Time, time, time...

I am not good with time, on multiple levels.

In general, I'm very good at being very busy - with filling up my time.
More specifically - I don't know what to do with time when it's not filled up.

So let's step back for a second...

My first semester of grad school I took classes and did work/study for about 10 hours a week. Second semester I began working another part time job on top of it. By second year I was continuing both of those and doing an internship that was around 20 hours a week. By the time I graduated, I was working full time, working part time (NOT work/study after a while), going to school full time, and still, kind of, an intern.

My schedule was 8-8 Monday - Thursday, 8-3 on Friday, and varied on Sunday. My weekends were spent trying to be social, fit people in, study groups, and just do my homework for the coming week because there was very little time to do it on the actual week days.

Then, graduation came... and around that time, my part time job ended for the summer... Now I was only working ONE job. When this happened in the December prior, I picked up guitar because I was just plumb bored. I also read a number of books. So, the end of May comes, graduation festivities fade away.... and I am only working full time and still a "sort of" intern, on occasion. But I also knew I was job searching, I had trips I wanted to go on, and people to see before they moved away or I did, whichever came first. Also, the dreaded packing. I knew I was moving at some point, my lease was up, and I was going *somewhere* regardless of a new job or not.

So, my summer even, was crazy. It would seem it shouldn't be, but there are a lot of things that happened in those couple months, including being ordained, and then receiving and accepting a call to a new position...

So, I moved mid-August and started soon after. The first couple weeks were spent unpacking, getting the apartment situated, trying to orient myself to the stores, the job, the people... Just trying to find a balance.

Once all of that sort of settled, and it stopped raining, we had things going on - a Saturday became filled with a project, I missed a day off here, worked a couple extra hours there... Decided with this new place I need to be productive and I've got to stop babying my ankle (that I broke right before graduation, thanks very much world), and I joined a gym here. My ankle can't sustain a lot still so that bothers me, but otherwise, it's doing alright. I just have to be careful...

And then I have weeks like this week where I look at my calendar and realize that I will, once again, not have a true day off (by choice and for good reasons, for sure!), and I have evening events the second half of the week.....

But today, as I looked at my calendar, I said, "I'm going to be here a lot this week. Today, I will leave an hour early and head to the gym..."

And I did.

It was good, but my ankle gave me some grief annoying it yesterday, and I came home. I was home by 4:30pm, put in laundry, cooked dinner, ate, and it's not even 7 yet, and I'm done for the night.

Now, granted, my social life hasn't rebounded yet... for this introvert of massive proportions was spoiled by my friends further south into being a safe place to be a social introvert... I don't have that yet here, I'm still sometimes in the "dear in the headlights" phase...

But I'm wondering what to do with "time"... You see, finally, I'm sitting still again. Finally, I'm in place again. Finally, I'm feeling like I'm doing what I should be doing, and like I have a brain. Finally, like there's a purpose or direction for the stuff I'm pulling together.

But I get home, and that part is more, "Okay, I shall watch a movie tonight," or "I'm going to read another chapter in that BBT book..."... Granted, I could always read more, I love to read... and I've spent some quality time creating, which is always fun for me... But there's this social aspect that I'm missing, that even overseas I had. I know it takes time. I'll work on that. And I'm going to enjoy this time, too, because I know there will be weeks (ask me Friday), when I'll think, "I haven't had time to myself in a while..."

And it's all okay. But it's got me thinking about time. It's abundance and it's brevity.

And a God-moment that happened today... that even though someone says "don't overwork," I see as an opportunity to do something else; the chance to reach out in another way. And right now, when overwork is a different concept for me (can I remind you again how freeing a 50 hour week is after so many weeks of almost 70????), I want to enjoy it and explore more things.

So I shall. I'll at least explore it, and if it's something I can't do, I won't do it... but the timing was just right today, and it deserves at least a look...

Onwards now... as it is almost 7... Perhaps I shall clean tonight, too... or not. I'll need something to do tomorrow...

;-)

Also, I've been having a terrible time sleeping - that does not help me with my time management or perception of time... ::sigh:: 3 hours is not enough!

Restless much?

Wondering what words I'm not hearing that are keeping me up and/or waking me up?

But that's another entry, don't you think?

Darkness

So, I'm currently reading a book called "Learning to Walk in the Dark" by one of my favorite preachers/writers: Barbara Brown Taylor. This is not a book review, I did not get this book for free, I bought it of my own volition because I LOVE her, but I *DO* think you should read her stuff... just do it...

