and sit-coms. Now, I’m all for a good laugh and entertainment at times, but clearly, our minds, as a whole, in our present culture, are turned off by and large. Nothing good can come of this. And what we call music, thinkers of the past, let alone culture-watchers, would have (and thankfully a few still do) called ear and mind poison. Much of what our nation consumes on this front is merely moral and intellectual blindness put to a catchy tune. A good chunk of it, considered for what it actually teaches, communicates, inspires and provokes, is nothing short of God-mocking evil all dressed up and having too many places to go. Turn the mind off, it screams, just go with the driving beat! Don’t look at it too closely, we are encouraged, for then we might see it for what it is.
On a more pervasive platform, on the stage of worldview and thought, we teach our college students to actually abhor the idea of ultimate truth. In teaching them to see nothing clearly, we attempt to convince them that all claims are equal, all faces the same, nothing is truly discernible. 2 and 2 do not always equal four! Who says?! That is a set up for frustration if there ever was one. How are we to function as a people, tossed to and fro on a violent sea of moral confusion and spiritual bankruptcy? If we have no aim, fundamentally, where are we headed? And Hollywood? If ever there was a truly distorted image of reality staring us in the face and screaming with the consequences of spiritual agnosia, modern day Hollywood is it. We are taught that life is about feeling, emotion, quick plot fixes, seduction, violence, money, animal-like instincts, and mind-numbing pursuits, as we sit in front of the silver screen taking in all it offers. Truth, here, is ignored by a willfully blind society looking for another pleasure fix. In looking, often, are eyes have developed moral cataracts. If its up there, we seem to think, then it ought to be for viewing. Again, turn the eyes of the spirit off, just go with it, is the cry of the day.
Lest you think this is a soapbox preach about all that is wrong with us as a country, let me be clear. We ought to enjoy life. We ought to live life to the full. But in reality, we are going about just the opposite. The face of our cultural and personal pursuits are reflecting back at us in the pages of our newspapers, divorce papers, court papers, …and in vivid ways. Over the last few decades, as we have gotten wealthier, smarter, more advanced, and more evolved, drug use is up, therapy offices are more full, divorces increasing, murder spreading, addictions more prevalent, minds softer, hearts harder, and churches less full. The malls have a better attendance record than do churches now on Sunday.
If we are to find the life we were designed to live, we must recognize our agnosia for what it is-a lack of development in the most serious of ways. May God help us to see more clearly, who we are, who we are called to be, and the quality of life He offers us. May we remember, and pursue the face of God. In doing so, we very well may find a more brilliant, luminous, and altogether more lovely life. Not a life of ease and not a life free from difficulty, but a life with more depth, color, nuance, richness, and meaning.
God, give us eyes to see. Amen
Bruce Smith,
optimuslife.org
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21. October 2010 by BruceSmith.
Lights Out?
As I stood there, leaning over the fence, tired, frustrated, weak, discouraged, and wondering what happened to cause me to fall so far behind, a voice came through the clutter of my mind, a familiar voice, an encouraging voice, “Come on man. Don’t quit. We need you. You can do this. Its not over yet”.
It was the afternoon, it was hot, the sun was beaming down, I was a bit off my game, our team was down in a three match contest, and unless my partner and I won, our road to the national championship would come to an end. But we were down a set, and down 5-2, with the big lefty guy serving for the win. It did not look good. All but routine now. Four or five more strong serves and, game over. Go home. Defeat. Lights out. Known to be a dogged fighter, on this day, at this point, I was about to surrender mentally and physically, maybe even spiritually, and accept whatever fate lied ahead. This place, this match, this time, took me to a place I did not want to go on this day. It took me back to the realities of the heart which confront so many every day, expressed in the words below.
Now this? “It will work out.” So I tell myself. Why then, am I, now, most afraid, seemingly lost and alone on this monstrous globe, amidst an unfathomably large universe? A spec, utterly insignificant on the sea of eternity. Why do I feel as though shelter may not save me from this one? I keep telling myself to remember his providence in the past. I’m so tired, though, I cannot even open the files of my mind to view the episodes of rescue from another time. I’m so distressed the internal GPS appears off and unable to point me toward the memorials of shelter from days gone by. From whence cometh my help? That’s what I keep asking myself. The hills? I don’t even know where I am, how do I find the hills? Apparently, I’ve made one too many wrong turns though my compulsive desire has always been to get it right, embrace the ideal, be the hero, live the dream. I’ve let myself down, despite effort to the contrary, and many others will soon be disappointed. Looking for his highway I’ve managed to find one too many dark and lonely alleys. Searching for paradise, I’ve led myself to the barren and unsaturated wilderness. Its all so dry, charred, and endless out here. I cannot see the horizon, let alone the hills. Nothing in my sight but an endless vista of dust and desire. The fatigue, escalating, threatens to eliminate any foolish idea of fight. I’m fought out. I’ve fought all my life. Lead? I just want to lay down. But I can’t. Someone always wants something. Needs, everyone else’s, are always there. The time I do steal is always questioned, the rest, as a result, is never there, only pressure. Where’s the escape hatch? If I were to escape, all dreams would, of course, completely die and remain buried under the mounds of loss, shovels full of life debris. So, what then?
