"Hope is the ability to hear the melody of the future. Faith is the willingness and the courage to dance to it today."

Life is beautiful. Not easy. Beautiful. Not without challenges. All paths are not devoid of obstacles. Challenges and obstacles vary tremendously through time and circumstance. Mind, body, spirit and soul are remarkably capable of dealing with such challenges and obstacles, for we are supremely designed. Diverse. Distinguished. Gifted. Conscious of individuality, of vulnerability and authenticity. Communal. Some of us are growing into a mindset disposed to believing life - individually and collectively (as seems the desire and intention of creation) - is versatile. It allows each of us to make of life the best quality, if we so choose, for a life will not blankly best itself on its own. Grace and growth are two entirely different processes of being and becoming. Come along for the ride.

What Quality-Of-Life Challenges Are You Facing?

Pressing Toward The Mark of One's Highest Calling?

Along this extraordinary segment of our explorative journey to the lean side of the mountain where strategies profitable to living a life worth its salt - and its effort - and its power - and its meaning - the significant life - are laid bare, we anticipate discovering how to convert current challenges into consumate opportunities. We are re-designing our living spaces. Transformed through grace? Continually growing (being and becoming)? Ride along if you will. We are exploring, uncovering and discovering..

We climbed down from Golgotha and have begun preparing for a rejuvenized journey into and through The Circle. The sky will unfold there. Former things are passed away. Behold! All things have become new. The prophets spoke to our ancestors. Christ speaks to our communities.

Indeed, we chose not to spend an inordinate span of time reflecting on that blood-boiling experience atop Golgotha's Hill, though the very event itself, as experience while exposed vicariously through it attests, cracked open a fair number of deep philosophical, intellectual, emotional and scientific questions that are best not ignored. Rather, we are focused (arm in arm, cheek to chest) on being and becoming.

It is true, troubles hither, far and near abound. Noises hither to and fro are menacingly loud. Through it all, we're privileged to be surrounded by sparkly eyes. Love, strength, joy, even in the midst of challenges, encourage and cajole us to press ever forward. We feast, as it were on foods of champions in order that with each and every stride we can continue to gain strength and a confidence that comes from knowing our spirits are wholly liberated.. We are integrated. Whole. We are free. Unbounded. We are not of the former mold. Transformed. Not cloned. Owned. We know that every moment we exist we will never get again.

How is it with you along your stretch of the journey?

Life: it is a dance. It gets better with practice; its music is in your heart and in your soul and in your blood and in your bones. Life; it is a dance. It gets better with practice. You have a partner – your spirit. You can have a party if you like, but choose smartly who you invite, for life – your life – is a dance. It gets better with practice, unless you stop the music or so crowd your dance floor there is no space to move or be moved within it. Explore. Yes, life; it is a dance. It gets better with practice until the dance becomes the dancer and the dancer becomes the dance and life and all of existence becomes a singular flow. Yes, life; it is a dance. It gets better with practice. Dance.

Who made the mountains? Who made the trees? Who made the rivers flow to the sea? Who sends the rain when the earth is dry? Who made the flowers to bloom in the spring? Who made the song for the robins to sing? Who hung the moon in the starry sky? Yes, all that and so much more! Our minds. Our bodies. Our spirits. Our soul. And left each the full freedom to choose as purpose unfolds. Decisions are unavoidable.

What do you make of your enriched experience?
What decisions do you consider pivotal?
What about this deep question?

This now is a merely resourceful debate.
How does your experience or knowledge comport?

Being fully functional and wholly human!

An Upside Down World

Violence! Violence. Violence. That savagery, strength, brutality, power, to enforce one's will above another's. So alluring it is. So frustratingly backward the heart and mind bent on using it. In that world often a violent god is concocted for an illusion of permission and authority to shadow ignorance, arrogance and depravity. Then perpetrated. What is meant for inspiration and edification is muscled into dictation and division.

The transformed are not of that world, are of necessity traveling through that world, and reason it wise to not be blind to its trick, not to ignore it, and to not let it. How?

Workings ot That Upside Down World

With practiced slight of hand, instilling obedient tremble, purchasing ready compliance, shadowed, that regime of violence tosses the fearful back into times of other covenants (the conquered ones), and stays them there. That form of violence - a trickery - keeps the deceived stuck in minds of former times (co-opted covenants). They misunderstand, misappropriate and misrepresent the prophets of old in cover for such enforcement. Oh, how devilish! Yet, so smooth the innocent are netted. With words.

Perpetuation is preserved through inculcation (formative innocent minds, hurt, not brave enough or aware enough to ask the vital questions copy them), thus sustaining an intentional wickedness, an enforced subjugation, an oppression. With words.

A Competent Response

Indeed, a simple awakening would expose that kind of theft of soul. Yes, a vital question which God has forcefully, unequivocally, answered, just needs to be asked: why did Christ come - and died - and rose again - and lives? Why? Why did God send his ONLY SON to be the spotless offering? His Word.

