Losing Colorado

Somewhere on the way to Jasper BC, Canada. We filled our water bottles from streams.

In between 8th and 9th grade I went on a long trip to Alaska. Our first stop was Manatou Springs Colorado. That was a few decades ago, many many RonnieDs ago but I remember it like it was yesterday. That cool little hippy town that I was experiencing then in the early 70’s took my breath away. It just caught my attention somehow and I think I have been trying to get back to that kind of place ever since.

Lake Louis

There are many marker stone experiences in our lives together in regards to the mountains including dating on a Tandem training for a ride through the Canadian Rockies where I fell in love with Leisha. Then there was our Colorado trip on our honeymoon. Countless trips through the American Rockies from New Mexico all the way to the Canadian border… but like I said I have been trying to get back to something they the mountains represented to me, some un-knowable thing, deep inside for decades. It seems it was to complete some image I carried of who I am, what I am about.

Now much later in life this longing is reshaping itself from a journey to a completed me into trying to gain clarity of what the last 1/4 of my life will look like and then a different completed me. Yeah I only expect, I hope to live to 80. In other words, yes Ronnied “Follow that dang Cloud”. So, alas I had to chose off of Colorado yet one more time.

The way it happened was significant. Seemingly closer than ever to a choice towards moving there, sitting on our back porch Leisha, being an introvert recently said this to me. You know Ronnie, all I need is my people and I have that here. Before we started to go-to Church I had a few very good friends and that was enough. Now that we are going to church I have so many more meaningful relationships, I didn’t know that could happen. But I am now seeing there is another kind of person, one that needs something big to do too, you are that kind. I don’t need that, I am very happy for you to have that, but I do wish you had your people too, I am praying about that for you.

That stuck with me and over the next few weeks I began to wake up early and meditate on those points. It began to churn through my mind as I went about the day. Then new things began to show up on the landscape of my thoughts. Difficult things in regards to relationships. It’s not like I never had friends, I’ve had them in spades but more often than not in hind-site they were closer to “Acquaintances”. They didn’t show up when I was down, they didn’t stop by or invite me, there were a few difficult ones and then there was this habit of moving onto the next big thing before they could even get to the good part with me. As I processed those points I began to take inventory of the relationships I do in fact now have that are much different due to this Kingdom experience. I had to ask myself why would I not honor these people by staying here, moving on would cause me to take another 5 years to get there where I am here with some relationships. As I saw more and more value in the kingdom relationships I have here I also realized God was doing something in my life far more important than escaping into a dream. He was in a way asking me to stay here, go deeper and follow more through with what was started here and… he revealed to me I can’t have a relationship with a mountain. No matter how big and beautiful it was, there was nothing there to have a relationship with.

Another way to put the dream I was chasing was fundamentally worshiping the creation more than the creator.

Now know this, another layer of understanding comes from very complicated serious counseling where Leisha and I were told, due to some certain other histories in my past, deeper than surface relationships to me are akin to a man bitten hard by dogs, many of them over many years. The very thing I crave even with her, deep relationship was like asking me to pet dogs… There is something golden behind following this kind of difficult rainbow, I could see that, I was ok with the decision, the duty of it felt good. I told a few very close friends and a pastor but I didn’t tell her.

Later on, on our back porch, I described what had transpired from her original comment on My People and she began to immediately cry, it was a spontaneous visceral reaction. The kind where you see the person in front of you have more than just an emotional reaction, that immediacy, it tells you a lot. I saw it as connection to the Holy Spirit stirring inside of her and I knew it. You see that is at the heart of Gnostiscm, Paganism, escape away from the difficulties of this earth rather than find freedom in the midst of your own personal troubles and I was basically raised in that in my adult years, paganism, that is for many other post, AND… Manatou is very pagan, gnosticish. But here it was, go away to find personal, emotional, internal Freedom. Everything is spiritual, you just need to find your own way, spirit is even in the rocks, the mountains. I don’t actually believe that from what I can see, but at some level… it seems I did.