Amidst the impending loss, and amidst the reflections of a battered heart expressed above, which came rushing in when I least expected it, I was ready to fold.
But the voice, it caught me, and just in time. The voice, long recognized, had been there for me before in many tough spots, much tougher than this, and had proven to be the catalyst for continuing the fight. This was a minor fight, no doubt, just a game being played by tennis enthusiasts long after their prime was wrapped up. But it had and has meaning nonetheless. As I have said before, when I compete I do it full throttle, and feel a bit like the Scottish athlete and missionary Eric Liddell, who said of his competing as a runner, “God made me fast, and when I run, I feel His pleasure”. Competing, for me, always serves as a call, a metaphor to be embraced, a glimpse of the bigger picture.
The voice, that day, reminded me, when the lights were about out, that ultimately I was not playing to win, rather, I was playing to give my all to an audience of One. I could not quit on myself, on my partner, my team, on that match, or any match, because to quit like that would be to quit on trying to bring pleasure to the One who gave me ability. I would be quitting on myself, and that is a great loss in itself, but more, I would be shirking my call to live up to the gifts given me. Its like that in life, isn’t it?
I realize that putting so much thought into something so trivial as a tennis match being played by (mostly) forty-somethings, for no great prize, and no great cause, can come across as a bit melodramatic. That being said, I have always felt that tennis serves as a remarkable metaphor for life as a whole. I have learned so much from and through this game that I started as a child, and still love to this day. The training, commitment, lessons from success and defeat, the boundaries, angles, speed, vision, creativity, logic, reason, beauty, setbacks, strategy, come-from-behinds, and so much more, speak to the nature of life in the real world. Each stroke, each point, each match, can in microcosm point to the poetic realities of life in its truest form.
A set down, 2-5 down in the second, with big lefty serving, tired, defeated, leaning over the fence, a trip to the national championship on the line. That’s where the desire to be done shifted toward an unexpected and stunning victory. A match point down, lefty serving, the match changed, in an instant, on a dime. We broke back, the tide turned, and forty-five minutes later, with one huge backhand pass down the alley, lefty stunned, crowd going nuts, we won! Bring on the national tourney! Thank you for the voice.
The moral of the story is probably all too apparent. We all get to a place in life where we feel all is lost. People are unkind, even and maybe especially church people, fortunes are lost, families are filled with strife, dreams are left unfulfilled, and hearts break. That is life. There are times when we just want to lay down, turn off the lights, and say, “Enough. I quit”. I’ve been there, and you probably have too. If you have not, you will. Sorry for the wake-up call. All the self-help and power motivational talks won’t prevent reality from setting in.
In the midst of these struggles, under the weight of pressure, there is a voice that calls out to each of us. His is a voice we can recognize. His voice is one that stirs us toward competition. He calls us to stay in the fight long enough for things to turn around. And for reasons I probably will never understand this side of heaven, He tends to show off His best when its all on the line. Its almost as if He says, “I’m going to set this up so that people are stunned, astonished, overwhelmed by my grace”. The call for us is to keep our hearts pointed in His direction, strive for good, and when all looks lost, admit our inability, own our failure, and call out to Him for our rescue. It may come later than our hearts desire, it may appear that it won’t come at all, but if His word is true, help will come our way. The girl may be warming up her vocal cords, the lights may be dimming, and the crowd of revelers may be singing your farewell, but the promise I am standing on suggests to me that the Man still has one more play. The King always has one more move. We still have a point to play. May God give us strength for the game ahead. Let’s do this.
Swing like you mean it,
Bruce Smith
optimuslife.org
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5. October 2010 by BruceSmith.
SEEKING
Life Thought:
Trying to “seek first…” in real life, in a real way, in real time, with real motives, for reals. Matthew 6:31-33 The real questions, it would seem, are “What is the Kingdom of God?” and “What is His righteousness?” If we get those two pursuits right…life comes into view in a real way, relationally, providentially, aspirationally, fundamentally.
