Dates to Remember, Dates to Mourn Afresh

Some anniversaries we celebrate with salubrious candour. Others... well, they just are.

The whole of life stands on dates. Every day of our lives has significance and yet we’re given doubly special cause to recall and reminisce over particular days. And spread over these days is a variety of emotion.

Some we look forward to, then celebrate and even mourn afterwards — for having gone on past such a long hoped-for time. But others just bring us an inexplicable nothingness. Due to changed life circumstances — for instance death or divorce — they’ve become noted for a sort of docile numbness that brings us nothing but either reconciled or unreconciled pain.

It’s the latter — mourning the date — which is in present sight.

Not Denying Our Pasts

There’s no getting around the people we are; the persons we’ve become.

Perhaps the most important thing in reaching these strange milestones is having the humble recognition that once, and therefore now always, these were very special. We might even choose to be daring and pay these milestones some homage. That shouldn’t do any harm.

It’s in these that we realise we’re not set apart so much from life that we’re beyond the pain of changed circumstances, even in spite of our wills to avoid them.

Let’s not deny who we are and how we got here. Even the fact of our feelings is good, for these agree that our once-good memories did actually occur. They reinforce our identities. Despite the discomfort we’re now perhaps facing, and that feared reality that stares through us right now, we can most surely know this is a crucial part of the ongoing healing process.

Heal well. Heal continually. Embrace the reality of that life so special, as we honour them.

© 2011 S. J. Wickham.

Love From the Heart Into the Hand

“Charity is a virtue of the heart, and not of the hands.”

~Joseph Addison.

All the giving of the world comes to nought if it’s not from the heart that wishes to give. It’s the heart that owns abundance, not the hand.

As charity — or otherwise, love — begins at home, so does it commence from our innermost being. Charity cannot authentically come from extrinsic bases.

And though it happens it’s never something that truly occurs extrinsically. It can never be the hand that designs the acts of love, although the hand, in faith, expresses the desire to love and it does complete the feat. Hands are just as important — they just come more rightly as an output of heartfelt action.

Heart-Starter

There are all sorts of well-meaning turns of phrase around the humble morning coffee; our faithful “heart-starter” — that little shot of caffeine bringing us into more conscious wakefulness.

Charity, however, is the real heart-starter, for our hearts will not be further engaged — and indeed fuelled for the day ahead — without thought of charity. It is, therefore, a key ingredient in our living joyfully and volitionally.

Let our virtuous hearts always inform our hands. May the hands faithfully serve the heart... for the hand that does not serve has a contemptuous heart to blame for it, hiding deep and behind it all.

The Source of All Motivation

The heart is central to the flow of our being. It begins and ends there; the heart even informing the mind how it’s to think (despite better conscience).

But we just as easily address our estranged hearts by investing much good and virtuous thought and prayer — the power of the mind — to redress heart deficiencies... and we all have them.

Our objective, then, is to identify where we lack motive for God’s best for us — as it pertains to others — and to work on improving those matters at no better a level than at the core — our hearts.

This is about asking very honestly... “Why?” Why do we do bad things or things that feel bad? And how well or acutely are our consciences piqued?

The heart must always be the target of our keenest growth. All else springs from it.

© 2011 S. J. Wickham.

Being the Relational Mirror

None of us operates in a vacuum. We all initiate and respond within the realms of relational contexts. When someone ‘upsets us’ we, too, have often played a role in that — however small a role. When we choose to adjust our initiation or response behaviour, however, we stand to potentially transform the outcome.

We hardly ever consider how much we wear our hearts on our sleeves.

Our thinking and feeling affects how we relate with people more than we think. It’s not just others — themselves as thinking, feeling persons — that we deal with. We’re inclined to discount ourselves as not such a vital piece of the rapport jigsaw puzzle. Yet we are.

Sitting Aside from Our Conversations

Perhaps it’s as an offshoot from the Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) technique of sitting aside ourselves that can help us most.

Whilst we’re in conversation we can observe ourselves as if we were a third person looking on. We’re not doing it to be self-critical, just watchful, noting our influence to change the dynamics of the situation.

The Merit of Maturity

Self-facilitating maturity is achieved by keeping gentle, though firm, account of ourselves. This is a piqued awareness of the things we’re saying and doing in the moment we’re doing them.