That kind of thinking is all over the Gospel of Judas. Its all over the Nag Hammadi. It began to leak into our American culture much earlier than the 60’s but something big happened then and the onslaught has continued ever since, merging itself into all sorts of perspectives especially Christian ones. You see, she already knew of the things I was describing, had been quietly praying for a long time I would see differently about them so I would make the right choice for me, for us, for her. She didn’t see it in the terms I am describing, paganism, Gnosticism but she saw it wasn’t the right choice, she some how knew there was something not exactly right about it and the why go for me. She has been tenderly speaking against that choice for 24 years… stop and think about that, 24 &*9%6h years. She knew this !!! So when I described this to her, the Spirit inside of her jumped, her seeing into a moment of very necessary realization on my part came out of her in the form of wet eyes, human water running down her cheeks. She knew deeply this was very important.

I knew I had to stay, those wet eyes and that resonance between us from a woman who has seen into things and me in the deepest ways made the very final decision to stay. Now It felt really good but…

Her favorite Yarn Shop in Telluride CO

A week later we are in my studio, her sitting there crocheting like a ninja, me working on an un-named song, I had some basic things laid out and was looking for a nice lead type layer, found something cool. As I worked through discovering the lead I began to tear up and cry. Something hurt, it hurt a lot, a pain I was not EVEN aware of but I knew and it came out in the lead. The lead in this song really is the cry deep in my soul, how it sounds to me now that I see it. I saved the song down as “Losing Colorado” and I began to grieve deeply AND go into a discussion with my good good Father as to the why.

It was painful because I had to now trust a different kind of dream, not my escaping dream and trusting in dreams that involve people to the extent I am describing are massively difficult for me. I had to go deeper into this changing world view thing, I had to let the Holy Spirit reveal more of what were deeper recess’s of thinking I had, where that came from. A certain kind of view that has been building in the West for over a hundred years but broke out in the 60’s. Not really my decade but yet it was. It was also painful because I didn’t see this inside of me. How could I trust anything that I believe ??? How can I ever know enough ??? A certain kind of world view had to be deconstructed inside of me. Just like the 1st, 2nd and 3rd century church had to fight off Gnosticism I had to make some new decisions on parts my world view, I had to fight those off too. But I had to also grieve all of this… Thus this song, even though I understand the why’s, even though I tell myself and other people “I Will Follow”… this ask hurt, but then maybe all dying to self does !!!

And this my friend is how Following the Cloud can look.

For the next step in the journey see this…

No Pagan

I have known more than my share of grief and pain. I have experienced the kind of grief and pain that comes as no cause of your own and I have known the other kind, mountains of self-imposed grief and pain. Depressive pain that last years. I have shared more than my allotment of anger but one thing I also know is I have experienced large doses of peace. I have experienced large doses of self-imposed peace as in the kind of peace that comes over you after you just took in a nice big fatty. Standing on a tee box looking out over a well-manicured golf course on a soft late spring day where the air is still cool and the sun feels good on your face. Sliding down a perfectly groomed run, early on a winters morning with mountain peaks jumping skyward all around you, the sun coming up, blue bird skies ahead, you were first chair, no other tracks before you. All seems to be well within you soul….

And… as well, a kind of peace I believe only the Spirit can give as a gift. A kind of peace that comes even in the worst of circumstances, that doesn’t require circumstance to be in your favor to know it. So I think, for myself I can know the difference and I believe strongly there is.

God said: You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”

In my opinion two religions or world views were established in that moment. One world view was tied to the tree of Life… All others were tied to the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil… Pagan. Now I am not using Pagan in the strictest sense of the word and some people will want to call me out on that, I know because some have. My hindsight or my experience, to me, tells me that for myself, when I choose the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, at some point I have to manufacture my peace and I have found ways to do that as I described above, but when I choose the Tree of Life as my source then I receive a different kind of peace that comes from somewhere else in side of me that is not of me. This song, No Pagan tries to describe what that second kind of peace feels like… It surely is a peace that passes all understanding, its one of the most desirable things I have found in this world and it comes as a result choosing the Tree of Life… Jesus.

So that is one layer. Another layer is a recent song a thing I went through. After decades of wanting to move to Colorado, after a near year of discussion I decided not to and that story is covered in another song and another blog post… A few weeks after that step began a peace fell over me and thus this song.