The admonition of Jesus, the red letter stuff, here, is a call to embrace a reality which impacts, literally, every aspect of our lives. At the heart level, this is a call to get our desire, our ultimate desire rightly positioned. This call, embraced, stands to revolutionize every interaction, pursuit, and problem we walk in. Think about it.
If, in the context of relationships, our desire is not for God’s way of life and goals for us (Kingdom of God), nor for what is right, good, full of love, purity, and peace (righteousness), what can we expect to get? Strife, misery, pain, failure, dysfunction, and selfish destruction. If in the context of relationships we aspire to, and walk in, the plan of God for His people, and we actually walk in righteousness, and in the fruit of the Spirit, what do we get? Intimacy, depth, rest, support, comfort, and joy. Try it, you’ll see what I mean. The pursuit of goodness brings the experience of goodness. Walking in righteousness leads to a sense of things being “right”.
The reason Jesus, and the prophets, always presented truth in poetic ways, calling attention to the radical difference walking with God makes, is that the call of God is just that, poetic. It has structure, creative beauty, it reaches deep within. God’s call for us is beyond rule keeping, a moral platitude, a life organizational self-help step. Walking with God, truly knowing Him, is a new reality entirely for any who have walked another way. Life in Christ is not a better way to live, a more practical way to make life work out for you. No, knowing Jesus is an intoxicating and life-defining transformation that seeps through every hint of reaction, proaction, desire, bent, or hunger. The truth of God, infusing a life in a real way, seeps into the pores of our soul and translates to a manner of being. This is no moralism or better than I once was approach to life. God seeks to make us entirely new. Its really His chief aim for us. Heaven, as an escape clause for our lives, is not His intention. He said we are to be disciples, walkers in the way. Heaven comes with the overwhelming gift of knowing and walking with Him.
Why can we not seem to get this? Why are so many of our relationships, careers, and longings filled with stuff that is clearly self-generated and self-ish? Because we don’t hunger for the Way of God in all things first. We don’t want the Right Way because we lust for our way. These are signs of brokenness, not the newness He desires for us. As long as we continue to walk as blood thirsty soldiers of the kingdom of self-preservation, we can expect a life full of warring and faction. As long as our desire to be right defines our interactions and motives, and His righteousness is dismissed as weakness and frailty, we can only expect more division, frustration, and illness socially, emotionally, and spiritually.
The Kingdom of God, found in the Beatitudes, described in the character infusion presented as “fruit of the Spirit”, offers every living human being a way like no other. The poetically inspiring and life-giving way of God is the one thing that will soothe all the hurts, restore all that is broken, secure that which is lost, and provide where all seems hopeless. In seeking His way in all things, at all times, really, and fully, we find that which Jesus speaks of, Life, and Life abundantly.
What are you seeking today? Let your work, loves, play, pleasures, and passions be enveloped in an all out pursuit of His Kingdom and His right ways today. Let’s get it right. Let’s enjoy our Kingdom life.
Bruce Smith
optimuslife.org
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2. October 2010 by BruceSmith.
an excerpt from one of Bruce’s latest book projects… Hope! The Best is Yet to Come Truths for finding the way to your future Bruce Lee Smith INTRODUCTION Hope. She is beautiful. She is sweet. She is loyal. She is encouraging. She has a pedigree. She is a Retriever. And she is our future. Yes, Hope is the name of my Labrador Retriever, now a few years old. Hope is also the name of that quality of life we must have if we are to endure all the challenges that come our way. We purchased our Hope, our second Labrador, just after Hurricane Katrina. I named her as a memorial to the storm and as a marker for what we, as a family, needed amidst our challenges. We had just gone through a massive career change, a heart-wrenching divorce, the demise of a church plant, and a life-altering storm of historic proportions. The thing our family needed, as tired and beaten up by life as we were in the spring of 2006, was a bit of hope. Our yellow Lab, stumbled over one afternoon after church while on our way to the river for an afternoon of fun in the sun, has come to symbolize, appropriately, the thing we so desperately needed in our lives. In light of the recent death of our much loved fifteen-year old Labrador, Daisy, Hope has become our light amidst the darkness of loss and challenge. She helps us find energy, joy, fun, play, and exuberance in daily life, as we try to make it another day. Her eyes are bright, her love is pure, her attitude is brisk, and her joy in each moment are a reminder of what is still good and worth pursing in a life often marked by difficulty. She shows us what we ought to aspire to, what perspective is. No matter how tough the day, she is always eager for another run at it, another adventure. Hope is that refreshing break we all need when life is giving us all we can handle. Hope is the promise that once we get to her, our hearts will be restored. No matter how dark and dangerous the day has been, if we can just see Hope, the world will be set right. Hope is our heart’s safe harbor when the winds and rains storm about, and the floodwaters