Beware! Evil does not sleep. Woe. We've observed that when in full joy one is re-awakened by the truth of the miracle of the new covenant, there comes that other slight of hand intent on nulliffication. (We will come to that shortly.) Wolves amongst sheep. Who-ah! But God!

The Power of Words

Hopefully, by now this is also much clearer: promulgation of any idea that "sticks and stones can break one's bones but words can never hurt" is either malicious or misguided, inflicting one of the most damaging wounds one can inflict on the spirit, mind and soul. Words are powerful. Humans value their speech precisley because what one says and one's ability to say are of great value. God values words. He embodied it. Spoke! And there it is! Words can build a universe or squash it in a crunch. Words can set a heart on fire or spark a holy war. Yes, words are powerful, but they can lose their power, and can be rendered powerless, and there exists a shield, and it proves wise to hold fast to it. How?

"It is Finished!"

Finished! A powerful word. In fact, we consider it the second most powerful word of our universe. Finished!

Words that build fruitful community, words that inspire growth through one's utmost to one's highest, words that empower communities to lift and protect and serve and strengthen and reveal truth to power, those are the kinds of words along your journey endeavour to entertain and sustain, recognizing such words naturally reveal their character through their inspired actions.

And wounds - even those inflicted by damaging words - seek to heal, and being healed strengthened, and in strength as in weakness enable! At times, to do that most effectively we need to quiet distractions.

Healing requires its healing moments. One might carry scars, but be aware that scabs leave us exceptionally vulnerable to claws. The best healing leads to wholeness: full integration. It is a process, advisedly, that needs its proper finishing!

Troublesome Words

Good-intention-words ill-applied can be as bloody and cruel as well-intentioned un-informed fix-it methods of long gone dark ages. How does one find such words? By their deeds. They leave scars - most often thick scabs. Such scabs can become awful distractions, and at times, blissful glory-notches visible to their inflicters, and quite bloody at the scratch. Quiet the distraction.

Some words (holy words, scriptural words, ancestral words) can be weaponized to brutalize and suffocate unsuspecting souls, and to rob and steal from the weary and the wounded. Intentionally evil. Learn to be mindful, and in that, choose not to judge others for it, rather elect not to be damaged by it, and to not knowingly damage others by means of it. It's a learning. Quiet the distraction.

We are learning that sometimes glories of our histories do not translate well into the realities of our present; they simply slide out of place, out of step, out of fashion, or out of appropriateness over time. Some such failings are innocent. Some are blandly intentional. They strike and instruct unkindly. Incorrectly! Many - unsuspecting - suffer greatly. Acquire the shield. Use it. Quiet the distraction.

A thing, for example, meant back in the day, say, as a necktie, may well now be a noose tightened upon the draw. A thing meant to be a scapel back in the day is now a sword. A tincture is now a poison, and a poison now a tincture. The fruit from the tree of knowledge has become an apple and an apple is morphed into Eve's evil fruit. Such morphings (innocent or bold) imprison lives. At times, intentionally. Be mindful. Be acutely mindful. Quiet the distraction.

Out from the tragedies of Golgotha has come liberation: liberated into love and joy, restored, and . . . well . . . yes . . . transformation into that beautiful God Word, that oh-so-wonderfully-amazing word which we are en route to explore.

Be mindful that even up atop the hill, even from the stains of Golgotha, some transformational words have suffered with the passage of time through translation and, sadly, are sometimes misused, misapplied or misappropriated.

Two such words are sin and saved.

Indeed, it may well prove supremely worthy to discover / review / understand the origins and meanings of each of those two words within their contexts, where e're they are used, for over time they have suffered the trauma of enormous diseases. By virtue of frequency, they are two loudly misunderstood words in every day usage within and without christendom. They justify wars. They murder and steal. They subjugate. That's just how wickedly effective evil is; it traps good-folk (God's creation) in its tricky web of deception. Fear not: the gates are now wide open; chains are broken! In their authenticity the very two words quiet distractions. They set free. The job is done. The price is paid. It is finished! God done did it. The choice is ours. Justice requires every sin be fully paid for! Someone must pay. [EXPLORE our EXAMINATION OF ATONEMENT.] Quiet the distraction. Get out of the battlefield. Go into the community. There are problems to solve. There are people to celebrate. Be the gardener. Be the carpenter. Build. Uplift. Create.

Isn't life beautiful? Ah! So! Truly. Truly-truly-truly. What is love? What is faith? What is joy? What is peace? What are these treasures (truly) and what do they actually do in and for the life of the transformed? Fascinating. Let's quiet the distraction. And flourish. Like trees planted by streams of water.

"Knowledge that takes you not beyond yourself is far worse than ignorance." Elif Shafak.

Something To Consider

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You are

What POWER!

From the Book of Hebrews

HOW TO READ THE BIBLE

Liberated