Overcoming this Cycle

“What children learn from fear based parenting is that if they don’t surrender control, the most powerful adult in their life will get mad, threaten, withhold love, or hurt them in some way. They learn that in any relationship only ONE person at a time gets to be powerful. And in the end they learn to believe the LIE that drives and protects the cycle of fear, control, punishment, and disconnection in relationships--the lie that we can and should control people.” -Danny Silk

Happy 2014!

"There are years that ask questions and years that answer." -- Zora Neale Hurston

Happy 2014!

ME & YOU & WE

Over the last 18 months, I’ve only ever felt hurt by South Africans twice.  Interestingly, the wounding came at the hands of white South Africans and both times, it was because of my nationality. Both times, I did not know the people, truly.

I have no say over my nationality and they have no governance over theirs. So why treat someone spitefully because of it? This is MY country, my president, my pain, my history,  my land. Geographical boundaries--seems a strange determiner of friendship; of human bonds.

On Being Seen

To be seen. That's really what I want, isn't it? To be seen, to be felt. I have spent too many years living on the circumference of life, being busy. Or being seen as being busy, therefore important. Nonsense. This busyness is  a disguise to keep people from looking deeper. I cover up what I do not know, because I myself do not know. I have been afraid to look, for fear that I won't see anything worthwhile.

Now I see dimly. I'm beginning to see more fully. I see that I camouflage myself so that my true, transendent spirit does not come to light. Those in my circles would not approve of my true spirit thoughts and dreams. So I disguise them, and myself.

Thanskgiving

Thanksgiving is not about the contemplation of given things. It is the recognition and reflection on what has been and what will always be.

Double Sided Belief

If we treated pride, greed and gluttony with as much vehemence as we do homosexuality, we would have no friends, no family, no life. 

Moving On

Moving from a cessationist ideology to a whole-hearted continualist belief system is not something I argued and proved in my head or rationalized into existence. The Holy Spirit is not a puzzle to be figured but a Spirit to be felt. He is word to be tasted; Beauty to be seen. 

I would not be able to argue my post modern mind into believing that the Holy Spirit moves and breathes today, just as we read about in the New Testament, unless I had some tangible, touchable proof. The gift of speaking in tongues, miracles, signs and wonders all weave in and out of my everyday life.  This experiential knowledge is more than I need to believe. It chased after me, relentlessly giving me glimpse of deepest heaven. It has filled this vacuum, this void in my spirit that theology could not. It is wave upon wave of love and joy. It is colors and textures and visions and dreams. It is a language I don't understand, yet communicate with.