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Contentment

It was the part of our conversation about happiness that took a wide and unexpected turn into a moment of epiphany.

As if our chat wasn’t already fascinating given the long lapse of time between meetings, at one point we exchanged our own ideas of what makes each of us happy nowadays. I wasn’t expecting an epiphany but that’s what epiphanies do, they just creep up and surprise you when you least expect it.

As we were sharing I discovered our “happy” scenarios were all circumstantial, based almost entirely upon fortunate events and lovely experiences that once happened around us, to us, or were otherwise concocted by us, ultimately producing the experience of happiness.

Lunch ended.

As we hugged and each of us drove back to our jobs, I thought about it.

Us humans seem to put in a lot of effort for some fleeting bliss which, ultimately passes until dependence on the next experience brings us back to happiness.

To be continuously happy requires exposure to things outside ourselves, while being content is taskless; an unavoidable state of peace within ourselves despite the circumstances whatever they are.

While happiness is merely the ! at the end, contentment is the entire sentence before it.

We need not work at writing the sentence because our contentment just lets it fall into place.

Epiphanies are full of wonder and beauty, and exactly what our reunion over lunch had become.

It made me happy.

Things above and things below

Confession: I’ve been caught up in things below much more than things above, and here is my excuse.

So many events happen each day that beg for my attention under the guise of making me a well-informed person. Current events, scandals, tragedies, evils, politics, rumors of wars, all of which are important but in the bigger picture, not crucial, yet each of which drain a little more of my finite attention to be amused and preoccupied with the things below.

Colossians 3: 1 Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. 2 Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.

This doesn’t constitute a license to stick my head in the sand or to be eyes-closed ignorant, so heavenly minded I’m no earthly good. But I have such a knack for being distracted by news cycles, opinions and information that it drags me off course of seeing the things above.

People I know who seem to have the most joy and contentment in their lives are a lot simpler. They know how to be informed but not preoccupied to the point they jeopardize their panoramic view of things above. But I’m an addict and tend to overindulge in all things good or bad.

As such, I’m a voracious consumer of podcasts and news. So much so, the hobby crowds out so many other options for my time. A lifelong disdain of ignorance among believers compels my appetite. But altogether, it reminds me more of the mess of this world below than the promise of order above it.

I consciously forfeit good news of abundant joy for bad news of abundant evil.

Even now as I’m drafting this story, I’m on my 3rd podcast of the morning informing me that the days are evil in ways well beyond my ability to change.

What I can change, however, is to whom my finite attention is devoted.

My work is cut out for me.

Can I get an amen? and a third cup of coffee?

Meanwhile in the tomb…

Hey, wake up.

–Hi, I can’t sleep.

So let’s talk about tomorrow.

–Can’t you see I’m a little wrapped up right now?

I can’t see a thing, it’s pitch black in here.

–Well get your glow on, Dad. Do that ‘On The First Day’ thing again.

That’s better. O.M.Me! What in heaven’s name have they done to you!?

–Yeah, it wasn’t pretty.

Oh mercy, you need a shower. Let’s get you back to normal.

–Dad, here on out, things aren’t gonna be very normal anymore.

Oh yeah, tomorrow’s Our big day.

–Yeah, everyone’s.

Here’s a new outfit. Mary will be here sooner than We think.

–Right, then all hell breaks loose, and you-know-who’s gonna be mad for all eternity.

Yeah, We fixed that. He’s toast. Literally.

–Okay, I’m up. Let’s get busy.

Aren’t you eggcited about tomorrow?!

–That’s one horrible Dad joke.

(To be continued)

Biaggio

20 feet from my front door for over three years and regretfully, I just now met my neighbor.

We’d casually greeted one another namelessly with our pups in passing to and from wherever our very private lives had taken us all these many seasons, but I never really knew him until today when by what seemed like chance, we shared a pizza, two equally sordid pasts, and one very long embrace.

Our busy comings and goings had navigated us to and from others we’d deemed either critical or unnecessary to our routines until today when, quite serendipitously, we stumbled upon each other unencumbered, petless, and without excuse for a just another bland hello.

In an exchange that went from zero to sixty inside the first five minutes, two single men who live alone, neither with much of a social life, found a friend. Our dogs, both the same breed and size and also of different colors, found the same.

Amazing–a word I seldom use–would be an the best description of the similarities we found in most experiences and outlooks of our mutual lives.

Add in our recovered pasts and redeemed presents, odds for a future developing friendship were becoming better than even.

Funny, we spend our lives in search of people we like and are like, and they end up sleeping twenty feet and one welcome mat away all along.

May be an image of indoor

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46Susan Pierce, Debbie Moyer Wallace and 44 others

on a clear day

On a clear day you can see forever.

Everyone needs a sabbath.

