reflections on perspective

One of my goals for my week in Thailand has been to spend some time really thinking on life: direction/plans/goals/etc.  So far, this has looked like LOTS of time spent in coffee shops.  Luckily, Chiang Mai is basically the hipster Thai version of East Nashville, so spots for good food & excellent coffee are plentiful.  

I also wanted to incorporate scripture in my musings on life, since I have my "lost" bible again!  It has been living with my friends in Poipet, Cambodia for the last year, and I have missed it tremendously.
The funny thing is that when I sat down to dig into my bible, I ended up mostly just reading my notes that were stuffed in the front, back, and along the margins.  Reading through the Bible is not something that comes naturally to me.  I often become confused at the language, get distracted, become bored...lost in my own head.  I needed some encouragement to get me started, so I turned to Richard Rohr for a little encouragement.  

This is what I have been chewing on today:

Two Steps Backward Often
Precede Any Three Steps Forward.  

[Richard Rohr]

There is a necessary and inherent dissonance in many of the texts in the Bible. We largely remain unwise if we avoid these conflicts, dilemmas, paradoxes, inconsistencies, or contradictions; and I want to say those contradictions are in the Biblical text itself and presented to you for serious consideration—until you get the point. This is the real meaning of what we call Lectio Divina, or spiritual reading of a text. You are supposed to struggle with spiritual texts; but when you make the Bible into a quick answer book, you largely remain at your present level of awareness. There are groups who would describe the Bible as an answer book for all of life’s problems. The Bible is actually a conflict book. It is filled with seeming contradictions or paradoxes, and if you read it honestly and humbly it should actually create problems for you!

The way you struggle with the fragmentation of the Bible is the way you PROBABLY struggle with your own fragmentation and the fragmentation of everything else. The Bible offers you a mirror that reflects back to you how you live life in general. There are very high levels of consciousness and holiness in the Biblical text, and texts which are frankly hateful, selfish, and punitive. You need to recognize them as such. As Wendell Berry says, “the mind that is not baffled is not employed.” The Bible mirrors our own human fragmentation, your own two steps backward and your own occasional three steps forward. Your spiritual eyes will eventually be trained to see which way you—and the text—are going.

This helped me start with a better perspective.  Hopefully I can make some more headway in the next few days.

I hope that everyone has a chance to really step away from their life and take a good hard look at it from a distance.   It is so easy to get swept up in the day-to-day business of life and forget to examine it from time to time.  I have been guilty lately of running and running without stopping for breath...rarely looking where I am going, but pushing ahead nonetheless.

So.

I'm taking a deep breath...

and jumping in.