Trees Bear Fruit

I am not sure who, if anyone, still reads here but I wrote something I wanted to share with you all. Please pass it on if you like. I am working off my iPhone so editing is tough, so please excuse any incompletions in word or thought.

This is a small summation of just one element of something God has been teaching me this year, and boiling out as I am on this trip. I think getting out of Gainesville has been really good for me, I love that city but oh the distractions! Here I may find myself lost in a crowd or on a train in solitude, but still I am a free agent, hearing and seeking unbound by the unseen forces one's homebase often has.

So today I am reading and meditating in a town called Rueschlikon, near Zurich, Switzerland, and I just began typing this. Now, I will share:

"Trees bear fruit"

My problem is often letting go. Investing in something, a relationship for instance, requires sewing bits of ourselves into it, and the growth and fruit becomes our reward. When we invest in something while ourselves being in the nature of Christ, a never ending source, no matter what we give we will receive and find renewal in time. Outside of the nature of Christ, investments become more about ourselves and our motives and are less renewable. Without God we are a race doomed for extinction.

Yet either investment can and often will come to an end before we are ready, and separation from the work put into the growing season can be very painful. We want to move on, find new land perhaps, knowing by rote that this is "what's best," but we also fear what, unseen, lies ahead.

Those investments with less or even none of Christ may sink, taking parts of ourselves along with them, and in this situation continuation of the journey seems bleak. How can I step when I do not know my own feet? (They aren't your feet, they are God's feet!) Yet while we ourselves remain in Him we will be renewed. The more we sew in Christ, the higher our chances of return, but that does not mean we will receive what we initially desire. I've yet to meet a human who truly knows what they want outside of eternity. (yet even then, what a man desires is unfailing love, therein lies eternity or vice versa)

Yet despite any desire to remain, it is our nature to continue and create, as we mirror our Creator. It isn't in returning that we grow, unless by some lapse of maturity we are forced to circle back to some sort of origin. But we should trust the lessons God has already taught. Nor are we to leave disaster in our wake and proceed blindly in our way, for we are at every moment a witness.

There is a narrow path in the light of Grace on which we must situate ourselves and continue, step after faithful step, no matter what we have left behind, knowing that God is greater. Maybe not always feeling it, or thinking it, but knowing and believing what is true.

Phil 3:14

We must chose our investments wisely and sew accordingly, for many people depend on our fruit. It always matters, and as such we are urged to pursue wisdom. While we cannot change the past, we also cannot allow ourselves to constantly replant every seed or fixate on what could have been done.

We cannot always know the fruit of our labor in one season. We scratch the earth waiting for mere seedlings on our own time while God wants us to continue in faith and await the trees.

Feeling small or not at all

****A friend asked me for a biography, so I am writing one. There will be edits and additions and deletions and such, but I am going to post as I go, because it won't end until I do.******

My world is small and it is precious. I don't like people coming inside of it. I don't let many in but it's not because I don't like humans as much as it is that I don't like the way humans treat each other, even accidentally. My world is fragile, and thus easily broken. Little moments carry great significance and my inner self, unbeknownst the the rest of me, assigns grand meanings to memories and mementos and ideologies that would seem otherwise unnoticeable or trite. The glimmer of light that passes through a darkened room as the shades are drawn is but a passing glance given by a distracted world whose eye has been caught. But to me it is a beacon of hope, a cool drip on a smoldering tongue.

I can't even care properly for myself, so why and how could I ever figure out how to trust anyone else? I create a safe space that may feign itself as cozy and open, but only when I occupy that world. Outsiders may visit for a time, amount selected by the universe, but every friend seems to overstay.

My life is a shattered bridge of warn-out welcomes, connecting my body to my soul. Every piece of me has either been meticulously gathered over time, mined from those with whom I interact, or resides within me since and until eternity, innate and inert until the moment I am most in need. Traces made appearances here and there, but it is only after years that I am able connect the dots of my personality, dead synapses firing to life one by one, millions of jasmines blooming in the night.

What I most yearn for is to be accepted as I am. To speak and think and write as I like and have people take it as my personal voice. This is how I see the world; I am not pretending. This is how I think about myself in relation to life and I cannot see things any other way. It is neither immature nor pretentious. Every label is misapplied because people assigned them based on their own personal assessments and relations to the word and subject. The results are skewed and nothing can be fair.

It's all about perspective

So when I make my heavy attempts to control anger, or violence, or speak my truth, or whatever circumstance, and I am not taken seriously purely based on my manner of thought, I find myself at a dead end of the conscience. I can only be all that God made me to be, He gave me my voice and the life I have lead, by His grace, has brought me my words. What person who walks this earth could ever dare tell me I am less than I am? And why do I believe them?

What's more, it starts in my own heart most days. I look out into this world and see thousands of boxes that I don't fit in, and am too easily hurt when reality appears. I see limits and walls instead of ladders and bridges. So I condition myself to expect disappointment and rejection and then become depressed when that's what I get.

You could say confidence isn't exactly my strong suite.

I must climb the mountains, I must scale my battles and claim the territory of my soul. God gives me the strength to overcome yet how daunting is the task! But victory is the Lord's, and I shall see him face to face one day. Resting in God alone.

But there is yet this life on earth, and my struggles come and go. Just like friends, and love, and good chocolate.