Step one Towards Freedom

Freedom From Bad Definitions

Notes from Freedom Training 2017-04-07 – http://tdcounseling.com/

This step has to come first because otherwise one might end up chasing decoys. it is very important to get started right !!!!
Research Prisoner Thinking vs Freedom Thinking.
Note: We are so wired for Freedom that all the spiritual world has to do is give us a Bad Definition of Freedom, if even so small, it still sends us off track. Even a little off is not the Freedom Christ came to our realm for.
In Gen 3 the Devil Redefined the desire for appetite. (What is satisfaction). There is gold in them thar hills too.

So what is Freedom ? Freedom is becoming the person you were created and designed to be. Freedom is the ability to act and react in life as the man or woman you were created to be.

Don’t pass this by too quickly. The sentence is short. The idea is even simple. It is the many counterfeits and decoys of freedom preoccupying us that cause us to bypass the true definition too quickly. So often, the things that prevent us from being ourselves go unrecognized. Freedom is never about our outward circumstances, it is always about becoming ourselves within our circumstances. The evidence of true freedom is when we can act and react without insecurity … without judgment … without fear … without rage … without selfishness … without codependency … the list goes on.
— Bob Hamp. (n.d.). Think Differently Live Differently.

There are two more steps but the end result looks like below. I will blog about these other two in other post.
– Freedom from Self.
– Freedom from Obstacles.

Continue reading →

Church is more

I recently learned something that is earth shattering to me and partly because it aligns up with my experience here IRL. Not that your life experiences are supposed to dictate what the Gospels are trying to say but you can’t ignore that part wholly and it is possible for both to align. In other words it is possible for your experiences to confirm what you are reading, no ?

St. Michael’s Church, Cluj-Napoca Romania

NT Write is a pretty smart guy, his words are thick and hard to chew on at least for me but if you will work at him there are amazing gems in his understanding of the Gospels. So in reading or shall I actually say in swinging the wood chopping ax at the massive pile of wood he has laid down (Note I am talking about work here)… He used the phrase over and over: Load Bearing. This is kind of what I picture, big columns with ceiling engineering that carry the great weight of great structures for decades if not hundreds of years…

So his point was that in the gospels the load bearing message was family, unity, togetherness, standing up for each other as Christians, children of one Father, sisters and brothers as we move through this earthly experience called life. The earth shattering part is the idea of load bearing and then this being the main load bearing idea, can it really be that simple ?????

It’s not the first time I have heard this kind of idea in fact it’s also a load bearing, core idea of my church what is so fascinating to me is that it is in fact not only load bearing but maybe the primary load bearing pillar. I could go on and on but NT Wright says it much better than I can and this is not my point anyway, it’s a load bearing part of my point.

So my church made some changes recently to their church service schedule. They dropped the Saturday night service, opened a new service on Thursday night. Leisha and I decided to make some changes in our attendance schedule and our place of worship from the Denton Campus to the Flower Mound Campus, we now go-to Thursday night. This was done for many many reasons and this morning as I wake up early… ahh very early (3:30 am) I am finding myself having the opportunity to begin to prepare my heart early in my day for my part of our Thursday night “church, family” experience. That is my point, I get to do this. Prepare early and spend all day preparing, spend all day in anticipation, spend all day praying and thinking about the worship that will occur, the message that will be presented, the friends I will see, the person Leisha and I might get to pray for post service, the experience of Leisha and I “Doing Church” together.

I would like to comment here on what spurred on these thoughts. After I arrived at my desk (I work from home) this early AM, not wanting to really work yet I have all day to do so, I opened up my bible study software and went to a course on Genesis I am working on. I opened some notes I had entered a few weeks ago and in the notes was the definition of Doxology. In that set of notes was a link to this.

I played it and everything else you just read took off from there. That is the purest essence of Bible study and is such an important part of preparing for Church, preparing to play your part in church… I hope you get the many other points hear without me saying them other than one last point, there is Freedom untold in this kind of lifestyle, at least my experience tells me this.