This has to be situational Emotional Intelligence. All four pillars of self awareness and management, and social awareness and management are coming into play.

Maturity never has a bigger test than via the relational context. It’s easier to be mature when we just have to manage ourselves and not things beyond our control.

Checking Before Judging

It’s rather a shame that we’ll often judge someone’s response to situations whilst isolating our part innocently and apart from what’s occurred.

Can we really be that innocent... like, all the time?

We have the opportunity to check our ‘contributions’ in context of the responses and initiatives of others. Doing this can help us understand and empathise with others.

© 2011 S. J. Wickham.

“E” is for Empathy

“... for he who has pity on them will lead them, and by springs of water will guide them.”

~Isaiah 49:10c, d (NRSV).

There’s so much depression and forlornness — so much validated reason for sadness — in this life; it is so patently visible. There really is little wonder why. When we look about us just about everyone we know lacks the outlet of instant and availed empathy that I’m sure God had originally in mind.

The Value of ‘Sounding Boards’

Just how wonderfully precious is this concept: the sounding board?

The fact of this aforesaid empathy-gap illustrates another important point. Not only is there a lack of sounding boards to go around, there is the lack of will for most of us to engage in becoming a sounding board; probably because there’s little empathy coming to us, so why would we empathise with others? We run blind from the simple solution.

Then again, there are plenty of examples around our lives of people who — despite horrific circumstances, and dire a lack of forthcoming empathy from others — have managed to straddle a lifestyle that cannot help but empathise.

So, we have two problems. The first is, rarely do we have a tangible friend in all life circumstances who’s prepared and ready to listen without judgment, to help us on our way. The second, which directly helps the first, is we don’t identify the power in empathising with others as a way of sorting our own depressive and pitiable concerns — putting them into God’s context and perspective; the bigger, truer picture.

Becoming a sounding board helps solve problems personally and for others.

Empathy – the Trait of a Friend

If it wasn’t for the fact that we cannot help ourselves a lot of the time, we would actually make our own best friends — yes, on our own we’d be perfectly empathetic for ourselves.

Think about it. Nobody knows us like we know ourselves; apart from God, that is. So who better to empathise with us than ourselves? But again, we come back to the key problem; most often we cannot fix ourselves; heaven knows, we’ve tried many, many times.

The trait of the perfect friend is empathy.

They know the need, and they set about addressing the need. It’s a no-fuss approach and it is entirely other-person centred. There’s no self-thought in sight.

The servant in Isaiah — captured in the snippet above at top — is the champion of God. He or she is the perfect friend. Their mission is to help the people for which they’re called to serve. It is their life purpose. They draw surreal energy from giving their lives away.

This friend has the empathy of practical resource. It’s not the words the friend says; rather it’s the tangible safety that they provide. They’ll guide us around springs of water so we won’t fall in. When we’re fragile they take appropriate pity on us and lead us through the tremulous time.

They truly are Godsends.

And it’s to this that we’re all called. The more we’re able to empathise with others, the less the size of our personal problems. But this is not denying that we, too, have our problems. Blessed are we to be honest in our dealing with them, for that’s where healing is at.

Still, where we make copious room for others, we derive, as a by-product, more room for ourselves.

© 2011 S. J. Wickham.

Being On the Side of Fact

“The person who questions opinion is wise; the person who quarrels with fact is a fool.”

~Frank A. Garbutt.

At my workplace, two days running I made the same basic error; not checking facts meant I was soon destined to issue sincere, though humbling, apologies. God was gently reminding me to check facts.

A Christian’s Qualification: M.A. – Master of Apology

Christians, given that none of us is perfect, and that we’re admitting sinners, should be masters of apologies.

This is part of what Jesus was getting at in Matthew 5:23-24. We should be quick to settle disputes in even more grace than the other party expects.

As we forgive others we best also forgive ourselves. God’s not finished with “Project: Steve Wickham,” or anyone reading, yet. This is good; it means we’re still living.

Yet, beyond apology, we’re also called to a higher location, that being wisdom, and it can be discouraging to note instances of action over assumption; later that we’d have recourse to regret and remorse.

Ever Reliable Patience

I’m reminded that Cyprian of Carthage — an Early Church Father — called Jesus “perfect patience.”

