Short takes

How short can a blog be before it becomes a statement?  How long can a statement be before it becomes an essay? 

Often short glimpses, even though the brevity distorts, can be useful to thinking.

Here are a some short ideas that one day may make it into essays.

1.The art of giving:  it's an art, like a painting or music.  You can appreciate it, you can learn to do it, and it takes practice.  An amateurs expression is wonderful, but may not have lasting value to others even though it's a necessary stepping stone toward mastering the art.  The more you practice the more you know where to place the brush stroke, to play the note, and to create something of beauty that helps others.

2. Love: some like to say love makes the world go around, and all we need is love.  Be that as it may, accepting love is hard, and we only accept the love we think we deserve.  And so, a low self image is happy to accept abuse.

3. Robin Williams said "Just jump, because a net will appear".  Sadly some will take that as an admirable principle without any caveats.  How stupid can people be?

4. "Beautiful creatures" ... a movie that some Christians would not watch - not a Christian movie - but a movie with some interesting lines to make us think:

• "God created all things didn't he?  It's only man that goes along and decides which ones are mistakes." 
• "I don't want to preach today.  Instead, I just want to talk to you.  About a word we don't hear much any more - Sacrifice.  It's not what I'd call a modern word.  People hear the word sacrifice and they become afraid that something will be taken away from them.   Or that they'll have to give up something that they can't live without.  Sacrifice, to them, means loss ... in a world telling us we can have it all.  But I believe true sacrifice is a victory.  Because it requires our free will to give up something for someone you love.  For something or someone you love more than yourself.  I won't lie to you, it's a gamble.  Sacrifice won't take away the pain of loss, but it wins the battle against bitterness - the bitterness that dims the light on all that is of true value in our lives."

5. Wisdom.  There's wisdom all around, and fake wisdom too.  We can resonate with, celebrate and elevate the wisdom that we find.  Yet like a tuning fork we resonate to that note to which we are tuned.  When we are tuned to the right note, we don't only respond to that note but also to all the harmonics of the one true note of tuning.  And when we resonate to that which we're tuned, then all other sounds are as discords, easily recognizable for what they are.  The Word tunes us to the root note of the full chord of creation.  The world tunes us, to a discord that dampens our sound, leaves us lifeless and without resonance.  Tuned correctly, our notes sound out in harmony with all the true notes around us, and lets us live in an orchestra of wisdom. 
 
6. Belief that leads to the judgement of others is a belief rooted in an unrealized fear of being wrong, and the need to find security in being right.  So it is with blind faith, religious violence, and militant atheism.  Belief that leads to grace is belief that is secure in the knowledge of truth, understood in both mind and the heart, and thus feels no threat from disagreement.  Such belief gives freedom of grace to others and the strength of joy.

---