rise. Without hope, what would any of us do? If you have not figured it out by now, this is a book about hope. Hope is sweet. With hope, no matter the challenges in front of us, life can still be savored. It is hope that allows us to find sweetness amidst the bitterness of our pain. It is hope that offers us beauty amidst the ugliness of suffering and death. It is hope that is always there to give us stability and strength when all around us is convulsing and shaking. It is hope that prods us forward and offers us resolve for a stronger pursuit of what may be around the corner. Hope has a history of strength and a lineage of grace. Hope offers us a future when all seems lost. Hope is a retriever of the broken-hearted and the lost soul. Hope is the key to our future. It is hope that keeps us in the game, fighting for another chance to claim our future. Yes, like me, you may be keenly aware of the darkness and loss that seeks to ruin a life at any time. You too may have been in the trenches of life warfare, under siege, awaiting impending death. Perhaps you too have known the reality of illness, broken dreams, severed relationships, unexpected disappointment, or felt the rug being pulled out from under you. When these things happen, only one thing will help—HOPE. PART ONE: Hello, Pain and Loss “I was walking along a path with two friends—the sun was setting—suddenly the sky turned blood red—I paused, feeling exhausted, and leaned on the fence—there was blood and tongues of fire above the blue-black fjord and the city—my friends walked on, and I stood there trembling with anxiety—and I sensed an infinite scream passing through nature.” Edvard Munch on the inspiration for his famous painting “The Scream” Total Loss? The losses are all too real. Sitting in a coffee shop some time ago, I overheard two strangers talking about how Hurricane Katrina had changed their lives. One gentleman shared how he lost his teenage daughter in the flood waters that came up so quickly and with such force that nothing could be done to save his girl. His loss is great. One woman shared with me the enormity of loss brought not only by Katrina but by the brutality of living in a world full of illness and broken relationships. This woman, who had gone through a divorce recently, lost all of her possessions to the waters of Katrina and then on the heels of these two calamities witnessed the death of a child. As the history books tell us now, couples that had saved for a lifetime to build their dream homes lost them in a few hours’ time. Still others, who were living lives of survival from day to day saw what little they had snatched away in an instant. With nowhere to call home and little hope for tomorrow, for such people, the loss seems more than anyone can endure. Pain and loss swirl around us as an unrelenting torrent. Katrina, the event now characterized as the greatest natural disaster in our country’s history, is but one of many examples of horrifying calamity we have witnessed over the years. Earthquakes, tsunamis, fires, and more, hit the newspapers every day of our lives it seems. One thing is constant on our planet, pain. Is there hope for our earth, our lives? Is it all lost? Can we overcome? We all ask such questions regularly don’t we? As I sit here writing today, five years, and seemingly a lifetime removed from the floodwaters of Katrina, I am more assured of the power of hope than ever before. In my own life, and in the lives of so many others, I have seen hope carry us through. No matter how troubling and futile our present realities may seem, there is yet “one more play” left. We must remember this above all else. When all seems lost, God still has one more move. A broken economy, a lost career, a wandering spouse or child, an ominous diagnosis, scandal, failure, bankruptcy, divorce, a fractured friendship, …none of these or anything else has the last word on your life. I’m reminded of this reality as my adrenaline is hitting the roof while watching the undefeated LSU Tigers football team apparently throw a game away against an inferior Tennessee team. With the clock running out, no timeouts remaining, the run stopped at the three yard line, LSU driving for what would be the winning score, and with a killer running back in the backfield, the coaches make an astounding blunder that lasts an eternity, unable to put the right players on the field and unable to call a play, in total hysteria, the quarterback (if you can call him that!) finally gets a snap off when the last second ticks off, the ball just flies past him, and the game ends in a miserable disappointment. But wait! There was a flag on the play! I’m not kidding. Apparently, despite LSU’s total chaos and unfathomable blunder, Tennessee matched them, one-upped them, by putting not twelve, but thirteen players on the field! (that’s two more than allowed, for you non-sports fans) We get another play! With one second on the clock, the ball is handed off to Ridley, our beastly running back, …TOUCHDOWN! Amidst the defeat and failure, fan rage, and immediate calls for the firing of the coach, it only took one more play. As it turns out, all hope was not lost. It never is. This, my friends, is the theme of this book. It is never too late. God always has “one more move”. No matter how long your drought in this life (LSU scored, by the way, on the first play of the game, and then again, only, on the last play of that game), there is still time left on His clock. Hang in there, as long as it takes, for the game to be played out fully. Remember, He controls, manages, dictates, and counts off the clock. We are on His time, and He is on our side. That, dear readers, is a reason for hope.
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