September...
i love September...
There is something about the fall that captures my imagination and fills my soul with the feeling of possibility....
i once wrote an article for a newspaper (Mars Hill) that expressed exactly that:
"The air is crisp and the smells are sweet. The magical colors of the trees flood my vision, and the leaves pleasantly crunch beneath my feet as I walk with newly found purpose in my new 'back-to-school' boots. The memories of my childhood are pungent and clear as I pull on a sweater and walk out into a sunny brisk day. The Autumn winds sweep in the feeling of change just as it chases the summer warmth away. However it is the feeling of hope and newness flitting through the air that in particular captures my fancy about the Autumn.
I once read that Autumn is like new years only there aren’t the turkey leftovers and the hangover to contend with the day after you make your resolutions. Unlike New Years, Autumn really is the beginning of something new, it is marked by the beginning of a season, often a transition in jobs or the start of school, the end of summer romances, and at the very least the changing of your skin from a golden color to its normal pale self. With the beginning of this newness then, we have the actual chance to choose to be new as well. Everything from the weather to the scenery is demanding a change so why not make one?
Everywhere I look in the Autumn I see change; a physical manifestation reminding me of the inward possibility for beautiful change in my own life, and I am haunted by the words of Mahatma Ghandi “We must become the change we want to see”.
... while much has changed since i wrote those words, once again it is autumn, and although I am not starting back to school (an adjustment i still cannot quite get my head around), I am facing a new season in my life, and once again i feel the autumn around me demanding change...
So here i am once again.....
(once again meaning:
Living back home.
Jobless.
Single.)
... but rather than letting this somewhat daunting trio of events get to me I have decided to use the time that i have in front of me while i have it to start changing myself, so that when the next season of my life finally arrives I will more ready to make the change i want to see in the world around me....
Logically the first step in the process of change is self-examination....(a dangerous past time but also i have come to see as necessary in the process of my life)....
... and as i open the book of my life and read the pages that have been written so far, recounting not only this last year but the years preceding it I have noticed several things.
First I see that living in Africa really has changed me. I didn't think it had, and yet quietly there has been a shift in my values, and with that shift in values a shift in perception... i began to notice as i read this story of my life so far (a story i have re-read and examined often), that like a film maker watching his lifelong favourite movie for the first time after going through the film school the book was read by different eyes. It was the same story, but for the first time I saw subtext and themes where i saw nothing before....
and what i have come up with i didn't like very much... it was ugly.
I have realized that i have spent my life impressed by all the wrong things. I saw that in my ambition for the kingdom that my life has been hijacked by selfish ambition and vain conceit. That the cult of ME has defined so much of my life so far...
I have realized that i was impressed by money, power, success, ambition... good looks, prestige, fun, popularity. Religion. I chased these things in my own life, and expected them from those i chose to surround myself with.
Something I would have never admitted.... But whether i would say it or not so much of my life has been defined by these things, as have so many of my choices.
What i should have been chasing are humility, compassion, love for the other, kindness, patience, love for the other, and grace. Jesus.
i dated and befriended people like me. People that valued the wrong things. I chased the wrong people.
i have been fortunate enough to have dated people and befriended people who were not like me, and who chased the right things.... . The people who naturally valued the things God loves....
and i have hurt so many of them, by trying to make them subscribe to what i believed in, not the words of my mouth mind you, but how my life was lived... i have done permananent damage to some of the most beautiful people i know by forcing them to subscribe to the cult of ME, and what i valued....
... now when one self examines these arent exactly the things one is hoping to come up with, however this is what i have found....
and i am so ashamed, and i am so broken to know i have caused the people around me and God so much pain. My heart is bleeding knowing i wasted so much of my life on these empty pursuits and hurting those around me.... and once again i am in awe of the fact that God can give grace to someone like me.... someone who cannot ever live up to it, and yet is given it again...
... and i want to take it all back... but i cant... and all of these things have brought me to where i am now. But there is one man in particular i have damaged along the way.... and i only wish i could make amends....
I am acutely aware that while for so long I talked the talk about wanting to see beautiful change in this world I did not walking the walk. I was not part of any beautiful change.
My 'religiousness' caused others so much pain....
... so my self examination so far has been a painful one as this is just the tip of the iceberg... but i also find hope because i am finally in the place in my life where i can see the things i have done.. and so i hope this last year has marked a permanent change in my life.... i pray that as i have talk the talk that somehow i have begun to walk the walk.... i pray that as this new season opens that i can continue to follow up my talk with a changed walk.....
More than anything I desire to change the world, but the truth I have come to realize this fall is if I can’t even change the little things in my own life in order to become a more beautiful person and impact the people I interact with daily, then how can I change the world to become a more beautiful place? Thus in this fall where i am living at home, jobless, broke, and single, I have finally made a decision: that i spend this autumn continuing to build on the foundation of becoming the person I was made to be. I have made the decision to change, to set specific goals and specific measures for myself, and to become the person I have always wanted to be. Broadly I want to be better, I want to listen more, be more joyful, be less lazy, change my attitude towards God and others, judge less, be kinder, and have a softer heart to those hurting. I want to offer more grace, be compassionate, be kind, love people creatively, and reach higher and further than i have ever gone before. I want to tell people about how real Jesus is and how he likes them and that if he can love a wretch like me than he will definetly love them. i want to help the sick, the broken, the orphans, the widows, the poor... I want to love those I encounter the way Jesus would have loved them. I want to love myself better and be the person he created me to be and i want to use this last year of living in Africa as the foundation to keep building off of rather than just an experience i once had....
So finally i just want to end by saying that all of us want to make changes in our life. I believe that every one of you has the potential be even greater then who you already are; to be more, to do more, to give more… If you feel that any of those things are true, then why not make this the Autumn where you decide to become the person you were made to be, that you decide that your daily encounters with others are going to be the pattern you set for how you begin to change the world.
It’s Autumn and all around you everything is changing and there is hope, and there is newness, and if nothing else there is the knowledge that at least one other person out there is trying to make a change, and is cheering for you to succeed in making the changes you have always wanted to make too. So why not do it now, when everything around you is calling for a change...
....be the change you want to see, starting from the inside out.
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