Scribbles from Solitude - [Erik]
Something snapped in me this year. I had hoped to do some healing during my vacation in Chicago.I've had some time alone, and that's good, but most of it has been spent trying to solve the damn Rubik's Cube I got my daughters for Christmas. I screwed with the thing for two days before I finally looked at the directions. Even then, it took me an hour and a half before I got that strange joy that comes from lining up all the colors on that tactilely satisfying box.
Maybe there's a message from God in that, but I don't think so. He has been communicating in other ways though.
He spoke through Bob Marley. They have a great cable system up here with free on-demand concerts. Marley's ghost sent a message to me from the past...
"Every man thinketh his
Burden is the heaviest (heaviest).
Ya still mean it: who feels it knows it, lord.
Ya running and ya running
And ya running away.
Ya running and ya running
But ya cant run away from yourself."
The Lady in the Water said something about pool-nymphs and having a purpose and a place. Thich Nhat Hanh was on the Buddhist channel telling me to live in the now, embrace my pain, and to breath. Thomas Merton echoed and reinforced Thich Nhat Hanh with the following:
"Indeed the truth that many people never understand, until it is too late, is that the more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer, because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you, in proportion to your fear of being hurt. The one who does most to avoid suffering is, in the end, the one who suffers most: and his suffering comes to him from things so little and so trivial that one can say that it is no longer objective at all. It is his own existence, his own being, that is at once the subject and the source of his pain, and his very existence and consciousness is his greatest torture."
And finally, God just spoke through my wife after I once again put my son in time out for yelling while I was trying to write this. She said, "Will you quit punishing him for being a two year old. He just wants to play. Why don't you get your head out of your ass and come play with your children?"
All good stuff. I've got to go.
posted by Etcetera at 11:05 AM
9 Comments:
Old chinese saying: "Disciprine come from within."
I have been there and done that so many times I can't even count them. I am constantly telling my kids to be quiet so that I can hear what is on the radio or television. Later I always think that I suck as a dad. I have been trying this week to get out of myself and actually play with the kids.
Yeah your getting it!
"The hardest to learn is the least complicated" Indigo Girls
I can't stop the complications or pain that is here and more coming if I am alive from my health junk, I can't make money fall from the sky for Zeke, I can't make our youngest see herself through more gentle eyes, or our middle listen more, or our oldest stop going to the place when she is scared that hurts everything around her.
I can be cranky when our little housemates 6,4,3 wake me at 5am or I can grab them and pull them under the covers to hear them giggle and decide more coffee will be needed. I can yell at my pets when they get things messy or I can accept they are pets.
It is not complicated it is just hard to learn.
You are loved
I'm pretty used to the scenery up my own ass, me. Spend a lot of time there.
Forgive me for being an armchair philosopher but it is the nature of this world for one to want despirately what he does not have until he gets it and then either dispises it or throws it away. I don't know how that works with children as neither is an option in such a case.
I'll comment when I have my own children :) Until then, I'm an un-educated by-stander. But I have great seats!
Dang! I've never actually finished a Rubik's Cube without pulling it apart first. Sweet.
The great thing about all of this - even for those who are insane - is that God loves us in Christ. It's simplistic perhaps (too familiar maybe), but I like how the writer of Hebrews puts it (well, how he would have put it if he was writing in ESV English):
"Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son."
Perhaps He's speaking through spouses and Marley and Shyamalan, but He's saying "Christ". And he says that for us.
As for playing with your kids... hope you had a good time. (Didn't they worship you for doing the Rubik's Cube? C'mon! What more can they expect?)
I first solve a Rubik's cube last year when my daughter received one on Christmas. Yes, I needed the instructions and about an hour, but I got done.
Maybe God only allows dads and geeks to solve those things?
I used to have a Rubik's cube. Not anymore. It got thrown away years ago.
I'll get back to you on the other stuff if/when I ever become a mother...which won't be for quite a while.
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