"In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you." -- Leo Tolstoy
In his spiritual lexicon, "Wishful Thinking: A Seeker's ABC", Frederick Buechner includes an entry in which he discusses the Bible. without going into too much detail (for fear of butchering his well written and insightful entry), Buechner at one point compares reading the text with looking through a dirty window ... there is much to see, though it is hardly clear. it is really easy to get caught up and distracted by the grime and dust ... by the streaks and glare. it requires a different way of looking. by looking through the distractions rather than at them, we see what is meant to be seen. we see the beauty of real life. and i suppose i relate a great deal to his metaphor, not only with looking at the text, but with looking at life.
each of us carry our own burdens and pain ... we carry with us pride that sometimes becomes unruly ... we sometimes carry bitterness ... and these things color the way we see life. if we look at life just as we look through a window, then these aforementioned things are the grime and dust, the streaks and glare that muck up our view. the view becomes complicated and obstructed by these things, much like doctrine and tradition can complicate and obstruct our view of the text. though i would need, perhaps, a different forum to share my story of my "window cleaning" in its entirety, i can safely say that the above quote from Tolstoy was enough to make me think about how concerned i am with petty instances and seemingly trivial events. i realized that i tend to place blame on others and it wasn't really until i started owning my shit, that i began to be able to see a bit more of what is on the other side of the window. it came about in a series of questions that i had never asked myself before ... questions that when articulated, made me see that i, myself, had a great deal of humbling coming my way. there were things in my life that had become way bigger than they had business being, and things that had been shrunken down in size so as to make them easier to swallow, understand, control, etc.
this quote along with this picture (taken in Garden of the Gods in CO) very simply ask, no ... they demand that i look. they demand that we look. they demand that we stop settling in. that we stop being busy for the sake of being busy, and that we begin to really see things around us. i almost hate to once again mention the name of this blog in another post for fear of being too cheesy, but just as Tolstoy tells us to look, and just as the rock formation in the photo seems to be pointing to something greater and bigger than us ... look.
look and see ...
" ... stop a moment, cease your work ...", tolstoy chides.
" ... look around you."
there's treasure everywhere.
each of us carry our own burdens and pain ... we carry with us pride that sometimes becomes unruly ... we sometimes carry bitterness ... and these things color the way we see life. if we look at life just as we look through a window, then these aforementioned things are the grime and dust, the streaks and glare that muck up our view. the view becomes complicated and obstructed by these things, much like doctrine and tradition can complicate and obstruct our view of the text. though i would need, perhaps, a different forum to share my story of my "window cleaning" in its entirety, i can safely say that the above quote from Tolstoy was enough to make me think about how concerned i am with petty instances and seemingly trivial events. i realized that i tend to place blame on others and it wasn't really until i started owning my shit, that i began to be able to see a bit more of what is on the other side of the window. it came about in a series of questions that i had never asked myself before ... questions that when articulated, made me see that i, myself, had a great deal of humbling coming my way. there were things in my life that had become way bigger than they had business being, and things that had been shrunken down in size so as to make them easier to swallow, understand, control, etc.
this quote along with this picture (taken in Garden of the Gods in CO) very simply ask, no ... they demand that i look. they demand that we look. they demand that we stop settling in. that we stop being busy for the sake of being busy, and that we begin to really see things around us. i almost hate to once again mention the name of this blog in another post for fear of being too cheesy, but just as Tolstoy tells us to look, and just as the rock formation in the photo seems to be pointing to something greater and bigger than us ... look.
look and see ...
" ... stop a moment, cease your work ...", tolstoy chides.
" ... look around you."
there's treasure everywhere.