The wisdom of patience is where we’re reminded to grow. Many times less is more. Patience is a form of delay; it allows time and space for all the information to settle, before we pick through it, deciphering what it all means.

Being a decision-maker in such contexts isn’t actually that hard.

Gaining a reputation as a good decision-maker is within everyone’s grasp. There’s the requirement to choose to be on the side of fact; to guard against rushing in fear.

© 2011 S. J. Wickham.

Come, Sit on My Park Bench Awhile

Sometimes — for some length of time — people come to ‘perch’ upon our lives; to sit with us on our park benches. They come into our lives for a reason, for a purpose, for a season. Some are even family. Before long, however, they’re gone. In our sorrow we wonder why.

At these times — as we reflect — it’s often hard to know the where’s and why-for’s. Why did these friends appear so suddenly, sitting on our park bench, only then to just as suddenly disappear? Did they do it for fun? Did they do it for pain? Did they perhaps have nothing to do with it... were they taken from us?

The Anatomy of Hurt

We don’t know why we’re tempted, barring hurt, to resent their disappearance — whether it’s them we resent, God or life for taking them, or ourselves for something we might feel we’ve done.

Hurt usually has a lot to say about these things. If not the raw expression of rank sadness for the hurt, then anger. Anger comes as we ‘protect’ our sadness in pride.

But for some there is just the season, however much it hurts. They are close for a time and for some reason. Perhaps with the passage of the years we’ll find out eventually. In the meantime, though, we’re probably very well advised to simply choose a philosophical schema — however cold that might sound.

Saying Goodbye Far Too Early

It takes a great deal of courage to say goodbye. Sometimes it even runs across the grain of our logic to do it; this can prove confusing. “Is it okay to say goodbye?” might be our thought.

Now, if life has chosen for us, and we seem destined to have to get used to a new reality, we need not be in any rush to accept the new reality, but acceptance is where we need to eventually land.

Hard to say it, maybe, but can we envision the feeling of pure appreciation for these absent ones and their roles in our lives? Perhaps not now, but sometime in the future — that’s the hope. There’s healing visible in that.

© 2011 S. J. Wickham.

The Silent Power Available in Loss

“I long to dwell in your tent forever

and take refuge in the shelter of your wings.”

~Psalm 61:4 (NIV).

Oh the momentous calamity of loss and the thirsty needs of adjustment!

Strangely enough, it’s when we’re most blindsided by dreadful truths and their resultant anxious moments that we can sense the silent power of the Holy Spirit. This Spirit for life never vacates its office in support of us. We, however, may listen contrarily and heed the lies of the enemy; the one proclaiming spiritual aloneness, and hence creating feelings of isolation and desolation.

The Presence of Such Power

When we’re in our deepest furrow, God’s silently present, actively numbing us from the onslaught; guarding our way. The Holy Spirit is, instantaneously, the shelter of the Lord.

The still Voice intercedes in gentling whispers of unfathomable hope. And the reality is dire. But, we’re somehow reassured. We don’t know how; just we sit in this calming Presence knowing it should, one way or another, be worse than it is.

Such like, the moment is tirelessly bearable. We can see how moments are now connected, one to another. One moment survived in this strange peace beckons the next.

The presence of such power is an everlasting reality. It never changes.

The Issue of Such Power

This is where we, personally, come into frame.

The presence of such power has nothing to do with its issuance. This must come from our volition; agreeing to utilise such holy resource.

In this place, we’re accessed to choice. Will we accede to the drift of the Holy Spirit — coming within the realm of this actual Power — or not? It certainly requires of us focus and discipline; but perhaps more so, surrender.

The issuing of this ever-present Power unique to loss is completed with neither thought nor fanfare; it’s given at existence; accessed for just being there. It’s ever-available; determined at our grasp.

Making All the Difference

Why on earth do we have faith if not to utilise it to get through difficulty?

What makes all the difference, moreover, is this power of God’s to see us through. It powers our faith in making awkward sense of our sadness, clamour, unexplainable anxieties and losses, validating these in the rawness of truth; the road to healing, paved.

By the presence of this silent power, and its issuance — which is granting the Spirit permission to act for us, for God never forces our hand — we gain a hope for tomorrow and power to remain for today.

© 2011 S. J. Wickham.

