Let Your Light Shine
Here’s something that reminded me who I am…
and whose I am…
and how those are the same, I AM.
be.thebright.co/true-words-with-travis
“Blessed are the beggars in spirit…”
That’s good news.
Why do beggars make the best choosers?
Choosing. We all get to do it.
And not choosing, well…
I would never write about skinny dipping but if I did I would write about washing your heart in the crisp mountain stream which springs from Isolation. If you would shimmy your heart from worldly dressings and let down your cares, you must go to the wilderness where everything lives wild and free from the fear of interruption. Naked hearts are even more alarming and awe full than naked bodies. Better to go alone, mostly. Invite and the Whisper might and the Whisper will come and wash your feet there. Wade and splash and bask and be made new. In quietness and trust is your strength.
Take your heart to the mountain, just the One who Loves and you.
A good man might take responsibility for all his wrongs, stand up right, beat a noble drum and bear his own burden. A very good man, might.
But what kind of man stands quietly while falsely accused, taking the blame for another willingly, even to death, dying under their shame?
What kind of man would give his heart so completely?
Stretching one hand to the east and one to the west… saying, “fire away.”
The cop in the video plays a character whose Name I think you know.
The woman’s name…
…just don’t run away.
Here’s something that scraped out the bottom of my soul.
be.thebright.co/every-little-whiff/
If you’re curious enough, hang on until 1:37, at least.
I think you’ll be glad you did.
You might even watch it twice.
Or ten times.
“It won’t be easy. It won’t be certain.”
But take heart…
Laughter climbed the walls and swung from heart to heart on those steel monkey bars forged in long furious fights for love.
Freedom stained our lips and the white tablecloth where a joke ambushed us mid drink.
Looking around, finding sparkling soul windows all around, mine almost cried.
We fought battles to be here. We got scars to be here.
But not everyone is here.
So we drink, and we remember.
We remember the battle we couldn’t fight and the scars we didn’t get.
We remember the night Death found us covered in blood and not our own.
And we remember the One who doesn’t drink tonight.
We drink a bright living thing trampled underfoot
and killed
and wrung
and flowed into a dark place to rest.
We drink a new thing, living again
and poured out
and blotting out
and knitting heartstrings
in glowing bonds of a forever freedom.
We drink. And this is called Joy.
So I smile while my eyes surrender.
I laugh and taste the salt too.
Because we are here and not every one, yet.
For the one who would believe,
mountains of evidence are waiting
to jump into the ocean of his heart.
For the one who would not believe,
mountains of evidence will not be moved
so that his heart may have a steady place to rest.
This is the humility of the One who Loves.
That this Love would exist
or not exist
in my world,
according to my preference.
As you believe, so be it unto you.
Believe, or don’t, carefully.
You have the power of Creation in you.
Sunlight is popping over the horizon
but a poofy cloud blanket is keeping the bright beams at bay.
Silver crowned, hands scarred and healed and scarred again, a man places his book at the long table and goes to the counter.
“Morning.” A true smile. “Just a regular coffee.”
Other men begin to fill the long table.
“Here you go sir.”
“Thank you. God bless you today.”
In a booth by the door, two women are talking.
Well, one of them is talking. And wiping her eyes.
Her ancestors probably came from a land in the northern hemisphere.
The other woman, somewhere closer to the sun.
Resting on the table next to their water cups, their bibles are closed.
I don’t think their hearts are.
Doors swing open on the SUV that just parked in front.
The buzz-cut is a simple look but the story in his eyes isn’t.
Two miniature versions bounce around from the other side,
half his height and half again.
They could be Russian nesting dolls… Asian nesting dolls.
The boys are scanning through the glass at the menu
before they even make it to the door.
This is a special morning.
Getting up to refill my coffee, an excuse to peek at the book on the long table.
Waking The Dead, by John Eldredge.
Well amen.
Time is a friend I love to hate.
So fanciful and flighty and romantic and… untrue.
Seven hours in a second and seven days feeling every second like an hour.
Time, why are you so timely?
A boy looks through glass thick as your fist
and sticks out his tongue at the lions,
his death grip on daddy’s pant leg
and tiny fingernails let blood
but daddy doesn’t seem to mind.
—
Let this song beat your heart
like the pounding hooves of a Texas Rangers patrol
riding for truth, justice and The Resurrected Way.
Delight all you sons and daughters
of goodness and light!
Good always wins, in the end.
Hiatus comes from the Latin hio, which means a yawning or an opening.
A familiar-looking sister word is portal.
Think: a yawning grave.
Now that is an interesting portal.
Hiatus is also familiar to anatomical language, referring to an opening, especially in an organ.
e.g. the Hiatus aorticus is a hole in your diaphragm.
