There is only one problem what do I paint?

I stare at the canvas and it refuses to tell me what should be painted there.

Sneaky blank canvas. What would you paint?

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The wind stopped blowing in a instance on seventh and main,
no children laughed,
no lovers loved nor quarrelers quarreled ever again,
no elderly reminisced of life long ago,
the world was no longer the same
as the deafening silence turned the future
into the past with a deafening blast
bringing a silence born of modern science
with roots in the ancient past.

Angels turned their gaze
as the silence spread chaos
bringing hollow peace by inflicting great pain.

Deafening silence that could see no tear,
deafening silence that did not care of resoluteness or fear,
a war of creation and destruction
as the elements scream
of a nightmare to real to be a dream.

Oh men of progress what have you done?
You have bent nature to your will
charging the heavens and harboring hell.
Oh yes you silenced a war but at what cost,
in your victory have you laid the foundation of a future lost?

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Every Sunday in Lent is a free day where celebration replaces sacrifice at the rejoicing of Christ resurrection is foreshadowed. Every Sunday should be like this and I hope well after the Lent season ends that I remember that every Sunday should be a mini-Easter for the Christian.

I find myself occasionally posting things upon reflection that I later wish that I hadn’t posted. Either the necessity of posting, the venue of responding, or the wisdom of posting proves to be unwise in retrospection. In effect I practice thinking, speaking, rethinking, and need for repenting.

I have more than enough other things to repent for. So I’m going to try and think twice then post. Hopefully it will keep me from acting like ass when I want to act like a stallion. The animals may be similar from afar but far different up close and personal.

This is a new goal. If you know me or are getting to know me then feel free to try and help me keep a better habit of thinking twice and speaking once.

Harris noted how whatever he said in his doctor role was perfect. Every problem was solved in 30 minutes or less. He spoofed that fictional perfection in the commercial. His real life is far more complicated than his teenage characters. So are all of ours.

Many of us were raised to see life through the drama and stories of the television world. Real life is seldom like tv. On tv whatever the problem it was solved in 30 minutes to a hour.

Real life doesn’t work that way. Real life problems particularly the big kind take time and work. This time issue is so majorly different in real life compared to fantasy tv but we seldom really think about it. We begin to expect for resolutions to be quick. We think they should only take a few minutes or maybe a few hours. We think on the long side maybe a few days at max to work out the problem. Experience says that more often than not it takes months and in so cases years or longer to work out complex situations.

Life may be easier on tv but it isn’t real. Real life with all its problems is the greatest place to live out the drama of life. We must though be realistic with our expectations of time. We have to persevere and give ourselves time to work and for things to work out in the right timing.

Arctic winds swept over the mountains and settled in the valleys. The sun would disappear for days that turned in to weeks on end. Weeks turned in to months and for only brief moments the sun would tauntingly unhide itself before hiding again behind foreboding clouds which felt like lifetimes. Eons ago some of my ancestors walked those same valleys as they looked towards the sky and cursed the gods, plead with the unmoving deities to let the sun return, and allow the frozen ground to yield crops and bring back the game. One of their descendants walking by a bowling alley one day looked up to that dreary sky and challenged the paper deity that he had feared. He rebuked his once cherished hollow god’s very existence. In reality that boy was just hoping for Spring. He was hoping for a new birth and life to return not only to the ground but to his soul.

Tumnus, in Lewis classic Chronicles of Narnia, a fawn whispers to Luci that Spring never comes to Narnia. It is forever winter. There is a longing for joy in Tumnus life but the long winter lasting more than a hundred years had left the world in a depressed state. Later when Luci and the children meet the Beavers they are told of Aslan. Lewis says that for the children just hearing Aslan name is “like the first signs of spring, like good news.”

Half a decade would pass but the sun eventually rose and I began to see the grace of Spring. I have long battled with depression. For many years my soul tasted nothing but a long drawn out cup of bitterness and regret. Growing up in northern climate for me created a hardness from poor acclimation to a strange culture. Yet there was grace. I still remember vividly sitting in a Anglican Church during Good Friday service and looking at the old world style architecture. A Catholic nun walked in from the back of the building to the front reciting words from the Magnificat and the gospels. She fell so hard on the hardwood that her knee caps sounded as if they had been shattered. Her pain and anguish was that of Mary mourning the death of Christ. At the end of her words she arose and smiled. She knew that the winter of Christ death was nothing more than to prepare for the arrival of Spring.

Lent means Spring and this should be our joy. In the winter I lapse in to seasonal depression. In this third week of the 2010 Lent season as I feel so very down I reflect on the different parts of life experience from three decades of life during dreary Winter times. One of the great joys of Lent is that it is a affirmation that Spring is coming. It affirms Christ suffering as one of us. It foreshadows Christ sacrifice for us while it also foreshadows even in the cold winter shadows that Spring and Grace are coming. I love the grace of God’s Spring. Many long for this worlds Aslan to come. Rest assured Christ is on the move. This is why I love and practice Lent with more fervor every year.

“Why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.” – Angels to the Apostles as recorded in Acts 1:11