2024-12-14 A Meditation on Reflection

“22 And he said to his disciples, “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat, nor about your body, what you will put on. 23 For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing. 24 Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds! 25 And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? 26 If then you are not able to do as small a thing as that, why are you anxious about the rest? 27 Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. 28 But if God so clothes the grass, which is alive in the field today, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you, O you of little faith! 29 And do not seek what you are to eat and what you are to drink, nor be worried. 30 For all the nations of the world seek after these things, and your Father knows that you need them. 31 Instead, seek his kingdom, and these things will be added to you. 32 “Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. 33 Sell your possessions, and give to the needy. Provide yourselves with moneybags that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys. 34 For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” (Luke 12:22-34 ESV)

Bandits and opportunists, the world amok with degraded reality: our own War is one of personal sage peace. We learn to find ourselves at Peace with decisions made. We learn like Christ to rest right through the storm. Our own War is with the necessity: I may not be rich, I may not be flashy, but I stand for something. I stand for a few things, and as I take that Christ-led Rest, I revisit and rediscover that ultimate Decision to follow Him.

Ultimate matters: these drop in on our conscious progress and day’s thought product. Just as we recall Drawing Near: spirits ebb and flow, and we are warmed by the friendship of let’s face it another whole world owned by these our peers in or out of the faith. We are warmed to rehearse Experiences Past that one might in light of Decisions Made, refer to as Christ-Encounters. Just one. We only need one. And that Encounter spells a lifetime of being not only soldier but also reflective soul: each of us takes that God-led Rest, and contemplates. Each of us sees life through fresh lenses. Each of us bumps up against the Decision Once Made, to follow Christ, to make much of something easily also simply checked off on the survey: “Christian”.

Thus the honesty around our war, revolves around the fact we adopt a plain belligerence only in order to assess a Right Measure of things. We assess that not all players are afforded space and peace to Dream within. We assess that a world that should have plenty of personal space for all comers, instead focuses on elbow-to-elbow frustrated precocity, preciousness, presumption, penury towards the poverty-stricken hopeful ones.

And this, too, only because it is our career Mandate, to stand firm and plant: to make hay while the sun shines around preempting any fight with strong peace. To avoid that “gotcha” game of leading with too much weakness: yes, our Submission also requires we put up a warning label of a sort: we cannot just laugh at the entrapment in the name of faux-weakness. Instead we cultivate our notion of Strength-through-poverty, through weakness, through submission.

We are after all visionary, and again One Experience—a story watched or read, an orb of personal space meeting another’s orb of personal space—is cause sufficient for the day: we light up at the opportunity to be punctual, punctilious, preservative and reservist to the Peace and to the world Academy’s offerings to those who dream.

We are after all dreamy, believing in personal space alongside personal Endeavor: we endeavor to support those who struggle, we endeavor no longer to feel ours a minor role or diminished Outlay: we Can Do This. And that dreamy Vision, leads to a lifetime at the frontlines of this our necessary war, a war around standing firm and poised, placed and drawing borders most generous, or at least, most necessary.

That is, we are engaged upon such punctilious Work as to be generous also around sleeping through the storm. Things take time. We require some whole-body and soul comprehensive sensitivity, religion, inexplicable decisions. These refer back to the wealth of Experience of meeting whom we now call Christ. And we bump up against that Decision, again, always with scurrying, furtive, remanding and repositioning tacks: what does it all mean, after all, to claim the Name of Him? As our personal Religion? As our new Outlook. As who and what we, all things told, are?