Triangles, Trust and Conflict Resolution

Triangles and relationships don’t mix. Regarding trust, where two’s pleasant company; three’s definitely a hindering crowd.

It happens in every sphere of living involvement to the farthest corner of the globe. It hinders and even destroys relationships more than we care to realise.

This thing is triangulation in relationships, where one person’s problem with another person is ‘shared’ with a third person without the person with the problem knowing about it. When the third person then talks with the person who’s apparently got the problem, that person feels betrayed by the person who went behind their back to speak with the third person. As a consequence trust is diminished.

Trigonometry As An Illustration

The three sides to the common triangle in trigonometry are named the opposite, adjacent and hypotenuse sides. The opposite and adjacent sides are presumably like brothers or sisters whereas the hypotenuse is like the parent — or in this case, the third person.

In trigonometry, the hypotenuse is the function of the other two; it’s bigger. And when we add a hypotenuse to our relational situations we get something bigger alright; usually a bigger problem. We start to involve a sense of innuendo or competition, and trust between the first two flies out the window, no matter how well the ‘hypotenuse’ role manages the tension created.

Unlike trigonometry, relationships are best designed without this third more supervisory side.

Techniques in Two-Sided Conflict Resolution

There’s nothing wrong with having someone in an observer or arbiter role. It’s just best that the two that have the problem — or one with the other — can ‘battle it out’ together in the same room, so a productive resolution can possibly be achieved.

We best have the conversation, forgetting email and conference calls and the like. Trust is actually enhanced when we have the courage to say what we think and feel in a safe environment. In this we’re trusting the other person with hard information and trusting that they’ll have a response that won’t hurt us. This environment is also likely to lead to a restrained version of each protagonist in any event.

Moral Courage – The Missing Link

The courage to confront people on issues is never easy but it does become easier with successful practice.

It’s always best, wherever possible, that two with a problem can fix it themselves without help. This often takes a great amount of humility and courage — both adding up to form maturity — from both.

But, certainly, where things are too strained for one or both it’ll involve even more courage — and certainly wisdom — to get someone else involved in the face-to-face encounter, because both are now placing at least part of their hopes for recognition of ‘their side’ in another person. This third person is likely to command much influence whilst they maintain their credibility with the protagonists.

Courage is the only way we navigate through our relational problems; otherwise, it’s too easy to let bygones by bygones, and much less resolution or healing takes place there, particularly with unforgiving people bent on grudges.

And added to this is possibly the most important facet of courage.

This is the humility of self-courage to look at our own faults squarely and admit them — for our part — when we’ve got it wrong. Two people do that and resolution suddenly materialises.

© 2011 S. J. Wickham.

Worship – Our Innate Purpose

“Religion addresses only humanity’s external condition, not our internal confusion.”

~A.W. Tozer.

This 20th Century Biblical prophet and Christian mystic expounded material that is in some ways hard to swallow for many people (including many Christians) as it calls us back to the rawness of God at the heart of life every single time.

The truth is we all search for meaning. We all need it otherwise life loses it lustre and we inevitably become cursed in one way or another. The meaning to life is so inordinately difficult to understand as most of us look in entirely the wrong places for it.

Places We Search

For some it’s sought in the workplace. Know any workaholics? For others it’s education; know anyone with umpteen degrees? For others still it’s pleasure and thrills until one day they wake up, look into the mirror and find they’re not nineteen any longer. Age wearies them. It’s hopeless.

Have you perhaps sought to find meaning in these areas and come out empty handed?

The message to the meaning of life is more urgent than I first thought; the purpose of life.

It is to reconcile the inner discord within every single one of us. Most of us are blind to this.

It’s about God. It’s about Father-Son-Holy Spirit. It’s about relationship. It’s about growing passionately toward God for the rest of our lives. That’s worship. Our purpose is simply worship.

We are mirrors of the Almighty God. This is the very reason we were created in the first place, and without us recognising this fact we’ll never find meaning in our lives.

Worship – Singing Our Destined Song

Tozer cites John Keats who wrote of a “tongueless nightingale.”[1] What a brilliant metaphor. This nightingale had the songs — and songs of incredible beauty — but had no way of singing them... and this is us. This is our state, pre-Christ (assuming true spiritual re-birth). Our spiritual blindness pre-Christ prevents us from singing the true song that’s the sole purpose of our life.

