I am try­ing to fig­ure out how to bridge the gap between what I want and what I need; I am also work­ing on the even big­ger chasm between what I think I need and what God thinks I need. God’s prov­i­den­tial style is patience mixed with per­sis­tence. For all the times I have “waited upon the Lord” he has waited even longer on me. Sooner or later, I cave into the oppor­tu­ni­ties pre­sented by Deity rather than the super­fi­cial alter­na­tives I gen­er­ally prefer.

I want to have an easy life; God wants me to have some char­ac­ter. The two do not always mix. So far, I have had lots of ease mixed with var­i­ous sorts of rel­a­tively mild suf­fer­ing. I am glad that God has stuck to his guns on this one. The easy times have really not been all that reward­ing any­way. Invari­ably, my mis­eries have chis­eled away some of my hard-headed ten­den­cies. God made the almost end­less vari­eties of pain for a rea­son: to teach us what does and does not ulti­mately work and what we really need instead of what we might think we need

Every so often I throw away my expec­ta­tions list and replace it with an accep­tance of God’s pri­or­i­ties list. “Father Knows Best” is more than some cheesy nineteen-fifties tele­vi­sion ser­ial. God made out the agenda. I can either go along with it or I can die whin­ing. What I want, what I think I need, and what is ulti­mately best for me get sorted in life’s cir­cum­stances and then sep­a­rated by spir­i­tual tests. Two out of three even­tu­ally get blown away. My bet­ter self knows to go with the Great instead of the merely good.

For the most part, his­tory is the record of humanity’s inabil­ity to fig­ure this one out. I do not have the time for the major­ity to come to res­o­lu­tion on this one — so I guess I had bet­ter go with the One that will out-wait every shal­low worldly trend and hold out for eter­nal char­ac­ter perfection.

Carl Jung is not the first per­son to say that the entire world is pro­jec­tion. Jesus said it in a sim­i­lar way: “As a man thinks in his heart, so is he.” The state­ment is psy­cho­log­i­cal com­mon sense. We see what we think we see. We see what we want to see. We see what we are told to see.

See­ing is not neu­tral; it involves the heart — all of our expe­ri­ences and expec­ta­tions. We bring to this art a soul that is a work of art of its own (hope­fully any­way). “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”

I have a con­fes­sion to make: I have made a habit of toss­ing ver­bal ink blots out to peo­ple to see what makes them tick (and have done so most of my life). I play dumb. I want to see what I can expect from peo­ple. It is a com­bi­na­tion of need­ing some pre­dictabil­ity in life and a pro­fes­sional haz­ard of being a counselor/minister. I do not toss the ver­bal depic­tions around lightly or in a tempt­ing way, but I def­i­nitely lis­ten to the responses very closely.

Hearts are revealed (mine included) in such sub­tle ways. Again, from Jesus: “By your words you shall be jus­ti­fied and by your words you shall be con­demned.” There is no such thing as a neu­tral word. I do not speak to “bait” peo­ple. Usu­ally, I can learn what I need to know about oth­ers with­out hav­ing to toss out an ink blot of sounds. I also know that oth­ers have the right to read me as well in any­thing I say or do.

Ink blots are mir­rors. They help us see what resides inside our souls. Words, events, and actions are all fair game. It is impor­tant not to be judg­men­tal (as we judge oth­ers we too shall be judged). It is also impor­tant to real­ize how dim our mir­rors may be.

This arti­cle is a writ­ten ink blot.

On any given day, there is enough com­edy in the news to cre­ate a com­plete stand up rou­tine. The humor is dis­cov­ered in the way you look at it. First of all, you have to be detached enough to stand back and see this com­edy of errors for what it actu­ally is. I sug­gest mem­ber­ship in what Jesus called “The King­dom of God” — the com­mu­nity of peo­ple able to unplug from worldly rules and affil­i­a­tions, and iden­tify with God as King-President-Governor-Lord or what­ever you want to call the per­son­al­ity in charge.

Sec­ond, you must have the courage to talk about the numer­ous “ele­phants in the liv­ing room” with­out jus­ti­fy­ing, defend­ing, or blam­ing. They really are all there. Thank God it is a very large liv­ing room. In world gov­ern­ments, the blind lead the blind; in reli­gion the bland lead the bland. Insti­tu­tions thrive on those that will not rock the boat, nor pad­dle it, nor untie it from the dock. The spokesper­son at the helm lec­tures about the view of the mighty ocean, while the pas­sen­gers are con­tent to sit in the still boat and imag­ine being on some sort of voyage.

Igno­rance is bliss. I define igno­rance not as a lack of edu­ca­tion but of the abil­ity to ignore the obvi­ous. In fam­ily coun­sel­ing it is part of the game called “let’s pretend” — the game in which no one admits what is really going on with them­selves or each other. It is a con­spir­acy of silence that hopes to buy one more day of sweet obliv­ion at the cost of per­sonal sanity.

The truth will set you free, but it is going to hurt at first. It will cut through denial like a hot knife through but­ter. Truth faced will shake you awake. Real­ity is not budged by rhetoric. Talk­ing never changes the facts. Truth requires courage and an hon­est look in the mir­ror. Ever won­der what it is that your friends are afraid to say to you? The loneli­est per­son on earth is the one that has bul­lied the voices of insight within and with­out into silence.

Clue­less: a tem­po­rary state of pre­ten­sion some­times extended through­out a life­time, solved only from within by a heart will­ing to admit what is.

So, what is it you do not want to tell your­self about your­self that you already know?

I love the aroma of: leather shops, cof­fee shops, new clothes, new car­pet, spring rain, win­ter snow, fallen leaves, desert dust, new tires, bar­beque, salt air, spent jet fuel, gaso­line, newly cut alfalfa, cot­ton seed, butane, a win­ter fire­place, mesquite burn­ing, libraries, new asphalt, pine trees above six thou­sand feet alti­tude, the Grand Canyon, new homes, new cars, weight rooms, fur­ni­ture stores, rail­road ties, new paint, Dr. Pep­per, candy stores, ice cream shops, and many other such places and sub­stances. My nose knows all of the places I have been. I can close my eyes and pretty much tell you where I am. Take me any place from my past and my nose can give you the loca­tion bet­ter than GPS.

Dogs can smell fear. They can also detect a sin­gle human cell. A dog’s nose is smarter than a lot of human genius-types. I’ll put my money on a Bas­sett Hound’s nose against any Ein­stein when look­ing for a lost per­son. The nose is the fastest way to a mem­ory. No won­der God put it in front of the eyes. He even gave us an “inter­nal nose” to sniff out phonies and fools. “I smell a rat” has noth­ing to do with unwanted rodents. It has more to do with sales pitches and politics.

Paul called Chris­tians the “aroma of Christ” — then implied that we smell great to God but hor­ri­ble to the world. No doubt, we are a stench to the world at large. We stink of tra­di­tion, mys­tery, meta­physics, and faith in the seem­ingly impos­si­ble. Beauty is in the nose of the beholder. I won­der how THEY smell to God. Poop and fer­til­izer have the same aroma. I guess it all depends on the context.

It is good to have a “nose for news” but bet­ter to have one for ulti­mate truth. Some of the most pop­u­lar philoso­phies of our time stink to high heaven. I am often tempted to hold my nose in cer­tain sec­tions of libraries and book­stores. Noth­ing smells worse than dead reli­gion either.

Give me the aroma of gar­den flow­ers at the empty tomb and of embalm­ing spices never used. Those smell pretty good to me. They cer­tainly beat the alternative.