Thursday, January 28, 2010
Having Trouble responding?
I have had a few people who have had difficulty making a response to the blog. Please feel free to email me your response to amiable.mess@gmail.com . Reference the particular entry you would like to respond to in your email.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Losing Weight: Yes I Can...Maybe
Today is a difficult day. It is also a good day. My food choices over the past weekend took me toward perceived pleasure and away from perceived pain. I was confronted last night with what those choices brought me in the form of two extra pounds gained in front of a room full of people who are losing lots of weight.
I have determined that what works for one celled animals does not serve me very well. They can just bump around the world looking for food and back away from pain and they are the better for it. I guess I need to re-evaluate what gives me pleasure and pain. I am in the difficult place of having lost a lot of weight but not all of it. When I was nearly a hundred pounds heavier, the pain of my choices was so easy to grasp. But now, the scale has shifted and life is good! There is so much less pain in my life now.
To truly change my behavior, I shall embark upon a P.R. tour... in my mind! I need to visit every place where the trains stop (long-held and reinforced neural pathways) and proclam a message of change. I need to convert all of the red states to blue (or vice versa). I need to preach and proclaim this message with every action I take and every word that I hear myself say. Sounds very tiring, and I haven't come up with the right sales pitch yet. If I am going to embark upon a long and enduring battle I at least have to believe my own slogans, or I will lose heart. Here are some of the available choices and why I am having difficulty printing up the proverbial banner for each one.
1. Slogan: "Chicks dig thinner guys"
Why it won't work: I am not trying to "win the ladies", I have a great woman and she not only accepts me, but she really digs me. If we are just talking about attractiveness and how that effects people's openness to my ministry, I have found that people have been very receptive to the message of the music in the songs I sing wether I am 370 lbs or 270lbs, and I am not trying to win people based on my looks anyway. That seems shallow. I think the door to people's hearts swings open a little easier when I am less immense, but I feel like in my little corner of the world, things are pretty good. Mind you, I understand that change NEEDS to happen, I just need to crystalize a good reason why.
2. Slogan: "You will die!"
Why it won't work: The health scare tactic has been used on me since I was a small child and it has no power anymore. Fear can only work for so long. A person just starts to accept their fate. Keeping my soul ready for heaven is great but that's not exactly the agent of change that I am looking for.
3. Slogan: "You'll stop feeling embarrassed"
Why it won't work: This one is interesting. I guess to have my perspective I'd have to give you a semi-fictional scenario.
You are a chubby awkward teenager with little athletic ability. You walk to the gym with your jock friend. He talks you into playing basketball with his friends and even though you protest, it is clear he will not take, "no" for an answer. You've never had a girlfriend but all of these guys have their girlfriends and their girlfriends friends hanging around watching the game from the sideline. It's time to choose up teams, you get picked last and you end up on the opposite team as your friend, so you don't even get the comfort of playing alongside someone who has your back. How could it get worse, you ask? Then the decision is made...the worst has happened...you hear the fateful word, "skins!" You have to keep playing though and to make the best of it, you try to make baskets and get rebounds. At the end of the day you hope that people don't just walk away saying, "Did you see that fat kid try to play ball?"
Do you hear isolation, abandonment, shame and the struggle for significance?
These situations happened time after time as I grew up, and overall the theme of my professional life, so far, has been a variation on that theme. I am so used to it, I am not even able to access the pain of it. It has gone from "what I look like" to, "who I am". Everything I do in public takes a good stiff shot of courage because I live my life, 'in spite of" being overweight.
What I mean is, I know going in, that if I am going to reach an audience when I sing I need to be at my tip-top best or I will never overcome the initial impression people have of me. If I am physically unable to be at my best, vocally, I walk away with my head down because I think that it all hinges on my ability to overcome people's prejudgments. My mind tells me that it can't always be true, experience tells me that God is faithful to overcome and even flourish in my weakness, but emotionally, I find it very difficult to move past it (it makes worship all the more beautiful as the focus is completely on God and not on myself).
Embarrassment/shame is the background static of my life. It's always there, but I have consciously tuned it out as much as I can. Talk about reinforced neural pathways! The static went way down when I lost the initial weight. It was so freeing. The pleasure of that has been amazing. My embarrassment level, while still there has decreased a ton, especially when I hear from people who knew me before and have seen the change. Plus I can always tell myself that I am working on it which is way better than the years I spent with no plan and no hope of being able to work on it in any concerted way.