Most people would not know it but God is a relational being, and God seeks a relationship with every one of us. He has designed our hearts and minds to relate with him. There’s no getting around it. We’ll never achieve true peace and inner accord without God.

When we commence a relationship with God, we suddenly find the keys to truth and the answers to the things that vexed us incessantly beforehand. Life becomes true. No more panaceas. No more lying and denial. No more shame and guilt. Total divine freedom to love God, and to love, period. In the words of Helmut Thielicke, life can begin again... (for the first time).

From first to last (well beyond our earthly life) our purpose is to worship God as a lifestyle and not an event. Everything else is temporary, fleeting and of little eternal (true) importance. Everything we think, say and do is to be aligned to worship, holy and utterly pleasing to God.

© 2009, 2011 S. J. Wickham.

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[1] A.W. Tozer, The Worship Driven Life: The reason we were created, Ed. James L. Snyder (Oxford, UK: Monarch Books, 2008), p. 47. John Keats wrote this in The Eve of St Agnes.

Blessed Prisoners of Hope

“Return to your stronghold, O prisoners of hope; today I declare that I will restore to you double.”

~Zechariah 9:12 (NRSV).

“I am not optimistic, no... I’m quite different from that; I am hopeful. I am a prisoner of hope.”

~Desmond Tutu, 10 Questions for Desmond Tutu, Time Magazine.

What Desmond Tutu talks about here is being truthfully hopeful despite realities of contrast. As we look upon our world we’re often given to sadness, anger, and even disgust, for the iniquities of injustice, rampant abuses, and widespread suffering. But, many of us cannot help but hope. It’s in our moral DNA.

Hope – A Personal Blight?

We can, at a low point, consider ourselves cursed because we hope so much. We don’t seem to think we can live without the spiritual journey. Many of us can’t.

But it’s a blessed curse. It can feel like a prison, but in fact it’s the safest place we could ever be; our spirits entrusted to God who loves us.

Being a prisoner of hope means that when we lose our hope we feel strange, away-from-home; even kidnapped. Desperation, via contemplation, retrieves it for us.

Hope pushes us on but it also tires us. We don’t have the best of both worlds — we swim merrily or we struggle amid drowning. Hope gets us through when we’re spiritually ready but it also sees us flounder when things are awry.

The reality of our spirituality is we conform to the truth, but the truth is not always, on the surface, a friendly thought. The truth can both liberate and bind us, though we may always find it liberates us — as we respect it — eventually.

We’re pressed forward in hope or we aren’t; it’s as simple as that.

Hope – The Brighter Side

We can know with a sense of confidence and surety, that whilst we’re bound in the love of hope, we’re safe from the castigating clutches of the evil one. We don’t really understand what gets into some people who don’t seem to care. We cannot help but care.

This is not a curse at all. If it’s an incarceration were thankful to be there — safe, at a spirit level, with our redeeming God. We’re imprisoned within the boundaries of care; confined to an eternal safe-house of conscience.

So instead, we understand the contortion of time and space on this planet earth. We expect things to be confusing, perplexing, confounding. We live with it. We help others to adjust and we let them help us to adjust.

Adjusting is the process of adapting, in a continuing way, to this prison of hope — home in the body, but away from the Lord.

The brighter side of hope is this:

We don’t need to have it all together. Hope is beyond all this. Hope is something beyond our understanding. Our unexplainable confidence will be vindicated. Hope sees to it.

© 2011 S. J. Wickham.

The full Time Magazine interview of Desmond Tutu is available here.

The ‘Love Anyway’ Project

“Whoever loves a brother or sister lives in the light, and in such a person there is no cause for stumbling.”

~1 John 2:10 (NRSV).

Difficult people surround us everywhere. Indeed, for some others, we are those same difficult people. If that sticks in your throat, jump into their underwear for a moment. Feel their perspective.

We’re all difficult people for someone.

But we have difficult people we contend with; that’s why you’re here reading this, right?

Where Love Produces Truth

The Apostle John’s argument is the gospel reality: those who don’t act in love, but profess faith, are liars.

Because we’re all given to fail at love — which is, simplistically, the lack of toleration of people — we’re all, of a sense, liars. The good news is we have an Advocate in Jesus, that though we’re liars, we’re true in our Lord. Our bloodguilt is borne on the cross.

