10/06/96

I am sitting here at my desk this Friday night, its midnite-30, I am tired but enjoying the research and writing too much...

I have become more sensitized to pain and surprise over the past few weeks, since my life has become engulfed by challenges, stresses, fatigue...I am 9 weeks into 12 weeks traveling (with only one week off a while back)...This length of travel is not in itself a killer, but the NATURE of the travel is (a different city every day or so, hotels, cabs, running through airports, press interviews, speeches, etc.)...the burnout is tasteable...the fatigue, of course, alerts me to be more careful of my walk and my thought-life--to 'look well to my ways'...

I also have a couple of personal issues that have become highly stressful, confusing, frustrating, and draining...despair and passivity are constant Harpies, to be driven off blindly by flailing about with rods of sheer will and stubbornness...I learn much in such periods, mostly about my own limitations and disobedience, so I bear these 'education costs' patiently...Unfortunately, my mistakes sometimes spill over into the lives of others, and the 'uni-' in the word 'universe' becomes the carrier of pain to others...

The travel affects my ability to do Tank work somewhat, although currently I am consumed by the Women in the Heart of God series, for my Sunday school in San Jose CA. I am learning so much in this study, and am being so quietly blessed by the glimpse into His heart He is affording me.

The number of visitors to the Tank are still increasing (it has increased almost 20% in the last 4-5 weeks for some reason), as is the amount of information being downloaded. Last month, almost 100,000 pages of material were transferred from my page! I still get several good questions per day, and my backlog of unanswered questions is up over 300 (sorry). Every now and then I get an email saying "hey, I sent in a question 9 months ago! What happened? are you ignoring me?"...I wish I had more time to work on this--so many of the questions are good, and some even urgent--but my lot is otherwise...and I try to be faithful to where I am by His providence, by my folly, or both.

But I have discovered something very beautiful (albeit bitterly humbling)--the writings of G.K. Chesterton. Someone came through the Tank a long time ago and advised me to read "Orthodoxy"--I have only now started doing so, but the view from inside is so pure and wild (much like the Holy Spirit), I am reduced to tears and sometimes grief-over-my-sometimes-deadness...Martin Ward has a page on GK with pointers to Orthodoxy.

His writings make me feel old sometimes:

All the towering materialism which dominates the modern mind rests ultimately upon one assumption; a false assumption. It is supposed that if a thing goes on repeating itself it is probably dead; a piece of clockwork. People feel that if the universe was personal it would vary; if the sun were alive it would dance. This is a fallacy even in relation to known fact. For the variation in human affairs is generally brought into them, not by life, but by death; by the dying down or breaking off of their strength or desire. A man varies his movements because of some slight element of failure or fatigue. He gets into an omnibus because he is tired of walking; or he walks because he is tired of sitting still. But if his life and joy were so gigantic that he never tired of going to Islington, he might go to Islington as regularly as the Thames goes to Sheerness. The very speed and ecstacy of his life would have the stillness of death. The sun rises every morning. I do not rise every morning; but the variation is due not to my activity, but to my inaction. Now, to put the matter in a popular phrase, it might be true that the sun rises regularly because he never gets tired of rising. His routine might be due, not to a lifelessness, but to a rush of life. The thing I mean can be seen, for instance, in children, when they find some game or joke that they specially enjoy. A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, "Do it again"; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we. The repetition in Nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical encore.

I have been so privileged to see such beauty and goodness and grace in this world--all amidst the ordinariness of the present...

Fortunately, I have leg surgery coming up in a couple of weeks, with a guaranteed down-time of two weeks(!)--I can hardly wait! I'll get to read/research/write some more--my true passion from Him.
 
 

Glenn Miller, 10/05/96
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