Sunday, September 19, 2010

Daily 5 - Year 2, Day 35

Today's Daily 5:
  1. The irony of going to a church service after a weird start to the morning and discovering that the sermon text was from the precise chapter I'd been heavily thinking about in the early morning hours
  2. a truly amusingly ironic bulletin cover
  3. hugs from a few different people, some particularly good hugs
  4. putting more faces to names
  5. several hours of laughter and conversation while sorting literally thousands of monopoly pieces
  6. story telling, laughter and a friend with a great listening ear

Early

I read this quote on a facebook status for an organization I support a little while ago, and it kind of made me angry.  It read, "At the center of your being, you have the answer; you know who you are and what you want." (Lao Tzu)

If the center of my being has the answers, it sure isn't sharing them with me!

Mostly, it's a reaction stemming from early morning angst.  Early mornings, before conversations begin, and the day starts in earnest, are hard.  Those hours of willing my unwilling body back to sleep, of laying for hours in that place somewhere between waking and dreaming.  Those are the moments when peace is most elusive, when oppression can feel the strongest, and when fear talks loudly.

Lately even the usual "tricks" to hang on to peace and rest aren't working so well.

And so I read a quote like this and it ticks me off.  It makes me mad.  Because if I'm supposed to have the answers, I'm in big trouble. 

Trust has never been my gift, though it's one that God is teaching me.  But at least if I trust I don't have to have the answers within me - that there is something so much larger than me that can be in charge of having answers - then I can ward off the fear, the anxiety, the weirdness of life just a little.  Even in these early morning hours.