Positively, when we do love — choosing to live in the light — we bless those we love in our tolerance; we cause them not to stumble. This is because love is no barrier; only hate, dissidence and irreconcilable conflict creates barriers and, ultimately, hurt.

As truth is a smooth, clear flow, so is love. Love acts prove believers true to their belief, but arguments (failures to love) prove us liars.

The Opportunist Challenge Difficult People Provide

Because none of us are perfect we’re difficult for others, despite how mature (or otherwise) we are.

The person at our workplace, in our peer group, community, church, or family who’s trying our tolerance probably has the same issues with us — just the mirror perspective. We barely tolerate them, but they think we’re hard to please. Both of us are unloving.

Hate begets hate as love begets love. There’s a loose cause-and-effect arrangement at play, but tighter in truth than we think.

If we’ll be the opportunist — and let’s face it, there are no shortage of opportunities! — we can now enjoy the challenge of loving difficult people anyway, as we acknowledge that, yes, for some, and in certain situations, we too are difficult people. We can sympathise with them; they with us.

Loving Anyway

Besides all this, if we truly believe in God, following the Greatest Commandment (Matthew 22:37-39) of the Bible to the best of our abilities, we’ll seek to live the truth — that is to love... any way.

It’s easy to love those we get along with; there’s no maturity proven in that.

For the difficult person or situation, let’s love anyway, no matter the degree of barrier or past hurt present.

© 2011 S. J. Wickham.

Feeling Good In Our Own Skin

Whether it’s working our bodies, the food we eat, satisfaction or vindication, many are the inputs to feeling good in our own skin.

The older we get the more important it is to feel truly good on the inside. This has both physical and spiritual connotations — and all between, to the mental and emotional also.

Lasting peace is that frank surprise of this prepared nature; to have ‘gone on in’ toward the search for contentment in the Lord, to listen and to feel our way there — to our essence.

Better to feel good in the body than to look good in the mirror. The former is wisdom; the latter vanity, which is sweeping itself away on a tide to nowhere. Forgotten before long is that current which might ordinarily consume us if we’re not careful.

Feeling and learning to feel: great things are these. This is life and hope for us, yes, today!

© 2011 S. J. Wickham.

Words Magnify, Indemnify, Destroy

“Get it right, there’s no blood thicker than ink... Hear what I say, nothing’s as simple as you think.”

~U2, Dirty Day.

Not to make a soul feel guiltier than they already might do, our words really do tend to stick. “Sticks ‘n’ Stones” was a quick retort back when I grew up, one that reckoned of no hurt in the words heard. It’s unfortunate that it’s a lie.

Words hurt.

Whether we convey our words verbally, in the written sense (email being potentially horrendous) or through any other medium matters little. We best ensure that we apply our ‘speech’ behaviour with kit gloves.

But oftentimes we cannot help hurting people; it’s only through the agency of hindsight that we even know. Somehow we just didn’t think. It happens.

Still, words are great. We marvel at how words at the other end of the spectrum can inspire us.

The Motive for Self-Control Over Our Words

However we ‘speak’ we are most blessed to have circumspect speech. Even if we tend to be hurt occasionally by others’ words, we’re most keenly interested in having control over the words we utter.

At root there has to be a compassion for others that reaches the heart.

If we want anything to occur automatically, i.e. for the mind to ‘parrot’ good things, we work on the heart, for the heart is—using IT-speak—the ‘operating system’ for the mind. Whatever comes from the mouth has come usually from the mind, and deeper still from the heart.

Motive for pleasant speech is number one.

Focussing on Signs of Success

Second to motive is our own esteem for the capacity to enjoy the blessings of the better parts of communication—the preparedness to never offend.

This is a commitment as much as anything, but the best way to drown a bad thing is to flood it with good. As we recognise our own good deeds we bay in that light.

Not that we’re ignoring signs to the contrary, but we do give the positive signs top billing. We feed our vision to be a lover of all people, if nothing else but by tolerance.

If there’s one quality coarse speech lacks it is tolerance.

We’re also not put off by coarse words—written or verbalised—when in receipt of them. How stunningly easy it is to move on beyond them by ignoring it.

© 2011 S. J. Wickham.