So, do I open the door to feel the full brunt of embarrassment so that I can move to the final stages of my diet? It is time to go shirtless in public? I think not. Besides, I get kind of mad that people make the kinds of snap judgments about people based on the way they look and I get stubborn. I feel like I am allowing their shallow perspective to rule me. Of course, I do it too, but let's not talk about that right now.
4. Slogan: "Do it for Jesus"
Undecided on this one: One talking point that has some promise in the early polls is that "Christ accepts me and loves me as I am, but the better steward I am of the resources He has given me, the more honoring to Him my life becomes." It's the truest motivation I can come up with, but it's not very concrete and not very immediate, versus the pleasure of food that is as immediate as it gets. Plus, it really depends on my moment by moment faith that God actually cares what I am putting in my mouth, and that my stewardship actually means something to Him. For the most part I am okay with that, but then someone brings a pizza into the room and I become functionally "agnostic". In other words, I turn a bind eye to the lack of honor I give to God because He isn't hitting me with a stick to tell me to stop. I need to create something with more of a taser effect. Maybe I just need to take a whiff of some ammonia every time I eat the wrong foods. That will create enough panic to my system that surely it would create a lasting effect...well, wouldn't it?
I NEED YOU
If anyone has any ideas for my internal ad campaign, please comment liberally below. I would love to have your perspective on this, especially if you have ever made positive changes in your life that have really stuck.
I have determined that what works for one celled animals does not serve me very well. They can just bump around the world looking for food and back away from pain and they are the better for it. I guess I need to re-evaluate what gives me pleasure and pain. I am in the difficult place of having lost a lot of weight but not all of it. When I was nearly a hundred pounds heavier, the pain of my choices was so easy to grasp. But now, the scale has shifted and life is good! There is so much less pain in my life now.
To truly change my behavior, I shall embark upon a P.R. tour... in my mind! I need to visit every place where the trains stop (long-held and reinforced neural pathways) and proclam a message of change. I need to convert all of the red states to blue (or vice versa). I need to preach and proclaim this message with every action I take and every word that I hear myself say. Sounds very tiring, and I haven't come up with the right sales pitch yet. If I am going to embark upon a long and enduring battle I at least have to believe my own slogans, or I will lose heart. Here are some of the available choices and why I am having difficulty printing up the proverbial banner for each one.
1. Slogan: "Chicks dig thinner guys"
Why it won't work: I am not trying to "win the ladies", I have a great woman and she not only accepts me, but she really digs me. If we are just talking about attractiveness and how that effects people's openness to my ministry, I have found that people have been very receptive to the message of the music in the songs I sing wether I am 370 lbs or 270lbs, and I am not trying to win people based on my looks anyway. That seems shallow. I think the door to people's hearts swings open a little easier when I am less immense, but I feel like in my little corner of the world, things are pretty good. Mind you, I understand that change NEEDS to happen, I just need to crystalize a good reason why.
2. Slogan: "You will die!"
Why it won't work: The health scare tactic has been used on me since I was a small child and it has no power anymore. Fear can only work for so long. A person just starts to accept their fate. Keeping my soul ready for heaven is great but that's not exactly the agent of change that I am looking for.
3. Slogan: "You'll stop feeling embarrassed"
Why it won't work: This one is interesting. I guess to have my perspective I'd have to give you a semi-fictional scenario.
You are a chubby awkward teenager with little athletic ability. You walk to the gym with your jock friend. He talks you into playing basketball with his friends and even though you protest, it is clear he will not take, "no" for an answer. You've never had a girlfriend but all of these guys have their girlfriends and their girlfriends friends hanging around watching the game from the sideline. It's time to choose up teams, you get picked last and you end up on the opposite team as your friend, so you don't even get the comfort of playing alongside someone who has your back. How could it get worse, you ask? Then the decision is made...the worst has happened...you hear the fateful word, "skins!" You have to keep playing though and to make the best of it, you try to make baskets and get rebounds. At the end of the day you hope that people don't just walk away saying, "Did you see that fat kid try to play ball?"
Do you hear isolation, abandonment, shame and the struggle for significance?
These situations happened time after time as I grew up, and overall the theme of my professional life, so far, has been a variation on that theme. I am so used to it, I am not even able to access the pain of it. It has gone from "what I look like" to, "who I am". Everything I do in public takes a good stiff shot of courage because I live my life, 'in spite of" being overweight.
What I mean is, I know going in, that if I am going to reach an audience when I sing I need to be at my tip-top best or I will never overcome the initial impression people have of me. If I am physically unable to be at my best, vocally, I walk away with my head down because I think that it all hinges on my ability to overcome people's prejudgments. My mind tells me that it can't always be true, experience tells me that God is faithful to overcome and even flourish in my weakness, but emotionally, I find it very difficult to move past it (it makes worship all the more beautiful as the focus is completely on God and not on myself).
