The Adventure

Under Construction for Life!

Background: A lot has happened in the past few years: The girls graduated from high school and moved out, Belinda got cancer and we went through the battle of fighting it nutritionally, a cousin committed suicide, Belinda' s sister died of cancer,  Belinda was diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder and our marriage broke up. Oh yeah, I had to sell the house where I grew up in Atlanta.  Belinda moved to Colorado and I moved to Florida. A short overview of my life before this time can be found here. 

During the last few years, I have been starting to learn about grace. It all started when Belinda and I listened to the tapes from the book What's so Amazing About Grace. This book really stirred things up and caused  a lot of questioning for me. It was so radical and dangerous to my do-it-right, safe and don't get out of the box  mentality. Something inside yearned for the grace mentioned there. I wanted to walk in it,  to receive it and give it to others. Yet my inclination is to tell someone, "if you have blown it, you must first admit you blew it,  learned from this experience, then  I will forgive you." But God says "I am willing to forgive you first!" Take for example the woman caught in adultery (John 3:8-11). As Brennan Manning says in the Ragamuffin Gospel: "Jesus didn't ask her if she was sorry. He didn't demand a firm purpose of amendment. He didn't seem too concerned that she might dash back into the arms of her lover. She just stood there and Jesus gave her absolution before she asked for it." P173. And on Page 188: "The gospel of grace announces: forgiveness proceeds repentance. The sinner is accepted before he pleads for mercy." This really blew me away and made me realize how far away I was from having this in my life. 

All of this came to a head in 2002. As I started to crash I tried to take a good look at my life. You may call it  a mid-life crisis. I have been calling it the Second Journey based a definition from  Brennan Manning's the book -  The Ragamuffin Gospel. After reading another book,  The Sacred Romance, I realized that I am on a quest to discover my heart. The essence of this book is expressed in the 1st chapter of the Sacred Romance Workbook where it states: "We have an external life, which consumes most of us. We have an internal life, that of the heart, which most of us have lost track of. The internal, the heart, is far more important; without it we cannot truly live, or love or even know God. It is possible to recover the lost life of the heart - and very, very much worth the effort." So, I am trying to get life into my heart again. That may not relate to you, but to me, it is the reason I was a hippy and did so many things and am the way I am in many areas.

Books The following books have had a real role in my adventure and I recommend these as must read books:  What's So Amazing About Grace, The Ragamuffin Gospel,   Son of a Preacher Man, Living the Questions: Making Sense of the Mess and Mystery of Life,  The Sacred Romance: Drawing Closer to the Heart of God, Wisdom Hunter, Blue Like Jazz, Messy Spirituality and A New Kind of Christian.  

Music This will be developed  later. But for now, Carolyn Arends music and words have really spoken to me in their insightfulness and honesty. 

Questions As this develops, I will add many of the questions that have shaken my complacency. Many of these have not been answered and I am not sure some of them will be during this life. 

Quotes Many of the books that have been so pivotal in my life have numerous highlighted phrases or even pages. How I will disseminate this, I do not know...

My Poetry  As I have begun my new adventure of finding and living from my heart, I have begun to write some poetry. It is very honest and personal, but to me, that is what it should be.

One of my favorite songs that captures what I want to say to my friends is Carolyn Arends'  Feel Free 

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