Your aorta goes through there.
All your life blood goes through a hole in the thing that gives you breath.
How about that.
We make ourselves a place apart
Behind light words that tease and flout,
But oh, the agitated heart
Till someone find us really out.
’Tis pity if the case require
(Or so we say) that in the end
We speak the literal to inspire
The understanding of a friend.
But so with all, from babes that play
At hide-and-seek to God afar,
So all who hide too well away
Must speak and tell us where they are.
—
A poem about the flaws of poetry…
A delight.
And so, He did tell us.
Then and Than were born under a waxy moon.
Brothers, one God loved and one he hated.
One became a stepping stone for others.
A connector of ideas, a launchpad for the future.
The other became a harsh judge of the world.
Knowing always how to bind you to Better, or Worse.
For better or worse,
Then and Than were born under a waxy moon.
Mind which one you call on, and When.
Self-reliance, the height and perfection of man, is reliance on God.
Respect the child. Be not too much his parent.
Trespass not on his solitude.
Our strength grows out of our weakness.
The indignation which arms itself with secret forces
does not awaken until we are pricked and stung and sorely assailed.
Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming
that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.
A great man is always willing to be little.
Whilst he sits on the cushion of advantages, he goes to sleep.
When he is pushed, tormented, defeated, he has a chance to learn something;
he has been put on his wits, on his manhood; he has gained facts; learns his ignorance; is cured of the insanity of conceit; has got moderation and real skill.
The purpose of life seems to be to acquaint a man with himself.
He is not to live the future as described to him
but to live the real future to the real present.
The highest revelation is that God is in every man.
We are, like Nebuchadnezzar, dethroned,
bereft of reason, and eating grass like an ox.
Yet a man may love a paradox,
without losing either his wit or his honesty.
Be it how it will, do right now.
The thing done avails, and not what is said about it.
An original sentence, a step forward,
is worth more than all the censures.
Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions.
All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.
The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks.
Of course, he who has put forth his total strength in fit actions,
has the richest return of wisdom.
It is easy to live for others; everybody does.
I call on you to live for yourselves.
Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.
Accept the place the divine providence has found for you,
the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events.
Great men have always done so.
People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.
To different minds, the same world is a hell, and a heaven.
Truth is handsomer than the affectation of love.
Your goodness must have some edge to it — else it is none.
Speak what you think now in hard words,
and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks
in hard words again,
though it contradict every thing you said today.
I hung my verse in the wind
Time and tide their faults will find.
Valor consists in the power of self-recovery,
so that a man cannot have his flank turned,
cannot be out-generalled,
but put him where you will,
he stands.
Despair, never.
Hope is best savored in sips
so that the flavor frolics
and on your taste buds
makes melting mosaics
that behind your eyes
thought does glow, sticks.
Why are your ways so high?
While I am so low?
Why are your thoughts so still?
While all day long we are killed?
It’s quiet up there.
My side is empty,
But my hand is taken.
Forgiveness, can you imagine?
Are: the present form of to be.
-R
“If a good god is real why doesn’t he or she just show up sitting on a cloud or riding a unicorn with wings or something?”
“Did you know Where’s Waldo has sold more than 55 million copies around the world?”
“Huh?”
“Where’s Waldo, the crowd scenes with the Waldo character hiding in every single one…”
“Yeah yeah, I know. Great way to kill time. Super hard to find that guy sometimes. What’s that got to do with anything?”
“How many do you think we would buy if every page was just a giant picture of Waldo’s face?”
—
I waited for a giant picture for a long time. Then I got bored.
What if the point of all this is to get good at killing time?
Eternity is a long time, after all.
“Seek, and you will find.”
Maybe God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh…
Excuse me, I’m being serious here, did you just giggle?
If you want to build relationship a lifetime lasting,
it’s good to ask questions that are a lifetime answering.
Only 7% of humans are alive today.
Wise guys guess over 100 billion humans have existed, ever.
7 billion alive today = 7%.
That means you are 0.00000000001% of humans to have life, ever. *
At any point in life, a human is personally familiar with about 150 other humans, on average. **
The 150 people you know total 0.0000000015% of the humans to have life, ever. ***
You are alive today. And the few with you.
Not 1,000 years ago or a 1,000 years from now.
You are here today.
Not in a different galaxy or even a different town.
Who else is here today?
What do you think that means?
Today is the only day.
Is it marvelous in your eyes?
We are here. For a moment.
Will you rejoice and be glad with me?
—
* 1 / 100,000,000,000 = 1e-11
** Dunbar’s Number: Group Size and Brain Physiology in Humans
*** 150 / 100,000,000,000 = 1.5e-9