Calling Conclusion take 2

 

This week we are continuing to pay attention to where/what/who our attention is finding, focusing, and framing.  One of my definitions of prayer is to pay attention.  So it does matter where we are focusing and what is framing our mind/heart/soul.  We are aware of our own awake-ness or lack thereof.  There is also the truth that we cannot possibly comprehend everything we encounter and experience every day.  One of the modern days lures is to find balance…some state of harmony where all is at peace and rest. 

Which reminds me of a story.  

The above photo is from Devil’s Lake State Park in Wisconsin.  I had traveled there to preside at my niece Sidney and her wife, Marin’s, wedding in August.  We completed the rehearsal and all the women in the wedding party, including my wife and daughter who were with me, were going to the nail salon.  I did not need a manicure or pedicure.  Well, maybe I did, but it seemed best to wait until another time.  I had some free time on my hands and decided to go for a walk in the woods, to go hiking.  For me, spending time amid the towering trees on a dirt path feeds my soul.  Just looking at the above dirt path makes my inner-Robert Frost and Mary Oliver poet loose in this world.

The next thing you need to know is that after living in flat Florida for eight years now, I forgot that not everywhere you go is level.  Above is one of many inclines I encountered on my hike.  For me, this image reminds me of the last twenty-one months.  The steep learning curve of worship online, transitioning our groups and gatherings onto Zoom, the rocky unsteadiness of life.  I think about how many times I thought I had firm footing only to slip and slide and almost lose my balance.  Are you with me?  

While there was beauty all around me (both on this hike and over the last twenty-one months), I could also get tunnel vision.  I focused only on looking down rather than up and around.  How am I going to make it up that incline??  At this point I am talking BOTH about the incline from the photo AND the incline of life today.  What will I find at the top?  Is that a spider there?  Where you focus will affect and effect what you find.  That is true in photography and in life.  

My favorite phrase right now is from Jon Acuff, three days is firm, three weeks is fuzzy, three months is fiction.  That is, I can tell you with relative certainty what I will be doing on Friday this week.  I have a small sense of what I will be doing at the end of November, I mean besides eating turkey.  But if you ask me about January, there is so much mystery looking that far down the road.  Life today can feel like these steep steps we take one at a time, lose our footing and don’t know what will happen when we get to the top.

Pause for today to ponder where YOU have been focusing over the last twenty-one months?  How has where you have pointed your attention limited what you have discovered or uncovered? 

One more favorite phrase, this one from Richard Rohr, a point of view is a view from a point.  If I turned 90 degrees and snapped a photo, it would be different photo than the one above.  So too in our lives with our opinions that we love to post on social or share with friends or shout to anyone who will listen.  Your perspective is from a particular point given where you are.  Someone else who is at a different point and another place will find, focus, and frame in another way.  Hold this truth today and may God’s wisdom speak through you and open you to see both the beauty you know and know that there are other points of view as well.