Divorce

Last year I moved my men’s small group from the Denton Square to my house 6 miles south. A world apart into a seemingly perfect community called Lantana. Very quickly I was surrounded by some guys who were divorced, one of them at the beginning of his, he was a wreck.

There are some other situations I was involved in that had to do with Divorce and then there was some conversations I was having with my Pastor on the same. The whole of it caused me to find myself in deep contemplations about it and not only that remembering back into my own when I was 27. I also found myself arguing with my pastor for hours upon hours although it was really only me representing his side of the argument. I think you know what I mean…

You know the church both small c and big C have quite a few different stances on the issue, it is a plague in our society within the church and without, has been for as long as I can remember. I found out during all of this as I began to focus on my small group, rethinking some future goals in regards to Lantana there is a quiet little stat laying out there in that there has been 12 divorces within my church from couples living in my perfect community in the last 8 years and more near divorces… Then recently the count went up to 13 and then I found out a Lantana VCC couple is walking it out with 3 other couples (non lantana) who are nearing divorce.

Continue reading →

Hearing God – Working Examples 1

Now, sometimes God does strange things to get people’s attention, but the fundamental way God speaks to us is by causing thoughts in our mind that we come to learn have a characteristic quality, content, and spirit about them. Think about how we speak to each other. I speak to you by making noises, and little sound waves go into your ears and bounce around on your eardrums in a pattern that your brain converts into language. The ultimate result of that act is that you have a thought. I speak to you by causing thoughts in your mind. Once you have gotten that idea clear, then it can be pretty simple to see that God has many ways of causing thoughts in our mind.

Willard, Dallas (2015-02-10). The Allure of Gentleness: Defending the Faith in the Manner of Jesus (p. 149). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

I read that as “I Lay me down to sleep” and for a short bit I was not able to, it added such clarity to something I already knew then I thought:

I created this and by listening to it, without words it causes thoughts in your mind…

I took this and by looking at it without words, it causes thoughts in your mind…

Sit back, close your eyes, listen to this song. “Be Still and know that I am God” and hear his words, in other words take note of his thoughts in your mind. Be comforted, maybe moved beyond comprehension, meditate on those thoughts, receive them, let your faith be increased…

Most important understand some of those thoughts that just appear on the landscape of your mind are Revelation, God Speaking to you. It really is as simple as that !

Calling all Angles

This Christmas I am going to admit something outside of my own head. Meaning I am going to vocalize it. I already started it actually by telling my life’s partner, Leisha. I don’t really like Christmas. Now don’t get me wrong, I love the ideas behind Christ Mas, the birth stuff. I just don’t like what it represents in my/our culture. All the spending, the goofy movies, the lights are ok, everyone is so happy but yet pushy and even if they are not pushy they often are only friendly, happy, for now. What’s up with that ???? I would actually prefer more of a year of more genuine kindness under less pressure without the fake happiness under pressure that leads to pushiness. I would trade for that. Just a community that is kind under normal times all year. I know I’m not alone, but I’m not going to call anyone out, force them to join in my chorus.

Continue reading →

A quick thought on freedom

Salvation, sozo to be made whole, and “programs” and churches that pursue that more whole is not only for the really broken people…

It is also for the human that got “saved” (conversion), decades ago and who spent all those decades in the church doing great things..

Everyone means exactly that, EVERYONE, can use some more of this wholeness stuff. In fact “the churched” might be some of the most difficult “more wholeness” type of people one can deal with. Its really easy to be full of anger and know there has to be another way. A man rich in long time church might be very similar to the rich man trying to pass through the eye of the needle.

Having said that as soon as you begin to ask yourself about wholeness, you can quickly begin to say to yourself to be more whole I need to be free from __________

And….the kind of freedom that makes you more whole is not found in the “From”… for the really broken or the not so seemingly so.

The Word Became Flesh – Part 1

I read a lot of books about the Bible because I just don’t think on the kinds of levels a lot of book writers think at. I have pondered this question for near 35 years and I have never read in the Bible or from any author the answer as to why in as simple but as powerful answer as this. Left on my own this is what happens too often for too long. I had to post it to my blog – #Floored.

Continue reading →