She follows the phases of the moon as she explores darkness and it's cultural implications - mostly, how often we villainize darkness. Even spiritually, we say we found the light, or turned from darkness. This most recent chapter, where she explores blindess and life without light at all, and how darkness isn't what we really think it is... it's all got me thinking.

When you are born blind, you have no concept of what blindness is, or what darkness is. You have no way to understand that duality. Trees aren't seen by sight, but by the other senses. She says that seeing is superficial, but that it overpowers so many of our other senses; in darkness, though, we come alive. We see trees by their presence, we sense walls by their force, we identify people by their voice, and we feel the ground beneath us.

So why, so often, is spirituality compared to light? She says it's because the people who wrote our texts were people who could see. That is the duality they can use to describe the events that take place.

What if our biblical texts had been written by someone blind? What if it was not light and darkness, but love and apathy that we turned to and from? What if it was peace and calm that we turned to from hate and separation. What if we experienced more than the superficial "light" and got to the meat of the faith?

It makes me really want to spend time with my group exploring our other senses, and perhaps exploring the margins. I am not thinking to plan times where we more consciously not just serve those on the margins of society, but experience life that way. BBT went to an exhibit called "Dialogue in the Dark" where you experience the world as a blind person... really? How awesome would that be? To spend time actually in darkness trying to buy groceries?

What about spending time at the shelter?

What about being less of one of us and more of them? The early Christians were "them" and around the world, they are still the marginalized, but we rarely have that experience in America. Too often we don't realize that it is still dangerous to be a Christian in most of the world. We forget that we started "on the margins" and continue to live on the margins in a majority of the world. Christian acceptance is not a given, and we are told over and over again to cling to our faith when persecution comes... not if it comes.

What about learning to walk in the dark? What about learning about the presence of God without our superficial senses? What about going deeper?

I'm exploring darkness in different ways these days, trying to, as she puts it, learn to sit in it.... my favorite experiences of darkness were those when I was truly removed from the artificial lights of our world, our attempts to stave off darkness as long as possible... nights in India, on top of my mountain, closer to the stars than ever, seeing constellations from a different perspective and being able to reach out and touch them because the power was still out and there were no lights to interfere with their brilliance. Nights in a bach in Hari Hari New Zealand, with the generator off, a fire burning inside, but the light not permeating the darkness of the rain forest we found ourselves - seeing the southern cross and other foreign constellations that we miss in the northern hemisphere....

Rarely do we get to see the uninterrupted night sky in America. Even when I turn off all the lights in my house, street lights shine in...

And perhaps this is not a good thing. Perhaps we are missing the connection; perhaps we are favoring sight over our other senses... perhaps sight is not was allows to do anything we do, but actually, takes away from the fullness of our actions....

She mentions Opaque restaurants: restaurants where you eat in the dark and by doing so, you notice the food more, you notice the people more... She says perhaps we should have Opaque Church... I'm all for that idea. I want to do that. What is worship when we take away our sight? What is worship when we are using all of our other senses?

Perhaps that will be an experience I try to have soon.

Perhaps darkness is what we are missing in our world and in our church.

Perhaps we are too busy always trying to find the light that we forget the true Light. The Light that is much greater than the bulbs hanging from the ceiling.

Perhaps we have gone too far.

The New Covenant

by Bob Emery

I started this post weeks ago... I think it says a lot about this book that I was not in a hurry to write a review, or even to finish it. It's not that it is a bad book, because it certainly provides the story from a different perspective (the first person, actually), but it was just so hard for me to really get into this perspective. Historically, it presents the story as if it has the same main character throughout, but we know that isn't true, and I know part of my dislike comes from that. We can't take too literally the title of the book of John meaning that John wrote it, or that the letters of John were written by the same John from decades before. If you choose not to be so literal, there is no issue, though. In part III, while being culturally and historically interpreted (the beast as Nero), I hesitate to put those words into the text and write them down as fact, as Emery does.

The best part of the book, to me, is the Appendix at the back, giving a great amount of historical and much more factual information. Maybe I'm too close to DivSchool to do this book justice, but unlike some others I've read, I can't see myself buying the others of the series unless they are significantly better than this one, nor can I see myself recommending them to people looking for a good way to read the story. It would be much better, I think, to just recommend The Message if someone wants an easier read of the story, rather than this.

Perhaps I will give it another shot at a later date. There is no reason I can't like it later, but today, Go buy another book I've mentioned before (Learning to Walk in the Dark by Barbara Brown Taylor is a good one if you're looking right now!!!).

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the author and/or publisher through the Speakeasy blogging book review network. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255.