Embarrassment/shame is the background static of my life. It's always there, but I have consciously tuned it out as much as I can. Talk about reinforced neural pathways! The static went way down when I lost the initial weight. It was so freeing. The pleasure of that has been amazing. My embarrassment level, while still there has decreased a ton, especially when I hear from people who knew me before and have seen the change. Plus I can always tell myself that I am working on it which is way better than the years I spent with no plan and no hope of being able to work on it in any concerted way.
So, do I open the door to feel the full brunt of embarrassment so that I can move to the final stages of my diet? It is time to go shirtless in public? I think not. Besides, I get kind of mad that people make the kinds of snap judgments about people based on the way they look and I get stubborn. I feel like I am allowing their shallow perspective to rule me. Of course, I do it too, but let's not talk about that right now.
4. Slogan: "Do it for Jesus"
Undecided on this one: One talking point that has some promise in the early polls is that "Christ accepts me and loves me as I am, but the better steward I am of the resources He has given me, the more honoring to Him my life becomes." It's the truest motivation I can come up with, but it's not very concrete and not very immediate, versus the pleasure of food that is as immediate as it gets. Plus, it really depends on my moment by moment faith that God actually cares what I am putting in my mouth, and that my stewardship actually means something to Him. For the most part I am okay with that, but then someone brings a pizza into the room and I become functionally "agnostic". In other words, I turn a bind eye to the lack of honor I give to God because He isn't hitting me with a stick to tell me to stop. I need to create something with more of a taser effect. Maybe I just need to take a whiff of some ammonia every time I eat the wrong foods. That will create enough panic to my system that surely it would create a lasting effect...well, wouldn't it?
I NEED YOU
If anyone has any ideas for my internal ad campaign, please comment liberally below. I would love to have your perspective on this, especially if you have ever made positive changes in your life that have really stuck.
Friday, January 22, 2010
Scolded By A Flower: The Nature Of Beauty
On the way to work this morning hustling through traffic and studying music for the weekend on my car stereo my heart was lifted in a moment of worship that seemed very transcendent and I was feeling the glow of God's grace. Suddenly, a memory came flooding to my mind which held me firmly. This memory unchained a thought that I have found locked in the margins of my heart since I was a child, but always very present and very much in the core of my humanity.
I remembered a time when I was three or four years old and I held a flower of some type. I think it was a carnation. I had seen them before and there had always been a fearsome beauty to flowers when I really looked at them. To describe my feelings for them, I would have to say that I felt an amazement, an almost disbelief of what I was looking at. I had a deep sense of wanting to know how the lacy overlapping swirling petals were connected. What made it work? What was at the heart of this thing that held such sway over my heart and mind? This day I would find out.
I was determined to get to the heart of this puzzle. I can see that I was a conceited little man to believe I could ascertain how the flower became so beautiful. I began to open this flower and carefully pull at the petals to reveal, once and for all, what made it all tick. But after my exploration, the flower seemed to disappear and all I held in my hand was a bunch of bruised leaves, petals and a stem. The thing, when broken down, had left me with nothing but a deeper question. The wilted petals were beautiful in themselves, but they held nothing of their former beauty. The center of this formerly stunning vortex of texture and color seemed to pull me in. It demanded that I find out what was behind this beauty. My supremely finite understanding yielded no resolution. There had to be an answer!
At the time, I tucked the question into the sidebar of my life, and waited.
After remembering this moment earlier this morning, my heart searched for other times in my life when I could sense this same pattern happening. I think looking at the stars and being blown away with the immensity of the heavens, seeing a snow-capped mountain for the first time, and later when I moved to the West Coast and experienced the ocean, I had that sense again. Through the years the study of these things has taken the mystery away from what they are in concrete terms, but again, I was left with the question of beauty. When disassembled, these are just gaseous orbs in space, chunks of rock, and large bodies of water, and they seem to be nothing important or transcendent in and of themselves. The swirling vortex just got bigger.
My thoughts carried me to adulthood.
I thought of seeing the beauty of a woman and taking my wife to be my bride. Again, in my conceit, I thought that maybe I could get to the center of the question by becoming intimately involved with her. As I got to know her, I felt I might understand the heart of beauty, at last. As I truly got to know her and lived our lives together through the joy and the stress, what I realized is that if we break each other into our parts we find that we are both deeply flawed people with very little value in and of ourselves.
