Well, here it is, the end of the day again and for once I have some time to do a blog entry. Perhaps that niggly feeling I have about keeping this thing up is what I should post about. It isn't like I need to keep this up to keep people informed like my friend Pasha, or even that I have a great readership like my other friend Nathan who will be awaiting my next post. Sometimes it is as the title says, this is a place to let my brain drip dry. Other times it feels that I am doing this only because others are doing this and there is a certain level of social acceptance gained by doing it, even more so when I facebook. These socially antisocial activities yank on a need I feel to be accepted, and unfortunately there is a bit of conformity involved as well. That is the nut I am trying to crack today....conformity.
It is hard to get away from the forces that want to shape us into the likeness of someone else or even a group of someone elses. The safe places I have sought to escape this all seem to have slowly taken on the shape of a mold and soon I feel the walls closing in to press me into a conveniently understood little package of person. The primary one is the community of faith, mainly because that is where my heart primarily resides, but here I continually hope for something different. I guess the hope stems from the fact that while God is also busy molding us into someone else, He is not trying to make me look like the person next to me. What I mean is that as He presses me into the image of His beloved Son He allows my uniqueness to truly shine. He doesn't press me into a Jesus mold, rather He takes me and looks right into me and says...Hmmm... you look like the nose of my Son. He then proceeds to shape me and this is where the fight begins because so often I am worming around to look like some other part of Jesus' body. The other side of it happens as well, where part of Jesus' body tries to yank me in and make me look like them. Nooooo.....I'm a nose!!!! I shriek as the contortion begins. What is truly sad is when you see someone to whom this is happening and all they say is...Moooooo.
I hope to never offend someone for being a nose (or a heel), but it will probably happen. I hope there will be forgiveness then. I also hope I will never be found trying to make you a nose too.
Guess I wrote this to remind me that we are all beautiful as we join together to show the whole world what Jesus looks like. Shine on all.
1 comment:
There is no substitute for face to face contact, BUT, I find these blog forums a very valuable place to process thoughts. I find both of my own blogs very valuable, and may not get all those thoughts out so clearly if I did not blog. I love it when people comment. I find it hard when they don't. But I put a stat counter on my blog like Nathan and discovered that a lot of people read my blog and never comment. All this to say that I do read EVERYTHING you post, and others probably do too. I could probably interact even more meaningfully if we had some more shared context (which we will next time I am in Kelowna- which ever year that may be). But I also need you to blog, and Nathan and others too (who are sadly inconsistent). I need the intellectual stimulation. I don't always get that when I am in a foreign language context. So please keep blogging, I enjoy it and it is good for my brain too. If you want to know what is swishing around in my brain apart from my observations of Siberia then visit http://earinone.blogspot.com (which is far more regular these days).
Facebook may be fun, but really in a kind of high school way (and I think it is important to not give into the social drive for acceptance- this is the dangerous "lifeboat" game that Donald Miller talks about in "Searching for God Knows what"), but blogging is a place where you can say what ever you want regardless of what other people think, a place where you can be honest, a place where sometimes you will offend at least someone, as has happened to me on Sleeping Land (when you have so many readers, then some one is bound to get offended).
So I actually see blogging as an outlet for honesty. I guess the challenge is to also share those things that you blog about with people on a face to face level. But the blog can be a place to wake yourself up to actually do that, a place to let your subconsciousness challenge your consciousness. A place for waking dreaming.
You are a valuable part of the body of Christ, a part of the body of Christ that I would not be able to interact with if you did not blog.
By the way, I'm a noisy tongue, but I am aspiring to be a left eye brow.
God Bless ya Brad.
Pasha.
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