How Do You Paint the World?

You Paint the World with Calming Colors

You are a true friend. You are very dependable. Your friends can always count on you to be competent. You are good at anything you do. You are a truly successful person ... though sometimes it's hard for you to appreciate your success. You are quite cautious and conservative. You like to weigh risks carefully.

How Do You Paint the World?

Several thoughts from Henri Nouwen...

Bridging the Gap Between People

Our emotional lives move up and down constantly. Sometimes we experience great mood: swings from excitement to depression, from joy to sorrow, from inner harmony to inner chaos. A little event, a word from someone, a disappointment in work, many things can trigger such mood swings. Mostly we have little control over these changes. It seems that they happen to us rather than being created by us.

Thus it is important to know that our emotional life is not the same as our spiritual life. Our spiritual life is the life of the Spirit of God within us. As we feel our emotions shift we must connect our spirits with the Spirit of God and remind ourselves that what we feel is not who we are. We are and remain, whatever our moods, God's beloved children.

Overcoming Our Mood Swings

Are we condemned to be passive victims of our moods? Must we simply say: "I feel great today" or "I feel awful today," and require others to live with our moods?

Although it is very hard to control our moods, we can gradually overcome them by living a well-disciplined spiritual life. This can prevent us from acting out of our moods. We might not "feel" like getting up in the morning because we "feel" that life is not worth living, that nobody loves us, and that our work is boring. But if we get up anyhow, to spend some time reading the Gospels, praying the Psalms, and thanking God for a new day, our moods may lose their power over us.

Digging Into Our Spiritual Resources

When someone hurts us, offends us, ignores us, or rejects us, a deep inner protest emerges. It can be rage or depression, desire to take revenge or an impulse to harm ourselves. We can feel a deep urge to wound those who have wounded us or to withdraw in a suicidal mood of self-rejection. Although these extreme reactions might seem exceptional, they are never far away from our hearts. During the long nights we often find ourselves brooding about words and actions we might have used in response to what others have said or done to us.

It is precisely here that we have to dig deep into our spiritual resources and find the center within us, the center that lies beyond our need to hurt others or ourselves, where we are free to forgive and love.

The Dynamics of the Spiritual Life

Our emotional lives and our spiritual lives have different dynamics. The ups and downs of our emotional life depend a great deal on our past or present surroundings. We are happy, sad, angry, bored, excited, depressed, loving, caring, hateful, or vengeful because of what happened long ago or what is happening now.

The ups and downs of our spiritual lives depend on our obedience - that is, our attentive listening - to the movements of the Spirit of God within us. Without this listening our spiritual life eventually becomes subject to the windswept waves of our emotions.

A Window on Our Spiritual Lives

Even though our emotional and spiritual lives are distinct, they do influence one another profoundly. Our feelings often give us a window on our spiritual journeys. When we cannot let go of jealousy, we may wonder if we are in touch with the Spirit in us that cries out "Abba." When we feel very peaceful and "centered," we may come to realise that this is a sign of our deep awareness of our belovedness.

Likewise our prayer lives, lived as faithful response to the presence of the Spirit within us, may open a window on our emotions, feelings, and passions and give us some indication of how to put them into the service of our long journey into the heart of God.

Sunday evening

It was a full, but decent day.

I needed nature, color, creativity, and light. All done at a slow pace.

I accomplished all of those things with a trip to a beautiful waterfall on the edge of the mountains, followed by (mostly) window shopping my way through Kensington. Colorful items. Beautiful and creative things. And a bookstore, because it couldn't truly be a good day without a bookstore stop.

Then home, a bit of organizing, a trip to mom and dad's to pick up a tool, assembling a bookshelf, running out the door to church.

I have some thoughts on church coming soon I think. I've been having a lot of thoughts on that subject lately.

I re-listened to a sermon Rob Bell preached a while back as I drove today. It spoke to some things that have been close to the surface of my heart this last while. I think I'll be listening to it over and over again this week as I drive to and from work, and as I pray through these things. More thoughts on that are likely coming at some point too.

My vitamin schedule was wonky yesterday. It helped to have that back in the approximately normal times today. I'm still shocked by how much difference the many pills I'm taking these days make in my ability to cope with life. It's almost scary to me. And yet, it helps, so, other than griping about the fact that I'm swallowing approximately 17 pills a day, I'm going to stick to it for now.

I need to go to bed now I think. Well, to be fair, I need to do a bit of cleaning first. Time to tidy my space just a little to re-create peace. And then, maybe reading. I have a book to finish, and a new one I picked up today that I'm excited to read.

Photos from Yesterday

As I mentioned yesterday, for the first time in a while I was feeling up to making an effort with my appearance, and was feeling like I looked nice. My dad took a couple of pictures and emailed them to me as evidence!

Hangover?

I slept some last night.

A funny, interrupted sort of sleep.

I got up at around 3 am, to close the windows in the kitchen and living room. It seemed there was a bit of a thunderstorm going on, and the rain pelting against my bedroom window told me that if we didn't want puddles to mop up this morning, I'd probably better get out of bed and close the other windows.

I'm feeling unsure what to do with myself today.

The extremes of emotion from yesterday have left me feeling a bit hung-over, and uncertain.

I think I'll probably go to places that invite color and light. Maybe a shop I discovered a while ago in Kensington. Maybe a walk along the bow river. Maybe a trip to the Tibetan shop where I've purchased a few different favorite things.

But I'm trying to be careful too. Because I know my own tendency to shop, simply to try to dispel leftover emotion. To seek joy in purchasing, instead of being able to rest into it.

So, I'm off to shake off another night of odd dreams, and the leftovers of emotion from a crazy day.

It might actually require a trip to the mountains. Or at least the forest or a park.

We'll see.