As we had our three babies and fully embraced our role as parents, the breathtaking beauty of a child becomes dampened by the crying, the diaper changes, the temper tantrums and the responsibility to give them stability in the home. I can look at each of my kids and see their personalities, physical attributes, talents, shortcomings, victories and outright failures and quickly lose heart. Are my wife and I really in charge of creating a place where the beauty of their lives will be set on the path to find ultimate fulfillment? The challenges are too great for us...I know that.
In the past I have looked at people that have some type of genius, the kind that overwhelms me with its depth, complexity and beauty. I thought that if I could just learn about them or talk with them, maybe I could find out what is the seed at the center of it all. Whenever I have really studied someone or even gotten to know them, I ask a thousand questions and after all of them have been answered I come to the stark and disappointing realization that they don't have any clue that what they are doing is special. They feel like an idiot many times, just like I do. They are simply living out the beauty that was given to them. There is nothing physical that can fully explain the beautiful. I think I believed that if I discovered what was at the heart of their genius, I could nurture it in myself. Finding out that smart people, talented people, funny people and creative people have been given these gifts and they show themselves in a dazzling array with little to do with their control (I didn't say development) made me feel a little jealous, like I couldn't ever be as special as I wanted to be unless I was lucky enough to get the magic gift.
More recently after experience has shown me where some of my own strengths were hidden, and have been led to be able to use them in ways that have effected people’s lives. I looked to myself with the question of beauty. I riddle myself with all of the same questions that I wanted to ask others.
"Okay, buddy! You have broken down natural beauty, beauty in your loved ones and the beauty of talent and genius in mankind. What about you? You have unexplained areas that have touched others. Where does it come from? Did you create it? Did you form it? Did your incredible scope (ha) and great competence (ha ha) allow you to move situations around so that your talents would be used and appreciated by others? Why are you so special that you would get to do what you love? Crystallize for me, what allows you to know how to do what you do so automatically? Where exactly does talent lie? Is there any intrinsic value to you or your actions on this earth? "
I break myself down. I am that little carnation being pulled apart by my own little short stubby, drool-covered toddler fingers. I quickly discard sepal, petals, stigma and stamen. This time it's different though. More intense.
I look past the leaves, past the bruised, wilted stem. This vortex, this funnel cloud which has swept, shaken and stripped me of long held assumptions, held me weak and speechless and at times pulled the air out of my lungs, was finally going to yield an answer.
A tiny voice from the wilted, sad looking carnation cries out to me in a decidedly chastening tone.
"I am a flower! I have beauty, and I am of great value! Look at me, but gaze too deeply and you will lose sight of my beauty because its source is elsewhere! I am not the end; I am only a witness, a reflection, a darkened window. Stop this unending dissection! Settle this in your heart! You can never possess me or my beauty. If you try, I will become an ugly thing. I cease to reflect the Beautiful One when I become the focal point. Those who falsely think they are not made things and try to steal this beauty instead of reflecting it are foolish and have cut themselves off from what makes them valuable. Simply grow, bloom, and humbly show yourself as the flower you are meant to be, our Father will do the rest."
So, without rebuttal (who can argue wth a flower), I endeavor to enjoy the beauty that God has placed in nature, in the people I meet, and the people He has placed me with; while happily reflecting the unique beauty that He would like to share through me to those He wants me to touch.
I think that is a life worth living!
(Ref: Matthew 6:28-29, Romans 8:21-23, Ezekiel 31:9-10, 16-17, Luke 12:25)
I remembered a time when I was three or four years old and I held a flower of some type. I think it was a carnation. I had seen them before and there had always been a fearsome beauty to flowers when I really looked at them. To describe my feelings for them, I would have to say that I felt an amazement, an almost disbelief of what I was looking at. I had a deep sense of wanting to know how the lacy overlapping swirling petals were connected. What made it work? What was at the heart of this thing that held such sway over my heart and mind? This day I would find out.
I was determined to get to the heart of this puzzle. I can see that I was a conceited little man to believe I could ascertain how the flower became so beautiful. I began to open this flower and carefully pull at the petals to reveal, once and for all, what made it all tick. But after my exploration, the flower seemed to disappear and all I held in my hand was a bunch of bruised leaves, petals and a stem. The thing, when broken down, had left me with nothing but a deeper question. The wilted petals were beautiful in themselves, but they held nothing of their former beauty. The center of this formerly stunning vortex of texture and color seemed to pull me in. It demanded that I find out what was behind this beauty. My supremely finite understanding yielded no resolution. There had to be an answer!