A day with nothing on the calendar. No honey-do’s. No obligations. Nothing. A clear day to rest, reflect and ponder all things bigger than yourself and your circumstances.

It’s good for you.

And especially on Sunday where in worship on a clear day, you can truly see Forever.

red light.

I didn’t have it in me to take even one more call.

On my eleventh hour fueled only by a 20 minute noon sandwich, the flashing red light on my phone kept blinking like an ambulance. It was already after five when I called it a stoplight from God at the intersection of a very long day and busier tomorrow.

I’d earned this drive home, dinner with my dog and what’s lately been seeming more like a short winter’s nap than a good night’s sleep.

After a hot shower and shave this cold and blustery morning, I sported my longest topcoat, the length of which rivals my day ahead in this business of keeping poor people housed and fed with the lights on. That red flashing light would surely still be waiting there for me this morning along with a dozen other calls from the unfortunate many.

In early at the office, I turned on the coffee and tended to my opening routine, passing my doorway where the room illuminated red from the tiny light on my phone that had begged an answer all night long.

Coffee in hand, I listened.

A 74 year old man had just watched his home, bed and a backseat of possessions be towed away from a nearby parking lot and he needed a place to sleep for the night, transportation, and a little hope.

There are times I question the things I have come to believe I deserve. This is a business of flashing red lights that can eat you alive and spit your heart out one day with no shred of mercy in the morning.

It’s too early but I’m already on the phone trying to reach a cold old man out there somewhere and a little personal redemption in what will be another thankless day, but strangely worth every moment.

A lifespan.

Each of us has that one teacher who showed us the valuable difference between just going to school and loving the idea of education itself.

Who taught us excellence over mediocrity, passion over passivity and the fine art of learning how to learn for ourselves instead of regurgitating yet another someone’s thoughts and convictions.

Who soothed our painful rejections at the hands of bullies, listened to our deepest revelations after hours, and was in every front row of every event to cheer us on to victory.

Who after our school days were over when life learning was just beginning, kept in touch with invitations to their own family dinners as if you always belonged at their table and insisted you call them by their first name as awkward as it seemed.

Much older now with faded memories and eternities in view, by pure serendipity they come back into your life once again, and again you’re the student thankful for so many differences she made in your life that she will never fully understand but for which she is fully responsible.

And now the most sincere words I can muster are thank you, Mrs. Nimmo. May God give you the rest you have earned. We will all miss you.

unsolicited

For 15 years as a psychotherapist, I was paid handsomely for providing observations about my patients’ behavior, thinking, reasoning, communication and relational styles. Subsequently, I helped them to successfully navigate each toward a more adaptable, functional way of living. Because they were patients, I gently operated under assumption that their willingness to follow my lead was implicit. After all, they sought me, not vice versa. When they were less willing, therapy included a brief detour into deliberate discussions which helped them to ask me for what I was hired to provide. Success usually followed and at the end of treatment, they were empowered, believing they, for the most part, were their own guide out of the dark and into the light. That exact outcome made my work a joy.

Since those days, encountering acquaintances, friends and people I loved, I knew I could not be their therapists and, indeed, was not. I merely sifted my clinical impressions of each through an undetectable, internal mental health sieve and kept and continued only with those who had best friendship potential. Neither they nor my process was ever perfect, but with the exception of friends acquired during my drug days (which are 11 years in the past on Sunday) the method has saved me much heartache and failed efforts trying to fix anyone who hasn’t asked for it. It was fair to me and it was fair to them. It seemed to work.

My present struggle is with the few exceptions–the ones who slipped through and continue in my life–to whom I cannot and will not offer unsolicited yet well-meaning suggestions and opinions but who yet have maintained some presence nonetheless. My social circle today is the smallest it has ever been for this extrovert and the prospect of discontinuing even one relationship I’ve allowed in would represent a significant percentage loss from the whole of them. But as I get older, being accepted is less important so I keep a safe distance. The quantity of people in my life is far less important than the quality of the people I allow to remain.

Still, it’s the hardest thing, to say indirect goodbyes through my absence and lack of perseverance in a relationship I might have once counted as a keeper. However, it’s often the change most necessary for our survival that is the most difficult to effect. Still, abandonment of the least healthy of these makes one just that much closer to loneliness.

I’ve been to therapy myself and in doing so, discovered not only how my addiction was killing me but also how it had utterly destroyed relationships I once treasured. Sobriety. Don’t leave home without it.

year 11

Satan delivers terrible gifts.

After years without more than a thought about using, on the eve of my 11th year of sobriety, I just woke from a slew of degrading drug dreams from when I did unimaginable things on Meth like it was dejá vu on steroids. Still so tired, I’m thankfully awake and even moreso thankful to God for the rescue. Kids, don’t do drugs. If they don’t kill you, later on the memories will still try.