At the time, I tucked the question into the sidebar of my life, and waited.
After remembering this moment earlier this morning, my heart searched for other times in my life when I could sense this same pattern happening. I think looking at the stars and being blown away with the immensity of the heavens, seeing a snow-capped mountain for the first time, and later when I moved to the West Coast and experienced the ocean, I had that sense again. Through the years the study of these things has taken the mystery away from what they are in concrete terms, but again, I was left with the question of beauty. When disassembled, these are just gaseous orbs in space, chunks of rock, and large bodies of water, and they seem to be nothing important or transcendent in and of themselves. The swirling vortex just got bigger.
My thoughts carried me to adulthood.
I thought of seeing the beauty of a woman and taking my wife to be my bride. Again, in my conceit, I thought that maybe I could get to the center of the question by becoming intimately involved with her. As I got to know her, I felt I might understand the heart of beauty, at last. As I truly got to know her and lived our lives together through the joy and the stress, what I realized is that if we break each other into our parts we find that we are both deeply flawed people with very little value in and of ourselves.
As we had our three babies and fully embraced our role as parents, the breathtaking beauty of a child becomes dampened by the crying, the diaper changes, the temper tantrums and the responsibility to give them stability in the home. I can look at each of my kids and see their personalities, physical attributes, talents, shortcomings, victories and outright failures and quickly lose heart. Are my wife and I really in charge of creating a place where the beauty of their lives will be set on the path to find ultimate fulfillment? The challenges are too great for us...I know that.
In the past I have looked at people that have some type of genius, the kind that overwhelms me with its depth, complexity and beauty. I thought that if I could just learn about them or talk with them, maybe I could find out what is the seed at the center of it all. Whenever I have really studied someone or even gotten to know them, I ask a thousand questions and after all of them have been answered I come to the stark and disappointing realization that they don't have any clue that what they are doing is special. They feel like an idiot many times, just like I do. They are simply living out the beauty that was given to them. There is nothing physical that can fully explain the beautiful. I think I believed that if I discovered what was at the heart of their genius, I could nurture it in myself. Finding out that smart people, talented people, funny people and creative people have been given these gifts and they show themselves in a dazzling array with little to do with their control (I didn't say development) made me feel a little jealous, like I couldn't ever be as special as I wanted to be unless I was lucky enough to get the magic gift.
More recently after experience has shown me where some of my own strengths were hidden, and have been led to be able to use them in ways that have effected people’s lives. I looked to myself with the question of beauty. I riddle myself with all of the same questions that I wanted to ask others.
"Okay, buddy! You have broken down natural beauty, beauty in your loved ones and the beauty of talent and genius in mankind. What about you? You have unexplained areas that have touched others. Where does it come from? Did you create it? Did you form it? Did your incredible scope (ha) and great competence (ha ha) allow you to move situations around so that your talents would be used and appreciated by others? Why are you so special that you would get to do what you love? Crystallize for me, what allows you to know how to do what you do so automatically? Where exactly does talent lie? Is there any intrinsic value to you or your actions on this earth? "
I break myself down. I am that little carnation being pulled apart by my own little short stubby, drool-covered toddler fingers. I quickly discard sepal, petals, stigma and stamen. This time it's different though. More intense.
I look past the leaves, past the bruised, wilted stem. This vortex, this funnel cloud which has swept, shaken and stripped me of long held assumptions, held me weak and speechless and at times pulled the air out of my lungs, was finally going to yield an answer.
A tiny voice from the wilted, sad looking carnation cries out to me in a decidedly chastening tone.
"I am a flower! I have beauty, and I am of great value! Look at me, but gaze too deeply and you will lose sight of my beauty because its source is elsewhere! I am not the end; I am only a witness, a reflection, a darkened window. Stop this unending dissection! Settle this in your heart! You can never possess me or my beauty. If you try, I will become an ugly thing. I cease to reflect the Beautiful One when I become the focal point. Those who falsely think they are not made things and try to steal this beauty instead of reflecting it are foolish and have cut themselves off from what makes them valuable. Simply grow, bloom, and humbly show yourself as the flower you are meant to be, our Father will do the rest."
So, without rebuttal (who can argue wth a flower), I endeavor to enjoy the beauty that God has placed in nature, in the people I meet, and the people He has placed me with; while happily reflecting the unique beauty that He would like to share through me to those He wants me to touch.
I think that is a life worth living!
(Ref: Matthew 6:28-29, Romans 8:21-23, Ezekiel 31:9-10, 16-17, Luke 12:25)
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